Jia Li wouldn’t have blamed him for leaving. Hell, with what had just happened, if she wasn’t already in her own room, she probably would have left, too. Right now, she just wanted to curl up in a ball in some dark corner and die, but she wouldn’t. No matter what happened to her, she wasn’t the sort to just kill herself. She owed it to her tree to continue living no matter how many scars marred her soul.
Instead of leaving as she’d expected him to do, once she’d told him what happened, he moved toward her. Jia Li couldn’t look at him, and as he sat next to her, she started to tremble again. She didn’t think he would try to molest her again, so why was she shaking? Maybe she was afraid. The dryad didn’t want his pity even if she’d been hypocritically giving him hers when she’d asked him to come to her dorm.
What a mistake that had been... She would still be happy and ignorant to all things if she’d just stayed out of his business. The dryad had had no right to go digging up his past, and she’d been punished for it tenfold. This would definitely teach her to go looking into others’ mysteries. They were none of her business.
Then he defied all logic, and gently pulled her hands from their positions around her legs moved her scarred leg over his lap. She was too stunned to resist, too confused, and the confusion was obvious in her eyes when she lifted her gaze to peer at his face. It was so strange, feeling his fingers trace the hideous lumps and valleys that formed the flesh of that leg. The skin wasn’t nearly as sensitive as that of her unmarred flesh, but at that moment, it felt like electricity was shooting into her leg at his touch – and probably not because he technically could shoot electricity from his hands ((or so she thought)).
His annoyed sigh actually caused her to tense a little, preparing herself for one of his insults. He usually didn’t try to draw her into him trustingly before delivering them, but there was a first time for everything. He hadn’t tried so hard to take advantage of her before today, either, so this day could be a first for many things.
However, instead of insulting her, he told her the truth, about what he had hoped to accomplish by terrifying her. It erased all thoughts that he really was some horrible rapist. He was just trying to protect himself from her by making her so afraid of him that she’d leave him alone. He wouldn’t have to open up to her or have her nagging at him. It was quite an extreme way of doing it, but nothing else to that point had actually worked – obviously.
Then he basically admitted that the scar hadn’t done anything more than to make him realize she’d been hurt in the past and didn’t need more pain. He moved closer to her, and she watched as his fingers moved over her scars. No one had ever touched them before with the exception of herself. Jia Li had never let anyone near them, and she tried to keep it as much of a secret as she could. Even the people with whom she’d gone to high school who knew she’d been hurt hadn’t really ever seen the effects of it, and with how expertly she hid it, the gossip died away. At college, it was easier to hide because well… no one knew her or knew about her past.
Her green eyes moved back to his face when he said he still thought she was hot. “It’s easier to play something off as nothing if no one knows about it. I didn’t want people asking questions, and yeah, I guess I didn’t want some guy to look at it and flee for the hills.” That hadn’t really been a problem, though, considering the fact that she’d avoided any semblance of romantic relationships since the incident.