“Look at me. Please.”
It was an effort to open her eyes again. An actual physical effort. But she did it, for him.
Gently, so gently, his hand rested on Uma’s shoulder and trailed down, a first stroke, followed by his eyes and then hers. For a second or two, she couldn’t quite catch her breath as she let herself look. How strange for her body to be so unfamiliar, the skin not her own.
“’S it hurt?”
After a deep inhale, she looked away from herself and focused on him. “Only for a couple of days after a laser session. I’m getting them removed. That’s why I’m here.”
“What, they don’t do that up in the big city?”
“The place here does it for free for…people like me. I heard the doctor who runs it talk about it on the radio.” She shook her head. “At first, I couldn’t believe it. I was convinced it was a trap.”
“Joey’s got connections, huh?”
“You have no idea.”
After a brief hesitation, Ivan kissed her again, this time on the tip of her shoulder. She turned to watch his lips against her shame.
Not my shame, my life. My experience. Me.The affirmation was overwhelming, almost painful in its clarity: she owned these lines. Every one of them. She’d suffered for them, would suffer even more. They were hers, just as surely as anything she’d ever done or achieved, only these were greater because she’dsurvived. Like badges of courage, unfamiliar but without the slightest doubt hers. She’d earned them, after all.
Her next breath was clean, easy, the fear gone like a filter taken off, and she couldseeherself.
Above her, Ivan continued his sweet perusal, slow and thorough, and like a tourist in her own life, Uma followed along. He traced the circles around her nipples, then leaned down for the bees’ nest of scribbles on her belly, back up and over to theBinBITCH—the one he’d spelled right. It took a while for Ivan to take the scenic route back to her face, and when he did, there was a change in him too, a smile on his mouth if not in his eyes.
She felt the air he forced into his lungs before he said, “The tats’re kinda badass.”
A joke. He was doing his best to adjust, and he was joking.
Her heart twisted up inside, so hard it hurt.
At her look, he met her gaze and said, “What?” It was a challenge, a show of admiration. “You think I’m kiddin’?Youare a badass.”
With a huff, she looked away, a little embarrassed at the attention or the compliment, and sore from too much emotion.
For several beats, they shared something. Trust, maybe. Understanding. Whatever it was, it hurt. He leaned in, pressed his forehead to hers, and whispered, “I got you, Uma.”
She closed her eyes, swallowed back tears, and nodded, a tiny movement he had to be touching her to have felt.
The mood changed. He broke it again, just like that.
Pasting a grin on his face, he bent to lick a path from beneath her ear to her shoulder and palmed a breast. “The tats,” he said between swipes of his tongue, “arebadass.”
She liked that he wasn’t handling her with care right now, how he knew when to move on. And God, she liked how he weighed her in his hand—not too gently—before his fingers moved inexorably to her nipples and pinched. Only a light pressure, but enough to send a jolt through her.
“You…are…such…a guy,” she managed through a series of gasps. Because, damn it, she didn’t want to be coddled—she wanted the unreserved hunger that shone in his eyes. Maybe just a little of the mean and savage man she’d mistaken him for once upon a time.
“You’re fucking beautiful, Uma.” She still didn’t entirely believe him, but the words felt good anyway. “And this”—his hand skimmed her arm—“this is just history. It’s who you are. Like this.” He touched the scar on his face. She reached up too, and their fingers met where the angry red mark emerged from his hairline.
“How’d you get that?”
He hesitated. When his voice came out, it was tighter, less liquid. “Fight I mentioned.”
“What happened?”
“My sister’s ex and me got into it.”
“Why?”
