Within an hour the police were on Ronin property. Very soon thereafter, Percy Thornton was escorted into the back of a squad car, dried blood on his face, tears in his eyes, and cuffs around his fragile wrists.

My father, always the man to thrust up a hand and admit his short comings, embraced Tristan in a firm, clasping hug of grief and gratitude. The two of them slipping away for a more hushed, private conversation in my father's study.

Exhausted, emotionally drained, I returned to the guest house, stripped off my dress, slid into the shower. And wept. Wept for my blind stupidity. Wept for all the years Nate suffered in silence.

A kid. Just a kid. I might not have particularly cared for Percy, but I'd trusted the man. We all had. And now to know the sordid truth, as Nate wove through the entire ordeal for the police, both mother and father locked at his side, united in fierce love for their son, I was ruined. A mess.

My heart bled. My soul shattered. Every inch of me hurt. And worse, I felt dirty. Dirty for every touch, hug and caress, knowing what he'd done to my nephew, sickened me to my very bowels.

"Laura." Slumped on the tile, I lifted my head from my knees. Tristan stood in the doorway of the bathroom, his expression grave but tender. He pressed an arm against the jamb; shirt cuffed at the elbows, the top buttons undone and heavy lines of fatigue carved under his eyes.

"You're still here," I said, swiping hands across my face, cleaning up the mess of tears.

"I am." Entering the bathroom, he reached a hand into the shower, turned off the heavy rain of steaming water. "Let's get you dry," he said, holding out a hand. "I've got some explaining to do."

Wrapped in the warmth of a fuzzy robe, hair combed and still damp, I sat on the edge of the bed as Tristan leaned against the large, wide window overlooking the open paddocks. The air glimmered a dusky blue of pre-dawn, sunrise only an hour away.

"I told you about Ailish," he began, voice distant. Far away with memory. "My sister. My little sister. So tragically and needlessly had taken her own life."

I swallowed hard, running my cold hands over my thighs. "You'd said her death was your fault."

His head lowered, gold hair spilling around him. Shielding him from me. Tristan lifted a hand, swooped his fingers through it, pulling that veil back-away, as if to show me that in this moment there would be no barriers. No hiding. Only truth.

"She was seventeen. I'd never know anyone with so much to offer the world. Such a large heart," his own pressed over his chest. Held there. "She worshipped me. God knows why, but she did. And I was stupidly more concerned with other things. More important things." A pained smile broke his face, like a crack in a mirror.

"I should have seen it. I should have paid more fucking attention and seen it."

"What?"

"That she was suffering. That she was breaking." He sighed heavily. Shoulders weighed down with responsibility and blame. "I was away in university when things got really bad. It was my uncle. My actual blood relation who was the culprit. Apparently it all started during those long summers we'd stayed there as children. Caring for the horses."

My heart clenched. Seized. "The horse farm," I whispered. He nodded.

"It's why my father sold the place. I didn't know it at the time, but as I got older I realized it was his way of attempting to banish my sister's ghosts. To slay her demons. Had he done so while she was still alive, perhaps he would have succeeded and she'd still be here. Alive. We'll never know now."

Reading between the unspoken lines, I struggled to make sense of it all. Tristan's uncle, Percy--men like that were monsters. Horrible, soul destroying monsters who deserved to carry all of the blame. Not Tristan. Not me. And certainly not their victims, tarnished and forever tainted by their fiendish depravity.

"How is this--any of this--your fault?"

"Because she tried to tell me, in her way." Fingers curled, he bounced the side of his fist against the wall, a sharp, rap. "And I wouldn't hear her. I wouldn't listen. She'd come out to London, some obscure weekend and I wasn't expecting her. Things were tense, I was stressed with the grueling hours of classes and an overburdened schedule. She'd shown up on my doorstep--surprise, just there.

"You have to understand I was a different person back then. Driven. All ambition. Control. I had to be the best. Would be. And did anything I could to make it so. Shade Enterprises was a young company back then, a runt about to enter into the big leagues and I had to prove I would be worthy of assuming the mantle, of carrying that legacy into a proud, successful future. My father devoted his life to building the company, I wasn't going to have someone swoop in and claim what was rightfully mine and so having her show up like that, looking to plunk down into my life--my space, without a plan and without thinking to ask me first, upset me. I saw it as a distraction. A hindrance. And said as much, snapping at her so hard she left in tears." Tristan closed his eyes, the muscles in his face drawing tight.

"I can't go back there, she'd said to me. I don't care where you go, but you can't stay here. I don't want you here. Those were my final words to her. The last words she died hearing from me. Three days later, I got the call from my mother. She'd gone to a hotel in Edinburg. By this point my parents had known she'd run off and froze her accounts. Within a couple of days she'd run out of money. They'd thought she'd pick up the phone--turn to them. Forcing her to come home. Instead Ailish got her hands on a needle and enough heroin to level three junkies. Police found her body, and the lengthy letter she'd left behind, detailing everything. Everything, Laura.

"Only in hindsight did it all make any sense. Did I see clearly what I failed to see before. The man was a predator. Evil to the bone. He'd sunk his claws into her when she could barely string words together. Twisted her to his perverted will so that she, for a long time, saw it as love."

I closed my eyes, my thoughts drifting to Nate, imaging he too must have wrestled with the same sickening confusion, lost in a drug addled haze--expertly nurtured and controlled until Percy's guidance, keeping him just where he wanted him to be so as to manipulate Nate to his will without letting the addiction get so far out of hand the rest of us would easily catch on. 

