Cloves and cardamom.
“I did it because I’min lovewith you. I love you so much it’s fucking destroying me, Shemhazai. I would do anything for you. Even hurt you if I thought it was what’s best for you.”
His eyes filled with tears, and I gently kissed his mouth again, curling my fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck.
“She told me you were in love with me. Why is she always right?” He sighed, and I laughed softly, knowing he was talking about Hecate.
“Must be a witch thing.”
He nodded, resting his head against mine and closing his eyes.
He took a deep, shaky breath, and I tensed, waiting to hear whatever it was he needed to say.
“I want to… show you. What he did to me.”
“Good. I want to see.”
He pulled away slightly, and he searched my eyes. He looked so young and vulnerable at that moment, and I just wanted to tuck him into my chest cavity and keep him safe forever.
“I’m afraid if you see, you’ll think I’m disgusting,” he whispered, and the fact that he meant those words shook me to my core.
The earth tilted beneath my feet as I realized he really thought I could possibly look at his pain and think it made him anything less thanstrongfor surviving it.
“I could never think that, baby. That’s impossible,” I promised, and his lip trembled, but he nodded before silently dropping his hands to his belt.
His fingers shook as he fumbled with the buckle, and after he swore twice, I took over.
“May I?” I asked gently, and he allowed his hands to fall to his sides.
“Yeah. Can you… Can you make sure he can’t see?”
A lump grew in my throat at how afraid he was of that monster seeing his scars.
My wings bloomed from my back, and I curled them around us, cradling him in my soft feathers so that we could exist in a private world of my own making.
Carefully, I undid his belt and got to my knees before him, arching my wings up as I lowered to ensure he remained covered.
“I’m going to take them off, okay?” I asked, looking up at him.
He was staring at me, and he swallowed so hard I could hear it before finally nodding.
“Yeah. Okay.”
I kissed his stomach over his shirt, then curled my fingers into the waistband of both his slacks and his boxers before slowly tugging them down his legs.
He tensed up as I slid his pants down, and I forced myself not to react as inch after inch of scarred flesh was revealed to me.
Every piece of beautiful, tawny skin—from his hips down—was covered in horrible burns. Knowing that each of these had been builtup over time, drop by drop, cracked my chest open and shredded my still-beating heart.
“I told you it’s… a lot,” he whispered as I let out a choking sound that I couldn’t seem to contain.
I shook my head, not ready to speak, as I continued to lower his pants to his ankles. The scars carried on all the way down his shins, and my gentle fingers confirmed the backs of his legs were marked as well.
“Do you think… Do you think I’m?—”
“No!”I snarled, looking up at him so he could see how much I meant it. “No, Shemhazai. You’re not disgusting. This is just another part of you for me to love,” I said, and I laid a gentle kiss on his thigh, running my lips over the bumpy, scarred flesh to prove to him that I meant it.
“You’re perfect, baby,” I whispered, kissing him again and again. I moved from one leg to the other, kissing him and loving him until he was quivering in my arms.
