Martin released him and tangled that brutal hand in his hair, wrenching his neck at a painful angle.
“I’m going to fuck your ass.” The voice at Ricky’s ear spoke without emotion or familiarity. “I’ll do it dry while you’re tensing in fear. Once you’re nice and bloody, I’ll shove the handle of a hammer into that ruined hole and ram it hard.” Martin ground his erection against Ricky’s backside. “Every blow will drive so deep you’ll feel it in your stomach. The pain will own you, make you so fucking weak you’ll try to puke it out. I’ll shove your face in the vomit, make you lick up your own filth. When you start crying, because you will, motherfucker. You’ll cry like a goddamn faggot, and I’ll piss all over those whiny lips.”
A sickening feeling punched Ricky in the gut and sank to the pith of his stomach.
Van Quiso hadn’t put those images in Martin’s head. This was the creation of something much more sinister.
“Oh, no. Martin.” She rose to her knees and pressed a trembling hand against her mouth. Tears poured from her eyes as she shook her head in horror. “Who did that to you?”
She stole the words out of Ricky’s head. His dick started to shrivel as he yanked his boxers back in place. Then he turned toward his best friend.
Martin’s arms lowered to his sides, and he went hauntingly still. His expression froze, vacant and eerie, as his glazed eyes stared off into the distance.
“Martin.” She touched his jaw, her voice thick with tears. “How old were you?”
His brows pinched together, and his breathing lunged into a wheezing panic.
He shoved off the bed and pivoted toward the wall, flattening his palms against it.
Heart racing, Ricky moved to comfort him.
“Don’t.” Martin dropped his head between his braced arms and sucked heavy gulps of air. “Stay there. Please.”
The please locked Ricky’s limbs. The desperation in Martin’s voice gutted him. Martin never pleaded. Never asked. Whatever compelled him to do it now held Ricky in place.
A sob sounded beside him, and he hooked an arm around her, pulling her onto his lap.
He clung to her, suffocating in the wake of Martin’s pain as he helplessly watched Martin put himself back together.
Agonizing minutes passed before Martin straightened and stepped toward the bed. Stitches and bruises marred his gorgeous features, but none of it detracted from his strength.
He stood tall and powerful, wearing only briefs. He didn’t need the armor of clothing or the security of a masked expression. He let Ricky and Tula see all of him—the soft bulge between his legs, the bobbing swallow in his throat, and the indelible memories of abuse in his eyes.
“How badly did I hurt you?” Martin asked.
“It was nothing that I didn’t want or couldn’t handle.” He shifted to one end of the pushed-together mattresses, taking Tula with him. “I know you don’t want to talk about why you—”
“I can’t.”
“Can you tell me about your parents?”
Ricky had asked that question numerous times, and the only answer he’d been given was Martin had a dad, as in once had but not anymore.
Had Martin’s father molested him? Was that the man he killed?
His silent glare confessed nothing, his lips refusing to answer.
“I never knew my dad.” Tula pulled the blanket over her, covering her nude body on Ricky’s lap. “And my mom couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. I don’t know why. I never gave her any trouble and always did well in school. She and Vera were close, but she kept me at an arm’s distance. When I turned eighteen, she begged me to leave. To leave the city. The country. To just go away. So I did.” She sucked on her quivering bottom lip and released it. “She died seven years ago, and I miss her so much.”
Ricky slid a hand into her hair, raking his fingers along her scalp as he pulled her against him.
“I’m sorry, querida.” He kissed her head, his eyes locked on Martin, waiting.
“My mother left when I was two.” Martin lowered onto the far end of the mattress and leaned against the wall at his back. “I grew up on a small farm in Texas with my dad. He was a good man. Hardworking. He died from a stroke when I was fourteen.”
Orphaned at fourteen.
His heart caved in.
Based on his own experience, Ricky could draw conclusions about what happened to Martin. “I was given up at birth and spent my entire childhood in foster care. Fortunately, I was always placed with nice families.” He softened his voice. “No pedophiles or abusive foster dads.”
“I wasn’t put into foster care.”
“Orphanage?”
“No.”
“Then what—?”
“Fucking drop it, Ricky.”
All three of them had been victims of rape, and they coped with it in different ways. Martin’s experiences had been the worst by far, and Ricky knew he hadn’t heard the half of it.