Chapter 12
CINDER
While Samuel says his goodbyes, I move to the windows. Since giving me his shirt, he’s been bare-chested and it’s hard to focus with all that gorgeousness on display.
I turn my attention to the darkness beyond the glass. The grounds dissolve into a black so complete the manicured hedges lose their shape and become silhouettes stacked against the night.
A single landscape light flickers near the far fence line, catching the boots of an enforcer before he passes and the dark swallows him whole.
Stillness lives out there, the kind I used to take for granted when my father's house held the same quiet and the quiet meant safety.
My mind is full and empty at the same time. Months of planning, all of it stripped away.
My hand drifts to the curve of my belly and my thumb traces a slow circle. The baby is still tonight. Resting after all the chaos the poor thing had to endure. Smart kid. One of us should be sleeping.
Heat radiates at my back and I lean into Samuel. His arm wraps around my middle, his palm settling over the bump just below my hand.
I step out of his warmth.
The cold rushes back in and my skin prickles, but I hold my ground, wrapping my arms over my chest. The distance is necessary. A girl can only absorb so much in one night and my limit is a distant memory at this point.
"Is there something about my touch you don't like?" From the single arched brow, I can tell he’s being snarky.
I lift my chin. His dark brown eyes hold steady on me from four feet away, patient and unreadable, lamplight carving shadows along the ridged ink climbing his neck.
He is still shirtless. Still covered in the landscape of torn-flesh tattoos that wrap his torso, the exposed rib bones so detailed they look real beneath shredded red muscle and blood.
The black hole over his heart sits at the center, and in the dim light I can just make out the curve of my name scripted along its edge.
The sight of those letters pulls at a place low in my ribs. I shove the feeling down.
"No." I hold his gaze. "It's not about your touch."
He waits. Hands loose at his sides. Giving me the same kind of room he gave me outside. I'm starting to think that's deliberate, a man who could easily cage me choosing not to, over and over.
"It's guilt, Samuel. I came here to handle Edgar on my own terms, and instead I dragged four men into a war. People bled tonight because I snuck into a poker game not thinking of anyone but myself." My voice stays even but my throat burns. "I'm solving one murder, but what if more people die?"
Scarred knuckles brush down the side of my face, the touch light enough that my skin barely registers the pressure before the warmth of it seeps in.
I lean into his hand. The instinct overrides my resistance and my eyes close for one traitorous second.
"It's been a while since anyone has touched me with kindness." My voice drops. "Five months, to be exact."
His lips press against mine. Gentle. Warm. A kiss that carries no demand, only desire. My fingers curl into fists at my sides to keep from reaching for him.
He pulls back just enough to speak against my mouth. "Good to know no one has touched you since me."
"You've been my one and only."
Heat floods my cheeks at the admission. The memory of lonely nights with my hand between my thighs, reaching for the ghost of the man standing in front of me, burns across my pride.
"I wish I had never let you leave my room our first night together."
The confession cracks open a locked door inside my heart. I start to tell him I wish the same, but the words stick and I pull away instead. My fingers press against my lips where his warmth lingers.
"I left because I don't trust easily. I meant it when I told you I wanted to stay.
" I move toward the windows, putting some distance between us.
"You looked at me with so much…love. God, that seems so silly to say when it was just a night. But that is what I felt as you watched me step into that elevator.”
I move to the kitchen and gesture to the glasses in the cabinet. “Mind if I grab some water?”
“Allow me.” He pours me a cool glass and I use that pause to gather my thoughts. My palm finds the cold of the glass.
Leaning a hip against the kitchen counter, I pick my next words carefully. "But I knew I couldn't have a happily ever after, Samuel. Not with my father's killer still out there and the cops on his payroll. I was single-minded at best."
"You’re right about that, and wrong that you can’t have a happily ever after," he urges.
"I'm not." I rest my hands on my belly. The baby shifts, a slow roll under my palm, and the movement anchors me. "Not then and not now. But..."
He takes a deep breath, his massive chest expanding, the torn-flesh tattoos stretching with the movement. "But our baby changes everything, doesn't it? Your future and mine will forever change."
The husk of his voice works through me. I am not prepared for the effect it has on me. "What do you mean?"
