Chapter 38
Sakura stumbles back a step when Gaara’s eyes meet hers.
For all her years—all those months spent in back alleyways, chiseled teeth coated in blood and gore, eyes burning into the men who leered at her—she has never seen a person who meets her gaze like this.
His eyes are scorching, searing into her, and she feels, for a brief, fleeting moment relief that she is not the only one who has death in her eyes.
Blood trickles down his cheek.
It looks sticky, almost like mud, and coppery red, like the crimson sands on the faraway dunes that she’s always dreamed of touching.
“You hit me.” Gaara repeats.
Sakura thinks he might be in shock as he raises steady fingers to wipe at the blood that coats his face. She watches him pull away, eyes riveted on the sticky, copper-crimson blood.
A startled gasp gets stuck in her throat as he presses his hand to his mouth, licking at the blood. His eyes flash yellow and Sakura holds her tongue, her heart beating in her chest too fast.
She remembered how it felt on her cheek—warm and wet and fluid—and a part of her—a sick, perverse part of her liked the way he touched her without fear, without prejudice…without trying to kill her.
(Not even Obaba, for all her loveliness, dared to touch her.)
“You made me—“His eyes are feral, burning, and Sakura feels it now. The fear that bubbles up in her stomach, clutching at her lungs, threatening to choke and kill and tear at the bravado that she drowned her fragility in. “You made me bleed.”
His hands are at her throat with no time for her to scream out.
“How?” Gaara bellows at her. His breath is hot on her skin, his fingers digging into her neck and that part of her (the sick, decaying part of her) wants to lean in, because, because he’s touching her—he’s touching her— “How did you do it?”
A laugh bubbles out of her.
It sounds diseased, like a rabid dog with a frothing mouth, and Sakura hopes he will tear out her throat and put her out of her misery.
“Crazy boy,” She taunts, wheezing when his hands squeeze tighter. “Monster child. I am no one’s. I will not answer your stupid questions.”
A rumble of feverish fury escapes him and Sakura’s so sure, so, so, sure that he’s going to snap her neck in his hands right there when—
Someone knocks at the door.