“Your, ah, monster requests your presence at dinner,” Murry said at the door with a hefty dose of smugness in his tone.
With a leaping stomach, I folded my sweater and tucked it inside my bag, then scanned the room for other items. It was the tenth time I’d done it, but it made me feel better if I at least got prepared for the moment.
The moment when I’d walk out of here and never look back.
It was that last part that sealed the valves to my heart, blocking my next attempt at oxygen. And the reason I hadn’t left my room all afternoon.
Murry escorted me to the room at the top of the stairs in silence, and after rapping on the large doors, he opened them and left me there.
Steeling myself, I squared my shoulders and walked inside.
The door shutting behind me echoed right through my fingertips as I inhaled the smell of rice and spiced chicken, and let my eyes adjust to the bright space.
Heavy black curtains draped arched windows, two on either side of the room, and a set of French doors that opened to a small balcony. They were peeled back and tied with satin bows, allowing the last vestiges of daylight to leak in and cast the large king-size bed in orange and gray shadows.
Removing my eyes from the monstrosity that was dressed in black and gray linens, I walked over the oriental styled rugs to where Thomas sat at a small dining table, writing in that little brown book of his.
He shut it as I approached, then rose to pull out my chair.
“Hi,” I said, finding my voice as I took a seat.
“Good evening. Wine?” His rich, dark voice combined with the mouthwatering scent of butter chicken as he lifted the lids on our meals had me almost salivating.
I shook my head, and he poured himself half a glass, filling mine with water from a crystal decanter.
Steam billowed into the air, trailing to the opened doors where the summer breeze drifted in to kiss my bare legs and feet. “Your room is beautiful.”
He stopped fussing with the cutlery and took a seat. “Thank you.”
I had to know. “Was it your parents’?”
“It was,” he said without a hint of emotion.
“That doesn’t bother you.” Not a question.
“Not in the slightest.” His eyes met mine after a beat. “Dove, it’s just a room.”
“Of course,” I said, forgetting for a moment, as I was often doing nowadays, with whom I was speaking with.
The food was too good to pass up to stomach roiling thoughts, so when he gestured for me to eat, I gladly did.
After I’d demolished half my plate, I glanced out the doors to stop myself from watching him eat. It was fascinating—the way his jaw worked and his Adam’s apple bobbed—in a way such normal things shouldn’t be.
“I’d almost forgotten it was summer.” Thomas eyed my dress, and I laughed. “You know what I mean.”
He waved his fork. “I suppose. Though I never said you needed to stay indoors. Or stay period.”
That was true.
I ate another mouthful even though I was getting full to avoid answering that.
“We never finished our round of questions,” he said after a few minutes had passed.
“Ask whatever you like,” I said, taking a sip of water.
“No.” He set his utensils down, picking up his glass of wine to take a sip. “I want you to ask me.” At my raised brow, he swirled his wine. “You and I both know you still have questions.”
“I’ve already asked you what I want to know, and you refused to answer me.”
His lips twisted. “I wouldn’t say I refused …” When I laughed, he huffed, “Fine.”
I pushed my plate away, waiting.
He took another sip of wine, and then did the same, most of his food gone.
“I first killed someone when I was seventeen. My uncle.”
I tried to stop my eyes from growing, but judging by the slight lift to his lips, I was unsuccessful.
Thomas set his glass down. Rising from the table, he took measured strides toward the bed, his finger rubbing at his brow. “My father left Italy for good after meeting my mother here in college. My uncle Matias was his half-brother, the son of one of my grandfather’s side pieces, but he was all he had when my father left, so he tried to groom him to run the family business.”
My eyes absorbed his blank expression. His ancestry explained the tan skin and the chiseled, god-like angles of his face.
“My grandfather was too unwell to fly here for my parents’ funeral, and he died not long after the accident. So my uncle Matt came to arrange everything and stayed a few months. I never remembered much of him growing up, being that he never visited the States often. The few memories I had were from when I was young, and we’d visited my father’s family for a Christmas or two. And in those memories, he’d barely said two words to me.”
With rapt attention, I watched as his feet ate the length of the room with long strides.
“My grandfather was dead and my grandmother too old to take care of me or travel, so I was left in Matias’s care. But instead of caring, he spent his time here emptying our bank accounts, transferring half of my father’s fortune overseas, and arranging a contact for my school should they need to check in, and then he left.”
