Dukes of Madness: Chapter 25

Lavinia lifts my hand in hers, her fingers soft against my palm as she inspects my knuckles. The light in the bathroom isn’t very bright, but I can still count every single one of her eyelashes when she blinks, turning my hand to look at my palm. The guys are out there, in the living room, their voices a familiar murmur behind the bathroom door, and I watch her. Fuck, I watch her all the time now.

I get this flutter of a memory. The other day when she shaved my face for me, standing right in this same spot, her fingers gentle against my jaw. If there was ever any question, that experience with her would have sealed it. I need Lavinia to be mine like I need to breathe, and I’ll do whatever it takes to have more of those soft, sweet moments.

Even if it means losing a piece of myself.

Winning her from the Lords, forcing her onto her back… those were shortcuts. The easy way. Cowardly tactics that would have never earned me anything real. I understand that now. Gaining the real things—the loyalty, the smiles, the tenderness, the respect—these take the kind of work that can’t be rushed or gained through hurt.

Now, she does the same thing, tilting my face, searching for an injury. I know they’re there. He got a hook in on my jaw, and he scratched my forearm up like a little bitch. Nothing serious, though. I can’t even feel a sting.

In fact, I can’t feel anything.

“He fought back,” she says, mouth slanted into a displeased line.

I give her a look. Of course he did. Perez was a Royal. We always fight back. Nothing wrong with that. I wouldn’t have felt as good about it if he didn’t. It had to be like this. A fight to the death.

She looks startled when I reach up, skating my fingers over the curve of her cheekbone. Perez’s blood, still sticky and damp on my hands, leaves a trail over her skin, and I stare at it for too long, his blood on top of her blood.

Wrong.

I try to use my thumb to wipe the bloodstain off her cheek, but it just smears more and more, and it’s not right. He shouldn’t be on her like this. The thought of her covered in the stench of his death makes my chest feel suddenly tight, and I scrabble to erase it, to free her from it. Grabbing her shoulder, I yank the collar of her shirt up, barely hearing the confused sound she makes as I scrub the fabric over it, desperate to see it gone.

“Hey,” she says, hand wrapping around my wrist. “Hey, it’s okay, let’s just—”

I freeze at the way she sounds, quiet and coaxing, as if she’s talking to a rabid animal.

I suppose that’s what I am.

Mechanically, I drop the shirt, letting her go, but it doesn’t make it better. She’s still staring up at me with wide, worried eyes, showing me the rag she’s been using to clean my knuckles. Wordlessly, she lifts it to her cheek, swiping the smear of blood away, easy peasy.

Something inside me unwinds when the blood disappears.

She looks down at the sponge, and then my arms. They’re still crimson and brown, the blood drying on my skin now. I want to tell her how it felt to wrestle Perez down to the ground. How his neck went from rigid to loose all in a single heartbeat. I want to tell her that it wasn’t easy, but it was the first kill I ever had that felt like an actual victory. I want to tell her the Baron King was right all along.

But I can’t seem to get it to surface. Everything feels strangely cold and numb, and I’m not sure why. I’ve killed dozens of people. Bullets in skulls, sawing through bone, blood and muscle—none of these are new to me.

So why can’t I relax my fucking muscles?

That must be it—the tension in my body, strung like a wire that’s ready to pop. It came upon me as I was hitting him, pinning Perez to the ground out behind the athletic department. It was sloppy to do it there, to not have a plan, but I couldn’t stop and I didn’t want to. Over and over, I slammed my knuckles into his face. I thought of Lavinia’s cheek, the mark he left, and then I got this flash of memory. Lavinia crashing to the floor of my bedroom, palm covering her face as wet eyes glared up at me. Suddenly, Perez wasn’t just Perez.

He was me.

I broke his neck a second later, a clean, sharp snap.

“Okay,” she says, exhaling a measured breath. “Let’s get this off.”

She pulls my shirt over my head and I try to cooperate, lifting my rusty, rigid arms over my head. She goes for my pants next, her fingers dipping into my waistband and popping the fly. Her throat shifts with a swallow before she bends to push them down, boxers and all. My cock greets her eagerly, bobbing as it’s released. I’m not sure who’s more shocked at the hardness of it. It doesn’t feel like anything to me. Throbs but doesn’t yearn. An urge without a man attached to it.

Lavinia shoots up, keeping her gaze averted. “I’ll be right back.”

