Chapter 8: Chapter 8
The shock of leaving the steam-choked chaos hit Kate like icy water. Jace carried her, dripping and naked except for the remnants of her torn hoodie clinging to one shoulder, across the narrow hallway. Her bare back pressed against the damp, hard planes of his chest. Water ran in rivulets down his arms, tracing the thick scars and dark ink before soaking into the thin hallway runner. Her own small cuts stung in the cooler air. The scent of blood – his from the shoulder bite, hers diluted – clung to them both, sharper now outside the shower's humid shroud.
He kicked her bedroom door wide. The contrast was jarring. Cool, rain-scented air flowed from the open window. Soft lamplight replaced the bathroom's harsh glare, mingling with the flickering glow of half-burnt candles on the dresser. The steady drumming of rain on the glass filled the quiet space. Her sanctuary, usually a haven of faded quilts and stacked art books, felt invaded by their raw, wet presence and the lingering tang of violence.
He didn't set her down gently. He deposited her onto the edge of the unmade bed, the worn cotton quilt scratchy against her wet skin. She landed with a soft thump, legs dangling, the intricate portraits on her thighs stark against the pale bedding. The bite on his shoulder pulsed darkly in the candlelight, just inches from her face, beads of fresh blood welling along the ragged edges she’d torn. He stood over her, breathing hard, water sheeting off him onto the wooden floor. He peeled the remaining shreds of her hoodie off her shoulder, the wet fabric tearing further with a sound like ripping paper. It joined the discarded heap on the floor.
His eyes, still burning with that unnerving focus, swept over her. Not just the new marks – the livid bruise on her throat, the puncture wounds on her shoulder, the small cuts from the glass – but her. The tremor in her hands resting on her knees. The quick rise and fall of her ribs. The way her damp hair clung to her neck. The defiant angle of her chin despite the exhaustion etched around her eyes. He saw the small, almost forgotten tattoo on her inner right arm, a single, cute heart shaped lollipop she’d gotten years ago – persist – almost obscured by a faint silvery scar.
"Still breathing, little moth?" His voice was rough, but lower now, threaded with an unsettling thread of something almost like satisfaction. He reached out, not to hurt, but to trace the edge of the large bite mark on her shoulder with a single, calloused fingertip. The touch sparked nerve endings, a confusing mix of pain and hypersensitivity.
She flinched, a reflex she couldn’t suppress. "Barely." Her own voice emerged hoarse, scraped raw. "You weigh a ton." It was a stupid thing to say. Defensive. Light. Hiding the tremor beneath. She kept her gaze fixed on his chest, the water running in pinkish trails from his wound down the defined muscles, disappearing into the dark trail below his navel.
A low rumble, almost a chuckle, vibrated in his chest. "Should've tossed you in the tub like a kitten." He stepped back slightly, finally shedding his own sodden jeans. They hit the floor with a heavy, wet slap, joining the growing pile of destruction. He stood naked before her in the soft light, a landscape of scars and ink, rain-lashed skin gleaming. The deep bite on his shoulder was the freshest wound, stark against the older, silvery lines. His gaze remained locked on her, possessive, assessing. "Cold?"
She was. Shivering. But it wasn't just the temperature. It was the aftermath, the adrenaline crash, the sheer, terrifying vulnerability of being naked and marked in her own bed while he loomed, equally exposed, radiating heat and coiled intensity. She nodded, pulling her legs up onto the bed, hugging her knees. The movement made the fresh bite on her shoulder throb. "Freezing."
He didn't offer comfort. He moved. Turning, he stalked towards her closet, moving with that unsettling, predatory grace even barefoot. He rummaged for a moment, emerged with a worn, grey flannel shirt – hers, oversized and soft. He tossed it onto the bed beside her. "Cover up." It wasn't concern. It was an order. Preserving what he’d claimed from the chill.
While she fumbled with the shirt, pulling it on over her wet skin, its familiar scent of fabric softener a jarring contrast to the iron tang still in the air, he turned his attention elsewhere. He picked up one of the thicker candles from her dresser, its wax pooling warmly. He held it in his palm, ignoring the heat, studying the flame. Then his gaze lifted, scanning the bedroom walls, cluttered with her framed, failed watercolors – hazy landscapes, blurred faces – and stacks of dog-eared poetry collections. His expression was unreadable, distant for a moment, like he was assessing the worth of the art, the words. Or the potential of the surfaces.
He brought the candle back to the bed, setting it carefully on the nightstand beside a small, carved obsidian raven she used as a paperweight. The flame cast long, dancing shadows over his face, accentuating the hard lines. Water still beaded on his shoulders, catching the light. He looked down at her, now swamped in the flannel shirt, her damp hair plastered to her temples, her eyes wide and watchful in the gloom.