A dry, humorous sound raised his shoulders. “He came back a year later. Surprised I was still attending school and not in the system or dead, he gave me a pat on the shoulder as if I’d made him proud. But I knew why he’d returned, and though it destroyed me, I couldn’t stop him.”
He groaned. “The rage I felt brewing inside as he fed me lie after lie about being here for work, all the while he drank my father’s whiskey and smoked his favorite cigars, the ones I’d kept dust-free and locked in his study as if he’d never even left … it became too much.”
“He took more money.”
Thomas nodded. “And before he left again, as he tossed a few thousand at my feet, muttering something about putting the house on the market when he returned, I vowed to myself there wouldn’t be a next time. I took that few thousand and my rage and marched downstairs to the basement. There, I found the safe my father had hidden and tucked the money inside with the rest. You see, I couldn’t even access money from my father’s bank account. Not until I was eighteen.”
“But …” There would’ve been nothing left.
“Exactly.” His eyes gleamed with a malice I’d never seen before. “So when he came back a few years later with plans to sell the house, the very home my father had paid for through blood and savage deeds, I swore it’d be the last thing he ever made plans to do.”
He shook his head, a smile forming. “It was easy, really. He followed me downstairs, dollar signs in his eyes and missing one of his ears, which I later found out was due to owing the family money. Money he was stealing from me to pay them back.”
My hand fluttered to my lips as my eyes watered.
“Lured by the promise of a locked safe that I’d said I was having trouble opening, I knocked him out with a brick, tied him to a beam, and fled upstairs.”
A dark, nostalgic laugh drifted as he ran a hand over his hair. “I was shaking so hard I thought I’d chip my teeth. Once I finally calmed down, I realized he would likely escape and probably kill me or starve to death. Once that sunk in, this weird calm washed over me.”
“How?” I asked, my voice a croak. “How did you kill him?”
“A hunting knife.” He took a seat on his bed, kicking off his leather shoes, then tugging off his socks. “I could’ve done it while he was restrained and made it easier for myself, but I was too angry. Some part of me needed the challenge. Some part of me had changed. I untied him while he was still unconscious, unlocked the door, and waited at the top of the stairs.”
Lost in the sight of his bare feet, his next words knocked me from my trance.
“As soon as he appeared, I tripped him before he could even see me.” Another dry laugh. “I missed, stabbing him in the nose, but the second time …” His eyes met mine, unflinching honesty in them. “I made sure I didn’t miss the second time. Or the sixteenth.”
“Holy shit.” My tongue felt thick but not for the reasons it should. “Thomas … you were so young.”
He tilted a shoulder.
“What happened then?”
“I’d found my father’s drums of acid years ago,” he said. “I used them and the …” He saw my grimace and paused. “Anyway, my father’s cousin, who now runs the business, came looking for him a few months later. But instead of killing me, he grinned and hired me.”
I shook my head. “You were seventeen … How did you survive after your parents died until then?”
“Money, same as anyone else who has it.” A smirk curved his lips. “It’s quite easy”—his eyes lowered to the rug—“until it runs out.”
“So you worked for him here? What about school?”
Thomas eyed my bare feet, eyes skating up my legs, then swallowed and directed his gaze out the window. “I finished. Just. I might’ve been on my own, but after a short time, I preferred it that way. Going to school and being around that many people, people with ordinary lives and mundane problems, it drove me crazy.”
“What about your mother’s family?”
His jaw twitched at my distraught tone. “Aunt Lou Lou was gone, and so were my mother’s parents.”
My eyes threatened to well. “Did you go to Italy? After they hired you?”
“No,” he said. “I traveled or took care of anyone they sent here. It was good for a time, but I got sick of being told what to do. That happens when you have no authority in your life for so long.”
I smiled then, finding it hard to imagine him taking orders from anyone. Not unless it suited him. “How’d you get out of working for your family?”
“I haven’t; it doesn’t work like that. But I told them I was going into business on my own, and if they wanted my services, they needed to pay more money. I was almost twenty-five by then and didn’t know enough about their dealings to be too much of a concern.” He huffed. “Or so they thought. Regardless, those ties can’t be cut without bloodshed. I’m still in touch with Loren, my father’s cousin, for when he needs something here and vice versa.”
This man … all he’d been through. “Jesus, Thomas.”
He frowned at my blasphemy, and I stood, my legs liquid as I forced them closer to him, forced them to bend and take a seat.
