Kindness was a weapon I hadn't known how to wield against him, and it was breaking us both.
The penthouse was a gilded cage, but the air had changed. It was no longer just charged with the threat of external danger or the cold calculation of their initial arrangement. Now, it was thick with a tension so potent it felt like a third person in the room, breathing with them, watching them. The fragile truce, the shared vulnerability of his confession and the desperate passion that followed, had shattered the old rules of their war. What was left was a terrifying, uncharted territory.
It had been three days since he'd fallen asleep at his desk. Three days since she'd draped a blanket over his shoulders and he'd gripped her wrist, his eyes dark and unguarded, and asked, "Why are you being kind to me?"
She hadn't had an answer then. She doesn't have one now.
He'd been a ghost since, a storm contained in a tailored suit, moving through the penthouse with a rigid control that felt more dangerous than any of his previous outbursts. He was pulling away, rebuilding the walls she'd somehow managed to scale, and every brick he laid felt like a physical blow.
Elara stood before her easel in the sun-drenched living area, a canvas half-painted in furious slashes of crimson and obsidian. It was supposed to be about the threat of Julian Thorne, but all she could see was the stark pain in Lysander's eyes when he'd spoken of his mother. Her brush hovered, uncertain.
"Still documenting the ruin, I see."
His voice, cool and clipped, came from the doorway. She didn't turn, but her spine straightened, every nerve ending suddenly alert.
"It's what you paid for, isn't it?" she replied, her tone deliberately light. "One million dollars for twelve paintings of my own descent into madness. A bargain, really."
She heard his footsteps on the polished concrete floor, slow and deliberate. A predator circling his prey. Except she was no longer sure who was the predator and who was the prey. The lines had blurred into oblivion.
"This one lacks focus," he stated, coming to a stop behind her, so close she could feel the heat radiating from his body. He smelled of crisp linen and expensive whiskey. "It's angry, but it's directionless. Like a child having a tantrum."
Her grip on the brush tightened. "Not all of us can channel our emotions into hostile takeovers and corporate assassinations, Lysander. Some of us just have to smear it on a canvas and hope it makes sense."
"It doesn't." His hand reached past her shoulder, his finger pointing to a chaotic swirl of black. "This is fear. And this," he tapped near a violent streak of red, "is rage. But here," his finger traced a hesitant, unfinished line of gold, "this is something else. This is hope. It's weak. It doesn't belong."
His analysis was so brutally accurate it stole her breath. He saw the map of her soul on this canvas, and he was critiquing it.
She finally turned to face him, the small movement bringing them inches apart. "Maybe it does belong. Or are you the sole arbiter of what emotions are permitted in my work, as well as in my life?"
His eyes, those storm-grey eyes, bored into hers. "I am the arbiter of what keeps you alive. And hope, in our situation, is a fatal flaw."
"Is that what this is?" she shot back, gesturing wildly between them. "This… whatever this is that's been simmering since you almost kissed me in the hallway? A fatal flaw?"
A muscle ticked in his jaw. "It was a mistake."
The word was a slap. "Which part? Saving me from Thorne's men? Confessing you don't know the truth about our fathers? Or kissing me as if I were the only source of oxygen left in your world?"
"All of it!" he roared, the control finally snapping. The sound echoed in the vast, sterile space. "Bringing you here. Touching you. Letting you see — " He cut himself off, raking a hand through his perfectly styled hair, leaving it deliciously disheveled. "You are a complication I did not anticipate."
"I'm a person, Lysander! Not a complication! Not a pawn in your revenge fantasy or a damsel in your protection racket!" She shoved against his chest, but he was immovable, a wall of solid muscle and simmering fury. "You can't just… feel things for me and then decide it's a strategic error!"
"I can," he growled, his voice dropping to a menacing whisper. "I have to. Don't you understand? Wanting you makes me weak. It makes me slow. It makes me look at you when I should be watching for threats. It makes me care what happens to you, and that is a luxury I cannot afford!"
"So, what's the new plan?" she taunted, her heart hammering against her ribs. "Go back to just wanting to destroy me? Is that easier for you to process?"
"Yes!" he snarled, his hands coming up to frame her face, not with tenderness, but with a desperate, furious possession. "It is infinitely easier! Hatred is clean. It's simple. It has a goal. This… this thing with you… it's a chaos I cannot control."
"Maybe you're not supposed to control it," she breathed, her lips so close to his she could almost taste the conflict on him. "Maybe you're just supposed to feel it."
His eyes dropped to her mouth, and the air left the room. All the anger, the fear, the lingering doubt, and the undeniable, terrifying connection coalesced into a single, searing point of tension.
"Elara," he whispered, a raw, broken sound that was both a warning and a surrender.
It was all the invitation she needed.
She closed the infinitesimal distance between them, capturing his mouth with hers.
It was not like the first kiss, that furious clash at the gala. This was a conflagration. This was the final, desperate stand in their private war. His arms banded around her, crushing her to him, one hand tangling in her hair to tilt her head back, deepening the kiss into something devastatingly carnal. She met him with equal ferocity, her nails scraping against the scalp of his neck, her body arching into the hard, unyielding lines of his.
It was a battle, but it was also a confession. Every thrust of his tongue was a word he couldn't speak. Every gasp she swallowed was a secret she was no longer afraid to tell. He walked her back until her shoulders hit the cold, concrete wall, the shock of the temperature a stark contrast to the inferno raging between them.
"You see?" he rasped against her lips, his breath hot and ragged. "This is what you do. You make me forget. You make me forget the lies, the revenge, the goddamn blood pact that started it all. All I can think about is you. The taste of you. The sound you make when I'm inside you. It's madness."
"Then let's be mad," she pleaded, her hands fumbling with the buttons of his shirt, desperate to feel his skin. "Just for tonight. Let the rest of the world burn."
He tore his mouth from hers, his chest heaving, his eyes wild with a turmoil that mirrored her own. He looked at her — really looked at her — her lips swollen from his kisses, her hair a mess, her eyes blazing with a mix of defiance and desire. He saw the ruin he'd vowed to create, and the breathtaking beauty that had risen from it.
And it broke him.
"I can't," he choked out, the words ripped from somewhere deep and wounded. He pushed away from her, from the wall, putting a precious, awful foot of space between them. The loss of his heart was an agony. "I can't do this. I can't want you and destroy you. The two things are… they are the same, and I can't…"
He stared at her, his expression a harrowing mask of anguish, as if she were both his salvation and his damnation.
Then, he turned and walked away.
The sound of the penthouse door closing with a soft, definitive click was louder than any gunshot. Elara slid down the wall, the cold seeping through her clothes, and wrapped her arms around her knees, her entire body trembling. The ruins of their love story were scattered around her, and she was a prisoner in the wreckage, more terrified of his surrender than she had ever been of his wrath.