Page 84 of Love & Heart Braking

Peeking up at him first, I extended tentative fingers. We had no idea what the new limits were, but without testing, we’d never find out.

Touch featherlight, I whispered my fingers over his chest. Devereaux’s breath hitched, and he rested his head back. I lifted on my knees to run my hand all the way to the other side, then returned to the middle of his pecs to slowly trail my fingers down.

Bump, bump, bump.

With each ridge, my imprisoned lust was banging at the bars like a crazy woman.

Devereaux opened his eyes when I reached the top of his pants, and I drew back with more than a little reluctance.

“You have no idea what I’m going to do to you when this curse is gone,” he said, not a speck of humor on his face.

“What will you do to me, Devereaux?”

“Why spoil the surprise? But I can tell you that in the middle, you’ll say my name. And by the end, your ability to talk will be gone and those blue eyes of yours will plead with me to give you what you want.”

Fuck. My thighs pressed together. I wanted that so bad.

Our gazes locked, and I could see the wall between us cracking, the wall we’d always managed to maintain out of a healthy respect for the curse’s consequences.

“Another strikeout for you,” he said quietly. “You chose the right team.”

Lucky he was honest about this because I wasn’t paying attention to the game at all.

I licked my lips, mind shooting to removing the obvious—his jeans. Yet something else caught my attention.

Pixies fluttered in my gut. This could make him really uncomfortable, but… I had to see the truth of Devereaux’s struggles.

He was mine now. We were the real deal. And I’d get to know the good, the bad, and the painful.

“Your cuff,” I whispered.

Devereaux froze, his veiled gaze whipping to mine. He shifted his focus to the brown leather cuff I’d noticed at our very first meeting, his only personal item. Of course, I’d seen what it was for by now, but under that leather was the cold, brutal, and hidden reality of being descended from Mars’s line. The reality that other descendants knew nothing about.

His jaw clenched. “You don’t want to see that, sweetheart.”

I firmed my resolve. “I do.”

This had started as sexy fun, and this was bound to ruin the mood, but doing this also felt more important. Don’t get me wrong, when we finally got to be more physically intimate, I’d enjoy every moment of it. But truths like this made physical intimacy all the more meaningful.

“I’m sure,” I said.

He exhaled slowly. “All right then.”

Devereaux unbuckled the leather cuff and removed it, rolling his wrist a few times, and rubbing at the skin.

Gray eyes wary, he extended it to me.

I schooled my features to blandness in advance, then looked. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do anything about my pulse, which tripled as I stared at the small waxy circles dotting the skin of his wrist. Lowering his hand, I picked up the leather buckle. One savage spike was stitched onto the underside.

When Vera loosened my curse on the weekend, it had felt like she was hole punching my body. And that’s what had actually happened to Devereaux.

The scar circles on his wrist were uniform. Deep. Each waxy circle of scar tissue dipped in slightly, telling me the repetitive damage had eaten away at his skin.

The sight made me want to weep and never stop.

I ran my thumb over the scars, and Devereaux shuddered. “Tell me.”

“If I keep the cuff too long in one spot then the scar grows thick and I can’t feel enough pain to help manage my anger. I rotate the cuff around when it numbs.”

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