Chapter 36 Rowan
ROWAN
I’ve never wanted to kill someone more than I do in this moment. Abi, my Abi, is bleeding and half naked, her clothes hanging in tatters. And the man who did it to her is standing over her with his cock out.
It’s Sheriff Kaplan. I’ve seen his face on re-election billboards, watched him on the news as he gave updates on a few of my kills.
And right now, he’s looking over at me in confusion.
“You’re Nash Deegan’s son,” he says, dumbfounded. “What are you—”
The idea that anyone, even this piece of shit, would think Nash Deegan is my father sets another dynamite explosion of rage off inside me.
And this time, I let it propel me forward.
I launch myself at Kaplan, moving on instinct and adrenaline.
He shouts and swings his knife at me, but I catch it by the blade and wrench it out of his hand and throw it aside with a clatter.
Then I fall upon him. I slam his head up against the wall, hard enough that white plaster rains around us.
Then I throw him against the floor and leap down to slam my fists into his face, over and over.
I never kill like this. I never kill like a wild animal.
It’s always planned, calculated. But this afternoon with Charlotte loosened something inside me, and my terror at almost losing Abi set it free completely.
I don’t even care that it’s the sheriff, a man I’ve always known could ruin my life.
All I know, right now, is that he’s human, that he hurt Abi, and that I am going to beat him until he’s no longer breathing.
Kaplan squirms beneath me, trying to get away.
I grab his shoulders and slam his head back.
He grunts; blood splatters across the floor.
Then I punch him again, over and over and over, my fist sinking deeper and deeper into the mess of his face.
Some of his teeth scatter across the floor.
Hot blood sprays across my face—my face, and not my killing face.
For the first time, I feel it on my skin, as warm and sweet as one of Abi’s kisses.
Kaplan twitches beneath me, and I hit him harder. You wouldn’t know it’s him anymore. His face is nothing but blood and bone and swollen muscle. But I keep going.
Because he was going to take Abi away from me. He was going to torture her. Brutalize her. Rape her. Kill her. And he deserves to be punished.
The blood flows thicker, pooling across the floor. There are other things mixed in with it, too. Brain. Bits of bone. My fist sinks through his face, and I yank it out, dripping with gore.
And then I feel Abi’s eyes on me.
All my bloodlust evaporates in an instant. The world goes from red to black. I freeze and look over at her, suddenly aware of what I look like: Blood-covered. Feral.
Faceless.
“Rowan,” she whispers in a ragged voice. Her eyes are two bright spots in the dark. “Rowan?”
She repeats my name like a question, and I can hear a tearfulness in the way she says it that makes me slump backward.
“All this time?” she asks. “At the hotel—when we went for coffee—and the golf course—” Her eyes widen, and her mouth drops open. “Oh my god, that’s how you knew. I thought you were spying on us—I’m so fucking stupid—”
“You’re not stupid,” I say immediately. “I didn’t want you to know.”
She stares at me over the mangled corpse between us. Kaplan’s dead, of course. He was dead a long time ago, but I kept going. If Abi weren’t here, I think I’d still be going, grinding him down into hamburger for thinking he could hurt her.
“R-Rowan,” she whispers, and the truth is, I like it, hearing her say that name. My name. I shift toward her, moving slow and cautious. I don’t want to frighten her away. When I step over the body, and she doesn’t run, I take that as a sign to keep going.
“Why didn’t you—” She shakes her head, eyes tracking my movements. “Why didn’t you tell me? I thought—I thought I wasn’t good enough for you—for Rowan—”
My heart twists as I kneel beside her. Her breasts are bare, gleaming in the soft moonlight from the open door at the end of the hallway, but she doesn’t try to cover them up. Not from me.
“You’re perfect for me.” I cup her face with thinking, and her cheek darkens with blood. But she doesn’t pull away. In fact, she does the opposite. She leans into my touch, her eyes still fixed on mine. On my face. “So you’re perfect for Rowan, too.”
Abi takes in a sharp, shuddery breath.
“Rowan was my disguise,” I say, because I feel like she deserves an explanation. “I thought he wasn’t the real me. That’s why I wore my—my killing face. To show who I really am.”
Abi wraps her hand around my wrist. She’s shaking with fear, and I pull her into me, pressing her body against my chest.
“That’s how I wanted you to see me,” I whisper. “The true me. I realize now that Rowan is me, too. But this—”
Abi kisses me.
It startles me, the forcefulness in how she moves, the sudden warmth of her lips against mine. But my blood is boiling from all the day’s killing, and I return that forcefulness, dragging my fingers up into her hair to hold her in place as I explore her mouth with my tongue.
Then, just as abruptly, Abi jerks away, her eyes blazing. “Where were you tonight?” she spits out. “I thought you abandoned me.”
“I will never fucking abandon you.” I hold her in place, never taking my eyes off her. “I’m so sorry, Abi. I should have been there. I know that. I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”
Then I pull into another kiss, rough and violent, and she moans against my mouth. I kiss along her jaw until I find her pulse point. “I’m so sorry,” I murmur. “I’m so fucking sorry. ”
“How’d you find me?” she gasps.
I nip at her neck, making her moan and roll her hips. “That’s complicated, too,” I say. “And I’ll tell you later. But right now—”
I pull away and stare down at her, beautiful with her swollen lips and my bloody handprint across her cheek.
“Right now I really want to fuck you,” I say.
I still expect her to scream. To run. To call me a monster, the way my mother did. Instead, she shivers and wraps her hand around the back of my head.
“I want to fuck you, too,” she says breathlessly.
