“You need to go to the bathroom, and then you need to shower,” I said, clutching her hands in mine for a brief moment. Her eyes were wide with fear, her head shaking side to side.
“I want Samara,” she said, pursing her lips as she stared at me. I tried to push away the hurt that came with her wanting someone else. With knowing that she was afraid of me.
I’d given her very little reason to think otherwise.
I lifted a hand to cup her face, noting the way it encompassed the entire side of her head. “I’m not going to hurt you, Butterfly,” I said, keeping my voice soft despite the urge to push her. She was still too fragile, still too vulnerable to really come to terms with her new place in my life. “You’re mine now. That means that I’m going to be the one taking care of you from here on.”
I dropped my hand back to the knot on her sweatpants, unlacing it quickly and keeping my gaze on her face as the pants dropped to the floor. She swallowed, squeezing her eyes shut as I helped her sit on the toilet. She jolted the moment the cool surface touched her bare skin, staring up at me with a shocked expression as she pressed her legs together.
“It’s just pee, Irina,” I said, chuckling as I thought of all the things I’d seen and done in my life.
“Please?” she said, nodding her head toward the bathroom door.
Sighing, I stepped away and moved toward it. “Two minutes. Call me if you need help,” I said.
“I can wipe myself, thanks,” she snapped, the hint of the woman I knew bringing a smile to my lips. I stepped outside the bathroom, leaving the door open a crack in case she decided to try anything risky. My bathroom had been emptied of all dangerous objects she could use to self-harm, but I wouldn’t take any chances.
The minute hand on the Vacheron Constantin watch on my wrist seemed to move in slow motion as I listened for signs that she might be struggling on her own. There were none, and when the toilet finally flushed I made my way back into the bathroom.
She’d already stood on her own, putting weight on the leg that was still healing. “Would you rather shower or take a bath?” I asked, waiting for her answer. She looked at the tub in longing, but shook her head. Undoubtedly having to elevate her leg and arm on the side of the tub became exhausting and took something away from the relaxation.
I knelt at her feet to help her out of the brace on her knee for the shower, watching to make sure she didn’t move the limbs any more than absolutely necessary. The patellar dislocation still needed more time to finish healing. The position put my face level with the engravings on her stomach that were hidden by my shirt, where another man had marked her as his when he’d had no right.
It filled me with the desire to see my name on her skin. To erase his memory and replace it with mine, but given what had been taken from Irina, I could never do it by force. She had to want it.
I raised a hand slowly, slipping it inside my shirt and touching tentative fingers to the scars beneath the fabric. She flinched back, hollowing her stomach as if she couldn’t stand to have my touch there, even though they’d healed enough that they no longer pained her. “You’re beautiful,” I told her, finishing with unwrapping the brace and sliding it down her leg.
She swallowed above me, a sigh escaping her mouth. “I’m hideous.”
“It shows what you survived,” I said, attempting to reassure her. Setting aside both my desire to see my name on her skin, instead, and the rage that she’d been made to endure such a thing, there was nothing ugly about her strength. “If you really want to, we can always cover it up.”
She was silent, denying me an answer as I stood up in front of her until I towered over her. She moved to step back, flinching from my touch again when I reached for the hem of my shirt where it touched her thighs. The scars she’d put on her body tickled my fingertips, the raised flesh a reminder of everything she would do if I turned my back on her.
“I meant it when I said you come to me when you need pain. That goes for when you think you need to die, too,” I said, running my fingers over the scars. She closed her eyes slowly, breathing through the panic that I knew probably wanted to overwhelm her. My hand was so close to the pussy I’d felt wrapped around me, so close to the part of her that she would someday need to take back for herself.
When she was ready, we’d cross that bridge and find a way to be whole together.
“You don’t do this anymore,” I added, my voice deepening when she opened her eyes and the vivid green met mine.
“Will you come to me when you need pain?” she asked, tilting her head to the side as she went straight for the jugular. She’d seen me allowing Ryker to kick my ass. She’d seen the evidence of my brutal fights with a punching bag or Enzo or Ryker or whoever dared to take me on in the gym over the course of her weeks at the Bellandi estate.
I could have said no. I could have demanded it of her and never given it in return, because Irina would never know freedom from me regardless.
But I didn’t just want her mine; I wanted her happy to be mine.
And that meant I needed to make some sacrifices. The same ones I expected of her.
“I’m not sure what you can do to help me with mine, Butterfly,” I admitted. “But if nothing else, I’ll tell you before I seek it out.”
“I could always kick you in the balls,” she said, shoving my hands away when I attempted to raise her shirt above her head. There was more venom in her voice than a joke would have warranted—the first sign of her rage at my interference in her suicide.
“Meet me halfway, cuore mio. I don’t want you to be alone. I want to be your everything. I just need you to give yourself to me and trust that I’ll make it okay.”
“You can’t ask that of me. Not now,” she said, shaking her head slightly.
“I will ask that of you every day until we no longer walk this Earth, Butterfly. One day, your answer will be yes,” I said, tugging the shirt up past her resistance. She lifted her arms with a heavy sigh that felt resigned, baring her body to me entirely.
She was as stunning as the day she’d stripped in front of her apartment window, but she’d be even more beautiful when she gained back the weight she’d lost and was healthy again.
“And what if it isn’t? What if I never say yes to what you think you want?” she asked, staring up at me. There was something in that stare, something in the way her eyes met mine and challenged me to deny how fickle my intentions seemed to be.
I couldn’t begin to make her understand that something inside me had shifted when I’d seen her up on that railing, having already given up on life and so desperate to go where I couldn’t reach her.
I’d have followed her if I had to. Plunged to my death rather than live without her permanently. I didn’t know if that was love, didn’t think there was a strong enough word for what I felt for Irina.
I would have died rather than live without her. I would have died before crossing the final name off my list.
“Then I’ll be right here with you anyway, because nothing else is ever going to work for either of us. We fit together, Butterfly,” I said, sliding my fingers through hers so that my hand engulfed hers. “No one will ever fit you the way I do.”
She jolted back, rocking on her heels and shaking her head furiously. Her hand ripped out of mine as she stumbled, making it so that I could barely catch her.