Page 110 of Angels Are Falling

I opened my mouth to explain and understood, all at once, that there was no version of it that wouldn’t sound like exactly what it was.

“I didn’t have my phone on me,” I said anyway. It came out weak. “Stefan told me he’d cleared it with you. I thought you were okay with me⁠—”

“Okay with what? Spending the night with another man.” He laughed, low and awful and soundless. “There is no version of me, in any life, that would be okay with that. You knew that and did it anyway.”

I had no defense. Because he was right. I should have known better than to accept at face value that Kai was all right with me spending the night with Stefan. I was shocked when Stefan suggested he had cleared it with Kai, and, thinking Kai was okay with it, I’d reluctantly agreed. I should have clarified the content in the text. I should have known better. Kai would never be okay with this polyandrous arrangement, which still didn’t make sense, since he was the one who proposed it. If I had to guess, Kai saw the text and, instead of attending his morning meeting, drove all night until he was standing in front of me.

He was quiet. When he spoke again, it was softer, and the softness was the most frightening thing yet. “Look at me.” He waited until I did. “If you went to LA and found me in bed with another woman. Her hand over mine. My body curled into hers the way Stefan’s was curled into you.” Each word was set down with terrible care. “How would you feel?”

My throat closed.

“Answer the question. How would you feel?”

“Devastated.” The word cracked when it came out of my mouth. I didn’t have to imagine it, either. I’d rehearsed that exact devastation a hundred times without meaning to. Every time my mind wandered to the woman Kai had loved before me, the one he’d wanted so badly he’d memorized her from a distance. I’d never even seen her face, and yet I was so jealous of her.

So, I knew precisely what it looked like when the person you loved had a room inside them you would never be allowed into. The hypocrisy rang loudly in my ear. Because that was how Kai felt seeing me with Stefan—devastated. Stefan and I shared something he couldn’t penetrate, just like Kai did with that other woman.

Through my haze of tears, I saw a flicker behind his eyes. Like I’d confirmed the wound rather than eased it.

He moved close enough that I could see he was faintly shaking. “I’ve been standing over that bed, watching, and trying to understand how the woman who’d be devastated could do the same to me, and sleep straight through it.”

I started sobbing softly.

I didn’t have an answer. That was the shame of it. When I reached for a reason, there was nothing there but the tangled mess of our life, an unspeakable knot of why I had agreed to it. I should have stood my ground when Stefan suggested it, but I felt I didn’t have a choice. And I thought Kai had accepted it.

I knew he wouldn’t believe me, but I hadn’t slept peacefully without him. Rather, I had forced myself to escape in my sleep from what was happening in my reality, because when I lay awake next to Stefan, all I wanted was the man in front of me instead.

“I’m sorry.” The words were pathetically small. “Nothing happened. I swear.”

“I know nothing happened. That’s why he is still alive.”

I retreated a step, gasping at his words.

He followed my steps, unblinking. “You still let him hold you. You chose his side of the house when I gave you every reason to stay in mine. I called you again and again, and you were right here. Warm. Content.” His voice shook. “Do you have any idea what it did to me, walking in to find you at peace in his arms?”

I did. God help me, I did, because I could not have lived through seeing him that way. If I had walked into a hotel room in LA and found her—the one that got away, wearing the peace that was supposed to be mine—I would have come apart where I stood. And the knowing of it, that I’d done to him the one thing I couldn’t have tolerated, moved through me like grief.

“Kai.” I reached for him. I didn’t know if it was an apology or a surrender or both.

He caught my wrist before I could touch his face. Held it. His eyes dropped to my mouth, and whatever was left of his restraint gave way, the fury folding into something hungrier, a man who’d driven through the dark with his heart in pieces and needed, now, to put his hands on the only thing that had ever made him feel he owned any part of the world.

I glanced at the bathroom door, still slightly ajar.

“Kai, wait⁠—”

He didn’t.

“Not here,” I said, appalled.

But he didn’t care.

He turned me around, bent me over the sink, my knees crashing against the drawers underneath. My hands pressed against the cold mirror as he yanked my leggings and underwear down to my ankles. I didn’t have the chance to think as he kneeled behind me, spread my legs, and then his tongue was on my sex.

I bit my lip so hard to keep myself from screaming that it nearly bled.

There was barely any finesse in his efforts, just pure madness. He loved going down on me, and at times, it felt like his pleasure surpassed even mine. This was an area he excelled at, but tonight, there was a crazed edge to his skills. As if he needed this to possess me, suffocate me with his need until I didn’t know where I started and he ended.

He licked me first with fervor, then with grazing bites on my clit that had me moaning with equal parts pleasure and torture. My hands pressed harder against the glass as I arched my back. Kai spread my ass cheeks wide for better access to my clit. When his finger delved into foreign territory between my cheeks, my entire body froze.