Page 75 of Skin Deep

“There,” I said, panting and sweating. “Nowhe’s fucking dead.”

Paxwipedthebackof his hand under his nose. He was covered from his chin to his waist in speckles of blood and brain matter. I flexed my fingers into fists and forced them to relax, though it did nothing for the anger swelling in my chest. Bowen had killed Brandon, so he should have been mine, but that wasn’t why I was so pissed off. I didn’t even care that Bowen was dead, and yet watching Pax kill him had made a jealous anger flare in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to acknowledge it, but it was there just the same.

I stood there, listening to Pax try to catch his breath. Dark blood dripped from the end of the bat he had slung over his shoulder. Bowen’s death wasn’t the messiest I’d ever seen, but what he’d done to Bowen’s body in the aftermath might have been the biggest mess ever to grace my operating room.

Clean up was going to be a nightmare.

“You killed him,” I said, silent fury pulsing through me. “He should’ve beenmykill.”

Paxton turned to face me. “Does it matter? Dead is dead.”

“It fucking matters to me. I wanted him to suffer! Instead, you lost your fucking temper the second he started talking shit about your dead wife!”

“Excuse me?” Paxton said, nostrils flaring.

“This was my kill,” I snarled, even though I knew he deserved it as much as I did.

I didn’t even know why I was pissed off. Yes, I had wanted Bowen to suffer, but he had. I’d been torturing him for over an hour and we had most of the information I wanted. I couldn’t blame Pax for killing him, either. Not with the awful things he’d said and the threats he’d made.

I didn’t care that Bowen was dead, and I didn’t care that Pax had killed him, but there had to be a reason I was so angry suddenly. One that made sense, even if I couldn’t make sense of it myself.

I was so pissed, I couldn’t even find the words. I threw up my hands in frustration and suddenly realized how filthy I was. I wasn’t covered in blood like Paxton, but I felt like I was. It was like there was an invisible layer of grime and dirt all over me and I needed to get it off now.

“I need to shower.” I turned away and stomped into the showers we had set up in the next room.

It was impossible not to think about how it’d all started with us in that same room not so long ago. How long had it been since he’d first touched me in the factory shower? A week? A month? A year? It felt like a lifetime ago. I was certainly a different person than who I was when we met, though it was hard to put my finger on exactly what had changed. Had I gotten softer?

Maybe I was right before. Love does make me weak.

I stopped halfway through pulling my shirt over my head when Paxton stormed in. “You need to stay with the body,” I started to say, but never got all of it out before he grabbed me and yanked me against the bloodstained front of him.

Paxton put his lips over mine, swallowing my attempts at a protest. I squirmed and tried to twist away, but he didn’t let me free. His fingers threaded through my hair and yanked my head back. “Why are you pissed at me?” he demanded.

“I told you why,” I said, glaring daggers at him.

“You’re a fucking liar, War. You don’t give a damn that I killed him, do you? You’re pissed because you think I did it for her and not you.”

“That’s not…” I trailed off, unable to finish the thought without another lie. I turned my face away, unwilling to keep looking at him, knowing he’d seen right through me. It was stupid for me to be jealous of a dead woman. I’d been trying so hard not to be, but sometimes it felt like he loved her more than me.

I couldn’t blame him. She’d given him two perfect children, a decade of love through the hardest years of his life, given him her whole heart, which I couldn’t ever do. I was too selfish, too broken to ever love someone with all that I was. I would always be a burden, always need to be first in his life, even if I couldn’t do the same for him. It was unfair. Heshouldlove her more than me.

No matter how much I gave to him, I’d never be able to match what she’d given. I couldn’t give him life. All I had to offer was death.

“You jealous fucking bastard,” Pax said and dropped to his knees in front of me.

“What are you doing?” I asked as he pulled my pants and underwear to my ankles.

“Reminding you who I belong to.”

I should have told him to stop, that I didn’t want anything from him. I was too angry. But when his mouth closed around my cock, all my will to do anything else disappeared. My head fell back against the cool tile, and I huffed out a breath as my cock rapidly swelled to life in the wet heat of his mouth. “This isn’t fair.”

He didn’t listen, probably because Pax had never cared about what wasfair. He was as selfish as I was in his own way. Whatever he wanted, he got, and not me or anyone else was ever going to stand in the way of that. Why he’d decided he wanted me I would never know. I’d never felt worthy of his attention, but I wanted to be.

I combed my fingers through his coarse hair. He’d called me pretty before, but I didn’t want to be beautiful. Beauty was fleeting, more ethereal than smoke in the wind. I should know. I’d dedicated my life to beauty, and I knew better than anyone that it was only skin deep. The most beautiful people were the ones most likely to come to me with a list of their physical flaws, because flaws were all they saw in the world. Deep down, they didn’t want to be beautiful. They wanted to beperfect.

But that was where they all went wrong. Beauty wasn’t in symmetrical features and flawless skin. Real beauty was the scar running between Paxton’s nose and his lip, the calluses on his fingers that dug into my skin. It was in the nose that was a little too big for his face, the art tattooed on his body forever. Beautywasimperfection.

I let my head fall back, surrendering completely, wholly focused on the feeling of his tongue sliding slowly up and down my shaft. “Paxton…”

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