Brutally Beautiful(92)

I watched her. For hours, I just lay and watched her.

I watched as the first rays of glistening sunlight fell against her skin, soaking it with a golden morning glow. Her inky black hair splayed chaotically across my pillows, her breathing light and even. She lay on her stomach, as the sun and shadows danced their way across the curves of her flesh, unknowing. She laid bare, save for the thick comforter she’d tucked her toes under in her slumber.

She shifted onto her back and a small sound, almost a sigh, passed her lips. Watching the light spill into the room, crawling up her skin, my cocked twitched to life. Hardened rose tipped nipples lay perfect atop her ivory breasts. Her raw beauty paralyzed me.

I watched her.

My tongue found its way to the perfect peaks, and she moaned quietly against me; so close to her smooth skin. Then, with the sunlight slowly brightening up the room, I noticed things I hadn’t seen the night before.

Torrid heat flushed through my body, stinging my cheeks and burning my scalp as adrenaline slammed through my bloodstream. Violent images flipped through my mind, a flash slide show of horror and blood, and Sam.

“What the f*ck is that?” I growled before I could stop myself.

“Kade?” she asked in a sleepy voice. She lifted her head off the pillows, wild dark hair spilling past her shoulders, and sat up, tucking her feet underneath her. “Kade? Is something wrong? Is it…is it Dylan?”

Fuck yeah there was something wrong. She had scars across her body; raised f*cking ridges of flesh, a pale pink shade that matched the natural color of her lips. Yeah, there was something real f*cking wrong, because some of those scars spelled out f*cking words. It was a f*cking name.

David.

I could feel the anger coiling tight, threatening to explode.

“Kade?” She was looking at me with those beautiful doe eyes, and then realized what I saw and clawed like an animal for the blankets to cover herself.

“No. Don’t,” I whispered, but she continued to scramble for the covers, pulling them out from under my body, tugging and yanking. “No! Don’t f*cking COVER YOURSELF!” I screamed. I tore the comforter off the bed and hurled it across the room, and there she sat, naked, alone on my bed with her arms wrapped around her body as if she could hide behind them.

“Who the f*ck is David? Was that your husband?”

“Yes.”

“Why would you do that to yourself? Why the f*ck did you let him brand his f*cking name on you?”

She laid her palms flat on the bed and shifted herself over to the edge, and turned her face away from me, “I wasn’t conscious when he did it.” Moving off the bed, her beautiful lithe form glided across the room and started dressing.

No. No. No, no-no-no-no-no.

All the air just sucked out of my lungs and I had no idea what I could have said. I probably should have said so many things, but didn’t, nothing filled my mind but emptiness. I watched her cover my sanctuary with remorse.

“He had his own branding tool and a butane torch.”

“I’m sorry, Sam. I shouldn’t have yelled. I…I don’t know what to say…I don’t know anything and I want to know everything…”

“Coffee,” she whimpered, standing there in just an oversized tee-shirt.

“Excuse me?”

“I need coffee. I go through serious withdrawals without it,” she smiled then, but I knew she was humiliated, and it drained away part of my impulsive anger, part of it. I knew she was just buying time until she could get out of there and never have to explain anything to me.