“Why what?” I whispered, staring into the eyes of death itself. Of all things dangerous and ready to maim.
Ready to kill.
“Why did you fucking cut yourself?” he asked, applying a firmer pressure with my hand on my clit. I whimpered, coming so close to the edge that I saw stars.
And then he pulled my hand back.
“Scar,” I hissed, glaring up at him as his forehead touched mine. His cock hung heavy between us, his hand still on it as he focused on the answer he needed so desperately that he would manipulate my body to get it.
“Why, Irina?” he growled, holding me steady and giving me just enough room to maneuver feather light touches to the side of where I needed them. It was enough to keep me on the edge, but never enough to send me spiraling into heaven.
“You can’t do this,” I said, moving to shift away from him.
His hand left his shaft, coming to rest on my shoulder and pressing me back into the sofa. “Watch me,” he said, holding me steady when I struggled. With him between my thighs and his hands pinning my shoulder and wrist, there was nowhere to go.
No way to escape his assault on my senses.
“I needed to feel something,” I said, my desperation taking over. It was too much.
“You needed pain?”
“I needed anything, and pain is better than just nothing,” I admitted. He eased his grip on my wrist, letting go of my shoulder and putting his hand back on his cock to stroke it quickly. My fingers went back to my clit, circling and bringing me right back to the brink until his words threw me tumbling into the most intense orgasm of my life.
“Come for me, Little Butterfly,” he murmured, staring down at me intently.
I did, crying out as I arched my back. Scar grunted, groaning low as something wet and sticky covered my stomach and the space just above my pussy. He came, covering me in his release and watching it in fascination.
It seemed to never end, but when it did he touched his fingers to it and spread it into my skin. Then he raised them to my mouth, touching them to my bottom lip.
“Apri la bocca,” he ordered, the sound of his voice ordering me in Italian bringing goosebumps to my skin. Still coming down from the high of my orgasm, I parted my lips and let him slide his fingers into my mouth until the taste of him exploded across my tongue. “Suck.”
I did. I suspected I’d always do what he told me, some part of me wanting to give up control for just a little while.
He drew his fingers back, tucking himself into his pants and working to make it look like nothing had ever happened. “The next time you need to feel something, you come to me, Irina,” he said, snatching my cell off the coffee table. He thrust it at me, leaving me to gape at him as I unlocked the screen and handed it back to him so he could input his number. Then he turned for the door without another word, leaving me to watch him go from the place where he’d used me.
“You can’t fix me, Scar,” I called as he pulled open the front door.
“Watch me,” he growled, disappearing out the door and closing it behind him.
One of these days, I’d stab him. Because what in the actual fuck?
13
SCAR
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The sound of fists connecting with flesh or bags resounded through the gym space as I walked in the front door. After all these years, I still saw the chair in the main entryway. I still saw Franco Bellandi standing over me, waiting to welcome me into a new life that I’d never asked for and that I’d never thought could be my future.
Waiting to give me a new purpose after the loss of everything I knew and the only thing I’d ever loved.
The gym had become a safe haven in the months that followed Cesca’s death, a place where I’d gone to train my body and quiet my mind when the demons wouldn’t be silenced. I’d understood my butterfly when she said sometimes she just needed to feel something and that anything was better than emptiness. There was nothing like the rush of pain and endorphins flooding through your bloodstream to end the eternal numbness of daily life.
The real question was: why was she numb? Why did she need to feel that rush in the first place when the life she’d lived should have been safe and sheltered?
I didn’t have the answers, and even a day after being with her the questions nagged at me incessantly. I couldn’t get the scars out of my mind, the image of her imperfect skin, marred by her own hand. If it had been someone else who hurt her, I would have hunted them to the ends of the earth and made sure they suffered every bit of pain they’d made her endure.
What was I supposed to do when she’d done it to herself? How much could I really punish the woman that I never wanted to hurt? I couldn’t, especially not when she seemed to thrive under my command.
Irina would take everything I gave her and still beg me for more. She was dangerous. To my body and to whatever remained of my humanity.
I needed the pain just as much as she did. That was why I was here.
Ryker jumped down from the center ring, his opponent heaving a relieved sigh before he limped off. Matteo’s enforcer was only at the gym on rare occasions, as most of his time was spent with the worse-for-wear occupants at his warehouse, or following the woman he stalked in his free time.
I understood it too well lately.
“Haven’t seen you here in a while,” he observed, nodding his head and grabbing a towel to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
“Been busy,” I agreed, stripping the shirt over my head. The guys in the gym had all seen me often enough that they knew better than to stare at the scars covering my body. They stole brief glimpses when they thought I wasn’t looking, piecing together the puzzle of my past scar-by-scar, until they thought they knew the whole truth.
They knew nothing.
“So I heard,” he said with a grin, hoisting himself back into the ring. I followed, the wordless communication between us falling into its natural place. Ryker understood. He might not have been on the receiving end of the kind of childhood I’d lived, but he was familiar enough to have a better grasp on it than most people.
His family had been the violators. The abusers who took children from their beds in the night and sold them into a life of slavery, who trained them to be mindless objects for someone else’s entertainment.
“Shut up,” I groaned, not wanting to go into the details about my butterfly with anyone just yet, let alone the one man who saw straight through my bullshit. He’d try to tell me I deserved her. That I wasn’t too dirty to put my filthy hands on her the way I had.
He’d try to convince me to give it a real chance, never understanding that we would be doomed before we even started.
“Wasn’t going to say anything. Don’t think I have to,” he said, moving to the center of the ring. I followed, raising my fists to block the first swing he threw my way. Ryker was a strong fighter, probably the strongest we had in terms of brute strength, but his size and muscle mass slowed him down.
He was shorter, stouter, whereas I had longer arms and legs and could move faster. Most days, I had the advantage in our fights.
This was not most days. I hadn’t gone to the ring wanting a win under my belt. I hadn’t wanted to be victorious and have bragging rights.