Thunder (Hell's Handlers MC #10) - Lilly Atlas Page 0,100
attached, so we lived there. From as early as I can remember, I was exposed to fucking in all its forms. Some of the shit I’ve seen would make your eyes bleed.”
“God, Thunder, I can’t imagine what that was like.” So different from her own upbringing, yet just as dysfunctional and emotionally scarring for a child. It strengthened the bond she already felt with him. Two souls wounded by their pasts. If her past didn’t run the risk of endangering their future, this moment would be perfect. She tried not to feel angry about that fact. Now wasn’t the time, but still, she couldn’t help but experience some bitterness knowing she was the one who’d ruin what she had with Thunder. Either by turning him down now, or later when she had to leave.
He played with a lock of her hair, staring at the strands as they sifted through his fingers. “It wasn’t pretty. I saw the working girls get eyes blackened. I saw them steal from johns. I saw men screaming, violent, drunk, high, you name it. But I never saw a healthy relationship. Not one. My mom eventually married the asshole who owned the brothel.”
“Did she stop working after she got married?”
He snorted as though it meant nothing, but his eyes held the pain of painful memories. God, she understood that.
“Nah. That’s when she became a cash fucking cow. You got any idea how much these pieces of shit were willing to pay for an hour or two with the owner’s wife?” He whistled. “A pretty penny, and let me tell you, there were hordes of johns willing to pay. Can’t tell you how many times I’d be doing homework while listening to some guy give it to my mom as my stepdad grinned and counted his fucking Benjamins.”
“Oh, Thunder, I’m so sorry.” Her insides bled for the boy forced into the dark side of an adult’s world way before his time. Along with the heartbreak came a kind of understanding. While different circumstances, she’d not been allowed a childhood, either. She also witnessed the ugly underbelly of life before she’d been old enough to grasp the repercussions.
“All I’d ever known were men and women who made each other miserable. Who tore each other down, broke each other’s hearts, and destroyed each other’s lives.”
She cupped his face and pulled him down for a quick kiss, trying to pour all her understanding and caring into the act. “Yet you grew up into such a good man,” she whispered against his lips.
He grunted. “A good man? Makenna, I’ve done what I know. Treated women the same way I saw growing up. I’ve continued the pattern.”
No, he’d told her he avoided relationships to keep from hurting and getting hurt. Sure, he may have become a stripper and, well, prostitute in some sense, but he hadn’t carried on his parent’s tradition of severely dysfunctional marriages. The idea of Thunder acting in a violent or even disrespectful way toward a woman almost made her laugh. “No, it’s not the sa—”
“I was fourteen the first time I fucked,” he plowed on as though not even hearing her. “She was another unfortunate soul who’d been raised in the brothel. A year older than me. Her name was Paris. She was awkward and painfully shy, but we were both curious about sex. It dominated everything in the house, yet we had no idea what it felt like. So we decided to find out for ourselves. For me, it was fucking awesome. But I was a hormone-fueled teenaged boy. Paris cried, but pleaded with me to just get it over with.”
He shook his head, and her heart squeezed. No doubt, the memories seemed alive in his mind as though they happened yesterday instead of over a decade ago.
“I felt like such a monster. My stepfather discovered us, curled up in her bed afterward, naked, tears still staining Paris’s cheeks. I got a fist bump out of the deal where Paris got a lecture about sucking it up and getting more practice, so she’d be broken in and useful by the time she started working at eighteen.”
“God, Thunder…”
He nodded. “Fucked up, right? We were encouraged to keep fucking, but I was told my balls were on the line if I knocked her up. I’d loved it, hell what fourteen-year-old boy with hormones running rampant wouldn’t? But Paris hadn’t. She’d avoided me at all costs after that until one day when I finally cornered her. Not for sex, but