Page 156 of Watch Me Burn
“What about the rest?” His voice carries amusement.
I eye my underwear with distaste, the lace looking sad and crumpled. The shirt’s no better—wrinkled and reeking of yesterday’s anxious sweat. “I’m not re-wearing those.”
“I like where this is going.” He crosses his arms, leaning against the bedpost with water still beading on his skin like some kind of pornographic statue come to life.
“You would.” I pull on my jeans, the denim rough against my bare skin. “Do you have a shirt I can borrow?”
His expression darkens. My pulse spikes and my mouth goes dry. Hunger flashes across his face, primal and obvious, but beneath it lurks a devotion that makes my stomach flip. The way he looks at me, like I’m both salvation and ruin, a treasure he’d burn the world to keep. I’m only beginning to understand the weight of being so thoroughly wanted.
He moves to his closet, pulling out a light blue button-down.
“This one.”
I slip my arms through the sleeves, and it engulfs me, the hem falling to mid-thigh and the shoulders drooping well past mine. I start buttoning it, moving from bottom to top, but his hands cover mine, stopping me halfway up.
“I want to do it.”
His fingers work the buttons with a gentleness that seems at odds with what I know he’s capable of. But his breathing’s gone rough, each exhale a little too deliberate, a little too controlled. When he reaches the top button, his knuckles brush against my throat, and his eyes have gone molten.
“It’s just a shirt, Damien.”
“It’s my shirt.” His thumb traces my collarbone where the fabric gapes, dipping into the hollow of my throat. “On your body. Marking you as mine in a way everyone can see.”
“Okay, caveman.”
He pulls me flush against him, and the hard length of him presses against my stomach. “You’re going to smell like me all day.”
I push at his chest, fighting a smile that wants to break free. “Get dressed before I change my mind about lunch.”
He releases me with obvious reluctance, pulling on boxer briefs and jeans. I watch him button his own shirt, black this time, rolling the sleeves to his elbows. The morning light catches the tattoos on his forearms, those warped human figures that no longer seem quite so monstrous now that I understand what they represent. Each one a life he ended, a victim he avenged, a monster he put down. They’re a memorial and a confession inked into his skin for anyone who knows how to read them.
“We’re insane, aren’t we?” The words slip out before I can stop them.
He pauses. For a moment, he just looks at me, and I can’t read his expression.
“Probably.”
I sink onto the edge of his bed, suddenly needing to sit. “We’re building a relationship on the foundation of your deception, my forgiveness, and a shared conspiracy to frame a dead man for murder.”
“Murders. Plural.” He sits beside me, close enough that our thighs touch. “Don’t shortchange my body count.”
A laugh bubbles up, edged with hysteria, because what else can I do?
“God, that shouldn’t be funny.”
“But it is.” His hand finds mine, lacing our fingers together. “Dark humor for a dark situation.”
I stare at our joined hands. My fingers look small wrapped in his. The shape of his hand catches my attention. The way his fingers sit slightly crooked, bones that were broken, over and over, and never properly healed. Evidence of his father's brutality. I lift them to my lips as I blink back tears.
“Our foundation is built on more than just those things, Luna. It’s built on love.” I open my mouth, but my words die on my tongue. “Yes, I know it started with secrets and lies and my obsession, but I think I fell in love with you the second I laid eyes on you, even though I had no idea what it was.”
My eyes soften at the sincere expression on his face, at the vulnerability there that he only shows me. Even though we talked all of this out last night and this morning, I’m still wrapping my mind around our new reality.
“You’re a serial killer, Damien.”
“Yes.”
“And I’m a veterinarian. I save lives.”
