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Seriously. It feels like trying to reason with a brick wall.

Bare feet slap against the tile as he follows me in. I glance over my shoulder just in time to see him yank off his rumpled shirt. “What are you doing?”

“Drawing us a bath,” he growls, leaning over to spin the faucet above the Jacuzzi tub.

I frown, watching him adjust the temperature, my mouth watering at the way the muscles in his back flex with every movement. “I can’t take a bath with you.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” My voice falters, and I bite my lip, staring down at the clothes clinging to my body.

Getting in there would mean being naked. And I can’t be naked around him. Not completely.

Ryann moves closer, lifting my chin as he searches my gaze intently. “Shilo, we’ve fucked. I’ve had my tongue inside your asshole. I promise nothing you have under there will scare me away.”

I let out a squeak, my cock jumping painfully at the memory of how good that felt, how good he felt. But still… the wounds from high school run deep. And he’s exactly the type of guy that used to mock me—one of those locker room jocks with their chiseled muscles and perfect genetics.

Rather than voice my insecurities, I shake my head and glare at the floor, blinking back tears. Eventually, he sighs, turning off the water before sitting on the edge of the tub. A shuffle of fabric catches my attention, and I glance up through my lashes to watch as he slides his pants down, his gaze fixed on the marred flesh of his thick thigh.

“I mentioned the fire that night you slept over,” he begins, eyes growing distant, “but I never told you how it happened.”

Pausing, he clears his throat, absently running a thumb over the scar. “It was my fault. The fire. I killed my mother.”

My head snaps up, a chill spreading through me at the emptiness in his tone. “What happened?”

“A bottle rocket,” he says flatly, “given to me from an older kid down the street. I was fifteen. By then, my mom had finally gotten the US courts to grant her joint custody, and I’d started staying at her house. We were rebuilding our relationship.” He swallows hard, still tracing his skin. “I thought it’d be fun to light the rocket in the garage, stupidly thinking it would just spark up and fizzle out. Instead, it shot through the house and set everything on fire.”

“Ryann, you were just a kid,” I say softly, moving closer to him. “It was an accident.”

“An accident that took someone’s life.” He meets my gaze when I stop before him, his eyes softening as he wipes my damp cheeks. “My mother had been sleeping at the time, and we were told that she likely died that way. They found her still in bed. Cause of death was smoke inhalation.”

At least she didn’t suffer. That thought probably doesn’t take his pain away, though.

His hands settle on my hips as he continues. “Declan took the fall for me. Things between us became even more strained than they already were. He moved in with us, but he was a ghost. Hardly spoke to anyone, spent all his time locked in his room. I attended a private school while he stayed in the public system. He…blamed me for what happened. It wasn’t until college that we finally hashed it out and became brothers instead of strangers who just happened to share a womb.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, my throat tightening around something heavy I can’t quite swallow. “You must have been really lonely.”

“So were you.”

Those hazel eyes meet mine, and I glance down with a weak shrug. “I just got made fun of. Called names, pushed around. Nothing like what you went through.”

Jeez, he lost an entire parent, and I’m over here having issues just because some kids were mean? What’s wrong with me?

Ryann frowns, entwining his fingers with mine. “This isn’t a competition, doll. That’s not why I’m telling you this.”

“Then why are you?”

He blinks, clearly caught off guard. Running a hand through his hair, he exhales sharply before looking away. “Because you needed to hear it.”

My brows knit in confusion for a moment, but then his words from Christmas Eve resurface in my mind, and everything clicks. “The fire alarm for AVA. Olivia’s the one who developed the software, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“So you…” My thumb instinctively finds its way to my mouth as I chew on my nail, studying his open expression. “You’re dating her to get the rights to it. That’s…that’s messed up.”

His lips quirk as he gently pulls my thumb out, replacing it with his own. “I was, at first. It was a scheme Ronin came up with to make the merger go smoothly, but you’re right. It’s messed up, which is why I told Olivia the truth. And we came up with a plan of our own.”

“What kind of plan?” I ask around his thumb, sucking the salt from his skin.