When she felt assured he wasn’t looking at her, she pushed the covers down and stood.
Jude’s breath hissed in when he saw her back.
Scars. Everywhere. From the line of her panties to the base of her neck. His woman was scarred. Most were thin and looked to have been made with a very sharp, small blade. The thinness of the marks indicated the cuts weren’t that deep, but the presence of keloid scarring on some of them told Jude something had been done to make them scar in such a way.
Salt? Acid?
He was around the bed in a heartbeat. “Who?”
Her head fell, her chin touching her chest. There was so much sorrow in that gesture that Jude’s breath locked in his throat. The top of her head came to his breastbone and rested there. He reached for her, but she said, “Don’t.”
A shuddering breath, and then she whispered, “Don’t touch me. I might break if you touch me right now.”
He froze, hands partway up, and then he felt the scalding heat of a single tear fall on his skin, and he lost it. He scooped her up, turned, and sat down on the bed, holding her close. Her head tucked beneath his chin and she shook, deep, racking sobs that rocked her body in the cradle of his. Her tears scored him. Her sobs shattered him.
He held her tight, arms crossed over her. “Shhhh, El. I’ve got you.”
Still she cried, as if his touch had indeed broken the dam on her sorrow and she had nothing to hold it back any longer.
He waited for her to calm, and when her sobs eased, his hold loosened and his hands began roaming over her cold skin.
“Tell me,” he demanded. “Get it out, Ella.”
She shook her head, denying him.
“Woman, you’re killing me,” he whispered against her hair. Something told him he couldn’t push her on this right now. She was too fragile. And while Jude had a hard time reconciling the woman in his arms with the one who’d taken out an assassin on a rooftop in Russia to protect him, she was the same woman, and he couldn’t hurt her any more than she’d already been hurt.
He felt her withdraw and let her get up from his lap. She stood in front of him, quivering, hands twisting, quiet.
“Go use the bathroom. Take a shower, clean up. I left a bag in there with some underwear and clothes for you,” he said softly, making an effort to keep the rage out of his voice.
Someone had hurt her. Badly. Jude knew one man, in league with Dresden, who enjoyed his knives.
He drew in a deep breath. “I wish King had let him live.”
Her head rose sharply, the question in her eyes clear.
“So I could kill Savidge again and again for what he’s done,” he promised her. “I’d do it for you, Ella. Over and over.”
Something akin to relief lit on her face for a few seconds, and then she straightened her shoulders and turned, walking to the bathroom and closing the door behind her.
What had happened to her in Dresden’s clutches? Her story was vague, but her scars, her wariness, didn’t lie. She’d been devastated over the last year.
Jude rubbed a hand over his face, finding his cheeks wet.
Where did this leave him? How was he going to earn her trust when she was so splintered?
He’d have to love her harder.
So that’s what Jude set out to do.
* * *
Ella pressed her forehead to the heavy wood of the bathroom door. Pain ripped through her, rending and biting, taking chunks out of her soul—chunks she couldn’t afford to lose. His face when he’d looked at her?
Devastated.
He was hurt by her scars.
This man. The one she’d given everything to before Beirut. The one she’d given up everything for so he’d be safe. He was going to finish taking her apart, and Ella didn’t know if there would be anything left when he was finished.
She knew Jude. He was planning and plotting a way to earn her trust so she’d give up her secrets. But there were too many, and she didn’t know where to start—hell, if she could start. She was so locked inside herself, and she’d buried the key inside him.
He’d have to find it because she didn’t dare.
He’d held her, and she’d cried. There was more where those tears had come from. A tidal wave of pain that could eventually bury them both. He’d been her reason for carrying on with her mission, and now he was the reason she wanted to curl up with him and leave the mission far behind.
She made her way through the large bathroom, bypassing the sink and mirror and handling her business on the toilet before running nothing but hot water in the enormous sunken tub.
She turned off the hot water and put on the cold for a minute before she turned it off too. Then she removed her bra and panties, still avoiding any look into the mirror. Her face felt numb. She probably looked like hamburger meat.
Everything was a blur. How long had she been out? How long was he planning on keeping her? How long could Anna Beth Caine survive in Dresden’s hold?
She needed to contact the Piper. She needed answers.
Who was she kidding? She needed Jude.
And he was the one person she refused to pull any deeper into this than he already was.
Ella was off her game. Emotions she’d buried for a year were pressing against the back of her eyelids, threatening to pour forth from her throat and eyes.
She sank beneath the water gingerly, allowing the heat to soothe her knotted muscles. She bathed slowly, inhaling the scent of Jude in the
