I leave her standing there, eyes burning and brimming over with sadness and pain, not for herself, but for me, a man who just used her in the basest, unholiest of ways.
Chapter 16
Leena
Ispend the morning worrying. More than worry, I can’t erase the shadows from my mind or the cold bands that wrap around my stomach, pinching it unmercifully so that I feel so nauseous that I can’t even think about food, even when the morning hours disappear.
My insides feel all wrong, jumbled up, mashed together, like my stomach is in my throat and my heart at the bottom of my feet.
I don’t understand what happened this morning. I don’t know why Wraith reacted the way he did. I didn’t know that I was required to tell him that I was still a virgin. I kind of thought he knew, but then again, why would he?
After sitting around the house uselessly, I take a freshly diapered Abby for a walk. She loves being outside and seeing her enthusiasm, her bright shining eyes and her tongue hanging out to give her that big doggy smile, soothes my nerves.
I walk for an hour with her before we turn back to the house. Abby heads straight to the kitchen to lap up some water. I know I shouldn’t, but I’ve paced every single inch of the house already, so I head up that tiny staircase, back into the weird attic area.
It’s oppressively hot up there in the full heat of the day. The one window floods the place with light and lets the sun turn the small confines into a space that’s nothing short of sweltering. Even though sweat beads my forehead and tricklesdown my back like little feet creeping down my spine, I stay up there, taking in the paintings.
They’re all wondrous, but then again, I’m no art critic. I just know that I like them. The colors are bold and bright, the strokes confident and perfect. Most everything is abstract, shapes and swatches, perfect blends from one color into another, transitioning impossibly into two or three more.
I know less than nothing about art, and as it turns out, nothing about the man who is my husband. When I woke and found the bed empty, I trailed silently into the kitchen and then, the living room, looking for him. I was surprised to find that strange little staircase extending down as if from the very heavens. I certainly never expected to find him up there painting.
My eyes stray to the table where he’d parted my thighs in the heat of passion and thrust into me, smashing through my virginity and making me his.
His.
His possessive touch and brutal passion should have terrified me, but it didn’t.
I close my eyes, dragging in heavy breaths. I wanted him and that ache is back, that heat that steals up my thighs and consumes me. I’m sore there, between my legs, but it’s only a small twinge when I actually stop to notice it.
The throbbing is worse.
The need that wells up inside of me and flows over, an invisible caress that is more torture than it is gentle. My body heats as warmth surges through my blood, suffusing every vein and cell with longing.
I tear my eyes open and pain travels that same path. The look on Wraith’s face is going to be etched into my brain forever. That look of horror when he smashed through that barrier and filled me, stretched me wide and claimed me. Disgust. Revulsion. Not at me, but at himself. Then the rage that followed, rage I still don’t understand.
It makes me wish, for the first time, that I was more experienced. That I’d done this before and could understand what he was thinking and feeling. What I’d done so very wrong when I thought he wanted me.
He might not want me.The thought is so terrifying that it sends ice through my blood, chilling me where that sweet heat lingered only a few minutes before.
I force myself out of the attic, away from the incongruity of the beauty of all those paintings and the darkness of the painful self-doubt that infuses me.
My feet barely have time to hit the hardwood floor in the living room before the front door is thrown open and slams shut. Heavy footfalls freeze me to the spot. I stand there, guiltily, while Wraith folds the stairs back up in quick, jerky movements. Even though he never said I couldn’t go up there, I know I shouldn’t have, when he was gone. It feels like an invasion, one that I should apologize for.
I’m about to say something, but when I let my eyes trace the sharp, masculine planes of his face, I suck in a breath, my throat closing up at his terrible beauty. I stand there, knowing I should look away, but powerless against his allure. I drink in the sight of him. His eyes are blazing, black obsidian orbs. His lips are thinned out, his jaw clenched, a vein throbbing in his broad, bronzed forehead.
He looks like a warrior ready to do battle, powerful with all that rippling muscle. He’s all man, raw and wicked, sinful with a latent violence simmering in his veins like blood runs through mine, but there’s a brokenness to the lilt of his shoulders, the sheen in his eyes, like a warrior who is finally wearied of war. I know he doesn’t mean for me to see it, that pain shimmering below the closed off surface, but I do. I breathe in deep, a forced breath that expands my chest like a rubber hand, and take in the masculine, spicy scent of him. I scent something dark, like copper, mixed up with something else, lighter and fresher, the air that’s tangled through his hair and clings to his clothing.
“What happened?” I breathe. I wish Abby was here, a barrier between us, but she’s sleeping in her bed in the kitchen, where I left her after our walk.
Wraith’s face shutters off, any lingering warmth turning to ice. “Your father had one of your brothers punish Gage for a crime he didn’t commit. He could have used his fists, but he chose brass knuckles instead. Thirty fucking blows. When Gage refused to make a fucking sound, even when he was on the ground, bleeding the fuck out, your brother made sure he screamed. If I can say anything for your father, it’s that he’s taught his children well.”
Anger explodes in my veins. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Wraith’s dark eyes sweep over me, appraising me like I’m a commodity, those orbs cold, without warmth or grace. Even though I’m clothed, wearing leggings and a short sundress, I feel stripped bare.
“You. You’re a part of them. You’re all bent on our destruction.”
Pain, wild and searing, rips through me. I’ve always forced myself to be a calm, rational person. To shut myself away and save my emotions for private, away from my father and brothers. I’ve been trained into giving nothing away, nothing that anyone can use against me. With Wraith, I’m the exact opposite. I can’t keep my mask in place or pretend to be rational and unfeeling.
