Defaced: A Dark Romance Novel Read online

  Monster glanced down and shook his head.

  Her stomach lurched. He hadn’t made it.

  She reached out and placed her hand to his face. “I’m so sorry, Monster.”

  “Thank you. I’ll miss him more than I’d thought possible. I’ve arranged a funeral for the day after next.”

  She wriggled closer to him and kissed him on the mouth. “I’ll come with you. You don’t have to do this alone.”

  He kissed her back, and then broke the kiss once more. “I don’t deserve to have you in my life,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  The hint of a smile touched her lips. “Yeah, I know that. But it wasn’t much of a life to begin with.” Unable to keep her hands off his exposed chest, she slipped her palms over his skin, tracing the squared muscles of his pectorals, her thumbs brushing the hardened pink nubs of his nipples. “Is this hurting you?” she asked.

  He shook his head and fixed those dark eyes on hers. “You touching me could never hurt.”

  He reached for her t-shirt and pulled it up and over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and her legs were bare, so she now only wore her panties. Desperate to get them skin to bruised skin, she tugged the rest of his shirt from his arms and threw it to the floor. Then her hands went to his pants, unbuttoning the fly, and rasping the zipper down. As her hand slid inside, she realized he’d gone commando.

  “Oh,” she breathed, as his erection sprung out to meet her. It was long and thick, every ridge and vein pronounced as the blood flow grew stronger. She reached out to him and circled his girth in her hand. He felt hot and solid, and as smooth as silk. His eyes slipped shut at the contact and his hips thrust forward to meet her slow pump on his erection.

  She spoke against his mouth as they kissed again. “I want these off,” she said, tugging at his pants. She wanted him naked, all of him, so not a single scrap of clothing separated them.

  He lifted his hips to allow her to pull the pants down, and then his hands went to the remaining scrap of her underwear. They were both being careful of each other’s injuries, not wanting to cause more harm than had already been done. She continued her caresses on his cock as his fingers slid inside the waistband of her panties and moved lower. Lily spread her thighs for him, allowing him access. His fingers curled and pushed up inside her, and she let out a groan. She wanted him inside her, all of him. She wanted them to press their bodies together, and move as one person, until all of the hurt and fear had vanished.

  “I want these off, too,” she said, motioning to her panties.

  He smiled against her mouth and started to roll them down her hips with his other hand. Frustrated by the slowness, he slid his fingers from her body and used the other hand to rid her of the offending underwear.

  For the first time, they were naked together.

  Lily leaned back slightly to admire his beautiful body. Long, lean legs with a smattering of dark hair. Tight curls surrounded his long, thick cock. A stomach ridged in muscle, another line of dark hair running down from his navel to join the thatch between his thighs. His pectorals were squared with muscle, his shoulders broad and strong.

  She glanced up and realized he was staring at her with that dark expression where he looked like he was going to devour her.

  “If you keep looking at me like that, Flower, I’m going to forget all about your injuries and fuck you harder than you’ve ever been fucked before.”

  Lily gave a flirtatious smile. “Is that a promise?”

  He growled down at her. “You bet your sweet ass it is.”

  She wriggled closer to his body and reached for him again. Lily slid her hand from the root of his erection, up to the head, and back down again. She hooked her calf over the top of his thigh, opening herself to him, and positioned his glans at her slit. She was already wet from having his fingers inside her, and she swiped her thumb over the head of his cock, smearing the drops of pre-cum she’d found down over his length.

  She stroked his bell-end at her entrance, pushing down onto him enough that his cock pushed past her lips, but didn’t penetrate her. He tried to push his hips forward, but she pulled back again, teasing him.

  “Flower,” he warned again. “You’re asking for trouble.”

  “And I’m hoping you’re going to give it to me.”

  With another growl, he shoved her back, dislodging her hand from his cock. He pushed her thighs open with his knees, and grabbed her hands and pinned her arms above her head.

  With a gentle nudge of his hips, he penetrated her.

  “Oh, God,” she gasped, twisting her head against the pillow.

  He pushed hard and deep, and then drew out again, before thrusting even deeper. His cock hit her cervix, sending little sparks of pain through her body. His face lowered to her throat and he placed open-mouthed kisses against her skin. Over his shoulder, she watched his buttocks clench as he thrust inside her, and she fought to pull her arms free, wanting to grip his shoulders with her nails. He ground his hips in just the right way that the length of his cock brushed against her clit with every stroke, and she felt her orgasm mounting. Her breath came harder and faster, her toes curling. Her whole body tensed, her back arching and breasts pressing into his chest, as his momentum increased.

  He released her hands just before he came, and she clawed his back as the wave of her orgasm swept over her in pulses, leaving her a shuddering shell beneath him. He held himself deep and his hips jerked once, and then again, as he filled her.

  They clung together, their breathing and heartbeats as one, both finding healing in the person they loved.

  Twenty-five

  Afterward, he didn’t get up and leave her as she thought he might. Instead he held her, her body curled in against his chest, one leg hooked over his calf. His hand stroked her hair and his warm breath heated the top of her head. Despite all the scrapes and bruises that littered her body, she’d never felt safer.

