I said it like it was possible. Like all I needed was soap and water to wash away the filth he’d attached to his soul. Because of me.
Luke’s eyes stayed on me, his body jerking as he understood my meaning.
I expected a protest. For him to be the good guy. Tell me I was too vulnerable, that such a thing would be taking advantage.
For him to point out that great fucking elephant in the room. The one that had always been in the room. The one that stopped him, every day, every moment, from ever doing anything that would’ve had us right here. Together.
“Okay,” he murmured.
I flinched.
I’d expected him to be the good guy. But he wasn’t anymore. I’d made him into something else.
I hated myself for being so happy about it.
“Rosie?”
He cupped my cheek that was both hard and soft at the same time.
I blinked up at him. “Yeah?” I whispered.
Again, I expected him to ask me if I was sure, if I was okay. Again, the good guy Luke remained elusive.
“Take off my clothes,” he commanded, eyes shimmering.
I didn’t hesitate to comply. Maybe because I was scared that I’d only knocked out the good guy and he’d wake up at any moment. The sick, ugly part of me hoped he’d never wake up again the moment my shaking fingers exposed the column of his neck.
The other part of me, the part that had loved Luke for who he was, was sickened at the thought of what I’d done. What I’d made him do.
But that Rosie had been in charge for twenty years. She was tired. Weak. Vulnerable.
So the evil part of me continued to undo the buttons of his shirt.
He hissed out a breath when my nails raked at his washboard abs, scoring the taut skin.
I stared at it, his exposed torso, as his shirt fluttered to the ground. Luke’s smell, his aura, engulfed me, both sweet and sour at the same time.
Both a dream and a nightmare being lived out in real time.
I was here, with Luke. Alone. He was half-naked. He wanted to be here.
“Now you,” he growled.
I didn’t even have time to properly listen, let alone answer, before his hands went to the shirt that swamped me.
The steam from the shower swirled around me, beads of moisture erupting on my exposed skin as the tee mingled with Luke’s shirt on the ground.
He let out a harsh sound from between his teeth as his eyes went to my half-naked body.
Despite the heat in the room, I felt a chill, my nipples hardening from that and the raw, carnal look on Luke’s face.
“You’re beautiful, Rosie,” he said. That time, his gaze wasn’t on my breasts—which I’d always considered my best feature—but my eyes.
The way he said it, declared it, somehow told me that statement had nothing to do with my great rack. That it somehow had to do with whatever tarnished and broken soul I had left.
He kept his eyes on me as he lightly grasped my hands and brought them to his belt, undoing it using my fingers as puppets.
Flush warmed my cheeks as an uncertainty I didn’t recognize blew through me when I started to unbutton his jeans.
I wasn’t modest.
Far from it.
Physical nakedness was something I was completely and utterly comfortable with, something I didn’t blink an eye at.
But peeling off his clothes wasn’t just exposing his magnificent physical body. It was peeling off the clothes we wore over top of our souls every day. Exposing both of ourselves emotionally.
Stripping myself bare.
That, I was about to blink an eye at.
I wasn’t physically modest, but I was sure as fuck emotionally modest.
And I was terrified.
Somehow the most terrified I’d been in this whole twenty-four hours.
Because maybe violence and death and pain were all familiar. Somehow comfortable. But showing myself, utterly and completely, to the man I’d been trying to hide my truth from, that was one of the scariest things I’d done in my life.
I itched to flinch away. To cover myself and my soul.
But I kept looking into Luke’s eyes. Saw what he was giving me.
And I kept going.
Until he was completely and utterly naked right in front of me.
I stared at every inch of his chiseled and lean physique. The one I dreamed about and envisaged every time I had another man inside me.
And it was even better than imagination.
Because it was real.
“You’re beautiful,” I rasped, looking into his ocean eyes, communicating the same thing as he had to me. I didn’t just mean the V pointing to his amazing erect penis. Or the powerful thighs. Or the sculpted biceps.
No, it was that thing inside him. The soul that wasn’t all good, like I’d thought it was. The flecks of black that rippled through it somehow made it more than pure innocence and goodness could.
He reached out to trail across my collarbone and then downward, tracing down the side of my body until he reached my panties on my hip.
“Been dreaming of doin’ that for as long as I care to remember,” he whispered.
I swallowed the sandpaper of desire at my throat from not just his touch but from his admission.
That I wasn’t the only one battling this, thinking about this for years.
The desire that threatened to overwhelm me was polluted the second his finger hooked into the edge of my panties, intending to bring them down.
My hand was a blur as it moved to circle his wrist in a violent grip.
Even though I was strong, that movement in itself wouldn’t have stopped Luke. But the gesture did.
His hand stopped moving and his eyes locked on mine.
Filth settled over me as I remembered the last man who forced his way in there. The knowledge that my most private place wasn’t my own. I wasn’t my own gatekeeper anymore. I didn’t have control over who went inside my body.
I nearly collapsed under the weight of the memory. Of that realization.
There had never been a wider chasm of how dirty I was and how clean Luke was. Because I was now. Because of the choices I’d made in a man, in a life, I’d dirtied myself, inside and out.
Luke went granite as I spiraled and started to shake.
I waited for anger, fury, as I could taste it in the air. And even though I was used to anger and fury, I was terrified of the onslaught. I’d never survive it. I’d shatter in a thousand pieces if I had to face that.
So I braced to be shattered, and then he pulled me gently into his arms. Like he knew how close I was to breaking. Like he would never let that happen.
And I let him. I burrowed into the safety of his embrace.
“He didn’t r-rape me,” I stuttered, my voice weak and foreign.
Luke’s body was marble beneath me.
“Just so you know. He didn’t rape me,” I repeated, either to Luke or to myself, I wasn’t quite sure. “He didn’t quite… get there.”
Then my body, like my voice, started to shake.
He kissed my hair. “You’re okay, Rosie. I promise. You’re okay.” He stroked my back, his touch light. Then, carefully, he pulled me back just enough so our eyes met. “I know what he did made you feel like you’re not clean. Gave way to some fucked-up reasoning that it’s somehow your fault. I’m here to tell you, to promise you, that none of that shit is true,” he said. “I’m here to remind you that you’re beautiful and clean on the inside. Always have been. Always will be.”