“Actually, I know quite a lot about PTSD. I got my GED. I have a son and I wanted to be a good mother to him, to help him with his homework when he needed me, so I took classes. One of them, I had to choose a subject to write on. I chose PTSD. I was a victim of abuse and finally had to acknowledge that. It wasn’t just how normal people lived, it was how I was forced to live. I actually didn’t realize that. Maybe that makes me stupid in your eyes, I don’t know . . .”
“Breezy.” He was ashamed. Felt like shit. He shoved the heel of his hand against his forehead and pressed hard, trying to stop the pounding jackhammer.
“I refused to be an ignorant mother to Zane, Steele. And I won’t be afraid to speak out when I know something is wrong between us. I love you. I want us to have a good relationship, and to do that, we have to be able to talk to each other. Not only do you want me to talk to you, you demand it. We have a chance to be great together. To do that, you have to give me this.”
“Why?” He barely managed to ask around the terrible lump in his throat. His throat burned until it was so raw it hurt like a bear.
“I have to understand your need to watch us every second. I’ve asked about the car a hundred times, but you avoid the conversation. I’m perfectly capable of driving. I want to visit Blythe and Anya, go to girls’ night with Lana and Alena. I want to work.”
The moment she said that his heart nearly stopped. His hand pressed hard there. His head pounded, and he thought he might be sick. “You can’t. Breezy, damn it. You just can’t.”
“I’m willing to compromise, Steele, but you have to talk to me. Trust is a two-way street. So is a relationship. I mean it when I say I love you, but I’m not a doormat to be kicked around when you’re falling apart. I have a certain personality. I need to help the people I love. I have to feel I contribute to the relationship. If you refuse to allow me in, if you don’t give me the same trust you demand from me, I don’t see how we can ever work things out.”
Breezy moved across the large polished stones that made up the patio. As she did, the kimono opened to reveal her body to him. She wasn’t wearing a stitch under the silk. She was shaved, leaving her mound and lips bare. Smooth. He knew if he caught her up and laid her out on the lounger, she wouldn’t stop him. She loved his mouth on her almost as much as he loved eating her out. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t move. Somehow, she held him immobile just with the force of her will.
He watched her come to him, his heart pounding like mad and that strange roaring in his ears. His head hurt so badly he had to clench his teeth. He found himself running his hands over the scars on his chest. So many. The knife had dug deep. It was hot. Burning. He remembered how the blade had glowed red before it sank into his flesh.
“Stop.” He held up his hand and it was shaking. “I could hurt you.”
It was too close. So close, the memories crowding in. He couldn’t stop them now. Somehow the thick gates he held them behind had come open and he was there. Those gates had been pushing open for some time, and now it was far too late.
Twenty. So young but already too old. An accomplished killer. He almost preferred the missions where he killed when he was supposed to be a healer. A doctor. He’d taken an oath, and yet he did just the opposite of what he had sworn to do: save lives, not take them.
She halted for a moment and then she took the three stairs leading to the steaming pool. It was round, the outside bench curved, making up the seating for those not willing to sink into the heat of the hot tub. She beckoned him. “Come lie down, Steele. Put your head in my lap. I can see that you have a headache.”
Even her voice was soothing. Breezy had always recognized, almost before he did, when he was too close to the nightmare. Now he was in it. Reliving it. Caught in the web until he almost couldn’t separate reality from what had happened to him. He could feel the whip flailing the skin from his back. He had to disassociate before he went out of his mind.
He shook his head, trying to save her. He actually managed to stumble away from her. “Too dangerous,” he got out. “Too fucking dangerous. I’d kill myself before I hurt you.” He would. He would never have struck her or paddled her ass because she didn’t do what she was supposed to. That wasn’t in him. He didn’t know what he should do, but it wasn’t that.
“Honey, just lie down and talk to me.”
