Page 56 of One Bad Knight
“It’s fine,” I said, reading the question in her eyes.
Her hand fell and my chest squeezed, wanting it back already.
“Can you—I don’t want to be alone,” she said, glancing back and forth from the shower to me.
I released her elbow and stripped off my pants without question. She moved to do the same but slower. Risking the wrong thing, I slowly unzipped her dress and helped slide it down her body. The entire time, I never looked away from her face, letting her know I was here with her. For however long she needed me.
Steam curled around us, so I led her under the spray, following her in.
Kat sighed and closed her eyes, her shivers lessoning. Then without opening her eyes, she reached up and wound her arms around my neck, pulling me flush against her.
I swallowed against the lump in my throat. Water sluiced between us, turning her already soft skin positively silken. My mouth went dry as she molded her slick softness against my hard body.
The trust she had in me, naked, at her most vulnerable, shocked me to my core. Worst yet, it felt more right than anything else I’d ever known. I stroked down her hair and back, simply holding her to me. She laid her head against my chest. I was rock hard, my erection trapped against her soft belly, but I had no real desire to quell my sexual hunger. Something far deeper, more powerful, was happening.
I was about to ask her how she healed so quickly from the scratches on her arms and back, but I didn’t get the chance. Her shoulders shook against me. It took me a second to realize she was crying. My arms tightened around her as my heart broke.
“I’ve got you,” I murmured to her. “Everything’s going to be okay.” I didn’t know how, and soon I’d be leaving her behind for good. But still, I knew I had to make things right before I left town. She deserved that. She deserved everything.
Kat buried her head into the crook of my neck. I held her like that for a long time. Feelings twisted and curled in my chest in ways I’d never experienced before.
When the water grew cold, I turned it off and reached for a towel, wrapping it around her body. Again, a pang of shame pierced my heart as I saw her wrapped in my paltry, thin towel. She deserved fluffy, oversized towels. But she didn’t seem to mind. I led her to my mattress that lay on the floor and helped her down before wrapping my own body around hers protectively. I pulled up my white sheets, covering her further. Our legs twined, and a silent click went off in my mind as our bodies fit perfectly against each other.
We’d been intimate before, but nothing like this. The way Kat curled into me with such unquestionable trust made my chest swell to near breaking point. It made me want to be a better man. Made me want to be everything she ever needed. I was too sad, too broken, too bad to keep. But I could have this moment, and I’d have to make this last a lifetime.
“I was wrong,” Kat muttered after a long time.
I didn’t push, only continued to stroke her back and hold her close.
“I said I could take care of myself, but at every opportunity I’ve proven I can’t.”
“That’s not true,” I countered.
“Jimi drugged me and then he tried to—” She stopped speaking as a hard shiver ripped through her body.
I held her tighter.
She went on. “I don’t think that was his first time doing something like that. I tried to gear up to kick him in the balls, but I couldn’t do it. Because I knew him. How stupid is that? Because I wanted to be”—she choked on a sob—“polite and agreeable. To a guy who was going to force himself on me. I’m a fucking moron.” She buried her head against my chest, covering her face.
“Don’t say that. Don’t talk about yourself like that. You want to face the reality here? He drugged you. Even I can be compromised like that. Not to mention it’s one thing to strike a wooden post; it’s another to sink a fist into flesh with the intent to harm.”
She pulled away from my chest so I would hear her. “I go to Krav Maga all the time so that I can protect myself. But every chance I’ve gotten lately, I’ve fallen short.”
I tipped her chin up with my knuckles, looking down at her with fierce conviction. “You’ve never fallen short of anything.”
“Gatsby.” She pouted at me. “This is the twenty-first century—women aren’t damsels in distress anymore. This shouldn’t be happening. I should be able to take care of myself. In fact, women aren’tallowedto be damsels in distress! They revoke your feminist card. Pull it right out from your vagina and stamp you with a big bright letter T so everyone knows you are a traitor to your sex.”
“I didn’t understand all of that, but you do take care of yourself, in all kinds of ways. But no one can in all the ways. You are being too hard on yourself.”
“You mean like how you are hard on yourself? Saying you’re broken? But you’re not. You don’t choke, Gatsby.”
The laugh that caught in my throat came out a strange wheeze.
“I don’t choke,” I repeated her words, though they felt like they came from far away. “I was raised to slay demons and destroy enemies for the Order of Luxis. While my brothers were sent to fight monsters and exorcise demons, I was sent to slit the throat of someone the Luxis needed dead. One year before I met you, I was sent on my first wetwork mission. I’d been trained since birth, but when I cornered my target in a public bathroom, I faltered. But the man figured out why I was there. He was four times my size, and he didn’t hesitate. By the time we were done, the sinks were broken, the stalls ruined, and blood covered everything.” I closed my eyes, still remembering the way the lights flickered as I caught sight of myself in a broken mirror, covered from head to toe in blood, baring my white teeth like an animal after winning the skirmish. The man’s wide eyes stared at me with hate even in death.
“Did he get away?”
I licked my lips. “No. I killed him in the end. But at my core, I didn’t want to. By hesitating, I drew out what could have been a quick, clean kill into something bloody and brutal. And I earned this.” I took her hand and wrapped it around my waist to my side, over a thick, puckered scar. “He grabbed a shard of mirror from the wreckage of the bathroom and jammed it into my side, over and over. It was a miracle I didn’t die. Though most of the time, I feel I did die that day and I’ve been a walking ghost.”