Chapter Nineteen
Over the next week I heal. And spend time with Clara. And read the book of Rudyard Kipling stories I had my sister steal from downstairs and bring to me. I even grieve for my father. He may have been twisted, but he tried to help me in the end. I believed he would have if Byron hadn’t turned on him. I had the real father I’d been longing for—but only for a few seconds. That’s who I mourn.
I do a lot in that week, but I don’t talk much with Kip.
Or rather, he doesn’t talk much to me.
I get one visit a day, and even that feels compulsory. His eyes are always shadowed, like he hasn’t been sleeping. He asks me, stiffly, if there’s anything I need. Like he’s some kind of formal host and I’m a guest. And not his lover. Not the sister of his sister.
I don’t know if we can be close again, if I can trust him again. I’m not even sure what trust is. It’s all a dark miasma of lies, a twisted knot in my stomach. My mother’s death. My strange sisterly relationship with Kip and with Byron. Maybe it shouldn’t matter to me if we’re not blood related, but if I’d known that I never would have touched Kip—not for any amount of money. And now I’ve touched him everywhere. He’s touched me back. Too late.
I consider leaving the house. I’m not even sure where I’d go. Maybe it would be a relief to Kip to have me gone. Maybe he’s only keeping me here out of guilt for what happened.
Or because of Clara.
What if he’s disgusted by the way he saw me on that bed, naked and beaten? What if he only spent time with me because I was a stripper, because I was easy, and now that I’m lying in bed, I’m no use to him?
The next day when he comes to visit me, I’m already sitting up.
He frowns when he sees me. His eyes look haunted, but at least he’s distracted enough from all that to admonish me. “You should be lying down. You’re not fully recovered yet. If you push it—”
“Come sit by me,” I say, patting the sheet beside me.
Normally he doesn’t sit at all. One time when I asked him to, he sat on the edge of the armchair, looking so freaking uncomfortable I asked for a glass of water just so he’d have an excuse to leave. But this time I’m not going to let him off that easy.
He looks ready to refuse. God, is he actually leaner than before? Like he’s not eating either…
After a long moment he nods and sits on the edge of the bed. My stomach sinks. He really does seem disgusted. “Is something wrong?” I ask softly.
He looks surprised. Then he laughs, a little rusty. “I’m not the one who got shot.”
“Mhmm, but I’m making a full recovery over here. You, on the other hand…”
He shakes his head. “The last thing you need to worry about is me.”
“Do you want me to leave?” My heart gives a pang as I ask the question. I don’t want to leave. But I will, if he wants me to. I haven’t figured out if I can live with him.
But I’m already figuring out I can’t live without him.
“No! Jesus, Honor. You’re way too sick to be moved.”
I frown. “You make it sound like I’m dying.”
“You almost did.” His voice is rough. “I held you in my arms, watching you bleed out. Do you have any idea how much I—You can’t leave. That’s the bottom line. Don’t try to fight me on this.”
I hadn’t wanted to leave at all. But something is still wrong. “Are you—are you grossed out by me? By how I looked when you found me?” Before he can answer, I rush to add, “Because I wouldn’t be offended by that. I mean, it was awful. I hate that you saw me like that.”
He looks away. A muscle in his jaw flexes. His chest rises up and down like he’s forcing himself to be calm. But when he looks at me, he’s anything but calm. There’s fury in his eyes. “What the fuck are you talking about? Gross? You think I think you’re gross?”
He’s saying it like it’s totally ridiculous, but I don’t think it’s ridiculous at all. “Well, I mean…it was pretty gross.”
The marks haven’t healed. I see them every time I shower, though Clara has to help me. She winces just to look at them. I’m guessing a few of the deeper ones will leave scars, but at least eventually they’ll fade into some regular color instead of black-and-blue like now.
He’s just staring at me now. Speechless.
I’m making a mess of this, but I’m not sure how. “Look, I don’t want you to think I expect anything from you. Like a relationship or something. I know that we were just… that you were just… I know what I was,” I finish lamely.
Kip stands up, tension radiating from him. He stalks to the door, and I think he must be leaving. I open my mouth to call him back, to apologize, to beg him to stay, but then he turns on his heel. Even this far away I feel his gaze sear me.
“Let me get this straight,” he says. “According to you, I’m just using you for sex. I think you’re gross because you were hurt. And I want to throw you out in the cold while you’re still recovering. Does that about sum me up?”
My voice is small. “When you put it that way, it sounds kind of bad.”
