TWENTY-FIVE #2
And the truth of my answers raking up my gullet: I had the creams and needles because I’d needed them far too often.
‘I’m always in pain,’ he said inaudibly.
And I could hear that little crack in my chest open wider.
I couldn’t lie to myself – it hurt to breathe. Weapons weren’t allowed in Obsidian’s underground. Which meant someone had let that fighter bring one in. Someone with authority.
By the time we reached her flat, the adrenaline had drained, leaving only the throbbing aftermath of my insanity.
The past crawled under my skin like a bad itch.
I shifted on Paula’s couch, the cushions sinking beneath my weight.
When I looked down, I caught the rust-coloured smear blooming across the dark teal armrest.
‘Shit,’ I uttered. ‘I got blood on your couch!’ Then cast a glance sideways.
My eyes found her reflection in the window glass – bent over, half inside a walk-in wardrobe, rummaging. A dim floor lamp shed a soft halo over her bookshelves that boxed in the room like a silent jury.
It made me feel a little at ease, though, being surrounded by books… something familiar.
I looked over my shoulder, at leather leggings hugging her like a second skin, every curve sculpted in black. She slid the door shut and turned, her eyes brushing mine before darting away.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she rasped softly as she circled the couch. ‘Cold water, dish soap, hydrogen peroxide. It’ll come right off.’
She reached for my shirt—
And I caught her wrist.
Her skin was warm beneath my palm, her pulse stuttering like a trapped thing. Our eyes locked, and I tried – fuck, I tried – to soften the shadows in mine, to drown out the grim reaper Vinnie said had taken up residence behind my stare.
‘How would you know that?’ I asked, perhaps too loud for the quiet between us. But she didn’t wince.
Instead, her brows pinched slightly. She glanced down where our hands touched.
‘I have three brothers.’ Her tone softened, dipped back into control. ‘And I told you I had a rough relationship.’
I held her stare. ‘Yes.’
Then I released her.
Her fingers moved to the first button of my bloodied shirt.
Christ… I felt the press of her warm knuckle through the fabric. And it lit a fuse under my skin.
She slipped the button free.
I bit down the urge to catch her wrist again, to drag her palm to the wound, to feel the sting of her care like a punishment I deserved – and the blessing I definitely didn’t.
She didn’t know what that touch did to me.
Didn’t know that under her careful fingers, the monster in me didn’t wince – it fucking purred.
Which said a lot about me, considering I’d spent eight hours balls-deep in Scarlett.
The end of that chapter still sat heavy in my chest. I’d stored it away into a quiet corner of my mind, where old stories went to die.
I watched Paula fighting herself as she slipped the next button free.
‘How long did it go on for?’ I asked, jealousy and wrath coating the lust in my voice.
She hesitated. I could see the way her mind struggled with reopening the darkened rooms she had bolted shut. Her eyes glinted with something fragile, yet fierce. Her lips pressed together as if holding the memories back with her teeth. But her fingers kept moving, mooring her to the present.
To me.
‘Too long,’ she said at last. ‘Years.’
Another button undone. Then another. Her fingers worked faster, no longer steady. When the shirt peeled open and the gashes came into view, she sucked in a breath.
‘For fuck’s sake, D’Angelo…’
I don’t know why that dragged a grin across my face.
Maybe because the profanity in the shade of her voice suddenly made me consider if it tasted as sweet as it sounded.
She fumbled through the first aid box, hands shaking just enough to betray the effort it took to stay composed. Then she started wiping the dried blood.
A few times, she looked up at me. Those wide eyes seemed to keep trying to piece me together like a puzzle with missing pieces.
‘These are bad, Cain,’ she whispered. ‘Aren’t you in pain?’
‘Pain’s good,’ I said too quickly. I should’ve swallowed it, buried it under a lie like any civilised human. But I let it loose – and it hung in the air.
Her movements slowed until they stilled entirely. Her gaze clawed up to mine, inquisitive – but not unsettled.
Whatever she meant to say dissolved on her tongue when reason won out, and she returned to the wounds, gently dabbing the blood.
Each swipe of cotton against torn flesh made my nerves sing with an aching, exquisite thrum that spiked deep in my gut.
Fuck, I loved the feeling of her hands on me.
And just like that, the guilt for walking out on Scarlett disintegrated. She’d never been real – just gloss and leather stitched over a fantasy I had mistaken for connection.
But Paula? She was here. Breathing. Fucking touching me. And not once did she recoil from the blood. Worse… she leaned into it. Dug her fingers into my wounds and took whatever remained of my sanity.
‘I’m a bad man, Paula,’ I said with a low, gravelly note.
Christ… it didn’t sound like a mere, half-arsed confession, either. More like the truth finally exhaled. As if the monster didn’t need to hide around her.
‘No, you’re not,’ she answered simply. No pause, no judgment.
And she didn’t stop tending to the wounds.
I caught her wrist again, relished the heat flaring under my fingers – and her other hand shot to my throat on reflex.
Goddamn.
My jaw clicked shut, hips twitching forward instinctively. A low sound clawed up my throat – half a groan, half a growl.
‘What are you doing, DeLuca?’ I rumbled. But it wasn’t a warning – it came out as a low hum of something unholy and barely held at bay.
Her eyes widened. She snatched her hand back like she’d been burned. ‘Shit! I’m so sorry!’
But I caught her again before she could escape, pulling her into me.
She stumbled, one knee landing between my thighs on the sofa, her hands bracing against my shoulders to catch herself.
Her breath stuttered, pupils dilated until her eyes looked almost black.
What the fuck am I doing? The thought echoed—
But the echo drowned in the ocean of her eyes.
I didn’t mean to hold on, but my hands refused to relent.
Her face hovered so close that her breath brushed my lips, trembling between fear and something that felt dangerously like want.
She was the first woman I hadn’t picked up in Obsidian, the first who didn’t wear a mask, and the first who wouldn’t let me hide behind mine. No persona. No fucking control over the scene.
And it terrified me.
My toes curled.
Because I knew… if she didn’t like what she saw – the blood, the violence, the part of me that thrived in it – then what would be left of me to show her?
Nothing.
She would see nothing.
Her pulse stuttered in her throat as my hand climbed to her jaw in a slow, dangerous stroke, thumb dragging across skin soft as sin.
She didn’t pull away. She should have, but she didn’t.
‘I’m not the man you think I am,’ I murmured roughly, my words thick with something heavier than desire. But it was more to remind myself of their meaning.
Her lashes fluttered, and for a second I thought she’d wrench herself away. But her gaze stayed locked to mine, lips parted – just like that last time in the office when I taught her – Christ – taught her surrender.
‘I’m not who you think I am either,’ she whispered.
My thumb froze against her skin.
We stared at each other. Two fractured things, pretending we could breathe.
Don’t kiss her – I repeated it like words of a religion I had long abandoned.
Because I didn’t know how to kiss a woman without falling. And falling was how I destroyed everything I touched.
Scarlett had been proof of that.
But Christ – I was slipping.
My gaze dragged to her lips.
‘Don’t,’ she breathed.
And that single word… it bloomed through me like venom, spreading slow and sweet until it reached my heart and stopped it cold.
So I did the only merciful thing left.
I let her go.