There was something about Breezy that had always soothed him. She was gentle. Kind. Compassionate. Everything he wasn’t. Her voice had some kind of magic quality. Hearing that soft whisper stroking caresses over his skin, it was impossible to resist.
Lie down. She would watch over him. He was going to do it. Risk everything. She was risking everything without hesitating. He had hurt her over and over. Maybe not physically, but certainly emotionally. He had broken her heart when she was young and pregnant and still she had come back to him, accepting him, all the way in. Trusting him. Now she was asking for that same kind of commitment, all the way, trusting her completely. Trusting her to find a way for him, a path back to some semblance of sanity.
PTSD. He was a fucking doctor. He knew he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. People threw the diagnosis around, but the ones living with it, watching their partners suffer because they were out of control, reliving the nightmares, knew how truly debilitating it could be. It wrecked marriages and tore apart families. It isolated the one enduring the illness. He had seen brain scans proving that traumatic events changed the brain itself.
He had to trust that Breezy wouldn’t leave him. That she wouldn’t think less of him when he thought less of himself. He wanted a partnership with her, but he hadn’t given it to her. He took control and she allowed it—most of the time. That to him was the partnership. That was who he was. But she was right in this. She had rights in their relationship and would in their marriage. If he wanted her to accept his need to know where she was at all times, especially in the middle of the night, he had to man up and trust that she wouldn’t leave him.
“It isn’t pretty, Breezy. Nothing about my life was pretty.” His voice sounded hoarse even to his own ears.
“I’m well aware of that, honey.”
It was that voice that got to him. He couldn’t refuse her. She looked so serene. Calm. As if in the midst of the worst chaos in his mind there was a safe haven. He had to chance it, but he was terrified of what could happen. Reluctantly, Steele stretched out on the bench, his head in her lap. Immediately her hands were in his hair, massaging his scalp, sending ripples of comfort through his rigid body.
“Czar had a plan for all of us to escape. We were going to continue working for Sorbacov, but we wanted out of the prison we were in. We were so close to getting out. We had a timetable, and we were all counting down.”
He touched the worst of the scars on him, remembering how much it had hurt. “Venezuela was very important to Sorbacov. He was cultivating their friendship through a man by the name of Jose Merhi. Sorbacov had deliberately groomed him to bring out his depravity with boys, especially torture. Merhi liked to hurt the ones he fucked. Sorbacov taught him how. They went down a very dark road and Sorbacov took his time grooming him. Merhi liked to have two boys there at all times. One hurting the other often times. By having two, it ensured the cooperation of both.”
He felt the heat. The rage. His monster close. The man had flayed the skin from his back. Merhi had learned from Sorbacov to threaten one while he forced the other to do whatever his sick mind came up with. Steele had to do whatever the man said in order to protect . . . Demyan.
“Absinthe had a brother, Demyan. He made it through just the way the rest of us did. We were so close to getting the hell out of there. So close. Sorbacov sent us out to meet Jose Merhi. We were to do whatever Merhi wanted. We weren’t to question or hesitate. If we didn’t comply, Sorbacov would kill Absinthe, and he’d do it slowly and as painfully as possible. That was always the threat.”
Her fingers moved to his temples and applied pressure. It was never too much or too little. Breezy always seemed to know exactly what he needed. He turned his head more closely into her lap, inhaling her. The womanly scent of her. It helped to stop the scent of blood and burning flesh from making him crazy.
“Breathe for me, honey. Take a deep breath and feel me. You’re here with me. You’re not there, and that horrible man can’t have you.”
But he did. Jose Merhi had learned from an expert. Sorbacov had to shape Merhi into a man he could blackmail and use for his own political purposes. Once Merhi knew Sorbacov had filmed him and had him compromised, he demanded Sorbacov send him the young men he preferred. Demyan and Steele were at the top of his list.
“We followed orders. We could tell this was particularly important to Sorbacov and he would have really killed Absinthe if we didn’t do exactly as ordered—at least we believed that. Merhi liked to see a back red with blood when he fucked. He’d dip his finger in the blood and write obscene poetry and read it out line by line, sometimes using his fingernails in the raw whip marks.”
