Chapter 244
Chapter 244:
He scrubbed hard. Too hard. The friction burned, and I knew my skin would be raw beneath the suds. He wasn’t hurting me deliberately—he was trying to exorcise a ghost, to scrub away the memory of another male laying claim to what belonged to him.
“Dallas, stop!” I tried to pull away, but his strength was overwhelming. “You’re hurting me p>
He didn’t hear me. He moved to my shoulder, his movements jerky and panicked.
“Dallas!” I screamed, my voice cracking. “You’re scaring me p>
The words hung in the steam-filled air.
Dallas froze. The loofah dropped from his hand and landed with a wet thud on the tiled floor.
He blinked, the feral haze slowly receding from his eyes. He looked at my red, scrubbed skin, then at my trembling form, and the realization of what he had been doing crashed into him all at once. His shoulders slumped, and the terrifying Lycan shrank back into a broken man.
“I…” His voice broke. He stepped back, water cascading over his ruined Italian suit. He stared at his hands as though they were covered in blood. “I can’t have him on you, Adella. I can’t.” He pressed his forehead against mine, his body shaking. “I need him gone. I need to know you’re here. That you’re not… that he didn’t take you p>
ѕ𝗍o𝘳𝗶е𝘴 yo𝘂 𝘸on’𝗍 𝗉𝗎𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝘯 оn.с𝘰𝘮
It wasn’t anger. It was terror. It was the little boy left to die in the Siberian snow, desperately afraid that the only good thing in his life would be stolen from him.
My fear evaporated, replaced by a fierce, aching love. I reached up and cupped his wet face, forcing him to look at me.
“I’m here,” I whispered over the roar of the water. “It’s only you, Dallas. You’re the only one here. You’re the only one I want p>
He let out a shuddering breath, a sound of pure anguish.
“Make him leave,” he rasped. “Please p>
“He’s gone,” I promised.
I pulled his head down and kissed him. It wasn’t gentle. It was a collision of souls in the pouring rain of the shower. He wrapped his arms around me and crushed me to his chest, burying his face in my neck to inhale my scent—now washed clean, smelling only of soap, water, and him.
Adella
Sunlight poured through the modest windows of Unit 4A, painting stripes of gold across the tangled sheets. My body felt heavy, every muscle humming with a dull, aching soreness that spoke of the storm that had ravaged this room only hours ago.
I shifted, the cotton sheets twisting around my legs. Beside me, Dallas lay on his stomach, one arm thrown possessively over the space where I had just been. His breathing was deep and even, his dark hair messy against the pillow. In sleep, the lines of torment that usually etched his forehead were smoothed away. He didn’t look like the terrifying Lycan King or the ruthless CEO of Marshall Enterprises. He looked like a man who had finally found rest.