10. Chapter 10 Damon

Chapter 10 Damon

I blinked slowly, awareness seeping into my consciousness like honey dripping from a comb. The first thing I registered was warmth - the silken heat of Phoenix's body pressed close to mine, soft curves and smooth skin molding perfectly to the harder planes of my own.

A smile curved my lips before I'd even opened my eyes, memories of the night before playing behind my lids in technicolor flashes. Her taste, her scent, the satin glide of her flesh against my own as we'd moved together, striving toward that blissful peak. I'd never known anything like it, never felt so complete, so utterly consumed by another person.

She was a revelation, my Phoenix. A goddamn miracle in a world gone to shit. And for a few perfect hours, she'd been mine.

I reached out, intent on pulling her closer, losing myself in her honeyed warmth...

And froze .

Because there, marring the golden expanse of her back, were scars. Dozens of them, some old and faded, others fresh and angry, the skin still puckered and shiny. They criss-crossed her flesh like some sort of sick, macabre roadmap, a testament to a pain I couldn't even begin to fathom.

And then I saw the bruises. Mottled purple and yellow, stark against the cream of her skin. The unmistakable imprint of fingers, of hands that had gripped too hard, squeezed too tight.

Rage.

It exploded through me like a nuclear blast, white-hot and searing. It incinerated every rational thought, every ounce of restraint or reason, until there was nothing left but the roaring in my ears and the pounding of my pulse, violent and vengeful.

Someone had hurt her. Some sick, twisted fuck had put their hands on my girl, had marked her, broken her. Had tried to shatter that blazing spirit into a million jagged pieces.

I was going to kill them. I was going to hunt them down and tear them apart with my bare fucking hands, make them feel every ounce of pain they'd inflicted on her tenfold. I was going to rip their fucking throat out and paint the walls with their blood, decorate my skin with their viscera until the debt was paid.

No one touched her. No one fucking hurt her. Not now, not ever again. Not while I still had breath in my body and murder in my heart.

"Damon..." Phoenix's sleep-roughened voice cut through the homicidal haze, confusion and dawning dread mingling in the honeyed depths of her eyes as she took in my expression. "What...?"

But then realization crashed over her, and she went rigid against me. Her face paled, horror and humiliation chasing each other across those exquisite features as she scrambled to pull away, to hide .

"Don't." The word was a raw, serrated rasp, torn from my chest like a pound of flesh. "Don't you fucking hide from me, Phoenix. Not now. Not ever."

She shook her head frantically, tears welling in wide, haunted eyes. "You weren't supposed to see," she whispered, the words cracking and broken. "No one was ever supposed to see."

And I fucking shattered.

I yanked her against me, crushing her to my chest as if I could pull her inside my skin, absorb her into my bones where no one could ever touch her again. Phoenix shuddered, a broken sob muffled against my collarbone, but I just held on tighter.

"Who did this to you?" I ground out, the words tasting of blood and ashes on my tongue. "Baby, please. I need you to tell me who fucking hurt you like this."

She shook her head again, her whole body quaking now as she tried to burrow deeper into me, to disappear. "I can't...Damon, I can't."

Despair and fury tangled around my heart like barbed wire, ripping and shredding. But I swallowed it back, choked it down like cyanide. Because this wasn't about me, about my compulsion for violence and vengeance.

This was about her.

About being the rock, the shelter, the safe place she could break apart, secure in the knowledge that I would hold her pieces until she was ready to put them back together.

So I ruthlessly shoved down the beast clawing at my chest, the vicious, slavering thing howling for blood. With a herculean effort, I gentled my touch, my voice, forced my muscles to unlock and relax.

"I've got you," I breathed into the wrecked silk of her hair, my lips grazing the delicate shell of her ear. "You're safe, Phoenix. I swear on everything holy and unholy, you're safe with me."

A shudder rippled through her, and then she was melting into me, surrendering to the shelter of my arms as great, hitching sobs tore from her throat. I just held her through the storm, rocking her, soothing her, an endless litany of vows and promises and devotion falling from my lips like prayers.

And as I cradled her shaking form, as I absorbed her pain and her grief into my skin like ink, a cold, crystalline rage began to take root in my heart. It spread through my veins like hoarfrost, brittle and sharp enough to draw blood.

Because this? Her scars, her trauma, the echoes of brutality carved into her skin and soul? It ended now. I would make damn sure of that.

Even if I had to raze the whole fucking world to ash and rubble, even if I had to paint the streets red with the blood of anyone who'd ever dared to lay a finger on her...

