Page 53 of His To Erase

He stands and walks out of the room, while all I can do is stare up at the ceiling. My throat is raw, and every inch of me is flushed and aching.

My chest rises in erratic bursts, while my lungs drag in air like my body’s trying to piece itself back together.

What the fuck just happened?

Why do I want him to come back? And why do I feel empty now that he’s not touching me?

I try to close my legs, but I can’t.

Everything hurts. My thighs are shaking and my pussy’s still fluttering like it’s waiting for round two.

I hear footsteps, but I don’t sit up. He steps back into the room with a towel in hand, and something else I can’t see.

He crouches beside me—like he didn’t just fuck the soul out of my body. Too calm and too fucking unbothered for what he just did.

Then his voice slices through the silence. “Spread your legs.”

I blink up at him—dazed, unsure if I heard him right. When I whimper, he chuckles. “Don’t worry, I’m just cleaning you up, we’ve got all night.”

Something in me is still on the fucking floor crawling and I’m waiting for him to tell me what to do next. I don’t know what to do with this. With him. No one’s ever wiped me off before and I don’t know how to be touched like this. Not after being ruined like that.

Hell, he’s still leaking out of me.

His gaze drops to the space between my thighs like he could hear my thoughts, and I see the heat flash through his eyes.

Fucking hell.

The second the wet towel brushes my inner thigh, and I jerk, hissing through my teeth, still too raw to handle the drag of cotton on oversensitive skin.

He wipes me slowly—collecting the mess he made with a gentleness that floors me.

“This... is mine.”

His voice is gravel, and his eyes are still locked on the slick mess between my thighs. “And if anyone else so much as touches it—I’ll carve your name into their skin before I kill them.”

The air punches out of my lungs in one long, ragged breath. My mouth opens as heat, then confusion, then want, rip through my body all at once.

What the fuck is happening to me and when did I turn into someone that gets turned on by violence?

I swallow hard, praying my voice comes out steady.

“You’re insane,” I whisper—barely more than breath.

He leans in closer, with the same voice that pulled the crawl right out of me. “No, sweetheart.”

Then he presses the towel harder, cruel in a way that makes my back arch as a moan slips out—earning me a smile from him.

“I’m just getting started.”

He finishes cleaning me up then tosses the towel aside and stands with that cocky silence stretching between us again. He turns away without a word, but at the doorway, he pauses.

“Go pee,” he says. “Then come back.”

Come back?

Not leave or go to bed?

What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?

I feel tender in places I didn’t even know could be touched but I move anyway. Because apparently—I do what he says now.

The bathroom is dim as moonlight spills across the tile like water. I don’t look in the mirror, I don’t need to. I already know what I’ll see and we don’t really need to go there right now.

I wash my hands like I can scrub the submission off my skin but it’s in me now. Humming under the surface. And still—I hover at the door.

I could crawl into the guest bed and pretend none of this happened. Rebuild the walls, but I want to go back out there.

I walk down the hall and see him sitting on the edge of the couch, shirtless and leaning forward with his arms resting on his knees like he’s deep in thought.

The soft flicker of the TV is the only light in the room—Harry Potter’s still playing and I hover in the doorway. I should probably thank him for telling me to pee, but instead I open my mouth and let the brat speak first.

“So what, is this standard procedure after you fuck someone stupid?”

He stares at the floor—like the whole world lives between his feet and whatever’s still dripping out of me. The silence stretches, making my stomach twist in that way I hate. Okaayyy.

I shift, awkwardly glancing at the screen—and a laugh slips out before I can stop it.

Ron’s voice echoes across the room. “Why spiders? Why couldn’t it be ‘follow the butterflies’?”

I snort and instantly feel his stare. He’s not watching the floor anymore, he’s watching me. His dark eyes are so intense it steals the breath from my lungs. I blink. “What?”

His voice cuts through the quiet, soft enough to gut me.

“You don’t laugh like that.”

I scoff, trying to claw the moment back before it gets too close or too real. “Are you keeping a file on me now?” I ask, raising a brow.

He smiles. “Crawls. Orgasms. Emotional outbursts…what’s next?”

I roll my eyes and cross the room, collapsing onto the opposite end of the couch. My body still aches, feeling stretched and sore in ways I don’t want to think about. Okay, I actually do want to keep thinking about them.

I grab a throw pillow and wedge it between us like that’ll do anything. Whatever’s between us hums louder than the movie, and I’m getting wet all over again just thinking about it.

I’m doing everything in my power not to look at the man who made my body beg and now sits there—composed, and relaxed.

I didn’t mean to stay or sink into the cushions and curl up like this was safe But here I am.

And apparently… so is he.

At some point, he shifted closer and his arms stretched across the back of the couch, close enough that I feel his warmth. It’s taking everything in me not to lean toward it.

Sirius falls through the veil and I feel it hit—before it even happens. My chest is suddenly too tight and my eyes sting.

Harry screams and my throat does that awful, aching thing—like grief knows me too well to knock first.

I swipe at my cheek, fast, so he doesn’t see anything. The last thing I need is…

“Jesus,” he mutters. “You’re crying over the dog-wizard?”

My head snaps toward him, face burning. Heat flashes behind my ribs, because of the audacity of this man right now.

“Fuck you,” I spit, as my voice cracks.

He smirks, and it’s just cocky enough to make me feel seen.

“He was the only family Harry had left,” I say. Try to keep it light, but my voice cracks.

The smirk slips. “Didn’t realize dead godfathers hit you that hard.”

I grit my teeth, keeping my eyes on the screen like it’s going to save me.