He was mumbling, hearing the whistle of the whip and feeling the cut as it sliced open his back. His breathing returned to ragged pants, his lips dry and hurting. Mostly, there was shame and guilt that when he knew so damned much about killing, he hadn’t killed Merhi.
He knew boys and men didn’t receive much sympathy from others when it came to rape and torture. The older the boy, the more they were told to sweep it under the carpet. They would say he’d allowed his attacker to do those things to his body. To violate him. To torture him. They would be correct. He’d been handcuffed, but he still could have killed Merhi. He hadn’t because they had sworn to make certain all nineteen would survive. He’d kept Absinthe in his mind until he couldn’t stand it and he began thinking up ways to slowly murder Merhi. When even that wasn’t enough he forced his mind to go blank. He needed to disassociate.
He made himself look up at her, to see her eyes. He was afraid of condemnation, or disgust, but she only looked at him with the greatest of compassion. Tears swam in her eyes. That was what allowed him to continue.
“He heated the blade of a knife and made me say where it could go in on both of us without hitting anything vital. If I made a mistake, the death was on me. The blade cauterized the wound as he sliced into us, at least that was the theory. I had to watch him put the knife into Demyan.” He touched his chest. “Into me.”
Her breathing had changed, rapid and shocked, but her hands never stopped their massage. The pads of her fingers put just the right pressure on his pounding temples.
“I’ve never told anyone this, Bree. Not a single soul. I feel so damned guilty. Unworthy. They all look at me and think they can count on me . . .” He looked up at her. “I don’t think I could take it if you stopped looking at me as if I’m your world. I couldn’t, baby. I count on that look.” It was why he took so many photographs of her when they made love. It was there on her face every time, and he needed that just to survive some days. “My brothers believe I’ll be there for them, but . . .” He broke off, unable to hold her gaze.
She bent and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “Everyone counts on you, Steele, and you always come through. You’re the most protective man I’ve ever met. I know this is bad, but you need to get it out. I will never change the way I feel about you, no matter how bad this is, and whatever you tell me stays between us. You’re mine. I know you share yourself with the others, but I don’t share me with them. You’re just mine, if that makes sense and you can figure out what I mean.”
Her voice trembled, and he immediately responded to that. It helped to pull him a little further from his past. “Baby, never think you’re second, or that Zane is. To Torpedo Ink, you’re family and you always will be. They’ve taken you in and they’ll always hold you close, but make no mistake, Breezy, you’re mine. It’s the two of us.” He sent her a faint smile. “The three of us. If we’re lucky, we’ll add to that number and fill this house with the sound of laughter.”
He needed laughter when his past threatened to consume him. It was still there, surrounding him with the smell and the heat. With Demyan. “You’ve seen Absinthe. He’s a good-looking man. Demyan was that way. When he smiled he could charm the panties off anyone, and he did. I should have been thinking. I should have had my brain working that day, but I let the pain get to me. The humiliation. I should have been strong enough to put it aside so my brain could work.”
Her fingers stroked over his temples, and then down his face. He didn’t know if it was wet. He couldn’t feel anything. He’d gone numb, completely numb. He wasn’t certain he was in his own body. His lungs were raw and burning. He felt that. He heard blood pounding in his ears. He knew there was blood because his back was torn open from the whip and the chains Merhi had reveled in wielding. He’d set up cameras in two rooms and filmed the entire session, every detail, getting close-ups. First Demyan and then him.
“He said he had invited some friends to play. That was bad, and I knew it because it had never happened before. Any deviation was always a bad thing.” His heart was pounding. Hard. Coming through his chest. Sweat broke out and trickled off his body. He couldn’t lie there. He couldn’t have anyone touching him.
