protectively over her arm while she watched him through her long fall of hair. She looked feral, half crouched in a defensive stance while she eyed his every move warily.
“Why?” The word floated between them, soft and light as butterfly wings.
“It’s patterned, isn’t it?”
“It’s ugly.”
“Nothing about you is ugly.” The hoarse vehemence in his voice startled him, and he took a moment to compose himself before continuing. “Absolutely nothing.”
She never took her eyes from his face but she did stand up straighter; some of that familiar pride returning to her posture. She hesitated for a moment longer before lifting her chin and defiantly thrusting her arm out for him to see.
This time he was the one who wavered, before ever so slowly reaching out to tenderly grasp her slender wrist. He turned her arm until the delicate underside was exposed to him and then valiantly fought back a surge of fury so fucking hot it actually blinded him for a second.
The small round burns were pink and shiny—obviously quite old by now—and neatly arranged in a circle.
Inside the circle—
Miles blinked back the scalding moisture that pooled in his eyes and gritted his teeth against the snarl he could feel forming in his throat. Monster was too kind a word for the thing who had done this to her. There were no adjectives to describe anyone who could mark, demean and hurt another human being in this way.
He traced the obscene pattern with his trembling forefinger.
He hated knowing how much she must have cried and writhed and pleaded, while this less than human cocksucker had burned a crude smiley face into her skin.
He lifted her arm and unthinkingly kissed the scars there. He didn’t know how to deal with this, and he was absolutely certain that a man like him…irascible, blunt, and lacking in finesse would do more harm than good in a situation like this.
“I’m glad he’s dead.” His voice trembled with suppressed violence. “But part of me wishes he were still alive so that I could hunt him down and end him for doing this to you. For hurting you.”
He kept his gaze diverted, even though he could feel her keen stare on his profile.
“Don’t you want to know why he did it?” she asked in the smallest of voices, and the question succeeded in whipping his head around so that he could meet her eyes incredulously.
“Why? It doesn’t matter why he did it. Nothing you said or did could in any way justify this-this…atrocity.”
“H-he said I didn’t smile enough, that his parishioners would start to wonder why he had taken such a miserable bitch as a wife. So, he gave me a little reminder to k-keep smiling.”
Now you’ll always remember to smile, won’t you, Cherry?
Charity gritted her teeth against the memory of Blaine’s refined voice. How he had enjoyed hurting her like that. He had straddled her chest and pinned her arm down, using his superior strength to keep her helpless and subdued. She had barely registered the agonizing pain, shock and adrenaline shielding her from the worst of it. But seeing it afterward; she shuddered at the recollection. In a marriage filled with degradation after degradation, somehow, this had felt like the worst of it. This brand had been exactly what he had wanted it to be. A mark of complete and utter ownership.
It had obliterated the last remnants of the old, carefree Charity. After that she had been Blaine’s creature. Humiliated and terrified of doing or saying the wrong thing. Of setting him off. Because his loss of temper and control had always been her fault. For so long, she had truly believed that. And his parents—his mother—had perpetuated that lie.
Blaine’s a good, kind man. You bring out the worst in him. Maybe if you’d stop making him so angry, Charity. If you were more aware of his needs.
“Hey,” Miles’s assertive voice forced its way into the unwelcome recollections, drowning out her former mother-in-law’s pseudo-sympathetic advice. His touch was gentle as he cupped her jaw and lifted her face until she met his eyes. “There you are. Don’t go back to that dark place, Charity. Okay?”
“You’re still naked.” It was the first thing she could think of to say, and he smiled. Not one of the warm, generous smiles she was borderline addicted to, but a polite parting of his lips.
She didn’t like it, but she appreciated the effort.
“And you’re still topless,” he pointed out.
She gasped and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Why don’t you grab