So he didn’t say it aloud, he just thought it. I’m sorry, but I can’t let you go. You’re mine now, God help you.
Chapter Fifteen
Erin
Erin stretched. Her muscles felt wrung out and used well.
She turned her head, facing her lover with a lazy smile. Blake had his eyes closed, arm slung over his face. He grew less bold in the aftermath, as if she might find his scars ugly without the haze of arousal to soften him. He had also maneuvered them so that she saw his unmarred side. He did that constantly, so smoothly she hardly noticed until after. She wasn’t sure he even knew he did it. The burned skin was only a glimpse on the opposite cheek. Shiny tissue. White and pink that didn’t tan to bronze with the rest of his skin.
She wished she could tell him it didn’t matter. But that wasn’t really true. How man
y people wore the darkest part of them on their faces? What a different world it would be if we walked around with signs that proclaimed the worst thing that had happened to us.
For her mother, it would be whatever had happened in the house where she’d worked as a maid and then suddenly hadn’t anymore. For Erin, it would be when her boyfriend had taken her to meet his parents and they realized his father had been the one to hurt her mother. When her boyfriend had called later with that bullshit story about her mom stealing from them, sure that his father was innocent of any wrongdoing. When he’d left her to find her own ride back to campus and when she’d seen him walking between buildings with another girl on his arm. Broken spirit, her mother’s sign would say. Broken heart for Erin.
Broken body for Blake.
Put that way, she felt lucky. Everyone had pain in their pasts. Some had it worse than others, but no one was untouched. The difference was that Blake was introduced that way. The rest of them had their smooth-skinned shells to hide behind.
He turned to face her, exposing himself. She looked into his eyes and felt herself fall into them—the contentment there and the shame.
“What are you thinking about?” he murmured.
She almost smiled at the echo of his earlier words. During sex he’d asked that question. And her answer was the same, in essence. “About you.”
He raised a brow. “Anything in particular?”
She studied the smooth bronze of his skin, the mottled pink. The courage with which he faced each day, holding that damned sign up, his head held high.
“How beautiful you are.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “That’s cruel,” he said mildly.
She flinched. “I mean it. You’re beautiful to me.”
He faced the ceiling again. “Fuck, Erin. I never asked you to lie to me.”
She propped herself on her elbow. “Why do you think I have sex with you if I don’t find you attractive?”
“Pity?” he said, so cavalierly she knew he was baiting her.
And it worked, damn him. “Then why do you have sex with me?” she challenged.
He was still a moment. His expression impassive, he turned his head and gave her a long, slow perusal from her wild, disheveled hair down her naked body to where her toes were tucked under the sheet. He caressed her breast, running his thumb down the side, the rough pad of his finger like fine sandpaper on her sensitive skin.
His hand remained on her breast, a soft weight, a link between them as he looked her in the eye. “I love you, Erin. I’m not sure it’s enough. In fact, I know it’s not, but I can’t keep myself away from you. It has nothing to do with the fact that you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
She swallowed thickly. For someone declaring his love and her beauty, he didn’t seem happy about it. “Is it a problem?”
He smiled slightly. His voice was hoarse. “No. Not right now.”
A chill climbed up her spine. Only then could she see the risk he’d taken, teaching a class where she would be a student. At first he’d resisted because he didn’t want to rejoin society, didn’t want to work again and walk among the living, preferring the sanctuary he had made for himself in this house.
They would make it work with him as her professor, limiting the moral dilemma as best they could. She would do her best, which usually earned her an A or the rare B. Both were commonly the only grades given in the small advanced master’s courses, the idea being that all the C and D students had been weeded out by then anyway. But he would grade her fairly, regardless. He was too honorable to do anything else.
More than the potential for conflict between them, what if they were found out? Would there be some sort of inquisition? Would he be fired with a scandal on his virtual resume? Of course no one would find out. And she wouldn’t let the grade come between them, whatever it ended up being. But there was an awful lot of room for error in this plan. He must have known that, and he’d accepted it without complaint.
For her.