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And he has a sterile room made of metal countertops with saws, drills, and more hanging from the far wall. The faint smell of bleach is in the air. A white freezer, the largest I’ve ever seen in a residential setting, is in the corner. The table at the center of the room is so similar to the ones we use at work. The ones that hold the bodies. With one resounding difference: ours don’t have a need for chains to dangle from above and straps to hang from the sides like his does.
It has been custom built. Just like a lot of things in Rowan Stone’s house. He has a murderer’s wet dream built behind a hidden wall in his library. And now I’m standing in it.
I turn to him with sympathy welling in my chest. I’m not afraid of him. This space is the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever seen decor wise, but I see death every day. I make friends with it. I make it pretty.
This isn’t even on my top ten most concerning issues in my life right now.
“Rowan, I don’t need to see this.” I know he’s a killer. He has killed for me even. Does he think he’s going to get me to change my mind about him if I see this? That I’ll run away screaming?
I told him I’m not afraid of him. Is this what it’ll take for him to believe me?
“Ineed you to see it.” His words rumble out as he searches my features slowly, taking an inventory of every emotion I have within me. But none of it is what he expects.
“I see dead people every day. Do you want me to go running through the city screaming? What do you want, Rowan?” I lift my hands from my sides and ignore all the red flags in the room. If I pretend I’m color blind, I could gather up all those flags and make a pretty centerpiece here on the fucked-up table in the center of the murder room.
“Seeing dead people and dating a murderer is not the same thing. I want you to see who I really am. I’m not your hero, Little Bird. I’m very much the bad guy. And I need you to know how real that is. I thought I could date you? I thought I could be a real part of your life instead of just your dirty dark secret. I can’t. I’ll always be your secret.”
My secret. I’ve got a thousand of them... What’s one more?
“Then murder me,” I tell him, my voice bold, daring.
It startles Rowan, as much as his severe face can appear so. He blinks, his eyes widening a fraction at my request. “What?”
“You say you’re a murderer. So murder me. That’s the real reason you’re showing me this, isn’t it?” I step close to him, grab his hand, and force it against my throat. I know he can feel the way I swallow against his palm. The way my pulse is thumping against his skin. “Murder me, Rowan Stone. End it now.”
His fingers squeeze, but I don’t feel fear. Not even when he tightens. Not even when lights dance behind my eyelids. But then he’s pulling away, stepping away from me.
Always bringing me to the brink, but never shoving me over that edge.
My chest rises and falls with every heavy breath, but I keep my gaze pinned on him. On the boy who is just as fucked up as me.
“I never thought you were my hero, Rowan.” Even if he has saved my life more times than I even know. “I never thought you were the bad guy either. Life isn’t that simple. Our lives,” I look up at the intensity in his serious eyes, “are never going to be simple,” I add on a whisper.
He’s a bad man who kills other bad men. These two things don’t cancel each other out, but it isn’t something tragic to me. Not when I’ve been afraid of bad men all my life.
And now I have one of my own. My own personal safety net of terror.
“Maybe.” He glances away from me then, and I can’t help but grip his shirt and force him to look at me. “You’re going to see me clearly someday. I’m going to disgust you. You’ll hate me,” he vows.
The way he says those last few words makes me want to dig through every photo he owns to understand who the fuck in his life made him believe this. Who made him feel he wasn’t worthy of love.
Because they’re so fucking wrong.
My fingers push across his jaw, forcing him to meet my eyes as my fingertips trace the edge of that cruel scar.
“You could have killed me, too, Rowan. Your life would have been so much simpler without me. But instead of getting rid of me, you saved me. Over and over again. I’ll never hate you.” My voice drops to a confessional whisper. “I only know how to love you.” My quiet words kiss along his lips.
His eyes widen with the weight of my words clearly spinning in his head.
“I fucking love every inch of you, Little Bird,” he growls out before his head dips low as if he tastes the words I just confessed. He kisses me. Slowly. Dominatingly. Letting me memorize the possessive press of his lips against mine.
A big hand slips through my hair, claiming me there before another grabs my hip, and then his chest melds hard against mine. It steals my breath away until it burns inside me for more. My hands slip beneath his shirt, and hard lines skim my fingertips as I push my way up the warmth of his abdomen.
It’s like that small touch sets him off.
Quickly, he’s walking me backward. Our feet tangle, and a moan is all I can manage before my lower back hits something hard. He growls darkly against my mouth before his hand slams to the countertop with a heavy clank, steadying us there for only seconds before I’m shoving against the metal to shift ass up on the table.
He pins me there, his hands caging me in on either side. The weight of his hips is against mine, and the arch of my back only presses my center even harder against him. It feels like we’re warring against each other, giving and taking between ourselves but still needingmore.
