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“It was a misunderstanding on the meaning of the wordFuck, Saskia. Relax. He’s not going to punish me for this. He wants us to bond. He just wants me to remember which one of us is at the top of this food chain. As if I’d ever forget.”
Punish. Marcus might not think Quill owned him anymore, but if he thought in those terms—the same terms she thought in—he was already Quill’s again. Their master kept them both in a cage with only each other for comfort. And she wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t make up rules on the fly just so he could take his sadism out on her protector. Marcus seemed much more confident of Quill’s inherent sense of fair play than Saskia was.
Marcus rinsed her back. “Okay, you’re done.”
Saskia got out and grabbed a towel from a shelf. “Why didn’t you just fight him? You could probably take him.”
The look Marcus gave her told her everything. He was half in love with Quill, too. And like her, he knew how utterly foolish such feelings were.
“Once he recovered, he would have taken it out on you worse. It was the easiest way to appease him. I’m not that breakable.”
No. He wasn’t. And underneath the fear for him and the distress, she’d been excited by Marcus’s display of strength, as if he could take the whole world on and resurface whole when the debris cleared.
Marcus let the water drain and got out of the tub. Saskia passed him her towel. He wrapped it around his waist and sat on the bench. A brief, cozy domesticity.
“There’s a first aid kit in the lower cabinet,” he said.
Saskia retrieved the large box of ointment and antiseptic and bandages. Quill’s estate was practically its own pharmacy. She opened the container and laid everything on the bench.
Marcus pointed. “The peroxide, then this ointment, and these bandages. They breathe better.” Spoken like a man who’d been here before.
He turned away, and Saskia went to work on his back. Marcus was so cavalier about all of it that it was easy to brush off how harsh Quill had been, even now, looking directly at the damage. If it had been her there would have been screaming and endless tears and begging. It would have been impossible to dismiss the weight of it.
Marcus’s stoicism made it easy to forget just how raw and broken the skin on his back was—except for the dragon which remained untouched. As out-of-control as Quill had acted, he’d had the presence of mind to avoid the tattoo.
Saskia’s fingers trailed over the ink.
“A few years ago he wanted to collar me,” Marcus said. “I saidfuck no. He felt compelled to mark me in some way. We agreed on the ink.”
“But that’s permanent. You can take a collar off.”
“Not while with him, I couldn’t. And we see how far I’ve managed to wander beyond his reach. A collar is too on display for me. Not my thing. This was a compromise I could live with.”
It explained why the tattoo had escaped the bite of the whip.
“Why a dragon?”
“It’s a subtle reference to a part of his real name. I can probably say that much, at least, without his ire. It’s like aproperty ofstamp, if we want to be crass about it.”
So much more permanent than a collar.
“I thought you said he didn’t own you anymore.”
Marcus sighed. “In ways he does. In ways he doesn’t. Our relationship is complicated, but it’s not something you should worry about.”
He winced as she dabbed the peroxide on his back.
“I’m sorry.”
He squeezed her free hand. “Do what you have to do.”
When she’d gotten him bandaged, he returned to the gallery to dress. Saskia followed. Her things were all in a pile of boxes she still hadn’t had time to sort through. It wasn’t as if the gallery had drawers or closets to stash her stuff. The haphazard way everything was stacked in the gallery made everything feel very temporary. But the heated possessive looks Quill—and sometimes now even Marcus—sent her way, made it feel as if her confinement inside Quill’s gallery would stretch the full length of her remaining existence.
Marcus tossed her a robe from one of the boxes. She grabbed the garment out of the air when it reached her and stared at it for a full minute as if it might attack.
“Just wear it to the house. You gotta figure out the loopholes if you’re going to make it with him, love.”
“Are things going to be weird now?”
