Chapter 14 #2
Could he really think she was beautiful? Brave? Strong? Was he really attracted to her? Did he really want to make love to her?
That couldn’t possibly be true, and yet … he was kissing her like it was.
Unless it was more games. Another ploy to get her talking. All these doubts inside her head made her feel nauseous. All she wanted was steady ground beneath her feet, and yet the world kept rocking.
The words she’d heard in that room a few days ago, a conversation between Thunder and his teammates that she wasn't supposed to overhear, replayed in her mind. They wanted information from her, and she was so sure that once they got it, she would be out of there so quickly her head would spin.
Breathing hard, she pulled back, studied Thunder’s eyes, trying to believe the lust she saw in them. Not just lust. There was respect there, too. And affection. So many things that looked genuine, but she was beyond terrified to believe them. Believe him.
“You're going to throw me away like trash,” the words tumbled out without her thinking about it. Despite her head knowing that trusting anyone was a mistake, her heart still felt like Thunder was a safe place.
Eyes widening at the soft, raspy, broken, whispered words, Thunder then grinned, hauling her over so she was sitting in his lap, her palms splayed on his pecs, his thick erection nestled against her center.
Despite what Thunder seemed to think, she was no longer afraid of sex.
If anything, she’d become desensitized by it, it had lost all meaning to her, and was just something men did to her.
“So proud of you, babydoll.” His lips pressed a kiss to her forehead before brushing over hers again. When he pulled back, the smile slipped from his lips, a serious expression taking its place. “Would never, ever , throw you away like trash. Why would you think that I would?”
The earnest way he asked, the pain she detected in his words, had tears filling her eyes.
Before her, his image blurred, but he was still solid beneath her.
Strong and muscled. Sturdy. Her rock. Even when she’d been ignoring him, consumed with anger and despair, he’d still been there.
Sitting on the floor outside the art studio he’d built for her, silent but just … there.
“Because I'm damaged … filthy … ruined,” Maya replied. She didn't know how to explain it. Maybe after so many years as a sex slave, she was desensitized to sex, to rape even, but that didn't mean she didn't feel the effect of all those years.
They were there.
Written into her body. Her mind. Her soul.
“I didn't mean to, but I heard what you said that day,” she admitted. After not talking for so long, the words felt like they were being torn out of her throat. It felt weird, but also empowering. She was quite literally reclaiming her voice. “You … and your team … you want information from me. Information I don’t have. Was it … all a lie?”
“Was what a lie, babydoll?” Thunder asked, smoothing his calloused fingertips across her cheeks in a sweeping caress, before tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.
“I feel something for you. Between us. But I don’t know if you're just pretending.” It felt stupid to admit that out loud. Juvenile. A reminder that in some ways she was still a fourteen-year-old girl, while in others she’d lived a thousand lifetimes.
“Oh, babydoll, I wish you'd told me that was why you tried to run. From the second I walked into that room and saw you in that cage, I felt something. A pull. Drawing me toward you. It doesn’t make any sense, and I feel like, given everything you’ve been through, I should fight against it.
But I don’t want to, babydoll. I want to drag you closer, meld your body to mine so I know you're always safe, not put a respectable distance between us.”
“Don’t want distance,” she whimpered, very much liking the idea of melding her body to Thunder’s.
“I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere.” As though to cement his words into her mind, mark them into her skin, his fingers gripped her hips, digging into her flesh with a bruising hold that she relished.
She understood pain. Pain made sense to her. Pain made her know for sure that she was still alive.
“You're not filthy, my beautiful girl, and you're certainly not ruined. Maybe you're a little damaged, a little banged up, but you're not the only one, babydoll. If there is anyone who understands, at least in part, what you’ve been through, it’s me. It’s my team. All people who would never even think of throwing you away. Do we want to know if you have any information that could help us find Dr. Gardner? Yes. I won't insult you and lie and pretend we haven’t been dreaming about getting our hands on that man for a decade. But I want him to suffer just as much for what he did to you as for what he did to me. More. I was an adult who made a poor, uninformed choice when I signed up for that experimental drug program. You were just an innocent girl, snatched away from your life.”
“I … don’t think I can go back to it. My life. My family. Not now. Maybe not ever,” she admitted. That fear that she’d be shipped off to her family was still there, even if Thunder’s words were making it recede a little.
“That’s okay, babydoll. I meant it when I told you that you are in charge of your life now.
Keeping you here is about keeping you safe, although I won't pretend that I don’t want you to stay.
I hate that it feels like I'm imprisoning you, but I won't risk you getting hurt. Please don’t ask me to do that.”
Maya nodded. “I don’t want to leave. But … I'm so scared you’ll see me the way I see myself.” What was she going to do if she allowed herself to believe in Thunder only for him to change his mind a day, a week, a month, a year down the track?
“All I see when I look at you is strength. You're so very brave, babydoll.”
“I hid inside my mind. Refused to speak. When you found me, I never wanted to come out of the secret place inside my head that I created for myself.”
“That’s surviving, babydoll. You're a survivor. Surviving isn’t one thing, it isn’t one path.
What you did to survive is valid. What you’ve been through …
” Thunder broke off, dragged in a harsh breath, his large body beneath her trembling with what she was pretty sure was tightly controlled rage.
“It makes me want to do bad things. Things I'm pretty sure would scare you. When you're ready, you’ll give me names, and my team and I will make sure every person who laid their disgusting hands on you learns what it’s like to be on the other side of the cage.
But whatever you had to do to survive that hell was valid.
More than that, it was the right thing, because you're still here. Alive, beautiful, strong, here in my arms, right where I want you to be.”
This time, it was her who shivered. Not in anger, or fear, but with desire.
Maybe her motivation hadn't been right upstairs in the art studio. She’d wanted sex because she thought she could use it to keep Thunder on her side. Which made her little better than the men who had used her for sex.
But now her body hummed with attraction.
With need.
Desire.
Things she’d never experienced before.
One thing she was absolutely certain of was that she wanted this man. Wanted him to show her what sex was supposed to be, how a man was supposed to treat a woman. She wanted to be normal for just a few minutes, to forget about the past, to just be the Maya Newell she was supposed to have been.
Wanted slow, tender, beautiful.
Wanted Thunder so badly it consumed her, and she couldn’t think of anything else.
Just like Thunder said, he wanted her.
“Please,” she whimpered, rocking against that hard ridge pressed right where she wanted him and yet not close enough.
Those fingers gripping her hips tightened. “I need you to use your words, babydoll. Be more specific.”
“Show me,” she whispered, letting her fingers drift down his sculpted chest to hover at the waistband of his sweatpants. “How it should be. I want you so badly it hurts. Please, Thunder, give me … you.”
“Be very sure, babydoll,” he ordered, his body taut with control beneath her.
“Be sure you know what you want, what you're getting yourself into. It might not be fair of me to force you to decide when your whole world has once again been flipped on its head, but if you give yourself to me, that’s forever.
I won't be able to let you go, babydoll. I'm not strong enough to do that.”