Numb, I hardly felt the feathered duvet sink beneath me. “Before you finished school, you what, survived on money in that safe?”
Thomas undid his jacket, standing to drape it over an armchair by his bed, then took his seat near me on the bed again, a lot closer than he’d been before. “I made it last. Tuition was paid in full, curtesy of my uncle. When I got sick of walking, I taught myself to drive my mother’s car and would use it to get to the nearest bus stop, where I caught a ride into the city. But my perfect attendance started slipping after the eleventh grade. Once food and money became scarce, and my uniforms grew too tight.”
The image of that tall, lanky boy in the woods came forward. “When I saw you in the woods …”
A tender smile lit his eyes. “I was hunting.” At my frown, he laughed. “Don’t look so forlorn. People do it all the time. And the activity that stemmed from childhood boredom paid off.”
“In what ways?”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know if you want to hear—”
“Tell me.”
He sighed. “When I started running out of money, about four months before my uncle reappeared for the last time, I’d learned to do more than hunt. I skinned and gutted rabbits and deer, caught fish in the creek, and made do with old canned goods I’d found in the basement.”
My stomach heaved, my hand lifting to it.
Thomas grabbed my hand, fingers gently circling my wrist. “You could say my ability to shed blood was born from fun but also from the need to survive. Neither reason has changed.”
Understanding dawned. It wasn’t enough, but it was enough to empathize and see how he’d gone down the path he had. “So that’s why.”
He let go of my wrist, flopping back down onto the bed. The action was so childlike, so unlike him, that I had to stop myself from saying his name to reassure me it was him.
“Dove, if everyone had an excuse for the person they’d become, a reason to blame their subpar existence or terrible situations on, the world would be even more of a miserable place.” He sucked his lips, then gazed up at me. “Look at you. You were taken by a supposed monster, had your heart broken by your supposed fiancé, found out what really happened to your supposed perfect mother, yet just today, I saw you smile and laugh. I saw you thriving despite what’s happened to you.” He let those words sink in. “Why do you think that is?”
Knowing what he wanted me to say, I licked my lips, captured by his rich voice and haunting blue stare. The beauty of this man was stained in blood, but it was still there, drawing me closer with its relentless tugging.
He answered for me with a knowing smile. “Because you chose to.”
I managed to get my brain up to speed. “I get what you’re saying, but it’s not always that simple.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps. But ultimately, is it not?”
I laughed. “Now you’re just confusing me.”
He laughed too, the sound a buttery whiskey. “Should I have just gone with, I like it because having that part of me desensitized enables me to ensure I never have to eat out of date canned goods again?”
“I like both,” I said.
Our smiles fading, we stared a moment. Thomas appeared to be lost in the past, and me, lost in the present.
Flopping back down onto the bed, I blinked up at the crown molding and the chandelier on the ceiling. “For five whole years, no one knew you lived alone?”
“Money makes people shut up, and I spent enough to ensure I was left alone.”
“Unbelievable.” I shifted, leaning on an elbow to face him. “All those years tucked away in this castle. Like some long-lost dark prince.”
He snorted. “Hardly, Little Dove.”
“You missed out on so many experiences,” I said. Even if he went to high school, his life was so far removed from his peers.
“Like what?”
“Well, did you go to parties? Prom?” I paused before asking my next question. “Ever have a girlfriend?”
“Even before my parents died, I wasn’t one to socialize much and only had a handful of friends who put up with my eccentric ways. My only saving grace was that I was on the swim team, and that curbed most bullying about my frequent trips to the library.”
He looked over at me when he noticed I was still waiting. “I’ve had a few girlfriends, yes. Swim team, remember?” He raised a thick brow. “But they never lasted long. Not once we got to the stage of wanting sleepovers or proper dates.”
“So how did you, you know …?” Heat crept into my cheeks.
“The last girlfriend I had, senior year, was the second girl I had sex with. We had sex about three times. Locker room twice, back of her car once. Before her, there was one girl. We got rid of our virginities and basically went our separate ways.”
“What about after her?” I all but squeaked, my stomach warming and making me feel sixteen again at the way he so freely said sex.
He shook his head. “When you live on the fringes of society, normality only touches you as much as you let it.” He met my shocked gaze with a cold one. “And as I said, I got sick of letting it.”
Unable to fathom how a man who looked like him, who could kiss in a way that burned and touch so reverently it froze the blood in your veins, hadn’t had sex in years, I blurted, “But why?”
