I always pictured the reality of shower sex being less like it is in the movies—glamorous, sensual—and more like two baby elephants rolling around awkwardly in a tiny kiddie pool as they’re sprayed with garden hoses: trunks flying, legs tangling, everything a chaotic, weird-looking mess.
Kage simplifies things by pressing me against the shower wall, pinning my arms behind my back, and fucking me standing up.
When the echoing cries of our pleasure have faded, he drops his forehead to my shoulder and exhales.
“I wish I’d met you years ago,” he murmurs, softly kissing my wet skin. “You make me want to be a different man.”
The sadness in his voice tightens something inside my chest. “I like the man you are.”
“Only because you don’t know me well enough.”
He withdraws from my body, then turns me toward the warm spray. Standing behind me, he squirts a dollop of shampoo into his hand and massages it into my hair.
It feels so good, I’m almost distracted by what he just said.
Almost, but not quite.
“So start talking, then. What is it I should know?”
The sound of the water can’t drown out his sigh. “What do you want to know?”
I think for a moment. “Where were you born?”
“Hell’s Kitchen.”
Never having been to Manhattan, I don’t know much about its different neighborhoods. But I do know that Hell’s Kitchen isn’t considered high-end. “And you went to school there?”
His strong fingers massage my scalp, working the shampoo through my hair. “Yes. Until I was fifteen and my parents were killed.”
I freeze in horror. “Killed? By who?”
His voice gains a hard, hateful edge. “The Irish. Their gangs were the deadliest in New York then. The biggest and best organized. My parents were shot in cold blood in front of their butcher shop on 39th Street.”
“Why?”
“They missed a protection payment. One.” His tone turns deadly. “And for that, they were murdered.”
I turn around. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I search his face. It’s hard, closed-off, and a little scary. I whisper, “You were there, weren’t you? You saw it happen.”
A muscle slides in his jaw. He doesn’t answer. He simply adjusts the spray and tilts my head back into it to rinse the shampoo out of my hair.
After a tense moment, he continues. “After that, I dropped out of school and started working full-time in the shop.”
“At fifteen?”
“I had two younger sisters to look after. And no relatives—my parents left everyone behind when they emigrated from Russia. They barely spoke any English when they arrived, but they were hard workers. We didn’t have much, but it was enough. But with them gone, I was the man of the house. It was my duty to take care of my sisters.”
I recall how he said it was his duty and pleasure to take care of me and think I understand that a little better now.
He grabs the bar of soap and starts to wash me, gently and methodically, getting in all my nooks and crannies until my face is flushed. As he rinses me, he keeps talking.
“The day I turned sixteen, two men came into the shop. I recognized them from before. They were the same two who shot my parents. They said they’d given me time, out of respect for the dead, but now it was my turn to start paying them protection. When I told them to go to hell, they laughed at me. They stood right in the middle of my parents’ shop and laughed. So I shot them.”
Finished with me, he begins to soap his chest.
I gape at him in horror.
He says, “I knew who to call to take care of the bodies. It wasn’t the police, of course. It was the Russians. The Irish weren’t the only ones with tight community connections. Though my father wasn’t a made man, he was respected. After his death, the head of the Russian mafia made it known that if I needed him, I could count on him.”
There’s a short, weighted pause. “For a price.”
“You mean Maxim Mogdonovich?”
Surprised, Kage glances at me with sharp eyes. “Yes.”
“Sloane told me.”
“Stavros must’ve been talking.”
It sounds ominous the way he says it. I don’t want any blood on my hands, so I clarify.
“I don’t know if he did or not. Maybe she overheard something. Or she looked it up on the internet. She’s savvy that way, with research. She knows a lot of random stuff.”
He smiles, turns me the other way, and rinses himself under the spray.
It’s like watching porn.
Soap slides sensuously over acres of rippling muscles. Strong hands run up and down his broad, tattooed chest. He tilts his head into the water, closes his eyes, and rinses his hair, giving me a great view of his beautiful neck and biceps, his pecs and rock-hard abs.
