by Skye Warren
The air stirred behind me. I felt his heat at my back.
He dropped a kiss on my bare shoulder. “This was done to you. It wasn’t your fault. You know that. Don’t you?”
I shook my head. A lump formed in my throat, barring any words. But that was just as well. What I had to say couldn’t fit into the accepted language of a woman. A survivor not a victim, they said. As if the word mattered, when I could feel the lingering wounds with every breath I took. They may have been done to me, but they were a part of me now. Taken into my skin, my soul. My outside finally matched what was inside—that was the gift Carlos gave me.
Hennessey ran his fingers down my arms, feather light. “Let me in,” he murmured. “Let me in.”
I knew what he wanted. To take care of me, to comfort me. To control me. The same thing Carlos had wanted. They weren’t so different, and with a sigh, I closed my eyes and sank into him. My head rested on his chest, cradled by the hard muscles of a man who worked more than he rested.
His musk enveloped me like a lullaby. Put your fears to sleep. And in his arms, I found acceptance for my outward hideousness, if not the inside. He pressed kisses along my temple and down my hairline. He kissed the skin below my ear and continued until he found the seam of my neck and my shoulder. A sensitive place, one smooth and free of any bruises or whip marks.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured.
I had to close my eyes, because he didn’t know. Didn’t really see me. I wanted to blurt it out, suddenly, when keeping the secret had been my entire life’s work. I’d gone to see therapists and entered the academy, constantly moving, striving, running away from the truth. No one had ever hurt me, but that was a lie I told myself.
Turning in his arms, I faced him. The unadulterated sorrow in his face struck me like a lash. I’d done this to him, some way and somehow, and I was about to make it worse. The hotel’s A/C rained down cold air, raising goose bumps on my flesh. I was naked, brutally so. It was fitting, because I felt so exposed. Raw. Split open. Primed for a confession I’d barely even acknowledged to myself.
“I turned my father in. For murder. For rape. A bunch of other charges.”
“I know,” he said simply.
“He’s there for life. I don’t really know how he escaped the death penalty.”
“You did the right thing.”
“Did I?” I laughed and the sound was hollow. “My own father. My own flesh and blood. How can you trust me if I’d turn on my own family?”
“I trust you.”
I shook my head. He didn’t understand. “I didn’t turn him in because I just figured out he had killed someone. I suspected all along.”
His expression didn’t change. “You were a child.”
“Yes. A child.”
I closed my eyes as the truth flayed me open, more brutally than Carlos’s whip had ever done. What do you remember? I remembered my father hurting me, and every time I’d told myself he hadn’t, it had been a lie.
“He molested me from the time I was six years old.”
Hennessey sucked in a breath. I felt his shock. I felt my shock, at the truth I’d barely acknowledged in my own mind.
This will be our little secret, okay?
This was what my father had meant. Not the murders, the other children that he’d thought were a secret anyway. He’d meant his abuse of me. That would be our little secret, and until this moment, I’d never told anyone. How obedient. I’d never even admitted it to myself.
I kept going. Couldn’t stop now. “Until I was eight. Then I guess I was too old for him. I don’t know. He just stopped coming. And you know what the crazy part is?”
He did know. I could see the painful knowledge in his eyes. He would have studied enough victim psychology to understand how the mind works, especially one so young.
“I missed it,” I whispered. “I missed him coming to see me. Even though it hurt. Even though I knew it was wrong. How fucked up is that?”
“You were a child,” he repeated, more forcefully. His jaw was clenched. His whole body vibrated with anger, with energy, but I felt just the opposite, strangely deflated. I had almost, almost been able to keep this a secret from myself. If I just didn’t think about it, I didn’t have to know the truth.
“That’s why I told on him. To punish him for going to other children instead of me. I knew…I knew other kids were getting hurt, but I said nothing. Not until I was jealous.” I spat the final word, disgusted with myself. Bitterness thickened my voice. “He knew, too. My dad. That was what he said to me the last time I saw him. In jail. ‘I should’ve killed you too.’”
