by Maria Luis
Her warmth.
Her iron spine.
That cunning smile of hers that makes my bones fucking ache.
I slam my door shut with the heel of my boot then cut across the bedroom in five long strides. My palm hits the switch for the loo, flooding the room with light. Avoiding the mirror, I lean into the shower, past the curtain, and turn the water to piping hot.
And then I begin to strip.
Bloodied clothes hit the tiled floor. Pain pulses in my right arm from the round that grazed me. Need and want war within my soul, a tumultuous battle that has no victor because Rowena deserves more than I can give her. She rose from the ashes of Buckingham Palace, burned and blind, and she’s fought for life every step of the way. She’s a phoenix rising and I’m a man wreathed in violence.
I won’t have her see me like this again.
The first hit of water is like stepping past the gates of Hell. Hot, scalding, and still not enough to eviscerate the memory of Rowena’s horrified gaze when she finally laid eyes on me. Blood and shame run in rivulets down my legs. They stain the marble red. Circle the drain but don’t go down as the old pipes back up and water rises at my feet.
Caustic laughter scratches at my throat.
If only purging my sins was as easy as washing the grime from my flesh.
But I try.
Fucking hell, I try.
With soap and water, I scrub until my skin is raw and the water is ice. Pa warned me of this. The only time I can remember him sitting down with me, away from Mum’s always-narrowed eyes and my brothers’ antics, he put me on his lap and said, “There’s no hope for a man who falls to madness.”
He’d meant the king.
The words have always resonated with me. There’s no hope. No possibility of salvation. And I’m tired, so fucking tired of the rage and the fear and the goddamn need to keep fighting when I’ve already fallen. I feel the fatigue in my marrow. Feel the exhaustion that sits heavy on my chest because I’m terrified to sleep for even a second. The same terror shadows me even now as water slips past my lowered head to my spine.
With my forearm planted against the marble wall, I feel it wash over my left shoulder blade and sense nothing on the right.
Dead, nerveless skin.
“Damien.”
Peeling my eyes open, I meet violet through a cascade of water.
I need you.
Had she heard my unspoken plea while I stood outside her door? Had she sensed the raw desperation within me that demanded that she let me inside her room, inside her bed, inside her sweet cunt? Or had she known, from the very second that Saxon’s car peeled off and I turned to look up at her window, that I’m a man walking a path straight to purgatory and I don’t trust myself not to take her down with me?
I’m doused in a sheet of ice and feel only the grips of fire, and my fingers dig into the soaked tile to keep from reaching for her.
As if she’s heard my thoughts, Rowena sucks her bottom lip behind her upper teeth. Her fingers grip the curtain under her chin, the material bunching between her knuckles like she’s aching to touch me too. But she doesn’t give in to temptation and she doesn’t pull the curtain back for a better look.
She lets me keep my privacy.
She lets me have the moment to myself, should I want it.
Such a subtle show of respect when anyone else would have stopped to stare at my cock. But Rowena’s body was once her father’s greatest political asset, and I’m not surprised that she doesn’t feel comfortable forcing others to reveal what they haven’t personally chosen to share. Because while she’s felt all of me twice now—her hands greedily conquering every piece of me—that was before her sight returned.
Now she sees all of me, and I feel wrecked.
Tortured.
“I didn’t . . .” My throat burns, tongue scrapes against the dry roof of my mouth. The cold water continues to drench my skin. “I wanted to be clean.” For you. “I wanted to be . . . better.”
Her throat works with a convulsive swallow, and the smile she gives me . . . Jesus. It’s not cunning, not even remotely lethal. No. It’s soft and gentle and sweet. My heart kicks against my ribcage and I’m half-aware of pressing my palm flat to the tiled wall as I turn myself toward her. I drift closer. Lower my head and breathe her in, absorbing the sweetness of that smile and the soft, beckoning look in her gaze.
Would she let me kiss her?
A shudder rolls down my spine, and I briefly close my eyes against the intensity of the want.
