(Apollo & Adelaide)
He worked slowly, dragging the cloth across her back in long strokes, washing away the sweat and dried traces of their earlier violence. The faint bruises his hands had left earlier marred the pale canvas of her skin; his thumbs traced their edges with an odd, focused attention. Not regret. Not an apology. Attention like inventory, like assessment, like a king memorising the cost of what he’d demanded.
He didn’t apologise. The Devil did not apologise.
But his touch lingered there.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
She huffed. “Which part?”
“The parts I touched,” he said.
“That’s not very specific,” she said dryly, but there was a tremor underneath. After a heartbeat, she added, quieter, “Some of it.”
His fingers gentled by a fraction. “Good.”
Sh
