A startled gasp, more an abrupt sucking of air than any real sound, causes me to spin around, a curse forming under my breath.
Leena’s lush, mahogany hair is tumbled about her shoulders, the gold strands shot through shining in the early morning light creeping into the room. Her hazel eyes are wide and glistening with horror. No sleep clings to them, though her cheeks are still flushed with the warmth and comfort of slumber. It softens her face, even with her pillow soft bow lips parted wide.
“Oh my god,” she hisses, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “Your- your back…” She slaps a hand over her mouth, as her eyes widen further, nearly comically, though there isn’t anything funny about the ruined devastation of my flesh.
I realize I’m clutching a fresh t-shirt in my hands and savagely jerk it over my head. I expect disgust and condemnation in her eyes, and it’s like a sliver lodged in my shredded insides, irritating and wickedly painful, when all I find is muted sorrow shimmering in those depths.
Fuck.If she had to see it, I didn’t want it to be like this.
“It’s nothing,” I grind out hoarsely, whirling to find a pair of jeans from the dresser. I slam into them, before she can take in the rest of the scars that my years of living have painted onto the canvas of my flesh.
Leena’s young. I don’t even know how young, but I can tell that she’s probably no more than twenty-one or twenty-two, from the flawlessness of her skin, the smooth, taut surface without mar or wrinkle. She’s not like other women, though.
Other women would shrink away from the rage in my eyes and the acrid bitterness bubbling just below the surface. Another woman might shrivel up with disgust that her new husband from a forced union, has a body that is so blindingly ugly beneath that sleek façade of clothing, but not her.
Not Leena.
She’s not like other women. I realize that, as she scrambles from the bed and her soft padded steps carry her across the room to me. When I turn, towering over her, raw, fierce power, her breath catches and she seems to shake herself out of whatever trance she’s in. She twists her hands furiously in front of her and when she bites down on her bottom lip, my whole body reacts, my blood surging hot and twisted in my veins.
“I’m sorry,” she breathes, her eyes shining wells. “Just please tell me that you’re… I mean, are you okay?”
I nearly smile, despite how fucked up everything is. “Yeah.” I force gentleness into my tone because I hate the worry in her eyes. Worry forme. A man she doesn’t even know. Her hazel depths, big and liquid and guileless, remind me so much of Abby’s eyes in that moment that it hurts. That sliver twists deep into my gut. “They’re old. Don’t worry about it. Your father and brothers, bastards and pigs that they undoubtedly are, never laid a hand on you.”
It’s a statement, not a question, but she answers me the same. “No.”
“My… well… the people who were supposed to be caring for me, and I use that term fucking lightly, had a different version of how shit was supposed to go down.”
“Where are they now? I’ll ask my brothers… I’ll find them—”
I can’t help it. I laugh, a deep low rumble that starts in my chest and pours out of my throat like water rushing from a fountain. Leena’s mouth twists in a mix of horror and annoyance, because of course, none of this shit is funny.
“I appreciate the thought.” Really, I do.
I’m impressed that she’d turn to the very men who’ve obviously treated her with little to no regard over the years, used her as an object, traded her away like fucking cattle to satisfy their own ends, just to right an ancient wrong. That she’d humble herself and go back to her family. Forme.Me, when her pride has probably never permitted her to ask them for a thing forherin her life.
“They’re old scars.” That might be true. The ones on my back are, at any rate. “They healed up a long time ago, and you’ll be happy to hear I took my own retribution on the bastard who dealt them.”
She opens her mouth, but the low rumble of engines turns into a full on roar that echoes through the neighborhood. Considering it’s a Sunday morning, the rest of the block won’t be happy about being roused from their beds this early in the morning. Though they probably won’t say anything about it, considering who those bikes belong to.
Leena’s eyes widen and her body stiffens. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing.” I hope that much is true. I’m already moving, though, grabbing my leather jacket off the chair and slamming into my boots.
“No, it’s not nothing,” Leena insists, following me from the bedroom, down the hall, all the way to the front door. “It’s not. If it’s my father or my brother, I’ll tell them you were just standing up for me. That they insulted me. That you didn’t like it. I- I can’t- all of this can’t be for nothing just because you punched my brother in his yap, which he deserved, and my father well knows it. Ivan has always had a big trap…”
I silence her with a sharp look. “You’ve done your part in all of this. No one will ask any more of you.”
“But—”
I watch through the glass in the door as Snake and Edge make their way up to the porch. “Go back to the bedroom. Keep Abby from getting worried. I’ll be back soon.”
I don’t give her a chance to argue before I slam out of the front door, leaving her standing there in my wake, cruelly, in a house that isn’t hers. I can’t let myself feel bad about it. This is the reason I never let a woman into my life. Or anyone close to me, period. It changes how your brain processes shit, confuses the hell out of you, and wrecks your loyalties. I’ve spent less than a day with Leena and already her vulnerability, beauty, and naïve innocence makes me feel all sorts of shit I can’t decode or untangle.
Shit I have no business feeling.
I don’t like it. I don’t fucking understand it and there isn’t much in life I haven’t been able to sort through. The key to getting through it, to clawing your way to the top, is always understanding. If you can understand a thing, it’s not a mystery or a puzzle and you can get to the heart of it and exploit it for your own gain.
Instead of focusing on Leena and the strangefeelingsthat I can’t begin to process, I train my gaze on the two black leather clad figures advancing on my porch like a shadow.