His eyes are like molten copper, metallic and in motion. He’s panting like a bull about to charge, and suddenly my words seem like red flags.
“No, Honor,” he says, taking a step forward, “I don’t want you to leave. Not ever, if it’s up to me.”
My heart pounds. “Oh,” I say, real quiet. Because oh.
Another step. “And when I looked at you tied to that bed, I wanted to rip apart every man that had helped put you there, every man that had hurt you. I wanted to take your wounds into my own body, feel the pain instead of you. Not once have I thought you were anything but beautiful.”
I swallow hard. “Kip?”
“And as for using you for sex…” He reaches the edge of the bed, but he doesn’t stop. He leans over me, one hand on either side of the headboard, his face just a foot from mine. This close his eyes are pure energy, a vortex that sucks me in and steals the air from the room. “That much is true. I want to use you for sex again and again. I never want there to come a time when I can’t use you for sex, for friendship, for every goddamn thing, because I’m in love with you. Fuck, I love you.”
“I love you too,” I whisper. It feels almost magical, like if I talk too loud, I’ll break the spell. How could he love me after everything? How could I love him? But I do.
Love doesn’t ask questions. And love doesn’t lie.
“No,” he says, pulling back.
Um… “What?”
“You don’t love me,” he says flatly. “You don’t even know me.”
* * *
Night has fallen by the time I venture outside the house. I had to wait until Clara went to sleep. Otherwise she’d worry.
It feels right to find him in the dark, where we walked holding hands, where we lay on the roof. The moon conspires with us, giving just enough light to see the lines of each other’s bodies, but not enough to see all the scars.
Kip sits on the porch railing, looking at the yard with its dark morning glory blooms. He doesn’t turn as I come out. He doesn’t move when I walk closer. But he knows it’s me. “I suppose it would be useless to order you back to bed,” he says without heat.
“You could try.”
He slants me a look. “Why do I get the feeling you’d enjoy that?”
“Because you know me.” I lower my voice, pretending to be serious. “You know everything about me.”
“Think this is a joke?”
“I’m not laughing. I’m just… You can’t make these vague proclamations and expect me to just accept it. If you didn’t love me—” I have to swallow past the lump in my throat. “I’d understand that. But you do love me, and it feels like a miracle. I can’t just pretend you didn’t say that to me. Unless…unless you didn’t mean it.”
He raises my chin with his knuckles, so I have to meet his eyes. “I meant it. Don’t ever doubt that you’re loved. Don’t doubt I’d do anything for you.”
“Then be with me,” I whisper. Both in body and spirit. He’s shutting me out like this, and he knows it. It hurts. It hurts more than the lashes of Byron’s belt.
He swings his legs back over the balcony so he’s facing me. A hand runs down my arm. “You really should be in bed. Not my bed either. You should be far away from me.”
“You keep warning me away. But I know the kind of man you are. The man who wanted to help me when no one else did. The man who saved my life. And you gave up the bounty to do it—”
“Fuck the bounty,” he says, harsh and loud. The word bounty echoes off the brick and wood of the porch. There’s a lake beyond the metal fence. I see it peeking from between the trees, winking in the moonlight, beckoning. I feel suddenly tired, as if the only rest can be found underwater. I remember the poem, about the key being underground. I understand it more now, better than I could have before, how someone can want death. Not in a desperate scrabble, not violent or quick—just a slow drift to the bottom of a pond.
I look at this man in front of me, so intense, so angry. At himself?
And my sister inside, relentlessly cheerful after having lost her entire life. The father she knew. And the one who abandoned her before birth. She’s lost everything.
I’ve failed them both, Kip and Clara. I’ve failed myself. I thought I was looking into the barrel of a gun before. I counted each breath as I took Clara and ran, knowing any one of them might be my last. I faced down a lunatic and got shot in the process. But none of it hurt as badly as this desolate peace.
Kip’s eyes search mine, dark and knowing. “You deserve better,” he murmurs.
My voice is raw when I answer. “You’re all I want.”
He closes his eyes. When he opens them again, I see his determination, the new openness. There are no brambles, no thorns. There is only a wide expanse, an endless earth.
“You were there,” I say softly. “How?”
“I told you my father worked security for yours. I was just a kid, roaming the grounds when I wasn’t allowed to. I saw you playing. You looked lonely. You looked beautiful. Even then, I think I loved you.”
“When did you realize it was me?” I ask. It hurts a little that he didn’t tell me. We both look different now, older, but at some point he clearly realized.
