3. Reva
CHAPTER THREE
REVA
I can feel him.
Shiloh has one arm around my chest, one hand wrapped around mine beneath the water, and every inch of him is trying very hard to behave.
It is adorable, honestly, in a tragic, doomed, this-man-has-no-idea-who-he’s-in-a-bathtub-with kind of way.
He keeps his thumb light against my injured palm, his breathing slow against my back.
His mouth does not drift to my neck, even though I can feel the heat of it every time he exhales.
He does not squeeze. Does not tease. Does not do any of the things Shiloh Lafitte was clearly put on this earth to do, mostly because God is a woman with a wicked sense of humor and a fondness for cheekbones.
I've decided this to be true, especially here in New Orleans.
Shiloh is trying to be a comfort. Unfortunately for both of us, his body is being a lot more honest than it is soothing.
He is hard behind me, thick and hot against my ass under the water, no matter how carefully he keeps the rest of himself arranged.
Every time I shift, he goes still. Every time I breathe too deep, his fingers flex.
Every time the water moves between us, I feel the effort it costs him not to turn this into something else.
I shouldn't notice. Really, I should file a complaint with whatever department handles human bodies, because mine has picked a horrible time to be paying attention to it, because this is a shit evening.
My sister is alive.
My dead sister stood in front of me in a black dress and looked at me like I’d shown up with the express purpose of ruining her evening.
The men I have let touch me, protect me, and lie by omission with their stupid-pretty mouths, just admitted they knew about the 'assignment' that destroyed my family.
One daughter taken. One daughter killed. Adults dead. A child selected for punishment like this was a fucked-up game of eeny, meeny, miny, murder.
So, no, I should not be noticing Shiloh's dick.
I should be a grief nun right now. No touching.
No wanting. No noticing the criminally gifted naked man behind me.
And yet, my body has apparently decided that if the world is going to keep throwing me off a cliff, the least it can do is provide an orgasm on the way down.
Fantastic. Very demure, very mindful. Excellent work, nervous system.
Delia’s face flashes behind my eyes. You don’t know what you’ve done.
My chest tightens so hard I almost fold forward.
Nope. Absolutely not. I am not doing that sentence right now.
I am not sitting in it, unpacking it, labeling it, lighting a candle for it, and asking my inner child how she feels.
My inner child is busy hiding in a closet and would like everyone to shut the hell up.
Shiloh’s arm tightens a fraction. “You’re thinking too loud,” he murmurs.
Shiloh hears silence better than most men hear screams. It is one of his more annoying skills, right up there with smiling like sin and making “Yank” sound like a hand under my skirt.
“I don’t want to think.” The words come out before I can pretty them up.
Behind me, his chest stills. Water laps softly against the porcelain. Somewhere beyond the bathroom door, the house creaks around us. Old wood. Old secrets. Men somewhere deciding which truths they'll let me choke on next. Shiloh’s thumb strokes once along my hand. “Then don’t.”
I laugh, but it comes out rough. “Wow. Revolutionary. Should I put that in my planner?”
His mouth brushes my wet hair. “You own a planner?”
“No. But if I did, tonight's entry would say murder, emotional collapse, bath with naked Cajun menace.”
“Cajun-adjacent,” he says.
“Now is not the time for genealogy.” That gets a breath out of him.
Almost a laugh. Almost. The sound slips through me, warm and dangerous, because I like it.
I like that I can still make him do that even with my life currently spread across the bathroom floor in bloody little puzzle pieces.
I like that he is hard and holding back and talking nonsense with me because if we stop, I might remember I don’t know which parts of my childhood are real.
I am sick of remembering. Sick of old gunshots and sheet-covered bodies and people deciding silence is protection because they are not the ones who have to live inside it.
Sick of being handled. Managed. Saved. Patted gently on the head by men who then go downstairs to talk about me like I am a haunted object they found in a closet.
Even Shiloh’s gentleness scrapes at me. Maybe because I want it.
Maybe because I want the other thing more.
I pull my hand from his.
“Yank?”
I move before he can say anything else. Water sloshes high against the sides of the tub as I twist around.
Shiloh’s arm drops away fast enough to give me room, but his hands lift as if he expects me to slip.
