all out of this safe. Keep her alive man, keep her away from your fucking dad. Last thing that girl needs is to end up with Grimm’s target on her back.”
He levels a stone cold look at me. “You think I don’t know? I live with the man, I know all about his list of fucking sins. It’s long and fucking deranged.”
Chapter Fourteen
Odie
Mon Monstre has been home from his day trip for a full week before I finally break down. My work on the paintings is slowly eroding all of my strength, one by one as the faces appear, until I reach the worst of the men. Painting Alcatron is like standing on the surface of the sun, impossible and incinerating.
Illi leaves for the night with a piece of toast in one hand and his keys in the other, kissing me hot and hard over the kitchen sink as I wash up.
He arrives home twelve hours later to me sobbing.
I can't stop the sounds tearing out of my lips, the agony and pain clawing at me. Painting Alcatron is like standing in the rain only to find the droplets are made of acid, eating away at your flesh and leaving you stripped to the bone.
I thought it would be like the others, a healing experience but instead I feel like that dirty, broken, terrified girl. The one Illi had found and brought back here. The one who didn't know that the sun could shine again. I feel worthless.
"No more fucking painting."
I hear him snap but I can't react, I can't lift my head up from the floor. I can't think about anything but the filth on my skin.
"We're taking a fucking day off from this shit. No more facing demons."
He tries to touch me but I roll away from him. I don't want him getting dirty too. Then, he really snaps.
"Don't for one fucking second think you're going back into yourself, Odette. We've walked through fire to get you good again, we're not dragging our asses back to hell for a fucking painting."
The sobbing gets worse.
It's not a painting, it's the inside of me. The parts he can't see because the packaging it comes in is too pretty to see past. Every stroke of the brush is what's going on under my skin.
How can he not see that?
I try to move away from him but he's too fast, too angry, too done with all of this bullshit of mine to let me. Instead, he scoops me up into his arms and stomps back to our bedroom. He's still dressed for war, his boots covered in mud and blood that he's now tracking through the house.
When I point this out to him, my voice drenched in tears and pain, he snaps, "I couldn't take the time to get them off my fucking feet while you were rolling around on the ground screaming, could I?"
I didn't know I was making any noise.
He sits me on the counter in the bathroom and then bends down to unlace the boots. The sobs are still bursting out of my throat but I've numbed out a bit. The pain now back down to the subtle ache and not the clawing sharpness of talons in my gut.
"I'm sorry."
His eyes meet mine and he grits out through clenched teeth, "Don't fucking apologize to me, Odie. Not now and not ever."
He strips down, slowly revealing every inch of his hard body to me, the blood and gore streaked over him a sign of a busy day at the office for him.
A giggle bursts through the sobs.
"I'm glad my dick is so funny to you, baby girl." Illi drawls as he steps into the shower, his eyes still on me as he begins to soap down and wash away the evidence of his night.
I shake my head at him. "Maybe I am broken, mon Monstre. Maybe I'll never be fully healed again. I'm laughing at the deaths you're responsible for tonight. Normal people don't feel that way."
He scrubs a hand through his hair, the piercings in his nipples flashing as his pecs flex. My mouth waters a little as my pussy clenches. At least my breakdown hasn't ruined my appetite for him.
"No one is normal, baby girl. Everyone has skeletons in their closets. Everyone has deep secret needs, things they don't talk about at the dinner table. Everyone craves a little blood when you push the right buttons. I don't give a fuck if you're normal. I just want you