by Maria Luis
She pauses, her violet eyes downcast. “Penance. The word I’m looking for is penance.”
Mum’s necklace burns a hole in my pocket.
“When I was younger, I had nightmares.” Blearily, she glances up when the mattress dips at her side. I keep my space, giving her a wide berth. I’m here, I want to tell her, and the unspoken encouragement seems to register because she gives me a shaky nod. “Darkness always lurked on the horizon. It made me fearful. And so I would run—in my sleep, I would run.”
I feel my brows lower. “Sleepwalking, you mean?”
“All night long,” she allows, her thumbs crisscrossing anxiously over each other. “Once, when I was seven or eight, I managed to get lost in Regent’s Park. We lived nearby, just a block away, and I slipped out into the garden. Mum cried when the Met found me, but my father only put his hand on my arm and marched me back home without a word. After that, he . . . he had me lock my bedroom door.”
A hard swallow sticks in my throat as I drop my elbows to my thighs. “You locked yourself inside.”
“I was my own jailer,” she answers, her naturally husky voice lowering to a pained whisper. “A few years later, stuck in that ever-perpetual nightmare haze, I dreamt of creeping down the stairs like I did as a child. Only, I woke to find myself twisting the knob. No matter how hard I tried, the door wouldn’t open.”
I’m half-aware of my hands balling into tight fists on my thighs even as I latch onto her words and run them through my memory bank. “At the Palace, you told me that your door was bolted shut on the night that your house caught fire.”
The right corner of Rowena’s mouth turns up. Nothing in her expression exudes joy. “Before that night, the darkness always chased me in my dreams. Since then—and especially after I met with the king—I dream of only fire.”
With one elbow still planted on my knee, I shove my fingers through my hair. “What kind of man leaves his wife and daughter to die while he saves himself?”
“It used to make me feel better to believe that he planned to come back. That, when he looked up at my window, maybe he didn’t actually see me standing beyond the glass.”
The fucking bastard.
Although Rowena can’t see me, I bow my head to hide the rage bleeding to the surface. “But he saw you,” I edge out.
“Oh, he saw me. And then . . .” With a roll of one shoulder, she lifts her face up to the ceiling. “Once in a while I’d think that maybe he and Mum had a row. Maybe they argued and it was so godawful that by the time the fire started, he didn’t even stop to think that I was still in the house. He needed to get out and I was just . . . forgotten.”
Dispensable, she called herself yesterday.
I despise the word.
It crawls under my skin and spreads to my lungs.
You’ve been very, very bad, Damien.
Mum’s favorite thing to tell me whenever she felt that I acted out of line. Oh, she played the victimized saint around my brothers. Always weeping, always fragile. They catered to her every whim—helping her to the loo when her legs felt weak or pouring her water when she couldn’t reach the jug on the nightstand by her bed.
Then they would leave and it would be only us.
And she would show me no mercy.
“I keep wondering,” Rowena says, dropping her chin to one knee, “if it’s penance that’s brought me here.” When I start to speak, she holds up a hand. “The king tricked me. I don’t want to believe it but I can read the writing on the wall. All those people downstairs . . . I took them from their lives to help with a cause that was nothing but a lie. Sara blames your brother for her father’s death and Hugh thinks that Isla Quinn is the devil for killing Ian. And I won’t lie to you—I thought the same.”
“She did kill the king.”
Rowena stares just beyond my right shoulder. “We’re all running from something, though, aren’t we? We run, in our dreams and in life, like that’ll save us from what we’ve done. Isla Quinn may have killed the king, but I don’t know the toll that it took on her soul. All I know is that I was blind—literally, figuratively—and it’s not you or your brothers who caused my friends such hurt . . . it’s me.”
My shoulders twitch like she’s struck me. “You can’t shoulder all the pain in the world, Rowena. Not even if you think that you deserve it.”
“I can’t, no. But I want to apologize to them—your brothers, I mean—and to Holyrood as a whole.”
Jesus.
