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He squeezed her tight, trapping the air in her lungs. “She was taken away in handcuffs. Never saw her again. I spent the next thirteen years in foster care, and the land became mine when I was nineteen…because she died from a heart condition. Everything went to me.”

“She’d have to own a heart to have a heart condition. How could anyone put a little boy in a…” She choked, fought the tears from her voice. He’d said she was manic. Fuck, manic didn’t touch that kind of sickness. Unexamined viciousness? Pure evil was the only explanation.

“She put me in the oven because she said I was cold when she…” His body shook in violent waves around her. He jerked away and shoved off the bed. His fists flexed, his eyes on fire.

She scooted off the bed and followed him at a distance, dread weighting her feet.

He paced to the bathroom, picking up speed, hands in his hair, ripping at the short ends. The sheen of Vaseline accentuated the tension rippling his back.

At the vanity, he splashed water on his face and stared at the drain. “I hated the darkness, the loneliness smothering that shed. More than that, I hated when she visited me, when she made me lay on the mattress.” His knuckles blanched across his grip on the counter.

No. Oh God, no. She recognized that hate. It spawned from the terror of imminent visitations. She wedged in front of him and cupped his face. “You don’t have to tell me the rest.”

“Charlee. I do. I need—” His jaw clamped and his eyes pinched shut beneath his rubbing fingers. “I hated that Ilikedhow she made me feel. I don’t remember what she did to me, what she made me do, but I know that I liked it.”

His whisper crushed her heart. She blinked back tears, but they escaped anyway. Pulling his face into her neck, she stroked his hair and kissed the side of his head. “Maybe she didn’t—”

“I remember the dread, the embarrassment, the… anticipation.” He pushed away, glaring at her, his gorgeous face twisted in anguish. “Those feelings are as unchangeable as the fucking dark. I feared her. I hated her. But I fucking liked her touching me!” His roar cleaved through the room, slamming into her and tightening her tear-drenched face.

He bent away, launching at the toilet, and retched violently through incoherent shouts.

Her heart vaulted to her throat as she battled her own nausea and squatted behind him. With his hips between her thighs, she wrapped her arms around his torso and held him as he purged his grief. She stroked the strained muscles in his chest and biceps, and restricted her pain to silent sobs.

When his stomach was empty and his head hung, she handed him a towel and flushed the toilet.

Stone-faced and mute, he moved to the sink and brushed his teeth with mechanical movements, the silence thick between them.

Perched on the counter’s edge, she gathered her words, her desperate emotions based on her own experiences. “You didn’t like it. It was rape, Jay.”

He froze, glared at the toothpaste foaming in the sink, and resumed brushing.

“Your body betrayed you.” She touched his arm, his muscles pressing against skin, tense and restrained. “It wasn’t your fault.” With Roy, her orgasms were forced. Her body had writhed in pleasure, treacherous and unwanted as it was.

He looked up, eyes tapered as if penetrating her thoughts. He dropped his toothbrush and pulled her against his chest. “I love you. Fuck, I love you so much. You and me…this—” He crushed her body against his. “This is why we’ll win.”

His declaration electrified her, much like his grip on her soul. “We’ve already won. We escaped with our hearts intact. This—” she returned his unyielding embrace “—proves it.”

He clutched her hips, pivoted her toward the vanity, and met her eyes in the mirror. “I want you, Charlee. No games. No Roy. Just you and me.”

She nodded rapidly, pulse sprinting, and yanked her shirt over her head.

The strings on her hips dug in as he gripped the back of her thong and ripped it off. His belt buckle rattled. The sound of the zipper followed. His smoldering eyes reflected in the mirror and the nudge of his cock between her legs stole her breath. A few strokes through her folds moistened his entry. He pushed, working in and out, delaying the fullness.

She pushed her hips back, chasing his length. He sprawled a hand over her heart, the other crossed her belly and wrapped around her hip. Seizing her eyes in the mirror, he crashed his hips into her, fully buried.

The reflection of his parted lips and soundless gasp mimicked hers. They inhaled as one, absorbing the stimulation of their union.

“Best feeling in the world,” he breathed, stroking his length, hands enveloping her breasts. “Youaremy world.”

He pulled out, scooped her up, and laid her face up on the floor. She didn’t have time to question him. In the next breath, he was on her, in her, and kissing her with ferocity.

She responded with equaled ardor, bucking her hips and deepening the kiss. His hands burned over her thighs, squeezed her ass and caressed her clit with talented fingers.

Dragging her nails up his arms, mindful to avoid his back, she raked her hands through his hair. With an upward flex of her hips, she clenched her inner muscles and watched with happiness as his head fell back and the tendons in his throat strained.

Her flesh tingled, her nerve endings alive with arousal. His legs rubbed and twined with hers as he pumped in and out.

She raised her hips, meeting his thrusts, the urgency building with each heady stroke. Her cunt stretched, swollen, primed, ready.