Ruthless Creatures (Queens & Monsters, #1)(61)

He chuckles, pulling me against his chest. He drops his head to press a tender kiss to my lips. “It can’t be nearly as big as your mouth.”

“Oh, funny. You’re a comedian now.”

He gives me another soft kiss, then says, “I’ll be back soon.”

Cue my next heart attack. My pulse triples in the space of two seconds. “Why? Where are you going?”

“To my house.”

“You’re going back to New York already?”

Amused by my panic at the thought of him leaving so soon, he says, “My house next door. I have fresh clothes there. I can’t exactly put back on the shirt I arrived in, and I left without packing a bag.”

My relief is tempered by confusion. I squint at him. “Did you come here straight from a gunfight?”

“Yes.”

“Was that planned?”

“No.”

I squint harder. “Injured, bleeding, with no luggage, you spontaneously flew cross-country. Here. To see me.”

He takes my face in his hands and gazes down at me, letting me see everything. All the need. All the longing. All the dark desire.

“That’s where people go when they need to feel better: home.”

“But your home is in New York.”

“Home can be a person, too. That’s what you are for me.”

Tears spring into my eyes. I have to take several ragged breaths before I can say anything, and even then, my voice comes out strangled. “If I find out you read that somewhere, I’ll shoot you in the face.”

Eyes shining, he kisses me.

Then I blow out a hard breath and swipe away the moisture in my eyes. “But you don’t need to go next door. I have clothes for you.”

He raises his brows. “You want to see me in one of your dresses? And you say you’re not kinky.”

“No! I mean I have guy stuff for you. Big-guy stuff. I bought everything in size triple XL.” I eye the breadth of his shoulders doubtfully. “Though now I’m thinking that might not be big enough.”

Kage frowns at me. “You bought me clothes?”

He seems so astonished, I get embarrassed. I hope I haven’t crossed some macho male line, like now he’ll think I’m trying to be his mother and feel smothered or something.

In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea.

Looking at my feet, I say, “Um. Just like sweats. And socks. And T-shirts. Stuff you could, um, wear like, after a shower. Or before bed. To be comfortable. So you’d have some things here if you wanted to spend the night…”

I trail off into silence, not knowing what else to say because it all sounds so lame out loud.

He lifts my chin with a knuckle. When our eyes meet, his are exultant.

“You bought me clothes.”

He says it in a fervent tone of awe and wonder, like you’d say, Heaven is real and I’ve seen it!

“I did.”

“With your own money.”

“Whose money would I have used if not mine?”

“I mean, it wasn’t from your trust account. You haven’t withdrawn any money from that yet. So it had to be your own money. That you earned. Yourself.”

I examine the expression on his face. “I’m getting that you’re not often on the receiving end of a gift-giving situation.”

“No one has bought anything for me since my parents died.”

“Really? Not even your sisters? For birthdays or whatever?”

I immediately realize that his sisters are the wrong subject to mention. His eyes grow distant. His face hardens. He drops his hands to his sides.

Then he turns to the sink and says in a lifeless voice, “The Irish killed them, too. After they found out what I’d done, they took my sisters in retaliation.”

He pauses for a moment. “They didn’t get as lucky as my parents. Before they were shot, they were raped and tortured. Then they were dumped naked and broken on the doorstep of our house.” His voice drops. “Sasha was thirteen. Maria was ten.”

I cover my mouth with both my hands.

“A manila envelope of photographs of all the things that had been done to them before they were finally shot was dropped off, too. It took me a few years, but I found all the men in the photographs.”

He doesn’t have to say what he did when he found them.

I already know.

Feeling sick, I touch a shaking hand to Kage’s shoulder. He exhales, then turns around and pulls me tightly against his body, crushing me in a bear hug like he never wants to let me go.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his head bent to my ear. “I shouldn’t have told you that. You don’t need to know all the ugliness of my life.”

“I’m glad you did. I don’t want you to carry that all alone.”

My words send a delicate shudder through his chest. Swallowing hard, he presses his face to my neck and squeezes me tighter.

They call him Reaper because of all the terrible things he’s done, but he’s still a man just like any other.

He grieves. He bleeds. He’s made of flesh and bone.

And he’s been alone since he was a boy, with nothing to sustain him but terrible memories. Memories that turned him from a boy to a myth as he rose in the ranks of an organization renowned for its ruthlessness until he was at the very top.