I stand, naked and erect, as she throws open the bathroom door, calling Sy over. “Get rid of these,” she says, voice low but still audible. “Burn them or something?”

He answers, “Your shirt,” and I glance over, seeing a muddy brown mark in the shape of my handprint smeared over her shoulder.

She looks at it and then grabs the hem—torn and stretched from whatever altercation she’d had in that supply closet—and yanks it over her head. “This, too.”

It flusters me to know they’re probably getting rid of the head. Don’t they realize that I brought it here for her? It doesn’t matter, I guess. The whole meaning of it was lost the second she opened her jaw and shrieked in horror at the sight of it. But I’d spent the extra time to saw it away, and I’d been so excited to drive it over here to show her, although now that I really consider it, I don’t know why.

Grand gestures have never been my thing.

Sy must take them from her, because a moment later, she closes the door. I watch wordlessly as she pulls back the shower curtain, leaning over to turn the faucet. Her hand reaches out to test the temperature, and then she adjusts the knob.

I think I want to kill someone else.

The thought settles over me abruptly, my fingers twitching with something so deep and instinctual that I don’t even think to question it. Perez wasn’t enough, the gaping maw inside of me demanding more. Her father will be next. Maybe, after that, the other Counts. How many men have touched her without having the right? Can I kill them all?

Yes.

“Get in the shower, okay?” She stands before me, shifting from foot to foot, her gray eyes searching mine. “Okay, Nick?” I shift my eyes to the spray of water, but when I make no move to step inside, she folds her arms around herself. “You’re really freaking me out.”

My eyes fly to hers, and I see it. The spark of uncertainty. I note, “You’re scared.” And now that I think about it, “You’re always scared of me.” I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what I’d be sorry for. Existing, I guess.

This is just who I am.

Some of the doubt vanishes, leaving shrewd eyes and her arched brow. “Please. You wish you were scary.” I stare at her chest, the swell of breast over her bra, the half-finished moth with its wings spread as wide as two willing thighs. “How—how did you kill him?”

“He’s dead. Does it matter?”

Not always.

But for her, it does.

I answer by raising my hands, showing her my empty, blood-stained palms.

She stares at them, and whatever armor she’s had pulled around her all day suddenly falls away. “Jesus, Nick, you didn’t have to—”

“Yes, I did.” Whatever’s in my voice makes her look at me, her eyes softening as we remember the same words.

“…to kill someone with your bare hands is an act of love.”

Just like that, it was worth it.

After a second, she reaches behind her, unclasping her bra. But she clutches it to her chest before it falls away. “I-I’ll go in with you, okay? We need to get all that blood off.” She worries at her lip, asking, “Will you get in with me?”

Blankly, I nod.

“I wish you’d say something.”

When I don’t, her face falls, twisting the numbness in my chest into more of a hollowness. She undresses, baring herself to me. Seeing her body is the first thing that almost cracks the ice that’s grown around my lungs.

Almost.

Taking my hand, she leads me into the shower, lifting a leg over the tub, then the next, watching me intently as I mimic her. I think I’d probably bash my own head against the wall if she asked me to right now, but that’s always been the way with me, hasn’t it? I wasn’t made to steer myself. I was made to take commands. To be an instrument of mayhem. A soldier. A sharp-edged tool.

Gently, she commands, “Tip your head back for me?”

I obey.

If I’m going to be anyone’s weapon, then I’m going to be hers.

The water pounds against my scalp, tickling down my neck, shoulders, back. It doesn’t feel good, and it doesn’t feel bad, and I’m still not sure where all the feeling’s gone. Since I’ve memorized this set of motions, I wet my hair, letting the rivulets of nothing run down my face.

“Good, that’s good,” she says, and something inside me cracks free at the praise, shuddering in pleasure. I watch as she pauses, scrutinizing me. “Can you wash your hair while I get all this off you?” at my nod, she reaches around me to wet a new, clean sponge, whispering, “Good.”

My stomach clenches.

I barely get beyond dumping a glob of shampoo into my hand before I’m rendered motionless, frozen at the feel of her hands, scrubbing the sudsy cloth over my muscles. She takes it in stride, using my distraction to work the blood off the skin covering my forearm, still half-suspended with a palmful of shampoo.

“I don’t know what happened or how it feels to do that to someone.” She looks right into my eyes as she says it, her mouth pursed tightly. “But I need you to come back to us now, okay?”

I grunt as she moves the rag lower, hand brushing my cock.

