My body was covered in bruises. It didn’t take long to get me naked, and when I was, Swiss shed his clothes quickly. I grasped his cut, my fingers sinking into the leather, soft as butter. It calmed me, that piece of clothing. Something that could’ve been a part of Swiss for how important it was to him. How integral it was to his identity.
To mine, too, now.
It was heavier than a simple piece of clothing. But despite my injuries, my weakness, it was a weight that I could carry. I hung it carefully on the hook on the back of the bathroom door. It took me a while to cross the small distance, my steps measured, slow, careful. As if I were learning to walk again. I half expected Swiss’s hands to steady me; he’d made it clear he wasn’t going to let me go anywhere without his help.
But I made this small journey without his help.
When I turned, Swiss was standing naked in the middle of the bathroom, staring at me. Staring at me in a way that took my breath away.
Literally stole it.
My heart jumped in my throat.
Swiss was staring at me like I’d just hung the moon. Like he was staring at the whole world. With love. So much of it my chest burned.
But pain too. Utter anguish.
My knees barely took me back to him.
The second I stood in front of him, Swiss grabbed on to my hips and fell to his knees.
To. His. Knees.
His forehead rested against my stomach, and his arms went around me. Like I was the only thing tethering him to this earth. Like he had no other choice but sink to his knees in front of me.
My hands found his head, and my eyes closed, finding peace that shouldn’t have existed in a moment like that. But that’s the closest word I could use to describe it.
Swiss lifted his head slowly, after a minute or so. His lips found the scar on my hip, almost healed now.
His scar. The only mark on my body that belonged to him. The only mark on my body that I had obtained willingly.
Swiss’s lips landed on that scar, lingering there.
His head lifted, and his eyes found mine. “Did he touch you?” Every letter of the words he spoke were carved into the air.
I knew what he meant immediately. The words came out of somewhere visceral. Some ancient, feral part of him. They were dripping with pain. Blood.
In that moment, I made the decision, made the promise to myself, that Swiss would never ever know what had set Preston off. That it was his mark on me that started it all. I would not let him carry that. Cut himself to pieces on that serrated knowledge.
It didn’t matter that it very well could’ve been what saved my life, in a way. If that mark had not been there, Preston would’ve raped me. I wouldn’t have fought him, but it would’ve been rape. And then, something inside me, something integral, would’ve broken. Smashed into a million pieces. Never to be repaired.
Swiss’s mark was the reason Preston almost killed me. But it was also the reason I was still alive. Still me.
I wouldn’t be able to get him to understand that, though.
“No, honey,” I rasped.
His eyes studied me as if he were searching for a lie I was telling to protect him.
“I swear, he didn’t,” I croaked.
Swiss’s hand slipped between my legs, cupping me gently there before moving to my ass.
The gesture wasn’t sexual, though I sucked in a rough breath, and my core prickled with hunger. It was something more intimate.
Swiss got to his feet once more, forehead resting on mine. “Let’s get you cleaned up, Countess.”
When we got into the shower, I did something I hadn’t thought I was capable of doing. Not yet, at least.