"The longest part of the letter she'd written to me. Forgiving me. Christ, she didn't even blame me for tossing her out the way I did. She'd said she understood and loved me with all her heart. I was her big brother and there was no one in the world she loved more." His words broke with the snap of tears, the hot press of them. "But I'd failed to protect her. Failed to keep her safe. Fail to see beyond myself to her suffering and pain."

And their uncle? Laura wondered. What happened to him? If tonight's events were any indication, the man had known true terror before either being whisked away by police, or meeting a final end. 

"We never got any justice," Tristan continued, as if sensing my line of thoughts. "Apparently she'd called him hours before dosing, telling him she was finished with life. Bastard didn't even think to warn my parents. Or me. I was close. So close. I could have stopped her. Instead my uncle put his shot gun in his mouth that same night. A sad, cowardly end that gave no satisfaction or restitution."  

I exhaled slowly. Carefully. There were no tears in me, though I thought there should have been. This was the clearest I'd ever seen Tristan. Everything falling so precisely into place that now that man who had always been an enigma was a completed puzzle I could finally see.

Defeated, Tristan slid down the wall, stretched on his legs, hands folded in his lap. "Now you know. Now you see."

And so I did. I saw that the man I loved was more, so much more than I thought him to be. Cold? God, how could a man who felt so deeply, who hurt so deeply, ever be considered cold? Every wall I'd slammed into over the previous weeks, all the obstacles and barriers, they were meant to shield me from this. And I loved him all the more in spite of it. Hurt all the more because of it.

His pain was mine. His agony was mine. His grief, his sorrow. I'd never felt anything so deeply, so profoundly, as I did now. Connected to him. Linked to him. The simmering waves of his emotions poured from him and lashed over me like the stinging kiss of a whip.

But I would not turn away. Could not turn away. Even if it meant going to him now would singe me to ash, I would burn. Happily burn.

Because right now, he needed me. Needed the oblivion only release could bring. And there was only one way I knew how to give it to him. Rising, I unbelted my robe, let it fall to the floor. His eyes found mine, full of misery and question as I crossed to him.

Lowering to my knees at his side, I saw the way his chest expanded--held, saw the gleam of understanding flash in those arresting silver eyes, bright as the predawn light, a deep fathomless blue, flooding through the windows.

I set a tentative hand against his knee and whispered, "Use me."

The breath he held exploded from him in a sharp, single burst. "What?"

"Use me," I repeated. "No limits. I can take it." 

I straddled his lap, his features a war of conflicting expressions and his eyes filled with the heat of an internal struggle I couldn't make sense of. But the intensity was crushing, suffocating. He lifted a hand, cupped my face.

Tender. So tender. His thumb traced along the curve of my cheek as he sighed, "I can't."

"Shade--"

"No." The command was soft, barely a whisper. The reverence, unmistakable. "I don't want to." His gaze descended to my mouth, pinned there. And everything within me went still. Silent.

He slid forward a fraction, a breath. His progression, his every movement was slow...within each second was the birth of another eternity, the two of us locked within this endless state of connection, full of intention...so profound.

And then finally--finally--his lips found mine. Pressed. Held.

A shock scored up my spine, seared across every nerve. Dazzling, blinding as electricity racing through that simple point of connection. But this was different. Somehow different. Where our blood had always raced fast and hot, now it flowed slow, almost lazy, a steady hum and purr beneath the skin yet still every bit as potent and powerful.

Another kiss, luxurious and tender, spun into another, sliding deeper. Deeper. He'd made love to me with his mouth before, it should have been no surprise that he would know what to do with it now with a kiss, but it was.

I was. Surprised.

We rolled to the floor, his body over mine, our mouths never parting. Not for breath or pause. His tongue delved and stroked and tasted me, coaxed mine to do the same. This simple mating of mouths unlike anything we'd ever shared up unto this point. Pure, unbridled intimacy and vulnerability that stemmed from the heart, not passion. Not lust.

Time spun. Lost all meaning or purpose. Leaving only this. Only us. Only truth. Love poured from me, a dam I couldn't hold breaking, letting it all out. Without fear. Or shame.

Then he slid between my thighs, filling me, taking me completely, his thrusts matching that slowly, thorough taking of his lips and tongue, drinking me in. Every moan, whisper and sigh. Discovering me as no one ever had before.

Pleasure rolled over me, through me. Swelling in my belly, in my heart. Hands locked with mine, Tristan's body coiled and tightened, his lips racing over my throat, up to my ear with whispers, fluid, sensual whispers.

"Mo chroí. M'anam. Mo grá."

I didn't know the language and yet somehow I knew...understood what he was saying to me. He kissed me again and the tears came. My orgasm swept through my body, a slow, heady rush straight to my marrow. Tristan poured himself into me. Heart, body and soul. Light--a haze of crimson, a rush of gold blanketed around us.

Sunrise.

We fell asleep together, there on the floor, warmed by the wakening sun. My cheek resting over his heart.

Happy. Whole. Complete.

Well, I don't know about you guys, but I def got a little teary after writing this. This was one of the first scenes I had blocked out when first deciding to go ahead and turn Playing in the Shade into my own story. I'd only had the bare bones but this was a moment I simply couldn't wait to get to.

That kiss. That final dropping of emotional walls. Having Tristan show his darkest secret and share that with Laura is pretty, freaking huge. And because he's never kissed Laura up to this point--because he's made a point not to kiss any woman, makes this impact even greater.

I love when I'm writing those moments and I feel the impact of these scenes are real and vivid as if I were Laura, herself. Beautiful.

I hope you all enjoy! As promised - I'm going to keep delivering on the final chapters of their journey as quickly as I am able.

We're rounding the finish line. It's going to get ugly. It's going to get difficult. But the end will be all the sweeter, because of it.