"Lie back," he said, the command quiet but absolute. His hand rested on her covered knee, not gripping, just… present. Anchoring.
She hesitated. The taste of his blood was still a phantom copper on her tongue. The sting of her wounds pulsed. But the exhaustion was deeper, a heavy pull towards the soft mattress. And beneath it, that treacherous, humming thread of connection, forged in violence and steam. A moth drawn to a flame that burned and branded. Slowly, keeping her eyes on his, she eased herself back onto the pillows, the flannel shirt riding up her thighs, exposing the inked portraits again.
He didn't pounce. He moved with deliberate slowness, kneeling on the bed beside her. The mattress dipped under his weight. He reached for the small obsidian raven beside the candle, his fingers tracing the smooth, cold stone. Then his gaze fell to the bite mark on her shoulder, visible above the flannel collar. He shifted, his body heat radiating against her side. One hand settled beside her head, bracing his weight. The other hovered near her wounded shoulder.
"I want another mark," he stated, his voice low, the words vibrating in the rain-tapped quiet. Not a request. A declaration. His eyes held hers, reflecting the candle flame. "Not like before. Something… deliberate." His thumb brushed the edge of the flannel collar, nudging it down slightly, exposing more of the bruised skin and raw punctures. "Here." His gaze didn't waver. "Yours. Mine. Tangled. Like the glass."
He lifted his free hand, palm open, towards the candle flame beside them. He held it close, letting the heat radiate against his skin, his eyes fixed on hers. Not flinching. "Proof of the choosing. Not just the breaking." His voice was a rough whisper against the drumming rain. "You choose this. You choose the burn."
The flame danced, reflecting in his dark pupils. The heat pulsed. The shadows leapt. The scent of warm wax mingled with blood, rain, and the lingering ghost of bourbon. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird. He wasn’t forcing her hand into the fire. He was asking her to hold it there. To own the scar. To seal the tangled thing they’d become in the bathroom’s violent baptism.
Her gaze flickered from his intense stare to the candle flame, then to the deep, ragged crescent she’d bitten into his shoulder, still weeping faintly. Proof of her violence. Her claim. The air crackled. Not with fear. With a terrifying, electric potential. The rain hissed against the window. The candle guttered. Slowly, holding his gaze, Kate lifted her hand from where it rested on her stomach. Her fingers trembled, but her movement was deliberate. She didn’t reach for the flame.
She reached for him. Her fingertips, cold and damp, touched the hot, wet skin beside the bite she’d made. She traced the swollen edge of the wound, feeling the heat of inflammation, the pulse beneath the skin. Her thumb brushed over a bead of fresh blood. She gathered it, the crimson stark against her pale skin. Then, still holding his burning gaze, she lifted her thumb to the raw punctures on her own shoulder. She pressed her blood-smeared thumb firmly against her own wound, mingling their blood directly onto the broken skin. A wince tightened her features, a sharp inhale hissed through her teeth. The sting was immediate, bright.
She lowered her hand, her thumb now smeared with the mingled blood from both their wounds. She held it up between them in the candlelight, a dark, glistening offering. Her voice, when it came, was rough but clear, cutting through the drumming rain. "Like this," she breathed. "Mark me like this."
His eyes widened fractionally. A flicker of pure, unguarded shock, then something hotter, deeper, ignited in their depths. A low growl escaped him, part approval, part something feral. He moved. Not towards the candle. Towards her. His hand closed over her wrist, his thumb pressing hard against the mingled blood on her skin. His eyes locked onto hers. The candle flame surged. Outside, the rain beat down harder, a relentless rhythm against the glass, as he lowered his head to her offered, blood-smeared shoulder. The choice was made. The drowning deepened. The new mark began not with fire, but with a slow, deliberate lick across the mingled blood, his tongue hot and possessive on the raw edges of her wound. A claiming answered. A tangled scar begun.
His tongue was fire on the raw punctures, a searing counterpoint to the rainwater cooling on her skin. He lapped at the mingled blood—hers, his—a slow, deliberate claiming that sent tremors through her core. The intimacy was more shocking than the bite.
Kate gasped, her fingers digging into the quilt. It wasn’t pain. Not exactly. It was violation and communion twisted into one unbearable knot. The candlelight flickered across his bent head, highlighting the water-darkened strands of his hair, the tense line of his jaw working against her skin.
"Jace," she breathed, the word ragged. A plea? A warning? She wasn’t sure.
He lifted his head just enough. His gaze, molten in the dim light, locked onto hers. Blood smeared his lower lip, dark as ink. "Quiet, little moth." His voice was gravel wrapped in velvet. "Listen."
