Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
My bones protested at how tight he was holding me, and I forced my breathing to stay steady.
Don’t betray an ounce of panic, I told myself.
Looking upward, I met his eyes. They seemed to be black pools of darkness, tendrils of it curling around my skin, sinking past layers of flesh and bone to the very core of me.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, laying one of my hands on top of his, stroking, coaxing.
He flexed his grip, and I gritted my teeth against the pain. He could’ve broken my wrist if he wanted to in that moment. Doing that would’ve shattered me. Shattered all that lay between us. Because though I reveled in the pain that he made me feel, the roughness in which he handled me, the danger I danced by being close to him … the most precious thing about him was the violence he emanated but never truly released upon me. I wanted to be the one thing that was special to him, as delirious as it was. If he hurt me like he did everyone else, he would no longer be anything better than my father.
I was walking on a knife’s edge. We were. One wrong move and we’d sever everything between us.
Knox took an audible breath, nostrils flaring, eyes strained. He was fighting against his baser nature. Or one of them, at least. One that was telling him to hurt rather than open to the chance of being hurt.
I waited.
He let go.
My heart swelled at the trust he gave me, the enormity of the gift that trust was.
Taking a deep breath, I pulled up the shirt.
“Arms up,” I ordered, my voice only shaking a little. I knew he caught it. He was watching me like a hawk. Every tell my body had that I was afraid and aroused didn’t go unnoticed by him.
Despite his predatory gaze, he complied with my request.
I let out a breath as I exposed his torso. Muscled, chiseled, as I’d expected. The skin was porcelain, flawless.
On his torso, at least.
When I exposed his arms, I saw it.
Scars. Ribbons of them. From his wrists all the way up to his shoulder. There must’ve been hundreds.
Though I knew I needed to be mindful, I couldn’t restrain the gasp that came out of my mouth upon seeing them. Without even thinking, I reached out to touch the skin to ensure it was real. It couldn’t have been. He couldn’t have been sleeping next to me, been curled up with my soul while I’d been ignorant to what was obviously a huge part of him.
Knox stiffened as my hand reached forward.
My fingers hovered a hair's breadth away from the ruined skin when I looked up at him once more. His jaw was as rigid as iron; I could see him clenching it. His chest moved up and down heavily.
No one had seen these scars. I knew this inexplicably. Knox didn’t let anyone see what was vulnerable, human about him. He was ashamed. That’s why he’d been so intent on ensuring I didn’t see this, even when he was bleeding from a bullet wound. This was his secret, his shame, the most vulnerable part of him.
And he was showing me.
“What… Who did this?” I asked him in a strangled whisper. Fury simmered low in my gut toward the beast that was capable of inflicting such pain upon someone.
“I did,” he replied without dropping his gaze from mine. His tone was cold. Inhuman. I knew it was because he was protecting himself. He was waiting for me to shrink back in disgust or be scared off.
I looked from him to the scars, taking stock. Some of them looked older, others were puckered and raised. And there were a handful, I was horrified to see, that were red and angry, barely healed.
Recent.
He’d done it while here.
I’d been there, sleeping maybe, and he was cutting through his skin to create more scars.
“It’s the only way I can cleanse it,” he murmured, watching me. “My blood. Otherwise, the filth builds up.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t understand what he meant by that. I understood it was related to the abuse in his past, the way the trauma had manifested in making him feel unclean. The result of the assault on such a pure, defenseless body. On an innocent, vulnerable mind. My blood boiled at the visible evidence of what he’d been through, corroboration that barely scratched the surface of how far reaching the talons of his abuse had scraped.
My fingers traveled the small distance I’d put between us. Knox flinched as I made contact with the skin, but he didn’t push my hand away. I felt the ridges of the scars, the hardness and softness of the healing skin. I went over them, tracing the shapes with the pads of my fingers, thinking of Knox doing this to himself. Over and over again. For years.