“I’d become accustomed to being alone.” A sigh lifted his chest. “And being that I never leave this place unless I must, the opportunity rarely presents itself, and when it has in the past, it was usually in the form of a potential STD.” At my still shocked expression, he hurried to add, “Don’t worry, I still masturbate, and no, it’s not to gory images.”
“Oh-kay,” I laughed out.
Scooting closer, he twirled a strand of my hair around his finger. “I’ll bet I even discover what you like in a matter of minutes.”
“Whoa.” I was still reeling from the fact that this man—this beautiful, shadowed Adonis—was way less experienced than me in the bedroom. “Thomas, I didn’t realize that was what you’d want to do”—I waved a hand, then let it fall to the bed—“when you invited me in here.”
“Dove, no.” Eyes gentling, he said, “I just wanted to spend time with you, but now …”
“But now?” I repeated on a whisper.
His lips curled, and my toes reacted in kind. “Now that I can see what you want, that I can taste it in the air we’re breathing, you’re not leaving this room until you’ve let me inside you.”
His uncanny ability to read me had never frustrated and turned me on more. “Thomas,” I started.
“Hush.” His finger pressed to my lips as he leaned over me. “Let’s not waste time with false objections when we could be using it”—his finger dragged down my chin, dipped to the column of my throat, and stopped, rotating over the skin above my cleavage—“doing much better things.”
My hunger for him peppered my taste buds, flavored the thickening saliva on my tongue, and burned deep, crusting the cracks of my heart. But I couldn’t let it take control just yet. “Why do you want me, Thomas? Why are you trusting me?”
He answered instantly, voice deep and firm with conviction. “Because I knew …” His breath heated my lips, his eyes swimming into mine. “I knew from the first moment your eyes met mine that you were meant for me. I struggled with it, with wanting you, and then I surrendered. Though I didn’t know for sure, I had hope that you would be the one to see me.”
My hands reached for his face, thumbs rubbing over the day-old bristle on his jaw as I pulled his mouth to mine. “I see you, and you know what?”
“What?” The word drifted between my parted lips.
“I’m not scared.” My thighs and lips opened farther, making room for him to fall between them.
Heaven floated in my veins; a mixture of tingling heat and cool rapture as his tongue stroked mine, and his hand skimmed my bare thigh. My dress rose higher thanks to the friction of his rubbing hips. I took his hand and guided it between my legs, allowing him to feel the evidence for himself through the cotton of my panties.
His groan was a lit match tossed onto an already burning flame, and it sent my blood boiling with desperation.
His fingers were hesitant at first but taking encouragement from the heavy breaths escaping our kiss, the ones I couldn’t control, he pressed and teased.
Tearing my lips from his, I gasped out, “Move it aside, touch me.”
His nostrils flared as he studied me with molten eyes, then he was gone, the sound of his shirt hitting the floor had my head lifting in time to see his tan torso lower back on the bed.
My head fell back as his thumbs hooked into my panties, and his lips followed their descent, licking slowly, ardently, as if he were starved for the taste of my skin.
“Every inch of you,” he breathed once my panties had hit the floor. “I want my lips to traverse every inch of your skin.”
The thought was tempting, and shivers wracked me as I took in his enraptured stare, which was roaming up my legs, his eyes homing in on the space between my thighs.
“Another time, maybe,” I said, gesturing for him to come to me.
He ignored me, and my eyes squeezed shut as his fingers and tongue moved up my legs so slow I was close to panting by the time he spread me open. The feel of his appreciative gaze and the sound of his increased breathing washed away any embarrassment I might’ve felt for being on display for so long.
“You’re shining for me, and so fucking pink I can hardly breathe.”
“So don’t. Come here and kiss me instead.”
Again, he ignored me, and his breath washing over my thighs was the only warning I had before his mouth was right there.
He licked up and down, getting to know what I liked, as he’d warned, within minutes.
Less than two minutes later, if I was being honest, my thighs shook and my hands gripped his hair as he circled and circled, and then I saw bright sparks.
He watched my body shake, I could feel it, but it didn’t bother me. It only made it harder to refocus on my surroundings.
“Incredible,” he breathed, then said, “Again,” right before his mouth lowered, his tongue firmer and his hands joining too as he began with renewed determination.
Laughing and squirming, I clamped my legs around his head. “No, stop.”
Prying my thighs apart, he rested his chin on my lower stomach. “Why?”
