Page 2 of Make Me Pretty

More moans.

My skin feels like a live wire, zapping and arcing, ready to strike.

A flash of something bright, like a bolt through the darkness, makes my eyes dart up and to the left. I meet a pale face, partially blocked by a mass of tangled, blonde hair, but the eyes behind… are pointed right at me.

I choke on nothing as my stare clashes with the sharp gaze of another. I can’t make out anything more than bright white—and I don’t want to.

Everything good flushes right out of me, replaced with repulsive dread. A bone-deep disgust I’ve been warring with for years.

I shouldn’t feel this way… seeing this. Hearing this. It’s—it’s… my most dreaded fear come to life. Proof that what he did… altered me. A weight that is still very muchthere.

No one can know.Ican’t know.

My eyes sting, nose burning, body aching. Worst of all—my dick is on fire, balls heavy and pulsing with their own heartbeat. The pressure of my palm against my length only gives me friction, eliciting the worst kind of noise to tear from my throat.

I catch it as it tumbles out, sounding muffled and painful. Ithurts.Hearing myself… like this.

Lips, barely more than a shadow, curve upward into something resembling a smile, but it’s all… wrong. Warped and crooked and sinister.

Knowing… but that can’t be, surely?

I swallow restrictively, unable to look away, even with the voice inside my head screaming louder with every passing beat of my heart.

The shadows of the room seem lighter all of a sudden, darkness fading into shapes. Sharp angles, silver glinting. A mouth spread wide open as a tongue slides inside. Clashing teeth and sticky spit, eyes wide and locked on mine.

Oh, fuck.Fuckfuckfuck.

My own breath comes out in heavy pants. I can’t move, can’t breathe. Can’t…

A weak groan falls from my lips as my cock throbs in heavy pulses. White flashes, blood roaring in my ears. And while my worst nightmare shreds what I made my truth… a pair of gleaming, gray eyes stare in me—through me—right to my fractured core.

CHAPTER 1

ABEL

TWO MONTHS LATER

It wasa bad call on my part, that much I will say. I knew better—even my gut told me it was a bad idea, but money talks. And particularly loud at that.

So, all in all, I couldn’t refuse the proposition. And what a stroke of luck I had.

“I’m going to need you to remove your shirt,” a nurse murmurs softly somewhere to my left. I quirk my head in her direction, peering through my one good eye, the other swollen shut. Blood drips into my eyelashes, obscuring even more of my shotty vision.

Brilliant.

“Tryna get a look at this fabulous body, aren’t ya? All you gotta do is ask,” I rasp with a wink, trying for humor. It goes untouched. I frown at her pointed mask of indifference. But there—a twitch in the corner of her mouth. My own curves in success, which causes her to sigh dramatically.

“All right, all right, I’m taking it off.” I hold up my hands before pushing myself into a sitting position. The room around me spins precariously, and my eyes roll into the back of my head. “Shit,” I groan, clutching the starchy, white linen below me.

“Let me?—”

“It’s cool. I’ve got it.” I lift the hem of my shirt, two times too big for me, now stained with blood and who knows what other kind of fluids. I peel it off with a grimace before lamely trying to toss it across the room to a chair, only for it to splat not even two feet away from the hospital bed.

Well, that’s embarrassing.

I glare at it, but even the heat of my stare isn’t enough to change its location.

Whatever.