I hear him hit the floor and curse, but I don’t care. I have my arms around Haley again.
Chapter Six
Haley
Leo drops Perry, who falls to the floor with a grunt and a soft fuck. Keaton, a hand pressed to his cheek, goes to his brother as Leo puts his arms around me. He lifts me into a carry and I focus on breathing. I could cry forever, but I won’t. I have the sense that if I break down, it will be like when Leo was sick. He’ll lose his mind. He won’t know what’s wrong.
There are lives at stake.
His brother is here. Lucian. The two of them look incongruous, standing in Caroline’s house, but we don’t wait for long. “This way,” Lucian says again. I expected him to be cruel, to be…a Morelli. And he is. There’s a set to his face that makes me think he might go back for Perry and Keaton if they say the wrong thing.
“Haley,” says Perry. He looks like shit. Leo was going to kill him. There was murder in his eyes. It’s there now, just beneath the surface. A translucent layer of civility is over the beast now.
“I’m okay,” I tell him over Leo’s shoulder. “Really. Just—”
Just don’t do anything. Don’t keep me here. The urge to beg him is strong, here in Caroline’s house, but then Leo is moving with long, purposeful strides. Perry and Keaton don’t follow. Perry sits down hard on the floor as we go, and Keaton kneels next to him, and I think the only reason they’re not following is because Leo is such a menace.
Lucian is dragging a fourth person with us, all the way to the door, by the collar of his shirt. Leo’s brother does this with such a casual stance that I have to think he’s done it before. When we reach the door, he shoves the man into a corner and kicks him. Something cracks in the man’s chest and he cries out. Lucian grins. I think Bishop’s Landing has been wrong about Leo. They got the wrong brother. Lucian is the real killer. The real sociopath.
But—no. He’s here, after all, to get me. To help Leo. I don’t understand it and I can’t find my voice to ask. I don’t dare speak all the way out.
Leo bundles me close as we step out into the night. I’m in a nightgown, no shoes, no socks, and the wind cuts through the fabric. “It’s not far,” Leo says. His voice is different. A razor’s edge. Sharper than I’ve ever heard before. Lucian walks by his side as we go down the block, away from Caroline’s house. A click makes me lift my head from Leo’s shoulder. Lucian’s got a gun out, and he’s taken the safety off.
Lucian meets my eyes. No trace of discomfort there, only an intense curiosity. “Did they hurt you?”
I shake my head. It’s close to the truth.
“No more questions, Lucian,” Leo says, and we’re at his SUV. He opens the door, puts me into the passenger seat, and takes off his coat. He wraps it around me with efficient movements, his hands steady, and pulls the buckle over me. Clicks it into place.
His expression—
I don’t recognize it. I’ve never seen it before.
“I’m following,” Lucian says from over Leo’s shoulder.
“Fine.”
“I’m meeting with your security.”
“Fine.” Leo closes my door, and then he’s in the car, and then we’re driving away. A pair of headlights follows after us.
It’s not the first time he’s driven me like this. A different route back to his house. Same heat turned up high in the car. Same full-body trembles that set in only after we’ve pulled away from the curb. Leo is silent in his dark clothes, his eyes on the road, his hands on the wheel.
I reach for him at the same instant he reaches for me. His grip on my hand is so tight it hurts, but I never want him to let go. He doesn’t. He holds my hand all the way back to his castle of a house. All the way through the gate, and down the driveway. He only releases me for long enough to come around to my side and take me in his arms again. Up the steps. Into the foyer.
I’m expecting silence and space.
A crowd greets us instead. Men in dark suits are all over the foyer. Gerard. Eva, who gasps, and starts to come forward. Her face changes when she sees Leo’s expression. “Come and sit with us,” she says quickly. “Come and sit with us, and—”
“No,” barks Leo. He goes for the stairs without looking at her.
“Let’s have a meeting,” Lucian says, his voice rising above all the chatter, and the front door slams shut, and none of it matters because Leo is taking me to his bedroom. My skin tingles with relief, and with delayed fear, and with everything I felt at Caroline’s. With the shame of crying in front of Rick. With the disgust of being touched by him. But it’s over. It’s over.
What’s not over is Leo.
He kicks the door shut the moment we’re past the threshold. Puts me on my feet. Pushes me back so I’m pinned against cool wood, slipping the coat off my shoulders as he does. His hands are so large on the sides of my face. They slip down to my neck. He’s warm, and he’s here.
Leo’s grip tightens. He takes my air away. Makes it hard to breathe for long enough that my heart kicks up into a sprint. Even now, even when I can’t breathe, he smells so good I could die. Like a clean winter forest. Like a dark night.
And then.
He leans down and bites me. His teeth sink into the place where my neck curves into my shoulder, the heat of his breath tracing the marks. I’m on fire, lit up with him, every nerve responding to the pain. He’s never bitten me this hard before, never while he’s choking me like this, and I suck in a gasp.
Leo shoves himself away from me. My spine knocks against hardwood as he backs away with a growl. “Get out of here,” he says. “Go to the guest room.”
“What?” I put my hand where he touched me, press in like I can recreate the sensation. “No. I don’t want to leave.”
Leo looks me in the eye, and my heart thuds. Cracks. “I’ll be too rough with you. I’ll tear you apart.”
A heartbeat of fear. Another one of recognition. The gold in his eyes blazes with fury he’s not bothering to suppress.
Or that he can’t suppress.
The truth arrives like a bullet.
I’ve only ever had sex with Leo Morelli. The man standing in front of me now is the Beast of Bishop’s Landing.
This is the person Leo became to survive his father. This is the person he became to protect his siblings, and his secrets. I thought it was all an act. I thought he was only pretending to be angry. That it was skin-deep. A performance. And sometimes it is. Sometimes he allows people to think he is angry when he is really in pain. He allows people to think he’s ruthless and bloodthirsty when he is considered and calculated.
But now?
Now it’s real.
I’ll tear you apart sounded so raw, so violent, that I know it’s real. And it’s too late to stop it. Too late to hide it.
He’s trying anyway, though his anger is all in the open, it’s crackling in the air around us. It’s making the hairs on the backs of my arms stand up.
“Go,” he orders.
“No.” I separate myself from the door and take three steps toward him. Close enough for him to reach me. My body quakes with how lethal he is but I’ll never run from him. Never. Never. Never. “I want all of you. Even the beast.”