Chapter 207: Face Down

Chapter 207: Face Down

Lizzie

“What?”

The laugh that left me sounded wrong even to my own ears. It was too bright and came out too quick.

It was the kind of sound people made when their heart was trying to climb out of their chest and they needed somewhere safe to put it. “No way. I can’t be pregnant.”

Reese didn’t smile with me. He just watched my face. “Why not?”

I turned toward him fully. “I’ve got the implant. It doesn’t just fail.”

The words came out harder than I meant them to. They sounded less like fact and more like a wish I was trying to nail to the wall.

He studied me for a long second. “So we’re still here,” he said quietly. “You don’t want it to be true.”

He was right. I was still having a hard time with it.

I touched his arm anyway, needing the contact more than the argument. “That’s not it. I’m just saying the implant is still in. That’s the entire point of having one.” I tried to smile.

“You didn’t have to say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t do that.” His voice stayed gentle, but there was a thread of something wounded underneath. “You know what I mean. Do you not want to have my child?”

“I do.” The lie left me too fast, almost tripping over itself. “Reese, I do. I’m only saying it’s not possible for me to be—”

“Then take the test.” His brows drew together. “You’ve been having symptoms. Either you don’t want to look at them, or you’re choosing not to.”

I held his forearm and kept his eyes. “I’ll take the test. Whatever you want, I'll do it. I’ll ask Sav to get one. She can give it to Roman since he’s already coming. River can’t leave the manor, and Charlotte already thinks I’m pregnant anyway.”

He folded his arms, still watching me like he could see the fear I kept trying to fold smaller. “What are you so afraid of? Talk to me.”

“Nothing.” Another answer that came too quickly. “I’m not scared of anything. I just think it’s early for a scare. With the implant and everything—”

I was still talking when he swung his legs over the side of the bed. The shift in him was immediate—anger rising again, redirected toward the only target that made sense.

“Fuck it. I’m going to find Randall—”

I caught his wrist before he could stand fully. “No. Reese, wait. Please.” My fingers tightened. “Let’s wait for Roman.”

He looked down at my hand, then at my face.

“Why? He’s going to arrive already half out of his mind. He has a gun, Lizzie. I’d rather break a few of Randall’s bones myself before anyone decides on something permanent.”

He tried to pull away. I held on. “Wait. Sav is as much a victim in this as I am. We don’t do this without them. Please.”

Something in the plea reached him. He drew a long breath through his nose. The crease between his brows stayed, but the immediate forward motion stopped. “Fine. But if I see him before Roman gets here, I make no promises. Keep him out of my sight.”

Relief loosened something in my chest.

I moved closer until my body lined up with his, forehead nearly touching his collarbone. “That’s fair.” I traced a slow line down his arm with one fingertip. “I want time with you first.”

The hardness in his expression eased. A real smile threatened at the corner of his mouth. “I know that look. You’ve already decided something.”

I let my own smile turn softer, almost shy, and walked him backward with small presses of my hands against his chest. “Get on the bed. Face down. You’ve been wound tight since the cemetery. Let me help with that.”

His smile widened. “Suddenly I’m very interested.”

Before he could turn, I rose onto my toes, cupped his face, and kissed him, pouring every unsettled piece of the last hour into the simple fact of his mouth under mine.

When I pulled back, I kept my hands on his jaw. “You’re mine,” I said quietly. “Only mine.”

He looked at me for a heartbeat, then brushed his thumb across my cheekbone. “I’m yours. Forever.” Something darker flickered behind his eyes. “We dug up the graves earlier and—”

“I love you.” I kissed him again, shutting the sentence down before it could fully form. “I don’t want to hear about any of that for the rest of the night. Not the graves, not the cameras, not any of it. Just us. We can carry everything else tomorrow. Not now.”

He rested his forehead against mine. “I love you.”

The words stayed in the center of my chest. “Shirt off,” I murmured. “I'll get the oil in the bathroom. It's crazy that there's oil in the bathroom.”

He pulled the shirt over his head without argument. “Welcome to the manor. Everything you could need so you never have to think about leaving the cage.”

I caught the edge of the tattoos as I turned toward the bathroom. When I returned, he was exactly where I had asked him to be, face down, hair freed from its usual knot and half-spilling across the pillow.

