just as beaten, hurting so bad I could barely take a step and there would be two rows of broken kids lying in filth and blood, bugs crawling over them, waiting for me. Looking at me as if I could save them. As if I could come up with a miracle and stop what was happening to them.”
He pressed his fingers to his eyes as if that would stop the flood of memories he had unleashed. Rage, he knew, wasn’t hot and loud. It was ice-cold and gathered into a powerful weapon, one trained in anatomy. One trained in every kind of sexual behavior. One trained as an assassin. He was a very effective weapon.
“The point I’m trying to make with all of this is I have complete control of my body unless it’s you. I don’t have normal erections, not like every other man in the world. My body doesn’t react to women or men because I was taught never to allow my body to react. I had to be in control at all times. We all did.”
He studied her face without appearing to do so. It was a lot to take in and he knew that. People shut down when they heard horrific stories. Their minds couldn’t accept that others were that deviant, or cruel, especially to children. They didn’t want to hear or comprehend that boys and girls were raped, tortured and killed for the pleasure of adults.
Breezy had taken it all in. He could tell she knew he’d whitewashed it. There was no way he was going to describe the particulars to her, not if he could help it. He needed her to understand him. Why he was in control when they had sex. Why he touched her all the time. Why she had to be in his sight. Why he would be the same, maybe worse with his children. Why his house had to be so clean and pristine. Why he struggled to give her space when he needed everything his own way just to stay sane.
“I’m so sorry, Steele. It’s no wonder that you’re so close with the others. Sharing something so horrendous will either drive you apart or weave a bond so close, you can’t be without one another.”
“That was how we survived. Czar came up with a plan. So many died from infection. So many bled out. Others were killed for pleasure. We had to fight back. All of us had to do our part so we could make it out of there.” But he’d failed and one of them, one they all loved, hadn’t survived just when they were about to taste freedom.
He took another slow drink of water, appreciating how it cooled the strain on his throat. “The point I’m making is about sex, Bree. After you left—”
She held up her hand. “As petty as this sounds, given what you’re telling me, I don’t want you to ever rewrite our history or get the idea in your head that I left you. I didn’t. I never would have. You forced me to go when I would have walked through hell with you and would have been happy to do it as long as I had you.”
The truth was an arrow piercing his heart because she was right. Worse, he’d known that when he’d sent her away. He’d been cruel and ugly about it to get her to go because nothing else would have made her leave him. That was on him, that hurt she carried. He’d flayed her right to her soul and Breezy was a gentle, sensitive woman, filled with compassion and a quiet strength that called to him.
“I’m very aware I sent you away, Bree.” He pressed the bottle to his forehead, wishing the vise that was squeezing his skull would let up. Just for a few minutes. Just so he could try to explain the party to her. His needs. His desperation. “I needed to know you were safe. You were all I had, and the Swords would have destroyed you. I had to make you go.”
She nodded. “I’m beginning to see that.”
His heart leapt and then clenched hard in his chest. He rubbed over the spot. “After you were gone, I had no interest in women. I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with another woman. I spent a lot of time with the bottle, trying to find a way to sleep at night. It was too much of a bother to force my body to try