Chapter 17 Ranger
RANGER
I eased her off to the side and tucked her in before I bounded out of bed. I couldn’t believe it. Holy fucking fuck.
I touched her ass.
My hands throbbed with a need to return. Her ass wasn’t nearly as jiggly as it used to be, but that was an easy fix. Some hearty meals, a lot of sleep on a full belly, and those hams would be right back to jiggling in my grasp with every thrust.
Can it, Ranger. You’re just looking her over.
It was just such a monumental step, though. Going from not wanting anyone to lay eyes on her to my hands cupping the most sensitive areas of her body. I felt the moisture between her legs. The heat that called to the dog inside of me.
It was nothing to bypass it, though.
Nothing shared between us was worth it if she didn’t consent.
When I had her comfortable in bed, I rushed around and turned off all the lights.
One by one, I turned on my desktop computers, going so far as to turn a couple of them to face us.
I turned on three screens before I determined that there was enough blue light headed in our direction, and then the journey back to the bedside table ended with the sleep mask in my hand.
Smoke had been at the foot of the bed the entire time she was resting. He always did that when she was in the room. Parked himself somewhere between her and the door, like he'd assigned himself the job without being asked. I glanced over at him now.
"Out," I said quietly.
His ears rotated. He looked from me to Marla, then back.
"Out, Smoke."
He got up slowly, like he disagreed with the decision but was choosing to respect it anyway, and padded toward the door. I pulled it open for him, watched him disappear into the hallway, then eased it mostly closed behind him.
This part needed to be just us.
She was already shivering when I slid my hand beneath her head. “We’re gonna get this mask on now, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, her voice trembling.
I cupped the back of her head, gazing down at her. “We don’t have to do this.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“You’re shivering. I don’t like that.”
“Me, neither.”
She didn’t back down, however. She was strong.
So much fucking stronger than she gave herself credit for.
Wrecker said this would eventually come around.
I went to him for advice a lot over the last few weeks, trying to figure out how to help Marla.
How to give her what she needed when she couldn’t even come out of the closet.
And Wreck told me that, one day, there would come a time where she’d get brave enough to start the process of reclaiming ownership of her body again.
I braced myself for whatever came as I covered her eyes with the blindfold.
“There,” I said softly as I removed my hand from the back of her head. “How do you feel?”
“On guard,” he answered honestly.
“Want a back massage to help calm you down?”
To my shock, she rolled over herself. She moved in a fluid motion, flopping onto her front side as the soft hue from my computers illuminated her. Even in the soft glow of tech light, she looked breathtaking.
Memories of that night in the bar bombarded my mind as my hands descended upon her back.
I started over the shirt. But eventually, she wiggled around so much that I finally got the hint that she wanted the shirt out of the way. I shoved it up, little by little. Inch by inch. Just in case she pulled the ripcord and wanted me off her
She didn’t pull it, though.
And before I knew it, my hands soared over the expanse of her exposed back.
With those five lengthy scars staring back at me.
I counted the scars. All five of them. I studied their track marks and the mangled skin that made up two of them that were still purple, as if they were fresh and still in their last healing stages or some shit.
It took a lot of breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth to keep my hands steady.
I didn’t want her feeling my hands shake with anger.
They looked like whip scars, to be honest. Like the same places on her back were struck over and over again.
I felt her shoulders finally relax and I slid my hands down her body, taking great care with the muscles that ran along her spine.
I massaged around the scars, feeling her flinch every once in a while when my fingers rumbled over one of them.
She probably felt so foreign in her own body.
My heart ached at the notion.
I made it all the way down to the small of her back before her muscles tensed again. So I stayed there in that small groove, kneading and rubbing and working. I moved to her hips, keeping my hands above the basketball shorts of mine that she wore.
I tried not to think about how gorgeous she looked in all of my fucking clothing.
I wasn’t sure how long it took me to get her to relax. But when she did, I hooked my fingers into the band of her shorts. I paused for a moment, giving her time to kick back.
She stayed silent, though.
So I pulled the shorts down over the small globe of her ass. And sure enough, her left cheek was covered in little speckled scars. Her right cheek didn’t have much in the way of scarring, but it did have a couple of faded scrape marks.
Like she was dragged.
“What does it look like?” she whispered.
I continued sliding her shorts down, and she lifted her hips for me. I slid the shorts all the way down her legs until they sat at her ankles, and I tried to ignore the feminine scent that wafted from in between her legs.
Thank fuck, she had boxers on.
“Like I felt,” I whispered back as my hands picked up one of her legs and massaged. “Just some speckles. Little scars. They’re hard to see unless you’re really up close.”
“Oh, that’s good,” she said.
I liked that she spoke that part out loud.
Her body trembled as I massaged, but she didn’t tell me to stop, so I did my best. Her thighs were malleable, like she had no underlying muscle to them at all. It was soft, and then bone. It killed me, how much she wasted away.
I silently vowed to make her meals as calorically complicated as possible from this point onward.
My eyes studied the backs of her legs and to be honest, she didn’t have many scars back there. She had a couple of one-off scrapes that healed over a bit wrong, like she caught herself on something a little too sharp. But the backs of her legs, outside of that, were mostly unscathed.
She got comfortable enough to shift and part her legs.
When she did, the scars on the insides of her thighs came into view.
Parting them unleashed her juicy scent, and it called to the animal inside of me.
My mouth watered. I bet she tasted just as good as she did that night.
I licked my lips as I saw the smallest amount of hair teasing me from the gap in between my boxers and her legs.
I mean, it wasn’t like she had time to shave while she was tortured. And I knew she hadn’t taken on that kind of undertaking while here. The condition of her legs told me that.
My mouth salivated at the idea of a full bush.