I need you.
“Rowena—” I start at the same time that she blurts, “Do you trust me?”
“What?”
She pushes the curtain down, just enough so that I can see her from the neck up. Steam has plastered her cotton shirt to her skin and turned her cheeks a rosy pink. Violet eyes blink up at me then narrow slightly like she’s gathering her nerve. “I want to know if you trust me.”
A little over twenty-four hours ago, I fell from a roof thanks to her men. Twenty hours ago, I buried myself inside her with no other motive than the purely selfish—I wanted to make her come just as much as I wanted to feel alive. Rowena Carrigan is an addiction that I never could have foreseen. I wanted her even when I hated her, and I chased her even when I should have kept my distance.
I should still keep my distance.
In the end, though, my need for her is merciless. And I want . . . for just a little while longer, I want to own all that softness.
“Answer me one thing.”
Her brows lift in question. “Another confession?”
“Yes.” Turning off the shower, I let the water drain at my feet. The blood is gone but not the shame. The latter slips over me like a second skin, cinching tight around my throat, my heart. “Do you fear me, Rowena?” I ask softly.
Violet eyes meet mine, steady, intensely focused.
The phantom shackles around my wrists tremble, desperate to unlock. And then they clatter to the tile at my feet when her reply comes barely above a whisper: “You make me feel too much, Damien. You make me feel like I’m dancing with madness. So, yes, I fear you—I fear you like I’ve never feared anything else in my life. But if you’re asking if you frighten me, then my answer is no. I’m not sure you could, honestly, even if you tried.”
A breath that I didn’t realize I was holding floods my lungs. I gasp it in, and then give in to temptation to touch a finger to her chin. God, she’s beautiful. “My answer is yes—I trust you.”
She clasps a hand over my wrist. “Then meet me in my room in ten minutes. And don’t be late.”
31
Rowena
Damien enters my bedroom on silent feet.
Even with my back to the door and the rush of water hitting the porcelain tub to muffle the sound of his footsteps, I know it’s him. The air changes with his presence. It thickens and electrifies, and any hope I had of faking casual indifference after my not-so-indifferent confession goes out the window when his velvet voice rasps my name.
Moving my hand on the standing tub, to better balance my weight on the stool, I turn and watch him approach.
He’s beautiful.
Brawny frame. Thick, corded muscles. Each step he takes is a lesson in sensuality. Lithe, powerful. He advances toward me like a predator, and I have the distinct impression that he’s chasing me all over again even though I’m stationary. His blue eyes home in on my face, never wavering. He offers no smile, no pleasantries. It’s him and me, and the escalating tension between us, and the carnal look on his face that reads, You’ll break for me, and enjoy every second of the wreckage.
Feeling off-kilter, I slide a trembling hand between my clamped knees and tilt my chin toward the tub. “You mentioned that you wanted to feel better, and I thought, maybe, I could—”
“When did your vision come back?”
As if to mock me, the floaters in my right eye land on his gorgeous face. I smother a howl of frustration. “Earlier, when I was reaching for
a towel after my shower. I didn’t bother with turning on the lights but still saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye. It was just like what Dr. Matthews said—one moment I saw nothing and then I did.”
“And you see . . . everything?”
“Everything that matters,” I tell him softly.
Blue eyes fall to the tub that’s steaming with hot water, and a muscle leaps in his jaw.
A seed of awkwardness blooms in my stomach.
In the span of nine days, I’ve been with this man in every way that matters—angry, naked, vulnerable—and I think . . . I think that if I’m being truly honest with myself, there’s been a sense of relief in not being able to physically see him. Oh, I heard the different nuances in his tone and I read his mood in a heartbeat whenever he brushed his hands over my body. But when he fell to silence, or when his expression contorted with anger or lust, I saw none of it.
I existed in a vacuum that was, in many ways, a shelter from the storm.
There’s no hiding now.
