“No,” I snarled. “You wanna punish someone then come for me.”
Saint rubbed his jaw where she’d hit him and my grip on her hand tightened as I kept her behind me and she tried to move to face him. But there was no way I was letting her out from my protection until I knew she didn’t need it anymore.
“The two of you don’t need to get into a dick measuring contest,” Tatum growled behind me. “But I’m going inside with Kyan, right now to see what the fuck you’ve just done to his chest and patch him up.”
I frowned at the note of concern in her voice and Saint glowered at me for a long moment before grunting his agreement.
“Fine. But I’ll be dealing with both of you later. If you can’t get to the bottom of his shit, Barbie, then I’ll be doing it my way. And you’d better be ready to pay for striking me.” He snatched the packet of cigarettes from my pocket and scrunched them up until they crumbled and tobacco sprinkled all over the floor. “And if your family is causing shit, then I want the full explanation, not some watered down bullshit,” he warned me before turning and stalking away.
Tatum tugged on my hand and I frowned at her as she drew me towards The Temple, letting her pull me along as I wondered what the hell she even wanted from me. A minute ago she’d been glaring at me with hatred and now she was acting like some little burn on my flesh actually hurt her more than it did me.
I stayed silent as she drew me around to the door, watching as Saint headed off up the path towards Ash Chambers.
I was surprised he was willing to leave us to it. But I guessed he’d figured out that if he’d stayed, we’d be brawling in the mud by now. He wouldn’t wanna mess up his fancy clothes. And maybe it was that. Or maybe it was the way Tatum had looked at him like she wanted to skin him alive for stubbing that cigarette out on my skin.
She pulled me into the church and left me standing by the dining table as she moved away to start rummaging in one of the cupboards in the kitchenette.
“Take your jacket off,” she commanded as she pulled a first aid kit out and headed to the freezer. “And your shirt if the material isn’t burned to your skin. And sit up on the table.”
I shrugged out of my jacket and yanked my ruined shirt off too. I was pretty sure the sharp tug and explosion of pain that came from the burn told me it had been melted to my skin but it wasn’t anymore.
I looked down at the round mark and was pleased to find he’d missed my tattoos, the burn sitting on a small patch of bare skin just above my heart. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d aimed carefully to hit that exact spot too. Saint was nothing if not exact.
“Christ,” Tatum hissed as she approached me with the first aid kit in one hand and a bowl of ice cubes in the other. “What the hell was he thinking doing that to you?”
“When I quit smoking, I asked him to do that if he ever caught me lighting up again,” I supplied. There were a few things my family had given me which I couldn’t really help, my craving for nicotine was one that I could leave behind and I intended to strip myself of as much of them as I physically could.
Tatum frowned at me as she took that in then shook her head. “I don’t know if that request is more fucked up or him actually doing it is,” she muttered.
“If you hadn’t realised how twisted we are yet then you can’t have been paying attention,” I said in a low voice. “You bound yourself to a group of broken creatures when you joined us, baby.”
“Don’t I know it,” she huffed.
I leaned back to sit on the dining table like she’d told me and she moved to stand between my thighs as she placed her supplies down beside me and inspected the wound.
“My dad taught me a bunch of first aid, but it was more wound care in case I got injured while we were out in the woods other than burns…” she muttered, biting into her bottom lip as she inspected the inflamed skin on my chest and I inspected her. She really was beautiful. Captivating. The kind of girl who didn’t really exist, like a fantasy given flesh.
I watched as she lifted an ice cube and pressed it to the burn, the contrast in temperature almost made me flinch and the pain intensified as she looked back up into my eyes.
“Do you get off on hurting me?” I asked her and I wasn’t even sure if I was talking about the burn or…something else.
“I’m literally standing here trying to patch you up right now and you’re asking me that?”
“It’s just…ice make burns worse, not better. I wasn’t sure if that was the point, or-”
She snatched the ice cube away from my skin and frowned between it and me. “Cold makes burns better,” she disagreed and I was a little surprised to see that she really had been meaning to help me and not just revel in my pain. There weren’t many people who I could say cared about me enough to look after me in that way in my life.
“Ice is too cold,” I said with a shrug. I didn’t mention the fact that I knew that because my uncle Connor had once tortured a man to death using fire and ice right in front of me. I was twelve at the time. In
