Beneath These Scars

I wasn’t a victim. Not anymore. I was a survivor. And I never wanted to see anyone look at me with pity again. Shoulders back and spine straight, I whirled around to face Titan.

Concern creased his features, an emotion that looked completely wrong on his arrogant face. I hated it, and the urge to lash out clawed through me.

“I don’t feel the need to be interrogated by you or some cop. If you don’t want me in your house, I’ll be on my way.”

“Not until you tell me who hit you.”

His nostrils flared and his hands were curled into fists, but surprisingly, my fight-or-flight response faded. I didn’t feel threatened anymore. He wasn’t pissed at me, but for me. That was new and different. Still, it didn’t mean I was about to share my pathetic story. Who wanted to admit they’d been beaten and let it keep happening? Or worse, that at the time I’d believed my husband when he’d told me it was my fault.

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Except it did matter if my intuition was right and Jay had been in my apartment. Then it would matter very, very much. The day I’d testified in open court, at the trial that had sent him to prison, he’d sworn he’d never let me go. But then his grandmother had pushed the divorce through as soon as the court would grant it.

Even I appreciated the irony of the situation, that someone in his family had been the one to set me free from that nightmare forever. I thought about Ginny’s visit to Dirty Dog. The woman who’d helped me then was trying to help me again now, but this time she was trying to help me straight out of town. Did she know something I didn’t? Had she really told me the truth when she’d said she didn’t know when Jay was getting out?

I’d gotten so caught up in my thoughts that I completely checked out for a few moments. Titan was staring at me, studying me, and as soon as I was conscious of it, I felt the weight of his inspection all the way to my bones.

“I’d say it matters a whole hell of a lot,” he said finally.

“And I don’t know why you’d care.”

“Because something scared you bad enough to run, and I don’t think you scare easily. I may not be a good guy, but I’d fuck up any man who hurt a woman.”

I snorted. Right. Lucas Titan, billionaire, asshole of the first order, was probably a man who wouldn’t even fetch his own newspaper, let alone go after someone who hurt a woman.

“You don’t believe me? Do you want me to prove it to you?”

I outright laughed at this. “Quit, Titan. You don’t need to go ghetto and throw down. I’m fine, and nothing needs proving.”

He opened his mouth to protest but my stomach growled. Loudly. I expected him to ignore it, but the man continued to surprise me.

“When did you eat last?”

I thought back to earlier and all the craziness of the day. “I don’t know. Breakfast, I guess.”

“Come on. Follow me.” And he walked off down the hall, not even slowing to see if I was coming.

I guessed in Titan’s world, when the king said “follow me,” he didn’t have to wonder if his orders would be obeyed. My stomach growled again, and that was the only reason I hurried down the hall after him.

I RARELY WONDERED IF SOMEONE would do what I asked. But with Yve, I was learning quickly that she was more likely to do the exact opposite. In a way, she reminded me of Levi when he was a kid. He was just eight years old when I became his guardian, and the years that followed had been . . . difficult.

I pushed open the door to the kitchen and flipped on the light. For as little time as I spent in the room, it was surprisingly one of my favorites. Kitchens had always been my refuge as a kid when my father would lose his shit—he’d never set foot in one, as far as I knew—so I could always escape his wrath there.

Seeing it empty of Jerome, my majordomo, chef, and keeper of all things, was not surprising given it was his night for poker. He’d joined my father’s household when I was sixteen, when my father had first been sent to France as an engineer for a multinational corporation. Jerome had followed us from France to Germany two years later when my father founded his own company. Without Jerome, I wouldn’t have been able to keep Levi from going to a secondary guardian after my father’s death. My mother had passed away before we’d left the United States, taken too fast by an aggressive form of breast cancer.

Every time I thought about my mother, sadness followed. But every time I thought about my father, I shut down all thought and emotion. I would not think about that day, the one that had ended with him in a body bag and me in the hospital.

No.

Jaw set, I crossed to the fridge and yanked it open. Grabbing a container of hummus, I turned and slid it across the counter.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“Offering to feed a guest in my home?”

“An unwanted and unwelcome guest in your home,” Yve clarified.

“A guest who greets me naked is rarely unwanted and unwelcome.”

“You know what I mean,” she said, her cheeks coloring.

Fuck. With that blush staining her cheeks, I couldn’t stare at her without recalling how gorgeous she’d looked naked or the feel of her nipple between my fingers. She might not spell her name like the first woman to tempt a man, but that didn’t make her any less of a temptation.

I wanted her naked again. The robe wasn’t the obstacle, though; it was Yve herself. But she didn’t have to like me to fuck me; she just had to want me more than she hated me.

Yve kicked this little game into overdrive when she’d wrapped her hand around my cock. I’d watched her pupils dilate. Her nipples had been practically diamond tipped. She wanted me.