"Goddamn you," I growl. "You fucking liar."
I roll my hips up into her at the same time I slam hers down onto me, fucking her hard and rough.
"Traitor."
Thrust.
"Poisonous fucking—"
She screams as she shatters around me, her body milking mine and forcing my release before I can stop it. I'm coming inside her. Fingers digging into her hips. Teeth scraping along her collarbone. We're sweaty and sticky and hot against each other, and when I glance down, I realize it's because my shirt is off. We’re skin against skin in a way we’ve never been before. Her perfect silk to my gnarled, inked flesh.
She follows my gaze, half breathless as her eyes roam over the designs on my chest. When her palms come up to touch them, I move to stop her, but she shoves my hands out of the way and does it anyway. Her fingers flatten against my skin, warmth sinking into a space I haven’t allowed anyone to touch, and my eyes shutter closed as I consider what a goddamned mess this has turned out to be.
"I need you pregnant," I bite out.
When I open my eyes again, she's staring at me with a strained expression on her face.
"It's a matter of life or death for you." I brush her hair back over her shoulders and sigh. "No more excuses, Ivy. You’ll see a doctor tomorrow. And you better pray that come next month, that test is positive."
16 Ivy
“What?” I ask.
Santiago’s eyes are locked on mine but my gaze shifts between his eyes and the inked, broken canvas of his body.
His expression is hard again, shut down. For a moment, for moments even, he wasn’t closed off to me. He let me look at him. Touch him. And I understand so much more clearly why he lives in shadows.
I knew the damage wasn’t only to his face. But the scars on his body, and the ink with which he has attempted to camouflage them, they tell a story I don’t think he wants told.
“I didn’t mean what I said,” I start, not waiting for his answer. I need to tell him this. It’s been on my mind since the night in his office. Since our blowup.
Since he told me I made him sick.
My stomach twists a little at that.
“What?” he asks flatly with the same tone he used when telling me my life depended on whether or not I become pregnant with his child. It’s strange how unfeeling he can sound when physically, when he touches me, he does so with so much passion. So much rage. So much of himself, even if it is the darkest part.
I force my gaze from a deep groove on his shoulder back to his eyes. When he’s not angry, raging, they lean more toward green.
“You’re not deformed. I never thought that. I just wanted to hurt you.”
He remains studying me that crease still between his eyebrows visible beneath the ink. “My appearance isn’t something I think about. You didn’t hurt me.”
The first part of that may be true, but I’m pretty sure the last part isn’t. I know it in fact. The tattoo on his face, the ink covering his torso, his arms, the giant skull on his back, the candles and dim lights, the constant shadow he—we—live in, it’s all to hide the scars at least to some degree. And I think the saddest part is that he does it to hide them from himself not anyone else.
He shifts me off his lap and stands to cross the room into the bathroom.
“Come,” he calls once he’s inside.
I get up, follow him, hearing the shower switch on. I stop at the door and take it in, the dark walls, the sconces that light the space but barely. He stands naked outside the shower stall, gesturing for me to step in. I take in the wide stone counter, two sinks, the free-standing stone bathtub in the middle of the room.
There’s just one thing missing. A mirror.
He watches me, maybe waiting for my reaction. For me to ask why. I don’t need to ask. I know.
I step into the shower, and he follows. I turn to him, and he brings his hand to my face. He cups my jaw, and I look up at him as he smears the stencil. I grab his wrist.
“Don’t.”
He stops, eyes narrowing in confusion.
“I want to see it.”
“No, you do not.” He smears again.
“I do, Santiago.”
He doesn’t reply right away as if gauging the reason behind my request. But then he nods once and leans closer, forearm against the wall, hand over the top of my head, eyes on my eyes, then my lips and I think he’ll kiss me again, another blood-smeared kiss. But he doesn’t. And I’m strangely disappointed.
“Suit yourself.”
He picks up the soap and begins to lather it, then to wash me. Moments like this, he is so gentle that he’s almost tender. It’s so opposite to how he usually is with me that it’s confusing.
“What did you mean? That it’s a matter of life or death for me that I get pregnant?”
He grits his jaw, his gaze focused on the task of cleaning me.
“It means The Tribunal is sparing your life because they believe you are pregnant with my child.”
“What?”
He finishes washing me before washing himself. I smell like him now. Like he did on the night of our wedding in the confessional. Like he has every night he’s come to me. It’s the scent that clings to his pillow and sheets. Subtle, dark, and deeply masculine.
Once he’s finished washing himself, he opens the shower door and reaches for a towel, also black. He wraps it around my shoulders, and I take it from
