Unleashing Sin - A. M. Wilson Page 0,13

me. Nod your head. Tell me you’re listening.”

Her head bobs, and she whimpers.

“Your knees are done, but I’ve gotta get these shards out of your ass. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

She whimpers louder but otherwise doesn’t acknowledge what I said.

“Never violate you. Not into that. I’m just gonna clean you up. You hear me?”

Nothing.

I start to lose my temper. “You got a mouth on you, don’t you? Answer me.”

“Y-yes,” she whispers, her voice trembling as hard as her hands.

There’s no time to waste before she launches back into la-la land, so I work quickly. I lift the hem of the tee and clench my teeth. A breath of air puffs out of my chest before I can remember how to exhale properly. The tips of my fingers curl tighter into the cotton fabric while I try to contain myself.

Hundreds of thin, shallow lines cover every inch of her bare skin from her lower back to the middle of her thighs. Every direction and varying lengths as though she was beat repeatedly with some thin reed or sliced into methodically.

My gut constricts, and I choke back the bile rushing up my throat. I tell myself it’s from the weekend bender. Those three days of drinking and snorting coke with no food are making me sick. I tell myself that because if I admit the truth, I’d admit there’s a bit of decency left in me after all.

“I know how ugly I am.” Her soft whisper pulls me back to this house, this bathroom, this minute. It takes a second for the words to register, and she takes my silence as assent.

Her small hands try to brush me away. “Just leave it. I can get the rest myself.”

“There’s nothing ugly about the scars inflicted on us by others. What’s ugly is letting them sink down deep enough that it starts to come out of your eyes and your mouth. You can’t let what someone else did to you affect the way you see yourself. Speak about yourself. You can’t let it.” The small fire I see inside her captures my interest and pulls the words out before I can stop them.

She peeks over her shoulder at me. “You really believe that?”

I grunt in response. “I’m goin’ to get to work here. It’ll be quick. Hold still.”

The silence lasts for only a beat before her soft voice fills the small space. “I haven’t seen you around much since I woke up. I’ve spent a lot of time with Elias. He’s been really nice.”

Plink. Plink.

“Um…and I just want to say that…that I’m sorry for intruding on you like this.”

Plink.

“And I’ll, uh, get out of here as soon as I can. A couple of days tops.”

“No.”

The muscles of her legs tighten as she goes rigid. “What?” she breathes.

“You got family?” I ask while staying focused on my task.

“I, no. Not anymore.”

“You got a place to go? A job? Money?”

“I can take care of myself. I’ll find a job.” Her voice cracks on the last word.

“Yeah? You think you can just waltz into some business wearing one of Elias’s tees like a dress and someone will hire you with no background and no work history besides the fact you were recently a prostitute?”

The girl sucks in a sharp breath that I feel all the way in my gut. Fucking Christ.

“How did you know that?”

“None of your damn business how I know. Point is, you’ll stay put until we can figure out what to do with you.”

The last piece of glass comes free, which means I can stop staring at her damn ass and pretending I’m unaffected. Which I’m not. The scars are prominent, sure, but they don’t detract from the beauty in front of my face that I wouldn’t mind sinking my teeth into. Fuck, I’m a sick bastard.

After carefully applying some ointment, I tape the cuts with a large piece of gauze and some medical tape.

“Turn around,” I command gruffly.

The girl does, and I snatch her small wrist and go to work on her hands. To her, my focus is on the shards in her palms. That’s because I don’t want her to see how angry her bony wrists make me.

“It seems you know more about me than I do.”

I don’t bother with a response to that total baited bullshit.

“I don’t even know my own name.”

The tweezers slip and sink into the fleshy part of her palm, but she doesn’t even flinch.

“The, ah, place I was at, they called me Chloe. Wouldn’t let me use