by Mara Leigh
I shake my head. “It’s not necessary. I’m sure we’ll get this mess straightened out soon. Everyone wanted Zora dead. FJS just needs to develop a justification for what I did, otherwise chaos would reign.”
“How come FJS has so much power?” Selina looks around the room.
“If you’re looking for cameras,” I say, “they aren’t necessary. But yes, someone is probably listening to our conversation.”
She closes her eyes and nods.
“FJS is the oldest vampiric organization in the new world, and they have royal authority to uphold the code.”
“And what about the other syndicates?”
I take her hand. “The syndicates are nothing like FJS. Most were formed after humans uncovered our existence. They’re more like clubs, big extended families to help their members evade humans—to survive.”
“Can’t FJS protect everyone?”
I shrug. “Not everyone is the corporate type. And not all of the syndicates are law abiding.”
She nods. “Are your powerful friends from one of these syndicates?”
“No. Nothing like that.” I shake my head. “I don’t want to talk about that anymore. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter, if it will help get you out.” Pain twists her face for a moment, then she grabs my hands and looks into my eyes with such determination. “Gray. I love you. I love you so much, and if you care about me at all, then you need to do whatever it takes to get out of here.”
My heart nearly explodes, and I pull her into a tight embrace as I stand, crushing her small but strong body against mine. How many more times will I be able to hold her like this? How will I survive when I can’t?
“I care about you more than I can say,” I whisper close to her ear. “But I can’t tell you more about my powerful friends. Not now. Not in here. Not with others listening. As soon as I’m released, I’ll tell you everything.” I pull back and look into her eyes. “I promise.” And I mean it. At least in this moment, I mean it.
But I doubt I’ll have to keep the promise. I’m starting to think that FJS will jail me forever. But at least that will keep Selina out of the hands of the Order.
Our lips hover close together, our breaths co-mingling and the anticipation climbing. I hold there, not wanting the delicious moment to end, not wanting to do anything that will acknowledge the passing of time or the fact that we’ll soon be separated again.
But eventually I yield.
And the instant we kiss I’m pulled under. For the seconds or minutes or hours that our lips remain joined, I drown in her love. I drown and yet I’m rejuvenated too.
“Selina. It’s time to go.” Astrid’s voice echoes through my haze and I realize I didn’t even notice when she reentered the room.
We break our kiss, and I gasp for air, trying to remember how to breathe on my own.
“Don’t worry.” Selina squeezes my hands. “I’ll get you out of here. I promise. And after that we can be together forever.”
We keep our gazes connected as she moves toward the door and Astrid guides her out.
The second the door closes, I collapse to the floor.
I’ve kept so much from Selina. Too much. No matter what my motives, when Selina finds out the truth she’ll never forgive me.
Chapter 9
Selina
It’s well past closing time at the bar by the time I leave FJS, but I stop to see whether Rock’s still there. The night is humid, almost steamy, the air thickly choking. The lights are out and there’s not a sound from within. In fact, the entire building feels like a phantom of its normal pulsing self, another symbol that nothing will ever be the same, and I fight the urge to cry.
Crying won’t help a thing, and it’s not the same release without tears.
I pause outside the bar. Rock might be in his apartment, two levels below ground, but it feels invasive to let myself in to check. If that’s where he is, he’s there because he wants to be alone. And I don’t know if he’ll ever forgive me.
I glance at my phone to see whether Colton has texted, but there’s nothing, and that sends an uncomfortable feeling straight into my bones. It’s not like Colton always contacted me on nights we didn’t meet, but I can’t shake Astrid’s suggestion that my human friend might remember more than he let on.
I fight the notion. If he were deceiving me, wouldn’t he purposefully keep in touch to keep up the ruse and make me believe that nothing was wrong? I wish I knew. Colton has always been so transparent with his feelings—about vampires, about me—that I don’t know how he acts if he’s lying.
I walk slowly back toward Gray’s house, feeling more alone than I’ve felt since the first night I met Rock, and although alone was my natural state for so long, it feels alien now.
It’s like everything in the world is outside my reach. The flaps of bat wings in the air, the screeches of raccoons battling over trash, the snores of humans inside homes that I pass—they all seem distant, even though I know the sources of these sounds are close.
Gray’s house is quiet, but when I focus in, I sense Rock upstairs in our room. His room. I have no idea whose room it is now. But both his hearts beat in their hard but slow pattern I recognize as sleep. A restless sleep.
I want nothing more than to climb into bed beside him, but I’m not sure how he’ll react if he wakes. I need to beg for Rock’s forgiveness but if he doesn’t accept it, I’m not sure I can withstand the pain of a crushing rejection tonight.
The mere thought of entering Gray’s room without him there makes me cringe, and entering one of the vacant guest rooms seems just as warm as sleeping on the marble floor of the foyer.
I creep down the stairs to see if Pike’s in the basement, but there’s no sign of him anywhere and my sense of isolation turns up to a devastating level. I don’t know which is worse: the idea that Pike is already in FJS custody or that he’s out somewhere in the city on his own.
