He curled her against his chest and kissed her forehead. “Please, take a deep breath. This isn’t good for you.”

Finally, she managed to breathe deeply; then she swallowed back tears. “I found blood.”

Oh, Jesus Christ. His stomach went into a free fall. “Did you go to the emergency room?”

Again, she shook her head. “I was afraid we’d have to wait too long. I called my new obstetrician. She agreed to meet me at her office before hours, so Tyler took me there, waited while the doctor examined me.”

And he’d missed all of this. Luc stroked her shoulder, pressed another kiss to her forehead. Not only had he missed it; he’d heaped more shit on her.

Why the fuck hadn’t he listened instead of letting his jealousy do the talking?

“Are you okay?” Luc was almost afraid to ask the question. “What did she say?”

“That it’s not uncommon to spot if you’re on your feet too much or under too much stress.”

Without a doubt, Alyssa suffered from both.

“The baby is okay. But she told me to rest. Sleep. I couldn’t come here, and Tyler wanted me somewhere he could protect me. So he offered me his place to crash, but when we got there, I was too keyed up and couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to worry you. You were so far away. I was too shaken to realize you might be worried. I’m not used to having anyone care . . .”

“Sugar, anywhere, anytime, anyplace, you call me.” Luc wanted to growl the words at her. She was so damn independent, and it had probably grated her to even ask Tyler for help, much less call someone halfway across the country.

“Anyway, Tyler called the doctor again, asked if there was anything she could give me. Though she normally wouldn’t do this for someone pregnant, she prescribed me a sedative because of my stress and fatigue.”

“And you fell asleep.” In Tyler’s bed.

She nodded. “I know I should have called. Everything happened so fast.”

Of course she’d been more worried about making sure the baby was okay than soothing his jangled nerves. It wasn’t her fault he was a jealous, distrusting bastard.

“I’m so sorry you went through all of that without me. That someone broke in the house. That you spotted. That I scared you.” He held her close.

The water began to cool, and Luc reached out to turn it off. Leaning out of the tub, he grabbed her towel off the bar and wrapped it around her small frame, dabbing it across her face and removing the mascara, squeezing the long strands of her hair inside its folds.

She stood docile, almost unmoving. It wasn’t like her, and he worried until it was a bleeding hole in his chest.

Quickly, he threw off his wet clothes and left them in the bottom of the shower, then reached for his towel. He didn’t bother drying, and his hair dripped thick streams of water down his back and shoulders. Instead, he wrapped the towel around his waist and helped her out of the shower.

Alyssa didn’t say a word as he steadied her over to the bed. On the way, he grabbed their robes from the back of the door. He helped her into hers, belting it for her as if she were a child, then shrugged into his own. In silence, he toweled more moisture from her hair and studied her face. He still didn’t like her expression. Somewhere past shock, it was almost blank.

Luc swallowed down his frustration. Whatever was going on with her was more than someone breaking into the house, more than the fact he’d been angry enough to tie her to the bed. And he had to get her to open up, let it go, if he could.

He pulled her into his lap, gratified that she went trustingly, resting her head on his shoulder. “Alyssa, sugar. Tell me why I scared you.”

Her head jerked, jolted, until it finally became a full-blown shake. “It’s nothing.”

“Please.” He grabbed her tighter, then forced himself to let go, afraid he’d scare her all over again. “Someone hurt you.”

She closed her eyes. A tear ran down her cheek.

It nearly killed him. “Someone raped you. I did something to remind you of that, right?”

“It was a long time ago. Just forget it. I have.”

Luc barely heard her whisper, but he knew it was a lie. She wasn’t over it, and hearing the chocked admission heaped in denial crushed him. “You were a teenager.”

For a long minute, Alyssa said nothing, but stared at the wall on his right. Finally, she murmured, “Fifteen.”

Dear God. Not even old enough to drive. Barely more than a girl, and some asshole had forced his way into her body against her will? Rape was one of the ugliest of crimes, but against one so young?

Stomach turning, Luc hesitated. He had to keep asking questions that would allow her to reveal the ordeal a bit at a time. She wasn’t ready to just spill her entire secret in one breath.

“Were you on a date?”

Her whole body tensed. “No.” Then she gave a hysterical sob. “I wasn’t allowed to date. My mother expected me to be a virgin when I got married.”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this, truly. But he had to. Without this knowledge, Luc sensed that he couldn’t truly understand his wife.

“And you were a virgin when this . . . ?” He tensed, swallowed, somehow hoping like hell she’d say no.

But she nodded.

Luc had never been nauseous and angry at once. He wanted to smash this bastard’s head, make him feel every bit of the pain Alyssa had clearly felt. But he kept it to himself. No sudden movements, no swearing, no making fists. Instead, he softly stroked her hair.

“A boy from school?” he ventured, his voice as gentle as he could make it.

Alyssa opened her mouth, then closed it. Hesitated. Then she rose to her feet. Luc wanted to keep her in his lap, safe and warm, where he could hold her and soothe her at the slightest tremor. But he didn’t dare hold her down again.

She paced to the bathroom counter and braced herself on it. “Not . . . exactly. It’s ancient history. Not really important.”

Luc stood and slowly, giving her plenty of time to back away, approached her. Relief poured through his system when she didn’t pull away, so he loosely placed his hands on her shoulders.

“I think it’s very important. If you don’t want to tell me, I understand. I haven’t done a good job earning your trust today. Or for the past two months. I’ve been slow to learn, but I want to do better—with your help. Please, I need to know what’s going to frighten you so I don’t do it again.”

