Chapter 20: 20__A touch that heals

Maia slowly crept barefoot down the stairs of Rogan’s dark house, her hands feeling along the wall and her lip caught nervously between her teeth.

She had planned to stay in her room as Rogan gruffly ordered her to, but she’d had to go to the toilet. In fact, the toilet had been an excuse. She’d had to see if he was okay.

Maia couldn’t get the sight of the Sorcerer’s bloodied body out of her head. She’d never seen anyone so badly injured. He’d been bleeding from, what seemed to be, every pore in his body! How he’d been able to walk was beyond Maia. And so, laying in her soft but strangely uncomfortable little bed, she’d been unable to close her eyes for even a moment without envisaging the Sorcerer’s battered body.

After bringing her home from the Hostel, he’d simply trudged off to the kitchen and told her to go to her room and to stay there.

Easier said than done when the man she was counting on to protect her was currently in worse shape than a literal corpse. That’s what her worry was about. Maia needed him to keep her safe from the tribe. It had nothing to do with how her heart had wept in her chest when she’d seen that he was hurt. Someone had hurt him.

Maia peeked at the dark kitchen from around the corner, her eyes searching the little part of the place that she could see. Against one leg of the kitchen table, only a corner of which she could see, dangled a leg. Rogan’s to be exact. He was sitting on the table. She could only see his leg though.

A sharp hiss suddenly came out of the kitchen and Maia tensed, her heart kicking up again. That had been a sound of pain. She clutched her fingers against her mouth. He was in pain.

She could help him. Would he let her? She huddled against the wall, her legs burning from hunkering down this way, but she endured it.

“She can’t even hide properly,” Rogan suddenly murmured from the kitchen.

Maia blinked. Was he… was he talking about her?

“Just come out already, rag-skins,” he added, confirming Maia’s thoughts.

Embarrassed that she’d gotten caught, she slowly inched her way towards the kitchen, her fingers fiddling with the front of the long, soft sleeping robe Cecile told her to sleep in.

Maia stood in the kitchen doorway, looking at the side of Rogan’s face. He sat on the table, bare-chested and bathed in the moonlight that shone through vast windows directly across him.

She braced herself and walked to the windows, standing against them to look at Rogan. The moonlight made him so beautiful, but it also emphasized the ghastly wounds marring his body.

Not looking at her, Rogan picked up a vial and popped the cork.

Maia watched in growing horror as he turned the vial upside-down, emptying its contents all over his shoulders and torso.

A sizzling sound rose off his body along with some steam and Rogan clenched his jaw. The Shifters must have done plenty of damage. Not enough to kill him, but enough to annoy the hell out of him till Ursula’s spell fixed the harm done.

Raising his gaze, Rogan looked at Maia’s face and the pools of tears swimming in her eyes as she looked at the damage done to his body.

He paused for a moment. Did he look that frightening? Was that why she was crying? “What?” he asked her, his voice raspy and tired. “You that scared?”

Maia swallowed hard so that she would sound croaky when she spoke. “N-no.”

Rogan stared at her, feeling the potions seep into his wounds. “You not scared of me? It’s okay if you are. Everyone else is.”

She looked at him silently.

“Even the women at the Hostel,” Rogan continued, his eyelids blinking sleepily. “They don’t show it but they do. They fear me. My own father feared me. Especially on day I killed him.”

A deep silence followed his words. One that Rogan expected her to fill with a gasp of horror or even a plea to leave his house.

She said nothing.

Rogan slowly raised his gaze from his body and looked at her. There were now crystal streams of tears running down her face as she stared at him.

Lowering her hands to her sides, she moved away from the window and took a step toward him.

The single step toward him created such a strong feeling of unfamiliarity within Rogan, he almost asked her what she was doing. She’d come towards him. She hadn’t stepped away, she hadn’t turned away, she hadn’t run away. She’d looked at him and come *towards* him. After he’d told her he killed his bastard of a father. He didn’t even know why he’d told her that.

Maia swallowed the lump in her throat again. “Does… does it hurt… a lot?”

Rogan considered her question. It wasn’t the usual kind of thing people asked him. He wasn’t sure how to answer it. He hadn't even thought his answer through when it came spilling out of his mouth.

“Yeah,” he told her, his voice an even rougher rasp. “It hurts. It’s been hurting for a long fucking time.”

She stared at him for a moment longer, some sort of miserable emotion filling her eyes. Rogan couldn’t identify it. He’d never seen that particular emotion directed at him before.

