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I follow him in there, stepping over his pants and boots and that suspicious shirt, and stop dead in my tracks when I see him.
With one hand braced on the tile wall, his head bent low under the jets and the muscles of his back and shoulders rippling, almost vibrating with restrained power, he’s magnificent and terrifying at the same time. I allow my gaze to trail the water as it pours over his skin, forming thick ropes down his spine and to his ass.
But it’s when I go farther still down his legs and feet to the white shower basin and see the pool of pinkish red that I move closer again.
I pull the door open and stick my head inside. “Is that blood?”
Rowan turns to me. “He fucking touched you.”
He. Peter.
“It’s Peter’s blood. How badly did you hurt him?” When he doesn’t reply, I reach inside and shove my palm into his chest. “How badly, Rowan?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters!” I shove at him again, this time harder. “What did you do to him?”
Something in him snaps, and in a move too fast for me to evade, he snatches my wrist and hauls me into the shower with him. “He touched you. The memory of your body was etched in his mind and there was only one way to erase it.”
My skin curls as he presses me to the cold glass enclosure, and I jerk away from it, only to find myself pressed against his heat. A rock and a hard place.
I try to keep my gaze stern and unyielding even as he places his hand just above my head and looms over me like the beast that he is.
“You killed him.” A statement, not a question.
“Peter knew the consequences. He did it anyway.”
At this, I frown. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Do you honestly believe I would’ve allowed anyone else to have what belongs to me? You did nothing without me knowing, Lou. Except for him putting his hands on you. That scrawny rich twit was the only one with the balls to go against my orders.”
My lips part on a reply, but I pause as what he’s just admitted to sinks in. “Are you saying you ordered anyone I dated not to sleep with me? That you would have killed them if they did?”
His brow furrows as he hones that slit gaze on me. His agitated breathing increases and it makes the shower seem even smaller. “Did anyone else fuck you?”
I stare at him with my mouth agape as, for the first time since he took me, I seehim.
He’s completely unrecognizable to me. This Rowan isn’t the same person I met, the one who didn’t want to kill under his uncle’s command, because he believed people deserved second chances.
The man in front of me took a life without hesitation, and there’s not an ounce of remorse present.
Just because I didn’t see him for the last five years doesn’t mean time stood still for him. Life has hardened him as it has me. Maybe more so. His uncles would have demanded it.
How many more men was he ordered to kill under their command? Do or die. Don’t blink. Don’t think. Don’t hesitate.
Rowan didn’t have to tell me about the ways of the men in our world. I knew those words. They were recited by my own family all my life. It was how Papá taught my brothers to be brutal with the enemy. But I was especially horrified to know that his own family was so cruel towardhim. Vicious dogs doing their best to raise a vicious man. One who didn’t think twice about killing poor, helpless Peter out of jealousy.
He might not think twice about killing me either. Why would he? He’s the McKenzie boss now. Born and bred to rule a ruthless and dangerous criminal organization.
I chastise myself for the stupid mistake. For being blind to what he could become. For not anticipating it. Or maybe he’s always been the same and I was too in love to see it.
The thought sends a chill up my spine. Rowan might want me now, but what happens when this obsessive whim to have me passes? What happens when he loses patience at my resistance?
I know the answer to those questions. I end up six feet under.
“Lou, did anyone else—”
“No,” I reply before he can finish. “Peter was the only one.”