Instead, I feel unsteady, like he’s set me down in a tiny boat and pushed me out to sea without a single oar to carry me back to shore. I feel every wave that crests the hull and every sharp gust of wind that sets me farther off course.
My grip on the tub tightens. “When I first looked at you—when I saw you—you were lost to the darkness.”
Those blue eyes of his flicker to my face, startled, and I almost say, I understand. Because, God help us both, but I do. He looks haunted, and hunted, and if I thought he’d accept it, I’d leap to my feet and take the five steps separating us to wrap him in a hug. Uncertainty, however, keeps my arse planted on the stool after I shut off the water tap.
“You let it win tonight, didn’t you.”
“I drowned, Rowena. It didn’t just win, I . . . Jesus.” His Adam’s apple bobs with a hard swallow, and he presses his shoulder against the wall closest to him. His entire body sags into the support while his big hands slip into the front pockets of his trousers. Deep down, I can’t help but wonder if he’s ever allowed himself to appear so vulnerable. After a moment, he admits, “I let myself drown in a way that I haven’t in years.”
“Why?”
His dark brows furrow. “What do you mean why?”
“What happened tonight that made you lose self-control?”
That unsmiling mouth quirks at the corners, and my heart flutters hopelessly. “Self-control is a figment of our imagination. It’s the rules of society telling us that we need to keep silent when we want to scream or that we ought to walk when all we want to do is run.”
“You’re saying it’s a social construct?”
“I’m saying that I can act as well as the best of them, but I’m the man screaming when no one is listening and I’m running when the rest of the world is down on their hands and knees.”
“And tonight?” I prod gently. “What happened tonight?”
The muscle in his jaw jumps again, and then he confesses, “I let the world hear me scream.”
Oh, Damien.
As if my hand belongs to someone else, I watch myself reach for him. Palm up. Fingers loosely curled. Not so unlike how I found Clarke at Buckingham Palace. My heart constricts with the thought. Had he reached for Margaret when he fell? Did she take his hand, just once more, before making her escape? And if she didn’t . . . how had he born it?
Because I don’t think I’ll survive if Damien turns away from me now.
I stare at my fingers, silently begging them to drop before the humiliation of rejection really kicks in. But here I am, still reaching, still hoping, when slowly I lift my gaze—and am ensnared by the hottest, most visceral shade of blue that I’ve ever seen.
Take my hand.
Please take my hand.
“I thought of you,” comes his deep baritone, his cheeks flushed with color.
Instinctively my fingers curl against my palm like his voice is a tangible caress that I feel down the pearls of my spine. “Tonight, you mean?”
“Every moment since we’ve met, Rowena.” He gives a low laugh then combs his fingers through his still-wet hair. “Even when I wanted you dead, I thought of you. I was dying and, fucking still, my mind went to you. Always to you.”
“What happened at the Palace, up on the roof, I never meant for you to be—”
“You were the angel.” When my brows shoot up in surprise, he ducks his chin like he’s uncomfortable with the admission. “The devil on his shoulder,” he adds stiffly, “and the angel dead on the floor, defeated. Except that you’re not dead”—vivid blue eyes swiftly meet mine—“and I was fully prepared to add another death to my tally tonight.” Lips pressing flat, he brings a hand to his hard jaw. “Only, I couldn’t do it. After a lifetime of doing what has to be done, no matter the cost, I couldn’t do it.”
The god who dons the crown of the hero . . . Somehow, I knew it would always come to this with him. Damien Godwin is only the villain in his own nightmare.
“Why?” I ask.
“I worried you’d smell blood on me. Be horrified by me. And I wanted . . .”
My heart beats fast in my throat. “You wanted what?”
His gaze falls to my outstretched palm. Hunger glimmers in the blue, a flickering flame that burns so hot that I feel scorched. “I learned at a very young age that death waits for no one. Instead it waits in the wings to steal you away, always in the moment when you least expect it. Meanwhile every wish you had, every hope you ever clung to, is gone. You’re lucky if you bothered to live but damned if you spent an entire lifetime waiting to die.”