Returning to the main floor, I pause at the bottom of the stairs. I was a fool to imagine I’d found the family I crave. The family I never knew I was searching for until it was almost in my grasp. I was a fool to imagine I’d found the love that I crave and know deep down I deserve. Because I do deserve love.
I slowly ascend the stairs to the second floor. I’m not sure that Rock will ever love me again—not in the same way. I broke the trust between us. Having him love me is a stretch goal at the moment. I’ll feel happy if he ever speaks to me again.
The door to his room is open, and the sounds of his deep breaths wrap around me as I enter. He’s on the mattress on the floor. What remains of the bed frame is piled against one wall, a physical reminder of my horrible mistake. As if I needed one.
I lean against the wall near the door and bend over, sucking in air, trying to regain my bearings, trying to imagine how life going forward might unfold, trying to figure out what I can possibly say to mend what I broke.
“Acushla.” Rock’s voice, gruff and low, comes from across the room. He props himself up on his elbows to half sit. “You’re home.”
I nod slowly, from where I’m holding up the wall.
“Come,” he says, and then shifts over on the mattress to make room for me beside him.
It feels like a gift I don’t deserve, like going to him is committing yet another crime against Rock, but I go anyway, sliding into the warm space he left behind and yielding as he tucks my shoulders under his arm and pulls me against his side.
“Gray didn’t come home with you,” he says quietly and rubs my arm.
“No.” I can’t believe that he’s comforting me and not the other way around. “Have you seen Pike?” I ask.
“Not since last night.”
I squeeze my eyes tight, wishing I could turn back time.
“Talk to me,” he says softly.
“I woke you up. It can wait until morning.”
“I’m awake,” he says. “And I want to know what’s going on with Gray and Pike and Colton. With you.”
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Although I’d meant to keep my hands to myself, one lands on his chest that rises underneath my palm.
“Didn’t Malcolm say that Gray would be released tonight?” Rock’s voice rumbles under my touch.
“Astrid wouldn’t let him go, and now she’s after Pike too, and now both of them could be in prison forever and it’s all my fault.” My words tumble out in the same kind of tone a four-year-old might use to describe how another child took her toys.
“Don’t fret, Acushla,” Rock says. “I’m sure all will be well.”
He can’t possibly know this. I know more about the situation than he does. And yet Rock’s assurances comfort me almost as much as lying in his arms does. Perhaps tonight I am that four-year-old child, easily wronged, easily comforted.
But I’m not a child. I’m a grown woman, and on top of the problems I caused for Pike and Gray, I emotionally wounded Rock. I overstepped the only boundary he ever laid before me. Smashed that boundary like a vampiric wrecking ball. And that’s the problem I need to face now.
“I’m so sorry,” I say in an almost whisper. “If I say it all day, every day for eternity, I’ll never be able to express how sorry I am.”
“Shhh.” He squeezes me against him. “It’s me who should apologize.”
“What for?” I shake my head against him. “Why would you apologize?”
“Our sex problem is my issue, not yours. I can’t give you what you need.”
I push up to rest on one elbow, the other hand on his chest so I can look into his eyes. But they’re closed, his face turned away from me.
“Please, Rock. Let me apologize. If anyone should understand the word no, it’s me. I pushed you.”
“I overreacted,” he says. “But I thought you understood that I can’t—”
“That’s the thing, Rock. I did understand. You have limits when it comes to sex and I should have respected that. You don’t owe me an explanation, but…”
His breaths continue to lift his chest and my hand along with it, as I pause, hoping he’ll fill in the blanks. Or at least look at me.
“Whatever it is, Rock.” I trace my hand over his hard chest. “Whatever happened to make you feel this way about sex, you can tell me. You can tell me anything.”
“Not this.” His voice breaks.
“Why?”
“Because you’ll never see me the same way again.”
I lean over him and cup his face in my hand. “I love you Rock. So much it physically hurts me to see you in pain. I’m not going to pretend that I know how to heal whatever it is that’s hurting you, but this thing, this wound, whatever it is, it’s part of you and there’s nothing you could possibly tell me that could make me love you less.”
He draws a long, audible breath through his nostrils. “Is that some kind of dare?”
“Not a dare. It’s a promise.”
He turns his head toward me and opens his eyes. They’re so filled with pain it’s like a stake to my heart.
“Who hurt you?” I ask as I stroke his cheek.
He closes his eyes again. “I am the one who caused all the pain.”
I don’t believe him, not for a minute, but I don’t want to say anything that will keep him from sharing his story.
“Tell me,” I say softly. “I love you. Nothing you can tell me would make me love you less.”
“I’ll tell you, but I can’t look at you.” He turns away.
“Okay. That’s okay.” It’s not what I want, but it’s what he needs.
He slides up to sit against the wall behind the mattress, then separates his legs and guides me to sit between them, my back against his chest, and hope returns that at least one part of my life might be healed.
“I told you I was in a circus.” His deep voice rumbles behind me.
“Yes.” I’d almost forgotten, since he never brought it up again.
“I didn’t tell you about my act.”
I assume he was part of a freak show. The world’s largest man or some such nonsense, unverifiable at the time. “Were you put on display, like an animal?”