It’s all I need to hear. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to hear. I drag her into me for another long, devouring kiss, and I run my bloody hands over her body to pull away the last tatters of her clothes. She makes a sharp hissing sound as I pull her shirt over her head.
“Careful,” she says. “He stabbed me.”
“He what?” Panic nearly overtakes my lust, but Abi pulls me in close to her.
“I’m fine,” she breathes. “Now fuck me, Rowan.”
And then she pulls me in for a kiss, and I lay her down, gently, onto the floor. I lay her down in Kaplan’s blood.
Abi moans when it touches her skin, and I’m afraid I’m hurting her. But then she gasps, “It feels good,” and I know she’s horrified because I can feel it. But I can also feel how turned on she is, too. “It’s so warm.”
“Good,” I growl, kissing down the valley between her breasts. “Because this is where I want to make you come.”
Abi moans at that. She moans when I pull her nipple into my mouth. Moans when I lick away the blood from the tiny cuts Kaplan made in her skin. As I kiss her, I touch her between her legs, running my fingers through the hot wetness already gathering there and mixing it with the warm, thick blood.
“Rowan,” she gasps, grabbing at my arms. Hearing my name sends shudders through my body, all of them rippling toward my heavy, swollen cock. “It shouldn’t feel this is good.”
“But it does.” I slide one finger inside her, rubbing against her inner wall. Abi groans—a dark, throaty sound that makes me feel like the feral creature that I am. “No one’s ever going to hurt you again, Abi. I swear it.”
Abi’s eyes shift toward mine, her gaze unfocused from lust.
“I swear it,” I say again, right before I spread her legs wide, revealing her glistening, blood-covered pussy.
I shift between her legs and pull my cock out and press it against her entrance. It’s agony—every cell in my body wants to shove inside her—but I take my time. Teasing her. Brushing my cockhead against her clit. Abi moans and grabs at me. “Please,” she pants. “Please just fuck me, Rowan.”
“I love when you do that.” I slide myself halfway inside her and rub her clit, making her writhe around in the blood.
“Do what?” She gazes up at me through her fluttering eyelashes.
“Say my name,” I growl.
“Rowan,” she gasps.
I shove in to the hilt, and Abi’s hot, slick pussy clenches around me. I brace my arms on either side of her body as I roll my hips up to the seam of her legs. Abi groans and jerks up toward me, faster and harder than I’m currently fucking her.
“You want it like that?” I murmur, running my hands through Kaplan’s blood so I can smear it up around Abi’s waist and over her tits, painting her in crimson. “You want it rough?”
“Yes,” she growls back at me.
“You said you were hurt—”
“Rowan,” she says, her eyes glittering. “I want you to fuck me like you killed him.”
Her words go straight to my cock. So does the fire in her eyes, searing and hot, and I realize that Abi’s showing me her real self, too.
She may be human. She may not be a killer, not really.
But she craves all this depravity, and I know I’m the one who’s going to give to her for the rest of her life.
I rise onto my knees so I can slam into her, over and over, hard enough that her body jostles and slides through the blood. And with every violent thrust, I can taste her pleasure as it drifts through the air. It tastes like blood and wine.
I fuck her as hard as I can, plowing into her perfect, dripping cunt.
And Abi unravels for me, moaning and grinding against my hips, the blood drying on our skin until we’re stuck together.
I wrap my fingers around her throat, pinning her down, and when she looks up at me, her eyes brim with heat and lust.
“You’re mine,” I whisper, matching the words to the rhythm of our fucking. “I’m yours. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Abi pants out. Her body quakes with small, rippling contractions.
“You’re about to come, aren’t you?” I lean close, still plowing into her, not daring to change my rhythm.
Abi nods, her lips glossy.
“Good. I want you to come in Kaplan’s blood.” I hunch over her, still thrusting into her. “And I want you looking at my face while I do.”
I tighten my grip around her throat—not to cut off her air, but to hold her head in place. Already her orgasm’s starting. I can feel it, the way her muscles clamp down around my cock. But I can hear it, too: her frantic breaths. Her pounding heart, beating as fast as Kaplan’s when I killed him.
“Rowan,” she whimpers, her eyes boring into mine, drinking in my face—my real face, my killing face. They’re the same, under her gaze. “Rowan, I’m going to—”
She cuts herself off with a wail, and I press my weight down on her lower body as her pussy ripples and contracts around me because I don’t want her arching her gaze away from me. And she doesn’t, my sweet human girl. She keeps her eyes fixed on mine as the pleasure makes her whole body shake.
“Perfect,” I breathe, dragging my hand away so I can fuck her through the quivering aftershocks. And so I can look at her, too: spread out on the floor and drenched in the blood of a man who hated her. Who thought he could harm her.
If anyone ever tries to harm her again, I’ll do the same to them.
I dig my hands into her hips, rutting hard against her. Abi moans, her eyes rolled back, the blood beautiful on her pale skin. My own orgasm is building, a tension deep in my balls, and I give one impossibly deep thrust and then it spills out in her pussy in hot, pulsing bursts.
Then I slump on top of her, breathing hard. For a moment, I’m afraid she’s going to push me away. But she doesn’t. Instead, she nuzzles against me and wraps her arms around my shoulders, drawing me in close.
“Thank you,” she whispers, over and over. “Thank you. Thank you.”
I pull away just enough to catch her gratitude with my mouth, and then I kiss it out of her. I keep kissing her, there in Kaplan’s blood, in the place he thought he could take her from me.
But he couldn’t. He didn’t.
I may be a killer, but I saved her life. And that’s a treasure no one can ever take from me.