I would keep her safe. I would make it so no one could ever make her feel small or weak or afraid again.

And if that meant I had to become the monster, the nightmare, the fucking boogeyman in the dark...

So be it.

Phoenix shifted against me, drawing back just far enough to meet my gaze. Her eyes were swollen, her cheeks splotchy and streaked with tears. But there was a fierce, unwavering strength in the set of her jaw, a determined tilt to her chin that stole the breath from my lungs.

"I need you to promise me something," she rasped, her voice raw and ragged but infused with steel.

I nodded, helpless to deny her anything when she was looking at me like that. Like I was the answer, the salvation, the port in the storm.

"Anything. "

Her hands came up to frame my face, her thumbs tracking the harsh slant of my cheekbones. "Promise me...promise me you won't go after him."

I went rigid against her, every muscle locking up tight. She couldn't mean...surely she didn't expect me to just let this go? To turn a blind eye while the sick fuck who'd broken her walked free?

"Phoenix-"

"No, Damon. Listen to me." Her fingers tightened, nails biting into my skin. "I need you to swear to me, on whatever you hold sacred, that you won't do anything stupid. That you won't put yourself at risk, not for this. Not for me."

I opened my mouth to argue, to rage, to fucking roar my denial...but the words died on my tongue as I took in her expression. The desperation, the bone-deep terror swimming in those gorgeous eyes.

She was afraid. Not of the monster who'd scarred her...but for me. For what I might do, the lines I might cross, in the name of avenging her pain.

And that's when it hit me. The staggering, humbling truth of what this incredible woman was offering me.

Trust. Absolute, unflinching trust. The kind that comes from baring your darkest secrets, your deepest hurts...and believing, down to your bones, that the other person won't flinch. Won't run. Won't look at you differently, or think you're weak or broken or sullied.

She was putting herself in my hands, laying herself bare. And in return, she was asking me to do the same. To make myself vulnerable, to surrender the armor of rage and violence that had protected me for so long.

To choose her. Her needs, her wishes. Even if it went against every screaming instinct, every primal urge howling in my blood .

And as I stared into those endlessly deep eyes, as I let myself drown in the fathomless well of her strength, her mercy, her stubborn, unshakeable faith...

I knew I'd already made my choice. Had made it the second she'd crashed into my life and set my soul on fire.

"I promise," I whispered, the words heavy and binding on my tongue. An oath, a covenant. "I swear on everything I am, everything I could be...I won't go after him. Not unless you ask me to."

A shudder rolled through her, relief and gratitude and something hotter, headier shining from her eyes like starlight. She surged up, her mouth claiming mine in a bruising kiss that stole the air from my lungs, the thoughts from my head.

"Thank you," she breathed against my lips, the salt of her tears mingling with the taste of absolution on my tongue. "God, Damon...thank you."

I pulled her closer, sealing our bodies together from chest to thigh until I couldn't tell where I ended and she began. And as I lost myself in the slick heat of her mouth, the grasping clutch of her hands...I felt something slot into place. A puzzle piece I hadn't known was missing, a void I hadn't realized needed filling, suddenly complete.

She was mine. And I was hers. Two damaged, jagged-edged souls finding a home in each other's shattered pieces.

And for her...for the chance to keep her, to stand by her side and shelter her from the storms...

I would do anything. Be anything.

Even if it meant leashing the beast within. Even if it meant leaving her demons in peace, no matter how badly I wanted to lay their blood at her feet like an offering.

Because in the end, that wasn't what she needed from me. It wasn't what would heal her, make her whole.

She needed my strength, my unwavering support. She needed me to be the safe place to land, the unshakable foundation she could build upon as she put herself back together, scar by painful scar.

And I would be that for her. I would be anything, everything she needed.

Even if it killed me.

Because she was worth it. Worth every wound, every sacrifice. Every piece of my black, battered heart laid bare at her feet.

She was my salvation. My north star. The axis on which my whole fucking world spun.

And no scar, no trauma, no ugly secret from her past could ever change that. Could ever make me want her, need her, crave her any less.

I would stand by her side, hold her hand as she faced down her demons. I would be her shield, her sword, her impenetrable armor against anything that dared to threaten her.

And if the day came when she changed her mind, when she looked at me with vengeance in her eyes and blood on her tongue...

I would happily lay waste to anyone who'd ever dared to hurt her. I would paint the streets red with their ruin, decorate my skin with their dying screams.

But until then...I would be exactly what she needed. A lover, a partner, a guiding light in the dark.

Her fucking salvation, just as surely as she was mine.

"Who are you, Damon?"

