She walked to me, still naked, holding her dress. She cupped my cheek and forced me to gaze into her eyes. “I’m not leaving. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here for you. Please, let me help you.”

How I wanted to believe her. How I wanted to grab her in my arms, hold her against me until the last monster disappeared into the fog of the night. Could I try? Could I risk everything and keep her with me?

I shook my head. “You need to leave. Now.”

“I don’t understand. Please. I don’t want to leave. I want to stay and help you.”

I gritted my teeth. “No. Leave.”

She bit her lip, and two tears, one from each eye, rivered down her cheeks.

I had never loathed myself more.

She put her sundress over her head and covered her shapely body. She sniffed and said, “All right, Talon. I will leave. But tomorrow, we’re going to talk about this. You can’t push me away. I won’t let you.”

I didn’t want to push her away. All I wanted was her. She was all I had ever wanted. I had never wanted anything until I met her. But I had to push her away. I had to protect her from the horror that was my life.

I grabbed her arm. “You’re not understanding me.”

“Talon, I have never understood you. But right now, you clearly need me to leave, so I want to leave. But we will talk tomorrow.”

Except that we wouldn’t talk tomorrow. We wouldn’t talk tomorrow or any other day.

“When I say leave, I’m not talking about leaving for now. I want you out of this house.”

Sadness shone in her beautiful eyes. “You can’t mean that.”

“I’ve never meant anything more in my life.”

“When I tried to leave before, you wanted me to stay.”

Hell, I wanted her to stay now. But what happened tonight had been like a freight train running me over, crushing me into dust, and forcing reality into me. I couldn’t give her anything. She needed to get away from me and have a life. She was wonderful, the most wonderful woman I had ever met, and she deserved to find someone who was capable of giving her what she deserved.

An anvil of jealousy hit me in the gut. God, another man touching her… Fucking her…

Loving her.

I squeezed my eyes shut again, trying to erase the images from my mind. Have to let go. Have to let her go.

“Things change, Jade.”

“We just made love. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I did. I was massaging you, and then—”

“Enough!” I raked my fingers through my hair. “Leave my room. Leave this house.”

“I-I can’t leave tonight.”

“First thing in the goddamned morning, then. I don’t want to see your face here again.”

“But…what will I tell Marj?”

Thank God my sister was in the city tonight. “I’ll deal with Marj. You just get your ass out of this house in the morning.”

Her beautiful lips trembled, and her hair fell around her shoulders in unruly waves.

She turned and walked out of my room.

Out of my life.

Taking my only chance of happiness with her.

 

* * *

 

Hot breath singed the back of the boy’s neck. He had learned to separate his mind from his body. It was the only way to survive. But still, the breath. Always the breath, no matter how far away he was into his mind.

He had stopped fighting back. He had stopped begging them to leave him alone. It was useless. They seemed to like it when he resisted.

He was used to the pain. Tonight was bad though. The one with the tattoo went first, and he was the biggest.

The boy winced and cried out when Tattoo breached him. He hated himself for screaming. Each time he promised himself he wouldn’t scream, and then he did. Next time, he said to himself. Next time I won’t scream.

Tattoo grunted as he forced his way into the boy’s body. As much as the boy hated being penetrated, it was better than having it stuffed inside his mouth. He threw up either way, but at least with penetration he could hold off until they left. Then he would heave and empty his stomach.

“Yeah, give it to him good,” Low Voice said.

The three men always wore black ski masks, so the boy had no idea what they looked like. Just as well. He didn’t want to see their faces. This way, not knowing what they looked like, he could think of them as inhuman. Pure evil.

“You like that, don’t you, boy?” Tattoo said, pumping into him. “You like being fucked in the ass.”

The boy said nothing. The first couple of times he had screamed, “No. I don’t! Stop this! I hate this!” And he’d paid for it with a beating as well as a fucking.

“Come on, boy. Tell me you like it.”

Still, he remained silent except for a few wails and sniffs.

Until a cool metal blade touched his neck.

“You say you like it,” Low Voice said. “Say you like his big hard cock in your ass, or I’ll slit your pretty little throat.”

 

* * *

 

I like it.

I’d said the words. Like a goddamned little pussy, I’d said the words to stay alive. Alive in the hell that had become my life.

Why? Why had I bothered to stay alive?

Cold desperation paralyzed me.

The boy. He was me.

He is me.

God help me.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Jade

I cried into my pillow until finally, my nose clogged, my face swollen, I fell asleep.

I woke the next morning, rose, and walked into my bathroom. A look in the mirror was a terrible reminder. My eyes were swollen from sobbing, my nose red. My hair was matted with tangles. I grabbed my brush and put it through my hair, wincing when I hit a knot. I brushed it through, reveling in the pain of tearing the tangle out of my hair.

It hurt, but no tears came. I was all cried out. I turned the shower on, and the whoosh of water was somehow comforting. Once the bathroom was good and steamy, I stepped in, letting the hot water scald my skin. I stood there for a few minutes, not washing my hair, not washing my face, just relishing the hot water on my body.

After a few more moments, I shook my head, sniffed, and squirted some shampoo into my palm.

Time to move forward.

When I finished washing, I stepped out of the shower and dried off, taking a dry cloth and wiping a circle in the steam on the mirror. I still looked like hell, but my face would recover from the crying jag. My face, my body—they would show no sign of my time with Talon Steel.