No one had ever looked at his scars without flinching. He couldn’t bear the thought of her pity or disgust. Even the doctors—the expensive private practitioners who took his money and asked no questions—eventually averted their eyes.
But she had looked.
In the bathroom. In the mirror. Her gaze had traced the ruins of his back, and she hadn’t flinched. She saw him. Read him like a story she couldn’t quite translate.
Never before had he wanted someone to figure him out. To find his secrets, feel his pain, and know.
But why her? What made her so different? So unique?
There was an unspoiled innocence to her. A goodness that hadn’t yet hardened. A virgin. And that was how she was going to leave.
As he stared at the rows of finely tailored options before him, he thought back to her essay.
It would be a luxury if, for just one day, I could breathe air that doesn’t smell of hunger.
He knew that air. Had choked on it for years. The stench still coated his core memories. Some days, he could still taste it.
It was a lingering flavor of rot that contoured him into the man he was today. And it spoke to him on a deep level that she might be sewn from the same tattered thread.
He snatched a clean dress shirt from the rack and paused, looking back at his blood-spattered collar. No part of Hadrian Welles belonged here.
He changed quickly, forgoing the jacket and waistcoat. He stowed his gun in the safe, grabbed another shirt for her, and left the dressing room, rounding the corner of the alcove and?—
Every resolution crumbled to dust.
Perched on the edge of the bed now, legs dangling over the side, his ridiculous black socks bunching below her knees, she sat with ruined shirt open—buttons undone, fabric parted—exposing the pale valley of skin between her breasts.
His gaze slid down her throat, where a purple bruise started to form. His stare caressed the gentle slope of her breasts, the concave indent of her waist, falling softly into that golden nest of curls.
She wasn’t looking at him. But she knew he was there. Knew he saw her.
The shirt slid off her arms, falling down her back to the bed.
Jack swallowed, unable to move, forgetting how to breathe.
The clean shirt slipped from his fingers.
Blood in his ears in a deafening roar. His pulse thundered as his breath left his soul.
Tangles of wild blonde framed her face in a halo of chaos and survival. Firelight painted her skin in amber and gold. Freckles scattered across her shoulders like cinnamon sprinkled on cream.
Violence mapped across her beauty, trespassing in ways that filled him with such rage he wanted to punish whoever dared to mar her. This was his doing. His crime. Bruises marbled her ivory skin in faint watercolor stains. Scratches slashed her collarbone, her shoulders, and face in thin lines of red.
She was a work of art. Small, perfect breasts, pale as cream, tipped with nipples pink as dawn. A calm breeze traveled from the window, and her delicate flesh tightened in the cool air.
She lifted her arm to cover herself?—
“Don’t.” The word ripped out of him, low and rough, tearing something loose inside his chest.
Her arm froze halfway to her breasts, and her lashes lifted with a sharp flick as she finally met his gaze. If she was afraid, it didn’t show. She lifted her chin in challenge, now refusing to hide her body in shame.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
She lowered her arm.
Blood surged to his cock with vicious urgency. The ache of such raw wanting was so desperate it bordered on pain.