I don’t. The tub is huge, because it's only natural that Shiloh has a bathtub built for bad decisions.
There is room enough for me to turn and straddle him, one knee settling on either side of his hips.
His eyes go dark. For one second, we both freeze.
My breasts are level with his face. His cock presses against me beneath the water, hot and hard and not even a little bit comforting.
Which is perfect, actually. I'm done being comforted. Shiloh’s hands close around my waist automatically.
Then he stops himself. His fingers flex once, and his gaze snaps up to mine.
“Reva.” There is warning in the way he says my name. A strained, careful thread of don’t make me guess.
I settle my hands on his shoulders. His skin is wet and warm under my palms, muscle shifting beneath my fingers.
There is a faint scar near his collarbone I have never noticed before.
I almost ask about it, because apparently I do enjoy collecting terrible information at the worst possible moments.
Instead, I shift my hips. The head of his cock drags against me beneath the water.
Pleasure flashes through me so fast I suck in a breath. Shiloh’s eyes close. “Fuck,” he says softly.
Agreed. A full, formal agreement. With paperwork. I touch his jaw. “I don’t want to be soothed.”
His eyes open. “Then tell me what you want.”
There he is. Still making me say it. Still refusing to do the thing where a man pretends a woman’s pain is consent because it is convenient and he is horny.
It should irritate me less than it does.
It irritates me because it matters. It irritates me because he is right to make me use my voice when half the people in my life have spent fifteen years taking it away.
“I want you inside me,” I say.
His nostrils flare. “And tomorrow?”
I frown. “What about tomorrow?”
“When the shock wears off and you hate everyone again.” His thumb moves against my hip, slow and careful and infuriating. “Are you going to hate me for this?”
I stare at him. Then I laugh once, sharp enough to hurt. “Shiloh, I’m twenty-two, emotionally unstable, and currently straddling you in a bathtub after finding out my dead sister has been alive this whole time. I am absolutely going to hate everyone tomorrow.”
His mouth twitches despite himself.
“But not for this,” I add, and his expression sobers. “I need this,” I say, and the honesty makes my throat feel scraped raw. “I need one thing tonight that I choose. One thing that isn’t a memory or a secret or some old dead woman with a title deciding which little girl got to live.”
Something hard moves through his expression. “Mother Superior is not dead,” he says.
“Don’t ruin my phrasing.”
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No,” he says. “I’m not.”
I almost smile. It breaks before it gets anywhere useful. He sees that too. I hate how much he sees.
“I’m here,” I say, because he needs it and maybe I do too. “I know what I’m doing. I know who you are. I know where I am.”
His hand slides up my back. Still holding. Still not directing. “Say yes,” I whisper.
“Yes.” The word hits lower than it should. I kiss him before he can add a clause, a warning, or a morally responsible footnote.
It starts ugly. Teeth and wet skin and full on mouth-to-mouth collision. Shiloh groans into me and braces on the side of the tub like he needs something solid to keep from grabbing too much too fast.
Cute. Unnecessary. I reach between us, wrap my fingers around him, and stroke once.
His whole body locks. “Jesus, Yank.”
That voice. That wrecked little edge in it.
God help me, I want to bottle it and drink it on days when I feel too dead to be mean.
I lift up on my knees and guide him to me.
For one tiny, stupid second, I pause. Not because I’m unsure, but because the whole world seems to narrow to this.
My hand on his shoulder. His cock pressed against me.
His eyes on mine, no charm left in them, no easy smile, none of the pretty armor he wears because it usually works.
And that scares the hell out of me.
“This is...this is just... I'm going to fuck you,” I rasp. I'm not sure who I'm telling, him or me.
His jaw flexes. “Take what you need, Yank.”
So I do. The first push steals every clever thought I have ever had.
I sink down on him, and my body opens inch by inch, tight and slick and so alive it almost hurts.
The water shifts around us, warm against my thighs.
Shiloh’s fingers dig into my hips and then ease because the man is still trying to be sweet and chivalric while I am actively impaling myself on him. Honestly, rude.
“Stop being noble,” I breathe.
His laugh breaks on a groan. “I’m not sure this qualifies.”