Fucking hell, why did women ever start shaving?
Cut it the fuck out, you’re objectifying her just like all of those other asshats.
The voice in my head startled me enough that I finally moved.
I started at her calves, slowly massaging upward, giving her plenty of time to tell me that she didn’t like any of this.
My hands crept closer to the insides of her thighs.
I felt the heat from her pussy radiating through the set of my boxers that she wore.
Until I felt them.
Three distinct scars on both the insides of her thighs.
“Anything there?” Marla whispered out.
I smoothed my thumb along the three scars on her left thigh before moving my hands and massaging the other one. And sure enough, three practically identical scars were on her other thigh as well.
“You’ve got three soft scars on each of your inside thighs,” I said softly as I continued my massages.
“Oh.”
“Do you want me to look at them?”
She contemplated my question for a while before she slowly shook her head. “No. That’s a bit close.”
“Fair enough,” I said as I moved my hands down to her feet.
I was stunned at the condition of her feet.
As I picked one up in my hands, I couldn’t help but stare at the scars that lined the soles of her feet.
She had thick, roping scars that formed into makeshift calluses.
Scrap marks and pressure marks and cut marks.
Like her bare feet were the only thing that she was afforded while fighting for her life for months.
No wonder she ran in the woods as long as she did.
She probably didn’t feel much while running in the first place.
All I wanted to do was bend forward and kiss every single scar that I came across.
Each one I unearthed hurt more than the last. I convinced her to turn over onto her back with the shirt still rolled up to her shoulders, and watching her pancaked breasts flounce against her body had nothing on the four scars that caught my attention.
She had those same whipping scars from her back on her breasts as well.
One of them even cut through her right nipple, splitting it into two little points instead of one fused one.
I clenched my teeth so hard that it gave me a headache.
“Miles?” she asked softly.
“Sorry,” I whispered as I scooted off to the side.
I picked up one of her arms and continued my massage.
She let me massage basically all of her. And in return, I committed her scars to memory. What they looked like. How long they were. What color they were. What directions they slashed in, if necessary for the scar. I wanted to be able to answer any and all of her questions.
Especially since she stopped asking them.
At some point in time, she closed her eyes. Every once in a while, I peeked over at her face to get a temperature read on how she felt with my hands splayed across her bare skin. But all she did was lay there, sinking into my mattress while she let me pamper her.
The dog in me was pleased.
She allowed me access to her neck. To her stomach. To the front of her legs. I even massaged her feet again, simply because the numerous scars she had as calluses told me she could have probably used the pressure to help break up some of the tightness of those scars.
I noticed that her pinky toe curled in a little bit from a piece of marred skin that healed the wrong way.
I made a mental note to bring it up with Doc.
“Okay, I think I’ve had enough,” she whispered.
I never removed my hands so quickly from a woman in all my life. It ripped me out of my trance, and my gaze rushed back up to hers.
“Sorry,” she whispered as her face grimaced.
I just shook my head before I reached up and slid her shirt back down over her body. I reached down toward her ankles and helped her shimmy the basketball shorts back up around her hips.
Her hands reached for the sleep mask.
“Here, I’ll give you a countdown,” I said as my fingers slid beneath either side of the mask band. “Three. Two. One.”
I slid the sleep mask up to her forehead, and she blinked those bleary eyes up at me.
I smiled softly down at her, petting my hand along her hair, wanting nothing more than to tell her how proud I was of her.
She had taken such a huge fucking step. She allowed me to touch places that probably hadn’t been touched since those scars were left behind on her skin.
I wanted to scoop her up, kiss her senseless, and tell her that she was the strongest woman I had ever known, and that I was in awe of her.
Because I was.
“Hey there, beautiful,” I said softly as those pale blue eyes of hers finally focused in on me.
I wasn’t sure where that third word had come from. It just sort of slipped, I guess. I expected her to call me out on it. Or, to even deny it, like most other women did just so they could get more compliments out of someone.
But instead, all she did was roam her eyes over my face. “Do I even want to know how many scars I’ve got?”
Her voice was still a whisper, so I whispered back. “You’ve got twenty-two big scars and thirty-one little pock-marked scars.”
Her eyes welled with tears. “Oh.”
I smoothed my hand along her forehead. “Oh? Just… just oh?”
She sniffled softly. “I mean, I guess it’s better than the number I thought was coming. So there’s that.”
It took me a second to register that. Twenty-two long scars. Thirty-one little ones. And she… thought there would be more?
“Come here,” I muttered without a second thought.
I couldn’t handle that. My brain couldn’t wrap itself around that fact. She expected there to be more? What the fuck had these men done to her to make her think she’d have more than that? I scooped her close to me, feeling her scant weight settle against my arms.
“You were so good for me,” I said softly as I picked up my leg and wormed my way into bed. “So brave. And I am so proud of you, Marla.”
She laid her head on my shoulder. “Really?”
“Really,” I said as I wiggled beneath the covers of my bed, settling her in my lap.
I wrapped my arms around her and held her close, relishing the way she felt pressed against me. Big or small, it was a miracle she survived, and I was glad she was still breathing.
It meant I had a chance to prove to her that she really was amazing.
“Really, really,” I whispered as I leaned back against the headboard of my bed. “Now, rest. Your body still needs lots of it.”
“But what if I’m hungry?” she asked softly.
I chuckled and dropped my lips to the top of her head, like I did before.
She still didn’t balk at it.
Or tell me to stop.
“Then, I’ll hold you for a little while, and then I’ll go get us some breakfast.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
She nuzzled against me a little closer.
Like her body found the one source of physical touch that it could stand.
One of these days, I’ll kiss every single one of your scars, Marla.
And I would do it with the reverence of a devotee worshipping their chosen goddess.