Page 11 of Liv and Ripper

5

CHAPTER 5

LIV

Tears streamed down my cheeks and I had stopped wiping them away as soon as I entered the bathroom. Taking in sharp breaths, I wanted so badly to put it off, but I knew I had to look at the cut across my back. I had covered it up the best I could so Dad wouldn’t notice it, but now I needed to know how bad it was.

I took what was left of my top off and shut my eyes. I usually got sick at the sight of blood. My parents still found that amusing—a wolf scared of blood.

“What the fuck happened?”

A cold chill ran through my body and my eyes sprung open.Shit. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I went to grab a towel, but he was already in the room, his eyes on the claw mark on my back.

Ripper, the one man I didn’t want to get involved with, looked at my wound as if it was declaration of war.

“Who fuck clawed you?” he hissed, and then spun me around, roughly putting his hands on my shoulders so he could see my back clearly.

I flinched from his touch immediately.

He may have taken it has a judgement on him, but it wasn’t. I just felt fragile, and I really didn’t want to be touched.

“What the hell happened?” This time his words were softer and his grip on me loosened. I was facing the mirror now, my eyes on the basin as he was sure to be looking at the ugly claw mark on my back.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t you dare lie to me, Olivia Daleson,” he growled. “Look at me.”

My eyes bounced off the basin and to his reflection in the mirror. I saw angry, heat, and a mixture of pain—almost like he was feeling what I was feeling right now. Slowly his hands went off my shoulders, ran down my sides, and paused on my hips. He pulled me in to him, holding my eyes the whole time.

“Tell me who hurt you, darling.” His words had a distinct pledge in them.

“It’s just a scratch,” I lied, but it was pointless because we both knew it wasn’t.

A frown appeared on his face. “One day you’ll tell me.” His frown deepened, and my heart beat went up. And it scared me, that look on his face, the firmness of his words, as if he had been in the future and I had told him every secret of mine. It scared the shit out of me.

He rinsed a face washer under the tap and gently cleaned the cut. The whole time his focus had been on the deep cut. So much so, that I think he forgot I was here. I was relaxed—for the first time in my life, I felt relaxed as he cleaned it. It didn’t even surface in me that it was his touch that was calming me, almost numbing me from the pain I’d be experiencing if I had been cleaning this myself.

When he was done, he grabbed a towel from the rack and wrapped it around me. It only occurred to me when he walked out, after not saying another word, that he hadn’t once looked at my naked breasts. Not once did he gawk or even glance at them, the whole time he was focused on the wound on my back. Had he even realized I was topless?

But the question that was running through my head louder was why did his expression tighten when he touched me? Why did he look like . . . fuck it, I can’t even think of a word for his expression. It was like I meant something to him, as if someone had violated someone he loved.

But he didn’t love me.

He didn’t even know me.

* * *

Iwalked out of the bathroom after a shower with a towel wrapped around me. And a wolf whisper made me quicken my pace up the hall, and I walked straight into my bedroom, closing the door.Okay, I had avoided giving my dad’s friends a show.

I went to drop my towel.

“Don’t.”

I jumped immediately and turned around.

“What are you doing in here?” My eyes ran over Ripper. “Seriously, how did you end up in this room and not one of the others?”

“Your scent,” he said like it was obvious. Because I spent so much time in human form, and usually numbed, I forget about simply things like scents. “I wanted to check if your back was healed.”

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