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Prison? A fury of nausea flooded her. What had the woman done? Was she responsible for his scars?

Charlee circled fingers around the damage, mesmerized by the strength of the man beneath. Unwilling to drown him with the questions piling up in her throat, she pressed her lips together and finalized the last curve of the outline.

Finished, she disassembled the liner machine, plugged in the shader, and mixed a thimble of black ink with distilled water for blending. She added two more thimbles of red and brown.

For the next hour, the buzz of the machine overlaid the quiet between them. Sketched shreds of skin emerged from the real scars, curling away, and giving the image a three-dimensional effect. She kept her mind on the design, unable to justify the urge to ply him to talk. If she pushed him, he might shut down completely.

Midway through the shadowing on the final steel plate, he raised his head. “Take a break.”

In a jumble of anxiousness, she swiped the freshly inked area with Vaseline, clicked off the power supply, and set the machine aside. Then she looked at him expectantly.

His gaze, exposed and patient, burned through her, singeing away any lust she’d built up while touching the defined muscles on his back.

“Please put your hands on me.”

Whatever was pouring from his expression welled up from deep inside him and had nothing to do with her. She climbed over him, straddled one of his legs, and ran her hands over his middle back, careful to avoid the fresh ink.

“I don’t remember my parents. My earliest memory begins with Aunt El in a shed. It was an old ramshackle building behind the main house. One room, one window, one door. I think it had held my father’s tools at one time, but after he died, everything was cleared out.” He propped his chin on his joined hands and stared across the room. “Everything was gone except an old mattress and a Bolo oven.”

Saliva pooled in her mouth and blood surged through her veins. Were his burns connected to the oven? He’d whisperedBoloa few times during the worst of his nightmares. Had he crawled in it? Maybe he fell asleep and someone turned it on? She gripped her stomach.

“Please don’t take your touch away.”

Her hand flew to his bicep, caressed the sinews of muscle. Her other traced his lower back along the waistband. She leaned to the side, put his strong profile in view.

He closed his eyes, a tic bouncing in his jaw. “That first time, I’d done something my aunt disapproved of. I don’t know. The memories are just snapshots. Feelings are clearer. I remember her anger. It warped her face when she locked me in the shed.”

Biting back the comforting words that sprang forward, she massaged his arms and shoulders and pressed kisses through the short strands of hair behind his ear. She knew he wanted her to listen and touch. Not blather on with useless reassurances.

“The film over the window blocked the light and the darkness seemed to freeze time in there. In the beginning, I think the punishments were just short stays. The feelings that remain with me though, the endless hunger and the cold…I was probably in there through the night. Maybe several nights. Toward the end, I wasn’t allowed out at all.” His throat worked, and a quiver twitched along his back. “That’s where they found me.”

Grief and fury swelled in her throat and seared her sinuses. “How old were you?” Her voice broke.

“Six.”

The image of a six-year-old Jay, locked in a shed in freezing nowhere Canada threatened to shatter her outward composure. Why was his tone so indifferent when she was seconds from exploding?

Climbing off his leg, she crawled to a better position to examine his expression. Stretched alongside him, her chest to his side, her hand on his arm, she lay her cheek on the mattress.

Face-to-face, he watched her watching him. “I’ve tried to make sense of my memories, to fit them into the reports the detectives filed…after.” He raised his arm and hooked it around her back, pulling her close.

“Watch your ink. Don’t roll over—”

“She put me in the oven.”

His words echoed between them. Horror numbed her limbs. Her heart pounded. The constriction in her lungs spread through her body. “How…how could…” She couldn’t say it, couldn’t ask how a little boy could fit in an oven. Or the question that wouldn’t have an answer. Why?

“It was an enlarged modification of a vintage single-door Bolo used for roasting flanks of wild game, deer, moose, whatever my father hunted. I was nineteen when I returned. It was still there.” His nostrils flared. “It was barely visible amongst the charred debris when I burned down the shed.” His gaze turned inward, cloudy. “She forced me to squat on a pillow inside, warned me not to touch the walls. The thermostat must have been set to warm. I remember the…burn, but I don’t think it was hot enough to singe my skin.”

The scars on his back rebuked that. Her veins boiled with the lethal hammer of her pulse and her eyes ached, blurring her vision.

“I must have grown taller over that year,” he said softly. “I couldn’t keep my back from touching the wall anymore.”

“The burns accumulated over time.” Layer upon layer over his young skin. She choked back bile.

He jerked his chin, up, down. “The scars might not have been so terrible if she’d cleaned them, treated them. Infection set in. I got sick. I guess she phoned a doctor, asked questions, made him suspicious.” His chest heaved and his hand fisted, digging into her spine.

“And the doctor reported it? That’s how they found you?”