“Absolutely not. This is wrong. Just…wrong.”
I offered him my hand, and he let me pull him to his feet. Inside, I dumped the bag on the floor and guided him to the couch.
“Show me.”
“You don’t want to see it.”
Based on what little I’d seen so far, that was probably true, but I fixed him with an unwavering stare. He relented with a small smile, shaking his head at a private thought, and started to remove his shirt. He winced and hissed a curse.
“Let me help.” I moved to stand in front of him. “Raise your arms.”
He obeyed, and I reached around his waist and lifted, careful to keep the material away from his back. The shirt covered his face for a moment and then it was off, ruffling the dark curls on his brow. Our eyes locked, my mouth inches from his, his bare chest brushing my breasts.
Heat rushed through me, the kind I’d read about—and craved—in romance novels for years but had never experienced. Especially not with Jeff Hastings in college. Our awkward fumbling had been a candle to my body’s fiery, visceral response to Casziel. To be in his space, this close to his shirtless and scarred skin, lit me up from the inside so fast, it stole my breath. Like the woman in the dream, I trembled with anticipation and ached with want, yearning for a release that was years in the making…
For a heartbeat, we shared the same air and then I took a step back. But I couldn’t stop staring. My eyes gorged on him, the brick wall of muscle that was his abdomen, the rounded bulge of his shoulders that tapered to defined forearms striated with veins.
I put my hands on those shoulders to turn him around—a pathetic excuse to touch him—and a cry caught in my throat, the desire s
tamped out by horror. A pentagram, about the size of a dinner plate, was burned into his back and bisected with strange lines and loops. His skin was red and raw, blackened at the edges.
“My God. What is this?”
“Ashtaroth’s mark. A reminder to whom I belong.”
I swallowed hard and blinked back tears. “You need medication. For this and for your arm. This is a human body. It can be hurt. It is hurt and you have to take care of it.”
“If you insist, Lucy Dennings.”
He sounded defeated, but maybe it was only the pain. I hurried to the bathroom and returned with a tube of Neosporin. I sat on the couch and Casziel moved to the floor, his back to me. As gently as I could, I coated the strange lines with the clear antibiotic. He never flinched, though now and then, the muscles in his back would move and bulge—he was all elegant lines and sculpted masculinity.
And familiar.
I put the medicine on his skin and touching him rekindled the fire of need that burned deep in the center of me. My fingers itched to stray, to trace his scars. I longed to kiss them, to reacquaint myself with the lines and contours of him because the sense that I’d had him before—and far more intimately—was alive and bright in me. The dream of the woman reuniting with her warrior hovered in the thickened air between us like a secret waiting to be broken open. Or the proverbial door to Narnia, waiting for me to walk through it…
You don’t have the guts, silly Lucy. Stick to your books.
I blinked out of my thoughts and Deber’s insinuations and finished tending to Casziel’s back.
“You should really go to the hospital, but I suppose that’s out of the question.” I took his arm to tend to the cuts. “Why does he do this to you?”
“To feed on the pain that comes from wounding this human body,” Casziel said. “To remind me that I am vulnerable in my human form.”
“Can he…kill you? I mean…worse than sending you to the Other Side?”
Cas didn’t reply and the mountain of things unsaid between us grew taller, more precarious. I set the medicine on the table.
“Do you want something to eat? Or maybe watch TV, to keep your mind off the pain?”
“Are you not supposed to be at work?”
“I’m taking the rest of the day off.” I fished my phone out of my bag to call the office. “I haven’t called in sick or taken a personal day since Dad passed. They’ll survive without me for one afternoon.”
And you have only a few days left on This Side.
The pang in my heart was familiar too. The woman in Japan. The girl in Russia. Both had been left feeling as if they’d come close to something real, only to have it—him—vanish into smoke. Like a dream…
I called into work, then hung up my dress for the wedding. I returned to the couch and turned on Netflix, scrolling shows.