Without Remorse

Nicholas felt impatient with the curtain nonsense. They didn’t have time for this and it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen every inch of her body up close and personal.

He yanked off his own blood-spattered shirt and tossed it to the floor to join the pile of her ruined clothes, and shoved his dark jeans down as well, kicking off his boots.

Then he shoved the curtain back and stepped in the shower with her.

She yelped and covered her breasts. “What are you doing?” she screeched. “Get out!”

He rolled his eyes. “Why the modesty now? I saw everything you’ve got, or don’t you remember last night?”

“That was different!” she shrieked.

“How?” he asked, reaching for the bar of soap, shoving it into the spray she was hogging enough to get it wet so he could get a lather going to wash himself.

“That was before I knew you were a—” she broke off, shoving water out of her face so she could continue looking at him incredulously, her arms still shoved against her chest to protect her modesty.

“A what?” he asked, starting to get pissed himself.

“A gangster,” she finished, landing all her fury and judgement into the single word.

He threw the soap back on the dish, missing and sending it spinning onto the floor between them. “Did I ever once judge you for what you did? But you come in here and suddenly I’m a different man than the one you slept with yesterday because you don’t like my job when I did the same as you—I did what I had to, to get by.”

“It’s not the same thing at all!”

“No? Why not?”

“Because what I do never ended up with a man’s brains blown out across the room!” she shouted, finally dropping her arms but only so she could reach out and shove Nicholas backwards. It was like a gnat trying to push a boulder. He didn’t even move. Which apparently only infuriated her more because she kept at it, shoving and beating at his chest with her tiny fists.

Finally Nicholas caught up her wrists and yanked her forward until she was pulled against him. She struggled but he held her there, their steamy, soapy bodies intertwined. She gave up after a few moments once she realized it was useless and glared up at him.

The fury in her eyes was undeniable, and when she spat, “I hate you,” in his face, he couldn’t deny it stung.

He still didn’t let go of her wrists, he just walked her backwards until the spray was blasting her on top of the head until she was sputtering.

“Fine, hate me,” he bit out. “But you’ll still walk down the aisle with a smile on your face if you want to survive to see next week.”

She tried to shove against him again, spitting out water and struggling to look up at him but unable to because of the water washing the rest of the suds out of her hair. He let go of her wrists and reached up and roughly helped finish washing her hair.

She stood still but hardly passive—he could still feel the fury emanating from her as he worked his hands through her hair and then clinically down her body, cleaning her efficiently and quickly.

“There. You’re done. Out while I finish,” he ordered gruffly.

Her mouth tight, she glared at him one last time, then yanked the curtain back and stepped out. Nicholas sighed and scrubbed shampoo through his own hair. He used body wash on the rest of his body in record time and then flipped the water off, stepping out into the now-cold pool of water she’d left behind on the floor.

“Son of a—” he swore, reaching and yanking down two towels from the rack above the toilet. He tossed one on the floor, mopping up the water with his foot. He used the other to towel himself off.

Finally he wrapped the towel around his waist and made it back to the main room. Where he found his wife-to-be wrapped up in a towel sitting on the bed.

She didn’t look as angry anymore. She just sat there looking young and far too vulnerable. She blinked up at him with her large, doe eyes. “So was this always your plan? Not just to bring me here but to marry me?”

Nicholas swallowed, wondering if he didn’t prefer her raging at him than this stark vulnerability she was exposing now.

“Uh, well,” he dragged a hand through his wet hair. “I suspected it might be the only way I’d be able to protect you.”

She shook her head. “So why the charade? Why not tell me what we were heading into?”

He didn’t dare tell her the truth. That he’d been afraid that, in spite of her agoraphobia, she’d have found a way to run, if given the option of marrying him or running and taking her chances out in the world with the Tereshchenkos after her.