His eyes snapped back to me. "Was he in here?"
"Yes."
"Did he see you like this?"
A chill slithered down my spine at this tone. "I called him when…earlier. He just wanted to make sure we were both okay."
A heartbeat passed. Then another. "And are you?"
I thought I heard the slightest thread of concern. "Yes." I gave him a small smile.
Instead of returning it, he brushed his lips against mine. It was then that I realized I'd never seen him smile. Ever.
Rolling off me, he sat up, keeping one hand on my leg. The scars on his back were longer than the ones on his front. Thicker. Like marks I'd seen on old photographs of people who were whipped.
"Do you remember what happened tonight? With us?" I clarified.
He glanced over his shoulder at me. His hair was messed up from my fingers, but he was nonetheless still imposing. "Yes." He turned his face away, dropping his chin and tilting his head side to side to stretch the muscles in his neck.
I sat up. There was dried blood all over my chest and stomach. Some had even smeared on my hips and the tops of my thighs. I looked like a horror movie.
"Do I disgust you, Luna?"
The question was so quiet I almost didn't hear him. "No," I told him honestly. He didn't disgust me, physically or otherwise. He scared me sometimes, but not as much anymore. Cautiously, I placed my hand on his back. He stiffened, but only slightly this time, before he relaxed again. I traced one of his scars with my fingertip.
"I don't want your pity."
I stared at his handsome profile. "There's a difference between pity and commiseration. Or comfort." I did feel sorry for him, and there was nothing wrong with that. It meant I was a compassionate human being, not that he was weak. If anything, the trials he'd gone through—and still went through—only made him stronger in my eyes. Most people, me included, wouldn't have survived the horrors he had.
But I didn't say any of that. Not now. One day, maybe.
I was startled to think we'd have a "one day" sometime in the future. The notion that I envisioned there still being an "us" months or years from now caught me off guard. When had I started thinking of him as anything other than my stalker?
"What is it?"
"Hmm?" I blinked away the thought. "Oh, nothing. Just thinking I need a shower."
He made a sound of agreement and rose to his feet, drawing me up with him. Finding his pants, he pulled them on as I wrapped the blanket around myself. "The key is in the door," I told him when I saw him looking around. His chest and stomach looked like he'd been in a knife fight, which, I suppose, in a way he had. It had to hurt, but he didn't seem affected at all. He still moved with the same smooth grace he always had.
I stayed where I was as he gathered up his shirt and opened the cell door. His eyes had flickered over the knife on the floor, but he'd left it where it was. "Come on," he told me. "Get some clothes. We'll move your things later."
Move my things? Did that mean he was letting me out of this fucking cell for good? Why? I wanted to ask him what he meant by that. Was he letting me go? But…
I didn't want to leave.
That truth shook me so much I couldn't bring myself to ask him anything. I was afraid to. Afraid I wouldn't like his answers.
We showered in his bathroom. He washed my long hair and scrubbed his blood from my body in silence. Then he washed every inch of me. I didn't push him to talk, or to accept more of my touch. It was enough that he didn't have me handcuffed.
I couldn't take my eyes from him as he washed himself, the water running in rivulets through his scars. Beneath them, his body, though not bulky, was hard and muscular and perfectly formed. As my gaze traveled down his abs to the "V" at his hips and the tuft of dark, curly hair there, his cock thickened.
"Stop looking at me like that, or Enzo will be waiting a very long time."
I smiled. Would that be a bad thing? When I looked up, he was watching me with a strange expression on his face.
"You should let me bandage those," I told him as he rinsed his hair, indicating the self-mutilations on his chest and stomach. "Doesn't it hurt?" A few of the cuts had started bleeding again with the water and his movements.
He didn't even glance down. "Yes."