In the span of a second, Hennessey grabbed me. Crushed me against his chest, his arms hurting, his chest comforting. Oh God. I was so fucking crazy. He was never going to want to be with me now. I’d lost more than just my fake sanity. I’d lost him.
Still, I closed my eyes and let him hold me. I pretended he’d stay with me after this. I pretended he wouldn’t tell the Bureau I couldn’t work there anymore because I was insane and awful and broken inside. It would be a relief, in a way, for everyone to finally see the monster within. A relief to admit it to myself.
Every time I’d dreamed of someone hurting me, it hadn’t been because I didn’t know how it would feel. It was because I did know how it felt, and I wanted to have it again. The fear and the pain. It had become a drug for me in my formative years, and the addiction had never gone away. Never would.
I’d pretended to be normal for years, wished for it, but even as I stood in front of a man who could give that to me, I’d ruined it. A man who had built his career, his life around putting people in jail wouldn’t want a woman who had let a criminal go unchecked for so long. Being a child didn’t excuse me. Being a victim didn’t either. But just for tonight, I wanted to pretend. Another form of lying, but it was all I had left.
I moved against him, the slightest undulation to change the shape of our embrace. My breasts were already against his chest, tucked between my arms, and I rubbed them on him like a cat, marking him with my scent.
Turning my head, I kissed his chest, reveling in the coarse hairs that tickled my lips. He was strong where I was soft, rough where I was smooth. Distilled into the essence of masculinity and reformed in my arms, hard and pulsing. I wanted to hold him like this forever, to map every hollow and callus on his body, but there wasn’t time for that. This wasn’t a leisurely exploration; it was an invasion, quick and fierce, before he changed his mind. I placed open-mouthed kisses on his nipple. He jerked against me.
“Samantha, we don’t have to do this.” His voice sounded strained, on a razor thin edge.
I glanced down at the bulge, its shape and girth clearly visible beneath the thin fabric of his pants. “But you want to.”
His eyes flashed. “I’ve always wanted to.”
But he wouldn’t. First because I was his partner. And now? Because I’d been hurt, beaten. Normal men didn’t want to fuck a woman like that. I was too broken for rough sex, wasn’t I? If anything, they could make love or cuddle or… No. I didn’t want some diluted version of him. I might be broken, but that didn’t mean I wanted him to hide the worst of him. I craved the worst of him.
“Please,” I begged. “Carlos…he took something from me. Let me do this with you. Be normal.”
He sighed. “This isn’t normal, Samantha. It’s messed up.”
“I’m messed up!” I shouted, angry now. “What the hell else am I going to do?”
Silence. His expression was pained.
All I could do was push and push. And all he could do was take it. “Should I go on match.com? Do I mention my recent run-in with torture and rape in the bio section or wait until the first date to tell them?”
“Jesus.”
“Well, what do you want me to say? No one wants someone fucked up and broken. You don’t either. So where does that leave me? Should I go find someone like Carlos? At least they’ll still fuck me.”
He looked fit
to strangle someone. Me, probably. His expression was molten lava, burning hot and terrifying. Excitement thrummed through me. I wanted this. Pure emotion, unfiltered.
What do you remember?
I wanted to remember this.
Chapter Fifteen
“Get on the bed,” he said.
A tremor ran through me. Fear? Desire? I couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
“Get on the fucking bed.” His voice sharpened, but even now, I wasn’t sure he would actually go through with it. Maybe he’d tuck me in and leave me here, as if I really had died under Carlos’s hand. As if I’d died when my father should have killed me. All my life, trying to see if I was even still alive.
But I went. I lay down on the bed, and he followed, standing beside me. There was no place to hide, spread out on cool sheets. He stared down at the silvery lash marks on my breasts and swallowed. Did they disgust him? He bent and placed a kiss on my nipple. I shut my eyes. Another kiss landed on a half-healed bruise, and I flinched.
“Does it hurt?” he asked hoarsely.
I shook my head. He licked a cut with barely-formed scar tissue, and despite bracing myself, I whimpered.
