She started to wrap the towel around her body, but he couldn’t stand not seeing her. It had been too long for him. He took the towel out of her hand and draped it over his arm before holding out his other hand to her. She kept herself shaved, other than a little landing strip, again, his preference. He liked that she still did that, three years later when he hadn’t been around.
The stairs were wide enough to allow them to walk side by side, hand in hand, their bodies close. His thigh brushed hers. Their shoulders. Her breasts jolted with each step she took. He wanted to put his hand on her ass, but knew it was too soon. He wanted to mark her breasts with his mouth, put a claiming bite on her shoulder or neck, but he resisted every urge and just walked with her to the huge glass wall that took up the entire back of the house and slid or folded open depending on the room.
Breezy stood watching him, her eyes wide. “Who knew people had houses like this?”
“The moment I saw it, I knew this was the one. I bought it, furnished it with you in mind and then couldn’t even sleep here.”
“You always had trouble sleeping,” she commented, preceding him onto the patio when he stepped back to let her through.
“Still do. Always will. Too many fucking bodies. All those voices calling out to me.” He shook his head. “You’re all that takes them away, and only for a short while.” He rubbed his temples. “Some nights l think I’ll go insane.”
She frowned at him, that adorable little frown he always wanted to kiss off her face. “Bodies? What are you talking about, Steele?”
He used the remote to get the fire going. The chimney ran up the side of the house, between two turrets, wide and made of rock. It was nearly as beautiful as the house and fit right into the landscape. He gestured toward one of the chairs positioned close so she could feel the heat if she needed it.
She curled up, pulling her knees in and tucking her feet under her. It was such a Breezy thing to do. She was always curled up in some way. Making herself smaller. Just in case. She had no idea how she looked to him, sitting there in her soft, glowing skin. Her breasts were high and firm and very round. Temptation itself. He could just see the peeking of her sex between her legs, enticing him further.
His woman. Hotter than hell. He sank onto the chair beside her, his hand dropping casually to his hard cock. Circling it with his fist. It was more automatic when he was around her than anything else. He didn’t even think about it. Instead, he pumped slowly while he thought about how best to explain it all to her. She didn’t break the silence but watched him, eyes on his face and then dropping lower.
Steele took a deep breath. When he figured out what he needed to tell her, his hand dropped from his cock to his thigh and began kneading his muscle there. Fingers digging in. Fist curling and thumping on the heavy muscle, his cock forgotten. Everything forgotten but the past that continually haunted him.
“I’m no longer Lyov and I haven’t been since I was a little toddler, terrified out of my mind. I’m Steele. I had to become Steele to survive. My parents were murdered, and I was taken to what the outside world thought was a school to shape me into an asset for my country.”
He couldn’t hit his thigh hard enough to keep the pain physical and in the present. The past was rising like a specter. “There were four such schools. I was taken to the one Sorbacov called his own. No one was allowed to inspect it or see us for any reason. Sorbacov was a pedophile, as were his friends. The instructors at the school were vicious, disturbed criminals who enjoyed torturing and raping children. I was one of those children.”
There. He’d said it aloud. To her. He kept his voice expressionless. Disconnected. He let the pain of his fist hitting his thigh push the reality to the back of his mind. He needed the distraction to recount those early days to her, and she had to hear it. She had to know. It was his only shot at keeping her.
He heard her soft gasp and knew he had her. Breezy had more compassion, more empathy in her little finger than anyone he knew. He had to keep talking before he couldn’t make himself continue.
“In the end, there were two hundred and eighty-seven children brought to that school. A prison really. Only eighteen survived.” He stumbled over that. There should have been nineteen. He closed his eyes against that knowledge. His fault. His responsibility. That was on his shoulders. Only eighteen, not nineteen. They’d been so close to freedom.
“Steele.”
Her whisper was like a breath of fresh air. Breezy. Blowing away the memories. The knowledge of his failures—failures that had cost others their lives. When she said his name, every person and place, every horrific situation, every failure, was gone, leaving only his woman with her green eyes and perfect mouth and beautiful skin.
He forced himself to continue without looking at her. If he looked at her face, she would see his guilt. Those green eyes saw too much. “The children were all ages, and our keepers had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. The more they hurt us, the more they became depraved, and the tortures got worse. I couldn’t save the others no matter how hard I tried.”
Now there was no distraction. Not her breasts. Not her sex. Not her green eyes or his pounding fist. There were only those faces staring up at him with pleas and cries and suffering. “I was the only one we had to help, to doctor them, and in the beginning, I was a child being brutalized myself.” He had a gift, healing hands, except he’d been too young and had no idea how to use it.
He scrubbed his hand down his face, trying to wipe away the filth and dirt, the blood, sometimes black mixing with feces, vomit and filth on the unkept floors. “The conditions were intolerable. We were crammed into a basement with no bathroom. No way to clean. Very little food. It was freezing all the time. The wounds on bodies went septic very fast. There were rats and cockroaches everywhere. The smell . . .” He shook his head, trying to clear it. He couldn’t go back there. He couldn’t let his mind take him there.
