SLOANE
My head lays in Lark’s lap as her fingers rake through my hair. She rocks in time to the melody of her unsteady voice. ‘No one here can love or understand me…’ she sings. Her voice wanes to a shaky hum.
I know I’ve done something I can never take back. Something I would never want to, even though most people would feel regret. But I don’t. I feel relieved. I’ve finally opened the gate where a monster lay rattling its bars on the other side, begging to be freed. Now that it’s out, there’s no way to close back in.
And I don’t want to.
“My parents will fix this,” Lark whispers as she presses a kiss to my hair. “I’ll tell them what you did for me. They’ll help us. You can come home with me.”
My hands are wet. Sticky. I raise them into a sliver of moonlight from the window. They’re covered in crimson blood.
When I lower my hands, I see the body on the floor. The Artistic Director of Ashborne Collegiate Institute.
And my one wish is that he’d rise from the afterlife so I could do it all over again.
‘I’ll arrive late tonight…’ Lark sings, ‘Blackbird, bye, bye.’
“Blackbird,” a different but familiar voice says. I surface from the murk of memory and dreams that never let go. When I open my eyes, Rowan is there, sitting on the edge of the bed. His hand sweeps the hair from my face. “Just a nightmare.”
I blink and take in my unfamiliar surroundings. Light spills from the ensuite bathroom to illuminate a slice of the guestroom, decorated in hues of deep gray and white and pops of yellow that lose their cheerful brilliance in shadow. Moments come back to me from the haze of strong painkillers. Memories of agony as Fionn rotated my arm. The pain in Rowan’s eyes as he held my hand and reminded me to breathe. The relief of the bone sliding back into place. The way Rowan rested his head next to mine when it was over, as though every moment had carved a deep slash across his heart. When he rose and looked at me, there was both distress and regret in his eyes, and I couldn’t tell which one was worse.
And even now, they still linger in his eyes.
“What time is it?” I ask as I sit up a little with a groan. My shoulder aches, but there’s a certain comfort in having my arm strapped across my body in the sling.
“Eleven-thirty.”
“I feel gross,” I say as I look down at my leggings and the button-up flannel shirt that I’ve just slept in for the last few hours. I haven’t showered in well over a day, not since the morning of Harvey’s house of horrors. It’s as though he haunts me through the film that coats my skin.
“Come on.” Rowan offers a hand to help me sit. “I’ll start you a bath. Might help some of the soreness.”
He leaves me at the edge of the bed and heads to the sliver of light, as though he knows I need a minute to get my bearings. I hear the faucet squeak, the water rush into the tub. For a long moment, I just linger in the dimly lit room until I conquer my inertia and join Rowan in the bathroom.
I say nothing as I stop at the vanity to stare at my reflection and try to will the tears away despite the sting in my eyes and the knot in my throat. Deep purple bruises follow the curve of my eyes, the imprint of Harvey Mead’s bootprint even more vibrant in my skin than it was when I first saw it in the car. Dried blood still rims the edges of my nostrils. My nose is sore and swollen. Fortunately, however, it’s still in the right place. Which is good, because I already look like a fucking dumpster fire and I don’t need a broken nose to add to the current shitshow.
“Ready,” Rowan says as he switches the water off for the bath. When I don’t answer, he comes closer, his reflection drawing to a halt in the periphery. I don’t take my eyes from my ruined face. “I’ll get Rose to help you.”
“No,” I whisper. Tears gather on my lash line despite my best effort to keep them at bay. “You.”
Rowan doesn’t move for a moment that feels stretched thin. When he approaches, he stops behind me, the weight of his gaze so heavy on my reflection that I can feel it through the glass. “Beautiful.”
An incredulous laugh that sounds more like a sob escapes my lips. “I look like shit,” I say as the first tear falls. I know I shouldn’t care as much as I do. It’s only temporary. In a few weeks, this will be nothing more than a memory, probably even a funny one. But the problem is, I do care, no matter how hard I try not to. Maybe I’m just tired from the pain and the stress and the hours on the road. Or maybe it’s just hard to see that my vulnerability isn’t just trapped on the inside. It’s staring out at the world in full color. It’s staring at him.
