Chapter 8: The First Dance and the First Spark

"Your father is dead."

Rowan said it like he was reading a weather report. Flat. Final.

I stared at him. The rain hit the windows. The engine hummed. Something inside me had stopped.

"How?" I whispered.

"Fire. Started in his study. The doors were locked from the outside."

"Was it you?"

His eyes went dark. "No. I wanted him alive. Dead men cannot answer questions."

I pressed my hand to my mouth. My father was gone. Burned alive in the house I grew up in.

I should have felt grief. Instead, I felt nothing.

That terrified me more than the fire.

"Vincent Moretti," Rowan said. "Most likely. Your father made a deal with him. Something went wrong."

He started the engine. The car slid into the rain-soaked streets.

"You are not crying," he said.

"No."

"Why?"

"I have been crying for so long I have nothing left."

Rowan was quiet. Then, softly: "That is the most honest thing you have said to me."

The estate was silent. Damien met us at the door, his face grim.

"Police are calling it an accident."

"Of course they are," Rowan said. "Vincent owns half the force."

"And your mother called," Damien added, glancing at me. "Three times. She wants to speak with Mrs. Morphy."

My mother. Who had watched my father sell me. Who had stayed silent while Serena took everything I loved.

"I will call her tomorrow," I said.

Rowan took my arm and led me inside. The house was warm. The lights were soft. It felt like a different world from the one where fathers burned.

He stopped at the foot of the staircase. "You should eat."

"I am not hungry."

"You need your strength."

"I need to be alone."

He studied me. "Fine. I will be in the next room."

"Why are you being kind to me?"

"I am not kind."

"You are being something."

He stepped closer. His hand found the necklace at my throat. His fingers brushed my skin, slow, deliberate.

"You are wearing my mother's necklace," he said. "You are under my roof. That makes you mine to protect."

"Is that the only reason?"

"No."

"What is the other?"

He leaned down. His mouth hovered an inch from mine.

"The other reason is that I have not stopped thinking about you since the moment you grabbed my wrist in that ballroom."

My breath caught. "You kissed me in the car."

"I know."

"And you want to do it again?"

"More than I want anything else in this world right now."

He did not move. He waited. He was giving me a choice.

I thought of Devon. Of my father. Of every man who had ever made me feel small.

Rowan Morphy had made me feel dangerous.

I grabbed his lapel and pulled him down.

The kiss was not gentle. His hands were in my hair, on my waist, under the silk of my dress. He lifted me and I wrapped my legs around him, and he carried me up the stairs without breaking contact.

My bedroom door hit the wall. Then it slammed shut. The bed met my back. His weight came down over me.

His mouth found my throat. My jaw. The hollow beneath my ear. I arched into him, and he made a sound low in his chest that I felt everywhere.

"Tell me to stop," he said against my skin.

"I will not."

"Tell me anyway."

"No."

He pulled back and looked at me. His chest was rising fast. His eyes had gone black.

"Then you are mine," he said.

He undressed me slowly, like he was unwrapping something he had waited years to hold. His hands learned me—shoulder, ribs, the dip of my waist, the inside of my thigh. When I was bare beneath him, he pulled off his own clothes, and there was no hiding what he wanted. No lies. Just heat and hunger and the terrifying honesty of his wanting.

He kissed his way down my body. My stomach clenched. My fingers twisted in the sheets.

"Rowan—"

"Say my name again."

"Rowan."

He came back up and took my mouth while his hand slid lower, and my spine bowed off the mattress. I gasped into his neck. He caught the sound with his lips.

"Look at me," he said.

I opened my eyes. His face was close, sharp and beautiful and completely undone.

"I want to watch you fall apart," he said.

And I did. I shattered under his hands, and he held me through it, murmuring something low and rough against my temple.

Then he was over me, and I pulled him down, and the world stopped existing.

The rain started again. The house went still. Somewhere far away, a clock ticked. Here, there was only skin and breath and the weight of him moving inside the silence.

Afterward, I lay against his chest, my cheek on his heartbeat. His hand traced lazy circles on my back.

"Your mother called again," he said quietly.

"I know."

"She left a message."

I lifted my head. "What did she say?"

He was silent for a moment too long. Then he reached past me, toward the nightstand, and picked up something small and black.

A card. Matte. Expensive. A single word embossed in silver.

Soon.

"Where did you get that?" I asked.

"It was under your pillow."

The warmth drained out of me.

"What?"

"Someone was in this room, Sloane. Tonight. While we were downstairs."

I sat up slowly. The sheets fell away. The cold came in.

"Your mother's message," Rowan said, and his voice had gone very quiet, "was not the only thing waiting for us."

He turned the card over. There was a photograph on the back.

It was a picture of me. Standing in the ballroom in my red dress. Smiling.

Taken tonight. Before my father's house burned.