Page 54 of Broken

“How is that possible?”

“God’s will?” I suggest bitterly, bowing my head.

“Do you want to die?” she asks, the words soft.

Sad.

She hurts for me.

Not because she pities me, but because she doesn’t like what I’m telling her.

She doesn’t want me to feel that way.

Is anything about this night even happening, or is it a dream sequence gone awry?

Maybe that would make more sense.

“Not always,” I hedge.

Her answer isn’t forthcoming, but then, I guess there isn’t much to say to that.

Not even in dreams that take the shape of pocket pixies who cup cocks as a greeting and lick blood off their fingers.

Yet again, my body stirs at the memory. I know, point blank, that image will be in my head—dream sequence or not—until the day I die.

The clasp on the kit rattles as she opens it, making me tense as I hear her set up her station.

“Seriously, though, how did you clean the wounds when you bothered?”

“I’d douse a towel in rubbing alcohol and lay it on my back.”

“Jesus, that must have been painful.”

“Are you supposed to use profanity in front of a priest?”

Anyone else, I’d have reprimanded them. But sheisn’tanyone else.

“You’re not a priest,” she mutters absently, and before I can reply, she presses an alcohol-soaked gauze to a wound.

A growl escapes me as the astringent makes contact with the raw flesh, and my limbs lock as I process the pain.

Par Dieu, it feels good.

Not as much of a release as when I make the lash marks, but good nonetheless.

She’s thorough, God help me. More thorough than I usually am.

She cleanses everything, and at my side, where she placed the bottle of alcohol on the table, I watch as the level slowly depletes from three-quarters full to nearly empty.

Only then does she murmur, “Damn.”

“It’ll bleed for a while,” I assure her, knowing that to be the case from experience.

“I don’t know how it’s possible, but it looks worse cleaned up,” she whispers, and something in her voice has me glancing over my shoulder at her.

I see her tears. More, I see the trails that pour down her face. Three single track marks, almost symmetrical as they course over her cheeks. Too many to be fresh. Meaning she cried as she tended to me.

Lord, she’s glorious.

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