I’d have needed to be oblivious to miss the pulsing attraction, the hardness of his cock while he helped me. I’d experienced firsthand that a cock could be a weapon, but Scar was always careful not to let it touch me. Not to act on the desire he felt while I blanched in fear.
I forced myself to breathe through the panic, to remember that he wasn’t the man who’d hurt me. He’d been too rough with me, but never really hurt me.
I’d liked what he did… before I’d been ruined.
“Good girl,” he murmured, leaning forward to touch his lips to mine gently. The taste of him was like the cruelest torment, a reminder of everything I’d wanted when I’d been a person and not just an animal trying to find a way to survive. The praise sank into me, warming my insides in a way that should have disturbed me.
Inside me, underneath the fear, part of me wanted to be good for him.
After all this time.
I shifted on his lap, struggling to shove down the bite of fear in my lungs when the movement ground him against me. Where there would have been arousal, there was only the memory of pain.
He gripped me by the back of the head, burying harsh fingers in my hair and pulling me forward until my forehead touched his. “Breathe, Butterfly,” he said, the calm in his voice reaching inside and touching the part of me that felt my breathing quicken. The part of me that couldn’t handle the feel of him touching me—pressed against the most vulnerable part of me—quivered in the wake of the softly spoken dominance in his voice. “I will never hurt you like that. You know that.” I nodded against his forehead, the rational, reasonable part of me trying to shove away the fear that made me hyperventilate.
When I’d slowed my breathing, I pushed on his chest until I sat up, putting distance between the man who’d saved me and myself. Between me and the man who had broken my heart more times than I could count, and somehow always seemed to be there to pick up the pieces.
To help me shove them back inside my corpse, breathing life back into what was dead inside me.
“Where is my money?” I asked, the words sounding faint. I tried to put more behind them, to be stronger than I really was, but there was no fooling the knowing dark eyes that stared up at me.
“Gone,” he said. “Donated to various charities for homeless children around the world.”
“What?” I gasped, floundering for words. He could have at least given it to Fresh Start.
“It needed to go somewhere you couldn’t touch it,” he said, seeming to sense my outrage that he’d given my money to an organization other than my own.
“Why?” If he expected me to live, if he demanded it of me, I would need money to function.
“Enzo has people packing up your apartment as we speak. They’ll bring everything here and we’ll go through it, determine what we need and donate what we don’t. For the time being, I have to remain here. When things with Murphy settle down, we could potentially have a place of our own,” he said, ignoring the way my eyes widened at his words.
“What do you mean my apartment is being packed up? Are you insane?” I demanded, pushing off his chest in an attempt to stand.
I needed real clothes, but all I had were the oversized shirts he’d given me. I’d lived in his clothes for so many weeks, surrounded by his scent, that the thought of my own uncomfortable, laundry detergent-scented clothing didn’t appeal in the slightest.
“You’re staying with me. End of fucking story,” he said, something like anger flickering behind his eyes. The passionate temper he hadn’t shown me in all the weeks of my recovery simmered beneath the surface, ready to be unleashed if I gave him so much as a moment of resistance to the plan he seemed to think was guaranteed.
“It is not the end of the story. It isn’t even the goddamn beginning! I didn’t agree to this,” I argued, watching as his lips tipped into something like a smile.
“There she is,” he murmured, reaching up to cup the back of my neck with his hand. He dragged me forward, brushing his lips over the corner of my mouth while I pushed at his chest. “I knew you were in there somewhere, cuore mio.”
“That’s it? This was just some twisted test to get me to fight with you?” I asked, my fingers curling into the fabric of the shirt covering his chest.
“Oh no. You really are moving in permanently.” He huffed a laugh, dropping his hands to rest on the bare skin of my thighs. I flinched, pushing past the sensation that made me close my eyes to take a deep breath.
“And what about what I want? Does that not matter to you?” I asked.
“What you want stopped mattering the moment I pulled you off that fucking railing,” he said, his voice laced with cruelty. “It stopped the moment you tried to leave me here alone.”
“So I’m supposed to just do what you say because you decided you care all of a sudden? You’re just going to leave again. You always do,” I said, watching as the blow landed. He flinched, looking away from the tears building in my eyes.
I couldn’t be bothered to care if it hurt him. He needed to remember all the times he’d walked away.
All the times he’d chosen anything but me.
“I know I hurt you. I wish I hadn’t. You will never understand how desperately I wish things were different, that I was different with you. But I am not going anywhere, Butterfly. The thought of my life without you in it…” He trailed off, his face tightening with something sad as his eyes came back to mine. “I will spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of you.”
“Worthy of me?” I scoffed, my lips twisting into a bitter smile. “I’m a disaster. Nobody deserves me.” There was no mistaking the intent of my words, that I was too broken to love, but Scar smiled up at me softly and chose to ignore it.
“You’re right. Nobody in this world deserves to own your heart, but you gave it to me when you told me you loved me. I’m not giving it back.”
I blanched, wishing I could take back the words I’d said. At the time, I’d wanted him to know. Wanted to leave him with what I hadn’t been brave enough to say in the chaos of our non-relationship.
But I’d never intended to be around to deal with the consequences. To not hear them back after they’d been acknowledged was a cruel punishment in itself.
There were some hurts that were worse than the pain that could be inflicted on our bodies. The way Scar repeatedly ripped out my heart and stomped on it was somehow worse, because he never intended to hurt me.
He just did.
The knock on the door of Scar’s living area outside the bedroom saved me from having to respond, pulling a relieved sigh from my lungs. Scar growled, his fingers tightening on my thighs for a moment before he shifted me to the side and stood. “This conversation isn’t over,” he warned, pointing a finger in my direction as he tugged open the bedroom door.
He disappeared into the living room, a tormented groan following the sound of Sadie’s voice as she charged into his space.
Rebel bounded through the living room, shoving open the cracked bedroom door to jump onto the bed and assault me with dog licks. “Rebel, get off my bed!” Scar yelled, charging after the dog that refused to listen to him.
She covered my face with affectionate kisses as Sadie set a pile of clothing on the bed. “Get up, lazy bones,” she teased, the genuine affection in her words outweighing any ridiculousness that might have come from another woman’s judgement. “Enzo told me what you did with that fire poker, and you and I need to have a chat about more creative places to shove it the next time.”