Page 52 of Dravin

“If you don’t think so, I haven’t done my job.” We clear the doorway of the room, which feels like a massive progress. The hallway is long, but we can take all night to get there if that’s what Dravin needs. “Painting you.”

“I haven’t seen the painting.”

“I thought you enjoyed being living art.”

He’s quiet for a few minutes as we make our way down the hall. I steal a covert glance at him and realize that it’s not because he’s suffering, but because I’ve rendered him speechless. He has zero comebacks for that.

He did like it.

So did I.

It was the most erotic, breathtaking, transcendent experience of my life.He’smy favorite painting and I’ve barely started yet.

“I maintain that I wasn’t good looking even before all the scars and broken bones and getting sewn and stitched back together. My mouth is way too big. Kids used to bug me about it and dare me to stick shit inside to see how much it could fit.”

It’s probably a big red flag that I want to hunt down each and every one of those people and give their now adult selves a piece of my mind. I wonder what their big damn mouths could be forced to fit?

Whoa.

I need to relax. Going into full-on protective mode is also a red flag. A straight indicator that I’m way too far gone.

There’s normal and our lives and then there’s way too much, way too soon.

Try as I might, I can’t help but lean into him. I pretend that I’m holding him up, and because he’s a good man underneath all those layers he hides himself in, he lets me hold onto the illusion that he needs the support.

Chapter 11

Dravin

Ihaven’t truly slept in around seventeen years and tonight isn’t going to be the night I start.

My back feels as though I’ve been flayed alive. I suppose, with the top few layers of skin chewed up, that’s maybe true. It alternates between aching and burning. Healing this is going to be a bitch. All those places that I can’t scratch. Not that anyone should scratch healing ink, but I already know it’s going to be hellish.

If it dries out and needs ointment put on after taking off the weird skin bandage Crow spent half an hour meticulously putting on to seal up the wound, I’ll have to ask Kael to apply it. As for taking off the wrap, I’ll probably just ask Crow if he can do it for me when it’s time.

My back isn’t the biggest distraction.

Kael is taking up most of the bed. She’s lying on top of the covers, fast asleep.

She insisted I get into bed the second we got up here. Having my jeans on over the fresh ink on my ass was a special brand of hell, so I shucked them and got in while she was in the kitchen getting me some water and ibuprofen that of course, I never took. She left it on the nightstand, then sprawled out on top of the comforter.

I asked her if she was going to stay there all night, watching me sleep, and she said that’s exactly what she intended to do.

Except, after ten minutes of awkwardly staring me down, it was her lids that got heavy.

It’s the middle of the night. She’s snoring softly, her hand tucked under the pillow, her body curled into itself with her knees drawn up.

I’ve thought about getting her a blanket or leaving the bed so I can tuck her in, for hours. I haven’t been able to move, and not just because the pain is so uncomfortable. I’ve had worse, but everything is relative.

What I haven’t had is this woman, so perfect and unguarded,sleeping beside me. She makes giving up control look easy. She just closed her eyes and found oblivion, trusting that I’d be here to keep her safe. She’s gone from spitfire abhorrence to tenderness fast enough to give me whiplash. I still don’t understand it.

Normally, I’m more than able to keep up with change, no matter how fast it moves. There hasn’t been a situation that my training and experience hasn’t equipped me to handle, however awful, but I’m nearly lost right now. Why is violence so much easier for me to deal with than this woman’s softness?

“Hey.” Her sleepy voice catches me off guard.

It’s just another way that I’m slipping. She’s right beside me and I wasn’t even observant enough to realize that she was awake.

She pushes up onto her elbow, rubbing her eyes and drawing her hand down the bridge of her nose before she sniffles into it. Parts of Crow’s shop below stays lit up all night and there’s the glow of the streetlights that come through the cracks in the blinds. That ambient light hits Kael, and even half asleep, eye makeup smudged, and hair mussed, it looksgloriouson her.

---