Uncontrollable Temptations (Tempted #3)(44)

It took everything inside me to keep my eyes focused on Reina because all I wanted to do was look away shamefully. “I should’ve gotten help sooner. My son is in the ground because I was too proud to go to a doctor, too proud to admit my truth, too proud to bare my scars,” I whispered, watching as the tears rolled down Reina’s cheeks.

“I was diagnosed as manic depressive three months after Jack Jr. died,” I revealed to the blonde beauty staring at me in the mirror, completely bare to me just as I was to her. It didn’t matter she was naked, and I was fully clothed, we were both exposed in the most vulnerable way, revealing our scars to one another.

“I’ve given you my scars, Reina. Now, I’m going to take yours,” I whispered to her reflection in the mirror. “And I want you to watch. I want you to see what I see,” I challenged, before my eyes finally scanned her body, taking in the scars that marked her skin and claiming them as mine, just as I had the rest of her.





Chapter Nineteen




I stared at myself in the mirror, white gauze wrapped tightly around my body. I lifted my arm above my head and reached across my body with my free hand and untucked the start of the gauze nestled just beneath my breast, slowly peeling it away from my skin. I fixed my eyes to my form in the mirror, tears streaming down my face, as my skin became visible, inch by ugly inch. There was no more hiding from myself, this was who I was, who I’d be, these scars would define the rest of my existence. A scream penetrates through me, vibrating off the wall of my bathroom and I recognize it as my own shrill cry as the final piece of gauze falls from my body. I didn’t remember the sensations of the flames as they ate away at my skin, nor did I remember crying out in pain as my skin caught fire but I imagine the agony of it all when I stare at my body.





Jack kneeled before me, his hands falling to my hips as he twisted me toward him. I closed my eyes, tears escaping from the seams. I felt his calloused hand travel from beneath my breast, down my side, wrapping around my hip. I’m sure his touch was gentle but he could’ve dug his nails into my flesh and it would’ve felt the same. I could only feel faint sensations along the grafted skin and most of the time I walked around with the distinct feeling of pins and needles pricking my skin.

“Eyes open, Sunshine,” he murmured.

I willed myself to do as he commanded, to give him this piece of me. To hand over the evidence of what didn’t break me—to the man who could really break me. He could tear me down and ruin me. Jack could do that to me so easily. He could erase these scars with his tenderness, but he had the power to shatter me because it would be so easy to fall in love with this broken man.

My eyes fluttered open and gazed into his.

So easy.

I swallowed the lump in my throat as he closed his palm around my hip, his fingertips gliding over the graft where two shades of skin stretched and blended into one. He bent his head, his lips moving across the skin that was a blatant testimony of how cruel fire could be. He slid his hand higher up my body, faintly grazing the keloid that snaked around my side, pressing his fingers into the skin once assaulted by flames. If the ugliness disgusted him, he hid it quite well. He stared at my scars the same way he stared at the rest of me, like I was an angel sent to chase away the devil.

His lips moved across the scar tissue, his fingers tracing the curves of where it looked like my skin had been stitched together. He peppered kisses under my breast where the skin was still an ugly shade of pink and something inside of me flickered.

The pain faded as beauty took over, the beauty of this man who tried to heal me. With every kiss, every stroke of his fingers he claimed my scars. They’d always be mine but now they were his too.

He lifted his head, his eyes meeting mine as he kept his hand over my hip.

“You see what I see, yet?” He asked softly.

I saw a man on his knees, giving me back my confidence, giving me back all the things I lost in the fire. I saw a man who lived a lot of life in only thirty-eight years. A man who was feared by many and loved by few. I saw a man that tortured himself, tortured by his thoughts and the things he had seen throughout his life. His scars weren’t visible, but they were just as deep. I saw a man I wanted to fix, a man I wanted to make whole again. A man I wanted to claim.

I saw Jack Parrish.

Not the Bulldog.

Not the Jack he let others think he was.

“You’re beautiful, Reina, so fucking beautiful,” he said hoarsely. “And these scars? They might be the most beautiful part of you,” he added, fingers moving over the discolored skin. “They are your colors, your stripes, your patch, and you should wear them proud because you survived.”

He moved to his feet, stood tall as he brushed my hair away from my face and leaned his forehead against mine.

“Thank you for giving me your scars,” he whispered.

“Thank you for taking them,” I replied, my voice barely audible as I raised my hands to his jaw. I held his face, my thumb tracing over his black and white stubble, and pressed my lips to his.

He wrapped his arms around me and his palms cupped my ass, hoisting me against him, my legs wrapping around his waist as he lifted me up.

He pulled his head back and his wild eyes met mine.

“Not going to apologize for what I’m going to do to you,” he promised. “Going to fuck you senseless Sunshine, going to fuck your past away so that all you remember, all you ever feel now is me,” he seethed. “Made you mine with my words, time to make you mine with my body,” he growled.