Her body stiffens and then strains against the straps. A whimper escapes her as my fingers hover over her sternum. “Stop.”
“I haven’t even started yet, darling.” My palm lowers. The contact is electric, her skin like ice-silk. I let my hand rest against the frantic beat of her heart. It drives me crazy. I missed her. God, I fucking missed her.
I can’t hide my swallow as my hand slides up over the swell of her breast. She gasps and tries to twist away from my touch, but her body isn’t helping yet. A tear breaks free and tracks into her hairline.
“You look so pretty when you cry.” I love her fear and her tears. Those belong to me, only me. “But I want your real tears, Reagan.” Reagan doesn’t cry; Birdie does when she needs to. “Not the ones you gave me when I touched you for the first time, not the ones you gave me when I pinned you to this table, and not the ones you’re giving me now.”
My hand moves down her side and traces the line of her ribs. I feel every tremor, every involuntary flinch. Her eyes squeeze shut. She’s retreating inward. I can’t have that.
I lean close. “Look at me.”
She doesn’t.
I tap the pin in her shoulder, a light, precise flick with my fingernail. Her eyes fly open with a silent scream.
“Look. At. Me,” I command.
The hatred in her gaze is fire, pure, blazing, and it’s all for me.Hate me all you want, my little butterfly. I don’t care as long as you’re mine.I hold her gaze as my hand slides over her hip. When I find that comma-shaped scar, I trace it with a caress.
“Please,” she breathes. “You won’t believe me when I tell you I don’t want you to touch me.”
“Because it’s a lie.”
“Perhaps, but believe me when I tell you I don’t want you touching my scars.”
I glance down at the marred skin. Not a doctor’s work. Deep and uneven. A wound that was left to close on its own. “You don’t like needles, and you don’t like hands on your scars.” I turn my own bare hand over between us. The pale, ropey texture of old scars climbs from my wrist into my sleeve. A set I earned long before I learned to hide behind ink and leather and masks.
“Because it makes it real again. It drags the memory out of the past and paints it right onto your skin.” My fingertips return to her hip, but this time, I don’t trace the scar. I lay my palm over it, completely covering it, as if I could absorb the memory through my skin. “It’s not a mark anymore. It’s a wound that opens fresh.”
“Yes.”
That’s why I hide mine, so that no one will touch them or call them ugly again. At least, that’s what I was taught. To be so ashamed of them that I’d have to cover them. Until she taught me differently.
When the world strips you bare, when power abandons you and only scars remain, do not hide them, wear them like iron brands across your skin. They sing of a soul that refuses to break. In their darkness lies a force unmatched, an unyielding power that no blade, no betrayal, no despair can erase.
Scars are the crown of the powerless.
I finally pull my hand away. Then I reach past her head, down to the side of the metal table. She flinches, expecting another touch.
My fingers feel for a small switch I’ve built in the table and flip it.
A low, deep hum vibrates through the quiet. A wave of radiant heat begins to emanate from the steel surface beneath her. A heater I’ve installed for this moment.
Her gaze darts from my face to the place my hand disappeared, then back. She must feel it, the warmth that penetrates her back and through her freezing muscles.
“Th-thank you,” she says.
“You’ve earned it. You told me two truths. They earned you two hours of warmth.”
“Two hours? What happens after that?”
“I’ll turn it off until you tell me something else I don’t know about you, then I’ll turn it back on.”
“I hate grapes. There. Add another hour.”
“Something authentic, Reagan. A secret, a truth you haven’t told yet.”
“Have you not been stalking me for years? You must know all my secrets.”
