Page 38 of His Darkest Obsession

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INDIGO

For two years,Indigo Taylor has been like the prickly quills of a porcupine that keeps the outside world exactly where it belongs: outside.

Where it can never reach me again.

Everything from the blue hair to the calculated indifference that's supposed to keep people at arm's length and hide me from who I used to be, even to myself. All so that nobody can ever get close to me.

The real me.

Somehow, Anatoly has found a way to slip between those defenses with a single question.

And now I feel naked in a way that has nothing to do with standing before him in my underwear a moment ago.

I watch him shrug out of his suit jacket, toss it aside, and roll up his sleeves along his arms while talking in mid-conversation with the seamstresses in staccato Russian.

Every once in a while, he'd give his head a small shake, almost like he's annoyed at whatever the woman is saying, before he sharpens his hushed and hurried tone.

And slowly, he rolls his sleeves up just a little bit higher. From here, I can see the tattoos snaking along his muscular forearms. And even though my face flushes at the sight of it, that's not what I'm thinking about.

I close my eyes.

I can still feel the gentleness of his fingers on my skin, the heat of his body enveloping me, and the brush of his lips against my ear.

"Who did this to you?"

But above all, I can still hear the barely restrained rage in his voice.

He asked that question like the scars were a personal offense to him. Not because it's an imperfection, but because he saw them on me.

I meant it when I told him that I don't owe him my honesty, nor does he get to own my past. But his reaction is both the last thing I expect and everything I want.

A righteous anger on my behalf and a desire tohurtthe person who caused me to leave those scars on myself.

And God, Iwanthim to do that so badly.

As soon as that thought crosses my mind, something dark and cold slithers down my spine and moves to wrap itself around my heart.

But that dark and twisted thought has already taken root, and no matter how hard I try, I can't chase it out of my head.

Just like how I can't chase Anatoly out of my head.

I take a breath to calm myself.

When I open them, I see his gaze is locked onto mine.

A warm rush shoots through my body and chases away the cold wrapping around my heart, radiating outward until my heartbeat returns to its normal cadence, only to start speeding up again as a new thought begins to nibble away at the back of my head.

How is he able to do that to me with a single question? But more importantly, how is it possible that my own walls seem to crack apart so easily around him? Even as I remind myself over and over again that he came tokillme two days ago and that he's a monster, an unsettling idea slowly blossoms in my mind that he can bemymonster.

That he's willing to be my monster.

Even if he tells me so openly that I'm just a means to an end for him.

Everything is changing between us. And for all I know, maybe everything hasalreadychanged, fundamentally and irrevocably.

He walks over toward me, each step careful and measured in the way that I've come to know him even in this short time. When he reaches me, he extends his hand.