Page 87 of Scarred in Silence
Then a weight shifts against my chest—warm, breathing, fragile—and the nightmare recedes.
Astra.
She’s curled into me, knees tucked, one hand resting peacefully on my chest, as if she fell asleep mid-climb up my body. Sunlight enters through the curtains, gilding the dust in the air. The bedside clock blinks 12:03 p.m. Late, even for a man who prowled half the city last night. My body feels heavy, but my mind is buzzing like a hive of bees, restless beneath the calm.
I try to slip away without waking her, but the moment my shoulder leaves the pillow, her eyes open wide, alert, no fog of sleep. Survivors wake fast; I forget that sometimes.
She assesses me with that quiet, feral vigilance I both adore and despise. I brace for the question—Where all did you go last night? Why did you give me a gun?—but she whispers something that guts me instead…
“You’re bleeding.”
I glance down. Dried crimson smudges my forearm, a faint track along my collar where Varek’s blood splattered onto me.
“It’s not mine.”
She reaches for her wipes and cleans me. The intimacy of it steals my breath. There’s more blood beneath her fingernails than mine; she clawed at me when I sank inside her hours ago, half-mad with remorse. I should feel shame. Instead, I feel victorious.
“Did you sleep?” I ask.
“A little.”
“Nightmares?”
“Not mine.” She swallows. “You were thrashing.”
I remember flashes—Victor’s missing arms, Nicolette gurgling, Damien laughing from a shadowed doorway. I taste copper.
“Lucien.” Her voice is a fragile tether. “Look at me.”
I do. She touches the scar on my chest—earned the first night we met, when I saved her from death. Now she traces it like a seam that holds me together.
“I’m still here,” she says.
Three words. Salvation disguised as fact. I need reminding.
I kiss her—soft at first, but hunger sparks like a match to gasoline. She answers with hesitant pressure, as if gauging the temperature of my soul before diving in. She knows how hot and cold I can be, but today, I’m hot.
When her hands slide up my chest, I freeze, then I melt. The tremorin my chest loosens its grip.
“Let me see you,” I murmur. My voice is raw.
Color climbs her cheeks, but she lifts the hem of the oversized tee—my tee—slides it over her head, and drops it. Natural light spills across her skin, pale and marked: a fading bruise where Miles once gripped her, a healing bite at her hip from my own teeth, freckles on shoulders I’ve mapped in bleeding starlight.
Heat roars through me.
I grip her ankle, draw her leg over my hip, and settle myself between her thighs. I kick the sheet away. She parts for me without shame, trust shining through wariness. It slices me open like a razor.
“You still want me?” she asks, voice trembling from the weight of everything we’re not saying.
“Always.”
Even though I fucked her last night, she knew that was because I was tired of feeling. I needed her touch. Today, she questions my decision. I don’t regret it.
She skates her palms down my chest, fingertips brushing the healed wound. I suck in a breath. Pain mixes with want until they’re indistinguishable. It pains me how much I fucking need her.
“Show me,” she whispers.
Permission detonates restraint. I pull her down, her neck craned to the side, giving me easy access. My tongue sweeps the pulse hammering beneath her delicate skin. She arches, breath hitching. I trail kisses down her neck, linger at a scar I never gave her. Rage flickers, but she slips fingers into my hair and tugs, grounding me here, now.
