Page 43 of Thorne
I pull the shirt over my head, my hair snagging on the collar, and when I emerge, the air in the room feels like ice against my bare skin. I fold the shirt with trembling fingers, my movements small and frantic, trying to keep some semblance of order when everything is falling apart.
I step out of the jeans, the denim heavy and stiff with the road dust of the dam. The bruising from Phoenix's "hospitality" is visible now in a way clothing hid. The deep purplethumbprints on my shoulders where I was held down, the yellowing bloom across my ribs, the dark, ugly topography of the last week. I stand there in the center of the room, stripped to the bare, bruised truth of what Phoenix left of me.
I don't look at my own body. I look at him.
His eyes don't soften at the sight of the damage. They darken, the blue turning to the color of a bruised sky. He doesn't offer a word of comfort or a flicker of pity; he just catalogs the marks as if he's counting the ways the world has already attempted to break me before he got his turn.
I turn the handle, and the water takes a moment to warm, the hiss of the spray filling the silence like static. I step under it, the heat stinging the raw parts of my skin.
I shampoo first, my fingers working through my hair, road dust and the metallic scent of Ghostwater rinsing out in the drain. I wash my face, scrubbing until my skin is raw, trying to peel off the layers of dirt and grime that feel permanently etched into my pores. I work down: neck, shoulders, the bruising, the knots from three hours hunched over a table.
My hands are not steady. I tell myself it's fatigue. I tell myself it's the adrenaline finally purging itself.
If I fuck you.
He said it the way you correct someone who has gotten the weather wrong. Matter-of-fact. Certain. And now I can't stop thinking about what that would mean.
A man his size.
The specific, lethal quality of his stillness.
The control that lives in every single thing he does.
I have never been with anyone who frightened me the way he does. I have never been frightened quite the way I am in this building. Not even at Ghostwater. And whatever is happening underneath my ribs right now is a sickness I don't know how to cure, because I've never in my life wanted something that scaredme this much. I want him to stop looking at me like a problem and start looking at me like a person, even if that person is his to break.
The water can't wash away the feeling in his eyes. It's like a physical touch, heavy and pressurized, tracing the curve of my spine and the slope of my hips. I feel more exposed under the spray than I did standing naked in the room.
I turn the water off. The silence that follows is deafening.
I dry off quickly. The towel is rough against my skin. I pull the gray shirt over my head, then pull on the sweatpants. My hair is wet and cold against my neck, dripping onto the fabric. I feel heavy, weighted down by the humidity and the proximity of the man watching me.
I look up.
Thorne is looking at me.
Not at the bruising. Not with the flat attention of an operative. He isn't assessing the tactical damage. His eyes are fixed on the curve of my waist and the slope of my hip under the soft fleece.
He doesn't blink. The stillness of the man is terrifying, but it's the fissure in that stillness that catches my breath. I'm not imagining it. For the three seconds before he shuts it down, he's looking at me with a hunger so pure it's turned into a different kind of violence. It's not desire as I've ever known it; it's a predatory claim, a dark necessity that threatens to swallow the room whole.
My breath goes shallow. My pulse thunders in my ears. I want to look away, to hide from the raw intensity of it, but I'm paralyzed.
He blinks. His jaw locks, the muscle jumping beneath the skin, the shutters slamming closed on what I just witnessed. He pushes off the wall with a sudden, violent grace, the movement sharp and dismissive.
"Back to the room."
He doesn't wait for me. He just expects me to follow, his presence a predatory shadow that seems to swallow the oxygen in the hallway.
I follow him out, my legs feeling like lead, my skin still tingling from the heat of the water and the sharper burn of his gaze. His hand finds my elbow. That same bruising, unrelenting grip. He's moving faster now, his stride frantic, as if he's trying to outrun the humid air of the bathroom or the memory of what he witnessed through the glass.
Lily's door is ahead on the left. Domestic sounds bleed into the hall, a jarring reminder of the world I've been severed from. "Grandpa, you cannot skip me twice in a row; that's not a rule. Show me where it says that."
The muscle in Thorne's jaw knots and releases with a rhythmic pulse as we pass the door without stopping. He's running from the sound of her, or he's running from the sight of me. Or perhaps he's running from the fact that for a few seconds, those two worlds occupied the same space in his head.
Safe room door. He opens it, and I step inside, turning to face him. It's a reflex now, never turn your back on the predator. He comes in after me, the door clicking shut, but the bolt remains silent.
He stands one step inside the threshold, his massive frame crowding the space until the walls seem to shrink toward us. His fingers encircle the bone of my upper arm, and he looks down at me. I have to look a long way up. The room is eight by ten, and it has never seemed smaller.
"Stop thinking what you're thinking."
