Page 105 of Untamed

Instead, I dip the cloth again and return to cleaning the rest of the blood, inch by painful inch, while the silence between us swells with everything we’ve both left unsaid.

His skin is hot beneath my touch, fevered from the wound or from the fire he keeps caged beneath his ribs, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a bit of both.

His breath hitches when I brush my fingers along his forearm so I can turn it and clean the back of his arm.

“Why do you keep doing this,” I whisper. “Why do you keep going to war with the world. What are you even fighting for, Ares?”

That gets him.

His eyes flick to mine, stormy, raw. And for a second, I see something deeper than pain. I see grief. Rage. A boy who never got to be one.

“You don’t ask why in this family, Bambina,” he says, voice rough like gravel. “You just bleed when they tell you to.”

The words land like a gut punch, hollowing out the space between us.

I stop moving, frozen with the blood-stained cloth in my hand.

He exhales slowly, like saying it out loud cost him something he can’t get back. “That’s the world I was raised in. You learn to follow orders, to fight, to protect, to punish. You don’t ask questions. You don’t flinch. You survive.”

He pauses for a beat. “But you…” His voice dips, eyes looking over my face again. “You ask. You flinch. You care. And I don’t know what the fuck to do with that.”

I blink hard, willing the sting in my eyes to go away. “You let me stay,” I whisper again. “That’s what you do.”

Ares drops his eyes. But he doesn’t tell me to go.

And for me that’s enough.

Once the blood is cleaned off, I help him to his bedroom and into bed. But his jeans are bloodstained, clinging low on his hips. “Uhm, you’ll need to get out of these.” My fingers tremble as I reach for the waistband of his jeans. Blood has dried into thefabric, crusted and dark against his skin, and I know he needs out of them. I glance up, silently asking permission.

Ares doesn’t speak. He just watches me, eyes low, unreadable, like he's weighing every inch of control he has left.

I unbutton them slowly, careful not to jostle him. The intimacy of the act feels heavy, like the silence between us. Once they’re all undone, Ares hooks a finger into the waistband himself, shoving the denim down his hips with a sharp hiss through his teeth. I kneel in front of him to help him ease out of them completely. He’s left in nothing but black boxer briefs and I peer up at him, and he watches me back intently for a moment and forces himself to look away, as though he's afraid of what might happen if our eyes stay locked for a second longer.

Ares sinks onto the edge of the bed, his body folding with a weariness I’ve never seen in him before. I reach for the clean blanket as he lays back, pulling it around his waist and up over his torso. He lets me. He doesn’t thank me. Just watches. Always watching.

He closes his eyes; his breathing ragged as whatever painkiller the doctor gave him starts to pull him under. But just before he slips, he speaks, soft and slurred.

“You should’ve stayed in London,” he mumbles, voice thick with sleep, roughened by exhaustion and drugs. “With your sister. With the soft things. You were never meant to see this side of me.”

I sit beside him on the edge of the bed, heart twisting. “I wish you would let me see all of you, Ares.”

He’s quiet for a beat.

“There are too many broken pieces, bambina.”

I go still.

Those beautiful brown eyes are still closed, but his jaw moves slightly, like he’s trying to work something out in his head.

“You’re light,” he mutters. “And I’m just... smoke. You know what happens when light meets smoke?”

I shake my head, even though he can’t see it.

“It disappears,” he says. “The light... smothers it. Or the smoke chokes the light out. Either way, one loses.”

I look at him, really look at him. And I wonder how long he’s carried that belief around like a noose around his throat.

“You’re not just smoke, Ares.”

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