Steele jumped up and shoved himself away from her, putting distance between them, although he could no longer see her. The fog swirled around him like coils of wire digging into his skin. They pulled tighter and tighter. The blade stabbed deep, a hot piercing that sent agony ripping through his body. He looked across the room into Demyan’s eyes. As long as they could see each other, they could make it through. They gave each other the necessary courage to get through each second of torture.
The sex was nothing. A humiliation. Degradation. But they were used to that. The key was to always have another of them present in order to ensure they survived. This was beyond necessary. There was no survival without the other. They all knew that. Torture of this nature, so severe, was more than endurance of the body. It was strength of mind. Demyan got him through it. More importantly, he got Demyan through it.
He hung in those wires while they bit into his skin, nothing more than a mindless animal in pure agony. Cruel laughter surrounded him as others used his body. He didn’t remember their faces, and that was worse than anything they did to him because they took Demyan out of sight. They dragged him to another room. Merhi followed. He was left alone. He had completely disassociated from the pain, and it took far too long to come back into his body. Far too long.
When the screams started, Steele fought to get the wires off. He was strong, and he had an affinity with metal. Still, it took what seemed like forever. He had no idea of time passing, but it did because Demyan’s screams echoed through his entire body, shaking his bones and imprinting there. He worked frantically to get the wires, pulled tight from all his fighting, off of him.
By the time he was free, the screams had turned to animalistic moans of pain. He broke into the room to find a bloodbath. The room was red with blood, and the four men laughing and abusing Demyan’s body were covered in it, as if they had bathed in him. Steele killed them. As weak and as far gone as he was himself, he destroyed them. He didn’t remember how, just that he did. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t clean, and Merhi suffered before he died. That he did remember. Then he went to Demyan.
He couldn’t even hold him as Demyan slipped away because it hurt him too much to be touched. He could only whisper how sorry he was that he allowed him out of his sight. He could only wish he could take his place. It had taken over an hour for Demyan’s strong heart to give out. He’d been conscious the entire time, staring into Steele’s eyes. Never once blaming him. He’d tried to whisper something. It had been important to him. A message for Absinthe, his younger brother, but he wasn’t able to tell Steele.
Steele sank down onto the patio right at the edge of the pool, but he didn?
??t feel the wet mist on his skin or the rougher cement under him. He was trapped there, in the past with Demyan. The nineteenth survivor. He should have lived to laugh with them. Drink beer and ride in the wind. He should have had a life. A woman of his own. Children. He shouldn’t have died at the hands of madmen because Steele had taken his eyes off him.
“Honey.”
A voice. Soft. Moving through his mind. Moving through his own screams of pain. His body didn’t matter. The skin flailed from his back or the numerous stab wounds. None of that mattered. It was the wounds in his mind that could never be healed. He heard it again. Soft. Insistent. A distance from him. He tried to focus on it.
“Steele. Honey. You’re here. Safe.”
There was no safety for anyone. Those he loved were never going to be safe. He had to watch over them, keep them that way. Never take his eyes off them.
“I understand. I don’t mind the cameras, honey.”
Cameras. He’d destroyed those as well. He didn’t want anyone to ever witness what those fuckers had done to Demyan. They had reduced him to a mindless animal, and no one was ever going to see that. Demyan’s death was his alone.
“That’s good, Steele. No one should see that. It’s good that you did that. You need to breathe for me. Take deep breaths. That’s right, honey. Just breathe.”
He hadn’t been able to breathe for months afterward. If he did, if he inhaled too deeply, he dragged the scent of blood into his lungs. It was on his skin. His hands. It was in his hair.
“It isn’t in your hair, sweetheart,” that soft voice said.
It was. It was everywhere, all over him. His blood. Demyan’s blood. The blood of the men he’d slaughtered when he’d seen what they’d done. The monster had been born. He hadn’t known he was capable of that kind of killing, of that kind of rage. He was a healer. He’d been given the gift of healing and he’d slaughtered men. Human beings . . .