and suffering. “I was the only one we had to help, to doctor them, and, in the beginning, I was a child being brutalized myself.” He had a gift, healing hands, except he’d been too young and had no idea how to use it.
He scrubbed his hand down his face, trying to wipe away the filth and dirt, the blood, sometimes black mixing with feces, vomit and filth on the unkept floors. “The conditions were intolerable. We were crammed into a basement with no bathroom. No way to clean. Very little food. It was freezing all the time. The wounds on bodies went septic very fast. There were rats and cockroaches everywhere. The smell …” He shook his head trying to clear it. He couldn’t go back there. He couldn’t let his mind take him there.
“We didn’t have clothes and that became the normal for us. It was Czar that gave us all a sense of hope and kept our humanity in spite of what was happening to us. The daily rapes. The tortures. There were so many children so traumatized they were catatonic. The wounds were open, and we didn’t have antibiotics or any way to treat them. Eventually the sexual training. Training to kill.”
Breezy pressed a cold bottle of water into his hand. She’d found the little refrigerator behind the outside bar and had gotten him something cold to drink. He wished it was alcohol, although, he’d found over the years, even that did nothing to help. Only Breezy. Only his woman. Looking up at her, the wind tugging at her hair and her eyes overbright, wearing her empathy and compassion on her face, he knew what love was.
Steele pressed the bottle of water to his forehead. He was hot. “It was always cold there. No blankets. Always naked. We had very little water to share. Czar rationed it just like he did the food. Everyone was always hungry and thirsty. The smell of rotting flesh permeated the room. Those gaping, horrible wounds. Children rotting from the inside out. Sometimes, Bree, there were rows of them, lined up for me, begging me to help them. I was eight or nine when they all began to look to me to save them.”
“Why you?”
He shook his head. “I was born with an ability. I can heal, or at least get the process started, and that’s without any formal training as a doctor. I wish—” He broke off. He wished he wasn’t a healer, that he hadn’t known or felt the tremendous drive to try.
“Honey, you don’t have to tell me this.”
“I do. You have to understand me and why I’m so damn fucked up. You know I am, so don’t pretend. I don’t.” He always turned the spotlight on himself. He had to. He had a monster crouching inside, waiting to emerge, looking for a chance to escape. He was careful and that meant assessing his mental state at all times. “There were no adults looking after us, they were the ones hurting us. We had to make up our own rules. Our own code. We had to look after one another, watch one another’s backs.”
He took a long drink of the cold water, letting it slide down his throat, feeling the cool relief of it. Savoring it. He appreciated every time he drank water. He never took it for granted. Never. He never took having a clean environment for granted.
“We were trained to control our bodies, to give pleasure to others no matter what was happening to us. They would whip us, laying open our flesh while we were forced to continue performing. Some had it far worse than others, but all of us had to train to become experts at anything sexual.”
He raised his gaze to hers. He had to. He had to see if she understood, even a little, what had been done to all those children. Children he couldn’t save, no matter how hard he’d tried with the little tools he had. As always, his woman didn’t disappoint. There was compassion softening her expression. Her eyes were liquid and her long lashes damp. For a moment his throat closed. It was no wonder that he loved her.
“Anything sexual, Breezy. Any type of sex. We were beaten severely if we didn’t succeed in arousing our partner while controlling our bodies. Every type of rape you can imagine was done on us. I couldn’t keep up with all of them. I would come back, just as bloody and