Page 38 of Triple the Secrets
“He was choking you!” Wren screamed incredulously.
“Yes, he was,” she agreed, because why hide it. “But I asked him to.”
Wren and Win stared at her like she had grown three heads. “You asked him to choke you,” Win said slowly. “Are you fucking crazy?” she suddenly roared. “He could have killed you!”
“No I would not,” Rogue barked. He stepped forward, ignoring the withering glares they aimed at him. He nudged Scarlett out of the way and looked down at them, expression unreadable. “I would never hurt Scarlett. What you saw was completely consensual, as she said.”
“Fuck you,” Wren hissed.
“Wren,” Scarlett snapped.
Wren gave her a defiant look before she looked back at Rogue. “I will kill you if you hurt her. If you coerced her. You’re no better than the goddamn traffickers that raped all of us,” she screamed.
Scarlett froze, Rogue went still, and Win and Wren both seemed to realize what was just said at the same time. Wren’s hand flew to her mouth in shock, and Win immediately moved close to her, gripping the other like a lifeline. At that moment, it was like they were twelve again, trapped in those damn cages. Her heart broke in her chest, and she stepped forward to wrap them both in her arms, not caring that the blanket fell to the floor.
Both girls held her tight, burying their faces in her neck, shaking, and overcome with emotion. “Shhh,” Scarlett whispered after a few minutes. “We’re safe here. I promise. They will never hurt you again.” She stroked their hair and held them as tight as she could until they stopped trembling and slowly pulled away.
Neither girl would look at Rogue, and Scarlett glanced at him over her shoulder. He had apparently gotten dressed while they had stood there, and the expression on his face was shuttered. He didn’t approach, but he looked at both girls with dark eyes. Eyes that promised all kinds of dark and painful things to the men that hurt them. “We’re sorry,” Wren finally whispered, head down. “We really thought you were in trouble.”
“Stop,” Rogue said calmly. Both girls flinched at his voice. Scarlett opened her mouth to tell him to stop, but he cut a hard look in her direction. She shut her mouth, but watched him carefully. If he further upset them, he was about to see just what she could do to make him hurt. “Wren, Win, you were protecting Scarlett, and I understand,” he continued. “I’m proud of you both.” Both girls jolted at his words and looked up at him in shock. “You thought she was in trouble, and while it was stupid to run into a possibly dangerous situation, I understand why you did.” He took a deep breath. “I’m going to reiterate that this was completely consensual, and while it may have looked like I was hurting Scarlett from your angle, I promise I wasn’t. I hope you’ll believe me, and I hope you’ll believe me when I tell you they will never touch you again. Never.”
Then he moved around them, careful not to touch them or get too close, and walked out, shutting the door quietly behind him. None of them moved until they heard his feet on the stairs.
Scarlett looked at both girls and saw they were both on the verge of tears. A rarity for them. “Go to your room and I’ll be right there,” she said softly.
“We’re sorry, Scarlett,” Winter whispered.
“Hush,” she soothed. “We’ll talk in a second, okay? Now go.” Both girls nodded and, still clinging to each other, headed out of the room.
Scarlett wanted to scream and cry as she quickly used a discarded towel to clean herself up and then dress. She was terribly embarrassed, but she knew she had to deal with this. The girls needed her. Rogue said he was downstairs, but she wouldn’t worry about him now. Couldn’t. Her girls needed her.
When she walked into their bedroom, she found them huddled on Wren’s bed, wrapped around each other and backs pressed to the wall. It was a pose she remembered from when they had been in those fucking cages. Scared out of their minds, because they didn’t know when they would be taken next. Or if they would be separated. It had been a common threat from the traffickers, that they would take one of them away so they would never see each other again.
Her anger surfaced again. Anger at the past. Anger at the situation. Anger at herself for causing this.
She moved to the bed and sat on it cross-legged in front of them. Both girls looked at her with such hope and despair she wanted to cry. “I promise I am okay,” she began.
“We know,” Win whispered. “We’re just embarrassed.”
“Why?” Scarlett asked calmly. “You were protecting me. You didn’t know what was happening, and if he had been hurting me, you could have saved my life.”
She knew they realized that, but Wren admitted, “We just reacted to the sounds that we heard.”
Scarlett fought back the memories that tried to bombard her. They had hurt her. They had choked her, but unlike Rogue, they did it until she passed out. And she hadn’t been feeling pleasure. She had been fighting for her life.
“You’re both old enough to know that sex isn’t black and white,” she said finally. “Some people react differently to trauma. Some want to talk about it with shrinks and purge it all out. Others don’t want to talk about it at all. Or, like you two, you found ways to cope, talked when you needed to, and you’re doing so much better for it. Me, I need to feel control, because they took that away from me. Sometimes, for some people, sex is an outlet. I wouldn’t have said I was one of those people, until Rogue.
“Rogue isn’t an easy man, and I think you both know it. He’s hard, and he’s lived a hard life. What he gave me was a way to take that control back. He let me feel powerful again without judgement. There are a lot of people that won’t understand why I need that. Why I liked the feeling of him doing that to me.”
“Because it replaces a helpless memory with a powerful one,” Win murmured.
Scarlett nodded. “Exactly. Rogue was in control the entire time and he wouldn’t have squeezed so hard that I would have passed out. At any time, I could have asked him to stop, or tapped his hand in a signal, and he would have stopped immediately. That is power and that is respect. If he didn’t give me either of those, then I wouldn’t have taken that step with him.”
“He’s going to look at us differently,” Wren said sadly. “I don’t want him to look at us as damaged kids.”
Scarlett bit her lip in indecision. How did she handle this? Once you revealed that about yourself, was there really any going back? Would Rogue look atherdifferently? There was no way he wouldn’t. Finally she said, “If he does, then that’s his loss. What he should see are two strong young women that have endured one of the worst things that can ever happen to someone and become survivors.”
“Did we just mess up any chance for you two?” Win asked worriedly.
