Page 32 of Born for Silk
“My king will do.” My forehead tightens further. “Why are you holding your wrist? And your mouth, why are you working your jaw? Are you hurt?”
“I’m sorry.” She closes her eyes and shakes her head over and over. “It was naïve. I thought about taking off my clothes and pushing them down the drain for The Trade to find but I didn’t want to take them off. The boy… He seemed to hate the tattoo. I let him. It’s my fault. I didn’t fight him.”
“The fuck did he do?”
She smiles at me. “Are you real, Sire?”
She is out of her damn mind.
The tank roars and moves, and she shuffles around, nervous to feel the motion as it speeds up.
“My king,” I correct, somehow cementing a unique relationship with this girl, one that bothers me, but I keep engaging in. She is like a kitten, erratic and endearing. Her energy is odd and entertaining—innocent.
Why do I care?
I can accept this interest as akin to one between an owner and a pet—nothing more. I owe her nothing. She is safe now.
I kept a foolish boy’s word.
Though… Cairo would hate anything outside of the approved sequence of Trade interactions. I smirk. He would hate the conversations we have already had and the way she addresses me so informally.
I like that.
“You don’t think I’m real?” I close the gap between us, inhaling as I catch her scent again. Maybe I should make her moan; she would know how real I am then. Does vulnerability have a damn scent? Well, if it does. This is it—Aster.
I reach out and grab her little wrist to inspect the place she is cradling so carefully. She winces. Fuck. I loosen my hold on her bony wrist, never knowing my strength nor usually caring.
I feel her pulse racing beneath her skin.
A frown tightens my forehead. My mark has been skinned from her, a smooth valley down to the weeping muscles. The raw area pools with white and pink fluids, and tiny beads of blood.
Anger spreads a red mist over my eyes.
“I may be dreaming,” she repeats.
I grip her chin and tilt it upward. “Open your mouth.”
She blinks but does as she is told.
Hesitantly, she spreads her pretty lips, revealing a pink centre but then… Her tongue flashes at me. The middle crease has a long gash, as though she has been sliced with a knife.
“Which one did this to you?”
I release her, but she doesn’t move her chin, still peering up at me like the little kitten Tuscany was gifted the day after her rite. It was an offering to comfort her and bring her back to life. Tuscany was too gentle for this world…
I should have stopped him.
Could have saved her.
The kitten was her sanity manifested.
It was desperate for attention, but Tuscany had nothing left.
She ignored it.
It starved to death over the three weeks that she refused to move from her mattress. The little thing gnawed at the tips of Tuscany’s fingers while she was catatonic. My sister still has tiny scars on each digit from the desperate teething of her sanity.
Fuck. Why am I going there?