  He may have been a monster, but right now he was a gentleman.

  He spoke into her hair. “There’s something you promised to tell me.”

  Her muscles tensed. “I did?”

  “Yes. You promised me you’d tell me where your fear of touch had come from.”

  She forced a smile. “I think I’m over that now.”

  “Yes, I think you are, but I still want to know. You know everything about me—every dark, disturbing detail. I want to know about your past, too. I want to know about the events in your life that have made you Lily Drayton.”

  She lifted her head to look at him. “Does that mean I get to be Lily again? Not just Flower?”

  He kissed her forehead. “You’ll always be Flower to me, but yes, you can be whoever you want to be.”

  She gave a sigh of contentment and relaxed back down to the pillow of his chest.

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t still want to know,” he pressed her.

  Lily took a breath. “I try not to think about it. The pain the memory causes is too much to deal with.”

  “Did someone hurt you? Rape you?”

  She pushed herself to sitting, and arched her eyebrows in disbelief at him. “Is that what you think? That I was abused? That my abuse is the big secret I won’t talk about?”

  “What else am I supposed to think, Flower? You hated to be touched, so there must be a reason behind that.”

  She gave a cold laugh. “Do you really think I would ever break down and give myself to someone like you, knowing your past, if I’d ever been abused myself?”

  He frowned in confusion.

  “I was never abused, Monster. Not like you. Not in the way you are thinking. I was loved, and I loved more than anything else in the world, but I lost that love.”

  “What happened?”

  She pressed her lips together to suppress her emotions. Just thinking of it brought all the pain rising to the surface like ash from a volcano. She’d worked so hard over the last ten years to not think about what had happened, but now here she was about to
spill the whole story to a man who confused her emotions more than anything else in her life.

  “When I was seventeen, I hooked up with a guy who was a few years older than me. I thought it was love—all the usual stuff a young girl tells herself—but as soon as my parents found out about him, he took off and left me brokenhearted. But that wasn’t the only thing he left me with.” She glanced down and shook her head. “I ignored the changes in my body for as long as I could. I think I lied to myself a lot, tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. I started wearing baggy clothes and making excuses not to go out, or spend any time with my parents.”

  “You were pregnant?” he asked, his dark eyes wide with wonder.

  She pressed her fingers to her lips, trying to hold back the sob threatening to burst from her chest. Her eyes filled with tears, the world blurring before her. She got a hold on herself and continued. “Now I look back, I think my parents were lying to themselves, too. They must have known something was wrong. They told me afterward that they thought I was depressed because of Daniel—the guy I was involved with—leaving, but I think they didn’t want to admit it to themselves either. I was still their little girl in their eyes.”

  He reached out and took her hand. “What happened?”

  She sniffed. “I went into labor early. I guessed I was about seven months pregnant. I woke up in the middle of the night in the most unbelievable pain, like someone was stabbing a knife through my stomach. I’d never known anything like it. I was terrified, and I called for my mom and dad, but I’d forgotten that they’d gone away for the night because it was their anniversary. I’d turned eighteen by then, and my folks knew I wasn’t the sort of teenager to throw a party while they were away. I didn’t even have any friends to invite! Anyway, the pain was so bad, I could barely move. There was no way I could get to the phone and call for help—and back then not every teenager had a cell phone they were glued to.” She gave a sad laugh. “Perhaps if I’d had one, things might have been different.”

  “What happened to the baby?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper.

  “I labored for the whole night on my bathroom floor. Right at the end, when I could feel the baby coming, and my body just took over, I thought I was going to die. But then the baby arrived, and all the pain just went away. I looked down and the baby was this awful blue color, and covered in blood and mucus. I grabbed some towels and scooped her off the floor—“

  “Her?” he asked. “The baby was a girl?”

  She gave a sad smile. “Yes, she was a girl.”

  “She was alive?”

  “Yes. As soon as I picked her up and wiped her face, she opened her tiny mouth and started screaming. Right away, the blueness vanished and she pinked right up. I’ve never been so relieved about anything in my life.” Fresh tears sprung in the corners of her eyes at the memory. “By the time my parents got home, they arrived to find me and their new granddaughter being loaded into the back of an ambulance. They were shocked, horrified. They didn’t want to believe it at first, but they didn’t have much choice.”

  “So you were taken to hospital, and the baby was fine?”

  She nodded. “Yes, at first. She was early, but the doctors said she was a fighter because she’d been able to breathe on her own. Only after she was taken to neonatal, things started to go downhill. She struggled to breathe, and I used to watch her tiny little chest rise and fall in this awful, hitching movement, as though every single breath was an effort for her. The doctors did some tests, and it turned out she had a problem with her heart. If I’d been honest and owned up to the fact I’d been pregnant, I would have had prenatal care and they would have picked up on it sooner and been prepared. But I hadn’t, so they weren’t. The next couple of days were a rollercoaster. She had moments when she looked like she was getting strong enough to have an operation she needed for her heart, but then an hour later she would take a turn for the worse again.” The sob she’d been holding onto burst from her, sudden and unexpected, taking her by surprise. She pulled out of Monster’s grip to hide her face in her hands. “She lived for three days. She was never strong enough for the operation. She was just too small.” Lily gave in to the tears, and the old, old pain somehow ended up feeling as fresh as if it had only just happened.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Monster, and she lifted her head to find his dark eyes shining with unshed tears. “What was your daughter’s name?”