“You’re beautiful to me,” Rowan says. He reaches from behind me to chase the tear from my skin with his thumb. The next pass of his caress follows the swoop of the bruise beneath my eye. “That color right there, how many things can you think of that are that color? It’s rare.”
He grazes my bruise again, his touch so soft that I don’t feel pain. My lip trembles in the mirror. More tears well in my eyes. “Eggplant,” I say, my voice tremulous. “It’s the worst vegetable.”
Rowan’s huff of a laugh warms my neck and sends a current through my skin. “It’s not. Celery is the worst vegetable.”
“But eggplant is mushy.”
“Not when I make it. I promise you’d like it.”
“I have an eggplant face. That’s basically a dick face. A mushy dick face with a Carhartt logo.”
Rowan shifts the hair back from my shoulder and lays a gentle kiss on my cheek. I don’t have to see his reflection to feel his smile as his lips linger on my skin. “This is not having the intended effect. Let me try again,” he says, amusement warm in his voice. His other arm wraps around me to unclip the first of two buckles for my sling. My wince of pain is met with another kiss. “That color doesn’t remind me of eggplant, for what it’s worth. It reminds me of blackberries. The best berry if you ask me. It reminds me of irises. They have the best scent of any flower. It reminds me of night, just before dawn. The best time of day.” The other buckle clicks free and I close my eyes against the pain as Rowan slides the sling from my arm.
“But—”
“You’re all the best things to me, Sloane. No matter how many bruises are in your heart or on your skin.”
When I open my eyes, it’s not my marks I see. It’s not the swelling or the scrapes or the blood. It’s Rowan, his navy eyes fused to mine, his arm banded across my waist as his other hand traces slow patterns on my skin.
I place my good hand over his, wrap my fingers around his knuckles where scars crisscross over bone. Then I lift his hand away, every nuance of his expression absorbed by my watchful gaze. I guide his fingers to the top button of my shirt and let my hand rest on the tense muscle of his forearm.
No words are shared between us. Just the connection of our eyes in the mirror, one that doesn’t waver.
Rowan frees the first button. The second. The third. The fourth is low on my sternum. The fifth reveals my upper abdomen. The sixth the jeweled bar at my navel. Still he holds my eyes as he works the seventh and eighth buttons free. A slice of skin down the center of my body glows in the light that bathes us from above the mirror.
My pulse pounds. I could see it in my neck if I was willing to break my gaze away. But I’m not. I keep holding on as Rowan’s fingers curl around one edge of my shirt.
He folds it open, exposing my breast to the warm air. Then he does the same with the other side. And still our gazes remain locked. It’s not until I swallow and raise my brows that he finally lets his eyes fall to my body.
“Jesus…” he whispers. “Sloane…”
My flesh is a mess of scratches and bruises, all of the marks darker and more obvious than they were hours ago. His gaze drifts over every inch of my exposed skin as though I’m something precious yet damaged, a broken revelation. It might not be how he expected, but I know he’s imagined me like this before, bared and vulnerable to his gaze, his touch. Just like I’ve imagined him. But it’s different to feel it in the heavy silence that stretches between us. I couldn’t have expected the way my blood would charge through my flesh, or the way the whole world would shrink to this pinpoint, this moment in a mirror.
Rowan’s gaze rests on my throat, his navy eyes nearly black, his pupils consuming the color until only a thin band of blue remains. It traces a line down the center of my body, his attention so slow and deliberate that it feels like a touch against my skin. It flows over the ridges on my sternum. It veers left and slows over my heart. It traces the rose gold piercing encircling my peaked nipple. Gooseflesh rises on my arms and I shiver as his gaze crosses my chest to the other side and the matching piercing on my right breast.
“Something caught your eye, pretty boy?” I whisper.
“Yes,” he says, his voice pained. “God, yes, Sloane. All of you.”
Rowan drags the shirt down my uninjured arm first, then takes his time to pull it from my swollen shoulder, his eyes remaining steady on the reflection of my body. The fabric falls away and pools at my feet. He takes a deep breath before he hooks his thumbs into the waistband of my leggings and pulls them over my hips. His fingers wrap around my ankle to raise my foot from the cool tile and tug the fabric free of one leg and then the next. When he rises to his full height behind me, I can see every strained breath in his chest, every thump of his heart as his pulse surges in his neck.
