I wrap my arms around her in a bear hug. “Like you had my cock inside it, last night.”
“Ah. I was wondering what that taste was,” she says before exploding into giggles. “And the other flavour must be from you eating me out for a few hours.”
“Hours,” I scoff. “You didn’t last two minutes.”
“Wasn’t aware it was a competition to see who lasted longest.”
“Thank heavens because I think if it were, you’d be a sore loser.”
She laughs even louder at that, wriggling her arse back and forth. “I am sore but I’m not a loser.”
“How bad is it?” I ask in a more serious tone, craning my neck to peer down at the damage.
“It’s fine.” But she’s still frowning as stares at me. “Am I allowed to look at you this morning or should I avert my eyes?”
My gaze jerks away from hers, staring at the nondescript ceiling instead. “You’re allowed to look, but it’s not pretty.”
“Are you sure?” Her knees draw up so they’re on either side of my waist and she raises herself up, so she sits, straddling me. I jump when she touches her fingertips to a large scar slightly southeast of my collarbone, relaxing as she trails them along my chest and down past my waist. “You look beautiful to me.”
My torso is a mess. No amount of lifting weights or eating fresh fruit and vegetables bursting with antioxidants is going to change the skin mottled by burn marks on my right side, blowback from a Molotov cocktail where the wick got doused in the fuel rather than dangling above it.
No amount of aerobics can alter the stab wound she’s already explored with her fingertips, the gunshot where the scar tissue spreads out on either side courtesy of a deep infection.
A flick knife cut a score of lines across my upper back. The evenly spaced injuries point to their primary purpose as torture. A shiny patch of scarring on my shoulder shows where my first tattoo—the bratva version of a gang insignia—was cut out when I fell into a rival league hands.
Even if I didn’t have the scars from a dozen fights littered across my chest, there’d still be the pock marks from a childhood bout of chickenpox. With no kind parental figure to oversee me, I’d scratched the wounds, then fought a battle with sepsis, each individual skirmish leaving a deep hollow in my skin.
Some scars, I’d covered with tattoos, when they could take the ink. Others were circled with markings, drawing attention rather than shielding from it.
I’m not a vain man but it’s hard to watch as someone flinches and not feel it as rejection. Especially when my early years were stuffed so full of that very thing. I’d spent time in institutions, escaping periodically only to be dragged back to them. Couple after prospective couple would visit to see the proud display of children. Each time they left with a different boy or girl, it cut into my self esteem like a knife.
But there’s nothing on Isabelle’s face that looks cutting. She chews on her lower lip while tracing out my scars with her fingers, like she’s committing them to memory just in case I don’t reveal them to her again.
“Do these tattoos mean anything?” she asks, tapping my wolf right on the tip of his nose.
“They’re the different organisations I worked my way up in,” I say, pointing to the excised one first. “That was my original gang but the second one I joined didn’t approve.”
I tap another one, under my right armpit. A skull entwined with vines, above the phrase, “No past,” in Russian. A matching one on the opposite side reads, “No future.”
“This was a motto that my mentor used all the time.”
She touches it lightly, eyes jumping between the ink and my face. “Was that back home?”
“This is my home, but yes. Back in the place I was born.”
“Is Meri from there, too?”
A shake of his head. “I was adopted by a couple who migrated here. Meri came along a year or two later.”
Her head drops to the side, resting against my chest. “How old were you when she joined your family?”
“Fourteen.”
She raises her head, frowning while she stares into my eyes. “But how about when you were joining gangs and having your tattoos cut out?”
I shrug. “Eight or nine, I guess. It blurs together.”
“You poor thing. No wonder you’re such a wonderful dad to Sophia.”
