by Fiona Keane
I didn’t know which emotion tugged more carnally within me: the guilt over killing his grandfather tomorrow and not telling him, or the passion I felt for him as I watched his left palm press against the shower wall. His biceps tightened, pooling my insides at the view of water drops melting with the heat of his muscles, chiseled with intricate perfection. I licked my lips, almost panting from the man who stood in his shower, head turned toward the drain with water cascading down the length of his muscular spine.
Nothing else mattered in that moment. Julian’s eyes closed as he lifted his face to the water, the remnants of blood finally cleansed from his skin.
I stepped around the glass panel, my eyes greedily devouring the masterpiece before me. Julian’s body, the wanton image of his muscles moving beneath flesh as droplets of water cascaded over each crest of definition, was a magnet for my soul. My clothes tumbled to my feet as I shrugged free of their restraints and entered the shower with Julian. In another life, my mind would have screamed profanities at me. He was my every thought.
My hands warmed instantly against his shoulder blades. His skin seared mine upon contact, the heat acting as a glue between us. Julian turned, running his hands through his wild brown hair and rubbing water from his eyes, before meeting my gaze impassively. In another life, that expression would have terrified me. In any life, I had never desired more than him.
Beads of water trickled along Julian’s eyelashes, dribbling down his cheeks to rest on my hands while I grasped his face, our foreheads meeting as I lifted to my tiptoes. My chest was pressed against his, our hearts pounded into one another, and his arousal firmly warmed the space between our hips. Julian’s strong arms wrapped around me while his lips lowered to mine, squeezing and sucking the pain of history from me and giving me only the promise of our future. I shivered beneath the falling water as his hands glided down my spine, curving over my behind before he fluidly lifted me against him, his fingers pressing into the flesh of my thighs.
I was slammed into the wall, sandwiched between its cool granite and Julian’s scorching pecs. I tilted my head back, rewarded with his breath and tongue along my throat, catching his right palm open against the same wall as my back, balancing his weight into mine with each shattering plunge into our oblivion.
I fell apart in his arms. My body was limp, responding on its own to the desperate hunger controlled by Julian’s lips, his mouth, his goddamned teeth. They pierced my flesh with their sparkling damage, biting the line of my collarbones, stopping their torture for one second as his warm lips pressed into the hollow of my clavicle. We were suspended in a thick cloud of steam, our senses processing through taste and touch alone.
I clawed my fingers along his shoulders, resting my head in the deliriously perfect nook below his jaw as I inhaled him with the release of every question, secret, or fear ever held.
Our skin was riddled with a chill from using the hot water, but I was on fire within Julian’s arms. I loosened my legs, wiggling from his possession in the shower and feeling the glorious ache in my hips, meeting his toes on the shower floor. His toes. Trivial, but there, anchoring him…with me…in the shower.
His silence dominated every move, and I followed his guidance while he carried us both from the shower in his constrictive embrace. With one arm wrapped around my naked body, Julian reached for a towel with the other, comforting me in the center of his bathroom.
“How did you know where to find us?” I whispered, ashamed my first words to him since the theatre ruined the moment. Julian’s palms cupped my cheeks as he tilted my head back, his gaze unavoidable.
“Liam assured me you were safe, and he needed a coffee. I’m familiar with his riddles, Aideen.” Julian chastely kissed my forehead and wrapped a towel around his hips, leaving me to stand in the frozen bathroom alone.
I looked around, the pillows of steam disappearing with his footsteps, staring once more at the shower. Beads of water clung to the wall and tile, like my soul, desperate to hold secure the memory of moments earlier. Not so fast, Fuckoy. I followed the path of damp footprints across the hall and into our room, observing Julian pulling on a thermal shirt. His arms stretched as the fabric tugged over his head and he pulled it taut against his abdomen.
“Is he—”
“Yes.”
“Is sh-sh-Em—”
His eyes met mine, dark and ruthless. “Yes.” Every. Last. One. Julian’s demeanor was frigid, not the man who made love to me in his shower, or the man who destroyed a stranger’s desk hours ago. It wasn’t the man whose passion called to me with its wanton need. I met those eyes before, in the backroom of my shop, when Elliott died. He’s dangerous. He’s loyal. He’s mine. He better not forget that.
