The dark slash of a smirk came again. “I won’t touch you, and you won’t touch yourself either. Let it simmer.”
What the fuck? She was going to explode.
“Trust me still?” he asked, his gaze piercing.
She recalled the question he had asked her before when she’d been drugged, a word that had tied them together since the day they’d met. She paused, thinking about it. Did she trust him still? Yes and no.
Her silence answered him enough.
His gaze intensified. “Good enough for now. You know where I’ve been the last few days?”
She shook her head, her arms trembling with the need wracking her body. His arms came to rest beside hers on the counter, caging her in without touching her.
“I found one of the three.”
Her heart stopped.
She knew, immediately knew, what he was talking about. One of the three men who had abused her.
Her arousal began to simmer down at the memories.
One of his hands gripped her jaw, rooting her to the present. "I ended him.” His nose found her nose, brushing it once in a gesture so soft she wanted him to do it again immediately. “I cut his hands off—” his nose went down her neck “—then his tongue—” down her breasts, his breath on her rigid nipples “—then his little dick.”
All parts that had touched her.
She looked at the back of his head, his wet dark hair, and felt her throat tighten. Something blossomed inside her, unfurled, slowly, tentatively, terrified of being hurt again, being abandoned again, but still finding hope. Fucking hope.
“Was it the bald man or one of the other two?” she asked, her voice breaking, and saw him pull back.
His eyes locked with hers. “The one who had the camera.”
Her body shivered with the mixed messages her brain was sending to it, oscillating between arousal and grief and rage and pain and arousal again as his words slowly penetrated her mind.
“You saw it,” she whispered, horrified, humiliated.
He stepped between her legs, his hand tilting her jaw and his thumb tracing her mouth in a move she recognized instinctively as his.
“Every. Single. Second.” His thumb pillowed her lower lip, his eyes intense on hers, his body pressed against hers, everything about him fierce and powerful and so dark she wanted it all for herself. “You didn’t go through any of that alone.”
Somehow, knowing he had seen it, that he had experienced it with her made her feel a little less lost. Knowing he had seen her be used and discarded, and knowing he still wanted her, it made something in her chest go tight in a way her heart bloomed. He had seen her at her worst, witnessed as they broke her, found her in the jaws of death, and somehow, he’d still found her worth saving. Even after all of it, he had brought her to his house and given her a safe space to heal.
Something in her fragmented heart softened.
They looked at each other for a long, quiet moment.
"I'm yours." It was sinking in, truly sinking in, how much his she was. A man didn't witness what he did everyday for her for no reason. He might not feel emotions as he said, but there was something solid, tangible, unbreakable between them, and they both knew it.
His nose brushed hers again. "All mine."
She could pinpoint the moment the course of her life changed six years ago. And sitting there on the countertop, six years later with the same man, with little slivers of secrets and silence, she knew the course of her life was changing again.