Chapter 175: ¹⁷⁵: Get a grip

Chapter 175: 1??: Get a grip

"I’m not going anywhere, Kael!" I snapped back. I didn’t care what he said next. I didn’t care if he argued with me or tried to push me away again. I was done standing by while he insisted on enduring everything alone.

Before he could say another word, I leaned down and pressed my lips against his again, refusing to let him convince me to leave.

I moved my hands away from Kael’s face and slowly lowered them to his abdomen, allowing myself to hold him the way I’d been longing to for so long.

For days, I’d craved his touch despite my best efforts to distract myself from thoughts of him. I’d tried to push those feelings aside, reminding myself of all the reasons I shouldn’t let myself get attached to him. Yet, no matter how hard I’d tried, my thoughts had always found their way back to Kael.

And now, with him finally responding to my kiss, I could no longer pretend those feelings weren’t there.

This isn’t the first time Kael has experienced something like this. The thought surfaced in my mind again as I felt him finally respond to the kiss, his hands moving behind my head to draw me closer. My heart skipped a beat at the gesture, but the questions crowding my mind refused to disappear.

Had Kael been this helpless before? Had he suffered through this same pain on other occasions? If he had, how many times had he endured it? Had it happened even after he’d met me?

And what exactly was this strange condition that could leave him so weak one moment and make him regain his strength the next?

There were so many questions, and not a single answer to ease my worries.

But right now, I couldn’t do anything about them. I couldn’t very well stop to interrogate him when he was finally showing signs of recovering, and I certainly couldn’t bring myself to pull away while he was responding to me like this.

As our kiss deepened, I began to notice the change in him. Kael was regaining the strength he’d possessed when he’d first pinned me to the bed.

I could feel it in the way he moved, in the growing firmness of his hold and the increasing intensity of his response. His kiss, which had initially been hesitant and careful, gradually became more urgent.

The gentleness gave way to something fiercer, almost feral, as though the unfamiliar desperation from earlier had transformed into an overwhelming need to draw me closer.

Before I could fully process the change, Kael abruptly broke the kiss. He pulled my head back by my hair, his fingers tangled in the strands.

A startled yelp escaped me as I felt the tug at my roots. My hands instinctively tightened against his abdomen, and I looked up at him, my eyes meeting his deep, dark ones.

There was still a hint of his wolf in his gaze, but it was no longer the only thing I could see. The man looking back at me was unmistakably Kael, and yet there was something so intense about his expression that it left me momentarily speechless.

He looked at me as though he were struggling to contain something within himself, as though he wanted to pull me closer and never let me go. My breath caught in my throat.

"You wanted to fuck me, right?" I asked. The words left my mouth before I could second-guess myself. I no longer cared about the things I’d told myself when I’d tried to push him away, nor could I bring myself to think about the promises I’d made in the heat of our earlier argument or everysingle day for the past seven days.

All I could think about was the man in front of me and the strange intensity in his eyes. "Then what are you even waiting for?"

It was as though hell had been unleashed. Within seconds, Kael shifted away from where I’d been resting against him and rose to his feet, pulling me up with him as if I weighed nothing at all.

The sudden movement left me breathless. It was almost impossible to reconcile the man standing before me with the one who had been lying helplessly on the floor only minutes earlier. I’d watched him struggle to keep his eyes open, his strength almost entirely gone. I’d been terrified that something terrible might happen to him.

And now, he was holding me as though I weighed no more than a feather. The sheer difference between his earlier weakness and his current strength was bewildering.

"Kael, please be gentle," I whispered, my eyes still locked with his. "Even your normal movements seem to have three times the force they usually do."

A wince escaped me when I felt his fingers pressing too firmly into my back and thighs where he held me up in his arms.

He didn’t answer. There was no sarcastic remark, no cutting response, none of the snarky, demeaning words I had grown accustomed to hearing from him, now. He simply continued looking into my eyes, his expression strangely quiet. And that was what unsettled me most.

His gaze seemed almost searching, as though he were trying to find something precious hidden within me. There was a care in the way he watched me, a gentleness that felt entirely at odds with the overwhelming strength in his arms.

For a brief moment, I found myself wondering whether this was another side of Kael that I’d never been allowed to see dince so long now.

The thought had barely formed before I pushed it away. Get a grip, Athena.

I was doing it again; allowing my foolish thoughts to cloud my judgment, searching for meaning in every little thing he did and convincing myself that there might be something more behind his actions.

I couldn’t afford to fall into that trap again. Not when I knew how easily my own feelings could make me forget everything I’d promised myself.