Page 10 of Dirty Game (Broken Blood #1)

CHAPTER FIVE

Rosalynn

I can't stop touching my lips.

It's been three days since he kissed me—barely kissed me, really.

Just the softest brush of his mouth against mine, so gentle I might have imagined it if not for the way my whole body had lit up like struck lightning.

Three days, and I've become someone I don't recognize.

Someone who traces her bottom lip during meetings.

Someone who stares at his mouth when he talks.

Someone who lies awake replaying two seconds of contact like it holds the secrets of the universe.

I don't understand gentleness.

My family never?—

I push the thought away before it can form completely, but the ghosts linger.

Uncle Enzo's rough hands shoving me into walls.

Marco's fingers leaving bruises that bloomed like dying flowers.

Even my mother, before she died, had touched me with the efficiency of necessity rather than affection.

Quick braids pulled too tight. Swift pats on the shoulder that felt more like punctuation than comfort.

But Varrick's kiss had been neither cruel nor efficient.

It had been... careful.

Like I was something that might break if handled wrong.

Like I was something worth being careful with.

The numbers in front of me blur.

I've been staring at the same forensic accounting report for an hour, finding evidence of another mole in his organization, but I can't focus.

Every time I try, I remember the warmth of his breath against my lips, the way his hand had trembled slightly where it cupped my jaw, how he'd pulled back almost immediately like he'd burned himself.

We've been dancing around each other since.

He brings me food but doesn't stay to watch me eat.

He checks my work but keeps the desk between us.

He looks at me when he thinks I won't notice, with an expression I can't decipher—hunger mixed with something that looks almost like pain.

Maria tells me he's been spending more time in the gym, working out his frustrations on punching bags that never survive more than a week.

Jensen mentions, carefully casual, that the boss hasn't been sleeping well.

Even the men who work for him have noticed something's shifted, though none dare comment directly.

And I can't stop touching my lips.

It's midnight when I give up on sleep and wander through the penthouse.

My feet know where they're taking me before my brain admits it.

The gym is in the lower level, a space that smells like a mixture of antiseptic and sweat.

I hear him before I see him—the rhythmic impact of fists against canvas, the controlled breathing of someone who's learned to channel rage into precision.

But when I reach the doorway, he's not boxing.

He's sitting on the floor, surrounded by photographs.

Old ones, from the way the edges curl and the colors have faded to sepia suggestions.

His hair is damp with sweat, chest bare, wearing only low-slung sweatpants that reveal more skin than I've ever seen on him.

Scars map his torso like a history of violence—some old and silver, others still pink and angry.

In his hand is a lighter.

"You should be sleeping," he says without looking up.

"So should you."

I move closer, and that's when I see what the photos are.

Not recent ones. Not business associates or enemies or any of the people who populate his current world.

These are pictures of a boy.

Dark-haired, bright-eyed, smiling with an openness that makes my chest ache because I know who he became.

"Who's that boy?" I ask, sinking to my knees beside him.

He holds one photo up to the light—the boy, maybe fifteen, standing in front of what looks like a church.

He's wearing an ill-fitting suit but grinning like he's won the lottery. "Someone who thought love meant something different."

The lighter flicks open. The flame dances, eager to consume.

I don't think. I just reach out, take the photo from his hand before he can feed it to the fire. "Don't."

His jaw clenches. "They're my memories to burn."

"He looks hopeful," I say, studying the boy's face. There's something in his eyes that the man beside me has lost—not innocence exactly, but a belief that the world might be kind. "What was he hopeful about?"

"Everything. Nothing. Does it matter?" He reaches for the photo, but I pull it back.

"Hope died," he says flatly. "That boy died. The photos are just evidence of someone who doesn't exist anymore."

"Maybe it's not dead," I say quietly, looking at teenage Varrick's smile. "Maybe it's just sleeping."

Something shifts in the air between us.

The temperature drops or rises—I can't tell which, only that everything suddenly feels charged, dangerous.

"Don't." His voice is barely a whisper.

"Don't what?"

"Don't look at me like that. Like I'm salvageable. Like there's something in me worth saving."

"Isn't there?"

He moves so fast I don't have time to react.

One moment I'm kneeling beside him, the next my back is against the wall, his hands braced on either side of my head, caging me in.