Phoenix's question hung in the air between us, a loaded gun just waiting for a trigger finger. I stared down at her, my heart slamming against my ribcage like a caged animal desperate for escape.

Her eyes, those fathomless pools of gold that saw far too much, bored into mine. Searching. Probing. Peeling back layer after layer of carefully constructed armor, all the masks and walls I'd spent a lifetime erecting.

"What do you mean?" I aimed for nonchalance, but the words came out rough, strained. A tell if there ever was one.

Her fingers drifted over my face, tracing the stark lines of the paint that had become as much a part of me as my own skin. "This. The makeup, the contacts, the whole...persona. It's not the real you, is it? It's a shield. A defense mechanism."

I flinched, a full-body shudder I couldn't quite suppress. She was too close, her words flaying me open, exposing the raw, pulsing truth that lurked beneath the surface.

Because she was right. Of course she was fucking right. The face I showed the world, the snarling, feral creature who stalked the stage and bared his fangs at the crowd...it was a mask. A carefully cultivated illusion, designed to keep everyone at arm's length.

Even the boys, my fucking brothers-in-arms...they'd never seen beneath it. Never glimpsed the fractured, bleeding wreck that lurked behind the warpaint and the bravado.

But somehow, this girl, this impossible fucking supernova who'd crashed into my orbit and sent me spinning off-course...she'd seen through it all. With a few softly spoken words, she'd ripped away the veil and left me exposed. Vulnerable.

And I fucking hated it. Hated the way my skin crawled, the way my lungs seized up like there wasn't enough air in the room. Hated the sudden, visceral urge to run, to hide, to fucking disappear before she could dig any deeper, unearth any more of the festering wounds I kept so carefully buried.

But more than that...I hated the tiny, treacherous part of me that wanted to let her. That desperately craved the release, the absolution, that came with being truly seen. With finally, finally letting someone else shoulder the weight of all the scars I carried, inside and out.

Phoenix was still watching me, her gaze soft and luminous in the muted light of dawn. Patient. Understanding. As if she could see the war raging behind my ribs, the clashing armies of fear and longing that threatened to tear me asunder.

"You don't have to tell me," she murmured, her thumb ghosting across my bottom lip. A benediction and an offering all in one. "I know...I know how hard it is, to let someone see the broken pieces. To hand them a blade and pray they won't cut you open with it."

And that was it, wasn't it? The crux of the matter, the fundamental truth I'd been dancing around since the moment she'd first pinned me with those devastating eyes.

I wanted to let her in. Wanted it with a ferocity that stole my fucking breath. But the risk...the soul-deep terror of giving someone that kind of power, that kind of intimate knowledge of all my jagged edges and bleeding fault lines...

It paralyzed me. Turned me to stone even as every molecule in my body screamed to reach for her, to fist my hands in her hair and crush her mouth to mine, to pour every ounce of fear and longing into the slick slide of her tongue against my own.

But I couldn't. I fucking couldn't. Not yet. Not when the wounds were still so raw, the memories still writhing like vipers in the darkest recesses of my mind.

Phoenix must have sensed my hesitation, read the answer in the rigid set of my shoulders or the tick of my jaw. Because she simply leaned up, brushed the softest of kisses against the corner of my mouth. An absolution I hadn't earned, but craved with every fractured shard of my soul.

"It's okay," she breathed, the words a balm against my fevered skin. "I understand, Damon. Believe me, I understand."

And then she was pulling away, the sudden absence of her warmth like a physical ache. I watched, mute and aching, as she slid from the bed, the sheet falling away to reveal the devastation wrought upon her golden skin.

The ruins of her. The tangible proof of horrors I could only begin to imagine.

She didn't try to hide them. Didn't flinch or cower beneath the weight of my gaze as it roamed over every scar, every visceral reminder of a pain I wanted to carve from her flesh with my bare fucking hands.

No; she wore them like armor. Like a battle standard, a defiant 'fuck you' to a world that had tried its damnedest to break her. To a monster who'd left his mark on every inch of her, inside and out.

And in that moment, I knew. Knew with a bone-deep certainty that clawed at my guts and squeezed my lungs to burning.

I wanted to be like her. Wanted that same unflinching strength, that diamond-bright resilience that allowed her to stand there, naked and scarred and absolutely fucking resplendent.

I wanted to peel away my own masks. To strip myself bare, layer by agonizing layer, until there was nothing left but the raw, bleeding truth of me. The scared, shattered boy lurking beneath the warpaint and the fury.

The one who'd never really escaped the hell of his childhood. Who still woke shaking and sweat-drenched in the night, the phantom crack of a belt and the copper tang of blood thick on his tongue.

