Chapter 4 #3
My guts twisted so hard I felt nauseous.
I’d just fucked another woman, a woman whose name I didn’t even know, twice in Yooko’s office.
I still had her nail marks on my back and her teeth marks on my neck.
I smelled like her, could still taste her on my tongue.
And here I stood in the doorway of my bedroom staring at my seventeen-year-old charge and fantasizing about fucking her too.
No, it was worse: I wanted to make love to her.
She was so fucking young. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t a virgin. She’d had far too many choices taken away from her in her life. She deserved better than me. I wasn’t her guardian. I wasn’t her protector.
Because there was no one in this world who would protect her from me.
“I’m going to go sleep in the barn.” I couldn’t even just walk out. I had to tell her where I was going. Was that some subconscious ploy to see if she would follow me?
“Wait!” Caroline’s voice was as soft as mine, neither of us wanting to rouse the tiny bundle slumbering in the bed behind the couch. She sat upright, untangling herself from the pretzel pose she’d been in.
The door was halfway closed, and fuck me up the ass with a traffic cone, because I stopped at her command. Even if she only meant for it to be a request, my body treated it like an order. Was there anything I wouldn’t do for this woman? Fuck—girl!
Slowly, I opened the door back up, but I kept my feet bolted to the carpeting. Bacon might not be Hawai‘ian by birth, but he was adopting several of our customs, like no slippahs in the house.
Caroline patted the couch cushion next to her.
She was wearing a thin robe. It was jade green and virtually see-through.
I never allowed myself to study her body.
Blatantly looking went against the many rules I had set for myself around her, though the occasional glimpse couldn’t be helped.
I knew she was gaining weight because I paid for her clothing.
She’d already gone up a pants size since coming here.
I had to strictly ignore the knowledge that she’d also gone up a bra size.
Lu and Caroline didn’t spend a lot of time together, but there were some things that she just felt more comfortable doing with another woman.
I stared at that couch cushion. Every part of me felt the pull to obey. I wanted to go sit down next to her more than I wanted my next breath. But it would be for me if I did. Not her. Despite that it was her suggestion, it would not be in her best interest.
The things I would do to her if I sat down on that couch…
I shook my head, taking a step back.
Caroline stood, closing her robe tighter around her middle. She had an hourglass figure I hadn’t allowed myself to notice before. When I did look at her, I only looked at her face.
She came towards me, her head up high. “I’d like to speak to you. We can go downstairs if you prefer.”
Caroline wasn’t usually so forward. It should not have been so hot.
I took in her entire appearance. From her brunette curls bunched over her right shoulder to her kissable, bold lips, to her tank top and shorts under her robe, showing off a dip of cleavage and her bare legs.
No way in fuck was I allowing her out of this room dressed like that; I’d already almost killed one brother tonight. I did not need to murder another who only happened to be still up and wandering the halls. I didn’t even trust Lucifer around her like this, and he was a former priest.
Then again, I didn’t even trust myself.
Yet, I still walked into my bedroom and closed the door behind me.
The low lighting from the lamp cast an almost romantic ambience over us.
I tried to think of it as ominous, but why did she have to look so fucking sexy?
I could easily picture this scenario completely differently, where she was waiting up for me, not just to speak with me.
She was still coming towards me when I entered the room, making both of us stop feet from the closed door.
Caroline’s nostrils flared, and I knew exactly what she was smelling on me.
I didn’t know what she knew about Yooko’s business.
I certainly hadn’t told her anything, but like with Saga, the guys talked, and they weren’t as careful as they should be now that there was a child and teenager in the house.
She reared back, her arms coming around to circle her middle.
It wasn’t disgust I saw on her face, but hurt.
And it tore something inside me. I reeked of sex, and she knew it.
I should have lied. I could have. Claimed that I was only present at a sex party and hadn’t partaken myself.
Even told her that it was none of her business.
Or held my head upright and not defended myself at all.
I was a grown, single man. I could sleep with whomever the fuck I wanted, so long as she was over eighteen and consented.
And yet, I didn’t.
She turned her face away from me, and in that moment, I hated myself. Hated every decision I’d ever made that landed me right here, in this room, with her.
“I’m sorry.”
I hadn’t betrayed her. I hadn’t cheated on her. We weren’t anything, and yet I felt like I had. Was this how Kalea had felt when she’d stepped out on me? Had she even felt anything? Was history doomed to repeat itself, but with an ironic twist?
I wanted to fall to my knees and beg her forgiveness. To grovel until my throat was sore and there was no breath left inside me.
Caroline’s chin trembled. “It’s…” Her voice trailed off, and I wondered if she’d been starting to say that it was okay.
She stopped herself, because somehow, someway, we both knew it wasn’t.
Her face twitched as she looked anywhere but at me.
“I know you had to work tonight. Lu told me.” Fucking fuck balls, because Lu was the one person I couldn’t punish for having told Caroline what happened at Yooko’s.
Did she tell her about the barn too? “I just didn’t expect you to… ”
Lifting the sleeves of her robe, she wiped under her eyes. She still wouldn’t look at me, and frankly, I didn’t blame her. I wasn’t going to be able to look in a mirror any time soon.
“Am I not good enough for you?”
My self-flagellation stopped immediately upon her question. Not good enough for me? Anger replaced hatred, and my hands balled up into fists at my sides. Was she fucking serious right now?
“Don’t you ask me that,” I growled out through gritted teeth. “Don’t you fucking ask me that!”
My voice rose as I spoke, but the bundle under the covers did not move. I had to clamp my mouth closed and take several large breaths in a failed attempt to get myself back under control. When I looked back over at her, Caroline was staring at me like I was a stranger.
