Page 27 of Kissed By Shadows

ROWAN

After making soup for us all, I yell for Hunt and he joins us in the kitchen to eat. There’s something that just feels right about us all sitting down, eating our meal together. There wasn’t anything lacking before yesterday, before Iris Montgomery came storming into our lives like a whirlwind, all soft curves and beguiling eyes, but there’s definitely something more now that she’s here.

Like maybe we were just passing the time until she arrived.

Roman and I bounced around a lot of foster homes when we were kids, until finally, when we were ten, we were fostered by a couple in another flat on the estate and met Hunt, who was fourteen at the time and already making a name for himself. We quickly formed a brotherhood, working together to help out the youngsters on the estate, undertaking small jobs for bigger gangs in the area, slowly building the Shadows until it becameformidable and feared. And through it all, we were at the centre, Hunter our driving force, our leader and the one everyone always deferred to.

My gaze is fixed on Iris, on the way the sunlight highlights each freckle on her face, and like the stars in the sky, I want to map each one, catalogue them until I know them as well as I know my own face. My brother would call it the beginning of one of my obsessions, one of my fixations, but I know that it’s something much more than that. She’s ours, I can feel it in my bones, even if someone like her should never truly be with anyone like us.

She’s all polished diamonds while we’re the hammers used to extract the precious stones. We’re the dirt that surrounds them, keeping them safe and closeted deep in the earth.

“Nikolai and his two goons will come up here, escorted and stripped of all weapons of course,” Hunter tells us, using a piece of bread to scoop up the last of the soup before licking his fingers clean. I watch as Iris, my Little Lamb, delicately brings the soup spoon up to her lips, pursing them and tipping the liquid inside her mouth with not a sound.

Fucking diamonds alright.

And the way she’s so pure, so innocent, it’s what made me give her that name. She’s a lamb, ready for the slaughter, but I’ll be damned if it’s anyone but me who wields the knife. And unlike so many before her, I’ll put her back together, better than before.

“Is that wise? Having them so close to our home? No one ever comes up here,” my brother interjects, drawing me back from my observations of our beautiful captive.

“I did,” the lady in question adds in a quiet voice, looking down at her spoon as she dips it back into the bowl. Fucking hell, I could watch her all day while she eats, it’s mesmerising.

“That’s different,” Roman states but doesn’t elaborate. He’s right though, she was never going to be a threat.

“We can protect her best here, plus it’ll set them on edge,” Hunter tells us, throwing his spoon into the now empty bowl with a clatter that makes Iris jump.

“He wouldn’t hurt me,” she rushes to say, lying her spoon gently in her bowl and wiping her fingers on the napkin that she asked for, which I found in the back of one of the drawers. I scowl when I see almost half her bowl of soup left, and reaching over, I take the spoon, scooping some soup up before bringing it to her lips as large hazel eyes land on mine. “Oh, I’m full, thank you.”

“A little more,” I insist, not lowering the spoon. She licks her lips, and then without protesting, opens them. I hold my breath as I slide the spoon inside her mouth, my dick twitching when she closes her plush lips over it and takes the soup from the end. “Good girl.”

She swallows hard, her pupils blowing out, and one side of my lips tilt upwards. Looks like our lamb has a praise kink.

“Jesus,” Roman rasps from her other side, drawing my attention when he shifts in his seat, clearly adjusting his own arousal. “I call dibs on feeding her next time.”

Her head whips around to him, and I can only imagine the glare she levels at him. “I’m not a fucking pet, Ro!”

“But you do like to be stroked,” he counters, and I see the way her breathing hitches, her back stilling.

“Fuck’s sake, Roman. Can you focus for one fucking second?” Hunt sighs, though his eyes don’t leave Iris, no doubt remembering how well she responded to his stroking in here earlier.

“Sorry, Daddy,” my brother teases, ever the flirt. I hear Iris’s sharp intake of breath, and I snap my head to see her shifting on her seat, her thighs rubbing together as she looks between Hunt and Roman. Looks like she’s also turned on by the thought of Hunt and my brother together. Especially if the way her handsclench and open in her lap and her chest thrusts out are any indication.

Roman was always the more outgoing twin, the centre of attention, the life and soul of any party. He uses his easygoing nature to gather affection in an attempt to soothe the wounds of a shared childhood trauma.

Our story isn’t a pretty one, like so many on this estate, we were a meal ticket, a way for our foster parents to earn a bit extra without having to actually do anything for the twin boys who landed on their doorstep. We’d spent our entire lives in foster care, moving from place to place, never having a true home. In a couple of our placements, we were also something else, something that leaves scars so deep they never truly heal. Free labour, a punching bag, an unwilling hole.

I made a virtue of my more reserved nature, making it my job to study people, work out what makes them tick, what each behaviour means. I also studied the purpose of each muscle in the human body, what every nerve is responsible for, and how best to inflict pain while keeping someone alive. I made those others pay, the ones who left the deepest wounds.

I often don’t feel the same as others, my emotions taking a little longer to surface, if they do at all. It’s what makes my reaction to Iris so uncommon. She makes me feel so much more than I have in years. With the childhood we had, it was easier to just switch that part off, to not feel all the shit that was slung our way.

But like the spring sunshine after a cold, harsh winter, Iris Montgomery is breathing some life back into me, and even more curiously, I’m not mad about it.

“Rowan?” Hunt’s voice filters into my thoughts, and I blink, turning my head to look at him.

“Sorry, I missed that,” I admit, and his eyebrows raise to his hairline. I never miss anything.

“You will greet Petrov and his guys at the estate entrance, ensure they have no weapons, and then escort them up here. Understood?” Hunter commands, and I give a sharp nod. “Good. We have”—he glances down at the gold watch on his wrist that Roman likes to tease him about—“seven hours. They will be here at nine.”

With that, he gets up, taking his bowl and spoon over to the dishwasher and placing it inside. Without so much as a look at us, or Iris, he stalks from the room, probably heading to the office space to do all the shit that needs doing to run the empire that he’s created. He may be young by society’s standards, but in terms of gang life, he’s getting on, hell, we’re all older than we expected to live. Hunt has a determination that I’ve yet to see matched. He bends the world around him to his will, forces the fates to comply with what he decrees, and as such, we all follow him, all trust him with our lives. I often wonder about the burden that type of responsibility represents, how heavy that must weigh on him sometimes.

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