MY CRUEL PROTECTOR

Chapter 6: Flesh and Ashes

POV RUBY

The night had turned into a hungry beast scratching at the walls of the cabin. Nevan hadn't returned at his usual time, and the silence of the mountain was beginning to weigh on my shoulders like a layer of lead. I caught myself pacing back and forth, clutching the gray T-shirt he had given me in my hands. It still smelled like him: a mixture of tobacco, cold, and that particular masculine scent that was becoming addictive to me. I hated the way my pulse quickened with every creak of the wood, and I hated myself even more for worrying about my captor.

Then I heard it. A thud against the door. It wasn't a code, nor a triumphant entrance. It was the dead weight of a body collapsing against the wood.

I threw the door open, completely ignoring my own safety rules and the fear that Julian Vane might be on the other side. Nevan fell forward, landing on his knees on the cedar floor. He was soaked, but not just from the rain. The thick, iron-heavy smell of blood filled the small room instantly, choking out the scent of pine. He had one hand pressed to his left side, and his face was paler than I had ever seen it; his lips, usually curved in that wicked smile, were white and tight.

"Ruby..." His voice was a dry rasp, barely an echo of his usual baritone. "Close... the damn... door. Now."

I did. I bolted the door and knelt beside him on the cold floor. The initial panic, the kind that paralyzes your throat, was replaced by a rush of adrenaline that numbed my fingers but cleared my mind. Nevan tried to get up, growling a curse under his breath, but his muscles failed him and he ended up leaning his back against the wall, breathing with a difficulty that tore at my ears.

"You're hurt. My God, Nevan, you have a hole in your side." My voice trembled, but my hands moved instinctively toward the zippers of his tactical jacket.

"It's just a graze," he lied, letting out a stifled laugh that ended in a grimace of pure agony. "Just... help me take this off. It's too heavy."

My fingers, still stained with guilt from rummaging through his forbidden photos and discovering his months of stalking, began to unfasten the zippers on his vest. My feigned disgust, that barrier I had tried to build to protect myself from him, died the moment I saw his vulnerability. As I exposed his torso under the flickering light of the stove, my breath caught in my throat.

Nevan was a map of violence carved into flesh. His body was covered in scars: bullet marks, knife cuts, and dark tattoos, engraved with almost religious precision, which looked like ancient property stamps from a world I was only beginning to understand. He wasn't just a mercenary; he was a warrior who had survived a thousand wars. But now, a fresh, bleeding wound in his ribs cried out for immediate attention. The red was so vivid against his skin that it made me dizzy.

"Get the kit," he ordered, his blue eyes fixed on mine, clouded with pain but still charged with that unsettling possessiveness that made me feel like his prey. "You're going to have to stitch me up, sweetheart. There's no one else. Just you and me."

I went to get the supplies, tripping over my own feet. When I returned, Nevan had removed his soaked T-shirt with superhuman effort. Seeing him like that, half-naked in the orange light of the fire, sent a burning heat to the pit of my stomach. He was a wounded beast, and for the first time in this house of mirrors and secrets, I had the power.

"Clean it," he said, grabbing my wrist with surprising strength as I approached with the antiseptic. He pulled me toward him, forcing me to kneel between his open legs. His body heat was suffocating. "Don't stop even if I scream. Show no mercy, Ruby. I know you're dying to hurt me."

I began to clean the wound. Nevan hissed, an animalistic sound rising from his throat, and his fingers dug into the flesh of my thighs with a force that made me let out an involuntary moan. It wasn't just pain; it was an electric connection, a current that burned us both. Every time my fingers brushed his hot skin to remove the blood, I felt a spasm of desire that made my underwear damp. It was madness. I was healing a man who had stalked me, who held me captive, and my body just wanted him to pin me to the floor and end this torture once and for all.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked suddenly, his voice becoming flirtatious and dark despite the blood staining the wooden floor. "Do you like seeing me broken, Ruby? Does it turn you on to see that the monster can bleed too? Does it make you feel powerful to hold my life in your hands?"

"Shut up," I replied, though my hand was visibly shaking as I ran the needle across his skin. The contact was intimate, almost erotic in its brutality. "I'm just trying to keep you from dying and leaving me locked up here. If you die, I'm dead too.

"That's a lie," he rasped, his free hand moving up my back, sliding under my gray T-shirt, caressing the bare skin of my spine with a slowness that made me arch my body toward him. "You like having me like this. Helpless. Dependent on your hands. You like knowing I'm yours, even if it's just for tonight."

He leaned forward, capturing my breath with his. We were so close I could see the cold sweat on his forehead, the shadow of his beard, and the wild desire dancing in his pupils. Nevan ignored the pain of his wound to capture my lips in a desperate kiss, a kiss that tasted of iron, rain, and a need as old as the world. It wasn't a kiss of salvation; it was an invasion. His teeth bit my lower lip with a demand that made me gasp with pleasure.

I dropped the needle and clung to his shoulders, my fingers digging into his tense muscles. Nevan slid his hand down to the small of my back, pushing me hard against his erection, which felt like a column of fire against my thigh. He let out a deep growl against my mouth, a sound of absolute possession that made me tremble inside.

"If you don't stop now..." he whispered against my lips, his hand sliding dangerously toward my intimacy, brushing the edge of my underwear, "I'm going to forget that I'm bleeding out and claim you right here on this floor, Ruby. I'm going to make you mine until you forget you were ever afraid."

I pulled away from him, panting, my lips swollen and my heart pounding in my chest. My hands were stained with his thick red blood, but my eyes sparkled with an excitement I could no longer hide behind a mask of disgust.

"No," I said, trying to catch my breath and regain my dignity. "First, finish not dying. Then... we'll see which rules I decide to break first.

Nevan smiled, that wicked smile that promised me a hell far more pleasurable than any paradise I could have imagined in my old, boring life. He leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment to endure the pain, but his hand never stopped caressing my leg. At that moment, as I finished sewing up the flesh of the man who had stolen my freedom, I knew that it no longer mattered who was watching us through the cameras. The real danger was not outside the cabin. The danger was that I was beginning to love my chains, and that the man who held them was the sole owner of every beat of my heart.