For a second he looked almost asleep, the long lines of his body finally uncoiled.

I climbed up carefully and settled across his lower back. “Your hair’s down,” I said, smiling even though he couldn’t see it. “That’s rare.”

My hands stilled for a moment. The old whip scars crossed his skin in pale, raised paths. Scars I had put there. The memory tried to rise and I felt my throat tighten around it.

Reese’s low voice pulled me back before I could sink. “Don’t go there, Lizzie.”

I shook the past off as best I could and leaned down instead, pressing my mouth to one of the marks in a quiet apology. I didn't need to speak out loud. We both knew.

Then I let my hands travel, warm from the oil, slow along the muscles that had been carrying too much for too many hours.

When my fingers slipped just under the waistband of his pants in playful curiosity, he jerked with a startled laugh.

“Hey—what are you doing?”

I bit my lip, easing the fabric down just enough to bare the top of the curve of his ass, unable to stop the giggle that escaped. “Visual confirmation. You're so sexy.”

“Baby. Stop.” He was still laughing, the sound muffled by the pillow as he reached back to tug his pants up. I lightly swatted his hand away.

“Don’t interrupt the professional,” I said. “Unless you’d prefer I start adding spanking to the menu.”

He went still, still laughing under his breath. “Do not do that.”

“Want to test me?”

“I would never.” The words came out fond. Then he groaned. “My head feels like someone’s tightening a vice around it.”

“Migraine.” I shifted my hands into his hair and began working my fingers against his scalp in slow circles. “Let me fix what I can.”

A low sound of pure relief left him. One hand found my thigh where it rested against his side and patted once, grateful. “That’s it. Don’t stop.”

I kept going, deeper, slower, until the worst of the tension in his shoulders began to give. Only then did my eyes properly follow the ink that ran from the base of his neck down the length of his spine, joining the scripts on either side in a shape that almost looked like wings if you didn’t read the words.

“First time I’ve really looked at these,” I said softly. “They’re… beautiful. In a haunting way.”

He turned his head just enough to glance at me from the corner of one eye. “Don’t dwell on it. I got them a long time ago. I was a different person. Had a different life. But things are different now.”

Curiosity still tugged at me. “Can I read them?”

A quiet huff of amusement. “You’re already on top of me. You don’t need permission.”

My fingers left his hair and traced the line at the base of his neck. The words left my mouth almost without decision, like the ink itself demanded to be spoken.

“The manor commands the man.”

I read out the long script down his spine. The temperature in the room seemed to drop a degree.

“The manor does not raise sons. It only remembers who it made and who it can unmake.”

Gooseflesh rose along my arms. I forced myself to the lines on the left side of his shoulder blade, fingertip guiding the words.

“Obedience is the first language he taught me, long before I learned my own name.”

A shaky breath left me. My heart had started racing again, but for an entirely different reason.

The man beneath me remained calm, as if the horror written into his skin no longer had the power to reach him the same way it did before.

“Scared?” he asked, voice low and almost amused. “You don’t have to be. It’s finished. If it bothers you, I can have them removed.”

A tear slipped free before I could stop it. I wiped it away quickly. “Why did you get them? What did he do to you?”

He started to turn, concern replacing the earlier ease. “You’re crying? Baby, it’s just ink—”

“It’s not just ink.” My voice cracked despite my best effort. “It’s twisted. It’s what he did to you—”

“There goes the massage,” he said, trying for lightness as he began to roll onto his back.

I planted both hands on his shoulders and kept him down. “Stay. Please. I’m sorry. I just… I hate that he put any of that on you. That he made any of it normal.”

“It’s in the past.”

I bent forward until my chest rested against his back and wrapped my arms around him as far as they would go, holding on like the words themselves might still be able to hurt him if I didn’t.

“I love you. I love you so much.” My mouth was close to his ear. “I’ll keep you safe. I swear it.”

I meant every syllable.

I pressed one more kiss to the top of his spine, right above the darkest of the lines, and stayed there. “I don't want you to change anything about yourself. I love you this way.”

His hand found mine where it rested against his side and laced our fingers together.

“You're the best thing that has ever happened to me, Elizabeth.”