I nodded once and grinned, letting that monster inside of me take over.
Reina was sittingon her bed when I walked into the room. She looked up at me as I shut the door, and she sucked in a sharp breath of air.
I was coated in blood. Pretty sure I looked like a psychotic serial killer.
“It’s done,” I told her softly. I knew she would know what that meant without me having to elaborate
Her eyes widened in disbelief. “They’re dead?”
I nodded, pushing my damp hair back off my forehead. “I promised you they would fucking pay for touching you.” And I’d made them pay. And it hadn’t taken me an entire goddamn month to get a fucking move on it like it had taken this club.
She lurched off the bed, and completely disregarding the blood covering me, she jumped at me. I gripped the back of her bare thighs, lifting her up, my lips meeting her hungry ones.
She grasped my bloody face in her hands. “Thank you.”
I pecked her lips. “Anything for you, baby girl.”
And I meant that with every fiber of my being.
8
Sam
Two months passed, and I had been doing everything in my power to prove to Reina that everything would be different between us this time around. I’d refrained from touching her, instead relieving myself every time I took a shower. I kept my hands to myself. I wanted to show her that we had something beyond physicality between us. I knew I’d professed my love to her, but I wanted to prove it to her—neededto prove it to her.
Every club bunny that even glanced my way, I quickly shut down. I’d almost lost Reina once. I wasn’t letting a goddamn thing keep us apart this time. And I certainly wasn’t losing her because some club bunny wanted my dick shoved down her throat.
Reina’s back was finally healed. I had been keeping check on it, making sure it never got infected. The scarring was fucking horrible; every line that had been sliced into her back was a raised, puckered scar. It would remain like that for the rest of her life, and I knew she fucking hated it. She barely let me touch it long enough to bathe her back for her.
I wanted to kiss every single scar that littered her back, but I was terrified of scaring her away. She avoided mirrors at all cost that would reveal her back to her eyes. And she no longer wore tank tops and crop tops around the clubhouse. Now, all she wore was baggy t-shirts. My woman had gone into hiding, and I fucking hated it. I wanted the old Reina back, but I knew even if she came out of her shell again, she wouldn’t be the same woman anymore. That would be impossible. She’d gone through something horrific, and what she’d gone through—you didn’t come out of that unscathed.
“Reina, baby,” I said gently, coming up behind her in the bathroom where she was running a brush through her long hair, “you can’t keep avoiding your back forever.”
I’d been trying to ease into the conversation for a few days now, but every time I tried, she shut me down. I knew if I wanted to talk to her about this, I couldn’t ease into it anymore. I just had to lay it out to her and hope for the fucking best. We might clash heads, but fuck, maybe she needed a goddamn fight. God knew I needed to see that fire in her soul again.
“No,” she snapped, her eyes clashing with mine in the mirror. They were lit with anger and defiance. It made blood surge straight to my dick, but I bit that shit back.
I pressed my hand flat to the middle of her back, spraying my fingers out. It was a possessive touch, my way of showing her that no matter what was on her back, she was stillmine. Nothing would fucking change that.
I drew in a deep breath. Ink, Joey’s VP, was the best goddamn tattoo artist I knew. He had offered to tattoo her back if she wanted the scars covered. But I wanted her to face this first—needed her to. Tattooing wouldn’t ever help her heal if she couldn’t even face the horror of what had been done to her.
“Reina, you’ve got to heal, baby girl, and the only way to begin doing that is if you face what the fuck happened to you.”
She swung around to face me, her eyes glittering up at me with fury and an internal pain that fucking killed me as much as I knew it was killing her.
“You think I’m not trying to heal?” she snarled at me. She needed to be mad about this shit, and I was happy as hell to finally see she was. “You think I’m not facing this shit every goddamn time I close my eyes? I already couldn’t sleep at night because of Gregory,” she bitterly told me. I hadn’t known that, and I clenched my jaw. I thought she didn’t sleep at night because of this mark on her fucking back. “But now I can barely even sleep in the day. For you to accuse me of not facing this shit—”
I ripped the back of her shirt open and snatched her hand mirror off the counter. It was a good size one, one I knew she only used if she was fixing her eyebrows. I thrust it in front of her. “Look,” I snapped down at her. She shook her head, her eyes closed, her body trembling. I wanted to fucking throttle her. “Goddammit, Reina,look.”
She slowly opened her teary eyes, staring at the mirror in my hand that reflected her back to her. Her knees just about gave out beneath her, but I locked my arm around her, holding her up, being her strength when hers depleted.
“Sam—” she croaked.
I set the mirror down and wrapped my other arm around her, holding her tight to me. She sobbed, her hands fisting my cut. A heart wrenching wail left her lips.
“I’m ruined,” she sobbed.
I leaned down and smoothed my lips over hers. She whimpered into our kiss. “You’re not ruined, baby girl. Never ruined in my fucking eyes, you hear me? To me, that shit means nothing more than you being a survivor, a fucking warrior. You lived through something that would have killed a lesser person.” Her jaw shook as she stared up at me through her pretty, glassy eyes. I brushed my thumbs over her cheeks. “Now, I want to fix this my way. Do you trust me?”