off to the city and getting yourself killed.”
“I didn’t get killed.” He turns at the top of the stairs, and I think he’s going to take me to the guest room. I brace for it. But instead he shoulders open the door to his bedroom and goes inside. Leo deposits me on my feet at the foot of the bed. “Why are we in here?”
“Your clothes are wet.” He disappears from view. “And filthy. Come on.”
It has to be a trap. It wasn’t very long ago that he threatened me with a severe whipping for going this way without permission. But my skin prickles with the need to stay near him. As close as possible.
Leo emerges from his closet with an armful of clothes and goes down the hall without looking back. I follow him into the bathroom. Water rushes into the tub and he sits on the edge, a hand dipped in to test the warmth. He shakes off the droplets with an assessing look at me. Then he comes back and works his hands quickly over my clothes. The overcoat falls in a heap. The dress next. My shoes. Leggings. Everything. Then he walks me over to the tub with his hands on my shoulders and helps me step inside.
“This isn’t like you,” I say, from somewhere outside my body.
“Please. I don’t let filth inside my house. On your knees.”
A shameful heat echoes between my legs, but when I’m up on my knees in the tub, Leo doesn’t put his fingers in my mouth or order me to suck him off or any of the infinite dirty things he could do.
He washes my hair. He conditions it. He presses a washcloth into my hand so I can clean my skin. Under other circumstances I’d float in this tub forever. Now I want the water off me. I want it to go down the drain and take the fingerprints of those men with it. At the end of the bath Leo unfolds a towel and holds it wide, and I step into it. There. There. It’s over. That part is over, at least. He lets me fold it over my chest and tuck it in.
I run a hand over my wet hair. “I bet you don’t have a brush in here.” Leo stands in the middle of his bathroom. Dark jeans. Dark shirt. And a darker patch on the front of that shirt that has a strange shine to it. My heart stutters. “Is that blood?” He changed his shirt. He threw the original shirt in the fire. This is a new one. “Is that yours?”
Leo glances down at the front of his shirt. A ginger touch to the darker spot. His fingers come away red. “One of them had a knife. I wasn’t paying much attention to it.”
“Oh my god.” I go to him without thinking and reach for the hem of his shirt. His hand comes down hard on mine, his eyes blazing, but I shake it off. “Leo, let me see. You’re bleeding. You’re hurt.”
“It’s a scratch. I don’t even feel it.”
Those words sound true, in his strong, clear voice. But I look into his dark eyes and see he’s lying.
It’s a wretched lie. A lie he wishes he didn’t have to tell. Because he does feel it. The gold streaks in his eyes are bright with pain. So bright it takes my breath away. My heart tips onto the floor and breaks like a delicate vase. He feels this pain and all his past pain. Leo Morelli is a tuning fork of pain. It runs through him in such jagged vibrations that the only way to look directly at it is to pretend it’s anger. If you see it for what it is—
God.
I draw myself up to my full height. “Sit down. You shouldn’t be standing.”
His eyes flutter closed for a bare instant, and the broken pieces of my heart burst apart again. He follows me to the bench by his tub and sits, his jaw tight.
I knot the towel more securely around my chest. “I have to take your shirt off to see.” He gives a terse nod and another layer of pretense falls away. The cloth of his shirt is stuck to his skin in the front. Leo braces his hands on the side of the tub and grits his teeth. “I’ll be fast.”
Leo hisses when I pull the fabric away from his skin, his whole body tensing. He helps me get the