Page 109 of Beautiful Scars

At myself.

At everything that’s led me to this point, including every idiotic decision I made en route. I’m nineteen, and what do I have?

Nothing, and no one.

If I can’t dig myself out of this mess then there’s no way I can start fixing my train wreck of a life. Every minute I’m held captive by Cillian Hendry is another minute I’m not out there looking for Grace.

Grace?Trish asks.The girl you’d stopped looking for the night you met Cillian?

No one asked you, Trish! But yeah, fuck. So what?

I’d given up.

That’swhy I went to the club.

I tried to tell myself it was to break through my PTSD. To face the fear that kept me up at night.

But I went there because I don’t deserve Grace, and that’s what a pathetic excuse of a mother like me would do. Instead of being out there, looking for her daughter, she goes to parties and fucks strangers.

That’s how I found Cillian.

That’s how...

No.

I didn’t find him.

He. Found. Me.

At his own club.

How—

Cillian’s teeth graze the side of my neck. It shouldn’t, but the heady sensation rips that last thought from my mind.

“Thought I already fucked the brat out of you,” Cillian says.

I don’t even have time to scream. The candles that were the centerpiece of our table go flying, extinguishing as they bounce off the flagstones. I scramble for balance, and end up on my hands and knees. I’m distantly aware of glass shattering.

NowI’mthe centerpiece.

Cillian hikes my dress up my back with one hand, and yanks my panties down to my knees with the other. When I try to get off the table he slaps my ass so hard, I’ll be shocked if passersby in the alleyway outside don’t hear me gasp in shock.

I can feel every finger of the handprint he undoubtedly left on my rump aching in time with my pounding heart. “What are you doing?” I try and sit up on my knees, but before I’m halfway up, he shoves my thighs apart and licks me slow and hard, all the way from my clit to my hole.

Leaving behind a shivering wreck.

I thump back onto my hands. For some reason, I try to open my legs wider.

Delirious with hunger. The wine. Insomnia.

So many reasons.

Except for the most obvious.

I crave him like plants crave the fucking sun. My body waits for him like a goddamn sunflower, turning to follow him across the sky every day, closing up with despair every night when he disappears behind the horizon.

My underwear keeps my legs too close together for his liking, apparently. With a growl that’s more beast than man, Cillian grabs the flimsy fabric and yanks it out from under my knees. I hear something rip, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re stretched beyond use.