“This is nice,” she whispered, breath tickling his chest.
Nice didn’t begin to describe it. Her arms went around his back, then he felt her lips press a kiss to his chest. Then another.
His dick grew half hard at the contact. He gripped the back of her head, tilting her mouth up to meet his. After a long, drawn-out, drugging kiss, he released her. Her eyes had a renewed lust, and he really wanted back inside her, but after the way he went at her earlier, she was probably a little sore.
“The way you kiss…” She shivered. “It takes over my entire body and short-circuits my brain.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Oh yeah. It’s the best.”
Smiling, he tucked her head against his chest and shut his eyes, enjoying the peace and calm. Beth ran her hands over his back, pausing to explore every time she found a random scar. After a few moments, she focused only on the scars. He couldpractically hear the wheels turning in her head. The questions she wanted to ask but wasn’t sure how to voice. The answers were ones he never gave. Those physical scars were the reason he had tattoos. Ink hid the worst. The mental scars, of course, were easier to hide, but far more damaging. His past was the biggest trigger. Even Makenna didn’t broach the topic with him, and she’d lived through it. Well, they’d lived parallel lives during that time, each enduring a unique hell until they finally escaped.
But for the first time in his life, he wanted someone to ask. Wanted her to ask. It was the only way she’d know him, and while his baggage was heavy as fuck, some instinctive part of him understood Beth was strong enough to help him carry it.
“Go ahead,” he whispered when’d she’d fondled a particularly long scar for a while. “Ask.”
She lifted her head from his chest, staring up at him. “From where were you raised? In the… cult. I guess. Is that the right word?”
He nodded. “Yes. It’s what Mak and I use. And yeah. They’re all from that time. Well, I have one on my side from when Gator tried to fuck some dude’s girlfriend, and I stepped in to help him. And another on my shoulder from when Gator was drunk as fuck and accidentally sliced me with his belt buckle.”
She blinked, then laughed. “What? How does that even happen?”
God, that had been an insane night. “It happens when you’re Gator, and you drink a damn bottle of tequila then decide to use your belt as a lasso.”
“Wow. Maybe you should steer clear of him when he’s drinking.”
“Yeah, the other scars don’t have such funny stories.”
Her fierce frown made something in his stomach quiver. It felt like she was furious on his behalf, hating the very idea that someone would hurt him. “Who gave you these? Your father?”
“Some of them. But not most. Mak and I lived very different lives in that compound. Her life’s mission was to get married off to some old fucker who’d keep her knocked up for the rest of her days while he collected a harem of wives. My job was to become a weapon. A good little child soldier ready for the end of the world or an attack on our compound, whichever came first. My entire life was spent on manual labor, prepping for the coming apocalypse, farming the fields, and training to fight whatever threat cameour way, real or perceived.”
He said it in a manner one would if they were reading from a boring book—flat, monotone, detached. In reality, he felt anything but those emotions. They were the mask he’d constructed over his entire life. Thinking about that time brought a galloping heart, nausea, and horrific memories. Speaking about it made his skin prickle with a burning itch as though thousands of fire ants went to town on his flesh.
As though sensing his mounting distress, Beth ran her fingers over his back in random soothing patterns. “I’m sorry you lived that life. No child should ever live that way.”
Her eyes held no judgment, which he didn’t know how to handle. She should judge him. Anyone would. Hell, she should probably fear him on some level. By the time he was five, he knew twenty ways to kill a grown man. By the time he escaped the cult? Well, he’d been more feral than human, tamed only by the need to protect his siblings.
“It’s still in there,” he said. God, he couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. His chest felt cracked open, exposed. What a perfect example of self-sabotage. Beth would run screaming by the time he finished vomiting his feelings. Any sane woman would. But now that he’d started, the dam broke, and he couldn’t shut his mouth. “Those experiences, they’re always there. They…”
How on earth did he describe this to someone with such a vastly different upbringing?
“They shaped you.”
Yes, but he hated the truth in those words.
“They fucked me up.”
She gave him a sweet smile tinged with sadness. For him? Or because of him?
“Maybe, but you escaped, and you turned yourself into someone amazing. You got all your siblings out. You helped give them a sense of normalcy and a healthy childhood. You have a family, both blood and chosen, who love you. You’re good, Saint, and kind, and…”
“Beth.”
She shook her head as she kissed the underside of his chin, then placed a hand over his mouth. “No. You’re gonna hear me out.”
He growled and nipped her palm, making her giggle.
