I reached for the buttons on my vest with trembling fingers. But my hands were shaking hard. So hard. I'd never undressed in front of a man before, or anyone, for that matter. After fumbling with the first one, Elias's hands covered mine.
"Let me," he said softly.
I nodded, dropping my arms to my sides. Then I closed my eyes tight because I couldn't watch his face while he undid each button with careful precision. I didn't want to see the shock, the disgust, when I was bare in front of him.
But he was having none of that. "Eyes on me, little witch," he commanded.
With a shuttering breath, I forced them open and met his gaze, holding it while he finished with the vest and slipped it off my shoulders. The temperature in the room seemed to suddenly drop. Or maybe that was just me, already feeling exposed.
"This too?" he asked, fingers at the hem of my shirt.
My eyes fell to the tips of his fangs, barely showing between his parted lips. "Yes."
He lifted it slowly, giving me every opportunity to change my mind. I raised my arms and let him pull the fabric over my head. The cool air hit my skin, and I shivered, standing before him in just my bra.
The black one. The one designed to hide the truth.
Elias's eyes never left my face. "You're shaking."
"I'm terrified," I whispered honestly.
His heavy brows lowered over his dark eyes. "We can stop," he said.
"No." Fresh tears burned my eyes. I'd come this far. We may as well keep going and rip the band-aid off. "I don't want to stop."
"Talin, look at me." His large, warm hands rested lightly on the bare skin of my sides, his thumbs rubbing back and forth just below the elastic band of my bra. "There is nothing about you that could ever make me regret this bond. Nothing."
"You don't know what you're saying."
"Why don't you let me be the judge of that." He raised his hands to my shoulders, tracing the straps of my bra with his fingers, but making no move to remove it. "Show me what has you so convinced I'll run."
The bond pulsed between us, a living thing that demanded honesty. Demanded vulnerability. I'd spent years building walls to keep people out, but Elias was steadily knocking them down, stone by stone.
"The clasp is in the back," I whispered when I couldn't bring myself to do it myself.
Eyes on mine, his arms reached around me and his long fingers found it, popping it open with a single flick. The cups fell away, and my hands automatically rose to catch them. But I couldn't hide from him forever, so I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and forced myself to drop my hands back to my sides, letting the straps of my bra slide down my arms until it fell on the floor between us and I stood before this perfect male with my torso completely bare, unable to hide anymore.
The left side of my chest was normal. Full. The areola and nipple a pretty pink. The breast I'd been born with, untouched by the cancer that had tried to kill me.
The right side was gone. Nothing there but a long scar and some puckered skin, leaving me asymmetrical and wrong.
Bracing myself for what I'd see, I opened my eyes and watched Elias's face as his eyes traveled down my throat and over my chest. Waited for the disgust. The pity. The barely concealed disappointment that I wasn't whole.
His eyes went wide when he saw me. Then filled with fiery red fury that quickly changed to tears. His upper lip lifted, exposing his long fangs.
"Talin," he breathed, voice breaking on my name.
"Don't." I tried to cover myself, but he caught my wrists, gently but firmly pulling my hands away.
"When did this happen?" he asked roughly.
"When I was fourteen." I said it haltingly, each word a struggle. "They found cancer. They said it was rare in someone my age, but..." I swallowed hard. "They had to remove the breast tissue. All of it. Magic couldn't fully heal it because—because, I don't know, it might have been connected to this power trying to manifest. Or maybe it was my body rejecting the magic I was born with. No one really knew."
A tear tracked down his face. "You were a child."
The old shame rose up, choking me. "While other girls were discovering boys and hanging out together, I was in hospitals. Having parts of me cut away. Wondering if I'd even survive." I forced myself to keep talking, to get it all out. "And when I did survive, I had to figure out how to live in a body that wasn't the same. That was ugly."
"Stop," he said fiercely.
