Page 9

9

Dirt

“You do, but not for condemning you to hell,” I acknowledged, watching her face for that flicker of vulnerability she tries to hide. “For not being the angel you needed to rescue you. I’m sorry, Kitten, you had to save yourself.”

The words aren’t lies—not exactly. I am sorry she suffered. But not for what it created: this magnificent creature, perfectly broken and reformed into something that matches me. Something that can withstand me.

I captured her mouth with mine. Not the animal claiming from the forest—that had been instinct, survival. This was deliberate. Calculated. I wanted her to feel the difference—to understand that this wasn’t chaos but choice. My choice. And soon, hers.

When her teeth sank into my lower lip, drawing blood, triumph surged through me. There she was. My pretty and cruel girl.

“That’s it, kitten,” I murmured against her mouth, tightening my grip in her hair, feeling her shiver against me. “Show me who you really are. Who you’ve become.”

I’d spent fifteen years imagining this moment. Hunting her through the darkest corners of hell. Killing anyone who’d touched her. And now she was here, clawing at my rain-soaked shirt, exposing what she’d done to me.

I stood still, letting her see her handiwork. The scars she’d carved into my flesh during those first days in this cabin. I’d let her do it. Could have stopped her anytime, but I needed her to purge that poison. Needed to carry her marks like she carried those from the men I’d slaughtered. Perfect symmetry.

“Beautiful,” she whispered, the word slipping out unguarded.

“Yes,” I agreed, meaning her. Always her. The admission in her eyes when she looked at my marked body was better than any confession tortured from a man’s lips.

Her rain-soaked underwear tore easily in my hands. The thin barrier between us gone, I took my time studying what fifteen years had done. New scars mapped territories of suffering I would make someone pay for. Her body was leaner, harder—a weapon forged in survival.

“I remember every inch,” I told her, a truth she wouldn’t understand the fullness of. How I’d traced her from memory every night. How I’d broken men who had dared touch what was mine. “Dreamed about it for fifteen years. The reality is better.”

“Liar,” she countered, but there was no fire behind it. “I’m not the same. Not even close.”

“No,” I agreed, tracing her scars like reading braille. Each one told me who to kill next. “You’re more now. Deeper. Stronger.”

I watched goosebumps follow my touch. That telltale shudder she couldn’t control. The body never lies. Not hers to me.

“Off,” she commanded, reaching for my belt, trying to reclaim control.

I let her think she had it, shedding my remaining clothes with practiced efficiency. Let her see all of me—what fifteen years without her had sculpted. Let her see the power I’d built while searching for her. The hunger that had never abated.

She thought taking me to this cabin, marking me, drugging me had been her revenge. She had no idea how perfectly she’d played into my hands. How completely I would reclaim her.

Pressing her against the shower wall, I lifted her with hands that remembered exactly where to grip—where to press to make her gasp, where to avoid to prevent the wrong kind of pain. Her legs wrapped around my waist without hesitation, her body remembering mine despite everything between us.

This wasn’t forgiveness or redemption. Those were irrelevant. This was recognition. The acknowledgment that we were the same predatory species now, perfectly adapted to each other’s darkness.

I entered her with a single, calculated thrust. Not the frenzied coupling from the forest, but something designed to remind her body who it belonged to. Who had always owned it, even when others had violated what was mine.

“Look at me,” I demanded, gripping her jaw, forcing her eyes to mine. I needed her to see exactly who was claiming her. “See who’s inside you right now.”

Her eyes widened, pupils dilating as something shifted in her expression. Recognition. Realization. The first crack in that wall of hatred she’d been maintaining.

“Jace,” she whispered, my name on her lips a victory sweeter than any confession. My rhythm faltered for just a moment—a weakness I’d allow only with her.

“Again,” I commanded, driving deeper, reclaiming every inch that others had defiled.

“Jace,” she repeated, louder this time, the sound echoing off the bathroom tiles. My name in her mouth again after fifteen years. The only prayer I’d ever needed.

The water washed blood and sweat from our bodies but couldn’t touch what linked us. We moved together with the precision of perfectly matched predators, muscle memory transcending the years apart. Every touch, every response, reminded her of who she belonged to—who she’d always belonged to.

When she came apart around me, my name spilling from her lips like a confession, her fingers digging into my shoulders, I knew I had her. The first true surrender. Not the last.

I followed moments later, burying my face in her neck, tasting the salt of her skin, imprinting my scent on her. Mine. Always mine. Taken, reclaimed, possessed.

For endless moments we remained locked together, her body trembling against mine. Only when the water turned tepid did I carefully lower her to her feet, steadying her when her legs threatened to give way. Another small victory—her body remembering its dependency on mine.

“The water heater in this place was always shit,” I observed, allowing a glimpse of the boy I’d been to surface. The human mask I’d learned to wear.

A laugh escaped her—rusty, surprised, but genuine. “Some things never change.”

I met her eyes, allowing the mask to slip. “And some things change completely.”

I reached around her to shut off the water, using the movement to press us chest to chest in the confined space. Without the shower’s white noise, I could hear her heartbeat. Still elevated. Still responding to me.

“What now?” she asked, her question laden with all the unspoken complexities between us.

I wrapped a towel around her shoulders with calculated gentleness. Let her see this side too—the care I was capable of. “Now we get warm. Dry these wounds—yours and mine.” I traced the bite mark I’d left on her shoulder, a visible sign of my claim. “And then we figure out how to get you to accept what we are to each other.”

“And what is that, exactly?” she pressed, needing the words. Always needing the words.

I smiled slowly, allowing genuine warmth to show. The truth was my best weapon now. “We’re the same,” I told her simply. “Beautiful in our brokenness. Terrible in our darkness. Ruined for anyone else.”

I watched the truth of my words land, resonating behind her eyes. For all her rage, all her righteous vengeance, what she truly wanted—what she’d always wanted—was to be seen. To be understood. To be accepted in all her magnificent vitriol and hate.

And only I could give her that.

“I’m not fixed,” she warned, wrapping the towel tighter, a futile shield. “What they did to me—what I did to survive—it can’t be undone.”

“I don’t want you fixed,” I replied, making no move to cover myself. Let her see all of me—my comfort in my power, my dominance. “I want you exactly as you are. Scars, rage, black heart. All of it.”

“Why?”

Such a simple question. Such complex implications.

I held her gaze steadily, letting her see just enough truth to bind her to me. “Because you’re the only person who sees me and doesn’t look away. Who knows exactly what I am and wants me anyway.” I allowed my voice to drop, to convey a rawness she would interpret as honesty. “Because fifteen years without you taught me that nothing—no power, no revenge, no amount of blood on my hands—filled the void you left inside me.”

She turned away, unable to bear what she saw in my eyes. “Pretty words from a sadistic monster.”

“Truth from your monster,” I corrected, following as she moved into the bedroom—the room where she’d kept me captive, where she’d carved her pain into my flesh day after day. The room where she’d taught me exactly how to reclaim her.