The silk had slid off her shoulders like a confession, pooling at her ankles in a deep blue heap—too rich for mourning, the color of a bruise just starting to bloom. And there she stood, naked in the dim bedroom light, not as a victim but as a living map of survival and raw, aching beauty.
All of Roxanne's ruined body was revealed to her son-in-law.
Her full, heavy breasts rose and fell with each ragged breath, the soft, warm weight of them trembling visibly.
The left one bore a large, dusky-purple smear beneath its curve where something cruel had been pressed and held; the skin there felt hot and tight under her own fingertips when she'd checked earlier, throbbing with a dull, persistent ache that now pulsed in time with her racing heart.
Her dark areolae were pebbled tight, scattered with tiny pinprick marks like needle-kisses or claw-tips, each one sending sharp little sparks of sensitivity every time the cool air brushed across them.