“They don’t.”

He tilts his head, watching me.

“Sure,” he says after a beat. “You always tear up when guys fall through curtains?”

I glance at him through narrowed eyes and full defense mode. “You always act like you don’t feel anything?”

That gets him. His jaw ticks—barely. He lets the silence settle in like it belongs there.

Then softer—“You’ve got that look.”

My brow pulls tight. “What look?”

He shrugs one shoulder, all calm detachment, as if we’re not standing on the edge of something neither of us can come back from.

“Like you’ve lost something you never got back.”

The words land in a way that doesn’t register until it’s already too late. I don’t even realize I’ve stopped breathing until my chest pulls tight and the air rushes out all at once.

The ache blooms behind my ribs—raw and familiar—and I feel the crack before I can pretend to brace for it.

I exhale hard, trying to push the air out fast enough, so that it’ll blow the moment away with it before I lose it completely.

“Anyway.” I fake a shrug, eyes back on the screen. “It’s just a movie. Fictional wizard-dad dies. Big deal.”

But the damage is done—and we both know it. He doesn’t push, so I fill the silence, because God forbid I ever let one sit too long.

“I think it’s the vanishing that gets me,” I say, crossing my arms tighter. “One second, someone’s in your corner—and the next? Gone.”

Steven tilts his head, that unreadable stare narrowing. But he says nothing, so I keep going.

“Maybe I’m still bitter,” I mutter, trying to laugh, but it cracks in my throat. “When I moved here, I didn’t speak English. Not really.”

I see him go still for two seconds before his body relaxes again.

“I was eight,” I say quietly. “They stuck me in a class and just... left me. Just—sink or swim.”

My fingers twist the hem of my shirt, anchoring me.

“I used to eat my lunch in the bathroom, because it was easier than trying to talk and explain why the words didn’t come out right.”

A breath pushes out of me—tight and bitter.

“There was this group of girls that called me Static. They’d tell me I made things awkward just by breathing.”

I pause, clenching my jaw. That old burn flares in my throat, sharp and humiliating. Steven doesn’t speak. But I feel the change in the air, in the way he watches me now—less predator, and more…something else.

“Then one day, this guy just sat next to me, he didn’t say much, but he waited, and didn’t flinch when I butchered a sentence.”

A smile ghosts across my lips. “I think he said like four full sentences that whole week. But for the first time, someone listened and was just… there.”

I blink at the screen just in time to watch Sirius fall.

“And then he moved away.”

Steven blinks once. “So that’s why the wizard-dog broke you.”

I snort, eyes burning again. “Excuse you. He’s an animagus. He also happens to be the only person who saw Harry. Who stayed. Who made him feel... less alone.”

I glance at him.

“You’d cry too if your only person vanished into a curtain.”

He just tilts his head giving me this look. My mind instantly goes to the photos I found in his office. The look he’s giving me tells me he knows exactly what I’m talking about.

“So let me guess,” he says finally. “You spent the next ten years perfecting your English and collecting emotional baggage.”

I raise a brow. “No. I started lighting my Barbies on fire and learning how to fake smiles that don’t invite questions.”

His mouth twitches. “Therapy must love you.”

“Therapy can’t afford me,” I shoot back.

There’s a pause—just long enough for my brain to betray me. “My mom used to sing to me in Spanish. Only when she thought I was asleep though.”

It comes out before I can stop it, like my mouth forgot we don’t do that—don’t share random things, but here we are.

“My grandma always said I had la tormenta in me. Too much storm and not enough silence.”

He doesn’t say anything—but the air shifts as the corner of his lips curl. And I fucking hate how much I notice it.

“And you’ve been in Denver since?”

I shake my head, casually. “No, I actually just moved here last year.”

I glance back at the screen, like this whole conversation’s background noise. “Honestly? I don’t really remember the move. It was kind of a blur. But I just needed a change of scenery, you know?”

My thumb rubs over the seam of the blanket. “I was sick for a while—right after I got here. I kept having these weird dreams. Still do, but that’s not important.”

His eyes flick to mine at that—but he doesn’t push. I pause, searching the edges of my memory.

Steven doesn’t fill the space with reassurance like a normal person would. “I don’t think it’s normal to forget that much when you move.”

Fuck.

Right. I probably shouldn’t trauma-dump on the man who just rearranged my spine and threatened to brand me from the inside out.

I shrug, trying to play it off. “Guess I just wasn’t paying attention.”

It’s a lie, but it’s the safest one I’ve got. My thumb rubs at a spot on the blanket that isn’t even there, chasing a memory I don’t really want to catch.

The silence pulls tight between us. “So what came before Denver?”

“I lived on the coast,” I murmur. “It’s like there’s this whole stretch of time I watched happen instead of living through it. Sometimes it feels like that life belonged to someone else.”

He doesn’t respond. But something in the way he’s staring at me makes my skin prickle.

“What happened there?”

His voice is soft, but there’s nothing gentle about it. The movie’s over now, and the credits are rolling in silence. I feel raw and exposed. I also feel cornered, so I do the only thing I know how to do—snap back before I bleed too much.

“Wow,” I mutter, pushing the blanket off my legs. “Didn’t realize I signed up for a therapy session. You moonlight as Dr. Phil, or is this just how you flirt?”

I can feel his jaw lock from across the couch.

“I ask a question, and you get defensive,” he says flatly. “Interesting.”

“Oh, sorry,” I bite, standing up. “Was I supposed to sob into your lap and hand over my trauma like a good little patient?” I fold my arms, turning toward the kitchen. “I’m getting food.”