Yes, he had. He’d more than thought it, he’d expected her to follow his instructions to the letter. “I wouldn’t have died, Chiara. I’ve gone up against a dozen Breed males at a time and walked away the only one still breathing. Your stalker won’t be any match for me. Killing is what I was born to do.”
It took her a moment to absorb that. “Well, either way, I wouldn’t have left. What kind of person do you imagine I am?”
He knew she didn’t expect him to answer, so he didn’t voice any of the replies that popped into his mind.
A foolish one.
A stubborn one.
A beautiful one.
A brave one.
“I may not have asked you to play my protector, Scythe, but I am grateful to have you.”
She edged closer, leaving him no option but to hold his ground or back away from her advance. He chose the former, even though every instinct in his body warned him it was a mistake to let her any nearer.
“And I’m grateful for how you sheltered Pietro and me along with Bella and Ettore when we came to you in Matera too. Maybe none of that means anything to you, but it does to me. So you’ll just have to forgive me for trying to be nice or hospitable to you.”
A tendon pulsed in his jaw as he stared down at her. This was dangerous territory, allowing her to think of him as some sort of savior. Dangerous for him, and for her.
Rather than succumb to the urge to touch her, his left hand flexed and fisted at his side, while the stump on his right wrist throbbed in useless stillness.
It wasn’t hard to recall the mistake that had cost him his other hand. He’d let his guard down once, had let emotion cloud his reason and paid a steep price for it. Not only him, but two other people he cared for.
Never again.
That lesson—that awful regret—would stay with him forever.
“I have no need for soft words or tender concern,” he told her, praying she would heed it as the warning he intended. “Don’t expect me to provide those things to you, either. That’s not who I am. Look at me only as a weapon. A deadly one you’d be wise to steer clear of until this whole thing is over.”
She didn’t cower, even though he’d made grown Breed males tremble with less venom than he showed her now. She drew her shoulders more squarely, her eyes narrowed as she slowly shook her head.
“You’re not a weapon, Scythe. You’re flesh and blood. You’re a man.”
“I am a Hunter,” he corrected her. “That’s what I was born. That’s how I live. It’s how, eventually, I expect I will die.”
As he spoke, he watched her gaze flick away from his face, drifting lower. Her eyes paused on the web of scars that ringed his neck where his collar used to be. The ultraviolet-powered tether he’d been forced to wear had ensured he and the rest of his Hunter brethren obeyed their Master without fail.
It had been two decades since the Order’s victory over his creator had freed him and the rest of his Gen One half-brothers from the hellish program, but there were times when Scythe still felt the cold, unbreakable black cuff around his throat.
Times like now, when Chiara’s tender gaze seemed riveted on the scars left behind from his enslavement.
“Dragos did all of this to you?”
Hearing the villain’s name on her tongue made his gut twist. He didn’t want to imagine she knew anything of the horrors Dragos and his followers had perpetrated before the Order had finally wiped the lot of them from the earth. God knew he didn’t want her pity. He would rather walk into full sunlight than face that from her.
“Don’t let my scars fool you. I earned every one of them. Dragos may have shackled my body, but he never broke my will.”
She said nothing, merely continued to stare at his neck, and at the bared wedge of his chest that peeked out from the unbuttoned collar of his black shirt.
Even worse, she reached up without warning and touched the ruined skin at the base of his throat. The unexpected brush of her fingertips took him completely aback. So much so, he lost all capacity for words or motion.
Locked in place where he stood, he stared wildly, helplessly, as she traced the ropy welt from one side of his neck to the other. He sucked in a sharp breath at her touch, holding stock-still as she traced the patchwork of scars. She continued her journey all the way around to the back, until her fingers brushed the long hair at his nape.
Her delicate exploration of him sent a shaft of white-hot need arcing through him so strongly, it made his hunger to feed the night before pale in comparison. His fangs punched from his gums. His dermaglyphs writhed, heating beneath his clothing, his arousal intensifying with each passing second.
Her attention—and the swift physical reaction it stoked in him—was too much to bear. He wheeled back on a low, harsh curse.