From Best Friend To Fiancé (Savannah and Roman) novel Chapter 165

**Chapter 102: Courthouse Paperwork Is Polite**

His words detonated within me like a grenade, sending shockwaves of heat coursing through my body—an unwelcome sensation that I fought to suppress. I could feel an electric charge crackling in my limbs, tightening my muscles, while the pulse of my blood thudded in my ears, a relentless drumbeat of panic. Heat pooled in places that it absolutely should not have, igniting a primal, traitorous reaction that spread across my skin and settled low in my belly.

No. No. No. This is not what this is. My mind screamed in protest, a frantic reminder of the reality I was grappling with. This man—this man—had extinguished a life, orchestrated suffering, and had the audacity to cloak it in the guise of devotion. He had taken it upon himself to wield the power of life and death, and yet here I was, battling an insidious desire that clawed at my insides.

The immediate wrongness of my body’s reaction was corrosive, a poison that seeped into my very being. I could almost hear the shame oozing from my pores, an audible testament to my internal conflict.

Desperate for clarity, I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes until bright stars exploded behind my eyelids. For a fleeting moment, I was lost in a haze, unable to discern which sensation belonged to what truth. Was it the physical coil of attraction I had once felt—warm and dangerous—or the deep well of dread that had taken root where trust should have flourished?

In a wild, loathsome flash, I envisioned throwing myself at him, surrendering to that violent certainty. Perhaps in doing so, I could silence the fear that gnawed at me. The thought was a siren’s call, enticing because it promised to satiate a hunger my body craved. But it also made my stomach churn, a sickening twist that I couldn’t ignore.

“You’re sick,” I finally managed to say, my voice hoarse, the words scraping against my throat like shards of glass.

“And you’re naive,” he retorted, his tone dripping with disdain. “You want the tidy narrative—the man wronged, the man punished by the law. But we both know that’s not how the world operates. Your parents didn’t shield you. The law won’t shield you. The law never protects women like you. So someone had to step in.”

He closed his eyes for a brief moment, as if savoring a memory that was both bitter and sweet. “You didn’t ask for it because you were broken, Sax. Because you were conditioned to be small. Because you were trained not to scream. I heard your cries. I witnessed what they did to you. And I made the choice not to let him walk away.”

The taste of metal and shame lingered in my mouth, a grim reminder of the reality I faced. I regarded him as though he were a plague, a disease I could not afford to catch. “You are dangerous,” I stated plainly, my voice steady. “You pose a threat to me. To everyone. You’ve crafted a law for yourself that no judge, no jury, no conscience has sanctioned. That’s not protection—that’s a sentence.”

He moved closer, like a predator coiled and ready to strike, the heat radiating from his chest palpable. His voice dropped to a dangerously seductive purr. “And yet,” he murmured softly, “you keep choosing to be with me. You keep crossing back into my world. You keep loving me with all your jagged edges. So, who is the real hypocrite here?”

That question hung in the air, a heavy weight that almost unraveled me. Rage and humiliation clashed within me, battling against a desperate hunger that felt all too familiar, like an old addiction I couldn’t shake. I could taste it, coppery and raw. The itch for him surged beneath my ribs, a longing I would later punish myself for even daring to entertain.