immediately running across my scalp and down my inked muscles, bringing me back to the present and soothing me back into focus.
“Are you okay?” Her soft lilt sent my heart stumbling a few beats. I wasn’t used to a woman’s concern, or anyone’s, for that matter. It made me feel special for the first time in too long.
“Better now.” She looked up at me, wide, innocent doe eyes, and my mind eased a little. The anxiety of the past fell away and I was suddenly focused on the beautiful woman in front of me. Keeping her happy, that was my only focus now.
Happy. It was a novel idea. I felt it in her warm eyes and her soft smile. She was mine; on some level, maybe I hoped she was sent here to thaw my cold heart. I just had to be the man she deserved.
“Will you tell me about the scars, for real this time?” catching me off guard as her fingertips whispered across the angry slashes on my knuckles.
Her dainty fingertips ran over the hate and pain tattoos.
My eyes flickered away as my thoughts were pulled back into the past, to a time I’d spent years trying to forget. “I’d rather think about only you tonight.”
“I’d rather get to know you,” she replied easily, like someone without a secret to hide.
“Someone hurt me a long time ago and I swore I’d never be the weak one again.” My fists tightened at her shoulders before I recognized that I might be hurting her and I released, clenching them instead at my sides. I swallowed the heavy feeling in my throat, thinking that at some point I’d have to tell her everything. No way was that time now, not when I had to worry about her.
She was suddenly in my space again, her arms wrapping around my naked torso. Oddly, the feeling of her was the only thing keeping me in control. My body seemed to rage like a wild animal in her presence, while for the first time in so long, my mind seemed to quiet. It was peacefully quiet. I found being around her was like inhaling fresh air for the first time. She kept the anger at bay.
Sort of.
“That’s why I don’t do people. I’m one of those people that’s better off alone. Hard to feel taken advantage of by a dog,” I mumbled, thinking I had to add something to help her understand, without sharing too much, too soon, and scaring her, or worse.
“Right. Your pound puppy best friends.” She traced a fingertip along the arch of my eyebrow. “You’re so innocent down deep, Sinclair. I can see it in your eyes.”
I shook my head, adamant that she was wrong. “Wrong. I’ll prove it to you, ask me anything.”
“Fine.” She smirked adorably. “Favorite color?”
“Black.”
She frowned. “You don’t say. Okay, bad question. Favorite female heroine in a classic novel?”
I paused, not expecting that question. I swirled a finger around the naked tip of her pert breast. “Joan of Arc.”
She burst into a giggle. “Joan of Arc?”
I shrugged. “She went into battle and slayed real monsters, not fictional ones. She confronted the beast and when the beast bit back she didn’t back down. Who needs fictional heroines when there are real life ones running around on earth every day?”
She smiled thoughtfully, snuggling into the crook of my arm before sighing softly. “I haven’t seen any heroes running around Black Mountain Academy lately.”
I threaded my fingers in her hair and placed a kiss on her head as she yawned. “I’ve got my eye on one. Now go to sleep, and dream of how sweet it will be when I kiss you awake in the morning, little mouse.”
Chapter 23
“I have little left in myself -- I must have you. The world may laugh -- may call me absurd, selfish -- but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Maddy
“Stop!” Kyler shouted in his sleep.
My eyes shot open and panic held me hostage in place. The darkness in the room hushed around us like an impenetrable blanket. I tried to adjust my eyes to the light, searching for Kyler.
“I don’t want any more candy. I want to go home.”
I turned and looked at Kyler fast asleep, but his body thrashing on the bed, the sheets twisting in unrecognizable patterns around his legs. I turned on the side table lamp, the dim light