Page 147 of Savage Roses
“Jon,” I murmur, knocking gently.
No answer.
I knock again and wait another minute.
When there’s still no answer, I try the door. Whether the brass knob turns out of sheer force of will or the door’s simply unlocked, I’m not certain. All that matters is that the door opens and I’m able to slip inside.
The window curtains are drawn and the bed’s empty.
My eyes spend a couple seconds adjusting to the dark. I scan the room to no sign of him anywhere.
Not on the bed or at the desk or any other corner of the room.
The ensuite.
The door leading into the attached bathroom is shut but light glows through the crevices. My feet pad across the room as I approach with a flip of nerves inside. The way I’m moving it’s as though there’s a rabid wild animal on the other side and I’m about to expose myself to his fury.
At no fault of Salvatore’s.
But it’s been weeks since we’ve truly seen each other and after what he’s been through, it’s impossible to know what to expect.
Stitches seemed to think it was bad enough to warn me.
Inhaling a cautionary breath, I enter the bathroom, creaking the door open.
I stutter to a stop at the sight of him.
It’s the back of him I see first. My eyes track him, starting at the top. First, his hair that’s longer than it’s ever been having gone weeks without a cut; it’s past his ears, messy and untamed in a feral manner worthy of someone subjected to barbaric conditions.
It reaches the nape of his neck. The same I’ve put my arms around and kissed so many times—times that feel like a different lifetime altogether given everything that’s happened.
My quiet study continues.
Past his neck and then across the hard, masculine line of his shoulders.
Down his back.
A pit of sadness hollows inside my stomach. I’ve seen Salvatore’s bare back more times than I can count, have run my hands down the length of it with love and affection and scratched it up in moments of pure lust and passion.
I’m familiar with the sculpted ridges and divots of muscle and how unbreakable he feels under my touch.
I’ve memorized it all—the sight, the feel, even the scent of him while wrapping my arms from behind and burying my face into him.
I remember every inch of porcelain skin and dot of ink from his tattoos, so vividly I can close my eyes and paint a perfect picture.
But it’s no more. He’s changed.They’vechanged him.
I blink trying to hold off tears that wet my eyes. The sick feeling from weeks ago in the safehouse returns and sends bile rising up my throat—not out of disgust at him butforhim.
…what have they done to him?
His back is no more. Not in a human sense. It’s been stripped away—the flesh itself torn off all over to make way for a network of red streaks. Deep, bloodied gashes that travel up and down. Crisscross and side to side. Some older and already scarring. Others fresh and shiny. All the way to his lower half where his waist and pelvis meet. All of them the true marred horror of what he’s been through.
He stands at the claw-footed tub, naked and bared. If he’s heard the door open, he gives no sign either way.
I stand there for who knows how long, tearing up, sickened to my stomach. Somewhere even farther inside me, dark and furious this was done. It’s almost drawn out to the surface, like it was at the Mill, where I’d blacked out and jammed a stiletto into my would-be rapist’s eye.
Every person who had a hand in doing this deserves the same. They deserve so much worse. To be beaten to a pulp in an even more savage way than what they did to Salvatore… ’til they’re nothing but pounds of broken, irreparable flesh.