“We didn’t have clothes, and that became the norm for us. It was Czar that gave us all a sense of hope and kept our humanity in spite of what was happening to us. The daily rapes. The tortures. There were so many children so traumatized they were catatonic. The wounds were open, and we didn’t have antibiotics or any way to treat them. Eventually the sexual training. Training to kill.”
Breezy pressed a cold bottle of water into his hand. She’d found the little refrigerator behind the outside bar and had gotten him something cold to drink. He wished it was alcohol, although he’d found over the years even that did nothing to help. Only Breezy. Only his woman. Looking up at her, the wind tugging at her hair and her eyes overbright, wearing her empathy and compassion on her face, he knew what love was.
Steele pressed the bottle of water to his forehead. He was hot. “It was always cold there. No blankets. Always naked. We had very little water to share. Czar rationed it just like he did the food. Everyone was always hungry and thirsty. The smell of rotting flesh permeated the room. Those gaping, horrible wounds. Children rotting from the inside out. Sometimes, Bree, there were rows of them, lined up for me, begging me to help them. I was eight or nine when they all began to look to me to save them.”
“Why you?”
He shook his head. “I was born with an ability. I can heal, or at least get the process started, and that’s without any formal training as a doctor. I wish—” He broke off. He wished he wasn’t a healer, that he hadn’t known or felt the tremendous drive to try.
“Honey, you don’t have to tell me this.”
“I do. You have to understand me and why I’m so damn fucked up. You know I am, so don’t pretend. I don’t.” He always turned the spotlight on himself. He had to. He had a monster crouching inside, waiting to emerge, looking for a chance to escape. He was careful, and that meant assessing his mental state at all times. “There were no adults looking after us, they were the ones hurting us. We had to make up our own rules. Our own code. We had
to look after one another, watch one another’s backs.”
He took a long drink of the cold water, letting it slide down his throat, feeling the cool relief of it. Savoring it. He appreciated every time he drank water. He never took it for granted. Never. He never took having a clean environment for granted.
“We were trained to control our bodies, to give pleasure to others no matter what was happening to us. They would whip us, laying open our flesh while we were forced to continue performing. Some had it far worse than others, but all of us had to train to become experts at anything sexual.”
He raised his gaze to hers. He had to. He had to see if she understood, even a little, what had been done to all those children. Children he couldn’t save, no matter how hard he’d tried with the little tools he had. As always, his woman didn’t disappoint. There was compassion softening her expression. Her eyes were liquid and her long lashes damp. For a moment his throat closed. It was no wonder that he loved her.
“Anything sexual, Breezy. Any type of sex. We were beaten severely if we didn’t succeed in arousing our partner while controlling our bodies. Every type of rape you can imagine was done to us. I couldn’t keep up with all of them. I would come back, just as bloody and just as beaten, hurting so bad I could barely take a step, and there would be two rows of broken kids lying in filth and blood, bugs crawling over them, waiting for me. Looking at me as if I could save them. As if I could come up with a miracle and stop what was happening to them.”
He pressed his fingers to his eyes as if that would stop the flood of memories he had unleashed. Rage, he knew, wasn’t hot and loud. It was ice-cold and gathered into a powerful weapon, one trained in anatomy. One trained in every kind of sexual behavior. One trained as an assassin. He was a very effective weapon.
“The point I’m trying to make with all of this is I have complete control of my body unless it’s you. I don’t have normal erections, not like every other man in the world. My body doesn’t react to women or men because I was taught never to allow my body to react. I had to be in control at all times. We all did.”
He studied her face without appearing to do so. It was a lot to take in and he knew that. People shut down when they heard horrific stories. Their minds couldn’t accept that others were that deviant, or cruel, especially to children. They didn’t want to hear or comprehend that boys and girls were raped, tortured and killed for the pleasure of adults.
Breezy had taken it all in. He could tell she knew he’d whitewashed it. There was no way he was going to describe the particulars to her, not if he could help it. He needed her to understand him. Why he was in control when they had sex. Why he touched her all the time. Why she had to be in his sight. Why he would be the same, maybe worse, with his children. Why his house had to be so clean and pristine. Why he struggled to give her space when he needed everything his own way just to stay sane.
“I’m so sorry, Steele. It’s no wonder that you’re so close with the others. Sharing something so horrendous will either drive you apart or weave a bond so close, you can’t be without one another.”
“That was how we survived. Czar came up with a plan. So many died from infection. So many bled out. Others were killed for pleasure. We had to fight back. All of us had to do our part so we could make it out of there.” But he’d failed, and one of them, one they all loved, hadn’t survived just when they were about to taste freedom.
He took another slow drink of water, appreciating how it cooled the strain on his throat. “The point I’m making is about sex, Bree. After you left—”
She held up her hand. “As petty as this sounds, given what you’re telling me, I don’t want you to ever rewrite our history or get the idea in your head that I left you. I didn’t. I never would have. You forced me to go when I would have walked through hell with you and would have been happy to do it as long as I had you.”
