Page 52 of The Beast's Broken Angel
“How long?” I asked, though I suspected the answer would make me want to hunt down every social worker who'd failed to protect three abandoned children.
“Until I was eighteen and could legally become their guardian,” Noah said with a shrug that didn't hide the years of sacrifice and terror. “Four years of walking the line between keeping us together and keeping us fed. Not exactly the wholesome background you'd expect from someone in healthcare.”
Four years. Four years of a child carrying adult responsibilities, making impossible choices between family and legality, survival and morality.
The strength it would have taken, the compromises he'd been forced to make, painted a picture of resilience that rivalled anything I'd witnessed in my own violent world.
“It's exactly the background I'd expect,” I corrected firmly, meaning every word. “Someone who learned early that the system fails people, that sometimes you have to break rules to do what's right. That survival requires making impossible choices and living with the consequences.”
“Is that why you're telling me this?” Noah asked, searching my face with those perceptive eyes that saw too much, understood too clearly. “Because you recognize something familiar?”
“I'm telling you because I want you to know that I understand,” I replied with brutal honesty. “What it's like to be responsible for someone else's survival when you're barely surviving yourself. What it costs to make those choices, to carry that weight every day without breaking.”
Here we were, two children forced into adult responsibilities by circumstances beyond our control, shaped by violence and abandonment into something harder than the world around them. Different methods, same fundamental damage.
“And I want you to know that the man who stole food to keep his siblings alive is the same man who patches up enemies because it's the right thing to do,” I continued, leaning closer until our foreheads almost touched. “The same man who looks at someone like me and sees something worth saving.”
“You're not a monster,” Noah whispered, hands coming up to frame my face with devastating gentleness that I didn't deserve, would never deserve. “You're someone who had to become dangerous to survive. There's a difference.”
“Is there?” I asked, because the distinction had never been clear to me, the line between necessity and cruelty blurred beyond recognition. “When the methods are the same, when the body count is the same?”
“The difference is in why you do it,” Noah said firmly, conviction absolute in his voice. “And who you choose to protect with that danger. A monster destroys indiscriminately. You destroy to preserve what matters.”
The words hit me like absolution I'd never thought to seek, reframing a lifetime of violence in terms that didn't require self-hatred.
“How do you do that?” I asked wonderingly, genuinely confused by his ability to find light in such darkness. “How do you look at blood on my hands and see anything worth saving?”
“Because I've had blood on my hands too,” Noah replied simply, no self-pity or melodrama, just stark truth. “Different kind, different circumstances, but I know what it feels like to make choices that keep you awake at night. To carry the weight of other people's lives in your decisions.”
The admission surprised me, this glimpse of the darkness he carried beneath his healer's facade. I'd seen the professional competence, the moral certainty, but not the personal cost of those choices.
“That's not the same thing.”
“Isn't it?” Noah challenged softly, voice carrying the weight of experience I'd underestimated.
“I've watched people die because I wasn't fast enough, skilled enough, because I made the wrong call in critical moments.
I've chosen who to save when resources were limited, who got the last dose of medication or the final surgical slot. Those choices haunt me just like yours haunt you.”
“The difference is that you save people,” I pointed out, though the distinction felt less solid than it once had. “I kill them.”
“You save the people who matter to you,” Noah corrected with devastating accuracy.
“You saved me, even when you thought I'd betrayed you.
You're saving Dominic by keeping him out of tonight's operation.
You saved your grandmother, your organization, everyone under your protection by identifying Harrison's betrayal.”
His words reframed my actions in ways I'd never considered, highlighting protection rather than destruction, purpose rather than pathology. It was a dangerous perspective, offering hope where I'd only seen necessity, redemption where I'd only found survival.
“You make me want to believe that,” I admitted, voice rough with emotion I couldn't quite suppress, vulnerability I'd never shown another living soul. “Want to believe I'm capable of being something other than what this world made me.”
