Chapter 17
KILLA
My cock continues twitching inside her, and I roll us so she’s able to rest her head on my chest. Our bodies are drenched in sweat and cum.
“That was incredible.” She smiles against the beat of my heart, and I grin down at her.
“Fuck yeah, it was.” Then I tilt my head down toward her. “You love me.” I grin broadly.
She rolls her eyes.
“What you said.” I shrug. “Just repeatin’ it.”
“Shut up.” She nudges me.
“Never loved a woman before now. Just so ya know,” I say, and the playfulness leaves us both.
“Well. I never loved a man before now.”
“Good.” I grunt with satisfaction, and a content silence fills the air.
She moves and rests her head on her elbow. “I won’t be cheated on, Killa.”
“Colton. My ol’ lady calls me Colton in my bed.” I correct her with a smirk. The sound of ol’ lady on my lips feels like a turning point in my life, one I don’t deserve, but like the bastard I am, I’m taking it anyway.
She wrinkles her nose. “That makes me sound old.”
I chuckle. “I don’t want any woman but you.” Jesus, just the thought makes me want to hurt someone for trying to approach me. Only Cass’s hands on my skin feels right, only her tongue in my mouth, lapping at my— I clear my throat. “So, is that a yes?” I lift an eyebrow.
“Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
She rolls her eyes. “What if I was to say no?”
I stare down at her. “You wouldn’t like the answer to that.”
Her eyebrows pull together. “What does that mean?”
“Means I’d have you chained to the damn bed and fuck some sense into you.”
Her face pales, and she swallows hard, and I wish I could take the words back, but I can’t. Instead, I opt to soothe her with my hand, stroking over her shoulder, avoiding the back of her head.
“I can’t be chained, cuffed, you need to promise me that,” she rasps with a rare emotion I’m grateful she’s gifting me.
I hold her stare. “I promise. I’m sorry, Cass, I wasn’t thinkin’.”
“Even if I do something that really pisses you off. Never, Colton.” Her words aren’t just a plea, they’re a demand, they’re the proverbial line in the sand, daring me to cross it and end us completely. Not something I’m prepared to ever risk.
“Of course.” I’m already working through ideas in my head that would work around that clause in our relationship, because I’ll be damned if she thinks she’s ever leaving me. If there’s ever a sign of it, I’d do what is necessary to keep my girl. Not just my girl, but my son too, we’re family now.
“Wanna knock you up, put a ring on your finger, and adopt Noah.”
Her eyebrows shoot up, then she laughs like I’m joking. She pats my chest with her hand. “Slow down. We’ve a lot to figure out first.”
I furrow my brow. What the fuck is there to figure out? “Already figured it all out.”
She rolls her eyes again, then looks off toward the door before she swings her gaze back to mine.
She swallows. “I have baggage, Killa. A lot of it.”
“Know it.”
“Me and Noah. We’re only just getting on our feet.
” She means moving into her own place with Noah, but the thought of them living there without me isn’t even an option, especially now I know about her past and the demons hiding in her nightmares.
Nope, I need to be there to protect her from them, to pull her out of the darkness when she needs it the most. To be there for them, always.
Besides, Noah loves me, he likes to chat with me when I make his breakfast; he likes how I make him laugh when I tuck him in at night while making animal noises.
He needs me too, and deep down, I know she knows this, she’s just scared to admit it.
“Not just you and Noah anymore. Got me now too.”
A silence hangs between us, and she trails the tip of her finger over my tattoos.
“You have therapy?” I ask her.
“No, not anymore. They made me have it in the beginning, but I didn’t want to continue with it.”
“Think you should, Cass.”
Her finger stops moving. “I don’t want to talk about any of it, with anyone,” she whispers.
A far-off look takes over her, and I hate not being able to read her emotions and thoughts, but I know she’s thinking about her past, something I wish I could change for her.
“Gonna tell me ’bout it?” I ask, with hope. “I can listen.”
“What?”
“Benjamin. You gonna tell me ’bout it?” His name feels like acid on my tongue, and she closes her eyes as if it pains her to hear it.
Her lip quivers, and when she opens her eyes again, they’re full of unshed tears, ones that do nothing but make me want to comfort her. “I don’t like you saying his name,” she mutters.
“Won’t say it again.” I stroke her shoulder. “Ain’t goin’ anywhere, ever, Cass. You’re mine, nothin’ you say will change that.”
A heavy sigh leaves her. “He took me on my way to school. He told me he thought there was a cat in the bush, and it needed coaxed out because he might have hit it with his car by accident.”
My heart hammers with each heartbreaking word.
“Can you believe that? Can you believe how dumb I was?” She shakes her head solemnly.
“You were a kid.”
“My mama warned me about strangers; about people we don’t know talking to us and offering us candy for a ride in their cars. Instead, he used a cat. At the time, a part of me wondered if it was ours.”
My mind flashes back to the reporter and her mom discussing her pet cat.
“I had a little tortoiseshell cat named Lulu. She followed me everywhere, and I thought maybe she was following me to school or something.” She stares off across the room before bringing her gaze back to mine, and her chin wobbles.
Jesus, it’s heartbreaking, hearing the thoughts of a little girl’s innocent mindset. “She’d followed me before.”