Then he shakes his head like a dog, spraying water everywhere.
He turns off the water and says, “You’re very loyal to your friend.”
“She’s my bestie. It’s required.”
“Do you think she has real feelings for Stavros?”
That would be a no. Men are like goldfish to her: they make cute pets, but they’re indistinguishable from one another and replaceable at little to no cost.
But I’m not about to tell that to Kage, considering his penchant for shooting people.
Eyeing him warily, I say, “I don’t know. Why do you ask?”
He chuckles. “Don’t be so suspicious. I’m just curious.”
“Let’s just say she’s not exactly a romantic.”
Kage takes my face in his hands. He gazes at me, his lips curved into a tender smile. “Neither was I. She just hasn’t met The One yet.”
My mouth goes dry. My pulse surges.
Is he telling me I’m The One for him? I mean, obsession and true love are two very different things.
But I’m not brave enough to ask, so I change the subject. “Your shoulder is leaking again.”
He glances at it and frowns. “How good are you with a needle?”
I feel the blood drain from my face, but gird my mental loins. If he needs me to stitch him up, I’ll do it.
I take a breath and straighten my shoulders. “I’m sure I can manage.”
He grins at the grim expression on my face. “I know you can. You can manage anything.”
The pride in his voice makes me glow. I’m probably blinking dreamily at him with little red confetti hearts for eyes.
We get out of the shower, and he dries us off, carefully blotting my hair with the towel, then even more carefully combing his fingers from it from scalp to ends to get the tangles out. Even when I tell him there’s a comb in the drawer, he wants to use his hands.
“You have a thing for my hair, don’t you?”
“I have a thing for all of you. Your ass is a close second to your hair. Or maybe your legs. No—your eyes.”
Pretending to be insulted, I say, “Excuse me, but I’m more than the sum of my body parts. I actually have a personality, too, in case you haven’t noticed. And a brain. A very big brain, as a matter of fact.”
Except when it comes to algebra, but I don’t count that, because it’s ridiculous.
He chuckles, pulling me against his chest. He drops his head to press a tender kiss to my lips. “It can’t be nearly as big as your mouth.”
“Oh, funny. You’re a comedian now.”
He gives me another soft kiss, then says, “I’ll be back soon.”
Cue my next heart attack. My pulse triples in the space of two seconds. “Why? Where are you going?”
“To my house.”
“You’re going back to New York already?”
Amused by my panic at the thought of him leaving so soon, he says, “My house next door. I have fresh clothes there. I can’t exactly put back on the shirt I arrived in, and I left without packing a bag.”
My relief is tempered by confusion. I squint at him. “Did you come here straight from a gunfight?”
“Yes.”
“Was that planned?”
“No.”
I squint harder. “Injured, bleeding, with no luggage, you spontaneously flew cross-country. Here. To see me.”
He takes my face in his hands and gazes down at me, letting me see everything. All the need. All the longing. All the dark desire.
“That’s where people go when they need to feel better: home.”
“But your home is in New York.”
“Home can be a person, too. That’s what you are for me.”
Tears spring into my eyes. I have to take several ragged breaths before I can say anything, and even then, my voice comes out strangled. “If I find out you read that somewhere, I’ll shoot you in the face.”
Eyes shining, he kisses me.
Then I blow out a hard breath and swipe away the moisture in my eyes. “But you don’t need to go next door. I have clothes for you.”
He raises his brows. “You want to see me in one of your dresses? And you say you’re not kinky.”
“No! I mean I have guy stuff for you. Big-guy stuff. I bought everything in size triple XL.” I eye the breadth of his shoulders doubtfully. “Though now I’m thinking that might not be big enough.”
Kage frowns at me. “You bought me clothes?”
He seems so astonished, I get embarrassed. I hope I haven’t crossed some macho male line, like now he’ll think I’m trying to be his mother and feel smothered or something.
In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea.
