Rowan Read online

  And with that, he leaves me standing, staring at, apparently, a legend.

  And the legend?

  He is staring right back at me, his dark eyes devouring me inch by inch.

  Rowan

  God, she’s sexy.

  I want to eat her whole. And her hole.

  I’ve been watching her all night, the way she moves around, always alert, seeing everything.

  And all the depraved bastard that I am can think about is how she might taste.

  I bet she likes long, sloppy laps of the tongue. She looks like the kind of woman who has a really sensitive clit, where you’ve got to be careful when you go in for the suckle not to do it too hard. Something about the way she pushes her legs together when she’s aroused tells me she is protective of her little pearl.

  I wonder if she’s bare, has a landing strip or is au naturelle.

  If she’s sensitive, she probably has a bit of bush. I like a bit of fur. Bare girls are fine, but they gotta have the mound for it. If the mound hasn’t got the right curve, it makes them look like a prepubescent girl and that’s a major turn off for me.

  This one is all woman. Not because of the tits and the arse, though both are plenty fine, especially the latter, but because of the way she holds herself. She’s confidence porn.

  Shame that she’s just found out who and what I am. There is no point wondering what that Irish medic just told her. He’s not exactly discreet. Just my luck that I’d bump into someone who knows who I am in the middle of nowhere in fucking Dorset. Really? Really, really? Apparently so. By the look she’s giving me now, she’s just been told exactly who the Python is and that he eats babies for breakfast. Great. Which is why it’s doubly surprising that she starts walking towards me.

  Oh yeah, I wasn’t wrong, this one meets whatever scares her head on.

  Fucking beautiful.

  I’m hard as a rock again.

  Raven

  I meet his gaze and seconds later, my feet start moving toward him of their own accord.

  There is no point in trying to hide. He’ll be in my house, on my floor, for the next four weeks, so I’ll put an end to it before it even starts. Silence the tiny voice in the back of my head that tells me I like it.

  I’ve never been looked at like this and it’s making me all sorts of wet.

  Sure thing, I’ve had men leer at me before. But he’s not leering. He’s…smoldering.

  I can’t really say what the difference is. The stare is the same. Maybe it’s to do with the thoughts behind the stare. He isn’t mentally undressing me then spitting me up to stick his dick in me.

  In his mind, I’m already buck naked and he’s doing things to me that are all about me. About what I want. Really want. Even if it’s more than I can handle. The idea really turns me on, and I feel another glut of moisture slide down my insides and pool between my legs.

  I try to ignore it and keep approaching.

  “Hi, boys,” I say when I arrive at the table where Rowan and Tristan are sitting.

  It comes out breathy, like Marilyn Monroe taking the microphone when she entertained the troops. I want to slap myself. Tristan looks up at me, wide-eyed, mumbles something, pushes out of his chair and bolts.

  “You scared it away!” Rowan mocks. “It was almost ready to eat out of my hand.”

  I smile. I can’t help it. It’s his delivery. In that rumbly, thunderous bass. It’s pitch perfect.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I was just trying to check in with you guys.”

  “Making sure I’m not corrupting the young Padawan,” he states with a smile around the eyes but an edge to his voice.

  I shake my head.

  “No, not at all.”

  We stare at each other again in silence until he pats the chair next to him.

  “Sit.”

  I do but on the chair opposite him, with the table between us. It’s safer that way. He crosses his arms on the tabletop and leans forward, holding my gaze hostage.

  “I don’t know what that Irish dick just told you, but I’m not gonna kill the kid, okay? I don’t kill innocents. Relax.”

  He holds my eyes for some time after that, and the conflict I see behind his stare makes my insides turn to mush. There is so much more to this guy than meets the eye. And the weird thing is, I do relax. He smiles, earnestly, knowingly, and gives me a small nod. Then that smile turns into one of his arrogant fucking grins.

  “So, tell me, Raven. What’s the Halosan stance on dalliances between guests and staff? Is it like a teacher fucking his pupil?”

  I love how he slips in a word like ‘dalliance’. I mean, who does that? More to the point, what guy does that? Without sounding camp? Rowan Hadlow-Fuller-O’Brien, that’s who.

  After a furtive glance around to make doubly sure nobody is in earshot, I lean in, mimicking his posture.

  “It’s very much like a teacher fucking her pupil,” I whisper across.

  My casual change of the gender of the personal pronoun does not go unnoticed. It lights up a fire in his eyes that has my heart racing. Shit. Not good. I was supposed to be cutting him down. What am I doing flirting with him? Better lay it out, loud and clear, with no room for misinterpretation.

  “Worse because certain staff had their training paid for by the company and if they get fired, they have to repay their student fees in full. That’ll be eighty thousand bucks in my case. Not happening.”

  There, I’ve said it. End of story.

  He nods then looks away over my shoulder into the distance, thinking.

  “What about sleeping with other staff? That allowed?”

  I shake my head, wondering why I am even letting him carry on pursuing the subject.

  “What about the locals?”

  I raise my eyebrows, not that he can see it because he is still examining the scenery behind me.

  “Yeah, outsiders are allowed,” I answer. “As long as I don’t bring them to The Village.”

