Page 23 of The Beast's Broken Angel
The door opened almost immediately. Noah stood there fully dressed, his eyes instantly dropping to my shoulder where a small bloodstain had seeped through my shirt.
“Your shoulder needs looking at,” he said simply, stepping aside to let me in. No questions about why I was there at one in the morning. No awkward small talk. Straight to the point.
I stepped into the suite, everything as I expected. The bathroom counter was stocked with the medical supplies I preferred—restocked every morning by staff who understood the consequences of negligence. The wardrobe held fresh shirts and suits in my size, pressed and arranged by color.
“Take your shirt off,” Noah said, already reaching for his supplies. The casually authoritative tone caught me off guard. Nobody tells me what to do in my own house. But the medical command bypassed my usual defences, and I found myself complying before I could think about it.
I unbuttoned my shirt slowly, watching his face as my scarred chest came into view. His eyes stayed clinical, focusedon the injury instead of the mess of scar tissue around it. No disgust, no pity—just professional assessment. It was... refreshing.
“Sit there,” he pointed to a chair under the best light. “Need to get that bandage off first.”
Noah snapped on a pair of latex gloves from the medical supplies, the practiced motion automatic and professional.
His hands were warm when they touched my skin. Professional, yes, but there was something else in the contact that I hadn't felt in years. Just the simple human touch without revulsion or fear. His fingers moved over the damaged tissue with confident strokes, probing the edges of the wound, sending unexpected shivers across my skin.
“This is shit work,” he said bluntly, peeling away the bloody bandage to reveal another layer beneath. “Whoever redressed this after the hospital doesn't understand burn scars at all. My original sutures are fine, but this bandaging job is completely wrong for damaged tissue like yours.”
The casual criticism of Montgomery's work, delivered without a hint of deference, caught me by surprise. Most people tiptoe around anything that might sound like criticism.
“Montgomery's been treating me for fifteen years,” I said, watching Noah's face as he worked.
“Then he should know better by now,” Noah muttered, his fingers pressing lightly around the wound, sending little jolts of sensation through nerve endings I'd thought long dead. “Bullet trauma on old burn tissue is totally different from normal wounds.”
He leaned in closer, his breath warm against my shoulder as he examined the damage. The proximity created an unfamiliar tightness in my chest. His touch was clinical, but my body's response wasn't. Each brush of his fingersseemed to wake something long dormant, nerve endings firing in ways that had nothing to do with pain.
“The bullet did more damage than it looked like at first,” Noah said, completely focused on the wound while I fought to stay focused on his words rather than his touch. “It's torn along the old graft lines. That's why it's bleeding again.”
His directness was oddly appealing. No sugar-coating, no careful phrasing to spare my feelings. Just straight facts delivered while his fingers worked magic on my damaged skin.
“Montgomery always treats me like I might shatter,” I admitted, surprised by my own honesty. “Like my scars are some delicate thing he's afraid to touch properly.”
Noah's hands never paused as he cleaned the wound, his touch firm but careful. Each stroke of his fingers sent warmth spreading beyond the injury site, a strange awakening in tissue I'd long considered dead to sensation.
“Burn tissue needs proper handling, not kid gloves,” he said, reaching for fresh bandaging. His fingers brushed across a particularly sensitive area where scarred skin met undamaged flesh, sending a jolt of pleasure-pain up my spine that I had to fight not to react to. “Your old doctor's methods are seriously outdated.”
The confidence in his assessment, offered without seeking approval or tempering his criticism, was strangely arousing. Most staff seek constant validation, terrified of overstepping. Noah simply stated facts and kept working, his hands moving across my skin with a competence that was somehow more intimate than any deliberate caress.
“You think Montgomery's treatment has been crap?” I asked, genuinely curious rather than testing him.
“For this kind of injury? Yeah, absolutely.” Noah applied antiseptic with steady hands, the sting barely registering against the more distracting sensation of his fingertips tracing theboundary between scarred and healthy skin. “The junction between original burns and grafts needs special treatment when there's new trauma. Your inflammation shows he doesn't get that.”
He kept explaining as he worked, technical terms flowing easily as his hands moved with sure strokes across my chest and shoulder. His touch was setting off reactions I hadn't experienced in years, awakening nerves I'd thought permanently deadened. The clinical nature of the contact somehow made it more potent, more forbidden.
When he finished, he stepped back, but the ghost of his touch lingered on my skin like an afterimage.
“Most people can't even look at my scars,” I said, staying seated instead of covering up immediately. Testing him. “They try to act normal, but I see them flinching.”
Noah gathered his supplies, his eyes meeting mine directly. “I've treated soldiers with worse scars, acid attack victims with more visible damage, and kids with fresher burns. Yours are bad, yeah, but they're just scars. It's the treatment history that's actually interesting.”
No pity, no revulsion—just professional interest. It hit me in a way I wasn't prepared for, stirring something deeper than physical response.
“What do you mean by treatment history?” I asked, suddenly needing to hear more.
Noah paused, looking at me properly. For a moment I thought he might back down, remember his place in our new arrangement. Instead, his professional interest visibly took over.
“Whoever treated you after you got burned used old-school methods,” he said, gesturing toward specific areas of my scarring, his fingers coming close enough that I could feel the heat of them without actual contact. “The keloid patterns here, thetightness along your neck and shoulder—that's from inadequate pressure therapy and range-of-motion work.”
He leaned closer, his eyes focused on a section of particularly bad scarring near my collarbone. The proximity sent my pulse racing in a way that had nothing to do with medical concerns.