The one who'd been running for so long, he'd forgotten what it felt like to stand still. To plant his feet and face the reckoning that waited in the wings, patient and implacable as the grave .

Phoenix turned back to me, a sad, knowing smile playing at the edges of her lips. As if she could read the direction of my thoughts, the sudden, dizzying urge to claw my way out of my own skin.

To become something new. Something real. Even if it flayed me to the fucking bone.

"I'm going to take a shower," she murmured, the words heavy with unspoken understanding. "Take all the time you need, okay? I'll be here when you're ready."

And then she was gone, disappearing into the adjoining bathroom with a soft click of the door. Leaving me alone with the riot of my thoughts, the thundering cadence of my own pulse in my ears.

For a long moment, I simply sat there. Staring at the rumpled sheets, the indentation where her body had been. Trying to wrestle some kind of order to the chaos clawing at my insides, the relentless hammer of 'want, need, can't, won't' beating against my skull like a war drum.

But in the end, there was no taming it. No neat little boxes to shove all the ugly, unquiet things threatening to tear me apart. There was only the gnawing knowledge that something had to give, and the sickening lurch of my stomach at the thought of what that might mean.

Before I could second-guess myself, I was lurching to my feet. Staggering toward the bathroom on legs that trembled, threatening to give way at any moment. My pulse roared in my ears, a deafening thunder that drowned out the hiss of the shower, the low hum of the fan.

I didn't knock. Didn't announce myself or ask for permission. I simply shouldered through the door, a man on a mission. A condemned prisoner marching to the gallows of his own making.

Steam billowed around me, thick and cloying. It clung to my skin, beaded in my hair and eyelashes like tears. Through the haze, I could just make out the blurred lines of Phoenix's body behind the fogged glass, a watercolor smear of peach and gold.

She didn't startle at my entrance. Didn't gasp or shriek or cover herself in a belated bid for modesty. She simply turned, the hazy outline of her going preternaturally still as she watched me stumble to the sink.

My hands shook as I gripped the cool porcelain, my knuckles blanching white with the force of it. In the mirror, my reflection stared back at me. A ghost. A specter. A thing of shadows and sharp edges, all snarling lips and kohl-rimmed eyes.

But it was a lie. A fa?ade, as brittle and insubstantial as spun sugar. And beneath it...

Beneath it lurked the truth. The scared, broken thing I'd tried so hard to outrun. To bury beneath rage and rebellion, sex and whiskey and the throat-shredding scream of a guitar.

But there was no more running. No more hiding. Not from her. Not from this...this impossible fucking girl who'd stormed my defenses and laid me bare. Who'd seen through every mask, every smoke-screen, to the wounded, wanting creature huddled behind it all.

My hands moved of their own accord, yanking open drawers and medicine cabinets with an almost feral urgency. Fumbling through neat rows of cosmetics and toiletries until they closed around the cool, smooth cylinder of a makeup wipe.

The first swipe was agony. A visceral, lancing pain, as if I were stripping away my own skin along with the paint. But I grit my teeth and pushed through, scrubbing at my face with a savage sort of determination.

Black and white and red smeared across pristine cotton, a macabre Rorschach of greasepaint and perspiration. With every pass, every brutal stroke, I felt something inside me crack. Splinter. A fissure spreading through the bedrock of my being, a sinkhole yawning wide and ravenous.

By the time my face was bare, my eyes stripped of their obsidian shields...I was shaking. Quaking like a building on the verge of collapse, my whole frame wracked with the force of the tremors.

I stared at my reflection, at the stranger gazing back from the glass. Tawny skin, bronzed by the sun and scarred by a lifetime of fights. A jaw darkened by stubble, the faint silver of old wounds glinting beneath the scruff. And my eyes...

They were the worst. The hardest to face, to reconcile with the snarling beast I'd so carefully cultivated. Because there, in the warm, whiskey-hued depths...there was vulnerability. Humanity.

A fucked-up, fractured sort of innocence, wounded and wary as a whipped dog.

I wanted to look away. Wanted to slam my fist into the mirror until it shattered, until the shards bit into my skin and the pain eclipsed the sickening swoop of exposure, of naked fucking fear.

But I didn't. I couldn't. Because in the glass, through the veil of steam...Phoenix was watching me. Her own face bare and open, her scars shimmering like brands in the low light. And in her eyes...

Christ, in her eyes there was everything. Understanding. Acceptance. A soul-deep sorrow and a fierce, burning sort of pride that skewered me to the spot, turned my bones to water and my blood to fire.

