Total pages in book: 767
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
Strong arms closed around me, but they didn’t frighten me. They were warm, powerful enough to protect me.
I turned my face into his chest and sobbed, my fingers fisting in his shirt as I struggled to get closer. A soothing stream of Spanish rumbled over me. Even though I couldn’t understand the words, I focused on the lilting cadence, allowing it to fill my mind and blot out all the awful things.
But now that the memories had finally been unearthed, I couldn’t bury them again. They played out in my head in horrible, vivid detail. Every muffled cry, every shameful gasp. The wrenching pain between my legs as Uncle Robert violated my small body.
Big hands stroked my back, my hair, my cheeks. They were warm. Familiar. I leaned into them, seeking more heat. I was so cold, frigid down to my bones. My entire body shook, except for my fingers, which were fisted so tightly in his shirt that my knuckles were white.
I didn’t want to remember. I didn’t want…
“Where is your uncle now?” he asked in English. His soothing voice roughened, and his arms were tight around me.
“What?” I asked, struggling to move from memory to reality.
“You said…” He trailed off on a growl. “You mentioned Uncle Robert. Where can I find him?”
I shuddered at his name. “Why?”
“I’m going to kill him for you, Samantha,” he swore, his hand firming on my head where he’d been stroking my hair. I realized I wasn’t the only one shaking. Andrés’ strong body practically vibrated with barely-restrained violence.
“He’s dead,” I said hollowly, remembering the day I’d watched his casket being lowered into the ground. I’d been fifteen then, when his alcoholism had sent him to an early grave. Six years after my parents had left me alone with him so they could go on a week-long vacation. They hadn’t known about his drinking at the time. They hadn’t known about him. About what he wanted to do to me.
“I cried at his funeral,” I whispered, anguished. “I didn’t know why I was so upset. I fucking cried over him.”
“How old were you?” Andrés asked. “How old were you when he—?” His teeth snapped closed, as though he couldn’t let the words leave his tongue.
“Nine,” I said softly. “But I forgot. How could I forget?”
Everything made so much sense now: my nervous tics, why I was so uncomfortable around men. I’d always been awkward and shy, even as a child. Before. But I’d had friends at school. People I wanted to play with.
After, I stopped going to my classmates’ birthday parties. The idea of a slumber party, especially, gave me crippling anxiety. I didn’t want to leave my parents.
So I’d stayed at home. I’d found solace in my computer games. I hid behind a screen, isolated from everyone. No one could touch me.
Until Andrés. He hadn’t let me hide from him. He’d pushed past my barriers and demanded that I let him in. It might have been fucked up, but he’d been right: I never would have found intimacy with another man like what I shared with him. Not even Dex. My gentle giant of a friend might be a Dominant, but he was far too sweet to have given me what I truly needed.
I needed ruthlessness. I needed darkness. I needed Andrés.
“I’m sorry,” I choked out. “I’m sorry I tried to leave. I thought you didn’t care about me. I thought—”
“You thought I didn’t care?” he demanded, his muscles tensing and rippling around me. “Do you know what it did to me, seeing another man hurting you, touching you? Seeing you broken and crying when you remembered what—?” He cut himself off again before he fully verbalized what Uncle Robert did to me.
His black eyes bored into me. They sparked with fury, but lines of anxiety tightened around them. “Did I hurt you?” he asked, his voice strangely thick. “Last night. Did I hurt you?”
He thought he’d hurt me during sex?
“No,” I reassured him, touching my fingertips to his cheek, tracing the line of his scar just as I’d done when he’d been buried deep inside me.
“Then why? Why would you leave me?”
Shame heated my cheeks at the hurt in his voice. “I woke up, and you were gone,” I said, my voice small. “I didn’t have my collar. Then Lauren brought me the pill and the shot, and I thought I must have imagined… I thought you didn’t care.”
His face shifted to a carefully blank mask, but something stirred in his dark eyes. “Do you want to get pregnant?”
“I… No. Not… Not right now.”
The thought of having a child with Andrés—of having a family again after losing my parents—made something tug in my chest.
He started petting me again. “That’s for the best,” he said, sounding as though he was talking to himself as much as to me. “You need to take the pill.”