He made a sound of regret. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I don’t…” I opened my eyes. He looked down at me, curious and heartbroken. “It hurts, but I don’t want you to stop.” I don’t want you to leave me.
His frown was uncertain. He had to know how fucked up all this was, but he’d straddled the world of the criminal and the law-abiding for so long, he knew also how little that mattered in the end. Sane and crazy. Right and wrong. It all whirred together like the tinsel-bright colors of a carousel going round and round. Here. Now. That was all we had.
Slow, so I’d have time to stop him, he bent to kiss another cut. Another bruise. He licked and nuzzled and caressed every point of pain on my breasts. He moved down my belly, which was mostly bare. My thighs were marked more deeply than my breasts had been. It was a testament to Carlos’s care of me that the severity of the wounds depended on the place. He hadn’t been randomly beating me. He’d been careful, giving me only as much as I could take. And my thighs could take a lot, judging from the slash marks I’d seen in the mirror. The ones Hennessey stared at now. What did he feel? Disgust?
He did the same for them, licking and kissing until my hips rolled up in silent invitation. Please, here. He did move to my center, licking at my cunt with skill and eagerness. But only on my outer lips. He nudged my hip, and following his tacit instructions, I turned over. He repeated the strange healing process starting at the nape of my neck. He trailed his tongue along a thinly formed scab on a cut, and I gasped. He sucked at a bruise, sending sparks of pain to my core. The sensations were tied up between surface pain and deep, sensual pleasure. They were tied up between natural aversion and a childhood longing.
He worked his way down my body, over the valley of my lower back and the hills of my ass. Lower still, until he reached my ankles and circled them lightly where the chains had been. I jerked when I felt something soft and wet at the bottom of my feet, right on the heel. He kissed and licked there too. It felt strange at first, as if he were abasing himself—and I would never ask that of him. But it was different when given freely, like he did for me now. Where once I’d felt the worst kind of pain imaginable for fleeting, heart-stopping seconds, now he caressed the tender skin with his lips, laved it with his tongue. He found each wound on my body and he loved it—and in that way I found the acceptance I’d been searching for. Carlos had hurt me, but that was only one half of the equation. But this, this was the answer.
A cell phone rang in the distance, but he muttered for me to ignore it. As if to ensure his command, he pulled my hips up, so I knelt on the bed face down. It was wholly undignified the way my face and breasts hugged the sheets and my ass pointed at the ceiling. Wholly undignified the way he pressed his face between my legs from behind, licking and sucking at my cunt. He delved deeper this time, lapping at the moisture in my core, drawing it out.
He found my clit and circled it, pressing the flat of his tongue against it in a timeless rhythm until I moaned against the sheets and warm liquid dripped down the inside of my thigh. He made love to me with his mouth, moving over every place that Carlos had touched, that Carlos had hurt.
Hennessey’s touch didn’t erase the pain. He made it sharper. Sweeter. I still felt the ache, jerking and crying out at the touch of wet tongue to torn skin. He saw the darkness written on my skin, and he wanted me anyway. The thought spurred me higher, on the roughened currents of hope.
I pushed back against him, shoving my wet cunt against his face, begging him to take more of me, all of it. Fingers slipped inside me, filling me where I needed him. It wasn’t enough though, and I clenched around him with my secret muscles, begging for reprieve only he could give me.
He pushed my hips down flat on the bed and placed his cock at my entrance.
“Tell me it’s okay,” he said.
He had to know I wanted him, from the dampness drenching the crown of his cock to my breathless moans urging him on. He knew, but he wanted me to state it clearly, unequivocally. That was the difference between him and Carlos. Carlos had reveled in my lack of consent, had gotten off on it. This man wanted more than my reluctant participation. He wanted my full-fledged desire, and he had it. I wanted his strong body. His intelligent mind. His unrelenting sense of honor. I wanted all of him.
“Yes. Please. Take me.”
“More,” he said on a groan.