He shifted his weight, his knee pressing against her thigh under the flannel shirt. The heat of him soaked through the fabric. One hand, calloused and warm, settled firmly on her ribcage, just below the swell of her breast. Anchoring. Owning. His other hand rose.
Not to touch her face. To trace the air beside her cheek, as if outlining the shadows dancing on the wall.
His voice dropped lower, a resonant murmur that vibrated through the mattress, through her, merging with the rain’s steady drumming.
"Bone whispers beneath the skin,
a map of breaks we carry in.
The moth seeks flame, the candle bleeds,
scarred wings fulfill forgotten creeds.
Your blood, my salt, the rain's cold kiss,
this broken altar where we twist.
Marked not by saints, but shards and teeth,
the binding’s forged in pain beneath."
The archaic words hung in the fragrant air, thick with beeswax and copper. They weren't pretty. They were dark, resonant, vibrating with a grim weight that felt older than the rain. They echoed the violence in the bathroom, the shattered glass, the bite, the blood on the mirror. They named the altar of her quilt, the binding of their wounds.
Kate stared, mesmerized. This wasn't the Jace who growled commands. This was something else. Something deeper and colder, pulling her down. Poetry as a ritual. Words as another kind of mark.
He watched her absorb it, the flickering light carving hollows beneath his eyes. Slowly, deliberately, he leaned down again. Not to her wounded shoulder this time. His target was the untouched skin just below her collarbone, pale and vulnerable above the flannel shirt's collar. His lips brushed the spot, feather-light. A whisper against her skin. "Choose the fire now."
His hand on her ribs slid upwards, nudging the flannel aside. He exposed the smooth skin he'd just kissed. The candle sat inches away, flame dancing hypnotically. Proof of the choosing. He held her gaze, the intensity unbearable. Waiting.
The phantom taste of his blood flooded her mouth again. The poem echoed. Bone whispers. Scarred wings. Pain beneath. Her hand trembled violently as she lifted it. Not towards the candle. Towards his face. Her damp fingertips touched his jaw, tracing the tension there, the hard line of bone beneath stubble.
He went utterly still. A predator caught mid-strike. His breath hitched.
Her thumb found the still-weeping bite on his shoulder. She pressed into the swollen flesh, harder than before, making him flinch. A low sound rumbled in his chest. She felt the heat radiating from the wound, the life pulsing hot beneath her touch. Her other hand moved.
Fast.
She snatched the obsidian raven off the nightstand. Cold, heavy stone bit into her palm. Before he could react, before the shock could even register in his eyes, she pressed the smooth, polished base of the carving – not the sharp points – hard into the center of his fresh bite.
A choked gasp tore from him. His body jerked, muscles locking tight. Pain flared bright in his eyes, eclipsing the predatory focus. Not fire. Stone. Cold, blunt trauma to his open wound.
She held it there, pressing with all her trembling strength, her eyes locked on his shocked ones. "Mark this," she hissed, her voice raw, unfamiliar. Not defiance. Something darker. A claiming of her own.
The candle flame surged as a gust of rain-cooled air slipped through the window. Shadows leapt wildly across the walls, across their strained faces, across the black stone pressed deep into his torn flesh. The rain hissed its relentless rhythm. The silence between them crackled, thick with shared pain and the echo of poetry turned weapon. He didn't pull away. He endured the pressure, the agony, his gaze burning into hers, a silent, furious question hanging in the charged air. How deep would she press? How deep would he let her? The drowning had teeth on both sides now.
The pressure of the cold obsidian biting into his torn flesh lasted only a heartbeat longer. Jace’s hand shot up, impossibly fast, clamping over hers, pinning the raven carving harder against his own wound. A guttural sound ripped from him – part pain, part something primal, approving. His eyes, wide and burning, held hers. Not anger. Stark recognition. "Fucking hell, Kate," he rasped, breath ragged. "Where'd that come from?"
Her hand trembled violently beneath his grip, trapped between the stone and his burning skin. Adrenaline screamed through her, sharp as the glass shards downstairs. "You left marks," she breathed, the words scraping out. "So do I." The raven felt like an anchor, grounding her defiance in the face of his overwhelming presence. Rain lashed the window, a frantic counterpoint to the thudding pulse she felt beneath her trapped fingers.
He didn't remove the stone. He held her hand there, pressing it deep into the ache, his blood slicking her fingers. His other hand moved to cradle the back of her head, fingers tangling in her damp hair. His gaze dropped to her lips, smeared faintly with his dried blood. "Yeah," he murmured, the word rough, almost lost in the rain's rhythm. "You do." He released her hand abruptly. The obsidian raven clattered onto the quilt, dark and gleaming. "Clean it."
