“Yeah.”
“Should I feel different? I thought I would feel different, like the brand would change something fundamental inside me, but nothing’s different. Everything is still the same, except there’s pain now.”
His hand tightens a fraction on my waist, and I feel the tension in his body, the careful control he’s maintaining. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” The question comes out softer than I mean it to, not accusatory but genuinely curious, because I need to understand what goes on in his head, what he thinks about when he looks at the brand he let his father burn into my skin. “Or are you sorry it had to be this way?”
“Both.”
We lie there in the dimness, his warmth against my side grounding me, the steady rhythm of his breathing like a metronome marking time. Something shifts in me, something I don’t want to name or acknowledge or think about too hard because if I do, I’ll have to face what I’m becoming.
The pills make everything hazy, make my body feel languid and warm despite the pain, make me hyperaware of every place Calder’s touching me—his hand on the bare skin just above the edge of my panties, his chest pressed against my side, his breath ghosting across my hair. I shouldn’t want this, shouldn’t want him, but the pills blur the lines between should and want, between right and wrong, between captive and something else entirely that I’m afraid to name.
“Calder?”
“Yeah?”
“The pills make everything feel…” I search for the right word, for a way to explain this feeling without admitting too much. “Different.”
“Different how?”
Heat pools low in my belly, inappropriate and wrong but undeniable, spreading through me like wildfire. “Like I can’t think straight. Like my body doesn’t remember why it should be afraid of you, why it should recoil from your touch instead of lean into it.”
His hand stills on my stomach, right under the edge of my shirt, and I feel the tension coil through his body. “Saint?—”
“I know it’s the pills,” I say quickly, giving us both an excuse, a way out if we need it. “I know I shouldn’t… that we shouldn’t…when I’m healing.”
I don’t finish the sentence because his hand is warm on my skin, and my body is responding in ways that have nothing to do with the hatred I should be feeling. Nothing to do with logic or reason or self-preservation and everything to do with this twisted thing between us that I can’t explain or deny or escape.
“This is a bad idea. You’re in pain,” he says, his voice rough and strained. “And drugged.”
“What if I want to?”
It’s a dangerous and bold question, and I wonder if this is who I’m becoming, someone who asks her captor to touch her, someone who begs for comfort from the man who destroyed her life, someone who can’t tell the difference between survival and surrender anymore.
“I know better,” he says, but his hand doesn’t move, nor does he pull away, staying warm and solid against my skin. “It’s the pills talking.”
“Maybe.” I turn to look at him, meeting those ice-blue eyes that see too much, that know too much. “Or maybe I just want to be comforted.”
A war is taking place in his mind. A fight between right and wrong. “I can comfort you by holding you. I don’t have to fuck you. I can’t. Not when you’re high, hurting, and fragile.”
“Can’t or won’t?” I tilt my head to the side. “I’m in this situation because of you. Why not let me have this one thing, even if it’s wrong, even if I might regret it tomorrow?”
“Because it’s not right.”
“Nothing about this is right.” My hand finds his chest, resting over his heart, and I can feel it pounding beneath my palm, matching the frantic rhythm of my own. “If I wait for things to be right, I’ll be dead, and if I’m being honest… I’m tired. Tired of being afraid. Tired of pretending I don’t feel whateverthisis between us, this twisted fucked-up thing that shouldn’t exist but does anyway.”
“Saint—”
“Please.” The word comes out breathy and desperate, and I hate how much I mean it, hate how much I need this. “I just want to feel something other than pain. Just for a little while. Just until the pills wear off and reality returns, and I have to face what I’ve become.”
He’s quiet for a long moment, war playing out behind his eyes, and I know he’s fighting himself as much as he’s fightingme, torn between what’s right and what we both want. Then his hand moves from my belly and slides lower, almost hesitant, like he’s giving me time to change my mind, time to come to my senses and push him away.
I don’t change my mind.
His fingers find the waistband of my panties and slip beneath, and I gasp at the contact, at the heat of his skin against mine, at the way my body responds immediately like it’s been waiting for this.
“Tell me to stop,” he says, his voice strained and rough. “Tell me this is a bad idea, and I’ll stop. I’ll pull away right now.”