“I’m sorry, baby.” What else is there to say? She was a little girl who thought she was helping. It turned out to be the biggest mistake of her life.
“He grabbed me so fast, I didn’t know what was happening. I kicked.” Her chest heaves, heart pounding furiously. “I swear I kicked.”
I wonder if it’s a good idea reliving this with me, but something in my gut tells me we need to do this. She needs to let it out, because how the fuck can I help and support her when I don’t know what I’m up against.
She sits up, and I hate the feeling of not having her resting on me, so I shift her body, draping her legs over my chest, and draw the sheet up over her naked form while she rests her back against the wall and twists her hands in her lap.
“I’ve gone over that day so much. What I’d do different, how I’d fight harder.”
“You were a kid, Cass.”
“I know, but I could have tried harder.” Her eyes implore mine, and I hate the vulnerability in them. The strength I know her to have, the fight in her dissolved.
I entwine our fingers together. “You fuckin’ tried. He was a fully grown man.” Just calling him a man makes me want to growl; he isn’t a man, not really, he’s a coward, a sick bastard for taking a child.
I squeeze her hand. I want to tell her she was tiny, that she couldn’t have done anything against him, but I don’t want her to know I’ve seen images of her as a child, a blonde-haired little whisp of a thing, tiny framed like Noah.
“That was the first time he tied me. My hands, they hurt from it being so tight.” She brushes over her wrists, and fuck me, does it hurt to know I did the exact same thing to her.
“He put me in the back of the car and drove so fast. I tried to fight him, and he leaned into the back seats and punched me in the face.” She rubs at her jaw, and I swear to God, I’m going to kill him.
I’m going to slaughter every fucking inch of the bastard.
“I just remember his face being so angry,” she bites out.
“And I remember thinking I’m never going to make him that angry again because he could do so much worse to me.
” Her sob stutters. “Then everything went black. I was between being knocked out when he cuffed and gagged me. I just remember being so utterly terrified and fighting against the darkness.” She turns toward me, and the pleading in her eyes twists my guts. “I wanted my mama so bad.”
This time, it’s me who chokes on emotion, but I swallow it back and keep it inside. I need to be strong for her.
She turns her head to face the door and takes a deep breath.
“When I woke up, I was in a room on a dirty mattress. The bed had a metal frame, and it was old. It felt dirty on my skin. I was cuffed to a chain; he’d attached it to a hook he’d drilled into the wall.
” She releases a shudder I feel down to my bones.
“It took me a while to realize I was only in my panties and that I’d wet myself at some point. ”
My stomach rolls, and I shuffle in a bid to keep the bile down.
“I was completely overwhelmed. I wanted my mama, and I was worried she’d be mad at me for ruining the school project I dropped when he grabbed me.”
I think back to what Hunter said about her belongings being found at the scene, and emotions I didn’t know were possible bleed from me, but all I can do is sit and listen to the horrors of a little girl surrounded in a world of hell.
I will get vengeance for her; that, I can guarantee.
She stares down at the bed. “Over time, he would allow me around the house if I behaved.”
Behaved? What the fuck? “Behaved how?” I bite out.
She lifts her head to face me, her eyes shimmer with embarrassment, and crimson floods her cheeks. “Did things he wanted.” Her eyes bore into mine.
Anger fires through me, and I know she can feel it because she jolts, and I fucking hate that. She doesn’t have to say any more about that shit; I can figure it out. She had Noah, for Christ’s sake, and while I’m grateful for him, no child should birth another.
I tighten our fingers and bring her hand to my lips. “It’s okay, baby.”
She lifts her chin but stares straight ahead. “I tried to escape. But he’d beat me, and the rapes just hurt more and more because I didn’t want his touch.”
My throat becomes dry as she admits that.
“I thought when I had Noah, he would go easy on me. But he didn’t like the attention I gave him.”
I rear back. “He didn’t want you to have him?”
Even though I refuse to wear condoms with her, this still shocks me. I openly admit I want her pregnant, and not using birth control is as good as willing it to happen.
“No. He hated him. But he’d use him to control me. Threaten to hurt him to get me to comply with his demands.”
Not only was she a strong, badass mama as a kid, but she had this fucker trying to hurt her baby boy all to make her do fucked-up shit. “Fuck, Cass.” I bring her fingers to my lips again and again. How the hell she survived this, I’ll never know, I’m just grateful she has.
Tears flow down her face, and I want to tell her to stop talking, that for the first time ever, I don’t want to see her cry, but I owe her this. She’s opening up to me like never before, and with the way I’ve treated her, I deserve to hear all the fucked-up shit she endured.
I only wish I could take it from her; I’d experience it all on her behalf if I could.
“Noah wasn’t allowed to speak in his presence. It was so hard because my little boy was learning his voice, and he’d go crazy at him for trying to speak.”
Pure fire burns my veins. What the actual fuck?
He wasn’t allowed to speak?
No wonder the poor kid has had issues with his speech. Noah was no more than a pawn to get control over Cass. And who the fuck doesn’t allow a child to speak.
“The last time I tried to run with Noah, he’d parked the car in the field and waited for me to try. It was all just a game to him. H-He …”
The grip on my hand tightens, and I know whatever she’s going to say will gut me.
“What he did next, it …”
My mouth becomes like cotton wool, but I choke my words out. “It what, Cass?”