“I see.” She moves slowly, crossing to stand next to the bed.
Before I can decide how I want to play this, Shiloh grabs my wrist and lifts my hand up until it’s even with her face. The same hand with fingers still wet from my orgasm. She leans down and draws my pointer finger into her mouth. Her tongue, the slight sucking motion…
I shift on the bed. “Tease.” My voice is too breathy, too affected.
Shiloh ignores me and gives my next finger the same treatment. Tasting me. Cleaning every bit of evidence from my skin. It doesn’t take a large jump to picture her tasting me from the source. I shift again.
She flicks her tongue against my fingertips and releases me. “I’m very angry at you.”
“You came in that bathroom. I didn’t. If anyone should be angry, it’s me.”
Shiloh raises a dark brow. “I wasn’t aware orgasms were transactional with you.”
She has me there. I sigh. “Okay, fine. They’re not. I enjoyed making you come for the sake of making you come.” I’d like to do it again. And again. And again.
“Thought so.” She absently trails a finger over her collarbone. “You’re seducing me to hurt Broderick.”
There’s no reason to lie. She’s a smart girl, and she’ll see right through it. “That’s part of it, yes, but I’d seduce you even if he weren’t involved.” I wouldn’t say I have a particular taste in partners. I don’t think attraction can be boiled down to something as mundane as liking a certain hair color or body type or gender. There’s too much nuance for that. Yeah, I liked the look of her face when we first met, but what really draws me to Shiloh is her steadiness and the way she cuts through whatever bullshit I throw at her without so much as raising her eyebrows. She feels unshakable…or she did until she was coming.
“How am I supposed to believe that?”
“That’s not the right question to be asking.”
“Oh yeah?” Shiloh smiles a little. “And what question should I be asking?”
It strikes me that I’ve never seen her with her hair down. It’s longer than I thought, well past her shoulders. I glance at her legs, note the intense scars there, and look back at her face before she can get self-conscious. They’re obviously the reason she only wears jeans. They don’t look like knife wounds or anything like that. Best guess, they’re burns, but they’re too regular to be from something like a fire.
Understanding dawns.
Someone burned her legs. On purpose.
Rage surges in me, so strong that it takes my breath away. I forget my intention to ignore her scars. “Who did that?”
She doesn’t ask me what I mean. She just shakes her head and moves toward the closet. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
Shiloh pauses, looking at me like she’s never seen me before. There’s something on her face, something shocked and a little angry. “Why are you upset? It was a long time ago.”
A long time ago can mean anything, but I heard Harlow say that Shiloh has been with the Paine brothers since their first year of exile. She can’t be more than thirty, if that, and if she’s been with the Paines that long, this must have happened when she was a teenager. Maybe younger. “How long ago?”
She sighs. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
Since she obviously doesn’t want to talk about it, I should let it go. One does not successfully seduce another person by dredging out their past trauma. That kind of depth isn’t required for sex, and judging by the sheer number of scars, neither of us will be in the mood if I know the full story. With that in mind, moving on is the only thing that makes sense for my goals.
Instead, I open my mouth and tell the truth. “No, love, I’m not going to let this go.”
Chapter 10 Shiloh
I wasn’t thinking when I walked into the bathroom without a change of clothes. I can only blame Monroe’s presence on my sheer lack of brain cells and planning. I never let anyone see my legs for this very reason. It creates questions that dredge up stuff I’d rather not think about. For the nearly eight years I’ve been with the Paine brothers, I’ve learned valuable lessons.
The first being that trauma doesn’t make you special. Everyone has some flavor of it. Mine was horrific, but it’s nothing compared to what Broderick has experienced, let alone some of the others who joined up over the years.
More, I don’t want to be pitied.
I sure as hell don’t want to take a walk down memory lane to the first eighteen years of my life. I’ve worked hard to move past that time, to forget as much as I’m able. I knew coming to Sabine Valley would be difficult for a number of reasons, but I never expected this.
An Amazon demanding to know what happened to me.
The irony would make me laugh if I could find breath in my lungs. Monroe’s sitting on that bed, looking sexy as hell in that ridiculous shirt, and ready to commit murder. If only she knew the truth.
She crosses her legs and studies me. “Tell me.” After the briefest hesitation. “Please, Shiloh.”
I’ve never felt so naked, and this towel covers me from mid-chest to nearly my knees. Monroe can be conniving and manipulative, but I haven’t found her to be overly cruel. At least not to me. I don’t understand why she’s so insistent on this. “Why?”
“So I can kill them, preferably rather slowly, but I’m willing to do it quickly if you’d rather they not suffer overmuch.”
I blink. Wait for the punchline. But Monroe is still staring at me with that intent expression, not a single smile in sight. “You’re serious.”
“Of course. I never joke about
