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“Better?” he asks.
I nod. He holds me against him for a few minutes, allowing the water to warm me and bring me back from the brink of what I’m certain was almost death. When I finally manage to open my eyes, I’m surprised to see the same man from the family portrait in Judge’s study. The man I know to be his brother. He has dark features too. The same type of brutish handsomeness that manages to make my stomach flutter every time I look at Judge. But there’s something slightly different about him. Something more uncivilized. More charming, but also… more dangerous, I think.
“You like what you see?” he teases as he notices my eyes roaming over him.
I try to laugh at the awkwardness of the situation, but it hurts too much. My lungs are still burning, and I think I must have coughed up water. I think he must have resuscitated me.
“Do you think you can try to stand?” he asks. “I’ll help you get cleaned up so we can dress your wounds.”
“Yes.” My voice is too faint when I speak, but he hears it, nonetheless, and gingerly lowers me to my feet.
He keeps a firm hold on me until I prove that I can actually stand, and then he reaches for the bottle of soap. It occurs to me then that I’m completely naked, and how inappropriate this is, but I can’t muster an ounce of modesty to care at the moment. I’m too weak to clean myself, and there’s blood streaking down my legs and my stomach from where the skin has split. Not to mention all the cuts on my feet. And from the feel of it, I’m guessing my face is pretty banged up too.
It’s a strange sort of intimacy to have with a stranger, letting them wash you this way. And Judge’s brother is as meticulous as he seems to be, paying attention to every inch of skin his hands move over. When he pauses on the cuts and bruises, taking extra care with those, I almost burst into tears. Not because it hurts, even though it does, but because he’s being kind to me.
“I can do that—” I protest when his fingers skate lower and lower, delving toward my inner thighs.
“Don’t worry.” He flashes me a charming smile. “I’ll be a proper gentleman, Scout’s Honor. But you have a cut just there.”
He’s touching my inner thigh when the sound of a door crashing open in the cottage startles me, making me jump. And then comes the thunderous voice I’d recognize anywhere.
“Where the fuck is she?”
I don’t hear the woman’s reply, but I sure as hell hear the footsteps echoing off the floor as Judge stalks into the bathroom. Instinctively, I draw closer to his brother, seeking out protection even though I don’t know him. But it’s a grave mistake, one I only realize when Judge appears, and his fiery gaze alights on the scene before him.
I’m completely naked, pressed against his brother’s bare chest in the shower, his palm sliding precariously higher between my thighs.
“Theron.” His eyes move between us as he snarls the words like a demon. “What the fuck are you doing?”
27
Judge
My brother is back. My fucking brother is back.
And between us, drawing closer to him, stands a very naked Mercedes. I’m about to lose my fucking mind.
“Get your fucking hands off her!”
Theron’s eyes narrow, and the right side of his mouth quirks upward in that way of his. That way I’d almost forgotten but fuck if it all doesn’t just come crashing back as if I just saw him yesterday. As if he just stabbed me in the fucking back yesterday.
He switches off the shower and raises his hands in mock surrender, a grin fully on his lips now.
“I don’t see your mark on her,” he says, making a point of looking Mercedes over and fuck me. Because she’s pressed against him, her back to his chest, her bare ass against his thigh. At least he’s still wearing his jeans.
“As if that would stop you,” I blurt out, reaching for Mercedes, who slaps my arm away.
“Don’t touch me!” she says, her voice hoarse.
Theron is still grinning, enjoying this little show. And behind us, I feel my mother’s presence like a dark shadow.
“For fuck’s sake.” I grab a towel, reach into the shower stall and physically take Mercedes out, wrapping the towel around her shoulders and looking her over. “Did you do this to her?” I ask Theron, shifting my gaze over her head to him. Her face is bruised, cut in places. Her body too.
“No, asshole. I don’t get off beating women.”
I grit my jaw at his insinuation.
“That’s your area,” he adds more quietly as if I may not have gotten it the first time around. He reaches for a towel, and I notice the tattoo on his chest that wasn’t there the last time I saw him. A hand holding a sword, the scales of justice balanced on either side. Justice. Consequence. The Montgomery coat of arms. Although it’s not exactly right.