"Yesterday I only dreamed of having you in my arms again.
" He stalks toward me as he speaks, the heated concrete silent under his feet.
Shadows cut across his jaw and the recessed lighting throws the scars on his knuckles into sharp relief.
"And yet tonight I killed to protect the future I thought I would never have. "
He walks me backward until the cold marble edge of the kitchen island presses into my lower back. The wooden knife block sits to my left, handles up, blades glinting. To my right, empty counter.
"You can try for the knives, but I'm fast, baby."
He lifts me onto the counter. The marble bites ice-cold through the thin fabric of my skirt and the fishnet stockings. He forces himself between my thighs, his hips pressing my knees apart, and his presence swallows every inch of air surrounding me.
"You have a choice here."
I shove at his shoulders. Solid muscle absorbs the impact and he doesn't budge. "Do I?"
"Always."
"I call bullshit." My palms flatten against his bare chest, my right hand landing squarely over the inked letters of my name. His heart drums strong and steady beneath the black hole. He looms over me all taut muscle and looking like a gorgeous villain. It’s hard to be mad when he saved me from dying.
And then he takes my face in his hands and steals my breath. He palms the back of my head and takes my lips in a hard kiss. Hard enough to steal the end of my sentence and soft enough that my fingers curl against his chest instead of pushing.
I break away, my breath uneven. "I wanted to do this my way. I didn't want your help and yet…here we are." My jaw tightens. "And now that I’ve said that out loud, I hear how egotistical and arrogant that sounds."
His grunt of a laugh grates against my already frayed nerves.
"You looked like you could have handled him on your own." His thumb traces the curve of my jaw, tilting my face up. "But you will never have to bloody your hands while I'm alive."
He kisses the tip of my nose. Infuriatingly sweet for a man who just buried an ax in someone's skull.
"We have a few hours to wait. Join me in a hot shower." His voice lowers, the rough edges smoothing into a warmth that coils through my belly. "We don't have to do anything you don't want to do. Let me care for you the way I've fantasized for months on end, Cinder. We can take it from there."
"Why do you care so much?" It’s a silly question given my baby bump, but my soul needs to hear all the soft words tonight.
He gathers the ends of my tangled hair between his fingers, working through a knot with a patience that contradicts every violent thing I've watched him do tonight.
"I cared the second I saved you from losing your virginity to that asshole you were about to let touch you.
" The corner of his mouth pulls, wicked and warm.
"Now come with daddy and let me take care of you. "
My heart trips over itself and shudders in my chest.
What did he say? I reach behind him and loosen the tie holding his hair back. Dark locks fall free and I run my fingers through the softness of his hair.
My blues meet his browns. "Daddy, huh?" The word rolls over my tongue and every nerve ending south of my navel lights up. It's been five months, but the effect is the same. Warm. Electric. My thighs squeeze against his hips before I can stop myself. "Not happening."
The amount of tragedy that moves over his expression pushes me to test how far he will take this.
Arrogance tugs at the edges of his dark eyes and pins me where I sit. He's amused and irritated at the same time, the combination tightening the muscle in his jaw while his mouth threatens a grin.
And then his light expression turns wicked. "We'll see about that. Shower first, and then we can see how we spend the hours until sunup."
My entire body trembles in anticipation.
Sweet, delicious soul-consuming anticipation.
He lifts me off the marble counter and my bare feet never touch the floor.
His borrowed shirt falls open as he carries me through the corridor.
The peaks of my nipples press hard against the thin halter top, visible through the fabric, and his gaze drops to them with a hunger he doesn't bother hiding.
"I never thought I'd get to call you daddy again." The truth slips free because my body is already broadcasting it in bold print. My nipples ache, my skin is flushed, and every inch of me pressed against his bare chest is humming with a need to feel alive.
"Those pretty pink tips tell me you like it." He turns down a hallway I haven't been through. "I'll have you screaming for your daddy before the night is up, Cinder. That is a promise."
"You don't have brakes, do you? You just floor it through to the end. Screw stop signs and red lights."
"I'm seeing neither in this instance, so I don't see what waiting and pussyfooting around what I want will get me.
" He pushes through a door with his shoulder, carrying me into a master suite that matches the rest of the house.