The truth was an arrow piercing his heart because she was right. Worse, he’d known that when he sent her away. He’d been cruel and ugly about it to get her to go because nothing else would have made her leave him. That was on him, that hurt she carried. He’d flayed her right to her soul, and Breezy was a gentle, sensitive woman, filled with compassion and a quiet strength that called to him.
“I’m very aware I sent you away, Bree.” He pressed the bottle to his forehead, wishing the vise that was squeezing his skull would let up. Just for a few minutes. Just so he could try to explain the party to her. His needs. His desperation. “I needed to know you were safe. You were all I had, and the Swords would have destroyed you. I had to make you go.”
She nodded. “I’m beginning to see that.”
His heart leapt and then clenched hard in his chest. He rubbed over the spot. “After you were gone, I had no interest in women. I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with another woman. I spent a lot of time with the bottle, trying to find a way to sleep at night. It was too much of a bother to force my body to try to cooperate.”
Breezy got up and went to the bar. He watched her walk, wondering why a woman would ever want to wear clothes, and why her man would want her to. When she moved, he knew the meaning of poetry. The female form was beautiful, no matter what. Her body, to him, was stunning. Gorgeous. It was no wonder, knowing her the way he did, that he reacted physically to her. She was as beautiful inside as she was outside.
She bent to get another water out of the refrigerator for herself. When she bent, the firm globes of her ass with his ink dripping over the curves, declaring her forever his, sent his cock into a frenzy. Blood rushed, pooled. Low. Wicked. Sinful. The ache turned to pain. For a man like him, one who couldn’t have a normal erection, the sudden steel running through his cock was a miracle.
She didn’t return to the chair but instead stayed a distance from him, leaning on the bar. The sun shone on her breasts. He wanted to spend hours on her breasts and devouring her spicy honey, drawing moans and cries from her. She was so responsive, genuinely so, and he loved that about her. Breezy was always unexpected—a mixture of submission and demands.
“Once we were here, away from the Swords, and we began to interact with other clubs, going to their parties and inviting them to ours, I decided to try to find a better way to sleep than drowning myself in alcohol. I didn’t want to be in any other body but yours. I knew that. I also knew if I wanted a release, I had to work at getting one. Or have the woman work at it.”
Her eyes were on his cock, mesmerized by his fist circling the rigid shaft, once more sliding slowly up and down, fingers tight. Her tongue touched her upper lip, and his cock jerked hard. Little pearly droplets made an appearance on the broad crown.
“One woman never got me off. Not ever, no matter how long I was in her mouth. Then two didn’t. No matter how much I commanded my body to obey, how much I needed the release, I couldn’t get there. I’d had your body, your mouth, your ass. No one else was going to do it for me. I haven’t been inside another woman. Not one time since you’ve been gone. There’s only been you.”
He watched her expression carefully. She didn’t have a poker face. He was telling the absolute truth. It was possible the copious amounts of alcohol he’d drunk had contributed to his inability to get hard, but it hadn’t mattered. He hadn’t wanted to be inside another woman.
“I got off looking at those pictures of you. So fucking sexy.” He pulled out his phone and texted Maestro. Needing his help. Needing to know his woman was his again.
“How did you get those pictures? You were inside me and you didn’t have a camera.”
“I asked Storm to take them. He likes that shit. Gets off on it. Apparently, I do too, as long as it’s you. Come here, baby.” Just the idea excited him. “Don’t you get a little hot thinking about getting pictures of us fucking? Just a little?” He folded the bath towels and dropped them in front of his chair.
She sent him an enigmatic smile and a small shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe. I
t’s hot knowing you jerked off to them.”
“Are you damp? Touch yourself and let me see.”
Breezy dropped her hand between her legs and curled her fingers into her body. He nearly groaned aloud watching as her hips did a slow undulation, and then she raised the two fingers into the air to show him the liquid coating them before licking them clean.
“I want your mouth on me and I want pictures of that. The photographs are just for me, or us. I love looking at you. That look you get on your face when I’m sending you over the edge. It’s hotter than hell and so beautiful.”
She moved toward him slowly. The sun added a glow to her skin and put highlights in her hair, which was still in that messy knot on top of her head. Every step she took had her breasts moving suggestively. Her hands followed the indentation at her waist and moved over the curve of her hip.
“You okay with the boys taking a few pictures? I brought the camera, just in case. They’ll be somewhere out of the way.” He held his breath. He could tell her he knew why he needed those pictures, what had started him down that path, but he didn’t know what he’d do if she said no. He’d taken a huge risk asking her permission. She had to trust him implicitly to give her consent for such intimate pictures.
“I know you have a problem with the parties. You never seemed to mind when we had sex and the others were in and out. Surrounding us. Protecting us. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, Breezy.”
“I’m not uncomfortable with that,” she admitted. “I never notice when you’re in me.”
“The pictures, babe. I want the pictures of you.”
She shrugged. “If it’s important to you, then I don’t mind.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and leaned into him, arching her back, pushing her tits right into his face, so that he latched on to her right breast and caught at her left with his hand. He had turned the chair just slightly, just enough to present a profile, so a zoom lens would be able to record everything for him. She threw her head back, closing her eyes the way he loved, looking as if she was in ecstasy.