I crawl onto the bed and move around behind him. His back is rigid, and I have to withhold the sharp intake of breath when I understand why. Upon seeing the large tattoo carved into his flesh, my stomach churns with dread. For Ronan.
The words are distorted, but I can still make them out. The codes of his militant cult. They are engraved onto his skin as a permanent reminder of the horrors they never want him to forget. The stretched lines make it apparent they were done many, many years ago. When he was only a child, and not even close to done growing yet.
My eyes sting from unshed tears, but I don’t let them fall, and I don’t make a sound. I told Ronan he could trust me, and now I understand his fear. His fear that I couldn’t handle seeing these things without losing my shit.
That thought alone propels me to touch his shoulders. They are warm and muscular beneath my palms, a testament to the many hours he spends boxing with Lachlan.
This man is a fortress in his own right.
Immovable. Unstoppable. Formidable.
He is the very thing they created him to be. A killer. A machine. But he’s also a protector. A man who can be as human as any other. I’ve seen his true nature. And I’ve never felt safer than when I was in his arms. So these people-the ones who hurt him-they didn’t win. Ronan might not know it, but I do.
“Is this okay?” My fingertips move over him in a gentle cadence, massaging him lightly. A full body shudder moves through him, and his voice is a rough whisper when he replies.
“Aye.”
“Have you ever had a massage before?” I ask.
“No.”
My eyes rove over the skin on his back, riddled with scars and a lifetime of more pain than any one person should ever have to bear. It looks like he was whipped, stabbed, burned, and shot at… among other terrors my mind probably couldn’t even conjure. These wounds tell the story his lips can’t. And even if I don’t know all of the details, I’m glimpsing a piece of Ronan that I doubt very many ever have. It isn’t something I take lightly.
My fingers crawl up the nape of his neck and dissolve the tension from his muscles there and into his hairline. Ronan’s only response is a small grunt of approval, but it plays like the sweetest melody I’ve ever heard. I massage his scalp and press a gentle kiss to his shoulder.
“I’m messing up your perfect hair,” I say.
“I don’t care,” is his reply.
When I move lower, I notice a deep scar on the side of his head. My stomach flips when I trace over the raised flesh behind his ear.
“What’s this one from?” I whisper.
“Another lad tried to cut it off,” he answers. “And then I killed him.”
I nod even though he can’t see me, because I’m afraid if I speak my voice will betray me.
So for a while, I just touch him. Coaxing the stress from his body and watching the magic of Ronan melting into me. He’s enjoying this. He trusts me. And I know without a shadow of a doubt now that I’ll never be able to let him go.
I direct him to lay down on the bed. He does, and this time, I kneel beside him and work on his feet. Like every other part of him, they are well cared for and clean. But on the bottom of his soles, I uncover another score of long healed scars. More burns and slices. Deep and unforgiving. The amount of pain he must have endured to conceive such mutilations is unfathomable.
“Do they still hurt?” I croak.
“Sometimes,” is his murmured reply.
His voice is sleepy. Content. The shock of what I’m witnessing no longer fazes him. He’s under the spell of my fingers, completely oblivious to anything else. I forge on, choking my emotion down as the horrors of Ronan’s childhood are laid bare. Scars on his knees. His thighs. His stomach, chest and shoulders. There isn’t a single part of him that’s been untouched by the violence he has known.
I’m trying to hold it in. Tamp it down. Keep control of myself. But the more I see, the harder it becomes. So many times, I’ve questioned this man. Who he is and what reasons he had for his behavior. I couldn’t have known. My mind would never have taken me to such a dark place. But I get it now.
I get it so much that silent tears of shame and anger bleed from my eyes, burning me like acid. A sob drags from my lungs before I can stop it, and Ronan blinks up at me in confusion. I swipe at the mess that is my face and shake my head.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to cry. It’s just, I hate them. I hate them for what they did to you. And I slapped you. I should never have slapped you…”
Ronan reaches for my hand and tangles our fingers together. He stares at that connection, and he likes it. Things that I’ve always taken for granted, the small kindness of a human touch, must be so foreign to him.
He’s never had them. Any of them.
I’m going to make it up to him. I’m going to rock his world and make him feel everything. Everything good.
I straddle his hips and lay my body down across his much larger one, gazing up at him.