More tears of sadness slipped down Maia’s face, but she didn’t wipe them. She only looked at him. This man who clearly was certain that he was the devil himself. He branded himself with such a powerful stamp of Evil that everyone around him was forced to go with it. But Maia saw more. Maybe in him there did exist an evil. But that wasn’t all. Just as he’d said: He hurt. And he’d been hurting for a long fucking time.

When she took another step toward him, Maia wasn’t even aware of it. Her legs moved of their own will, taking her to him and when she stood directly before him, her hands rose, reaching around him to enfold him in a warm hug.

Rogan was as still as a photograph. Her warm little hands were splayed against the bruised flesh of his back, her head laying gently on his chest so as to not hurt him.

What exactly was she doing? He wondered. Was she pitying him? Rogan didn’t need her pity. He hadn’t needed anyone’s pity for a long time.

“I killed my father with my own hands” he rasped out suddenly.

Maia bit her lip, tightening her hold on him.

Rogan clenched his jaw. She didn’t understand. He was the original evil. Dracula himself would bow down to him.

“I killed my father’s wife too.”

Maia hugged him closer.

“I killed two humans and tried to frame my half-brother for it..." Rogan continued. “I tried to kill my half-brother. I tried to kill his woman. I killed a few subjects in their kingdom. For the longest time, all I did was kill and destroy. As a villain should...”

He was tense, his jaw clenched as he waited for her to release him and finally turn away.

Her arms only tightened. Rogan was baffled by her. So baffled, he found himself unable to utter his thoughts. She didn’t fear him? Truly didn’t fear him or was she pretending? If… if she wasn’t pretending, then she was as insane as he was.

“Your wounds,” Maia said softly, her head tucked beneath his chin. “Am I hurting you?”

Rogan swallowed hard. “Don’t act like you fucking care.”

Maia slowly lifted her head, keeping her arms around him, she raised her gaze to his, seeing those beautifully swirling orbs that so fascinated her. “Rogan—”

“Don’t. Act. Like you fucking *care*.”

Maia looked up at his face, aglow in the moonlight, his eyes filled with an old injury, distrust and self-condemnation. “What if I really do?”

“Bullshit.”

The single word had been as cold and clipped as Zainab’s ice blades and it stabbed through Maia just as sharply.

He denied her sympathy, but didn’t turn away from her. Rogan continued to stare down at her, allowing her to gaze up into his eyes. Whatever she saw in there, he was confident she wouldn’t be able to decipher.

His mind, his heart, his soul, they were all coded and not even if she were the best hacker, would she be able to get through.

Maia didn’t seem to want to hack into anything, however. When she slowly unwrapped her arms from around him, Rogan thought she’d finally given up. She proved him wrong when she raised one hand, placing it against his cheek.

He stared at her, dumbfounded. It wasn’t so much that she touched him than how she touched him.

The gentleness was unheard of. Her touch felt like a magic spell.

Maia raised her other hand to cup his other cheek, holding his gorgeous face between her hands. Rogan stared at her, recording every miniscule movement she made. He stared at her so intently and yet, he didn’t predict what she did next.

Rising onto the tips of her toes, she reached her mouth up to his and Rogan felt the most feather-light of kisses grace his lips.

She pulled back an inch and when he didn’t protest, slowly brought her mouth back to his for another of her soft kisses.

Maia hadn’t planned to be doing this when she’d been creeping out of her room. This moment wasn’t one she could have planned. The way Rogan made her feel wasn’t something she could have planned.

He made her desperate to make him happy.

And Maia had never felt that way before.

The feel of her mouth on his was gentle, but it had hit Rogan with the force of a truck. This girl stunned him. She left him speechless with her every word, her every gesture.

When he’d finally processed that she was kissing him, Rogan found the answer to one of the questions he’d asked himself. Yes. They were soft.

And he wanted to feel more of their softness.

Large hands circled her waist and Maia felt herself being tugged closer to him. Closer until her front was plastered against his chest and he could feel all of her warmth.

Rogan deepened the kiss, growing dominant and overpowering her softness until she opened up for him.

She tasted of sweets and red wine and he suddenly felt like sweets and red wine were his favorite things in the whole world. Holding her against him, he drank deeply from the pool of comfort in her kiss, feeling his heart lift when she whimpered into his mouth.

The moment stole his thoughts away from him. It stole his fury and the pain in his body, leaving nothing but the feeling Maia stirred within him.

It stole away everything he should have been thinking at that moment. Including one of the most important.

Just how would break his curse and die, leaving this girl behind?