  “You found anyone around here then?” he asks casually, still not looking at me.

  “No,” I say.

  He makes eye contact with me again. And, boy, can I feel that contact. I can feel it all the way from where it hits my eyeballs down to my toes in one liquid rush.

  “You’re nice and pent-up then,” he states, and I swallow hard.

  I’m about to respond with something like ‘you gotta stop talking to me like this’ when he abruptly gets up. There is no denying the erection that is straining against his pants. It’s unashamedly in my line of sight.

  What is it with this guy? Is he always up and ready to go?

  The thought, like just about every thought I’m having about him, makes my insides clench.

  “Excuse me, I’ve gotta hit the sack,” he says, tips his head at me, and grabs his and Tristan’s finished-with plates to stack them. “I’ll take these. Is there a dishwasher?”

  “Yes. It’s...”

  “I’ll find it,” he interjects then looks around. “Anything else you want me to bring inside?”

  “No. It’s okay. We’ll handle the rest,” I respond, almost on autopilot.

  I feel weirdly dismissed and as soon as he leaves, there is a void in the space around me that I can’t explain.

  Part of me hopes he’ll come back out.

  But he doesn’t.

  I don’t see him again for the rest of the night.

  Rowan

  It’s the longest night I’ve ever had. Trumps even the night before I had to go and nearly kill Silas. And that was fucking long.

  But that one was all psychological. This one is mostly physical.

  It’s stuffy and hot under the roof, so I’m lying naked on the bed with the dormer window open and the door ajar to create the semblance of a draft. It means I can hear every little sound she makes as she comes up the stairs later, goes in and out of the bathroom and into her room. She is trying to be quiet, but my senses are so heightened to her presence I can hear her breathe as she crosses the landing.r />
  My mind keeps wondering what she is or isn’t wearing. Whether she has opened her window, too.

  If the draft is caressing her skin the way it caresses mine.

  If her nipples are pebbling.

  If she’s hot and sweaty at the nape of her neck.

  If she would like someone to lick off the sweat and then blow over the skin to cool her down.

  If she’s got her hand between her legs.

  But I also wonder other things about her as I keep playing idly with my dick, not really masturbating but just keeping us in that limbo between arousal and ecstasy. I can do this for hours. I love it. If you pitch it right, there is a weird sort of serenity about it. It’s a state that’s helped me through a lot of shit. I think it might be what tantric sex is all about, not that I am prick enough to call it that. But to stay like this, I can’t just think about her tits and arse and cunt and licking and fucking her.

  I have to think about other stuff, too.

  Like where she comes from. If she has family. What that weird vision was of her as an urchin. Why she feels so oddly familiar. As if we were two of a kind.

  Something deep inside me kind of knows the answers already, but they aren’t sexy, so I go back to tits and arse and cunt and licking and tweaking and sucking and fucking.

  It’s a weird undulation of thoughts and images that I keep going until the small hours, when I hear her crying out in lust in her sleep before I finally fall asleep, with my dick still in my hand, hard and unspent, and a smile on my lips.

  Raven

  I wake up early as always, despite the precious few hours of sleep I’ve had, with a fully formed question on my mind. Is it possible for someone to weave an atmosphere across an entire floor from behind a closed door?

  It’s a silly question really, because I know the answer already.

  Sure thing, it is. My mother, not Elena but my real mother, when she was still alive, could infuse an entire house with her anger, her despair, her narcissism.

  Scrap that, she could project it over an entire neighborhood. So you couldn’t escape her mood even when you’d finally gotten to school five blocks away. But I think the difference is that my mom never projected anything positive or nice. That’s not to say she didn’t have her good moments. She did. But they were exactly that, moments. They never lasted long enough to dye the air happy, the way her black moods painted everything gray.

  What Rowan did last night was the same but different. Somehow, he managed to make arousal hang in the thick air under this roof like it was a tenacious but delicious smell, taunting me all night.

  I finally fell asleep at about one, exhausted from keeping my desire at bay, from refusing to get myself off to images of fucking this guy.

  Only to go and dream of a shadowy figure with a python for a cock pounding me senseless, until I screamed out my orgasm in my sleep.

  I know I did. I woke myself up with the sound of it then immediately went back to sleep, trying to chase the dream while vaguely registering the soggy mess I’d made of the sheets.

  I’m still liquid between my legs and down to my ass cheeks as I open my eyes to the day, but I no longer feel possessed. The early morning air brings a fresh breeze through my open window. I take a big breath before I swing my legs out of bed and make my way to the shower.

  I like to be up and having my coffee in the kitchen a good half hour before anybody else in the house rises. It’s the only time in the day that I truly get quality alone time. One of the drawbacks of the job. And I need my alone time.

  Before I was moved into care, my own company was all I ever really had, sporadic stage entries and exits of my mother and her ‘boyfriends’ notwithstanding. And although I soaked up the presence of other people, the safety in numbers, like a dried-up sponge once I got to Elena and John’s, it still took me years to truly acclimatize to the hustle and bustle of a group home. Once I’d gotten used to it, I was old enough to move to the dorm at nursing school. Same again. Then came the various Halosan settings. Same again. So you could say I’m well seasoned in rooming with lots of other people by now, but no matter where and with whom I’m living, I need that half hour to an hour in the morning by myself, being just me.

