Page 111 of Deacon

I touch his face, the rough stubble of his jaw. He watches me, silent.

“Who are you?” I whisper.

The corner of his mouth turns up. “What’s that mean?”

My touch runs over his mouth. It’s beautiful, masculine and cleanly cut but full. It somehow fits perfectly with the brutal cut of his face. I don’t know if I would call Deacon classically handsome, but he is wholeheartedly beautiful, like raw rock, like the gray landscape, like black mountains.

“I don’t know,” I whisper. “Would you like me to ride you?”

He shakes his head, reaching up to tap my chin. “Just keep me in that pretty little pussy while I have a smoke. You mind?”

I shake my head. I don’t like cigarettes, but I’m used to them. There are a lot worse things he could be indulging in. He leans over and takes a cigarette and a lighter from the bedside table. Flame flares. He inhales and leans back against the headboard.

“Are you satisfied?” I whisper.

“That you’re mine?” He looks at me through a haze of smoke. “You’ve been mine since I put you on your knees the night you got here. Just because you didn’t know that doesn’t make it not true.”

My stomach twists.

“What happened to you?” The words slip out before I can stop them.

His brow rises. “Why? You mean, why am I an asshole?”

I nod. He laughs quietly.

“I’ve always been an asshole. That’s why I got kicked from one family to another,” he says. “I was adopted out and handed back. Ended up in the foster system until around twelve.”

My lips part. “That’s not your fault.”

“No, that’s not the fault of other kids. I’ve always been too much. The world made that pretty clear from day one. Some of it was dumb luck, some of it because I got a hard head and a personality problem.”

He’s smiling, but there’s real pain in his voice.

“I can’t figure you out,” I say. “All the men I know are violent. You’re like them, but you aren’t like them at all.”

His eyes soften. “I’ve been on the receiving end of violent men. The man I killed, he pushed me hard, and I let him because I knew if I hit back, he’d be done.”

The bottom drops from my stomach. I should be horrified, but I grew up with Aiden. I’m hard to horrify.

“What did he do to you?”

He inhales, leaning back to release the smoke. “He got jealous and put a fence stake through my shoulder, stuck me right to the tree behind me.”

Oh.

There’s a distant roaring in my ears. I look, but he has so much ink on his shoulders, it’s hard to see anything else from here.

“A fence stake?”

“The iron stakes I was making in the blacksmith shop,” he says. “I use them to hold the bottom rung of the split rail fences in place.”

My head spins, a chill slipping down my spine. He put one of those stakes inside me. He fucked me with a weapon.

“What did you do?”

He sighs, his jaw flexing. “I ripped it out, walked back to the house with blood just fucking soaking me. He was inside, so I went into the living room and shoved the stake into his temple.”

Oh God, I might be sick.

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