Page 182 of Taken By Shadows

I shuddered under him, and I knew he felt it.

But I wanted more.

My hands reached for the hardness beneath the sheet tied around his hips, but he pulled away out of reach.

“If you tease me, peach, I will repay you in kind. And then some.” He smirked and turned to find a shirt; a shirt I wasn’t wearing.

I felt like I might collapse at the chasm and void he left before me as he got dressed.

My head and heart were swooning from the release, the touch, the burning need that still claimed me.

But then I saw Kaed as he turned from me.

An involuntary gasp escaped me, and my hand flew to cover my mouth when I saw his back.

Kaed turned to me and instantly regathered the shirt he held, as if that could hide what I’d just seen.

“Kaed …” I went to him, but he pushed my searching hand away.

“I didn’t mean for you to see that.” All hints of humour and flirting were dead in his voice. Replaced by something hard and almost cruel.

“I-I don’t mind.” I was still reeling from what I’d seen. “Please …” I breathed, and tried to put my hand on his shoulder to turn him.

And like last night, I saw something in the hard set of his jaw falter.

“It’s not something I want you to see. It’s not a part of me I’m proud of.”

I didn’t say anything, but he allowed my hand to urge him to turn.

“I want to see every part of you.”

And as soon as I’d said it, I knew it was the wrong thing to say. But it brought a light back to his eyes, and they twinkled. “Every part?” He grinned like a wolf.

“Let me see …” I ignored the attempt at levity.

With a shuddering inhale, Kaed turned, and I couldn’t stifle the tremor that came to my lips, even seeing it a second time.

His entire back looked like it had been painted with ribbons of shadows and twisted thorns. Only, they weren’t painted on. They were carved in. Not tattooed but carved into his skin so deeply that he now had a tapestry of black vein-like scars that stretched across the impressive expanse of his back. It was a charred tree of ash and smoke.

“Did they hurt …?”

I wanted to ask so many other questions. Who did this to him? Why did he endure it? But instead, I cared more about the pain and suffering he’d endured.

“Yes.” He ground out the single word.

I went to raise a hand to one, to trace it with my finger, but I stopped short. He hadn’t shared these with me. He’d left a gate to his past open by accident around me.

“And now?” I pulled my hand back.

He shook his head with slow deliberateness.

“Can I …?” It seemed so personal. So intimate. But this wasn’t about his body. This was about him. He’d sat through whatever form of torture this was. They’d hurt, and he’d suffered it. I knew there was a story behind them, and I was terrified of what it was.

Kaed nodded once.

My fingers shook as they reached for the point of one of the longer tendrils. It ran from the centre of his spine all the way to his left shoulder blade and had what looked like bleed marks seeping from it. As though whatever had done this to him had been sentient enough to try to spread once it infected him.

Kaed flinched when my fingers landed on his back. The skin under the inky black scars was cool to the touch.