Food came and went. I barely touched it. I should have felt hunger, but there was only this giant, numb hole where any feeling was supposed to be.
Time went by in a sluggish stream. It could have been hours. It could have been days.
I hardly moved, and when I did, it was in a trance. Mostly, I just lay on the bed.
Until a deep voice murmured in my ear, “Enough.”
Strong arms slid under me, lifted me up against a hard chest. Warmth and dark power enveloped me, the scent of leather, fire, and spice filling my nose. Azazel.
He carried me out of the room, into a space of humid heat and fragrant aroma. My feet touched marble tile when he set me down. I blinked, with little interest, at my surroundings.
Steam rose from the water filling the basin in my bathroom. Only a few candles burned in the holders on the walls, casting the space in intimate, low lighting.
Azazel grasped the seam of my tank top. “Arms up,” he said with calm command.
I obeyed, and he pulled the top off me. My bra followed. His fingers went to the button on my jeans, popped it open and pulled down the zipper. Going to one knee in front of me, he shoved my pants and underwear down and helped me step out of them.
The fragrant, steamy air curled around me as I watched him strip his own clothes off with practical efficiency. Scooping me up again, he took the stairs into the basin.
I gasped when the hot water closed around me. The first real sensation in what seemed like a surreal eternity.
He sat down and pulled me into the space between his legs on the bench in the tub, my back to his front. Water trickled over my head as he began washing my hair, ever so gently, the press of his fingers on my scalp and the soft tug on my strands a soothing melody of touch and care.
I didn’t realize I was crying until he tilted my face to the side, kissing tears off my cheeks.
“Tell me.” His voice was an intimate, coaxing murmur in the cocoon of humid heat around us. He laid his hand over my heart, pressed down a little. “There’s too much in here. It’s choking you.” He rubbed over that aching beat of my heart, then brought his hand up to stroke over my throat. “So tell me.”
I inhaled on a shudder. “I didn’t think it would hurt this much,” I said haltingly, as if I only realized what I wanted, needed to say in the very moment when the words left my mouth. Which was true. Speaking it out loud gave form to the chaos.
“I thought I was numb,” I said as he continued to wash my hair. “But there’s so much pain.” My breath hitched. What I had taken for lack of feeling was in reality an overload of it, so much so that I couldn’t handle it.
“After my mom confronted him,” I went on, a decade of hurt unraveling before my inner eye, “he just left us. He didn’t fight for us, he simply dropped us like an unwanted burden he was finally rid of. I waited—” My voice broke. “I waited for him to call me, to visit, to ask me to come over. He never did.” I swallowed hard. “Not until years later. And I—” Shaking my head, I caught my breath. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t let him back into my life. It was too late, you know? I adored him. Before he left, he was my hero, and I was his princess. And he turned his back on me when it truly counted and abandoned me for years. He chose his other family, his other daughters over me.”
Old hurt mingled with fresh anguish, turning my breathing choppy.
Azazel’s hand on my nape, massaging me with sure, unwavering support.
I found more words to untangle my pain. “When he tried to get in touch again years later, I was so bitter, so angry. I shut him out. And it felt good, at first. Like fair turnabout, you know? Show him what it feels like to be ignored. I imagined it hurt him, and it gave me this sense of retribution.” I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. “And of control.”
“You rejected him before he could reject you,” Azazel said, running his fingers through my wet hair, untangling the strands. “Again.”
“Yes.” I sucked in a breath, the humid, aromatic air