Page 56 of Ravaged With You

I hug myself, terrified for him even though I know that he got out alive.

“I got as many as I could on my way to the exit where they’d set up the detonator. And the last thing I managed to do was bring down the building and kill the rest of them.”

“I’m glad you killed them.” I frown, remembering something. “The other night, you talked about a woman. You kept saying she and her. What about her? Did she die, too?”

“She did, the bitch.”

I think he’s going to stay silent and not tell me about what she did, but after a long pause, he continues. “She was the reason they cleaned me periodically. She kept me like a pet.”

I can hear the disgust in his voice.

“She chained me to her bed. She used me. I’m not going to get any more detailed than that, except to say that she got what she wanted, and I will be forever disgusted that I let her have it, that I couldn’t fight my own body’s reaction. She stole every bit of my control. And Jo, that’s not something I’ll ever let happen again.” He swallows. “It’s not something I can. When I try—if I try—there are flashbacks. Memories. I can’t.”

I hear the terror of the past in his voice and reach out for him. “I get it. It’s PTSD, right?”

He nods. “So they tell me. But that doesn’t really matter, does it? She made me who I am now. This isn’t who I want to be.”

“I don’t know,” I say, trying to lighten the moment. “A man who can do what you did—who escaped like that—seems to me a man like that deserves to be in control.”

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t joke about it. I’m not talking about control with little velvet ropes you buy from some kitschy store that sells flavored lube.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to say. But I also think you’re too hard on yourself. You’ve been through hell and back. You deserve whatever you need. It doesn’t make you a bad person, and it doesn’t mean you’re going to hurt me.” I lick my lips. “That’s what this boils down to, isn’t it? You’re afraid you’re going to hurt me.”

“No. Yes. But also no. I’m afraid I’m going to use you.”

“Then do. That’s why you see call girls, right? You use them to work through all this when it gets to be too much.”

He swallows, then barely nods.

“So don’t use them. Use me. Isn’t it obvious, Red? I want you to.”

His chuckle is completely mirthless. “It’s not that simple, Jo.”

“But maybe it is that simple. You don’t scare me, Red. You have control in spades.”

He breathes in, a long, deep breath through his nose. “I told you all this because you deserve to know. Not because there’s an attraction bubbling up between us. Because honestly it’s more than attraction, and I think you know that. I love you, Jo. I always have. But,” he adds as he rises off the sofa, “that doesn’t mean I can have you.”

Chapter Seventeen

“A laser sight? You’re telling me that someone actually aimed a gun with a laser sight at your chest?” Abby stares at me, looking both appalled and in awe. “And Red jumped in front of you?” She closes her hands over her heart “Oh my God. That’s like something out of an action movie. You must have been freaking terrified.”

“I was,” I tell her. “But don’t act like it’s such a big deal. You told me the story about your creepy stalker. A shiny red dot on my chest was nothing in comparison to what you went through.”

Abby shakes her head. “No comparing ordeals. No one comes out the winner in that game.”

We’re sitting in Emma’s living room on the stone hearth in front of her fireplace. It’s an adorable cottage in Venice Beach which, according to Abby and Emma’s sister Eliza, has tighter security than the building inside the Tower of London that guards the crown jewels.

All in all, it really is a great venue for Abby’s bachelorette party. It is not however, the campy, trashy-looking strip club we’d been planning on.

”I’m really sorry that Red bullied you into changing venues.”

Abby brushes it off. “Don’t be silly. He didn’t bully me. Although Renly was very happy we decided to move it.”

Renly, I know, had specifically declined to have a stripper at his party. Abby, however, made clear she didn’t intend to be so pure. She’d talked about tradition, then shrugged, saying that if Renly’s ego couldn’t take it, well that was his problem.

“Best sex I’ve ever had after I told him that,” she’d told me later. “Guess he had something to prove.”

“Still, I feel bad,” I say now. “I can’t say that a strip club is my thing, but it sounded like campy good fun.”