"There you are," she murmured, the words barely audible above the rush of water, the hammer of my own pulse. "There's my beautiful, broken boy."

A sob tore from my throat, a jagged, animal sound. And then I was moving, lurching toward the shower like a man possessed. Steam billowed around me as I wrenched open the door, as I stumbled over the threshold to fall at her feet.

Water sluiced over me, hot and stinging. It plastered my hair to my skull, ran in rivulets down the planes of my face. Blurred my vision until all I could see was her. The hazy gold of her skin, the lush curve of her mouth.

I wanted to speak. Wanted to give voice to the riot of emotions clawing at my chest, the confessions and apologies and pleas bubbling like acid on my tongue.

But I couldn't. I could only stare up at her, mute and shaking. A supplicant at the altar of her grace, her mercy.

Her love.

"Oh, Damon." Her fingers thread through my hair, blunt nails scraped against my scalp in a way that made me shudder. "My brave, beautiful boy. You have no idea, do you? No idea how strong you are. How fucking proud I am of you."

I shook my head frantically, a reflexive denial. Because that...that couldn't be right. I wasn't strong. I wasn't brave. I was a fucking coward, a fraud. A hollow shell of a man, rotted through with ugliness and fear.

But Phoenix just smiled, a soft, radiant thing that stole the air from my lungs. She sank to her knees before me, heedless of the water, the hard tile. Her hands framed my face, thumbs stroking over the cuts of my cheekbones.

"You are," she whispered, fierce and absolute. "You are so goddamn strong, Damon. Stronger than you know. Than you've ever let yourself believe."

Her forehead came to rest against mine, our breath mingling in the scant space between. "Thank you," she murmured, the words a balm, a benediction. "Thank you for trusting me with this. With you. The real you."

And that...that was it. The permission, the absolution I hadn't known I was desperate for. The final tumbler clicking into place, unlocking the cage I'd built around my own heart.

A shudder wracked through me, a full-body convulsion. And then I was surging forward, capturing her mouth in a kiss that was more sob than anything. More broken prayer than sensual overture.

Phoenix met me with equal fervor, her lips parting on a gasp, her tongue delving deep to stroke and soothe. She tasted like salt, of water and tears and something brighter, sweeter. Something like hope, like possibility.

Like a fucking future I'd never dared to imagine, unfurling before me in a dizzying rush of color and light.

We clung to each other there on the bathroom floor, skin to skin and heart to battered heart. The water rained down around us, sluicing away the last lingering traces of greasepaint, the final flimsy remnants of all my masks and artifice.

Leaving only me. Raw and shivering and so fucking terrified, but whole. Real.

Hers.

"I love you."

The words spilled out of me, inevitable as the tide. As necessary as my next ragged breath, the next thundering beat of my heart in my chest.

Phoenix went still against me, her eyes flying wide. For a breathless, agonizing moment, I feared I'd over stepped. Pushed too hard, too soon. Shattered this fragile, fledgling thing blooming between us before it even had a chance to take root .

But then her face broke open, a sunrise unfurling across her exquisite features. Her eyes swam with tears, her lips trembling around a watery smile that stole the breath from my lungs.

"I love you, too," she whispered, the words a vow, an oath. "I love you so fucking much, Damon. All of you. Every scar, every broken edge. Every secret and sin and ugly, unquiet thing."

She punctuated each word with a kiss, a fierce press of her mouth against mine. As if she could brand them into my skin, my soul. Make me believe them through sheer force of will alone.

And god help me, I did. I believed her with every shattered shard of my being, every atom singing with the impossible truth of it.

This girl, this miraculous fucking supernova...she loved me. Not the beast, not the rock god or the snarling alpha male.

Just me. The scared, scarred boy hiding behind the warpaint and the bravado.

The one who'd finally, finally found a home. A harbor.

A place to hang my shredded heart, raw and bleeding. Knowing she would hold it, cherish it. Piece it back together with her bare fucking hands.

"Forever," I rasped against her lips, the word a covenant. An irrevocable promise, seared into my marrow. "I'm gonna love you forever, Phoenix. Gonna spend the rest of my fucking life making sure you never doubt it. Never forget how fucking perfect you are, scars and all."

Her answering smile was blinding, a slash of white in the gathering steam. "Forever," she echoed, soft and sure. "I like the sound of that."

And there, cradled close and dripping on cool tile, the future stretched out before us. Vast and bright and full of impossible, staggering promise .

Ours for the taking, the shaping. One day, one scar, one shattered-but-mending heart at a time.

Together.

Always.