Billy & The Beast (Ever After, New York #3) - Eli Easton Page 0,31
jogged down the sloped lawn toward the pool, a smile on my face. Like Jack, I was happy to see Aaron enjoying the water, and I wanted to say so, maybe tease him a little.
Only that’s not what happened. When I got close, Jack noticed me and ran toward me. I gave him a cuddle and looked up to see Aaron treading water in the deep end and staring at me. He wasn’t wearing his mask, but the most shocking thing about his face wasn’t the scars on the left side, or his milky eye, but the pale of his drained skin on the right side, and his widened, horrified eyes.
Oh. I belatedly realized that he might not want me to see him like this.
“Uh . . . hey,” I said lamely.
He didn’t reply, just turned and quickly swam to the shallow end. He went up the steps in angry jerks. His bare back was to me, and I could see the scars. They were heavier along his right shoulder and back, ropes of scar tissue. The back of his right thigh and some of his calf was red. The back of his knee—shit, that must have been so painful.
I’d never seen his scars before, and the extent of his injuries took me aback a little. It was one thing to know the scars were there, but it was another to see them. How he must have suffered. My heart ached for him.
He grabbed a large towel from the lounge chair and wrapped it around his shoulders so that it covered most of his body. He started walking toward the stairs that led up to the house, still without acknowledging me.
I couldn’t stand the self-loathing and humiliation pouring off him. I couldn’t let him go like this.
I hurried to catch up and touched his arm through the towel. “Aaron, wait. Sorry if I scared you.”
He froze. Despite the large gray towel he hid under, I could see the breadth of his shoulders and feel how stiffly he held himself. “I’m not scared,” he spat out, without looking at me.
“You know I don’t care about your scars, right? I’m glad you’re swimming. I wish you’d swim with me. I wish I could make you see it doesn’t matter, Aaron. It’s no big deal.”
“This is no big deal?” he said snidely.
He spun around to face me and opened the towel, holding it wide like Dracula’s cape. He wore only swim trunks—no shirt, no mask. His one clear eye burned, challenging me, daring me not to be repulsed.
My breath caught in my throat, and I stared.
The burn scars were all along his left side, along his forehead and cheek, and from his neck to the waist of his trunks and again from his thigh to his lower calf. They were not as bad as I’d imagined. The scary stuff always loses power in the light of day. His face was reddest over his cheek and there was some darker, almost purple, scarring at his forehead, but his skin wasn’t bumpy there. Just red and shiny.
The scars were deepest on his chest and thighs—ropey and bumpy. His right nipple was dissected with white scar tissue. But his stomach was milky white and unmarred. Maybe he’d curled in to protect it.
His body was half and half—like some old sideshow poster. Like Jekyll and Hyde.
But the scars weren’t all I saw. I saw a beautifully-shaped chest that was broad and furry where the skin was unscarred. I saw one dark brown nipple that made my heart skip a beat. I saw a firm bicep and thigh, plump with muscle. I saw a man who was both incredibly handsome and whose imperfections were outward signs of a pain that called to all my instinctive need to comfort.
Was it bad that heat pooled in my belly just looking at him?
My gaze traveled slowly up to his face. It was still Aaron, still Aaron’s face, only it was more of him, the true him. He was no longer hidden from me.
“I think it’s rather dashing,” I said. “You look like a badass.”
“A badass?” He laughed bitterly. “What?”
“You know—those crazy tough characters in movies, like a hardened mercenary, or a warrior type. Kurt Russell in Escape from New York. Stephen Lang in Avatar. Tom Hardy in his mask in Mad Max. They wished they looked as badass as you.”
He dropped his arms and stared at me as if wondering what was wrong with my brain. “You . . . that’s