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Her brow furrowed. “Don’t you growl at me.”
“I’m serious, Khloé. Enoch is going to try all sorts of ways to get to you. He might even hire an assassin to do the job for him. So if a stranger comes calling, you tell the receptionist to send. Them. Away. You hear me?”
“Look, I get that your emotions are still all over the place after what happened earlier—”
“Tell me you’ll do that, Khloé,” he said, ignoring her words. “Tell me you’ll send any strangers away.”
“Or what, Don Juan?”
He towered over her, all sex and fury, and curved a hand tight around her nape. “Or I’ll fuck the answer I want right out of you.” He took her mouth with a territorial snarl, sweeping away any other objection she might have made. The kiss was hard and wet and hungry, and it woke her body in an instant.
Need—so raw and terrible—roared through her. Her blood heated. Her nerve-endings tingled. Her hormones went haywire.
Keenan kissed her hard and deep, so greedy for her he almost shook with it. A powerful, primitive need crawled through him, thick and hot. He wanted to fuck her. Possess her. Pleasure her. Claim her.
His fear of losing her to the fucking infection sat like a lump of lead in the pit of his stomach, driving him to officially make her his. He couldn’t imagine not having her in his life. Her smile, her laugh, her way of making him feel alive—even when she was poking at his patience—warmed his soul. Just looking at her each morning set him up for the day.
He got why committing to a mating would be scary for her, but he wasn’t going to give her up. Not to her fears. Not to the infection. Not to anything.
He was done holding back on claiming her. He couldn’t do it any longer. He needed her in a way he’d never needed another person. Needed her to belong solely to him, because he sure as fuck belonged solely to her—all the way from cell to bone.
Struggling to breathe, Khloe tore her mouth free. “Wait.”
“No.” He bit down on the crook of her neck. “You’re mine, and I’m going to claim what’s mine.”
Khloe’s heart thudded. Claim? A contradictory mixture of panic and joy spiked through her.
Realizing they’d arrived at the penthouse, she backed out of the elevator. “You don’t really want this. You’re not thinking straight because you’re mad and—”
“Mad?” He prowled toward her, his face cold, his eyes alive with something that made her stomach twist. “I’m mad about a lot of things. I’m mad that my ex came here. I’m mad that you’ve got an infection ravaging your system. I’m mad that Enoch’s sending dead fucking bodies after you. I don’t do well with feeling helpless, Khloé. But I’m helpless to protect you, and I absolutely fucking hate it.”
She kept on backing away, but he just kept on stalking her. She licked her lips. “I’m doing what I can to stay safe—”
“Doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter if you were surrounded by armed fucking guards every single minute of the damn day. I’d still worry.”
“Then I’d say it’s a control issue for you. You don’t like that you can’t take charge of this situation,” she accused, expecting him to go on the defensive.
“You’re right, I don’t. Control is important to me for a number of reasons. But you’ve been shooting mine to shit since day one.”
The surprise of that made her halt. She frowned. “How? By poking at you?”
And then he was eating up her personal space. “No. By making me hard as a fucking rock against my own damn will. Yeah, that’s right, I can’t control my body around you. I never have been able to.”
Pure shock hit her first. But it quickly gave way to sheer incredulity when she realized … “Oh my God, you’re mad at me for this,” she said, backpedaling again. “How is it my fault?”
“It’s not. But I wish it was, because then I could be pissed at you. And maybe if I was pissed at you, I wouldn’t want you so damn much I can barely fucking think straight. It’s like you’re imprinted in my system. I can’t get you out, and I don’t even want to.” His anger melted away, replaced by a firm resolve that made her scalp prickle. “Come here.”
Her pulse jumped. “Why?”
“So I can claim what belongs to me. I know why that scares you. You hear the word ‘mate’, and you don’t think ‘safe.’ Why would you? I don’t know your family well, but it’s no secret that your mother’s relationships have been nothing short of dysfunctional—all violence and verbal abuse and binge drinking. It’s also no secret that your father wasn’t faithful to his past partners and that he struggled to settle down. Although he’s now mated, you’re probably not confident that it’ll last.”