Alyssa bit her lip, sighed, looked at the ceiling as if praying for strength. “N-no bondage. I can’t . . .” She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. “I just can’t.”

Reality hit Luc in the face. What had Jack said? He and Alyssa had realized quickly they weren’t compatible. That made complete sense now. “Not unless you’re ready. If that day never comes, I’ll understand.”

She gave him a jerky nod. “Thank you.”

Caressing her shoulders, Luc brought her against his body. She wanted to leave the story there. She’d been fifteen, a virgin, and had been raped. But he sensed the story was only beginning.

“It wasn’t a boy from school who hurt you?”

Alyssa wrapped her arms around her middle and shook her head. “I—I don’t know if I can talk about this. I haven’t told anyone this since the night after it happened.”

She’d kept this to herself for fourteen years? “You never told Jack? Tyler? A therapist?”

A sad smile crossed her face before it dissolved. “Jack would have hunted him down, and that’s the last thing I want. Tyler . . . If I think my past is coming back to haunt me, I’ll tell him. Never could afford a therapist until I worked through a lot of this on my own.”

Why the hell wouldn’t she want Jack to hunt this asshole down? Personally, Luc was dying to. But she didn’t want to hear that, and he couldn’t jeopardize the conversation now that she was talking.

He hugged her back to his chest again. “Who did this to you, sugar?”

“Joshua.” She shuddered, closed her eyes. “He’s m-my stepbrother.”

Sick fury assailed him once again. Someone who was supposedly a part of her blended family had violated her trust and body? As much as hearing this killed him, he had to get the full story. But he didn’t know what questions to ask from here.

Swallowing, he decided to simply wing it. “Your mother remarried?”

She nodded slowly. “When I was twelve.”

Please, please tell me this creep didn’t start taking advantage of her then. “Did it start then? Touching? Fondling?”

“No. At first, he was my best friend. My mom remarried someone very wealthy. We moved from our middle-class neighborhood to . . . Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. I started a new school. I didn’t know anyone. I was shy. I had a hard time adjusting.”

And this prick Joshua had used her insecurity against her. “So he said he’d be your friend?”

“Yes, and he made sure I had all the coolest friends in school. And he kept other guys away from me. When I was a freshman, there was a junior—one of Josh’s classmates—who decided he wanted to nail me at a party. He got me drunk and cornered me in the bathroom. Joshua and some of his other friends picked the lock and stormed in. Joshua beat this guy ruthlessly; then he carried me out. The next Monday, he told everyone we were dating and not to fuck with me. I thought he did it for my protection.” She grunted in disbelief.

“He wanted you for himself.” Luc had no trouble picturing that.

“Yeah. He’d fly into a rage if he even thought anyone was looking at me, or if he suspected I liked someone. Shortly after that incident, he started sneaking into my room, said he wanted to make sure I was safe.”

When she laughed bitterly, it twisted his stomach. Safe? The asshole had taken total advantage of her. How could he couch that as protecting her? “Did he start kissing you or just attack?”

“Oh, there were kisses. Lots and lots of those, and I stupidly encouraged it, thinking that he really cared. That started when I was fourteen.”

And this fucking rapist had been . . . what? Sixteen? Seventeen? Old enough to know that he was using a young, innocent girl.

“When did he start touching you?”

“Right before I turned fifteen. That summer.”

The way she sighed raggedly told Luc she needed to pause. He stood silently behind her, caressing her arms. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her they could stop here, talk later. Certainly, it would be better for his stomach and temper. But he knew getting her back to this place would be difficult and painful. Better to get it all out now.

“When did it become more?”

“I found out that he’d been sleeping with this girl in his English class. I was . . . so stupid that I ever believed that he wanted to marry me someday. In my fairy-tale-minded head, I thought he was waiting for me. You know, to grow up, so our first experience could be together. He told me that of course he had to fuck other girls. Our parents couldn’t know about us yet. They’d have freaked. So Joshua said he was keeping up appearances, letting his dad know he had a healthy interest in other females.”

“Scumbag,” Luc muttered. That was actually a lot milder than what he was thinking, but with that pronouncement, she’d know he empathized but wouldn’t alarm her with the violence of his fury.

“Then he said that all the waiting for me had been tough on him and that he’d had to have other pussy or his human pressure valves got too tight.” She scoffed. “So I told him to go away, that I didn’t want him anymore. I stopped speaking to him for weeks.”

“And he turned violent?”

“Yes. Just after my sophomore year started, he came to my room one night, tied me down, and said he felt cheated that he’d waited around and hadn’t gotten any. And he’d so been looking forward to being my first. He’d even gone so far as to plan this elaborate scheme to ‘pop my cherry’ for my sweet sixteen.”

Luc’s nausea rose to new levels, as did his need to wipe this asshole off the face of the earth. He wasn’t a violent man, but this . . . Unforgivable.

“I’m sorry.” He wanted to say so much more, but at this point, words would only placate him. Her damage had been done. He only hoped he could help heal her.

“Oh, God it hurt . . .” Her body trembled, seized up. The sobs started again. “H-he took me every way a man can take a woman.”

Joshua had raped her anally, too? Another blow to the restraint around Luc’s rage. He grabbed the countertop on either side of her hips and looked at her bowed head in the mirror. Her haunted eyes, squeezed shut tight, dominated her tense, fragile face.

“Sugar, I’m so sorry.” He kissed the back of her head. He didn’t trust himself to touch her gently in that moment. Too many violent urges running through his body.

“Wh-when it was over, I was sobbing and bleeding. He was angry and said he wondered why he’d bothered. I was just another whore after all.” Fists clenched, she drew in a shuddering breath. “I . . . I wanted to kill him.”