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He pulled her into the elevator and caught her in his arms. A swift, hard kiss landed on her temple before he tucked her head beneath his chin. She couldn’t stop trembling, couldn’t stop the sickening reel of words and images in her head.
I’ll teach you not to start something you can’t finish.
They rode up in silence, her arms stiff at her sides, her heart hammering loud and relentless in her ears.
When the elevator doors opened, he swung her into his arms and entered their suite. The door slammed behind them. He strode to the large armchair and sank into it, his arms clamped around her.
“Take off your mask.” It was a command, figurative and real.
Hands shaking, Leia drew off the mask and glanced at his face.
He cursed. “Jesus, what the hell’s going on? You look like someone’s just killed your puppy. What did I say?” Anguish coated his voice.
“Someone said that to me once… about teaching me a lesson for starting something I couldn’t finish.”
Hooded blue eyes narrowed. “When you were a kid?”
“I was sixteen when he first said that to me.”
“Who?”
“My stepfather. This… this was what I was going to tell you.”
He tensed beneath her and his eyes darkened, but his face remained a cool mask “Go on.”
“I talked my mom into letting me move into our pool house when I turned sixteen. She resisted for a while, but she knew I couldn’t stand the tension and passive-aggressive fightingbetween her and my stepfather. Anyway, she helped me turn what had been my dad’s home office into my bedroom.” She plucked at the corner of her mask and swallowed. “But my mom forgot that my dad had installed cameras in his office after a break-in. At first I didn’t think anything of it when my stepfather walked in at inappropriate times or in the middle of the night when I took the odd skinny dip in the pool.”
Noah’s hand tightened on her knees, and his jaw turned to steel. “Fucking Christ.”
“I hated the way he looked at me, but I was a brat back then. The world had taken the most important person in my life and replaced it with an asshole who didn’t treat my mom right and looked at me with his cock in his eyes. I acted out a lot, almost dared him to do his worst.” She whispered that last part, icy fingers of guilt clenching her heart.
His arms caressed up and down her arms. “Oh God, baby.”
A furtive look at Noah’s face showed the braced anguish in the dark blue depths of his eyes. Her heart squeezed, and she forced herself to go on.
“A couple of months after I turned seventeen, I threw a party. It was a classic parents-out-of-town party with too much booze and rich bratty kids. My boyfriend stayed over. I woke up minus my virginity and completely underwhelmed by an experience I could barely recall.”
“Leia.” His voice was a rough rumble. The hand on her thigh rose to splay over her stomach, and the other gripped her nape. His chest rose and fell in a jagged exhale.
She’d become attuned enough to his reactions to know he didn’t like the idea of someone else having her, even if it was past tense. But it was also coupled with a gentleness and strength that calmed her roiling emotions.
“Sexual frustration and self-destruct mode isn’t a healthy mix. I was using my vibrator when my stepfather walked in on me.”
Noah’s growl was low and deadly. She shivered.
“He told me he’d seen the video of Brad and me. He described it in vivid detail and told me how much better he would do it.”
“Motherfucker!”
“He called me a cock tease… A shameless whore.”
You’re a dirty little cock tease. You deserve my cock up your ass for your little stunts…
“Then he raped me in my bedroom.”
32
From a broken acorn…