This close, I can see every scar, every imperfection, every mark that tells the story of how that hopeful boy became this dangerous man.

There are so many scars.

Knife wounds that must have barely missed vital organs.

Bullet grazes across his ribs.

Defensive marks on his forearms from fights he probably shouldn't have survived.

And there, low on his hip, partially hidden by his waistband, something different.

Not a wound from a fight, but letters carved deliberately into skin.

S.C.

Without thinking, I reach out, my fingers ghosting over the raised letters.

He freezes, every muscle going rigid.

"Who was she?" The question escapes before I can stop it.

His hand catches my wrist, not hard enough to hurt but firm enough to stop my exploration. "How do you know it was a she?"

"The way you carved it. Or let her carve it. It's too careful to be something premeditated or solely violent, too permanent to be casual." I meet his eyes. "Someone marked you. Someone you let mark you."

His laugh is bitter. "Someone who taught me that betrayal comes in beautiful packages."

My chest tightens. "Am I... am I like her?"

The question hangs between us.

His grip on my wrist gentles, his thumb brushing over my pulse point the way it did weeks ago.

"No." The word is fierce, immediate. "She was a predator. She knew exactly what she was doing, who she was destroying. You're..."

He doesn't finish. Can't or won't, I'm not sure which.

"What am I?"

His free hand comes up to my face, fingers barely touching my cheek. "You're terrifying in a completely different way."

"I don't understand."

"She took. Everything she did was about taking—power, control, pieces of me I'll never get back." His thumb traces my cheekbone. "You don't even realize you're giving. Your trust, your protection of those photos, the way you look at me like I might be more than the monster everyone knows I am."

"You're not a monster."

"I've killed more people than you've had birthdays, little mouse."

"Monsters don't kiss like they're afraid of breaking someone," I whisper.

His eyes darken. "That wasn't a real kiss."

"It was to me."

The confession hangs between us, raw and honest.

It was my first kiss, as pathetic as that sounds at twenty-five.

But it was more than that—it was the first time anyone had touched me with gentleness instead of ownership.

"You don't know what you're saying," he breathes, but he's leaning closer, drawn by something neither of us seems able to control.

"Then teach me."

The words are barely out before I realize what I've said, what I'm asking.

But I don't take them back.

Instead, I do something that surprises us both.

I rise up on my tiptoes, my hands coming to rest on his chest for balance, and I kiss him.

It's clumsy. Inexperienced.

I don't know what to do with my lips, my tongue, my teeth.

I just press my mouth to his and hope that intent makes up for technique.

For a heartbeat, he's frozen.

Then a sound escapes him—half groan, half surrender—and his hand slides into my hair, angling my head to deepen the kiss.

This is nothing like the barely-there brush of lips from three days ago.

This is heat and demand and barely restrained hunger.

His tongue traces the seam of my lips, and when I gasp, he takes advantage, tasting me like I'm something he's been denied for too long.

I don't know what to do with my hands, my body, the sounds trying to escape my throat.

Everything is a sensation—his skin under my palms, his fingers tangled in my hair, the solid weight of him pressing me into the wall.

He tastes like whiskey and danger and something uniquely him that makes me want to crawl inside his skin and never leave.

When he tears himself away, we're both breathing hard.

"You don't know what you're starting," he says roughly, his forehead resting against mine.

"Then teach me," I repeat, bolder now, drunk on the taste of him.

He steps back so suddenly I almost fall.

The loss of his heat, his touch, his presence, feels like deprivation.

"Not like this," he says, running a hand through his hair. "Not when you don't understand what you're asking for."

"I'm asking for you."

"You're asking for something you've built up in your head. Some version of me that saves you, protects you, makes you feel safe." He's backing away, putting distance between us like physical space might break whatever spell we're under. "That's not who I am."

"I know who you are."

"Do you? Because the man you're looking at with those wide eyes, the one you think might have hope sleeping somewhere inside him—that man would destroy you just to see if he could."

"No," I say simply. "He wouldn't."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because you've had a dozen chances to destroy me already. Instead, you feed me strawberries. You break bones for my honor. You kiss me like I'm made of spun glass." I take a step toward him, and he takes one back, maintaining the distance. "That's not destruction. That's?—"

"Don't say it."

"That's care. Maybe even?—"

"Rosalynn." My name is a warning.