“I always knew,” he says. “That’s what I meant up in the room. I always knew it was you. That first night when I saw you onstage and in the private booth, I knew exactly who you were.”
My stomach turns over. Maybe it shouldn’t matter that he knew who I was. He could pull my hair and make me fuck his boot if I were a stranger. That would have been easier than this. Knowing what I was to him—almost family—and letting me debase myself in front of him.
“I hate what I had to do in that motel room, but I don’t regret doing it. Byron has always been…off. As he got older, it got worse. Complaints from other kids. Dead animals in the yard. We got him some counseling, and I went off to the military, too busy with not getting my ass shot to worry about what was happening back home.”
“Oh, Kip.”
“Then I get back to find out he’s part of the fucking family now. I was fucking proud when I heard he’d become a cop, and then I find out he’s as corrupt as they come. He always had a fucking thing about those jewels, thinking they were ours, that he deserved to have them.” Kip runs a hand over his head. “I should have put a stop to him sooner. I should have put him down, like the fucking feral animal he’d become.”
“You did,” I say, feeling light-headed, like my world is crashing down around me. Like my father’s stories. Delitto d’onore. “An honor killing.”
It’s one thing to think he planned to use me when I was a stranger to him. Another thing to realize he knew me all along, that he came for me and let me be afraid. I’m desperate now. Desperate enough to make excuses. I don’t want to lose what we had in the bedroom. Fuck, I love you.
He laughs, unsteady. “So you’ll pardon that too? Forget the fact that I didn’t tell you who I was, forget that I didn’t protect you from day one. You’ll let me get away with anything, won’t you?” He takes a lock of hair into his hands, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger, just like he did in the old outdoor ballroom. “My own personal martyr.”
I pull back, stricken. “I know you wouldn’t hurt me.”
“But would I let you get hurt, Honor? We both know the answer to that. I let you work in that fucking club. I should have pulled you out the second I found you.”
“Based on what? Knowing me fifteen years ago? I wouldn’t have let you.”
The look he gives me says I wouldn’t have had a choice. “I let Byron stay with you, even though I knew he was using you. He saw it as some kind of karmic retribution for our dad leaving us. I was so relieved when I found out you’d left. Even when I found out the bounty was on your head, and I came looking for you…”
I wait, holding my breath. My heart felt heavy as a stone, sinking. Already underground. “What?”
“I thought that I could be cold with you. I wasn’t the only one with a grudge. I thought I could use you to get in with your father, convince him to see Byron for what he is. And I thought I could use you to get to Clara, to make up for being absent all this time.” He shakes his head. “But I saw you on that stage, and I had to wait. I told myself it was better to wait, to gain your trust. And with the side benefit that I could touch you and fuck you and sink my fingers into that soft cunt of yours.”
That cunt squeezes now, muscles tight and wanting.
“I had principles, Honor. I had plans. But when I looked at you, all I could think about was keeping you with me, whatever I had to do. I threw away everything just to have you, and the only thing I regret is that you got hurt. If it weren’t for that, I’d do it all over again. I’d bind you with sex and money and whatever the fuck else it took, without a single thought to what you want.”
I reach down to the hem of my shirt and lift it over my head. It tugs my wound, and I wince behind the fabric, hiding it because I know he’ll mind more than I do. “Then spare a thought for what I want now, Kip.” My pajama pants go next, shoved down as far as I can bend and falling the rest of the way. It’s far from a sexy striptease. This dimly lit porch is the opposite of a stage. But he is enthralled anyway, watching me, swallowing hard. I see the bulge in his jeans.
There won’t be any lap dances tonight. I couldn’t swivel my body like that if I wanted to. And maybe he’s right after all. Maybe I should be in bed. But I don’t care if I pull my stitches. I don’t care if I hurt. It hurts worse not to be here with him, like this. Not to feel those thick fingers inside my cunt—which is ready for him. I’ve always been ready for him.
He slides a hand over my hip, cupping my ass. His groan is all the approval I need. What is the difference between groping and touching, between stripping and this? The dark heat in his eyes. The hitch in his breathing. Or maybe the way he says, “Is this okay? Am I hurting you?”
The way he cares.
“I’m fine,” I breathe. I’m actually hurting, but not because he’s touching me. I’m on fire, I’m burning up—but his hand on me is cool water, soothing me. I don’t ever want him to stop.
But then he does stop, when his dark gaze lands on my lingering bruises. His jaw clenches. “And you think I’m fucking sorry I killed him. The only thing I’m sorry about is not keeping him alive to do this to him before shooting him.”
