Page 77 of Body Tox

“You are not a monster, Little Wraith,” Asher said, holding me close as I cried. “You are asurvivor.”

I cried harder. I didn’t survive. He took so much from me that I would never get back. Asher picked me up, setting me on that altar and kissing my tears away. I sniffled, looking up at him.

He pulled my shirt free, and I stared at him in confusion. He smiled and raised his hands to me.

“Fix these mits, would ya? I have a job to do.”

I furrowed my brow, looking down at his mangled thumbs. They were dislocated. Not thinking about it, I anchored his arm in my grip, popping the digits back into place with a masculine grunt from him and an awful popping noise.

He sighed in relief, wiggling his thumbs like he was about to have a thumb war. Without a word, he laid me down on the altar, walking over to grab a pair of needles from my jewelry box.

I didn’t speak…just watched him in curiosity.

He pulled my pants down, the jagged lines of my scars raised, and my constant reminder of the pain of each one.

“You’re not a monster,” he said, pinching the needles together and dipping the tips into what looked like a little pool of blood and ash. He brought the line of needles to my skin, marking my scars and running the needles over each and every one of them. The bite of the needles stung, and I hissed, fixated on the pain and the intrigue.

He was…covering my scars.

I watched him as he worked.

Intricate lines made the jagged marks disappear into deep patterns of the handmade ink.

I tried to see what he was doing, but the blood-red and black colors coated my legs. He moved to my side, those lines of scars covered by the bloody ink and the lines of intricate patterns under his needles.

He was tattooing an image on my body. I gasped but kept still, not wanting to ruin his work. He was sweating, and the time ticked by. I watched him for hours, my body numb with all the patterns he drew onto my skin. My flesh burned, but I had never felt more alive.

His hand began to shake, and I was getting sleepy. It had been hours of the dip, dot, drag routine. He would sterilize the needles in a cup of alcohol, and this ritual continued. Finally, when my body was black as night, the ink covering me from my thighs, side, and up toward my chest, he laid down the little pack of needles.

“You aren’t a monster,” he repeated again, his voice soft, a sound I had never heard from him.

He took a basin of water and dumped it onto my body, the smears of black washing away to form a design of a dagger.

“You are a weapon,” he said, revealing the beautiful, daggered sword on my body.

It covered each and every scar I had.

“You are a Wraith.”

Whap, whap, whap.

I squinted my eyes, my body feeling sore and renewed like a phoenix rising from the ashes. The sound of smacking above my head alerted me. I opened my eyes and was instantly blinded by a cloudy white liquid, turning my vision white.

“Oh fuck!”

I leaned up and wiped at my eye, the stinging increasing and making both of my eyes water.

Asher was scrambling around, and the sound of chaos was around me as he ran around, grabbing things and letting others clatter to the ground.

I tried to comprehend what the fuck just happened and opened my good eye. Asher had his dick hanging out of his pants, and there was clear whitish liquid on my chest and stomach.

“Did you…?” I trailed off, wiping the come off my stomach and popping it into my mouth.

“I was going to say sorry,” he said, his voice lowering as he stopped his search and walked to me. “But now, I am definitely not.”

I scooped more of the come off my chest and stared at Asher’s beautiful lips. With a grin more devilish than Satan’s mistress, I popped my fingers in his mouth.

His eyes widened in surprise at first, and then he grabbed my hand and sucked each digit clean. The heat flooded my belly, and I stuttered, not expecting that.

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