Page 75 of The Devil's Scars

She traced the scars on his chest, on his arm, on his hand. Then she worked her way back up his body, to his face. She put her fingertips on his cheek, lightly resting them on the really bad scar on his face, the big one that started just under his right eye and extended down past his cheekbone. She stopped, held his gaze. Just held it. Her fingers on his face, his heart in her hand, they looked at each other.

They sat and breathed, in the space that they’d created and were holding together. Time stood still and they saw each other. For the first time that she could remember, Zoe wanted to see a man; she also wanted to be seen.

When she kissed him, it was the most natural thing in the world, in that space and time. It was impossible to not kiss him, to not want to be close to him. In a way, she was maybe kissing all that hurt and pain that his nineteen-year-old self had been through, trying to assuage it and offer him some comfort. In another way, she was very much kissing the man that he’d become, this tough, uncompromising, complicated man that she was equal parts afraid of and drawn to.

The fear was silenced for now, though; all she felt was the attraction.

And the dark, molten, desperate need. Both hers and his.

It was all rising between them, so big and overwhelming. Bigger than her hesitation, and excuses, and logic. It was bigger than her past, in some ways, and much, much bigger than the tiny voice whispering caution into her ear.

It was so overwhelming that it washed away her determination to not do this again, to never ever again let this man into her body, to not even once more give in to her need. But she was betrayed by her neediness and weakness –or was it that she finally trusted her strength? She pulled away, just a bit, rested her forehead against his.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, looping her arms around his neck, carefully avoiding the fresh tattoos. “For Friday night. I – I freaked out. I didn’t want Wolf to see what we’d just… well. You know. What we’d done.”

“Are you ashamed to be seen with me, Zoe?” He held his breath, praying hard that he was wrong about this. “Ashamed of what we did?”

“No,” she said, startled. “No, Scars. That’s not it, I swear.”

“Then what was it that made you run out of there? The truth now, baby.”

“The truth.” She sighed heavily, and he held her closer. “OK, well…the truth is that I’m not really sure about… well. You.”

“What? What about me?” He stroked her cheek. “Don’t you get it, Zoe? All you need to know about me is that you’ve got me, hook, line, and sinker. You belong with me. We belong together.”

“See, that’s the thing, though. We don’t.”

“OK, what? We don’t what?”

“I can’t belong to anyone, not ever. I don’t want to belong to anyone. Least of all you.”

“Least of all me?” he said, the anger is his voice clear. “What the fuck, Zoe? What does that mean?”

“It means that I don’t belong to anyone now, Scars, and I don’t ever want to in the future. It’s not safe, being that dependent on someone, being that open and vulnerable. I’m not yours, not even close, and the fact that you keep sort of… I don’t know… bullshitting that I’m special to you when I’m not, it makes me run screaming.”

“Hey,” he said, outraged, but she cut him off.

“ It – it makes me wonder what the game is, you know? Like you’re setting me up with lying promises, and I’m wondering when the other shoe is going to drop, and when you’re going to move on to the next stupid whore. I mean – the sex stuff is great, and the chemistry is off the charts. OK? I’ll give you all of that, hands-down, and if we just kept it like that, maybe I could hack it. But you don’t mean it when you say anything beyond how hot you think I am.” She took a deep breath. “Especially when you try to claim ownership of some kind. That’s the biggest lie of all – that’s the one thing that I know you don’t mean. You can’t mean it.”

“Stop saying that you don’t belong with me,” he growled at her. “That you don’t belong to me.”

“I don’t belong with you.” Zoe tried to mount some kind of coherent defense, though she was fully aware that it was way too little, and far, far too late. Damn that space that they’d created; damn her own need for him. “I don’t want to belong to you.”

“Liar.” His voice and eyes were both uncompromising. “You want to be mine… you want it to happen as bad as I do.”

“Scars…” She shook her head, and his name came out as a sob. A tear slid down her cheek, and she turned away, humiliated to be so weak in front of him.

Right away, his face and stance changed. On a less-hard man, it’d all look like softening, but Scars never looked sweetly-soft, not even when he was being gentle. Instead, the change somehow made him look more dangerous. Harder. Angrier.

The truth was that Zoe’s sudden lowering of her guard this evening had shown him and made him understand –for the first time – her clear distress at being made vulnerable with a man. And that made him fucking furious, because he knew now what that probably meant, what had quite possibly happened. How he’d missed it before, he had no idea, but he saw it now, and it couldn’t be unseen.

All he wanted to do was to kill whoever had scared and hurt her this much. He didn’t care who they were, where they were – he’d hunt them down, and make sure there was nothing left of them. She was his, and that made her safety and peace-of-mind his job, and to hell with any goddamn consequences.

“Don’t cry, beautiful,” he said roughly. “Just don’t, OK? It fucking tears me apart when I see that.”

Zoe took a deep breath, fighting for calm, but calm was just about the last thing that she felt. Why did this keep happening with him? How the hell had this man gotten so far, and so deep, under her skin? And why did she keep coming back for more, knowing who and what he was?

Is this more than just physical chemistry? Holy God, is this more than anything I’ve ever had before, with anyone?

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