“You’re a child,” I spat out at her. Who the fuck was she to even ask me that question?
“Terrible things happened to you, and you cannot understand how deeply that cuts me. You were forced to grow up to appease a sick man’s fucked-up fantasies, but that does not change how young you are.
And yet you stand there and ask me if you’re not ‘good enough’ for me? ”
I paced away from her. Even the little bit to the door was better than nothing. Did she not know the daily torment I suffered? The rules I had to put in place for myself so I could just be near her? The pain I endured because I couldn’t stomach the thought of sending her away into another’s care?
Not good enough? I didn’t even really know what that meant, but the question pissed me off nonetheless.
“I… I…” She frantically wiped at her eyes, and I felt even worse for having made her cry. “There are things about my past that you don’t know about. Things I haven’t told you. Things I should tell you and I don’t know how. I don’t want you to think differently of me when you learn what I’ve done.”
I stopped mid-step. I didn’t look at her. I couldn’t. If I did, I would break. I would take her into my arms and do everything in my power to take her hurt away. Even at the cost of my own dignity.
“I already guessed that your parents sold you to him.” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, not wanting her to think it was aimed at her instead of her parents. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her nod. “How old?”
I had to know. I suspected twelve or thirteen, but I had to know.
“Nine.”
The pain that hit me at that word was worse than anything I’d ever felt in my life.
When I’d been fifteen, Aloiki, Kayl, and I had been cliff diving.
We’d been fearless and reckless, and despite that this wasn’t our first time, we chose a bad day to do it.
We hadn’t read the waves, nor had we paid attention to the fact that there was a storm brewing on the horizon.
I got swept under the riptide, and it was only sheer dumb luck that had saved me.
Didn’t change the fact that I’d busted my arm and shoulder, dislocated my knee, and sprained my ankle.
All in all, it could have been a lot worse, but I was still in a lot of pain for several weeks while my body healed.
I would gladly jump off that cliff now to save myself the agony ripping through my soul at the knowledge that Caroline had been fucking nine years old when her parents had fucking sold her to Jones.
Nine.
When I’d been nine, my biggest worry was what homework I could skip that day so I could spend as much time catching waves as possible. My parents had been pieces of shit who were selfish enough to use their own son as a pawn to hurt each other, but they hadn’t fucking sold me.
I wanted to ask why. I should have asked so many things, but all I could do was marvel at her strength.
She’d endured so much. Nishi’s condition when we found her proved without a doubt the brutality of Jones.
Even Ayame, the other woman we’d found in that basement, had not walked away unscathed, though she had walked away.
And maybe it was fucked up of me to compare them, but Nishi and Ayame had been adults.
It didn’t justify or excuse Jones’ actions.
What they’d suffered had been no less terrible, but it did make a glaring difference between their circumstances and Caroline’s.
She’d been a child. Did a nine year old even know what sex was?
I tried to remember what year I learned.
Not just rumors at school or assumptions made by immature minds, but actually know what sex was.
Hell, at nine, my balls hadn’t even dropped yet.
I wanted to throw something. Tear something apart. I wanted to rage at the unfairness. Put her in a plastic bubble and declare her safe for eternity.
“Names,” I growled.
Caroline shook her head. “You’ll kill them.”
Good. She didn’t doubt their fate or my brutality. “They deserve to be killed.”
But she still shook her head. “I can’t, Tangaloa. Please don’t ask me to.”
My name on her tongue shouldn’t have had such a visceral effect on me.
It sliced through me like a thousand needles, and yet soothed me like nothing else ever had.
She didn’t use my name often, even adopting Samantha’s nickname when addressing me to the four year old.
So the effect it had on me wasn’t something I was used to, or was prepared for.
I kept my back to her, not wanting her to see the conflicting emotions cascading through me. Why did she not want me to punish her parents?
“Why did you sleep with her?”
The laugh that escaped me was anything but humorous. I stared up at the ceiling, wondering just what the fuck I had done to piss Māui off so much.
I had no answer for her, because I had no answer for myself.
Yooko probably thought that I just needed to scratch an itch, take the edge off whatever was bothering me.
In his defense, even I hadn’t realized how tightly wound I was until I’d gotten into Saga’s face.
He had no way of knowing the storm brewing inside me.
I’d been…less than kind to the woman in the office. She gave it right back to me, not cowering away from my touch that had been harsh to say the least. And while we both got off, she hadn’t deserved my callous anger.
The more I fucked her, the more Caroline slipped into my thoughts, which had only made me more irritated. I hated myself for fucking a woman while thinking of another, hated myself even more for who that other woman was.
“Did she… I mean, she was willing, right?”
I stiffened. I was used to pain when it came to Caroline, the need to constantly push down my desire and keep myself in check around her. The knowledge that she was within my reach and yet I could never have her.
But the pain that lanced me at her question was so much different. I hadn’t realized how much hope I’d been suppressing inside me that perhaps, maybe someday, there could be something between Caroline and me. That she would see past my old, crusted exterior and see a man she thought worthy of her.
Not until now. Not until that question.
I should have been insulted, but I wasn’t. Sadness filled me, more than the agony of losing someone or hearing bad news. Because I knew in that moment that there was no future between us. Not now, not ever.
My hand reached for the cool doorknob. I had no idea how my voice was so steady when my chest felt like it had been cracked open, my heart bleeding out for all to see.
“If you have to ask me that, then clearly you don’t know me as well as I hoped you did.
” I opened the door, and was halfway out of it, when I paused again.
I tilted my head to the side, still keeping her out of my periphery.
“I’ll be in the barn. Maybe it’ll be best if you go to Saga from now on if you need something. ”