“Talk to me, Julian,” I demanded, watching with confusion as he prepared to leave our bedroom. “I need you to tell me what happened, what’s going on. I haven’t seen you in weeks, you destroy me twice in one night as though that moment is our last…Do you know what they did to me there? How they tried to kill me, to stifle my mind before their promise of my death?”
“Stop.” His hands lifted in the air, but it spurred me on. He should have expected it; he knew I was stubborn. He told me he liked that. Once upon a time.
“Talk to me!” I reached for his shoulder, and he flinched, shoving himself away from me before his palms met atop his head.
“Regan hired my uncle to be at Elliott’s funeral. Want to know why?”
“Yes.” I’m going to die. Look at him.
“He was there to kidnap you. They didn’t plan for me to be there with you, for us to be together at the funeral. He wanted you dead because I refused to marry Noelle. They were responsible for the first bomb when we went to the theatre. They tracked you; they wanted to isolate you and murder you, Aideen.” Julian’s face was rigid, eyes narrowed and black. My silence urged him to continue as we stood in confession, but I could feel his pain. It radiated in waves, numbing the warmth of the shower, chilling my exposed skin.
“You want more, babby? You want to know what he told me before Liam held back his arms and I shot him? You really want to know?” Julian’s arms dropped, limply hanging at his sides while mine trembled in response to his debilitating tone. I was sobbing, I felt the tears, but I couldn’t move to wipe them. I didn’t even know if my towel was still on.
Julian stepped toward me, eyes searing mine. “Edward had that tattoo etched into his skin to mirror my grandfather, hoping he would get the blame for killing you in the hospital, and it worked out well because he also wants you dead. So forgive me, my beautiful angel, for not being how you want me to be right now, hours before I face my grandfather and the Senate floor. I just murdered the man who spent almost a year trying to kill you. I won’t tell you more. You don’t need those details running through your nightmares.”
“Julian,” I uttered, taking in a breath that pierced my lungs. “I owe you my life.”
“No, babby,” he softened, rushing forward to engulf me in his arms, kissing my hair, “You are my life.”
***
I woke to the sound of Julian’s pacing footsteps. They began near me, wandered to the closet, and stopped at my bedside.
“What time is it?” I choked on sleep, rolling onto my back.
“Three. I just received a curious phone call from Doctor Monroe,” Julian informed me while rubbing the tension in his neck, eyes peering down at me. “They saved her baby. Barely, but it’s alive. It’s a girl.”
“Oh.” I watched him, still struggling to come to with a sore body and mind, before his lean figure nestled next to me at the side of our bed. Our bed. Julian’s chest caved with an exhale to knock down a wall, his hands slapping on his muscular thighs.
“He called me first because he tested her DNA, curious about the father.”
“Why does it matter, Julian…” My fingers stopped spinning in my lap as scenarios played in my numb mind. He felt distant, but I wasn’t going to push. For once.
“It matters because her DNA is sim
ilar to mine, babby,” his head cocked toward me, eyes wide, “but I didn’t father that child. Monroe has our entire family history at his command. He did the research, he knew what to look for. It’s not my father’s, my grandfather’s. It’s like Lucy all over again.”
“They were going to claim her as yours,” I gasped, comprehending his words. “Because you two are too damn alike. Oh, my God, Julian. Does he know?”
“No. I’m telling him after the hearing today.”
I reached for his arm, anxious guilt over my own omission with knowledge of how exactly that hearing would go. “Will you stay home with me instead? Liam can come over later. We can get dinner. Please?”
“I’d much rather skip Liam, and dinner, and get right to dessert.” He lowered to press his lips against mine. When our eyes opened, gazing into each other’s, I saw myself reflected deeply in his.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Julian.” I shook my head, shoving the last few weeks of torture into the rotten place of my soul, where I planned to never look again. “None of it. After this moment, I don’t want them to define any more of our future.”