Feeling unsteady, I push to my feet and stride away from the bed. I look to the wardrobe, where I held her last night, and feel ruined, down to what’s left of my soul. I came to Holly Village with selfish intentions spurred by seven months of hatred for her father. Meanwhile, Rowena has the wherewithal to accept her wrongs with humility and grace. She sits there, stripped of her sight, humbled by a nightmare overheard by everyone on this floor, and still seeks to make amends.
I want to shake her.
I want to press her flat on that bed, spread her legs wide, and thrust inside her until she feels as shattered, as tortured, as I do.
Mistaking my silence for rejection, Rowena lets out a small, uncomfortable laugh. “Apologies are given without any expectation of their being accepted, and I don’t expect forgiveness. But I’ll apologize anyway because it’s the right thing to do.”
“We aren’t innocent in this,” I tell her roughly. “Don’t humble yourself when we . . . when I’ve done so much worse than you could ever dream of.”
“You took an oath. Whatever you did—whatever you’ve done—I’m sure it had a purpose.”
Even now, I can feel the sweat in my palms from gripping the shovel as I dug and dug and dug. The dirt under my fingernails, the emptiness in my heart. Rowena would be horrified to learn the truth, and all the warmth she gave me last night would be extinguished, as easily as the flame of a candle blowing out in the wind.
Wishing I had a cigarette, I force my fingers to relax at my sides. Breathe, Godwin. Just fucking breathe. “And if it’s only purpose was hate?” I ask, my tone hard. “If you knew it was wrong, and you reveled in it anyway?”
Her brows knit together. Slowly she extends her bare legs over the side of the bed. “I’m not one to cast stones, Damien. I can’t be, not after everything.” When she stands, it’s only for me to realize that she isn’t wearing any pajama bottoms at all. Only a rumpled shirt that catches in the elastic waistband of the same knickers that I stripped from her in the chapel.
My cock hardens.
Rowena Carrigan is too good for me. I’ll burn her in a way that Buckingham Palace never could. Drag her so far deep into Hell that she’ll feel its embers stoked over the coals of her spine until she’s all but ash. And if she runs, I’ll chase her—because good has never had a place in my life and my first inclination is to destroy it.
Destroy her.
I nearly come out of my skin when she presses a hand flat to my chest. “Do you want to tell me what happened?” Her tone is kind, empathetic. So damned gentle.
It snips at the already frayed thread of my control.
“No.”
Her throat visibly works with a swallow. “You can, if you want. Obviously, we got off on the wrong foot, but I thought, maybe—”
“No.” Against all better judgment, my palms find her upper arms. I sweep my thumbs over skin untouched by fire. Forgive me. The thought bleeds into my consciousness, just as I husk, “The only thing I want is you on your knees.”
25
Rowena
I don’t know when, exactly, I got a read on Damien, but as he orders me to my knees, I know that he’s banking on me telling him to sod off.
The truth lurks in his rigid posture, like he’s preparing himself for my rejection, and in his hard-edged tone that barely overshadows the raw vulnerability he’s clearly trying to hide. And when he barks, “Well?” all I feel is the rapid thud of his heart fluttering beneath my palm.
I see you, Damien Godwin. For the first
time, I see you.
This man has challenged me from the moment I awoke in Dr. Matthews’ operating room. He’s pushed at my restraints and boundaries. He’s tested the limits of my temper and loyalty. To all of England, I’m the prime minister’s reclusive daughter. To the people in Holly Village, I’m the one rallying the troops against the Priests. No one knows my soul. No one knows my triumphs.
Not even Margaret.
In life, I run the same way that I do in my dreams—forever reaching, forever grasping for that elusive something that will wipe my past clean and bring me long-sought peace. Nothing has ever come closer than waking in my bed, skin teased with perspiration from a nightmare, and hearing this man call me back to the realm of the living.
Coiling my fingers in the fabric of his shirt, I tip my head back. “Confess something first.”
His gravel-pitched reply is immediate: “What?”
“Would you say the same thing to any woman in my place? Would you tell her to get down on her knees and make you come?”
“Jesus. Rowena—”
When he cuts himself off, I steel my shoulders.
