Page 94 of His

“What?”

“The scars. Do you want the surgery? We could clean them up for you.”

“We?”

“I have an old friend. He’s a cosmetic surgeon.”

I looked down at the white seams on the insides of my wrists. They caught the light and gleamed, just for a moment, shining brightly. Like my soul was peeking through the thin parts of me.

“You would be there?”

“I would assist.”

I raised my eyebrows as he lay down beside me. His hand cupped my breast and he nuzzled into the side of me. I had never thought about getting rid of my scars. Even in the summer, I would wear long sleeves to hide them. To be able to walk around freely, without worrying… it was tempting.

“You would assist, because…”

“For one, there’s nobody else I would trust to come into my home.”

“Oh! You would do it here?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“You know where, kitten.”

I thought of the kitchen table, the straps. The blood.

The man he had murdered. He was a murderer.

My inner self was more intelligent than my outer body, and I squirmed uncomfortably, thinking about the idea.

“You wouldn’t be tied,” he said. “You would be drugged. Local anesthesia.”

“I wouldn’t be zonked out?”

“No.”

“But this friend of yours, then, he would know about us? About you?”

He blinked deliberately. Stalling. There could only be one reason for his hesitation.

“He already knows?”

“He’s… he’s like me. In certain ways. In others, not so much.”

“How so?”

“He’s much less patient than I am.”

I stared at the man who had tied me up and teased me to the edge of insane desire. Someone worse than him?

“You’re skirting the question, kitten,” he said.

“I…”

I looked down at the lines once more. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine them gone. Tried to imagine my skin bare and unpuckered again. The image in my mind was of myself, but younger. Fifteen. Before I had taken a knife to my veins.

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