“Targen,” she whispered.
“I got you.”
She nodded once, like that was enough.
In the bathroom, steam curled around the mirror. I lowered her into the tub slowly, keeping a hand behind her back until she settled in. Her breath caught when the warm water touched her thighs.
“Too hot?” I asked.
“No.”
Her voice was soft the way that I loved. Yeah, I loved her smart-mouthed and sparring with me. But this? Soft and open and trusting? I adored that shit.
I sat on the marble bench beside the tub and watched her for a moment. Her knees were bent as her head rested back. Faint marks from my mouth had appeared on her honeyed skin. Satisfaction spread through me at the sight.
She moved slowly, rubbed a spot on her thigh that made my eyes drop lower. She’d disturbed the water and bubbles and for a moment, I could see them.
Her scars.
The anger came the same way it always did when I saw them. What had happened to her was something I’d never fully comprehend. I understood that there were men who hurt others because they enjoyed it. There were men who hurt others because they were paid. There were men who hurt others because it was for business or family or survival.
Then there were men like Chauncey. Men who needed to make women small, so they felt big. I wanted to make sure he felt like that. See, dead was too easy. Dead would give him peace. I wanted him to have terror.
Theory’s eyes opened, and I knew I had let too much show on my face.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
I looked at her. “Don’t what?”
“Please don’t go wherever you just went.”
I dipped the washcloth in the water and wrung it out. “Damn,milaya, I put it on you like that? I’m right here,” I evaded, pretending not to understand.
“No, you not,” she insisted. “Your face changed. Like you went somewhere that could take you where I couldn’t reach you… again.”
She was too tired to hide the fear in the words, on her pretty face, in her warm eyes.
“That will never happen… again,” I promised her.
For long moments, she just looked at me. Then she nodded like she believed me.
I washed her shoulder slowly. “I hate what he did to you.”
“I know.”
“I hate that your body had to heal from him.”
“I know.”
“I hate that sometimes I touch you and have to think about how not to touch because of him.”
“Targen—”
“That’s why when we… when things happen like tonight… I want it clear that I’m not just another man who taking something from you.”
She sat up a little. “You’re not. I don’t feel like that about you at all!”
I glanced at her face. “You sure about that right now?”