And that would only mean more pain for Kip, more guilt. “I’m glad it was quick.”
“You would be,” he says grimly. “You always were too forgiving.”
Maybe so, but I know he’ll never forgive himself. Not for letting me get hurt, not for leaving Clara as a child. Not for killing the monster that was his brother.
I will do what I can for him, though. I’ll give him unconditional support, the best way I know how. All that practice stripping helps for something. I run my hands over my breasts, attracting his attention, offering myself.
He’s staring at them with hunger. With need. His gaze roams lower.
And I freeze, knowing what he’ll see.
I keep myself bare, usually. I shaved when I worked at the club. And before that, with Byron, I waxed. I haven’t been able to do either of those things while I’ve been laid up recovering the past few days. There’s short, stubbly hair that hasn’t been trimmed or shaped at all. Self-conscious, I move to cover myself.
His hand catches my wrist. “Don’t,” he says gruffly.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t hide from me.”
I close my eyes and let my hand fall to my side. Trust. That’s what this is about. He knows it, and I do too. Trust that he’ll like my body when I’m no longer the smooth, sleek stripper he saw onstage. Trust that he wants me for more than sex. I don’t know much about trust. It’s a language I don’t speak. But I hear the sound of it, the heart of it, when I’m near him. I want this badly enough to try. I need him badly enough to shake with the effort.
“Sit down,” he says, gesturing to the porch swing.
I sit down on the smooth wood, feeling the slats press into my skin. Sitting straight and prim doesn’t last long. With one finger under my chin, he lifts until I’m looking up—and leaning back. The bench creaks a little as I do, but I don’t doubt it will hold. Even if we fuck on this, it will hold.
Like the ballroom, like the Grand, everything in this place is built to last.
“Are you afraid?” he asks. He must feel me trembling.
“Yes,” I whisper.
He places a kiss on my cheek. Then lower, down my jaw. On the side of my neck. “Afraid of me?”
After a beat, I jerk my head in a nod.
He moves along my shoulder, dropping kisses while his hand slides down between my legs. “Afraid I’m like my brother?”
“You’re nothing like your brother,” I say on a gasp, because he’s got his fingers against my pussy, rubbing gently, and it’s too much. Even this light touch is too much. How will it feel when he fucks me?
Kip kneels, watching my pussy intently. With a firm hand, he pushes my legs apart. Then he leans in and places a kiss on my clit. I buck my hips into him, but then he’s gone, leaving me bereft. I let out a soft whimper.
“He didn’t do this?” Kip asks.
“Never.”
Kip leans in and licks my pussy lips, and I shudder at the feel. I’m already strung out, tight and close to coming. Then he circles my clit with his tongue. “Kip.”
His eyes flash up at me. “You’re going to stay very still so you don’t get hurt. Just sit. Let me take care of you. Understand?”
I bite my lip. Not really an answer.
He presses two fingers inside me, and I moan. “What is it, Honor? Tell me what you’re thinking. Don’t hide from me.”
“He never did that either,” I whisper.
His fingers curl inside me, hitting a certain spot. “Did what?” he asks, voice low.
“Took care of me.” I tell him what I know he needs from me, just like he gives me what I need. “You’re nothing alike.”
Kip doesn’t respond. He just leans forward and sucks my clit, twisting his fingers—hard—and I’m thrown headlong into orgasm, unable to buck my hips or fuck his hand, unable to move at all while he wrings pleasure from my body, as he pushes me over the brink and then catches my fall, making sure I don’t twist my stitches or hurt myself as I go.
“Why are you afraid of me?” he asks quietly before I can even catch my breath.
I answer him though. I wouldn’t dare not to. “Because I need you.”
I’ve always needed him. Even before I knew who he was, when I saw him in the Grand, I needed him to be real. Needed the promise of help, of relief, of safety to be real. I needed a savior. Not to get me out of danger. I ran away myself. I survived myself. I needed a savior, because I needed someone to care.
His lids lower. He looks like a big satisfied lion, licking up the cream I’ve spilled. He still has a bulging erection—it must be hard as steel, and painful too—but he doesn’t seem to mind. No, he’s far more concerned with sucking my sensitive pussy lips into his mouth, running his tongue down my slit, turning me on again when I’ve barely come down.
He doesn’t mind that I haven’t shaved or that I have scars on my body. He doesn’t mind anything about me. And I understand what he means now. I don’t have to hide from him. I don’t have to run and hide—not ever again.