It wasn't a request. It was a test. His shoulder pulsed, dark and wet in the candlelight. The bite she’d given him looked angrier now, the edges swollen where the stone had dug in. Kate stared at the wound, then at her own blood-sticky fingers. The taste of his blood, metallic and intimate, still lingered on her tongue. She swallowed hard, the phantom copper sharp. Without a word, she slid off the bed, legs shaky.
The small ensuite was still humid, reeking of cheap bourbon and violence. Broken glass glittered wickedly on the wet tiles near the drain. She grabbed a clean washcloth, ran it under cold water until it soaked through. The scent of her own perfume, usually comforting, was buried under the heavier smells of conflict. She squeezed the cloth, water dripping onto her bare feet. Proof of the breaking. Tangled. Real.
Back in the bedroom, Jace hadn't moved. He watched her approach, a statue carved from shadow and candlelight, water still drying on his skin. She stopped beside the bed, the damp cloth heavy in her hand. His gaze was unnerving, stripping her bare beneath the oversized flannel. She reached out, tentative, the cloth hovering near the ragged crescents on his shoulder. His hand closed around her wrist again, not roughly, but firmly, guiding her touch down onto the open wound.
The contact was electric. She flinched, expecting fury. He just held her hand steady, pressing the cloth against the bite. "Harder," he commanded, voice low. "It needs pressure." She pressed down. Felt the heat, the give of damaged flesh beneath the cloth. A muscle jumped in his jaw, but he didn't pull away. Water and diluted blood soaked into the fabric, turning it pink. She focused on the task, the mundane act of cleansing strangely grounding after the poetry and the stone.
His fingers slid from her wrist up her arm, tracing the small, faded scar near her inner elbow – a relic from a forgotten bike fall years ago. His touch lingered near the simple, persistent lollipop tattoo. "Permanent reminder?" he asked, his thumb brushing the ink. His voice had lost its edge, replaced by a weary curiosity.
"Cheap tattoo parlor," she mumbled, avoiding his eyes, concentrating on dabbing gently around the inflamed edges of his wound. "Felt like optimism, once." The memory felt distant, pathetic compared to the raw immediacy of his skin under her hands. The flannel gaped open as she leaned, exposing the vicious bite he’d left on her shoulder. It throbbed dully.
He saw it. His free hand rose, fingertips hovering just above the bruised, punctured skin. Not touching. Just… acknowledging. "Hurts?"
"Like hell," she admitted, finally meeting his gaze. His eyes were shadowed, the predatory fire banked to embers. Exhaustion etched deeper lines around them. "Yours?"
"Worse." A ghost of a smirk touched his lips. "Good." He finally lowered his hand from her arm. "Your turn. Clean yours."
He let her go. Kate stepped back slightly, the sudden space feeling vast. She brought the damp, stained cloth to her own shoulder, wincing as the cold water met the raw punctures. The sting was cleansing in its own brutal way. She watched him over the cloth. He leaned back against the headboard, the candlelight catching the intricate patterns of ink across his chest, the stark lines of old scars, the dark trail leading downwards. He watched her tend her wound, his expression unreadable, the silence stretching, filled only by the rain and the soft sound of the cloth on skin.
When she lowered the cloth, her shoulder stinging but clean, he simply patted the quilt beside him. Not a demand. An invitation heavy with unspoken weight. The flannel felt suddenly too thin. She hesitated, the image of the blood-streaked bathroom mirror flashing in her mind. Proof. Tangled. Her own defiance with the raven felt distant now, muted by fatigue and the strange intimacy of cleaning his wound. The bed, her sanctuary, felt like the edge of a precipice.
Slowly, she climbed back onto the mattress, keeping a sliver of space between them. She pulled her knees up, the flannel covering her. The candlelight flickered, casting long, dancing shadows. He didn’t reach for her. He just settled deeper against the pillows, his eyes closing, the harsh lines of his face softening fractionally in repose. The rain beat a steady rhythm against the window pane. A gust of wind made the candle flame gutter wildly, sending shadows leaping across his scarred torso, across the obsidian raven lying forgotten on the quilt. He didn’t open his eyes. His breathing deepened, evening out. The coiled tension in the room didn’t vanish, but it shifted, settling into a heavy, watchful quiet. The storm still raged outside. Inside, an uneasy truce. He stayed. Curled on his side, facing her, one arm thrown loosely over his waist, the other resting near the obsidian bird. Deep, even breaths now, the rise and fall of his chest slow and steady in the candlelight. The fire in him banked, for now. Exhaustion, deeper than the wounds, held them both. Kate watched him, the dangerous angles of him softened by sleep, the rain tapping its endless rhythm on the glass. Her own eyes grew heavy, the adrenaline finally leaching away, leaving a hollow ache and the impossible fact hanging in the scented air: he was still here. HE STAYS THE NIGHT.