Chapter Twenty-three
Wide eyes watch me as I slide the belt through the loops on my pants and then undo the button, my cock aching and leaking precum into the front of my boxers. There’s so much I want to do, so much to learn but I need to slow down. There is time.
We have time.
I unbutton my shirt halfway and then rip it over my head, dropping it to the floor. Her eyes devour me, scanning every part of my torso on show for her.
“You have so many scars,” She whispers.
My hands freeze before I can strip out of my pants.
She looks at each one, the silver raised lines causedby anger and abuse, the reminders of a past I can never truly escape. The horror may be over, but the nightmares remain.
Not when I am with her though, they cease to exist when she is beside me.
She sits up, trying to get closer, “Lay down Savannah.”
“What are they from?”
From years of being weak. From years of letting people down.
“It isn’t important,” My tone is sharp, a slap that visibly makes her flinch.
Arms fold around herself as she lifts her eyes to mine, looking up at me from beneath her lashes.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you,” She says quietly.
My shoulders soften and a sigh leaves me. Leaving my pants in place, I rejoin her on the mattress, grasping one of her wrists to bring her hand away from her body. She’s stiff at first but allows me to pull it and bring it to the scar on my left side, about halfway down my ribcage, “This one,” I tell her, “My father smashed a bottle and threw it at me. I managed to get out of the way, but it still caught me just here.”
The tips of her fingers trace the jagged line of the scar, “Your father?”
“This one,” I move her to the series of small roundscars next to my naval, “He used me as an ashtray to stub out his cigarettes.”
She gasps, “Killian–”
“Here,” I move her hand to my hip, to the largest scar on my torso, “He kicked me repeatedly. So hard and so often he ripped my skin apart.”
Her hand has started to tremble trapped in mine.
“And here,” I move her hand to the round scar on my shoulder, “He carved out his initial with a switch blade. And I carved it right out.”
The same switch blade I carry around with me.
She doesn’t speak, doesn’t move save for the quaking of her body, “And when I no longer screamed, he turned his attention…” I cut myself off from saying Dean’s name, “Elsewhere.”
There are more scars littering my body, some from my life in the organization, bullet grazes and knife slashes that are hardly worth mentioning but I always remember which ones were caused by my father’s hand.
I lift my eyes to Savannah’s face, see the tears tracking down her cheeks, her wide, glazed eyes full of tears for me.
“Don’t cry for me, Savannah.”
I roll my thumb across her cheek and capture her sadness, but still they fall. But then she moves, quicker than I can counter and straddles my lap, her hands onmy shoulders, attempting to push me down. I could fight her, push her off and have her beneath me in a second but instead I let her think she is winning. My spine hits the mattress while her legs stretch over my hips, her pussy pressing down on my hard cock.
She’s still crying though, her sorrow for me written all over her face. I want to wash it away, tell her that they’re what I deserve. If I gave my father what he wanted, Dean wouldn’t be suffering the same.
But I don’t say that. Instead, I selfishly take her empathy, the warmth of it a tonic to a poison that’s been in my system too long. Her fingers run over the scars as a warm tear lands on my abs and then she leans down and kisses each of them. Tenderly, like I am something to be worshipped. Her lips are warm and pillowy, the whisper of a butterfly wing against my skin.
“You didn’t deserve that,” She sniffles.