Looking at my feet, I say, “Um. Just like sweats. And socks. And T-shirts. Stuff you could, um, wear like, after a shower. Or before bed. To be comfortable. So you’d have some things here if you wanted to spend the night…”
I trail off into silence, not knowing what else to say because it all sounds so lame out loud.
He lifts my chin with a knuckle. When our eyes meet, his are exultant.
“You bought me clothes.”
He says it in a fervent tone of awe and wonder, like you’d say, Heaven is real and I’ve seen it!
“I did.”
“With your own money.”
“Whose money would I have used if not mine?”
“I mean, it wasn’t from your trust account. You haven’t withdrawn any money from that yet. So it had to be your own money. That you earned. Yourself.”
I examine the expression on his face. “I’m getting that you’re not often on the receiving end of a gift-giving situation.”
“No one has bought anything for me since my parents died.”
“Really? Not even your sisters? For birthdays or whatever?”
I immediately realize that his sisters are the wrong subject to mention. His eyes grow distant. His face hardens. He drops his hands to his sides.
Then he turns to the sink and says in a lifeless voice, “The Irish killed them, too. After they found out what I’d done, they took my sisters in retaliation.”
He pauses for a moment. “They didn’t get as lucky as my parents. Before they were shot, they were raped and tortured. Then they were dumped naked and broken on the doorstep of our house.” His voice drops. “Sasha was thirteen. Maria was ten.”
I cover my mouth with both my hands.
“A manila envelope of photographs of all the things that had been done to them before they were finally shot was dropped off, too. It took me a few years, but I found all the men in the photographs.”
He doesn’t have to say what he did when he found them.
I already know.
Feeling sick, I touch a shaking hand to Kage’s shoulder. He exhales, then turns around and pulls me tightly against his body, crushing me in a bear hug like he never wants to let me go.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his head bent to my ear. “I shouldn’t have told you that. You don’t need to know all the ugliness of my life.”
“I’m glad you did. I don’t want you to carry that all alone.”
My words send a delicate shudder through his chest. Swallowing hard, he presses his face to my neck and squeezes me tighter.
They call him Reaper because of all the terrible things he’s done, but he’s still a man just like any other.
He grieves. He bleeds. He’s made of flesh and bone.
And he’s been alone since he was a boy, with nothing to sustain him but terrible memories. Memories that turned him from a boy to a myth as he rose in the ranks of an organization renowned for its ruthlessness until he was at the very top.
All his success was driven by what happened to his family.
Violence is his calling card, bloodshed his stock-in-trade, but the real beating heart of this man is revenge.
He told me he was a debt collector, but it isn’t until now that I understand what he meant.
The debts he collects are paid in blood.
When I shiver, he pulls away and looks at me—really looks at me, deep into my eyes. There’s something raw in his look. Something desperate.
As if he’s waiting for me to say goodbye.
But I’ve already tumbled too far down the rabbit hole to go back to my old life now. I couldn’t go back, even if I wanted to.
Which I don’t.
I have no idea where this dark part of me has been sleeping, how it’s lain dormant in my heart for so long, but Kage’s story has awoken something hard and flinty in my bones. A creature that believes the ends justify the means, no matter how bloody.
A fire-breathing dragon has roused inside me, snapping open slitted eyes.
The dragon says, “I don’t care about your past. What you’ve done. How you got here. Maybe I should, but I don’t. I care about you, and the way I feel when I’m with you, and how you’ve brought me back to life. You don’t ever have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I won’t pressure you. But if you do want to talk, I’ll listen without judgment. No matter what you have to say. No matter how awful you think it is, I’ll be here for you.
“Because although you told me you’re not a good man, I don’t believe that’s true. But even if it is, even if you are a bad man, then you’re the best bad man I’ve ever known.”
Frozen, he stares at me. His lips part. He exhales a small, shallow breath.
Then he kisses me as if his very life depends on it. As if his soul is on the line.
And if I sense the smallest hint of anguish in his kiss, the faintest shade of misery and regret, I know it must be my imagination.
