My feet were lead as I pushed them across the tile separating us, through the slowly thickening steam filling the room. Still his eyes were cold, deadly, his entire body wired.
My fingertips trailed down from the top of his shoulder, slowly, purposefully. He flinched as I did so, as if I was slicing through the flesh, opening the wounds. Every part of him was iron, his entire body shaking with my touch. I knew he was uncomfortable, wanted me to stop. Which was why I kept going.
I continued, my finger light, my eyes never leaving his. Pain reverberated up my hand, up my arm and all the way to my heart as my fingertip trailed the length of his trauma.
Then I reached the smooth skin of his hand and I tightened my grip, lacing his fingers with mine, bringing our intertwined hands together to lay a kiss on the top of his. His eyes lost all that cold menace, melting against the heat of his gaze, the naked intensity of it.
He was still waiting, I knew that. I could see it. He was expecting something. Because when you were disfigured or broken in a way that was obvious to the world, the world asked questions. Did everything it could to make sure there was no way to hide. To forget.
The world was cruel.
It made Gage cruel.
But it wasn’t going to make me cruel.
So I slowly and purposefully opened the door to my shower, stepping into it and bringing Gage with me. His body was anchored to the spot for a moment, not prepared for me to move, to yank him to the shower to wash off what cruelty I could.
But then he moved.
And he moved.
The shower door was closed, water cascading off our naked bodies, coloring pink at the drain as the blood washed off us.
Gage’s hands were at my neck, yanking me to him in the small space so our soaking bodies were plastered together. His mouth was attached to mine in the next moment, the kiss different than the ones we’d shared before. It wasn’t soft or tender. I knew Gage couldn’t give me soft or tender, had guessed it when I saw that coldness, that darkness behind his eyes. I was certain now seeing the scars on top of his skin.
But I had my own scars too.
And though they couldn’t be seen, I realized they made it so I didn’t want soft or tender.
So I sank into the kiss.
But it was more than just a kiss.
It was Gage showing me that I’d tilted his world too. That I’d shaken it to the core.
It was a harbinger of the destruction we’d bring one another.
Eight
A knocking woke me up.
Or more accurately, a banging, since the sound traveled all the way from the door, into my bedroom and punctured what had been, until that moment, a pretty deep slumber.
The knocking teased me out of sleep, and then the incredible heat covering every inch of my body fully woke me. It took me a couple of moments to realize the source of that heat. To remember who was holding me. Why every square inch of my body ached underneath the grip of the scarred arms atop mine.
Gage.
He was in my bed. He was cuddling me. My chin was using his muscled pec as a pillow, my leg cocked up and slung across his body. I was draped over him, my naked body pressing into his skin. In his sleep, he didn’t seem to be complaining, holding me so tight against his chest it was hard to breathe. How it was the knocking and not the struggle to inhale that woke me up, I had no idea. Or maybe I did. My body was willing to forgo oxygen in order to have Gage.
That, of course, was insane.
But it was also right.
Because had there not been a knocking at the door, I wouldn’t have even entertained the idea of moving. Who needed their full lung capacity anyway?
I’d always considered Gage to be hard. Everything about him was. His eyes. The angles of his face. Whatever darkness and evil lay behind his eyes. His muscles, sculpted from pure stone, the scar tissue rippling across those muscles, melding into them with a permanence that showed his demons would always live on his skin.
But sleeping in those arms was one hundred times better than my Tempur-Pedic pillow that took three months to pick out. In his sleep, his body was still hard, but it was relaxed, almost bordering on vulnerable. But not quite. The way he clutched me to him seemed like he was expecting someone to try and wrench me away while he slumbered, and he was ready to wake up and fight whoever tried.
I toyed with the idea of ignoring the not-so-gentle knock at my door, curl into Gage—who was still asleep, if his relaxed breaths were anything to go by—and pretend the sun wasn’t up, that it would be as simple as staying in bed, naked and safe in the arms of the man who was the antithesis of safety.