I won’t wilt for him. I won’t break for him. Regardless of whether I want to blow him or not—and, God help me, but I do—I won’t bow to him or any other man. I’m a fool to want anything with Damien to mean more but I won’t do it all if it’ll only mean less.
“Well?” I demand, smothering the tremor in my voice before it can expose the soft shell of my underbelly. “Would you?”
The hands on my upper arms squeeze then draw me hard against him. My breasts flatten against his chest, and his forefinger hooks under my chin. Firm but gentle. Calloused yet unbelievably tender. His breath mists over my lips when he growls, “You want me to confess?”
“I do.”
He hisses between clamped teeth like I’ve personally scorched him. “Then here’s my confession: I want nothing more than to put you on that desk. I want you naked, Rowena, all but those knickers of yours. I want you flicking your thumb over your nipple while I watch, and then I want you to take your hand lower and lower fucking still. I want you trembling, I want you panting. I want you so turned on that you’ll beg me to touch you.”
Oh, God.
“But I won’t,” he continues on a husky purr before I can even catch my breath. “I won’t lay a single finger on you. Not then, when you’re begging, and not even when your fingers dance across your thigh to cup your pussy. Because I want that, too—I want to watch you make yourself come.”
My legs threaten to buckle, and Damien grips me a little tighter, his mouth finding my ear. “Does that turn you on? Does it make you wet to know that I stayed up all night thinking of this very thing?”
It makes me whimper.
My head lolls to the side when his lips find the hollow of my throat, the sensation so deliciously sensual that I can’t stop myself from rocking against the muscular thigh he wedges between my legs.
“Confess, Rowena.”
“Find out for yourself,” I throw back at him.
He lets loose a ragged groan that rakes goose flesh across my skin before turning me around in his arms. His hands land on my hips, pulling me back against him, and then he brings one palm to the apex of my thighs. I’m wet. Drenched. Unable to keep quiet, a keening cry escapes me as I rise onto my toes. His hold on my hip tightens and he grinds the heel of his palm against my core.
Yes, yes, yes.
The bristles of his jaw scrape my cheek as he folds his body around mine, keeping me tucked against him. And all the while he circles his palm, so slow, so arduously, that it’s bloody torture. I cant my hips, seeking more friction, but he only snatches his hand away to remind me that he’s the one in control and I’m left . . . bereft.
Aching.
“Please,” I whisper, reaching for his wrist but finding his forearm instead, “don’t stop.”
Warmth from the sun dances across my bare toes. I’m burning, wanting for him, and with a dark groan, he brings his hand back between my legs like he can’t last another second without touching me. “I shouldn’t want you this much,” he breathes. “Jesus fucking Christ, I shouldn’t want you.”
“Why? This—us—isn’t hurting anyone.”
“It’s going to hurt you.”
“Because there’s someone—”
“There’s no one,” he grits out, “there hasn’t been anyone in three years. It’s how I wanted it. No distractions. No new addictions. And then you—” He slips a finger under the seam of my knickers and plunges it deep within me, wrenching a gasp from my lips. “You are the last woman I should want. You, who apologizes for your mistakes. You, who feels empathy for a man you barely know. In ruining you, I’ll find salvation for myself and goddammit, Rowena, tell me to stop.”
I don’t tell him to stop.
I couldn’t, even if I wanted.
Hooking my calf around the back of his leg, I grip the arm that he’s locked over my lower stomach and grind myself down on his hand. He thrusts his finger, slowly, like he did with grinding his hand against my clit—and I whimper a small protest. He doesn’t give me what I want. In and out, in and out. Slow glide after slow, damnable glide, until my legs are a quivering mess and he’s forced to hold me upright. Only then does he slide in a second finger, stretching me, while his thumb finds my clit and presses down.
I’m a woman without a single addiction—and then Damien had to show me the stars.
“I don’t want to live like I’m already dying,” I hear myself gasp, “so ruin me, Damien. If that’s what you need, if that’s what you want, then ruin me.”
