Chapter 7 - THE TOUCH OF FIRE
That night, I sat on the edge of Vincent’s massive bed, shivering despite the warmth of the room. The graze on my arm had been cleaned and stitched, but the adrenaline crash left me hollow. Vincent emerged from his adjoining bathroom, holding a fresh medical kit. He sat beside me, his presence an anchoring weight.
“Let me change your bandages,” he said softly.
I stiffened. The scars on my face and neck were healing, but my left shoulder and ribs were a twisted landscape of red, shiny, ruined tissue. Even doctors winced when they looked at it. “You don’t want to see it, Vincent. It’s ugly.”
“Let me decide that,” he murmured.
Slowly, gently, he unbuttoned my silk pajama top. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable recoil, the disgust that Trevor had so freely shown me. But Vincent didn't pull away. I felt the cool air hit my scarred skin, followed by the feather-light touch of his fingertips tracing the jagged lines across my collarbone.
I opened my eyes. He was looking at my scars not with pity, and not with horror, but with absolute reverence.
“You crawled through hell,” he whispered, leaning down to press a soft, lingering kiss against the worst of the scarring on my shoulder. “You wear the flames, Harper. You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”
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A sob broke loose from my throat. Months of shame, of hiding, of feeling monstrous, dissolved under his touch. He caught my tears with his thumbs, pulling me into his lap. We spent the night tangled in his dark sheets, where he mapped every inch of my broken skin with his hands and lips, worshiping the very things I had hated about myself. He didn't treat me like I was fragile. He treated me like I was precious.
But the peace of that night was a fragile illusion. By morning, the war had begun. The Russian syndicate had crossed a line, and Vincent Calder was not a man who forgave.
