Page 113 of Untamed

His skin is warm under my touch. Too warm. I feel the tension in him like a storm brewing beneath the surface, muscles taut and breath caught somewhere between restraint and surrender. His heart thuds against my hand, hard and unsteady, and I swear I feel it in my own chest.

“Here?” I ask, barely above a whisper.

He doesn’t answer.

But he doesn’t move away, either.

So I let my hand wander. Not aimless, never aimless, but searching. Curious. Careful. I trace the hard plane of hiscollarbone, then down again, over his ribs, where the skin pulls tight and his body reacts, twitching, resisting, not from pain but from something deeper. Somethingolder.

“Here?” I murmur again, eyes flicking to his.

Still, no answer.

I don’t need one.

The closer I stand, the more I feel it, this push and pull between us, like a current I’m not sure I want to fight anymore. My nightdress brushes against his knee, and my breath hitches as I feel the heat of him soak into the silk. My other hand lifts, almost instinctively, to his face. My thumb grazes the edge of his cheekbone, just barely tracing the bruise still faintly blooming there.

“Here?” I whisper, voice tighter now. Not because I’m afraid, but because Ifeelhim. God, I feel all of him.

Ares gives me the smallest nod. Just once. But it’s enough.

It’s not the ribs. It’s not the bruises or the half-healed scar along his side. It’s the look in his eyes when he thinks I’m not watching. It’s the silence when he can’t find the words for what’s inside him.

It’shim.

I drag my fingers slowly down the side of his face, across the sharp line of his jaw, then down the strong column of his throat. His pulse kicks beneath my touch, frantic. Real. Human.

“Is this where it hurts?” I ask.

His laugh is soft and broken. Barely a breath. “Everywhere, bambina.”

The sound of it knocks the air from my lungs. Because I know he means it. And not in the dramatic, poetic way people sometimes say things like that. Hemeansit, in the deepest, most fractured parts of himself.

My hands don’t pull away. If anything, they settle firmer. I want to ground him. Anchor him. I want to take all the broken, burning pieces and hold them until they stop shaking.

And fuck, he lets me.

In that moment, I think he’s braver than he’s ever been. Because he’s not reaching for control or retreating into silence. He’s just sitting there...Andletting me feel him.Even if neither of us know what this is between us.

My fingers linger along the sharp line of his bearded jaw, steady despite the way my heart is threatening to beat right out of my chest. I don’t know what possesses me, maybe it’s the way he’s looking at me, like he’s afraid to breathe, afraid to shatter whatever this is between us, but I lean in anyway.

Soft and tender.

I press the lightest kiss to his cheekbone, just above the faint purple bruise budding along the bone. I feel him go still beneath me, like the contact knocked something loose. Not in his body, but somewhere I don’t think anyone’s touched before.

Another breath. Another kiss.

This time against his temple, a whisper of warmth and skin and breath that’s more vulnerable than any word I could ever say. I feel his exhale graze my neck, unsteady and sharp.

Something in him breaks then. Not loudly, or with sound, but I feel it, in the way his tension eases by a fraction, in the way helets me stay close, lets me keep touching him like he’s not made of violence and scars and impossible walls.

Like he’s not dangerous.

Like he’sjust a man.

So I keep going. Featherlight kisses along the side of his face, the scar on his left eyebrow, just beneath his eye, the edge of his jaw, the place where stubble brushes my lips. I don’t rush. I don’t speak. I just allow myself to map the parts of him no one else seems to be permitted to touch.

All the while praying he lets me and doesn’t recoil and shut me out again.

---