Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [56]
She wanted him, too.
Lucan started to release her, but as her arm twisted slightly on its retreat, he spotted something troubling. His eyes lit at once on a series of faint marks that spoiled the flawless peach skin. The marks were scars, tiny slices cut into the underside of her forearms. And she had more on her thighs.
Razor cuts.
As if she’d endured repeated and hellish torture when she was little more than a girl. “Jesus Christ.” He swiveled his head back to look at her, fury no doubt rampant in his expression. “Who did this to you?”
“It’s not what you think.”
He was fuming now, not about to let this one slide. “Tell me.”
“It’s nothing, really. Just forget—”
“Give me a name, goddamn it, and I swear, I will kill the son of a bitch with my bare hands—”
“I did it,” she blurted out in a quiet rush of breath. “It was me. No one did this, just me.”
“What?” Holding her fragile wrist in his hand, he turned her arm over once more so he could inspect the faded network of crisscrossing, purplish scars. “You did this? Why?”
She withdrew from his loose grasp and sank both arms under the water, as if to shield them from his further inspection.
Lucan swore low under his breath, and in a language he rarely spoke anymore. “How often, Gabrielle?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged, avoiding his gaze now. “I haven’t done it in a long time. I got over it.”
“Is that why there’s a knife lying in the sink downstairs?”
The look she gave him was pained and defensive. She didn’t like him prying, no more than he would like it himself, but Lucan wanted to understand. He could hardly fathom what might drive her to dig a blade into her own flesh.
Over and over and over again.
She scowled, staring at the dissipating suds surrounding her. “Look, can we just drop the subject? I really don’t want to talk about—”
“Maybe you should talk about it.”
“Oh, sure.” Her small laugh held an edge of irony. “Is this the part where you suggest I need to see a shrink, Detective Thorne? Maybe go someplace where I can be put in a medicated stupor and under a doctor’s close watch for my own good?”
“Did that happen to you?”
“People don’t understand me. They never have. I don’t understand myself sometimes.”
“Don’t understand what? That you have a need to hurt yourself?”
“No. That’s not it. That’s not why I did it.”
“Then why? Good God, Gabrielle, there must be upwards of a hundred scars.”
“I didn’t do it because I wanted pain. It wasn’t painful to me.” She drew in a breath and pushed it out between her lips. It took her a second to speak, and when she did, Lucan could only stare at her in stunned silence. “It was never about causing hurt, not to anyone. I wasn’t burying traumatic memories or trying to escape some kind of abuse, despite the opinions of several so-called experts appointed by the state. I cut myself because…it soothed me. Bleeding calmed me. It didn’t take much, only a small cut, never very deep. When I’d bleed, everything that was out of place and strange about me suddenly felt…normal.”
She held his unwavering gaze with a new air of defiance, as if a gate had been opened somewhere deep inside her and a heavy burden had been freed. In some small way, Lucan realized that was just what he’d witnessed here. Except she still was missing a crucial piece of information that would make things click into place for her.
She didn’t know that she was a Breedmate.
She couldn’t know that one day a member of his race would take her as his eternal beloved and show her a world unlike she had ever dreamed of. Her eyes would be opened to a pleasure that only existed between blood-bonded pairs.
Lucan found himself hating that nameless male who would have the honor of loving her.
“I’m not crazy, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Lucan gave a slow shake of his head. “I am not thinking that at all.”
“I despise pity.”
“So do I,” he said, detecting the warning in her words. “You don’t need pity, Gabrielle. And you don’t need medicine or doctors, either.”
She had been retreating into herself from the moment he had first discovered