Her eyes flick down to it, and then to my chest, lathered with soap that’s turned pink. “Is that what you need?” she asks, pausing to catch my reaction when she brushes against it again.

My eyes slide closed, mouth parting as a sigh pushes through.

Slowly, her fingers close around the shaft, her palm hot and soft as she gives it a slick, gliding tug. I hear her get closer more than I feel her, the softness of her whisper grazing my ear as she commands, “Come back to me, Nick.”

One of my hands shoots out, slamming hard against the shower wall, while the other snatches a fistful of her hair. Somehow, through the blinding need of turning my face to hers, I find the presence of mind not to hurt. Not pulling her hair. Not forcing her to give me another kiss. I just hold her there, close enough to feel her breath against my chin. If she fought, I’d let her go, but she doesn’t.

And that’s when it tumbles out, as messy as an open wound. “I’m sorry.” She pauses and I shake my head. “Not for Perez. The only thing I regret about that is taking so long to do it.” The water beats down on us, her hand still on my cock. “I’m sorry for sending you back, and for everything that happened before that. I couldn’t see it until it was too late, and this is probably fucking worthless, but in case you need to hear it, I’ll tell you.” Our foreheads press together. “I’m sorry.”

She tilts her face up to me, hand squeezing my cock as her lips brush against mine.

I part my lips, so still that when she licks at the rim of my mouth, I don’t even tip into her. I just extend my own tongue, meeting hers with a deep, desperate rumble ripping from my chest. Lavinia kisses me carefully, like I’m a stick of dynamite about to blow.

She might know me better than anyone, living or dead.

All the while, her hand slides up and down, sending a cascade of sparks throughout my nerves. I surface so gradually that I don’t even realize I’m rocking my hips into her fist until she begins swaying with me, her eyelashes wet against her bruised cheek.

“Is that good?” she asks against my mouth, her palm twisting at the tip. It’s a practiced, deliberate motion that punches a grunt from my throat, and she swallows it with another kiss, pulling this sickness out of me. I understand what this is now. A thorn that’s stuck under my skin, festering into sepsis.

And she draws it out, looking so fucking beautiful as she strokes me, heavy eyes blinking open to watch me panting for it, chasing her cherry-red mouth like it’s a beacon in the dark. I get my arms back next. Hands. Shoulders. I use them to touch her, fingertips grazing the supple sides of her tits. She flinches, but she moves into me, neither an invitation nor a protest. Just an awareness.

My balls draw up tight before I’m ready to let it go. Not just the sense of orgasm, but the lingering numbness that keeps it bay. I’m not ready to feel it all—the anger, the bitterness, the stab of hurt I’ll feel when she walks out of here to return to my brother’s bed. In here—in the quiet, secret, dark places—Lavinia is mine.

Out there in the light, she belongs to them.

It surges inside of me like a tempestuous wave, pulling the thread thin until it snaps, and fuck. Fuck, I hope she can forgive me. I grab her by the hips and drive her back, too hard, too fast, her back colliding with the wall. There’s a flash of panic in her eyes that I don’t want to see, so I bury my face into her neck as I begin thrusting—sharp, forceful punches of my hips into the circle of her hand, the tip of my cock jabbing into her hip. I reach down to grab her ass, as if crushing her closer isn’t just ruining my own goddamn friction. I fuck her hand like it could ever be enough, grunting her neck with every bang of my body against hers.

Her free hand finds its way into my hair, stroking more gently than the moment calls for. “That’s it,” she whispers, the words jagged with the assault of my hips crashing into her. Even though I’m all strained tendon and wild thrusts, she’s nothing but sweet and soft. “You’ve done so good, Nick. Come for me now, okay?”

I couldn’t hold it back even if I wanted to.

I slam forward, fingers clutched around her neck hard enough to bruise as the orgasm rips through me. It spills against her hips in frantic surges, and I don’t even recognize the sound I’m pressing into her shoulder, quiet but frantic.

Her arms wrap around my waist and she pulls us together, our bodies wet and naked, fused into one. I don’t just feel the release, but the rise and fall of my breath, the thudding of my heart and all her skin, alive against mine.

Darkness beckons me. I sense it just inches away, but this girl—this woman—has drawn me back and I’ll cling to her like a lifeline for as long as she’ll let me.

What I don’t know is what will come from my act of vengeance, but the people of Forsyth need to understand one thing: no one lays a hand on the Duchess except her Dukes and survives.

Even if that means starting a war.