Shadows dance along my right peripheral.
Or maybe it’s just the tears threatening to spill free.
I’ve amassed a fortune over the years and reclaimed ownership of my body. I’ve said yes to a king and saved a queen. And I don’t think I realized, until this very moment, anyway, how very little room I’ve given myself to hope or dream. I live because I draw air into my lungs and put food in my belly, and I live because it’s expected that I’ll continue putting one foot in front of the other, day after day. But I haven’t wished on anything in so long that I’m not even sure it’s a skill that I still possess.
Have you ever been loved, Miss Carrigan?
Sweat dampens my palms.
That would be my one wish—to love and be loved.
To feel its heat in my veins and its courage in my bones. To know that when I wake each morning, it’s to a face that I dream of when I sleep. I want laughter and the adventure that comes with tackling life beside your soul mate. I want the fierceness of safety while facing the risk of falling ever deeper. And if I let myself hope, if I really let myself dream, I wish that this man would chase me to the ends of the earth, just so he could catch me in the end.
“Is that what you wanted?” I ask, my voice hoarse with unshed tears. “To make a wish?”
Damien pushes away from the wall.
His long legs demolish the space between us until he’s right there in front of me. Tall as he is, his eyes are level with mine when he drops to his haunches and clasps my outstretched hand. Calloused against soft, big against small. He traces my lifelines with his forefinger before gently bringing my hand to his mouth.
He kisses the center of my palm with his eyes closed.
“I want to live,” he says on a rough breath, “I want to live long enough to know happiness. I want to feel it, Rowena, here”—he presses my hand to his heart, which beats solidly inside his chest—“and I want to be the man who loves first and loves hardest. That’s what I want, but what I wish . . .” Steadily, he meets my gaze. “I wish that I could kiss you, just once. I wish that—”
I crush my mouth to his.
A harsh sound rises in his throat and then his hands clasp the back of my head and he’s dragging me close, close, close until my arse is nearly off the stool and it’s only the strength of his body that keeps me from falling to the floor.
His kiss isn’t patient or gentlemanly bec
ause Damien Godwin is no Prince Charming here to whisk me away on his white steed, and I’m a woman who will always save herself.
No.
Our kiss is a brutal clash of lips, a spiral of desperation when the world around us is crumbling at our feet. Our kiss is heat and burning fire when my heart has been frozen and neglected for years. Our kiss is us, a perpetual battle of the wills that has me sinking my fingers into his hair and tugging on the strands, hard, because I want to hear him groan.
Like melody in my ears, he feeds it to me guttural and low against my lips.
His fingers flex over my shorn head, and he seeks retribution with a nip of his teeth. God, yes. I pull away to seek out his chin, the underside of his jaw. My nails rake through his thick hair, over the slope of his nape, and then my lips find the hollow of his throat. I press an open-mouthed kiss to his racing pulse, and then another, because I live for the way he curses beneath his breath.
Then he tugs me back up for more.
Against my mouth, he growls, “Open for me, Rowena.”
I can’t find the strength to tell him no.
My lips fall open and his tongue swoops in, and he consumes me like I’m the oxygen he needs to see another sunrise. My head falls back into the cradle of his hands and he angles our mouths at a slant, pressing deeper, invading me completely.
I’ll die if he stops.
So when he lifts me in his arms and carries me into the bedroom, I cling to his shoulders. And when he lowers me to the bed, I all but whimper as he separates us to pull his shirt over his head. It lands on the floor with a whisper.
“Touch me,” he husks, bringing my right hand to his chest, “please touch me.”
Dark scrolls of ink bleed across his sculpted upper body.
There’s little rhyme or reason to the abstract tattoos on his biceps; they’re as tangible as whisps of smoke slipping through my fingers. But my pulse quickens when I spy the figure inked over his hard chest: a raven in profile, the lower half of its body morphing into a skull with wings of burnished red. My gaze catches on the inscription below, and I drag my fingers over the words written in Old Norse. “What does it mean?”