I plant my hands on her waist and haul her roughly against me, so that our bodies are melded together, my flesh and her clothes. She gasps and tilts her face, her eyes blazing furiously.
“Ashes,” I repeat, thickly, because it’s so fucking accurate.
Her nails dig into my back, into my ruined flesh, into the scars. That’s all I am. Ashes and scars.
When I lift her, my fingers digging into her waist, she doesn’t protest. She wraps her arms around my neck and clings to me, letting out little raspy breaths all over my neck, bathing my flesh with her life force. She wraps her legs around my waist and I spin her, carrying her out of the kitchen and down the hall, towards what damn well better be a bedroom waiting.
Every single time I imagined being with her, we fucked. Hard. Brutal. Sometimes slow and soft, after. We came together. In my fantasies, I always made her mine as she writhed and twisted around me, coming on my cock and calling out my name. The pain was always there, sweet, welcome, by both of us, because a man like me can’t imagine this without there being pain. For both of us.
When I slam through the door and see her queen bed waiting, neatly made up, the room as stark white and uninviting as the rest of the place, as barren as I now know both of our souls to be, I know that this isn’t going to be like any fantasy I’ve ever had.
This isn’t going to be a fuck.
This is going to be transformative.
And it’s gonna save us both.
Chapter 15
Ami
The old me might have half expected Gage to throw me down on the bed. To cover me with his massive body, tear my clothes off, and fuck me until we both see stars.
Except of course, he doesn’t. Because that’s not the Gage I thought I knew. That Gage, the rough, conquering, demanding, infuriating Gage, is gone.
In his place is a man, stripped to the waist, his scars on full display. In his place is a man who sets me carefully down on my feet and looks at me like I might break. Not that he’s wrong. I feel soft and spongy inside, like my heart is made of mush and it could be just as easily stomped on, stomped out, and ground down to dust, as it could be saved and nurtured.
And he stands there, not just stripped bare because his clothing is lying in a pile on my kitchen floor, but because he’s bared his soul to me.
It’s dark in the room. The hall light is turned off and the fading dusky gray seeps through the slim cracks in the blinds, hardly any light at all. It’s enough, though. Enough that I can see every raised wheal, every scar, every line and every bump and every ridge. The pink and the white, the silver and every shade in between.
When I look at the ruination marring his otherwise perfect skin, so carefully hidden away from the rest of the world, my stomach clenches hard. Someone did this to him.
He keeps his face neutral, carefully blank, and when I sweep my eyes there, he gives nothing away.
I want to ask him what happened. I want to ask him who hurt him. I want to ask a thousand different things, but I know this isn’t the time. This isn’t the moment, because this moment, this is our moment, and neither of our pasts are allowed to creep in and steal it.
I made myself weak for him. I made myself vulnerable. I cracked myself wide open and let him see the carnage inside. He did the same for me. He doesn’t have to tell me that no one else knows about this. I know all about scars. I know about secrets. I know about fear and self-loathing, and shame. I know about pride and about wanting to be a normal person, not the sum of the events that happened, not your past, not a thing to pity, and I already know that a man like him wouldn’t have told a soul.
I swallow hard when his eyes find mine. They lock there, and I read the question he doesn’t voice.
Am I sure?
Am I sure I want to do this? I’m not. I’m not at all, but maybe… maybe everything I told him about wanting closure and peace was a lie. About moving on.
Maybe I sought him out because I finally got brave enough to realize that this was what I wanted all along. A partner. Someone to protect me. Someone to protect in turns. Someone to share my secrets with, even the darkest of them. Maybe, after a year alone, what I really wanted was a family. A second chance.
I’d be lying to myself if I said there was a single day in the past year that his face wasn’t swimming through my mind. That I wasn’t wondering if he hated me for what I did. That I never thought about him or weighed the chances of forgiveness.
When he kissed me, I knew. I knew he was different. I didn’t feel fear with him. Fear or loathing. I wanted to go to him. I wanted him to wrap me up in his arms, haul me against his chest, offer me his protection and his warmth and reinvent me.
To change everything I know about the past. About the present. About my future.
“Ami…” He breathes my name reverently, like he could damage me just by daring to say it. His eyes flick down, then back up, and the uncertainty on his rugged face nearly kills me.
“Gage.” My voice doesn’t waver. I’m certain. Sure. “Tell me what you want me to do. I trust you. If it’s too much, I’ll ask you to stop. And I know you will.”
One brow arches. “Why? Because underneath my clothes I look like someone used me for target practice? Or because you trusted me before?”