“An easy excuse. You can say it. I’m damaged goods.” She uttered a bitter laugh.
“Bullshit. You’re perfect.”
“No, I’m not.” She faced me but looked sad. “I have scars and not just on the inside.” She stood so the water lapped at her waist and to my shock, began peeling off her bathing suit, revealing a perfect breast with a crescent scar marking the flesh of it.
It took me a shocked second before I exclaimed, “He bit you?”
She didn’t reply, but rather kept lowering the suit, showing me two older and puckered wounds on her abdomen.
Stabbed or shot, the holes could have been from either.
When she pivoted, I could see the faded lash marks across her back.
Fuck me, she’d been whipped.
She wasn’t done. The suit lowered even more to show the damage done to her buttocks, the round scars the kind left behind by burns, as if from a cigarette. I should know the look of them, since I had a few myself from a short stint as a prisoner of war.
I barely heard her whisper. “You thought me beautiful and perfect, but now you know the truth. I’m damaged. Marred. What man will want someone with so much damage? How can I expect anyone to look at me with desire when I can barely stand to look at myself? And don’t lie. Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter. Your silence says it all.”
Oh fuck. I didn’t speak because shock froze my tongue. I didn’t speak because anger coursed through me. I couldn’t say a word because it would emerge as a primal scream.
I did the only thing I could. I laid myself bare. “I’ve got my own scars,” I said. “And yet the ones on my flesh aren’t the worst ones. I have nightmares. Panic attacks. I’m an alcoholic and a miserable bastard. If anyone is damaged and unworthy, it’s me. Even my own wife couldn’t love me after I returned from my last deployment.”
“She was a fool,” Nicky hissed. “There is nothing wrong with you.”
“And yet I wake up every day hating myself.”
“Guess we have that in common. I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything.” She sat on the edge of the tub and swung a leg over, readying to leave. Leave after baring her soul to me. Leave because she thought herself unlovable. Unattractive. Unworthy…
At my core, I knew I was wrong for her on so many levels. A woman who’d been through so much deserved a better man and yet in that moment—with her so vulnerable, hurting, doubting—I couldn’t reject her. Call me selfish, but I couldn’t let her walk away thinking I didn’t want her.
I wanted her so bad it fucking hurt.
I didn’t give a fuck about her scars. To me they showed her strength and resilience. She was a survivor, like me. And maybe I wasn’t the right guy for her, but in that moment I didn’t care. She needed me, and fuck me, I needed her too.
I stood and put a hand on her, feeling her shudder and hating how her shoulders curved inward. I tilted her head to face me.
“You. Are. Beautiful. Every fucking inch.”
“You’re just saying that because I’m pathetic and you feel sorry for me,” she whispered, pearly drops clinging to her lashes.
“I might be many things, but I am not a liar, not about something like that. While I still think—actually, I know—you could do so much better than me, I only have so much willpower. And you just shattered it.”
With that, I kissed her softly. A gentle press of my mouth to hers at odds with the passion that pulsed in my veins.
She remained still for the embrace. As I coaxed her mouth, her trembling ceased. Her lips parted. Her clipped hair didn’t survive my fingers raking through it to cup her head and the silken strands came tumbling down. She inhaled. As if that were a signal, something within her unleashed.
Her hands clutched at my shoulders as she kissed me back, and the sweetness of her passion almost dropped me to my knees. I felt shaky enough I sat down on the bench and dragged her with me, seating her in my lap, knowing she could feel my cock hard against her ass.
Would that be proof enough I found her desirable? Apparently not, because she kept kissing me, turning in my lap so she straddled me properly. Grinding against me. Making me growl into her mouth as I sought not to lose control and scare her.
My hands cupped her ass, squeezing the firm flesh, digging in, but not too roughly. She was delicate and needed gentleness, not the savage straining inside me.
She wanted proof she was desirable? I’d show her. But not here in the tub where it would be awkward and uncomfortable.
