air through his lungs and made every effort to not only get himself under control, but to quickly assess what was happening. He was pragmatic about the things Torpedo Ink had to do in order to survive. That included investigating their women. That included Scarlet Foley. He might want her to trust him enough to tell him her past, but he couldn’t give her his, not without a true commitment from her. He never would disclose everything to her. He understood if she didn’t. Also, even if he knew, it would still mean as much if she did tell him. So, what the hell was wrong?
“I’m sorry, Absinthe,” Czar said softly. “You’re absolutely right. Your woman does have a name. Scarlet then. Your librarian. I presume she’s extremely intelligent or you wouldn’t be attracted to her. You need a brainiac to keep up with you.”
Absinthe took another deep breath, careful not to look around the room. Rage was present, a living, breathing entity. It was ugly. All consuming. Eating him alive. He knew Czar was giving him a chance to pull himself together and figure it out. Czar was president of Torpedo Ink for a reason. Steele was young, but he was VP for a reason. The two knew if Absinthe was acting out of character, and it wasn’t his rage, it had to belong to someone else in the room.
“What do you have, Code?” Absinthe asked, needing something else to concentrate on.
It was difficult to breathe. He knew already exactly who was broadcasting that kind of rage. There was only one person who had the kinds of demons that ate him up from the inside out. None of them had found a way to help and all of them had tried. The room was large, the windows open, but still it didn’t matter. At times, the rage inside of Savage built and built until there was no way to contain it. He was at a breaking point. Absinthe didn’t have to touch him to feel the way the past haunted him.
Absinthe heard the screams in Savage’s mind. Pleas. Smelled blood. The scent of sex. Heard whispered words of promises and then the whistle of whips or floggers. Not the kinds of whips found in adult toy stores. Whips that could cause permanent damage if not wielded by a master. He tried not to see the images pressing into his mind. He didn’t want them there. He didn’t want to see writhing bodies marked with red streaks and tears. He didn’t want to smell burning flesh or hear the screams as a young child was encouraged to practice whipping, branding, piercing and eventually breath play.
It was all he could do not to put his hands over his ears and rush from the room. It was years of discipline that saved him. That was always what saved him. He’d been sharing the demons of the other Torpedo Ink members since he was a young boy.
“Her name really is Scarlet Foley,” Code said. “She’s twenty-seven years old.”
Absinthe was relieved. He loved her name. Scarlet suited her with all that long red hair. He forced himself away from rage and hurt and the need for violence in order to crawl out from under the past and concentrated on breathing, needing to see his librarian, the woman who had the ability to save his sanity.
“When she was seventeen, she was convicted of attempted murder. Three men, college friends. Frat brothers. One, by the name of Holden—Robert Barnes-Holden the Third—apparently brought her to a party. She was already in her second year of college and he was dating her. I pulled up the trial itself,” Code continued, “and it looks to me as though it was a clear case of self-defense, but Holden’s family is very wealthy and her family not so much. Daddy Holden bought off the defense attorney. I know he did because I dug deeper and found the payoff.”
Absinthe had to move around the table away from Savage to one of the windows so he could take a deep enough breath to fill his lungs with air. He made certain it looked natural, as if he had to pace, but his own rage, ever present, twisted with Savage’s again, making it nearly impossible to control. She’d been seventeen.
“They tried her as an adult,” Code added.
There was silence in the room. Absinthe stayed by the window, needing to know details, but afraid to ask, to hear. It was going to be bad. Code