“You already are,” Noah said with quiet certainty that cut deeper than any blade. “The man who plays piano in the middle of the night, who notices what I like to eat, who touches me like I'm precious instead of property, that's not the monster you think you are. ”
I didn't flinch from bullets or blades, but that quiet conviction in his voice, that unwavering belief in something better beneath the violence, made my chest ache like he'd struck something raw and buried.
He looked at me like I was something holy, and I didn't know what the fuck to do with that kind of mercy.
I lifted him onto the examination table with a growl lodged low in my throat, not from anger but from the overwhelming need to claim, to mark, to remind us both exactly who he belonged to.
Medical supplies clattered to the floor in a violent symphony of glass and metal, the pristine sterility of the room falling to chaos under the weight of our hunger.
His mouth met mine in a collision of teeth and tongues, bruising and desperate and perfect. I wasn't gentle, didn't know how to be when the possessive fury was riding me this hard, but the hunger in him met mine with equal ferocity.
My hands tore at his clothes with efficient brutality, fabric giving way under my fingers like it was made of paper. The sound of seams splitting was loud in the clinical quiet, but still I couldn't get close enough, couldn't eliminate enough barriers between his skin and mine.
“Tell me to stop,” I growled against his ear, not because I wanted to be stopped but because I needed him to understand this was his choice, his permission, not just mine to take.
Noah answered with nails dragging down my back hard enough to draw blood and legs winding around my waist with shameless desperation. His body was already trembling, already hungry for what I could give him.
“Don't fucking stop,” he gasped, voice breaking like a prayer, like a confession. “Don't you dare stop.”
I didn't. Couldn't.
His shirt was gone, mine following in a rush of expensive fabric hitting the floor. Our trousers joined the pile and then there was only heat, his bare skin against mine, silky and warm and marked with bruises from our earlier encounters.
The scent of him, sharp and clean beneath the antiseptic tang of the medical bay, went straight to my cock. Already hard, already aching, pressed against the soft curve of his arse like coming home.
He watched me with wide, dark eyes as I reached for the medical lubricant, slicking my fingers with practiced efficiency.
Even now, even when I wanted to bury myself in him and lose the world, I took my time.
I circled his hole with deliberate care, watching the way he reacted, the way his breath hitched and his thighs trembled with anticipation.
“You're mine,” I said quietly, pushing a finger into him with controlled pressure. “But I'm yours too. That means I take care of you.”
He whimpered, back arching off the table as I worked him open with methodical thoroughness. One finger, then two, then three, until he was panting and rolling his hips to meet each thrust like his body already knew the rhythm we'd fall into.
His cock was flushed and leaking against his stomach, every twitch making my own pulse stutter with need. But I forced myself to go slow, to stretch him properly, to make sure he could take me without pain.
When he was ready, open and waiting for me, I paused at his entrance.
“Look at me,” I commanded, my voice low and rough with barely controlled hunger. “I need to see you when I give you this.”
His eyes met mine—open, trusting, absolutely fucking perfect.
I reached for the lube one last time, slicking myself thoroughly, then guided myself to him. The cool gel warmed quickly between us as I positioned myself, holding his gaze .
I pushed inside him with a groan, the tight heat of his hole swallowing me inch by slow inch. I had to grit my teeth against the overwhelming wave of sensation, every muscle in my body straining not to lose control and just take what I needed.
He was so fucking tight, his body clinging to me like he'd been made to take my cock, like this was exactly where I belonged.
We both moaned, the sound raw and involuntary. He wrapped around me completely, arms and legs and heat, breath hot against my throat as I buried myself to the hilt.
“Adrian,” he whispered, and that did something to me, made me thrust deeper until I was seated fully inside him. We fit. Christ, we fucking fit like we'd been designed for this.
I moved slowly at first, each roll of my hips measured and controlled, watching the way his lips parted with every thrust, how his fingers dug into my shoulders like he needed to anchor himself to something real.
My possessiveness was still there, simmering beneath the surface like molten steel, but I tempered it with care. I didn't just want to take. I wanted to make him understand what this meant, what he meant.