His hands combed my mess of hair, eyes fondly sparkling into mine. “I can’t begin to express the pride I have for you. I’ve never been more in love with you. I’m afraid to touch you…”
“You can touch me, Julian. In fact, I need you to touch me.”
He closed his eyes with a laugh, a blissful sound I worried I’d never hear again. His top lip slipped between his teeth to quell his response. “I didn’t plan our first time together to be so rushed, babby.”
I observed him, my heart melting at the side of his big blue eyes gazing into mine, flashing back to a memory of the hospital. “Nothing before us matters, Julian. Whatever you did, whatever I did, or what happened to us…We have a lot of firsts left for us, and I wouldn’t change that moment for anything.”
The low rumble of his amusement poured from his pout, and I caved, falling heavily beneath his weight on the bed, almost forgetting that in six hours my coffee would kill his grandfather.
I flattened against the mattress, sandwiched between the cool white linens and Julian’s warm, heaving chest. The soft breeze from the opened window was a welcome relief from the heat scorching between us. I lifted my hands to his shoulders, my fingernails piercing his muscles, scratching their stain along his skin before Julian bound my wrists and lifted my arms above my head. Beneath him, I was blissfully useless, useless and wanting.
The destructive strength in his muscles strained before my face as his arm maintained its hold against my bound wrists, without complaint from either of us. Julian’s head fell to the crook of my neck, his lips poisonously debilitating as they grazed my sensitive skin and pooled the need within my core. His chin glided along my clavicle, forcing a shiver to course through me, his hold tightening.
He wasn’t speaking, and I didn’t question it. His actions screamed at me, pleading and begging all the while dominating and crushing demands I never knew existed. Each bite, every kiss or touch of his skin against mine, obliterated any omission or farce. It was his truth, I was his truth.
His left hand lowered from my throat, gliding along my side before his palm wrapped firmly around my hip, his fingertips controlling my skin with their dominance. Julian’s hand clutched my thigh, and he released my wrists, lowering his hand to my other leg before pulling my calves around his waist.
I was curled in his warmth once we came undone, our skin glistening and bodies satiated, while Julian held me, whispering his affections as I fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty-One
JULIAN
I finished securing my tie and pressed my palms along my shirt, smoothing the image of Julian Molloy. I was more than him, and while I resented the part of me which brought Aideen so much trauma, I knew it was because of the same stakes that we were able to protect each other. I stood in the doorway of the kitchen, not as an heir or man fueled with rage, but a man who would die infinite lifetimes for the woman hovering over the boiling French press.
Her long, smooth legs poked from the thermal shirt I wore before bed last night, the fabric catching her curves, lifting just enough over the swell of her backside as she leaned forward on her tiptoes, driving me insane. The only reason I felt determined to attend the Senate hearing that morning was to analyze the consequences of my behavior last night. I hadn’t heard from my grandfather, my sister, not even Liam since he wiped blood from his hands on a filthy rag and gruffly nodded his departure. It was never easy taking a life, even if the life was poisoned by corruption and threatening my love. Easy wasn’t the right word; I considered it uncomfortable, traumatizing, when I took a life, but there are casualties in war, and I promised Aideen I would kill every single person who threatened her. Now there was a new life, an infant being sustained by nurses and an incubator, fragile and too precious for this world.
I watched Aideen pour coffee into her mug, unaware I gawked, swallowing each movement of her exquisite body. Her blue eyes were tired as she peered at me over the rim of her mug.
“You look nice,” she whispered. “I think that’s the same tie you wore when you scared the shit out of me in the backroom of my shop.”
“Sorry about that.” I grinned, winking at her. “You’ve always been one for details.” Aideen nodded, the sparkle of her eyes fading with one more sip of coffee. I noticed her hand tremble as she placed her mug against the kitchen table, the ceramic scratching against the woodgrain.
“I found something of yours.” I smiled, reaching into my pocket. “Do you want it?”
“Always.” Aideen looked at my clenched fist and slowly pried open my hold. She gasped, blue eyes wide against mine as tears fell along her cheeks. I wasn’t going to tell her what I did to get her necklace back; it was okay that she didn’t know that.
