Page 170 of Her Beast

Malcolm pulled away and the two of them filled their starving lungs with air.

“I love you, Julia.”

Her darkened eyes widened. “You do?”

“I do, with all my heart. You don’t need to look at my ravaged face to prove anything,” he told her. “I’m accustomed to wearing this mask and can—”

“I love you. All of you.”

This time when Julia reached up to remove his mask Malcolm didn’t stop her.

∞∞∞

Malcolm was right that the damage appeared far more severe up close.

Julia’s eyes burned with tears and she grieved for the pain that he must have suffered.

“May I touch you?”

Only when he exhaled did she realize he’d been holding his breath.

He nodded.

The skin was so soft she feared damaging it. “Does this hurt?” she asked, feathering her fingers over his cheek.

“I feel some sensation in a few areas and none in others.”

His eye was gone, as was all but a vestigial part of his ear.

Julia laid a hand over the patches of skin on his neck. “Why do these look different?”

“Those are called grafted skin, which was taken from another part of my body.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“It was an experimental procedure fifteen years ago—only now does the medical establishment even begin to accept that grafting can work. A French physician pioneered the process. I took a great deal of risk to try it, but tonottry it—well, that would have been worse.”

He wasn’t entirely without hair on the left side of his scalp, but he kept it shaved close to his head.

Julia turned his face until his eye met hers and her heart ached for the dread she saw in his beautiful blue gaze.

She lowered her lips over his and kissed him. For a long moment he was motionless beneath her and Julia explored him at her leisure, her sadness slowly sloughing away as she nipped and nibbled and probed the wet heat of his delicious mouth.

He’d still not responded when she finally pulled away, her pulse pounding with arousal.

She smiled. “You’ve not driven me away or scared me off and I still love you.”

His expression was one of disbelief.

Julia groaned. “What can I do to make you belie—”

“No, I believe you.”

“Then what is it? Why are you looking at me as if I’m mad?”

“No, not mad, just… utterly unexpected.”

“You’ve known me for weeks and yet you still believe I would reject you because of your scars?”

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