I’m relieved as fuck to see that some of her fire is back. I couldn’t stand the flat, deadness in her eyes. The place where not even pain can reach, like a wound that’s so deep it no longer has sensation.
“I don’t have to try very hard,” I admit, just to see those flames bank a little higher. “Everyone else—that’s the past, Ami. I was never with a woman because I loved them. Never was with one because it was anything but physical. And I haven’t touched anyone in the last year. Haven’t even thought about another woman.”
“Why?” Her mouth drops open and her eyes widen in shock.
My thumb moves away from her jaw, where I still have her face gripped tight. I sweep it lightly in a gentle caress over her sweet, full bottom lip. “I told you. Since I saw you, I wanted you. No one else was going to cut it.”
She blinks so hard and rapid that her eyelashes look like they’re going to tear right off. “Even after… even after what I did? Lying? Humiliating you? Leaving you like that?”
“Yeah. Maybe I'm fucked up because all I wanted was you.”
“Gage…” Ami’s lips part, my thumb still there, the pad of it pressing against her bottom one.
“I’m not an eraser, Ami. I can’t make you forget.” I need her to understand that. More than I’ve ever needed anything in my entire existence. “But I can transform you. I swear to you that I’d never mistreat you. I’m a rough man with rough desires. I fuck the same way I’ve lived, but I would never hurt you. If you don’t want it. That’s fair. If you don’t want me, I fucking get it. If you want me gone, I’ll leave. I’ll sign the papers and get out of your life. But know that if you ever need anything, you know where to find me. Me and all my brothers, because I’ll always have your back.”
Her lip trembles below my thumb and my insides squeeze painfully. I want so fucking badly to be everything I just told her that I can’t be, to steal that pain out of her, to suck it from her veins like venom and spit it to the floor, to erase all the terrible memories locked inside of her head and her heart, to remove that tattoo out of her skin.
“And what if I said no? That I can’t? That I’ll never be what you need?”
“If you say no, you say no.”It would fucking break me if you did.“If you say you can’t, I’ll accept that. You say you’re not ready, you know yourself better than I ever will. You say you want time, I’ll give it to you. You say wait, I’ll wait for a thousand fucking years. But if you think you’re not what I need, you’re wrong. You’re wrong and I’ll prove it to you any and every way I fucking can. Because you’re exactly what I need. Even when you’re a pain in the ass, even when I wanted to hate you, I never could.”
Ami’s eyes well with tears and I hate them. I fucking hate it when she looks at me, her obsidian eyes swimming, her pain unbearable. “It’s not as easy as that…” She sucks in a shuddery breath and I drop my hands from her face. I want to put distance between us, but she looks up, imploring me, freezing me in place. “You’ve always been strong. You’ve always been big and hard and… and a man. You’ve known power all your life. You can’t imagine… you can’t imagine being made into a victim and suffering with it for years. You can’t ever know how damaged I am. You can’t possibly…wantthat.”
Her words hit me like a physical blow. I feel every single one of those lashes again. Every punch and every blow.
Because she’s wrong.
She’s so fucking wrong.
This time, when I try to step back my feet obey. Before I even register what the fuck I’m doing, I’m unzipping my jacket, shedding the leather, peeling it and letting that leather, which I wear with so much pride, hit the damn ground.
My eyes find hers and lock, even as my fingers peel up my cotton shirt. I don’t do it slowly, inch by inch. I tear the fucking thing away like it’s offended me. Like it’s on fire. I get it over fast. Get it fucking done with. Like tearing off a scab, I do it clean, let the blood flow and well to cleanse what will never be purified.
Because like her, I’m scarred. Like her, I’m marked. Like her, I was a fucking victim. And like her, I will live with the scars for the rest of my life.
And I stand there. In the stark, overhead light of her kitchen, two bulbs burning overhead, suddenly harsh, illuminating all the darkness I’ve never showered a single person. Not my brothers. Not the guys I used to call friends before I fell in with Steel and Edge and became a part of The Riders. Not a single woman that I’ve ever been with, because I always stayed as fully clothed as I could. The fucks I gave were quick, hard, dirty, just something to satisfy the ache, the rage, or whatever the fuck I was feeling at the time. No one ever complained. If I wanted to keep my jacket and my jeans on, they screamed out their pleasure just the same.
But me—I always felt hollow.
Because it was supposed to mean something. And it never did.
I’ve never trusted a single person enough to make myself vulnerable. Fucking. Ever.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Ami slams a hand over her mouth after, like she didn’t mean for that particular shade of blasphemy to escape. Maybe something close…
She shakes her head again and screws up her eyes, as though she can unsee it. As though it doesn’t make it true.
I’m about to gather my shirt off the damn floor and slam back into it, find a pen and get those forsaken papers signed, and get the hell out of there, because it’s clear that even though she’s broken, I’m shattered, and she’ll never want something like this. Someone who looks like me—disgusting, wretched, my body a canvas that’s been slashed to shit, disfigured, ruined—when she lets out a hard rush of breath and steps forward.
She comes to me.
Her tiny feet eat up the short distance across her kitchen, and then her eyes are open and she’s looking at me,seeingme. She’s crying again, but those tears are silent, an offering of pain and prayer for us both, survivors from the cruelest past. I don’t think it’s possible, I’m actually pretty sure I’m damn well dreaming it, her hands on me, her warm, damp little palms splayed out against my chest, my waist, my sides, my back. Roving. Exploring. Touching what I never thought anyone would willingly touch.
“I want you to show me,” she breathes, right before her lips find my flesh and she trails her mouth, her tongue, her hot puffs of breath, over the worst of it. The ridges. The pink, raised flesh. The old white swirls and lines and patterns. Her hands sweep to my back and she lets out a pained cry when she finds the raised wheals there too. “I want you to be the fire and I want to be the phoenix. Do what you said. Burn me up. Transform me. Make me something new. I’m tired of walking into the fire and letting it burn me up. I don’t want to be ashes anymore.”
I close my eyes and bend my head, resting my chin on the sweet crown of her dark hair. “Ashes.”
“Ashes,” she whispers back, before she plants another burning kiss on my chest, right beside my pec, since it’s as farup as her mouth will reach unless she stands on her toes. Her fingers splay over my back.
