Page 21 of Wraith
He looks defeated, worn down, the kind of lost that only a man like him can look, because he’s still so incredibly impressive doing it. His presence commands instant authority, dominates the entire space, and steals my breath.
I want to fix this. I want to say something, anything that can offer some assurance, that will relieve the heavy burdens those bowed shoulders carry.
There isn’t anything I can say that will undo the bruises on my sister or the accusations against a man who my husband feels is his brother. A man who I’m not even entirely convinced made those marks on Ami—because that’s what’s unsettling me. I love Ami, she’s my sister, but something about the story just doesn’t ring true. And now, the fragile peace we’ve all sacrificed for, is at risk again.
Instead, I force myself forward, even though fear sinks its claws deep into my muscles. I have no experience with this. With any of it, least of all with how to comfort a person I have no notion of.
He doesn’t move when I step silently beside him. I feel his power though, radiating off him like his body heat, searing through me. My hand shakes when I reach out and set it gently between his massive shoulder blades. I set it flat on the leather, warm from his skin below, and my pulse point nearly jumps out of my neck, my heart kicks up so hard.
His entire body jerks like he’s been shot, like I’ve wounded him with the absurdly gentle touch. My mouth dries up, but I don’t take my hand away. I realize that we’re close, our faces a breath apart.
“You look tired,” I whisper, because it’s all I can think to say.
Hedoes. He looks exhausted, but not the regular kind of tired, though he probably is that too. He looks heartsore. I know from experience that the wounds inside are the hardest to heal because they so often go unseen. I know how they can weary and age a person.
He gives a grunt of admission. It’s not much, but it’s enough to encourage me to keep going.
“Let me make you something to eat. I’m a shit cook, but I think I could manage toast or something.”
He lets out a hard breath that rushes past my face. “I’m seriously not hungry over here.”
Right. Why the hell would he be? My own appetite is so far gone that I wonder if I’ll ever be able to eat again. “Do you want a shower?”
“Had one last night.”
I search frantically for something,anything. I’m so inexperienced with anything like this that I want to stand back and laugh at my horrible attempts. I might be naïve, but I know myself and I don’t give up without a fight. I’ve survived nineteen years of my life so far, a life where I watched my own mother sink into desperation and unhappiness so potent, that she abandoned me with the man she’d both loved and hated more than anything in the world.
I’ve survived so much more. Fear. Loneliness. The realization that I was never anything more than something unwanted, a product of a used woman who thought herself in love with a man so cold and callous he could never trulyshow a scrap of affection to another person if he couldn’t gain something in return.
So no, I’m not giving up.
“We could take Abby for a walk. I’d like to see how her wheelchair works.”
His head snaps up and his unfathomable velvet black eyes study me so intently that I shift from one foot to the other. I watch the gorgeous, bronzed column of his throat bob as he swallows hard. He’s fighting a war, waging it against forces that I can’t see, but finally he exhales. The sound is like a truce between us, breaking the horrible tension and both unspooling and coiling something even darker inside of me.
“Yeah,” he says, voice softer, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “We can take her.”
He doesn’t move though. He studies my face, his eyes raking over me like hot coals, eating me up until it feels like I’ve been stripped of all my hiding places and laid bare before him.
I realize that I have to do something. To open myself up if I want to reach the closed off part of himself, if I want him to trust me and confide in me. To him, I’m nothing but a stranger. I swallow convulsively. I’m not used to this. To giving my nameless feelings a voice.
“Wraith…” his name feels strange on my tongue, but a good kind of strange. I take delight in the way it forms up from the back and rolls off the tip, how it lingers on my lips like something delicious that I want to savor.
His dark eyed gaze hones in on me and his eyes narrow slightly. He waits for me to continue, and I get the feelingthat he too is used to keeping everything locked away inside the secret parts of himself.
I draw in a shuddery breath as a shiver traces its way up from the soles of my feet. “I… Um… in less than twenty-four hours you’ve shown me more kindness than my mother or father ever did. I thought, going into this marriage, before I met you, that I could hate you. And then- then I saw you and I couldn’t make myself be hard. I wanted to, but you… you’re the kind of man who has Abby and when I met her, I knew you weren’t bad at all. And then you stuck up for me—”
“Maybe I’m just a bastard with a penchant for paralyzed dogs who likes to get my fists bloody.”
“Or maybe you’re not.” I have to force saliva down my throat, because my mouth goes dry when tiny flames flicker to life in the depths of his black eyes. “I don’t think he did it.”
“Did what?” Wraith asks carefully, but he tenses, like he can’t really believe what I just said.
I can’t really believe I just said it either. “I- I don’t think that Gage… that he did what he did to my sister. I saw him walk out of there even though it was only for a second, out of that meeting room. I looked into his eyes and those aren’t the eyes of a man who hits women. They weren’t cruel eyes. They were swollen and red and I could tell that he’d been crying. I don’t think he’s the kind of man who sheds tears easily.”
A rush of minty scented breath wafts past me as Wraith exhales hard. “No. You’re right. He’s a wreck. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but Steel is gonna try and smooth things over with your father. He wants to let Viking or one of your brothers punish Gage with physical violence. It’s our method of solving shit, when one brother wrongs another. Wedon’t want feuds and grudges and shit dragging on forever, so it’s an easy way to get it done.”
My stomach sloshes and I feel bile rise up the back of my throat. “You mean he’d let an innocent man be punished like that?”
