[BL] Bound to My Enemy: The Billionaire Who Took My Girl

Chapter 336: Punches

NICK

The first punch was fast... the kind of fast that only comes from someone who has spent years doing exactly this, someone who didn’t waste an ounce of motion on performance.

His knuckles caught the side of my jaw, and the sharp, wet sound of the impact seemed to echo in the open air of the roof.

The concrete floor came up to meet me before I could even register that my legs had given out.

My shoulder hit the gravel first, followed by the flat of my back, the cold stone soaking through the fabric of my white coat instantly.

Before my brain could even tell my muscles to try and stand, a heavy weight dropped directly onto my chest. Cyan was on top of me, pinning my ribs down with his knees, his right fist already pulled back.

The second punch caught my lower lip. The sharp, copper taste of blood was immediate, filling my mouth before I could swallow.

The third hit my nose. There was a distinct, sickening crack of cartilage.. a sound my body recognized from a completely different life, a reminder of the last time I had been foolish enough to stand in his way. ƒrēewebnovel.com

Right between the second and third blow, the rain finally started. The first drops were huge, heavy, and cold, slapping against the concrete like the sky had just been waiting for someone to give the signal.

Cyan kept hitting me, his arms moving with a brutal, unblinking efficiency. There was nothing performative about it; he wasn’t doing it to scare me or to make a point. It was pure, unadulterated violence from someone for whom violence was a familiar language.

And I didn’t cover my face. I didn’t raise my forearms to block the hits, and I didn’t try to shove his weight off my chest. My hands stayed flat against the wet gravel on either side of my head, just taking it.

That was the part that surprised me the most as the pain started to dull into a thudding ache.

The total lack of resistance wasn’t because I was weak; it was something else entirely. It was the strange, humiliating realization that I had spent three weeks needing to be hit by this exact person, and I had absolutely no way to explain why, even to myself.

The rain turned into a steady, heavy pour, soaking through both of our clothes until my coat was plastered to my skin. The gravel underneath us turned slick and dark.

Suddenly, the fist stayed up.

Cyan stopped, his hand hanging in the air above my face. His chest was rising and falling in deep, ragged heaves, and his pink hair was dripping wet, clumps of it stuck to his forehead.

The empty, cold mask he usually wore was entirely gone. His eyes were wide, blazing with a raw, furious heat that belonged entirely to him.

He stared down at me... bleeding, soaked, and lying completely still underneath him. I could see the anger in his face start to collide with something else at the edges.

A sudden, sharp look of confusion came into his eyes, like a question he hadn’t intended to ask. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com

I looked back up at him through the falling water. My lip was split open, and the blood from my nose was mixing with the rain, washing down the side of my cheek onto the gray stone.

A massive wave of déjà vu hit me before the actual memory could form. My body knew this exact position before my mind could even catch up to the data.

Then the memory arrived. The dream. The white ceiling of my dark apartment, the weight on my ribs, and the purple eyes catching the light from above.

A strange, quiet feeling opened up in my chest... something I refused to put a medical name to. I let out a wet, breathless sound that might have been a chuckle if it didn’t hurt so badly.

"Why did you stop?" I asked, my voice small against the steady patter of the rain. "I thought you were going to kill me. Or something." I tried to force the ghost of a smile through the blood on my mouth.

Cyan’s expression darkened. His hand dropped from the air, his fingers wrapping into the wet fabric of my collar and yanking me upward until my shoulders cleared the gravel. His grip was vice-like.

"Who really are you?" he said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low register that was far worse than the anger. "And what the hell do you want from me?"

Our eyes locked, and for the first time in three weeks, there was no distance between us. The city was gone, the hospital was gone, and there was only the rain falling between our faces.

"I want you to look at me," I said simply. I didn’t use the sarcasm. I didn’t use the condescension or any of the intellectual walls I spent my entire life building around every single thing I ever said. "And you’re looking at me. Finally."

Cyan’s fingers stayed twisted in my collar, his knuckles pressing against my throat. His eyes searched my face, watching the honesty of what I had just said move through my expression.

The confusion on his face deepened for a fraction of a second, his brow furrowing as he tried to process a response that made absolutely no logical sense.

Then, he stopped searching.

A completely different look came over his features, the unmistakable expression of someone who had just hit a revelation, someone who suddenly understood a joke that everyone else had missed.

The laugh started as a tiny, hitching breath in his throat.

Then the sound came out, low at first, before his head went all the way back against the rain.

It was a loud, hearty belly laugh, completely unguarded and full of genuine amusement.

It sounded like the first time he had found something actually funny in longer than he could remember, and he didn’t care who heard it.