WHEN HE DESIRES

MOVING

NOVEMBER POV

I don’t realize I’ve stopped breathing until the car door shuts behind me.

The world outside is muted by the thick glass. My palms are sweaty, my pulse frantic and my mind won’t stop screaming the same question over and over.

What have I just done?

Killian slides into the seat beside me. He doesn’t look at me, but I feel his presence like gravity pulling everything in the car toward him.

The door closes with a soft thud, sealing me inside with a stranger who knows my name, my father, my past. A stranger who looks at me like he already owns my future.

The engine starts.

My heart tries to launch out of my chest.

“Breathe,” Killian says quietly.

I jerk at the sound of his voice. I hate that it affects me—low, smooth, steady. Like he’s not worried about anything. Like he’s not sitting beside a panicked woman he practically abducted.

“I am breathing,” I mutter.

“No,” he says. “You’re not.”

I inhale sharply, realizing he’s right. I press a hand to my chest, trying to steady myself.

His eyes flick to my face.

“Better?.”

His tone is neutral, but something flickers in his gaze—like he sees me as something pitiful.

I don't want his pity.

I nod even though I feel otherwise staring out the window as rain streaks down the glass.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Somewhere safe.”

“Safe how? Safe for who?” I hate how my voice cracked. “You say you know my father, but I don’t know you. At all. You just—just dragged me out of my home.”

Killian finally turns toward me.

“I saved you,” he says, “from men who were minutes away from taking you.”

I flinch. Because he’s right. And I hate that he’s right.

“This isn’t saving,” I whisper. “This is kidnapping.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Am I restraining you?”

“No.”

“Holding a gun to you?”

“No.”

“Did I hurt you?”

“No…”

“Then don’t call it k********g,” he says smoothly. “Call it… relocation.”

His lips twitch like he almost smiled, and the effect is lethal like a storm with a mouth.

I tear my gaze away before I drown in him.

“I could’ve run,” I whispered. “I had a plan.”

He studied me for a long time. Too long. Like he’s peeling back layers.

“You don’t survive men like Dimitri Romanov with a plan,” he says quietly. “You survive with protection.”

“And that’s you?” My laugh is humorless. “Some stranger in a thousand-dollar suit?”

“Yes” His tone dips lower. “And you’ll learn fast to accept that fact, November.

My throat goes tight.

His eyes sharpened. "I may be a stranger to you but not to your past and definitely not to your survival."

My hands tremble.

He sees it. Of course, he does.

He leans in just a fraction, his voice lowering so only I can hear.

“I told you.”

A slow exhale.

“I owe your father a debt.”

Then, softer—almost intimate—

“And I always pay my debts.”

Something cold slides down my spine.

He sits back again, calm and in control, while my entire world feels like it’s tilting.

I don’t know this man.

But he feels like a danger I stepped into willingly.

Or maybe like a darkness that was always destined to find me.

KILLIAN POV

She’s shaking.

Trying to hide it.

Failing miserably.

November Paige looks like a porcelain doll someone left out in the rain—fragile, trembling, cracked at the edges. But there’s steel under that softness.

She’s not weak.

Weak women die in my world. November survived.

That alone makes her interesting.

The car winds through narrow roads, leaving the small town behind. My guard sits in front, silent as a shadow. Good. He knows I don’t want noise when I’m studying someone.

And November… she is something to study.

She sits stiffly, holding her bag against her chest like a shield. Her fingers twist in the fabric. Her eyes flick constantly to the windows as if expecting Dimitri himself to appear on the glass.

Fear isn’t pretty on most people.

On her? It’s a warning. A reminder that someone tried to break her once.

I don’t like that.

I don’t like that at all.

“Your hands,” I say.

She blinks. “What about them?”

“They’re shaking.”

She tucks them under her thighs, embarrassed. “I’m not used to… this.”

“This?” I echo.

“Men like you,” she whispers. “Dark, dangerous, controlling.”

I chuckle once. Soft, humorless. “You think Dimitri Romanov is the measure of danger?”

Her face blanches.

I lean closer—not touching her, just close enough that she feels the shift in the air.

“Dimitri is a child with a knife,” I say. “I am a man with an arsenal. Don’t confuse us.”

A small sound escapes her throat—fear, maybe disbelief, maybe both.

“But why me?” she whispers. “Why do you care what he wants?”

“I don’t,” I say truthfully. “I care about what your father did for me nineteen years ago.”

I expect questions.

I expect fear.

Instead, she exhales shakily and whispers, “You never did say what happened to you?”

For a moment—a single moment—I go silent.

She has no idea what she’s asking.

But she’s looking at me, really looking, like maybe she wants to understand the monster beside her.

The monster her father saved.

So I give her the truth.

“A m******e,” I say. “My father ordered it.”

Shot twice. Left to bleed out.”

My jaw flexes.

“Your father hid me. Operated on me. Saved me when doing so put a target on his own back.”

Her eyes soften—sympathy or grief. Emotion people don’t offer me. People fear me. They don’t feel for me.

But she does.

I look away first, which is uncharacteristic. Her gaze is too open. Too warm for me.

And I don’t do warmth.

Not anymore.

The car slows as we reach a secluded road that leads to the abandoned warehouse—temporary, hidden, secure. A place where no Romanov will think to look.

I tap the glass.

“Stop here.”

My guard exits first, checking the perimeter.

November stares at me, eyes wide. “Where are we?”

“A safe house.”

She hugs her bag tighter. “Will I be locked inside?”

I meet her gaze evenly.

“No. But you won’t run.”

She bristles. “Don’t tell me what I will or won’t do.”

“I’m not telling you,” I correct. “I’m just stating a fact. If you were going to run, you would have done it already.”

She opens her mouth, closes it again, then glared at me.

She hates that I’m right.

Good.

Truth is the first step toward control.

I open my door and step out. The cold wind cuts through my coat as if trying to reach my bones. I round the car and opened her door.

She doesn’t move.

“November,” I say quietly, “come.”

The word isn’t a demand. Not a request either. More like a command wrapped in silk and edged with steel.

She hesitates then she slides her hand into mine.

Her fingers are small, cold, trembling slightly.

I don’t squeeze, but I don’t let go either.