Chapter Eighty-Three
Georgia
H e wasn’t rough, and he wasn’t gentle. But he was methodical and thorough, and I couldn’t remember anyone ever washing my hair before.
My entire body was tingling. I both hated and was shy that I was only in my underwear, and I never wanted this moment to end.
But with each stroke of his huge hands as they ran the length of my hair, I saw the tension in his muscles increase.
My sensitized nerves prickled with warning. “What’s wrong?” I tried and failed to shove down what he’d said after telling me I was free.
I have a life, woman.
His jaw ticked as he focused on rinsing my hair. “Seven years ago. You were raped.”
Inwardly, I recoiled. “I was used.” Now I was ashamed. And felt about an inch tall. “I’m not talking about this.” I would never tell him that I hadn’t said no that night because it’d been the only thing that’d made me feel wanted—until it didn’t. Then the man I’d stupidly married beat me for something he’d started.
A SEAL dumped out a small bottle of conditioner onto his palm and rubbed his hands together before running them through the ends of my hair. “Year before we met, after you left him, where were you?”
Running. Treating the knife wounds. Getting a tattoo once they’d healed. Losing myself. Discovering myself. “Nowhere. Everywhere.” I closed my eyes to concentrate on the sensations of his simple touch. “When did you learn how to wash a woman’s hair?”
“I didn’t. First time.” He tilted my head back. “How’d you get the scars?”
My neck stretched, exposing my throat, and I thought about his lips on my skin and the fact that he’d never done this with another woman. He’d also never kissed me.
I tried to concentrate on the question. “Which ones?”
So light, I barely felt the touch, he traced a finger under my right breast, then across my stomach and over my left arm as his booted foot glanced against my right ankle, reminding me that he was still in his pants and shoes.
Not that I cared right then.
Aftershocks from his touch sent a current of desire that whipped across my nerves, and before I knew what I was doing, I was laying all of my ugliness at his feet. “He threatened to cut off my breasts if I didn’t lose weight. He said they were too big. He also said they were the only reason loser guys would fuck me. The night before I finally left, he tried to make good on his promise. The scar on my stomach was from years earlier. He’d been gone a week. When he came back, I asked where he’d been. I never made that mistake again. My arm was a burn accident, and my ankle was from being tied to a radiator.”
“That night you wound up in the hospital,” he ground out. “I need names.”
“You said all of Henry’s crew was dead?”
His hands stilled. “Yeah.”
“Then you don’t need names.”
I watched his chest rise and fall three times. On the fourth inhale, his fingers sifted through my hair, and he gave me a quiet but utterly dominant command. “Tell me what happened.”
I didn’t want to. It felt like if I told him, I would be cutting myself open, cheating on him, and destroying any chance of ever seeing him again, all at once. But the self-sabotaging part of me and the nearly impossible to ignore submissive part that wanted to do whatever he said, they needed to tell him. Or maybe it was a new part of me, one that’d been uncovered by a ruthless killer who’d taken on the cartel and swiped tears from my face.
I told myself I owed him an answer.
But when I spoke, it suddenly felt like I was doing this for me.
“Henry said I was fat. He didn’t want to touch me. So he offered me up, then got mad.” The devil was in the details. But not those ones. “Sex never meant anything to anyone I ever gave it to, so I didn’t think that night would be any different.” That’d been my mistake. “I’m done talking now.” My hair was clean, but my soul felt dirty, and a warrior had dropped his hands.
Tainted by life and my choices, I started to turn to walk out of the shower.
A rough palm grasped my throat, then a Valhalla warrior looked down at me with his piercing gaze as his deep voice rained over me with pitiless unattainability. “I was never going to leave you homeless, woman.”
I swallowed against his hold on me. “Why?”
“Because two years ago fucking meant something.”