Page 19 of Diary from an Inked Throne

But the only way to do that was to know exactly what had happened.

When we were both naked, we moved beneath the spray. The water was warm and clean, and even though I’d only had a shower that morning before I’d put on my wedding dress, so many things had happened since then that I was sure no shower had ever felt this good.

Dax hissed with the same sort of pleasure-pain.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

He shook his head. Then nodded. “It hurts. My skin and bones and everything inside me feel so damn raw I don’t know how I’m not bleeding. But it feels good too.”

He squirted a big handful of shampoo into his cupped hand, and I expected to run it through his own hair and beard, which desperately needed it.

But instead, he smoothed it onto my hair. He stood behind me, massaging it into my scalp, and then my neck, and then lower, over my back, my breasts, and my still-swollen belly.

He avoided touching me between my legs, leaving me to judge how much that area could take, but every other part he washed away the filth, leaving my skin fresh and clean.

There was nothing sexual about any of it.

It was just him taking care of me in the way I’d missed so damn much.

“Where were you?” I whispered. “One day you were here with me, and we were planning a life. And then that phone call…”

That phone call where he’d told me he was leaving.

He leaned down and kissed my shoulder. “I never wanted to make that phone call, Nyah. You have to know I would never willingly have said any of that.”

I nodded. Because I had known. I’d fought. I’d told everyone it wasn’t true. That something had been wrong, and yet I’d let them talk me out of it.

Even though my heart had known better. “Then why?”

His fingers traced up and down my arms, like he was reminding himself over and over again that I was here with him. “I was in the middle of a back piece at the shop, and then men rushed me. They put a bag over my head, and then I’m being shoved downstairs and into a room, phone thrust into my hand and told to tell you I was leaving.” He turned us, so the spray hit my back. He was tall enough it missed his face. My body blocked his from most of the water, but if he was cold standing there, wet and naked, he didn’t complain.

He stroked his fingers down the side of my face. “They said they’d kill you if I didn’t let you go.”

I caught his hand, pressing my cheek into it and closing my eyes. “Nobody believed me when I said you wouldn’t have left willingly. They all thought it was because of me and Lynx and Luca…” I felt so stupid. “Maybe I believed that a bit too. What we had, just the two of us, was so good.” My hand drifted to my belly, and an ache rose inside me over it. “We were so good we made a baby, Dax. But then I walked away.”

His golden-eyed gaze bore into mine. “You never walked. You were forced.”

It didn’t feel like it mattered. “I left, and when I came back, things were different. There was Luca. And Lynx, and all along there was you, a piece of my heart I could never give up. But it was different. Something had changed.”

He took my hand and squeezed my fingers. “It had only changed for the better. I might have been jealous at first, sure. But it’s really hard to stay jealous when they were only giving you more. Not replacing me. Just adding to it.” He smiled ruefully. “Plus, Luca and I…I don’t know. Being locked up together for so long changes you. I understand why Reaper and Lynx got so close. When you have no one else, a bond forms.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “Are you telling me you and Luca now like each other the way Luca and Lynx like each other? That while I was out here all alone, thinking the three of you had abandoned me, you were actually all just swapping saliva and doing butt stuff?”

Dax snorted and gathered me back up in his arms. “No. But I am glad to see a little spark back in you, so if all it takes is some butt stuff to see that again, I might be inclined to try.”

I laid my head on his wet chest and wrapped my arms around his waist. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

He kissed the top of my head. “Good. Because you’re the only person I want in that way, Nyah. I hope you know that. But Luca and Lynx and me…something has changed. You can’t go through all that and not come out feeling like a brotherhood.”

The sound of that left me feeling warm all over. “I have so many questions. What did you guys even talk about all that time?”

“You,” he said without even thinking about it.

“You were gone for so long I lost count of the days. You had to have talked about more than just me.”

“Your eyes. Your mouth. Your humor. Your hair, your teeth, your ears…”

“You talked about my ears? Seriously? Did Luca make fun of them because they kind of stick out?”