My mouth opened and closed. “He hates me?” I stammered. I hadn’t even thought of it that way. Why would he hate me? He didn’t even know me.
“He hates everyone, including himself,” Gauge said before turning his attention back to his cell and effectively dismissing me.
Beast hated me.
And himself.
I should hate him back for the way he treated me and the way he spoke to Jenna. But the stupid part of me didn’t. All I could think about doing was trying to take away some of his pain. I just didn’t know how to do that.
Chapter Four
~ Beast ~
Every part of my body hurt. With every drag of that damn sponge across my sensitive flesh, I wanted to scream. It was like dragging nails across my skin and slicing them into the muscles. At one point I would have loved being bathed by a hot-as-hell nurse. I would have seduced her and had her bent over my bed within five minutes. But now I was reduced to lashing out angrily at her so I didn’t cry out in pain.
She had swiped over one of the worst scars on my stomach and all I could think about doing was rearing back and slamming my fist into that pretty face of hers. I wanted to see her cry. I wanted to see her trembling in fear, snot and tears colliding down her cheeks as she cowered beneath me. Blood running down her face as she begged for me to stop. I hated that the thought turned me on, but it did.
I’d never in my life been violent to a woman—men, yes, but not a woman. Yet the image of her stripped naked with my handprints over her pale flesh was seducing me and making the violence inside of me grow.
“Unless you want it cut off, I suggest you quit that,” the nurse snapped.
I chuckled darkly and pushed all thoughts of violating the pretty Belle out of my mind. She didn’t need to know that I hadn’t felt a single thing from my cock since I woke up in the hospital over three months ago. Nothing, not even a twitch. I was dead from the waist down.
“You had no place bringing her in here,” I said, staring up at the white ceiling as her hands moved down my thigh.
“She needed to see that not all people were good.”
She spoke matter-of-factly, like I was the epitome of the Devil or some shit. Hell, I guess I was.
“Nice,” I said with a shake of my head.
“She needed to take some of the emotion out of the job so she could get on with it. Every patient can’t be a bleeding heart or the job will kill her.” She dropped the sponge back into the bowl and dried her hands off, her gaze moving over the tender burns that were finally healing on the left side of my body.
I’d been in here months. Some of it awake, and some of it in an induced coma. I was glad for the coma, because if the pain of what I’d woken up to was anything to live by then I wouldn’t have survived that first month if I’d been awake. Pain, so much pain.
“So you brought her to see me,” I chuckled. “Bitch will probably quit after this little encounter. You’re welcome.”
Jenna pulled out the tube of cream for my burns and my body involuntarily shuddered. Fucking hated that cream. Hated new bandages. Hated sponge baths. Hated this place and this room and this damned bed. Jenna’s scowl grew deeper.
“What the fuck did I say now?”
“Her name’s Belle, not bitch, not sweetbutt, and most certainly not your darlin’. Belle. Nurse Belle to you. And getting her to quit was not my intention, not ever.”
I held up my hands and then winced as pain lanced down both arms when the scars and burns and bruises stretched with the too-quick movement. Fuck, that hurt.
“I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not,” I said truthfully.
“I wouldn’t want your apology anyway, Beast.” Jenna removed the cap on the cream. “A man like you doesn’t ever mean his apologies, so what would be the point.”
“True,” I agreed.
I gritted my teeth as she rubbed the cream into the worst burns, the pain making me feel sick. Everything hurt, all the fucking time. But the cream was like a thousand bees stinging me over and over and over and over. Little daggers of death pricking my skin and splitting me in two. Goddamn I hated the cream.
“Almost done,” she said almost kindly, continuing on with her slow torture. “Just the big one to go now.”
Great. Just the really big one that made me want to pull my own teeth out. Just fucking perfect.
I let my mind go elsewhere. To a place better than this where I didn’t constantly hurt. Where my body was tattooed and sculpted to perfection, not shredded by knives and fire. Where my muscles weren’t wasting away in this fucking uncomfortable bed. To a place where grown men feared me and beautiful women adored me. I let my mind go there, ignoring the way my head spun and my stomach clenched with the need to vomit because it hurt so fucking much. I was shivering with the pain of it all and willing myself to not be there.