I begged. “God, please. I want to feel you inside me. I need to… Let me…”
My words ended on a gasp and a sudden sense of fullness. I couldn’t breathe. Could only gasp against the bed, sucking the fabric against my lips and muffling the sound of my pain. I was still sore here, something I hadn’t known about before coming here. I didn’t regret it; like his kisses before, his touch on the bruises left behind made everything richer. Layers of pleasure on pain, an indulgence of sensation. I gripped him with my cunt, and he pulsed inside me, a shared and private communion I could feel and observe but not change. Along for the ride as he picked up his pace, pushing inside me faster and deeper, finding a spot that made me gush all over his cock and down my legs.
“Feel me,” he grunted. “Feel me.” It became a chant, muttered under his breath, indistinguishable from his rough, needy sounds.
I knew exactly what he meant. More than touch, more than words. He wanted to leave his mark somewhere deeper, but he’d already done so. Before I’d even been captured, I’d fallen for him. What we did now just retraced those lines on my body, over my heart.
The pressure built and tightened through my body, centering around the invasion of his cock, exploding over me and raining down sparks I felt in every cut, in every bruise. I moaned against the sheets, out of breath and mindless, giving myself over to the utter weightlessness of hope and the breadth of desire. Open, trusting. Finding exactly what I needed around the pulsing hotness of his erection. He stiffened behind me as he rocked against my ass, the sound of his low groan filling me and sinking deep into my core.
There wasn’t any place to hide as his body sank down on mine. Not any way to lie to myself about how much I wanted him like this, sated and spent, bonded and broken. The feeling seemed to be mutual. He let out a quiet sigh, acceptance and need wrapped into one.
* * *
The acceptance was too much, too complete. I couldn’t believe in it, especially when I’d only just admitted the full extent of my father’s abuse to myself. I tried to warn him about the poison inside me—the shame and the guilt. To protect him. From me.
“Do you remember the story,” I whispered in the dark, “of the scorpion and the frog? The frog carried the scorpion on its back as they crossed the river. The scorpion stung the frog, and as they both were drowning, the frog asked the scorpion why he’d done it.”
“Because I’m a scorpion,” he finished.
I stayed silent, my p
oint made.
He made a small sound, a puff of air, incredulous. “You are not the scorpion.”
“But—”
“You’re not. Now shh. Come here.”
And he proceeded to make me forget I’d ever doubted. We made love countless times over the course of the night. Each time I woke with hands on my body and his cock deep inside me. I’d opened a dam, and he rushed forward, poured forth, unstoppable in his passion. And I received him, made myself a vessel to hold whatever he gave me.
As yellow light filtered through the waffle-patterned curtains, I grew to trust in what he offered me. It wasn’t forever. Even better, it was now. He was used to dealing with some of the toughest criminals in the world. And sure, he wasn’t trying to date them. But the point was, he didn’t fear me. Not what had happened to me as a child or what had happened with Carlos. I didn’t need to warn him away any longer. He understood. He stayed.
At least until I woke the final time. I stretched and felt…nothing. Just a warm spot where he had been. I could hear the shower running. I could imagine him naked with water running down his body, winding its way over his skin like a liquid web, catching him for me. That made me the spider. I was the cautionary tale, but he’d always been a risk taker. Tackling the toughest cases at the FBI. He didn’t feel fear like normal people, which made him perfect for a girl who’d been afraid her whole life.
In the bright morning light, I couldn’t quite believe I’d confessed to him about my father. It felt like a dream, but then everything related to my father felt that way. The memories of him coming into my room. Repressed memories. I sighed. A psychologist would have a field day with that one, but I was done with that. It hadn’t fixed me. Nothing could.
I’d seen a tree once with an indent running all the way around the trunk. Something had been there and the tree had grown around it, damaged but still alive. That was me. I was as healthy as I could be all on my own. As for the Bureau, I’d see one of their psychologists to get cleared for duty, but I wasn’t going to bare my soul. I had a meeting with Brody today. I wondered if he’d give me the results of the psych exam. There were mandatory minimums for things like this, but as long as no red flags came up in the therapy sessions, Brody would have to reinstate me. I just had to wait them out, and with Hennessey in my home, it was no hardship.