  She smiled, tight, but real. “Her name was Amora, for love.”

  “Beautiful.”

  “I thought so.” Her mind went back. She had been beautiful. Dark hair and blue eyes, a rosebud mouth, and the softest skin she’d ever felt. But she’d blamed herself for her daughter’s death. If she’d only been more honest with herself, her daughter might still be alive today—a smart, sassy ten-year-old who would probably drive her crazy as much as she loved her. Lily had marked both Amora’s birthday and her death every year since she’d been born.

  “I’m so sorry, Flower.”

  “Yeah, me too. The pain never goes away.”

  “But …” He hesitated. “I don’t understand what this has to do with your aversion to touch.”

  She gave a shrug. “I can’t say for sure. Perhaps it was because the last time someone touched me intimately, it resulted in the sort of pain no one should ever have to suffer—that of losing their child. Or perhaps I simply withdrew physically because nothing would ever compare to the sort of physical contact I had with Amora. I’d created her, and given birth to her, all by myself. She was a part of me now, but that part was gone. I blamed myself for not having any prenatal care. I didn’t deserve to have a blessing like that again.”

  “You were just a child. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I was more than a child. I was old enough to get involved with an older man, to have unprotected sex and get pregnant. I was old enough to have been responsible.”

  “What happened to your parents?”

  She glanced up at his sharply. “You know that already. You did your research on me, remember.”

  “I know they died—your father when you were twenty, your mom a year later when you were twenty-one.”

  “My father’s heart gave out on him. I think it was all too much. I was suffering with depression, and they’d lost their only grandchild. They were blaming themselves, too, only they were blaming themselves about their daughter and their granddaughter. I didn’t see it, though. I was hurting, in so much pain I was oblivious to theirs.”

  “And your mom?”

  “She started drinking. It was awful, and got even worse after Dad died. She got sick one night and choked on her own vomit. I found her.”

  “Jesus,” he said, taking both her hands.

  “Don’t feel sorry for me. You’ve been through even more than I have. I don’t need your pity, especially not considering the situation.”

  He seemed to contemplate what she had said, and nodded. “Okay, no pity. I, of all people, understand that.” He bit his lower lip and focused his gaze on hers. “So is that why you went into helping people, because you didn’t get help when you needed it yourself?”

  She gave a sad smile. “Perhaps. Working with a laser meant I could help people without needing to be too intimate with them. I always had the laser between us.”

  He nodded. “That makes sense.”

  Lily let out a sigh. “So what do you think of me now you’ve heard my story?”

  “I’m never going to judge you, Flower.”

  “But I’m not exactly the perfect person you thought I was,” she pressed him. “I neglected my own baby and allowed her to die.”

  “You didn’t neglect her. You did everything you could. You weren’t much more than a child yourself when it happened.”

  “So you think I should forgive myself, and yet you still blame yourself for things you did when you were the same age.”

  He glanced away. “That was different. You were innocent.”

  “No, I wasn’t. Perha
ps I had been at some point in my life, but I made choices that took away that innocence. None of us is perfect, Monster. We just need to accept that fact and try to live the best way we can.”

  She thought of something. “Anyway, you said I know everything about you, but I don’t. I haven’t even seen your bedroom.”

  He laughed, and she relaxed at the sound. “You’re in my bedroom, Flower. This has always been my room. I only moved out after you’d been brought here and I saw how beautiful you were. I wanted to get you in my bed the first moment I saw you, even if it meant I wasn’t in it with you.”

  “You never moved out? Even after your father died?”

  “It was the only room I’d ever had. I couldn’t see the need to move to another part of the house.”

  “There’s something else I don’t know,” she said, figuring she’d get him to spill everything while she could.

  “Yes?”

  “What country am I in?”

  He gave a slow smile. “Cuba. I brought you to Cuba.”

  Monster (Present Day)

  Together, they attended Tudor’s funeral, and the next day had a second funeral for Marianna. Both funerals only had them in attendance, together with a priest. There was no one else who cared the two people were dead.

  Monster brought in a construction crew to rebuild the house. He no longer gave a damn about the curious glances his birthmark drew. The work Lily had done on his face had faded the mark, but it was still visible. The difference was that he no longer cared. Hiding away in this big house hadn’t brought him safety, and had almost killed the woman he loved. He didn’t intend to make that mistake again. The people he dealt with from now on would get to see exactly the sort of man he was—both on the inside and out.

  He gave Lily enough time to heal, for the bruises and swellings to fade from her beautiful face. He didn’t want to do what he needed to, but he had no choice. The days passed by, and he got used to having her by his side during the day and in bed with him at night. Each morning he promised himself today was the day, but each day he put it off once more, unable to bring himself to say the words.