“I need to get my shit together,” he mutters, his voice low and gritty, the words not meant for me. He holds out a hand for me and I take it. “Come on. Into the bath before I fucking die.”
I drag my feet as he tugs me toward the cloud of white bubbles shimmering in the tub. “Would that mean I’d get an extra win?”
“I’m about ready to forfeit every game, Blackbird,” he grumbles. “I don’t think we need to go to the extreme of killing me off just yet.”
We stop at the edge of the tub. Rowan keeps hold of my good hand as I dip one toe into the warm water. When I take my first step in, I glance up, expecting to catch him focused on the details of my body. But he’s not. His eyes are on mine, a crease notched between his brows as though this whole experience is excruciating.
“You okay?” I ask as I steady myself with his hand and place my other foot in the water to stand in the small tub, my faint smile only serving to deepen his frown.
“Not really.”
“You’re doing great.”
“Shouldn’t I be telling you that?”
“Probably.”
“Just get in, for the love of God.”
“I am in.”
Rowan drags his free hand down his face. “How do you still have the energy to take the piss out of me?”
“I always have the energy for that. Your suffering is my number one priority.” My smile starts out bright but falters when Rowan’s gaze shifts from me to the corner of the room as though he can’t bear to keep his attention on my face for a moment longer. “What is it? Rowan…?”
“I’ve been suffering for four years, Sloane. I’m begging you here. Get in the fucking bath.”
My eyes don’t stray from his profile as I slowly lower myself into the water. Every inch that I fall, I hope he’ll meet my eyes, but he doesn’t, as though he suddenly can’t. Like he’s put himself into a box that wasn’t there just a moment ago.
I submerge myself until the bubbles consume my chest, only my shoulders and upper back visible above their diaphanous embrace as I curl forward and hug my knees. Rowan’s long exhalation is unsteady above me. It takes a moment before he squats down to my level. My gaze is still fused to him, and he still avoids it.
Rowan takes a facecloth from where he laid it out at the edge of the tub to saturate it in the bathwater. He’s careful not to touch me beneath the surface. He withdraws the cloth and slides it across my uninjured shoulder to cleanse the grime from my skin with slow strokes, and though I stay perfectly still on the outside, my thoughts churn with the force of a hurricane.
I swallow, still unable to look away from Rowan. My voice sounds small when I say, “Four years?”
Rowan’s eyes darken, their focus snagged on the motion of his hand as he sweeps the cloth across my skin. He doesn’t graze me with his fingertips, not even once, despite repeating the motion of the cloth until the water in it cools. “You already know. I told you at Thorsten’s.”
My heart lurches. Rowan dips the cloth through the cloud of bubbles and into the water, this time grazing my hip in a fleeting touch that might have been intentional. Before I can be sure, the cloth is out of the water and sliding over my spine.
“You…you remember that?”
Rowan doesn’t answer. I don’t think he will. So when he dips the cloth into the water for a third time, I grab his wrist beneath the surface, and finally his eyes meet mine.
“Hey,” I say, my voice gentle. “I’m right here.”
“Sloane…” Rowan presses his eyes closed and takes in a long breath as though hoping to wash away the pain. When he meets my gaze, he looks just as agonized as he did a moment ago. “If I touch you again…” He shakes his head. “It took everything in me just to get you undressed without bending you over at the bathroom counter and fucking you until you beg me to stop.”
My cheeks pink, but I try on a cocky smile, one that only darkens the agony in Rowan’s eyes. “Not sure I see the problem with that idea at the moment.”
“You’re injured.”
“Just my shoulder. And my face. Okay my ribs are a little sore too, but I’m fine, really. Hazards of the job, right?”
“I need to look after you. It’s my fault you’re like this. The game was my dumbass idea.”
“Hey, do not shade the game. It’s the most fun I’ve had since…maybe ever. As long as I can remember. It’s the thing I most look forward to every year,” I say, the amusement slipping away from my voice with every word spoken as the truth rises to the surface. “You are the thing I most look forward to, Rowan.”