“To start. For years and years that’s all it was, but then I grew, my body changed from a boy’s shape to a man’s, and the circus got a new owner who had other ideas for me.”
“Being on display like that. It must have been humiliating.”
“My humiliation was nothing. They forced me— No.” He stops. “I have to own what I did. I have to face that it was me and only me who hurt so many women, possibly killed some, certainly damaged most to the point they could never bear children.”
I bite down on the words, I don’t believe you. The Rock I know would never, ever hurt anyone weaker than himself. But I need to let him tell his story in his own time.
“Every night,” he says quietly. “Every fecking night they’d bring some poor woman on stage and tie her up, her pussy exposed to the crowd.” His voice breaks.
I touch his thighs beside me, but they tense up, his whole body tenses, so I slide my hands back to my own lap.
“They kept me in chains, like some kind of animal. And I was an animal. A beast. A monster who’d fuck the poor lass while the crowd cheered me on. I’d ram her tiny hole with my huge fecking rod as she screamed in agony. And she’d always scream, at least until they gagged her, or she passed out from the pain.”
My throat and chest tighten. I want to say something comforting, but even if I could think of the right words to say, I’m not sure I could squeeze them out through my quickly closing throat.
As someone who’s suffered through rape, been penetrated without my consent, it’s hard to hear Rock’s story. In the story he’s telling, I am the woman. I am the one brought on stage to be tortured for others’ entertainment.
Why would Rock do this? He must have been a completely different person back then, and even though it’s far in the past, it’s hard for me to imagine him committing acts of purposeful cruelty, even if he was in chains.
Hurting others for pleasure, or even to alleviate his own pain, the mere idea of that does not mesh with the Rock I know. Even if life in this circus was the only life he’d ever known, I can’t imagine the man I know performing in a show like that, earning his living in such a revolting manner.
“Why?” I ask softly.
“Doesn’t matter.” He sighs behind me. “Excuses can’t change what I did.”
“There’s a difference between excuses and reasons.” I reach up behind me to find his cheek, wet with tears. “And even if you think they’re excuses, I want to know what they are.”
“I had a love,” he says almost inaudibly. “A love before you.”
My fingers still for an instant, then continue my caress.
“What was her name? Or his?”
“Liliana.” The name is heavy on his lips, drenched in loss. “Lily.”
“What was she like?”
“Kind. Talented. Beautiful.”
“Did she work at the circus too?”
“She was strong. Performed feats of strength for the crowd few men could accomplish.”
I can sense his pride in her to this day.
“Were you…were you married?” I ask, ashamed that I care about the answer. Rock was alive more than a century before I was born, and I can’t believe that I’m jealous of a woman who lived so long ago. But I am.
“Aye.” He says softly.
“Did you have children?”
“No. We never. We wanted to. I couldn’t get my thing inside her.”
“So…” My heart squeezes in my chest. “The only times you’ve had sex were on stage?”
“Aye.”
“Your first time was on stage?” I think through all the implications of his story.
“Aye.” His head shakes side-to-side and I drop my hand back down to my lap.
“The first few months were the worst,” he says, pain in his voice. “None of the times were good, but the first while, until I learned how to get it over quickly. Until I learn
ed how to enter without help.”
“Help?”
“My handlers, the stage hands. They used to…” His voice tightens as he tries to get the words out. “The first few months they fastened chains to leather straps around my hips and dragged them to the four corners of the stage. One would hold my cock to position me, then the ones on the chairs would tug me forward and back. Five or six men on each of the chains.
“They’d force me inside her over and over. ‘Heave, ho!’ they’d yell and the crowd would join in. And sometimes they’d change the chant, but I tried to block out the sounds, the words. Just like I blocked out…”
“Blocked out what?”
“The pleasure.” His voice breaks again. “The fecking pleasure. I was hurting these women, and I knew it. After the act, I’d almost always have blood on my rod, but it fecking felt good. I’d never felt anything like that before, and I hated how good it felt. And then it got worse.”
“Worse?”
“I found ways to resist. I’d wank off all day so that I couldn’t get hard on stage. Or I’d twist my hips to the side when they pulled so I’d keep missing her hole.”
“How were those things worse?”
“Because when I resisted, that’s when they brought in my Lily.”
“They made you… I thought you said…” Then I figure it out.
I considered myself a virgin until I had consensual sex, and that’s probably how Rock felt too. In his mind, in his heart, he never made love to his wife because he only ever did it on stage.
My heart breaks. “How horrible that you were forced to consummate your marriage in such a crude and public way.”
“No. They kept her off stage,” he says, anger growing in his voice. “They’d chain her, naked, right in my line of sight. At first their plan was to use her to get me erect, but they soon realized it would take more than that to make me perform. Whenever I failed on stage, they’d hurt her.”
His voice tightens. “The things they did to my Lily.” He wraps his arms around me. “It kills me inside to know that you’ve suffered such acts too.”
I turn my head and he lets me twist to the side so I can see into his eyes. His pain crushes me. I’m not sure how I’ll ever move again under the weight of it.