“You’re thinking too much.”
“That’s usually your job.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
I kiss him again because that is faster than coming up with a comeback, and also because his mouth is right there and I am not made of stone.
I take the rest of him in one slow, greedy slide that leaves me seated fully in his lap, filled so deep I have to stop and breathe against his mouth.
For a moment, neither of us moves. The bathwater laps against our joined bodies.
His chest rises hard against mine. My nipples drag over wet skin, and my body clenches around him like it has opinions.
A lot of opinions. Possibly a full dissertation. Shiloh’s head falls back against the rim of the tub. “You feel—”
“Finish that sentence carefully.”
His eyes open, dark and hot. “Perfect.”
Damn him. That one gets in. I lift my hips before it can settle too deeply, then sink back down.
Pleasure rolls through me, blunt and bright.
My fingers dig into his shoulders. His hands slide to my waist, up my back, down again, like he cannot decide where he is allowed to touch now that I’ve given him permission.
Everywhere, idiot. My body says it before I do. I grab one of his hands and put it on my breast. His eyes flare.
“Reva.”
“Do I need to draw you a map?”
“No.”
“Then catch up.”
His mouth curves, but it is gone almost instantly when I move again. His hand closes around me, thumb dragging over my nipple, and pleasure punches through me hard enough that my rhythm stutters.
“There?” he asks.
I glare at him. He does it again. My head tips back. “You know damn well where.”
“Still like hearing you say it.”
“Of course you do.”
I ride him because I need the motion. Need the pressure.
Need the slick drag of him inside me proving my body is still mine, still capable of wanting, still capable of taking something from this cursed night besides another wound.
I need to feel alive in a way death cannot argue with.
His mouth finds my throat. This time, he bites.
Not hard enough to hurt in a bad way. Enough to make me gasp and clamp down around him. Shiloh curses against my skin. “Careful.”
I laugh into the steam. “I thought we were done being careful.”
His hands grip my hips, and then he finally, finally stops treating me like cracked glass.
He does not take over completely. He is too smart for that, too tuned to the jagged places under my skin tonight.
But he helps. Lifts me. Guides me down harder.
Meets me with a thrust that sends water slapping over the side of the tub.
“There we go,” I say, breathless. “Knew you were in there somewhere.”
His smile flashes, wicked and wrecked. “You have a mouth on you.”
“You noticed?”
“I have a list.”
“I better be number one.”
“You’re the whole damn list.”
My chest does something stupid. I ignore it by moving faster.
The tub is a disaster. Water spills everywhere.
My knees slide. His hands catch me every time, strong at my hips, my ribs, my back.
I slap one hand against the tile wall to steady myself, but it slips, and Shiloh drags me closer, laughing under his breath in a way that sounds half-mad.
“Your floor,” I gasp.
“Fuck my floor.”
“God, I hate rich people.”
“I’m going to drown you.”
“Try it and I’ll haunt your dick.”
He makes a sound that might be a laugh if it weren't buried under a groan. “Romance really isn’t dead.”
“Give me five minutes. I’ll kill that too.”
He kisses me hard enough to shut me up. For a little while, there is no room for anything else.
No Delia. No Deacon. No women with tattoos moving through Noir Night like they own the air.
No childhood assignment. No sheets. No blood.
No question of which girl was supposed to die and which one was supposed to be carried off into the dark.
There is only Shiloh under me, inside me, his mouth on mine and his hands all over me now because I gave him permission and he is done pretending he does not want to use it.
Good. I want his greed. I want the heat of it.
I want the proof that someone can want me without turning that want into a cage.
His hand slides between us beneath the water.
The touch of his thumb against my clit makes my hips jerk.
“Cocky bastard,” I say, but it comes out thin.
“You wound me.”
“You’ll live.”
“Currently undecided.”
Then he does it again, slow and firm, and the rest of my insult dissolves into a sound I will deny making if anyone asks.
His eyes lock on my face. I hate that I love it.
Hate that he watches me as if this matters beyond bodies and water and shock.
Hate that I want it to matter, at least for these few minutes, because despite being scared to death, if tonight means nothing except pain, I may actually start screaming and never stop.