He swallows, his expression a thin veil over whatever conflict is chewing him up on the inside. When he shakes his head, the sting of sudden, restrained tears burns in my nose. Maybe his suffering isn’t what I wanted, as much fun as that seemed just a few heartbeats ago.
“I wanted to play,” I continue, my voice still sure even though I don’t think it will be for long. “I was scared when we started, afraid that I was making a huge mistake. But finding someone who could understand me for all the shattered pieces beneath the mask? I needed that. Before you came along, something was missing. You, Rowan. You were missing. You made it safe to feel seen. Safe to play on our terms. Safe to have fun, even though our fun might not be everyone’s idea of a good time.”
His jaw clenches, like it’s a struggle to not bite out his next words. “That is the problem, Sloane. It’s not safe. It’s the farthest thing from it.” When I open my mouth to argue, Rowan grasps my chin with his hand to trap me in his stern glare. “I almost lost you,” he says, every word punctuated by a pause, as though he’s trying to push each one into my head.
“I am right here,” I reply in the same cadence. My fingers fold around his, guiding his palm to my heart to lay it flat against the surging beat. “Right here.”
“Sloane—”
I’ve had enough of words.
I close the space between us and press my lips to his. He stalls with shock and I squeeze his hand where it’s still damp and hot on my chest, my tongue a demand against his lips. Let me in. I realize at this moment that I’ve always been in, in Rowan’s thoughts, in his plans, maybe even in his heart, and now it terrifies me that he could suddenly shut me out.
He kisses me back, but it feels tentative, like he’s trying to keep me away even though he doesn’t want to.
I drag his hand across my skin. His breath shudders when I stop at my breast, the piercing at my nipple resting in the center of his palm. A conflicted groan escapes Rowan’s control. His hand presses harder to my flesh. But the kiss is still not the same as it was in the barn, not when it felt like we’d escaped one fate to fall into a better one.
So I move his hand. I pull it to my sternum. Glide it down my skin. Let his hand slip into the water, slow and gentle over my navel. I know he likes that piercing too. I could see it in his eyes when he watched me in the mirror.
Our kiss breaks when I keep going lower. His breath floods my senses, the hint of bourbon a phantom between us. I inhale the scent and trap it in my lungs as my pulse hums in my ears.
I press Rowan’s palm to the apex of my thighs and hold it there.
He sucks in a ragged breath.
“Sloane…is that…”
My hand floats away as I let him explore. His fingers find my clit and the triangle piercing there and I bite down on my bottom lip at the burst of sensation. He then moves down to the symmetrical outer labia piercings where the bars on each side are capped with small titanium balls. By the time he reaches the fourchette piercing, he’s nearly vibrating with tension.
“Out of the fucking bath,” he growls as he grips my good arm and hauls me to my feet. A wave of water sloshes over the edge of the tub and soaks the bottoms of his jeans, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
“But I just got in, as instructed I might add.”
“I don’t fucking care.”
I give him an innocent smile, one that earns me a sharp and heated glare. “I thought you said you needed to take care of me.”
“And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
The moment my second foot is out of the tub and touches the bath mat, he lifts me into his arms. He doesn’t give me a towel, doesn’t wrap me in anything but his embrace. Fat drops of suds slide from my body and drift to the floor as I soak his shirt.
Rowan yanks the door open with more force than necessary and marches toward the bed.
“But I’m no fucking angel, Sloane.”
He sets me down on the edge of the bed and steps away. His chest strains against his wet shirt with every breath. Arms folded, he glares down at me where I sit, my legs crossed, my good arm clutching the injured one to my body as the water cools my skin.
“Show me,” he demands.
My brows hike as my heart tries to spear itself against my ribs. “Show you?”
“You heard me. Get up on that bed and spread your legs and show me.”
“I’ll make it wet—”
I don’t even get my last word out and he’s in my face, barely an inch away, his hands bracketed to either side of my hips. “Do I look like I give a fuck? Do you really think I care?” My skin tingles as though begging for his caress, but I’m sure he knows it, can sense it in every ragged breath that passes my lips. He’s careful not to touch me with anything but the fire burning in his eyes. “I’m done running around this, Sloane. I’ve wanted you for four years. And you’re going to show me what I’ve been missing.”
