Page 114 of Tracked and Taken

A long three seconds. The water. Her wrist, pulling once more against my hand. Then her fingers open, the soap drops into my palm, and she stands with her throat bared to me and her fists closed at her sides like a soldier at an inspection she did not consent to.

“Tell me when,” she says. Flat. “I need to hear it gone.”

I put my hand under the water.

I wash her.

The mate-mark spot first. The bottom of her throat where Kesh’s hand cradled her neck. I soap my hands and I slide it, over the welt she made — the pressure of removing another male’s chemistry, not the pressure of touching my mate.

My biology wants.

My biology can want.

My biology will not get.

She makes another sound. Smaller. Her head bends forward. Her hair falls under the water, falls over my hand. I move my hand under the hair.

The side of her neck where Kesh was going to put his mouth. I clean it at the angle that gets everything off — hair, skin, the hollow at the collarbone.

Her shoulders.

Her upper back. Between her shoulder blades where I kissed her this morning, and which is now a place I am cleaning.

Last night I mapped her. Every inch, the way I said I would. Another male wrote over the map, and now I am washing my own work off my mate’s skin to get at what he left, and I will redraw every line of it when she asks me to.

She may never ask me to.

I wash her anyway.

She cries again. Quietly. The water on her face hides most of it.

My hand on her shoulder does not stop. I say nothing. I do not need to.

Her arms. Her hands. The blood at her ribs where the off-hand blade grazed. I am going to patch it once we are out.

Her ribs. Her stomach.

I do not go lower.

“Tael.”

“Sweetheart.”

“Lower.”

“Natalie.”

“Tael. Please. I need it off. He — he was going to—”

“I know.”

I wash her lower.

Clinical. Careful. Her hand on my shoulder. Her forehead against my collarbone. The water hot between us.

“There,” I say, against her hair. “It is gone, Natalie. All of it.”

Her fists, closed at her sides since she gave up the soap, come open.