Page 44 of Rooke
I hug her, cutting her off. “Thank you.”
She gingerly hugs me back. “Okay, okay. I’ll be around tomorrow with some groceries for you.” I wait with her while she puts on her jacket and her odd, stripy woolen hat. At the front door, she plants her hands on my shoulders and looks me dead in the eye. “I love you, kid. You know that, right?”
“I do.”
“Good. Now go and get fucked by that ridiculously scary looking man. And no. I do not want details later, thank you very much. I don’t think I’m brave enough to even hear about it.”
Rooke’s leaning against the wall when I head back into the dining room. Ali was right: he is a scary looking guy. He’s certainly not someone I would ever have looked twice at before running into him at the museum. He’s not all sharp edges and dark scowls, though. There’s a tiny glimmer of light to him, too.
His face is a blank slate when he turns and looks at me, and I find myself trying to decide which side of him I’m about to witness now. That question is answered the second he opens his mouth.
“Strip, Sasha.”
“What?”
“Take your clothes off. Now. I want to look at you.”
“I don’t think—”
“Good. Don’t. That’s the last thing you need to be doing. Now be a good girl and take your clothes off.”
When I don’t move, he arches an eyebrow at me. The pain in my body seems to ebb, replaced with something else, then. The faintest hint of need. “Do you want me to do it for you, Sasha?” he asks.
Slowly, I shake my head. I begin the task at hand. It takes me a long time to get undressed. Lifting my arms over my head takes work, as does bending down to slide my jeans from each of my legs. I hesitate in my underwear, unsure if he wants me to continue. When I look up at him, I see just how stupid a thought that was. Of course he wants me naked. I slide my panties down my body, kicking out of them, and then I try to unfasten my bra strap. I physically can’t do it, though. My ribs thrum with pain when I reach behind me, and in a second Rooke is behind me, his breath hot on my neck as he brushes my hair out of the way with careful fingers, undoing it for me. He slides his hands over my shoulders, pushing the straps down, his chest pressing up against my back. Slowly, he takes my bra from me and allows it to drop to the floor.
“On the table,” he whispers into my ear. “Lie on the table. I need to see you properly.”
I’m past the point of arguing. He is so undeniably in control of this situation that I’m willing to do whatever he tells me to right now. I don’t even have the energy to ask why. The polished wood is cold underneath my skin. Rooke stands to the side of the table, waiting patiently as I scoot back and lie down. Once I’m in place, he begins to walk around the table, inspecting the myriad of green, blue, and yellow bruises that cover my body. He starts at my neck, angling his hand for a second, then placing his thumb against one of the bruises on my throat. He matches up his hand exactly to the spot where the guy in the museum held me by the throat, and a cold, hard fury flashes in his eyes.
Next he moves down to my arm, doing the same thing, angling his hand until it matches up with the bruises. I understand what he’s doing, then. He’s figuring out how my attacker assaulted me, how he held me down and pinned me, how he dragged me, how he hit me, how he abused my body.
I feel small. I want to climb down off the table and end this macabre reliving of my attack in the museum, but Rooke is so focused, so single-minded right now that I know he won’t let me. He needs to do this. Like he said, he needs to see.
The process takes a long time; I’m covered in bruises, cuts and scrapes. When he’s done with my front, he makes me roll onto my stomach and he goes through the same thing on my back.
Once he’s finished, he doesn’t say anything. He gets me to turn over, and then rather than holding his hands to my injuries, he places his mouth to them instead. It’s like he’s saying a silent prayer as he moves across my body, kissing and stroking, working his way down from my neck, over my collarbone, over my ribs, my stomach, my thighs.
This shouldn’t be sexual. I am a broken, beaten, hollow shell of a human being, but the way Rooke touches me has a dominance to it. It’s as though with every kiss and every touch of his hand, he’s removing the violence from my body, replacing it with something much deeper. A connection between the two of us, set in place over and over again. By the time he turns me onto my back and begins caressing my broken skin there, I’m panting, my breath coming in short, sharp blasts, my head swimming.
This man has such a control over me. Such a heady, delirious power. My body responds to him in a way it would never respond to anyone else. It’s incredible and it’s frightening, and I don’t know how to act. He lifts me up into his arms, and he carries me upstairs.
My breath catches in my throat when he almost takes me into Christopher’s room. “No. Not that one. There…” I point to my bedroom door, and he heads into the room without another word. Setting me down gently on the bed, he stands back and begins to undress. Shoes, first. Shirt. Ripped jeans. He’s not wearing any underwear again. He has the type of body I didn’t actually think existed in the real world—packed muscle on top of muscle that he must have worked impossibly hard for. His tattoos are everywhere, over his chest, his stomach, his shoulders, spiraling down both his arms, his hands, up around his neck. He’s a work of art, a masterpiece of his own making. I allow myself a minute to take him in, too intrigued to be embarrassed by my open curiosity. He must know what I’m doing because he just stands there for a moment, shoulders back, hands by his sides while he allows me to inspect him.
“You’re quite something,” I whisper
“So are you,” he replies. “You didn’t need a liter of ink and a thousand needles to accomplish it, though. You just…are.”
“You’d still be incredible without the ink.”
He shrugs. “Maybe you’re right. These tattoosareme in a way, though. Everything I’ve done. Everything I’ve been through.”
I bite the knuckle of my index finger, frowning a little. “Are you going to tell me what they mean?”
Again, he shrugs. “Maybe one day. For now…” He climbs up onto the bed, and a thrill of nerves races through me. His cock is hard already, brushing up against his belly, and he’s staring at me like he’s staring down the barrel of a fucking gun. Unafraid, though. Unwavering, and unashamed. Kneeling next to me, he takes himself into his right hand, palming himself, working his hand up and down the length of his erection, his gaze drinking me in from head to toe.
“Open your legs for me, Sasha.”
There is no way to say no to that. I don’t think I would, even if I could. I open my legs, exhaling down my nose, trying not to panic too hard. This is still so, so new…and after everything that’s happened in the past few days…this is probably a horrible idea. I should be in therapy or something, not about to have seriously intense sex with this crazy-hot man. Do I stop myself, though? No, I don’t. I need to feel something other than scared, or sad, or pissed off. I need to feelthis. I need to feel his hands on my body, making me forget…