Rowan doesn’t move as I slowly uncross my legs and release my hold on my body to brace myself with my right hand. I slide up farther on the bed and he looms over me, his fists pushed into the edge of the mattress and his eyes hooked to mine until he seems satisfied that I’ve made it far enough. When I stop in the center of the bed, Rowan stands straight and crosses his arms once more, his jaw clenched.
“Spread your legs, Sloane.”
His eyes stay fused to mine as I let out an unsteady breath. My left heel slides across the mattress, then my right, my knees still bent and my upper body braced off the mattress with my elbow. Rowan’s eyes still haven’t left mine even though I’m bared to him, as though he’s torturing himself, denying himself of his desire to look down.
“Wider.”
Heat surges in my core as I shift my legs a little farther apart. An ache builds beneath my bones, an emptiness that begs to be filled. Every demand Rowan makes is fuel, every word incendiary.
“Wider, Sloane. Stop trying to hide from me because I promise you now, it’s not going to work.”
I swallow. My legs spread to the point of discomfort.
A beat of time passes before Rowan’s gaze unlinks from mine to travel down my body. I feel it in every inch of flesh, the weight of his desire as it travels over me, his thinning restraint like fire beneath my skin. His attention settles on the apex of my thighs as the muscles of his forearms tense.
“The clit piercing. Tell me.”
He doesn’t look up when I pause. He just waits, watches. “I was eighteen,” I say. “It was my second body piercing, after my navel. It hurt, of course, but not as bad as I thought it would. Once it healed, it helped, I think. With orgasms.”
“You couldn’t orgasm before?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t have the right…situation…up until that point. But it felt like it gave me control.” I remain still as the muscle in Rowan’s jaw jumps. His eyes are dark, hooded. He knows just enough about my past to cement the gaps in his knowledge with his own imagination. “The labia piercings I got when I was twenty. I liked the way it looked. I know they’re small, but somehow they remind me of armor. Maybe that doesn’t make sense.”
“It does,” he says as his eyes anchor to mine.
I give him a faint smile that fades in a heartbeat. “The last one, the fourchette, I got that a few months before I met you. It just made me feel more confident. And I thought a partner might like it too.”
Rowan’s eyes are a lightless void, his voice a deep and gravelly rasp when he says, “Did they?”
My gaze travels across the room to land in the shadows. I don’t look at him when I shake my head. “I don’t know. I haven’t been with anyone since I met you.”
Those words are met with silence. They hang in the air. They consume the oxygen in the room. When my gaze lifts from the shadows, it collides with Rowan’s and I see it, the exact moment his restraint detonates.
“Why not,” he demands.
I shake my head again.
“I told you already. Stop hiding. It’s not going to work with me, not anymore. You want this? You want me? Then fucking tell me, Sloane.” Rowan’s arms unravel from his chest. His hands lay on my knees, steady on the tremor in my bones to capture the tectonic shift that’s cracking me apart. “You fucking tell me, so that you know when I ruin you for all other men, it’s what you asked for. Tell me—”
“You,” I say. Every breath shudders through my lungs. “I met you. I didn’t want anyone else. Just you. I only want you.”
There’s no amusement or relief in his eyes, only predatory intensity. He looks at me the way a tiger would a lamb.
A meal to be devoured.
The mattress dips as he shifts one of his legs onto the bed and then the other to kneel between my spread calves.
“Remember what you just said when you think you can’t possibly come again. Because you will. We’ve got four fucking years to make up for.” Rowan sinks down between my thighs, his calloused palms wrapped around my tender flesh to keep me bared wide open. Every exhalation warms the moisture gathered at my entrance. His eyes still hold mine from the length of my body, a gravitational pull I can’t escape from. “Pick a safe word. Do it now.”
I swallow. Hard. “Chainsaw.”
He huffs a laugh, a burst of warmth against my core. “How fitting, love. Now be a good girl and find something to grab on to…” he says, then passes one long, slow lick over my center. “…Because I’m about to destroy you.”