A strangled noise reverberates in his chest, and with my cheek pressed to his pectoral muscles, I feel its resonation all the way down to my toes. His lips find the crown of my head, and instead of remarking on my lack of hair or the scar that I’ve felt with my fingers, he husks, “You’ll ruin me, too, Rowena. Fucking hell, you’re going to ruin me.”
I tense around him, my lips parting on a hard pant, and then he begins to drive his fingers inside me in earnest. A hard thrust followed by his thumb grazing my clit. A third finger that makes me cry out even as I circle my hips against him and seek everything that he’ll give me.
And he does.
Damien kisses my throat, dragging his mouth up to my jaw. His velvet baritone is a dark, illicit melody in my ear, urging me on, telling me to let go. It’s heaven and hell and the more that I’ve craved for years, and it’s all that I need to come apart. Legs shaking beneath me, throat quivering as I gasp for air. I’m spinning again, the way I do in my nightmares when I can’t escape the flames, but now there’s only this.
Only him.
Only us.
“Tell me,” I say, when the stars finally dim, “tell me what you want.”
His fingers grip my thigh, still wet from making me come, and I fight the blush that burns across my cheeks.
And then, quietly, “Get on your knees for me, Rowena.”
There’s not a single shred of doubt within me as I lower myself to the floor at his feet. I want Damien in a way that I’ve never wanted anything or anyone else in my life. There’s freedom in submitting—when it’s submission to a man who gives as much as he takes.
Only I suspect that it’s not me who’s being tamed here but him.
My hands link around his calves and, for a moment, I merely breathe. Air seesaws inside my chest and I roll my shoulders backward. The denim is coarse beneath my palms, the man beneath nothing but hard muscle. And then I begin to move, my hands gliding up, up, up, until I have to rise to my knees so I can reach the button of his trousers.
Above me, Damien’s breath audibly catches.
Enflamed by his reaction, I dance my fingers across the zipper and tease my way up to slip them beneath the hem of his shirt. The rigid abdominal muscles spasm, and I swallow a small smile.
I may be on my knees but it’s not me who trembles.
Wanting to rattle him to his core, the way he�
�s done to me, I make short work of pulling down the zipper and parting the material. A quick tug on the waistband pulls the fabric down over his arse then further to his thighs. He stands perfectly still, like he’s half-terrified that I might leave him with his trousers down, and then he comes to life when I press a palm to the heavy erection straining past his pants.
We both groan, his pitched erotically low, and his big hands close over the back of my head. It’s a line drawn in the sand, a battle for who’s really in control—and I stake my claim by rubbing my thumb over the velvet-soft head of his cock. “Does this turn you on?” I breathe, victory singing in my veins at the chance to toss his own words back in his face. “Because I think it does. You’re leaking, Damien.”
His cock twitches against my hand.
“Jesus,” he grunts, “you should see yourself.”
“Paint me a picture.”
“I’m no artist.” His hips push forward when I roll his pants down his thighs and his cock springs free. “I orchestrate death—it’s all I’ve ever done and all I’ll ever do—but with you . . . fuck, grip me harder . . . harder, yes,” he hisses, thrusting against my palm, “like that. Just like that.” The hands on the back of my head flex. “I wish I knew beauty. I wish I could paint it for you because you, Rowena . . . you’re a dream I don’t ever want to wake from.”
Beauty is a man as roughened as he is—the villain, the monster—who breaks for only one woman.
Circling the root of his cock, I grip him hard, the way he likes it, and then . . . And then, with a surge of vulnerability quaking in my limbs, I lean forward on my knees and touch my tongue to the crown.
“Fuck.” At the guttural curse, I lick away the bead of moisture and drag the flat of my tongue down over the hard length of him. His fingers press into my skull, the internal war within him breeching the surface as he pulls me closer. “Open your eyes,” he orders.
I hadn’t even realized that I closed them.
As I lift my gaze, I take him into my mouth and swallow him as deep as I can. A throaty groan escapes him, and I feel my heart lurch. He’s enjoying the hell out of this and I . . . Oh, God, I love it. With him, for him, I love it.