The Whispers of Shadows - Azriel

64

Azriel led Aurora to the bathing chamber, standing her in front of the full sized mirror. She swallowed harshly as she looked over herself, the straps of her dress still hanging from her shoulders. Azriel had loosened the knot in the laced back, so the dress hung from her body. He kissed her shoulder, meeting her eyes in the mirror.

"Are you okay with me taking this dress off?" Aurora bit her lip to stop it from trembling as she nodded. Azriel pressed another kiss to her shoulder before tugging the ribbon free and nudging the dress until it pooled at her feet. Aurora looked beyond the mirror, at the cream painted wall behind it. Azriel took her hair in his hands and moved it over her shoulder. Her breath caught once more when his lips met the uneven skin of the scar on her back.

"So beautiful," he murmured under his breath, kissing every part of the mangled skin. Aurora swallowed her tears, lifting her eyes to the wooden beams along the ceiling. Azriel's fingertips traced the skin behind his lips as he lower to his knee, kissing her spine. Her body tensed when he kissed the bite mark scar on her rear, hand splayed on her hip.

"Every inch of you is perfection." She didn't trust his words, not when he was hidden behind her. Not when her mind screamed the opposite. Azriel stood again and she felt his calloused hand against her jaw, fingers on her chin as he urged her to face the mirror. A tear slipped between her closed lashes and she felt the scruff on his cheek as he leaned over her shoulder and kissed just in front of her ear. "Open your eyes, my love. Look at the way I see you."

Her breath shuddered as Aurora peeled her eyes open, blinking through the blurred vision to see herself, Azriel standing behind her. He began to kneel again and she kept her eyes on his.

"I'll start down here and make my way up," he explained in a soft tone. One knee was between her legs, the other to the side of her. One of his hands wrapped around the inside of her thigh to steady himself, the other tracing a line from her shin up to the entirely torn apart skin on her thigh. The fingers ran over the scars of teeth marks and circled the deep indent of where the arrow had been lodged in her skin. Aurora cringed as she glanced toward it then back to his eyes. Azriel shifted his body enough to place gentle kisses around the entirety of the scar tissue, gripping the inside of her thigh with both hands now. A shiver ran through her when his thumb began drawing circles.

"These scars are apart of you, Aurora. A way to show that you've gone through the worst of experiences and still made it out. You've lived such a hard life, let me be the one to bring you peace." Azriel's breath fanned across her skin as his lips moved to her other thigh to kiss the mark from her training that morning and the few scars scattered throughout. He then gripped her hip and lifted his face just in front of her clothed core. Aurora throat worked on a swallow as she watched his head move in the mirror. His wings hid her body behind them, and she found it much easier to watch now.

Azriel kissed the teeth marks on her hips and lower stomach, tongue tracing one near the line of her underwear. Aurora shuddered again.

"You're so brave, so strong, so beautiful," Azriel whispered, looking up at her. Aurora looked down to meet his eyes, vision blurring as the tears in her waterline blocked her gaze. Azriel kissed along the part of her lower stomach that was much softer than anywhere else, where her love of food had given her its own love back.

"This part of you makes me proud, it makes me so incredibly happy to know that your body is getting the nutrition you never got before. That you're healthy enough to start protecting your organs. I love to see you eat, I love to watch you train. You're treating your body the way it should've been treated for all of those years."

Aurora choked back a sob when he rested his hand on her stomach and brought his mouth to the teeth marks littering her abdomen. He kissed each one twice, his hands resting on her ribcage and thumbs sat beneath her breasts. He kissed around them, then kissed the bite that was left on her breast. She hated how her skin flared heat during such an intimate moment when his bottom lip grazed her pebbled nipple, but she loved how he accepted that sensation gratefully by rolling his thumb over her other breast.