Tragic Beauty (Beauty & The Darkness #1)(20)

He guides me down, holding me as a new wave of pain envelopes me with every cut that breeches the water. When I’m fully immersed, he sinks in behind me, making no sign of the pain I know he feels.

He takes the soap in his hands and begins gently washing my back. When his fingers graze the cuts, I whimper, but stay still, relishing in the healing touch. I’ve never been cared for like this. And I wonder if I ever will again.

When he’s finished with my back, he reaches around and begins on my arms, my breasts, my stomach. But while the touch is intimate, it isn’t sexual. He’s washing me with a reverence that makes me feel like the most precious being on earth. His touch runs across a cut on my arm and I flinch. His arms tighten around me. “You’ve got something in there,” he says. “Be still.”

I watch his fingers gently but firmly work at the cut until a tiny thorn emerges. It falls into the water and drifts away. “Better?” he asks.

I nod.

After he’s worked his way over my body, I take the soap from his hand. “Your turn,” I whisper, pulling away and turning myself so I’m between his legs, facing him.

I gasp again at his arms, the gashes more revealed now that the water has soaked much of the blood away. I frown and take his right arm in hand. “This one may need stitches,” I say, running my finger alongside a particularly deep cut along his forearm.

“It’ll heal, hopefully scar.”

I look up. “Why would you want it to scar?”

“So I’ll always have a memory of you.”

I turn away, a tightness settling around my throat.

Quietly, I set to work, washing every nick, every cut. More small thorns appear, along with little pebbles and fragments of dirt and slivers of wood. I move on to his other arm while he never makes a sound, never adjusts his breath. I notice a set of small marks on the inside of his left wrist—a tattoo—and I run my fingers over it. It’s four vertical lines with a line running diagonally through them, with two more vertical lines next to it, for a total of seven marks. I look up, wondering what it means.

He stares at me, his eyes dark, perhaps even sad. “You don’t want to know.”

I look back down and nod, knowing we both have our secrets to keep, then move on from his arms to the rest of his body. I soothe every hurt, caress every part of broken skin. In many ways, this was my doing. I led him down there. I ran knowing he would chase me, and even more certain he would catch me.

When I finish, I look up and meet his stoic gaze. I want to say I’m sorry again, but his eyes stop me. He stands, water cascading off his body as he holds out his hand. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.

He’s hungry again.

I rise and let him guide me out of the tub, where we left our mark on the water—it’s murky and tinged pink.

Once again, I’m swooped up into his arms and he walks us back into the bedroom, water falling off us along the way. The moon has shifted, but there’s still enough light to see his face, to see the desire set deep into his eyes. He lays me down on the bed, watching intently as I wince from the contact of the sheet to my wounds. He grabs a condom from the drawer and with a quick, graceful move, he’s on the bed, crouched over me.

“I know I hurt you before,” he says. “I know you’re hurting now. But I’m still going to hurt you again.”

My breath leaves me and a fever sparks deep within. He studies me for a moment, as though searching for any signs of protest, but I know what he’ll find—nothing but a hunger that matches his own.





CHAPTER NINE





His lips fall to mine for a brief, tender moment, then he dips his head and begins placing kisses along my jaw and down the side of my neck.

“What’s your safe word?” he asks.

“Oscar.”

His kisses drift further down, over my breasts and along my stomach. It’s pleasure, but the slow, drawn out tenderness is a torture in itself. The bed shifts when he moves to between my legs and begins kissing the insides of my thighs, until he finds his way to my center. His tongue makes contact and I gasp. My hips rise, my body shudders, but he holds me down and forces the pleasure on me. He licks and nips, teasing me until I feel close to breaking already. But then a sharp pain makes me cry out. It takes me a moment to realize it’s his teeth. He’s biting me. Biting me in that place.

“Gavin,” I whimper.

“Breathe, baby,” he says against my skin.

His tongue finds me again, followed by the dig of his teeth so hard that tears flood my eyes and spill down my cheeks. It goes on and on, an ebb and flow of pain and pleasure, to such slow extremes it threatens to tear me apart. He feasts on me while he draws out my cries, savoring them like a fine wine, until…

“Oscar.” I sob the word, not wanting to give up, but unable to continue.

But when I see the look in his eyes, the victory his, I know I’ve given him what he wants.

He rises up between my legs and sheaths himself. There’s no need to fight this time. We’ve already waged our battle. We both have the wounds to prove it.

Slowly, he enters me. I’m so wet, he meets no resistance except for the raw tightness of my body. A whimper catches in my throat.

“Don’t keep your pain from me,” he says in my ear, pressing deep inside me.