His tone conveyed genuine confusion. Knowing he hadn’t had sex in a long time, since he’d entered adulthood, really, I fumbled for the right words to describe it. “Have you ever been able to masturbate twice in a row?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
He smirked. “But I understand your point. Sensitive.”
I scooted up the bed, and he scowled, reaching for my ankle. I shifted out of reach, then sat up, and lifted my dress over my head. My bra was next, landing somewhere behind me on the floor.
Thomas crawled over the bed, eyes on my chest before rising to my face. “May I?”
“You just put your mouth between my legs,” I said with a raised brow. “Usually you touch breasts first.”
He paused, reaching for me. “I didn’t think that mattered.”
He was right. “I guess it doesn’t.”
“Do you prefer to have your breasts touched beforehand?”
Blinking, I tried not to flush as I admitted, “I like it, sure. But …”
“But?”
Getting to my knees, I pushed him to the bed, my hands reaching for his zipper, then tugging at his pants and briefs. “But I like having your attention between my legs more.”
Placing his arms behind his head, he watched me pull his pants down his thick, hair dusted thighs, then assisted me by kicking them off.
Drawing in a deep breath, I removed my gaze from the lean muscles of his arms, the concentration marring his brow, and dragged them over his packed stomach to take in his length. He was long, thick, and perfect, and I couldn’t stop myself from wrapping my hand around him.
Thomas hissed, and I looked up at his tortured expression. “Are you okay?”
“More than okay, but …”
“But?” I smirked as he peeled one eye open.
“I’m afraid that if you keep touching me, this will be over soon.”
My hand fell away, but not before I dropped my mouth to the tip. I swiped my tongue over the engorged head, tasting the salt of his own excitement. “Holy Mary mother of …”
Laughing, I moved up his body, straddled him, and took his lips. “No need for blasphemy.”
Then I was on my back, his tongue sweeping furiously into my mouth as his hand gripped my thigh, lifting my leg to wrap around his back. He broke away, his forehead resting heavily on mine as he rocked into me, every one of my nerve endings sparking for more.
“In,” I demanded.
He didn’t need to be told twice, and I waited, ready to help if he needed it, but he aligned himself and pushed forward within seconds, the tight fit making both of us groan.
It dawned on me then, as I felt him swell, fully seated inside me, that this was the first time I’d ever let a man inside me without a condom. It didn’t frighten me, at least, not until I remembered … “Shit, wait.”
Thomas stopped, the muscles straining in his shoulders and neck the only indication it was costing him. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve never, well, done it like this.”
It took him a moment, then it registered, and he smiled. The white of his teeth drew my eyes, and my fingers. I ran them around his lips. “You have the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen.”
He huffed, shifting inside me, then groaned. “As much as I love hearing compliments from you for a change, I want to know what the problem is.”
“I was on the pill,” I said, “until you took me.”
Thomas didn’t say anything for an unbearably quiet moment.
“Thom—”
His mouth fell on mine, his body too, as he started thrusting, slowly finding a rhythm that matched the mating of our tongues. He tore his lips away a second, breathing out raggedly, “I love hearing you say Tom.”
Like a drug, his mouth and his cock pulled me under, but I broke away after a minute. “Wait, you didn’t—”
“If you want condoms, I’ll get some. But for now, let me have you like this.” His hands reached between our lips, a finger dragging over my bottom lip. He pressed his mouth to mine, then whispered, “With nothing between us but skin.”
He didn’t last longer than another minute, which I thought was a feat, all things considered. But if I thought he was done, I was wrong. I was half asleep when the sheets shifted over my skin, the cool night air making me reach blindly for them, but I found a head of hair instead.
“Lift your perfect ass, Little Dove.”
I obeyed instantly, exhaustion evaporating.
He tucked a pillow beneath my stomach, then made me lift again as he tucked another on top of that one.
Getting curious about what it was he planned to do, I opened my mouth to ask him, then promptly snapped it closed, my eyes almost rolling shut as his fingers spread me open, and one slid down my center, playing with some of the cum he’d left behind.
“It does strange things to me,” he said, voice layered with lust and sleep. “Seeing me inside your body. Leaking out of you.”
Wicked delight pebbled my arms, and I whimpered.
After a few minutes, he carefully eased a thick digit inside. “I want you like this next.”
I think I mumbled something, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure of anything other than knowing it was going to be a long night.