  So when I go downstairs and enter the kitchen after my shower, wearing my Sunday best, makeup and all ─ it’s the only day a week I’m out of my tunic in my own chosen skin and I always make the most of it ─ and find Rowan in the process of pushing down the coffee grind in the big cafetière, I’m not exactly ecstatic at the sight of him.

  Actually, that’s a lie.

  The sight of him is magnificent, barefoot and in low slung extremely faded jeans and wearing nothing but his tattoo and muscle on the top half.

  It’s his presence I resent.

  But even that resentment I can’t keep up for long when he offers me coffee.

  “Do you want some?” he asks, still looking at the cafetière rather than me.

  “Yes, thank you,” I reply, and he looks up.

  I watch his eyes go wide as he takes me in and a small, appreciative smile forms around his lips. But he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. It’s all there in his eyes. He likes it. He likes me in my own clothes and for that I almost completely forgive him for stealing today’s alone time from me.

  Rowan

  She is a fucking wet dream, standing there in fishnets and a short, black, cherry-patterned fifties dress with a halter neck, with her tits falling out.

  Her makeup, too, is all retro pin up with lipstick the same shade as the cherries. Her hair is styled in a quiff with a bright red bandana holding the rest of her locks back from her face.

  And when she turns to shut the kitchen door, I glimpse the edges of ink on her back.

  Big ink. All black. Something with feathers.

  I hadn’t pegged her as rockabilly punk at all, but now that she is standing in front of me in her civilian garb, I kind of instantly forget what nursey Raven looks like, because this is the woman she is underneath all the time. It’s glaringly obvious in her every move that she feels happy in this skin. Whether in her uniform, or naked and barefaced, this is still the woman she is, always. No wonder I’m so drawn to her.

  “Milk and sugar?” I ask her as I pour milk into the bottom of my mug.

  “Yes to milk, no to sugar,” she answers, and I move on to the next mug with the milk bottle.

  I top up both mugs with coffee and hand her one. And yeah, cliché over fucking cliché, I feel a fucking zing all the way to my toes when our fingers brush in the process.

  “Thank you,” she says, and for a few moments, we just look at each other over the rims of our respective mugs.

  I blow on my coffee, take a sip and cock my head.

  “You look like you should be in Civet,” I say all casual and watch her face explode in a wide smile.

  Bingo. Knew it.

  “You know Civet?”

  She is genuinely surprised and so she should be. Civet weren’t that well known in the UK. I kinda like them because they were almost as good as The Distillers but hotter to look at. Aurally, I have a thing for female punk bands. Visually, I prefer a pin up. What can I say, I’m a bloke. So they were the perfect storm in my eyes.

  “I like Punk when it’s good and people can play their instruments,” I say.

  “Huh,” she utters and sips her coffee.

  I’ve thrown her. She didn’t expect that. Wonder what she did expect. So I ask.

  “What kind of music did you have me pegged for?”

  She shrugs and spills some of her coffee over her hand. She licks it off before she answers, and I barely hear what she says ─ too busy processing the image of her tongue darting out from between those cherry red lips and caressing the side of her hand.

  “I dunno.”

  She looks up at me from under her heavy eyelashes.

  “Aren’t you guys supposed to be into rap and hip-hop and...”

  She cuts herself off.

 
“And shit?” I finish the question for her because I’m not bound by remaining professional here, and grin. “And who exactly are ‘you guys’?”

  “Fighters,” she answers.

  I nod slowly.

  “Maybe. But I haven’t sustained quite enough head injuries for that yet.”

  And that’s when I hear her properly laugh for the first time.

  Raven

  He’s so dead pan it’s hard not to laugh, or not to like him. He waits until I’m finished and before he speaks again.

  “To be fair, I like good rap and hip hop. And, yeah, you’re right, there is a lot of it played on the fight circuit. There isn’t really a genre I don’t like. But it’s not something I’d buy.”

  I nod, put my coffee down on the counter and start opening cupboards to get stuff onto a tray for breakfast in the adjacent room. It isn’t really my job to lay the table, the whole house is supposed to pitch in and do everything together, but to be honest this whole Scouts’ team philosophy Halstroem had going is trite when it’s forced. Rowan and I are here in the kitchen first, and since I won’t be getting my alone time anyway now, we might as well start the day.

  Another thing I like about Rowan is that I don’t have to tell him what to do.

  A lot of guests stand around at first as if they’d never opened a cupboard or put a breakfast together in their lives, but he just gets on with it. While we cart stuff from the kitchen next door, we carry on talking about music and the conversation is just easy. It’s good because we have similar tastes but not the same, so there is a lot of ‘oh you gotta try them’.

  By the time we set the table, I feel like I’ve spent the last half hour with a really good old friend, rather than this hulking hot mess that I met less than twenty-four hours ago.

  I even stop seeing that he remains half naked the entire time.

  It’s only when we hear the footsteps of the others coming alive above us and he looks down at himself that I wake up again to the sexy giant of a man in front of me.