Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,100
Avoiding the mirror, I lean into the shower, past the curtain, and turn the water to piping hot.
And then I begin to strip.
Bloodied clothes hit the tiled floor. Pain pulses in my right arm from the round that grazed me. Need and want war within my soul, a tumultuous battle that has no victor because Rowena deserves more than I can give her. She rose from the ashes of Buckingham Palace, burned and blind, and she’s fought for life every step of the way. She’s a phoenix rising and I’m a man wreathed in violence.
I won’t have her see me like this again.
The first hit of water is like stepping past the gates of Hell. Hot, scalding, and still not enough to eviscerate the memory of Rowena’s horrified gaze when she finally laid eyes on me. Blood and shame run in rivulets down my legs. They stain the marble red. Circle the drain but don’t go down as the old pipes back up and water rises at my feet.
Caustic laughter scratches at my throat.
If only purging my sins was as easy as washing the grime from my flesh.
But I try.
Fucking hell, I try.
With soap and water, I scrub until my skin is raw and the water is ice. Pa warned me of this. The only time I can remember him sitting down with me, away from Mum’s always-narrowed eyes and my brothers’ antics, he put me on his lap and said, “There’s no hope for a man who falls to madness.”
He’d meant the king.
The words have always resonated with me. There’s no hope. No possibility of salvation. And I’m tired, so fucking tired of the rage and the fear and the goddamn need to keep fighting when I’ve already fallen. I feel the fatigue in my marrow. Feel the exhaustion that sits heavy on my chest because I’m terrified to sleep for even a second. The same terror shadows me even now as water slips past my lowered head to my spine.
With my forearm planted against the marble wall, I feel it wash over my left shoulder blade and sense nothing on the right.
Dead, nerveless skin.
“Damien.”
Peeling my eyes open, I meet violet through a cascade of water.
I need you.
Had she heard my unspoken plea while I stood outside her door? Had she sensed the raw desperation within me that demanded that she let me inside her room, inside her bed, inside her sweet cunt? Or had she known, from the very second that Saxon’s car peeled off and I turned to look up at her window, that I’m a man walking a path straight to purgatory and I don’t trust myself not to take her down with me?
I’m doused in a sheet of ice and feel only the grips of fire, and my fingers dig into the soaked tile to keep from reaching for her.
As if she’s heard my thoughts, Rowena sucks her bottom lip behind her upper teeth. Her fingers grip the curtain under her chin, the material bunching between her knuckles like she’s aching to touch me too. But she doesn’t give in to temptation and she doesn’t pull the curtain back for a better look.
She lets me keep my privacy.
She lets me have the moment to myself, should I want it.
Such a subtle show of respect when anyone else would have stopped to stare at my cock. But Rowena’s body was once her father’s greatest political asset, and I’m not surprised that she doesn’t feel comfortable forcing others to reveal what they haven’t personally chosen to share. Because while she’s felt all of me twice now—her hands greedily conquering every piece of me—that was before her sight returned.
Now she sees all of me, and I feel wrecked.
Tortured.
“I didn’t . . .” My throat burns, tongue scrapes against the dry roof of my mouth. The cold water continues to drench my skin. “I wanted to be clean.” For you. “I wanted to be . . . better.”
Her throat works with a convulsive swallow, and the smile she gives me . . . Jesus. It’s not cunning, not even remotely lethal. No. It’s soft and gentle and sweet. My heart kicks against my ribcage and I’m half-aware of pressing my palm flat to the tiled wall as I turn myself toward her. I drift closer. Lower my head and breathe her in, absorbing the sweetness of that smile and the soft, beckoning look in her gaze.