“Promise me,” she breathed, her hands greedily flattened against my chest, her diamond necklace back in her possession, “you won’t do anything stupid.” I lifted my head from hers and bound her against me as I looked down at her.
“I’m intrigued.”
Aideen tugged on my tie, nuzzling her face into my chest. The feeling of her against me, the only weight between us that of heady desire, was invigorating. Regan’s pained bellow, his plea for survival, pierced my mind, jarring the moment with Aideen in my arms. She lifted her palms to my cheeks, tilting my face toward hers as she stood on her tiptoes to press her lips against mine. It was possessive, dominant, and everything I needed to suck the sourness from my thoughts as she held me.
As she gulped her coffee in nothing but my shirt, I observed her hesitance, the silence that hung between us despite the incredible physical connection. I wanted to know everything they did to her so I could do the same to them, and I did the worst I could last night when I smeared Edward Regan’s life along the filthy floor of a derelict factory.
I observed her, the warmth in her complexion and glimmer in her eyes returning to the girl I’d met in the hospital, but I didn’t miss her tapping fingernails or fidgeting toes. I looked forward to the weekend, hoping we would have the moment to talk that was stolen from us weeks before.
I walked to the State House, welcoming the early spring drizzle that tickled from swollen gray skies above. I needed it to calm, to cleanse me before returning home to Aideen. The collar of my wool coat was flipped, protecting my neck from the chill, but my skin boiled with every step I made toward the devil, the water sizzling into steam as it dribbled against my earlobes.
I thought of the theatre, the shower, grinding my teeth until a migraine threatened my skull. Aideen consumed me, rushing through my veins while devouring the man I was and creating a monster just for her. It wasn’t simply the evils of truth that we shattered, but the past crumbled as well. I despised my grandfather, and it was only a matter of time before his punishment was revealed. His death was the most dangerous, holding the most consequence. Possibilities plagued my mind as I entered the hearing. I was late, an
d I couldn’t have given a shit because the dynasty no longer mattered; his legacy a pathetic joke built on corruption and evil. I would kill him…and I couldn’t wait.
The room was sparse, seats taken by a handful of congressmen and their aides. I made sure to maintain quiet as I entered and took a seat several rows behind the devil. From behind, I assumed I would look like him someday after a long life of raising babies and loving Aideen, a life spent long and blissfully after I found a way to kill him.
Their arguments drifted around me like a foreign tongue, unable to compute the intricacies of their speech. Nothing they said mattered. It was inconsequential because I knew the refugees they discussed, their hearing about what to do with people who deserved protection and care, it was all a scheme, a cover up.
I started twiddling my thumbs between my knees, elbows pressed to my thighs, while I stared at the floor. His deep voice chimed between arguments, a sound that made me want to vomit. The eloquence with which he spoke tugged at a raw nerve, the last time I heard him having been his demand for my confirmation…after Liam told me Aideen killed Malcolm. Holy fucking hell. I had been so blissfully overwhelmed with her in my arms, my shower, my bed, in my damn kitchen, that I stopped thinking of anything but her for a moment.
Aideen killed Malcolm. She got her revenge. My babby, my beautiful, glorious woman and her magnificent wings. It became a disturbing, but visceral, routine for us. Death, love, loss, death, empowerment. I peered to the left, observing movement in my periphery. Liam stepped into the room from the back, walking through the seats to settle directly behind Satan. My twitching fingers stopped, my heart on alert, as I sat rigidly in my seat and watched my brother. I studied every detail, tuning out the rest of the room.
I followed the direction of his nod, observing a young aide twisting the end of her braid while acknowledged by the playboy. She slowly moved around the room, out of my view in the background. There was a small clink of glass and the squeak of a wheel before she appeared once more in the aisle next to me, approaching Liam and our grandfather. Liam’s left arm lifted to the vacant chair next to him as he turned to whisper something to the woman. He declined her offer for coffee, something I wouldn’t have anticipated after the lack of sleep we shared while murdering a scoundrel. Liam tipped his head toward our grandfather, and the woman placed a cup of steaming coffee just to his left.