Dark. Cold. Sparse. A massive bed with heavy linens dominates the center, and floor-to-ceiling glass lines the far wall, the sleeping garden visible beyond. "Or you, for that matter."
The bathroom is glass on three sides. He sets me on the heated tile and turns the shower on. Steam erupts from the rainfall head, filling the enclosure fast, fogging the walls in seconds. He reaches for the shirt on my shoulders and peels it away, tossing the bloodied cotton aside.
His fingers find the hem of my halter top.
He lifts it over my head in one slow pull.
Cool air meets bare skin and my nipples tighten harder.
His knuckles graze my ribs, my waist, the curve of my belly, as he hooks the fishnet stockings and the short skirt together and drags them down my legs.
I step out of the pile and stand naked in front of him, five feet of pregnant, bruised, tangled-haired mess.
His eyes move over my body, slow and reverent. I can't make the softness I see in him now fit the same man who ended multiple lives tonight.
Yet here he stands, holding me like I truly am his princess.
He guides me under the hot spray. Water hits my shoulders and I groan, low and shameless.
Five months of cold showers in a studio apartment with bad plumbing melts under the pressure of hot water sluicing over sore muscles.
Steam wraps around me, thick as a blanket, and I close my eyes and let my head fall back.
Through the fogged glass, I watch him undress on the other side. His hands work his belt, his pants, dropping them to the tile. He turns and steam blurs his body into shapes and shadow, but the ink is unmistakable. Same torn-flesh landscape wrapping his ribs and back.
Those are the same.
I wipe the steam with the flat of my palm, clearing a streak across the glass.
But what has my attention now is the new ink. Vines climb from the darkness over his heart, wrapping around the script of my name, cradling the letters in thorns and small blooming roses. The detail is so fine, so deliberate, it looks like something living growing from the void.
My hand presses flat against the glass and my breath catches.
He steps into the shower and I step toward him. I reach for him and settle my open palms over my name and the garden growing from the darkness. His heart pounds beneath my fingers, strong and steady, and the warmth of his skin drives the last of the night's cold from my bones.
"I don't know what to say." I trace my name and the fine details of the red roses.
"You filled my heart with love that first night.
" His voice drops, rough and quiet, and the steam carries his words through me as much as the air does.
"Say you'll stay with me. Stay with me and marry me, Cinder.
" His scarred hands cup my face, tilting my chin up until I'm drowning in the darkness of his eyes.
"Now that I've found you, please never leave. Don't make me cuff you to my bed."
"You're kidding."
"Not even in the slightest, princess." His thumb drags across my cheekbone. "I want a forever with you. That is a promise."
I take him in. The hints of silver darken under the water streaming over wide shoulders.
The gray in his beard, thicker than five months ago.
Muscles built from violence and survival, scarred knuckles resting against my jaw.
He is twice my age and can end lives in seconds, yet he’s the most beautiful man I have ever put my hands on.
"What devious thoughts are running through that head of yours?"
"Not devious." My fingers trace the new vines inked around my name. The thorns rise from his skin in delicate shadows. "Answer me something, my villainous prince. Do you ever break your promises?"
"Never." Water runs over his jaw and drips from the edge of his beard. "I’ve spent an entire life keeping my word. I do not plan on breaking that streak now."
I glance down. Blood from the graze on his bicep mixes with the water, swirling pink at our feet before it circles the drain and disappears. I watch it go.
When I lift my eyes, he is closer. One step and my spine presses against the far wall of the shower, the glass smooth and slick against my skin, offering no grip, no friction. Steam billows around us and the rainfall head drowns everything into white noise.
"I know which promise you're thinking of." His grin is deliciously wicked. "You will be screaming daddy by the end of the night. I promised."
I smile back. Tilt my chin higher. Let the challenge settle into my bones alongside the heat of the water and the heat of his body blocking out everything else.
"Then prepare for me to shatter that streak of yours to fucking pieces, because the only way I'm calling you daddy again is if you tie me up and fuck me until I don't know my own name."
His dark eyes hold mine. Water streams over both of us. Steam curls between our bodies. The white noise of the shower swallows the silence and neither of us blinks.
"Deal."