Page 16 of Enticing Monsters

Mumbling to myself, I begin to sort hangers, placing them in the order he’ll need to grab them in the morning and then by color. Yes, yes, this will be good for him. Helpful.

“Tristan?” Kian’s voice is soft, but it still echoes into the closet I’m standing in, making me freeze.

I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, sucking in a big gulp of air and counting each item of clothing as I adjust the hanger.One, two, three, four…

I can see Kian move out of the corner of my eye, but I’m not able to face him. I’m barely able to face any of them, but Kian? He’s the hardest of them all. All of the poison that…that woman…whispered into my ears as she hurt me echoes in my mind. The things she did to him. The ways she hurt him. What she made him do… All the while, he was waiting for me to protect him.

Fabric rustles as I keep moving pieces around, unable to turn to face him. There’s a low huff of breath, and the door creaks as Kian leans against it, his head cocking to the side as he takes me in.

“She used to have another favorite, you know.” Kian’s voice is quiet, almost conversational, but with the blinders ripped from my eyes, I can hear the pain hidden underneath the words. “I’m not sure what his name was. She never said it. She called him ‘Toy.’”

He takes a breath, his head tipping backwards, his eyes finding the ceiling. I relax slightly now that I no longer have that too-knowing gaze locked onto me.

Does it make me sick that I’m curious? She never mentioned anyone else when she talked about Kian. Her focus had been on him, her words always manic and angry.

“He wore a mask when she’d call him in after a session. He was a healer of some type, though I’m not sure what all of his powers were. I’d look forward to it, you know. When her powers would release me and I’d hear her call for him. I knew the pain would be ending shortly.”

I glance at him out of the corner of my eye, and the corner of his lip twitches, as though he can feel my gaze on him, though my hands haven’t stopped moving.

Maybe I should arrange these by color first, rather than by type? Would that be better for him? Make him happier?

“Didn’t you ever wonder why you couldn’t see any scars?”

I pause at those words, my fingers stilling against the wool of Xander’s suit, the texture abrading the burns that litter my hands and the scabs from when I scrubbed the floor overnight and didn’t dilute the cleaner enough.

I’ve seen Kian without his shirt on often enough, between family parties in the summer and gym class at school, and if he had other marks under his clothes, it would have gotten around.

“She preferred psychological or sexual pain, usually, but when she got angry…” He shrugs. “It got easier as the years went on. She got angry less and less because I knew what she wanted, and it was easy to give it to her.”

His eyes meet mine, and I realize I started unconsciously rubbing my ribs, the memory of a knife digging into me so clear in my mind I can almost feel the sick, icy sensation of it tugging through my skin.

“She could make your body respond, then blame you for wanting it. And she had to be right, didn’t she? I mean, your body did respond. Over and over again. No matter how it hurt, your body wanted her, and after a while, your mind did too. It was easier, wasn’t it? To just give in to it? Tuck yourself away in that space in your head and let your body do what was needed to make the pain stop?”

I squeeze my eyes shut, my nails digging into my sides as I fight to breathe. He said it so casually. So matter-of-fact. Yet, I can’t slow down, can’t pause, can’t stop at all, or I’ll be swamped with it.

I’ve been lucky in comparison to him. I realize that.

She’d still been in the middle of torturing me when Sera and V arrived. She had been too distracted by their sudden arrival to keep her power going enough to actually rape me. But it didn’t change the responses she’d forced from my body. Or the guilt and shame that’s been rotting inside of me since I woke up, eating away at me like a corrosive acid.

“It was harder after the healings, you know. I didn’t even have the pain to lean into. To distract me from how she’d made me feel. Not just about her, but about myself. About what she’d taken from me. What she’d made me into. I tried talking to my parents.” He scoffs at that, his head thunking back against the thick wooden door as nausea roils in my stomach.

I’m suddenly glad I haven’t eaten recently. If I had, I’d probably be washing Xander’s clothing all over again.

“That was futile, as I’m sure you know. And well…” He trails off, but I know what the unspoken words hold.

He tried talking to me too, but I’d been too self-involved, too self-righteous, too self-centered to hear him. To see his pain.

“I tried to be normal. To be what everyone expected, because if I could be normal, then maybe, just maybe, it would all be in my head. Maybe I’d wake up from that nightmare, and it’d all go away. In my mind, if I stopped being normal, then I’d let myself become a victim.”

I wince as his words hit me, nailing me as hard as a physical blow.

“Then I mether.”

The glow on his face is so pure, so entrancing, I can’t look away. If I didn’t know better, I’d think his power is roiling through him, but I can’t sense it at all now that I know what to look for.

No, this has nothing to do with power or lust or want. This is adoration, pure and simple.

“And where everyone else saw my body, saw the pleasure I could bring them, that they could force from me? She sawme. When I’d flinch. When I’d want to scream. When fear was burrowing so deep inside of me, I thought I couldn’t breathe. She saw every bit of it. And she didn’t care. She didn’t walk away, even when she watched those girls all over me.” His eyes meet mine, and for the first time since our accident, I don’t look away.

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