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I scanned her face. Her cheeks were flushed where my fingers pressed into them. I removed my hand, and her labored breaths came hot against my chin. “Damn,” I panted. “I wanted to look at you more before we did that. Couldn’t help myself.”
She spread a hand on my back. “You can try again later.”
As my heart rate slowed from hammering to pounding, I released the tension from my muscles, giving her my weight. She was sweating, sweet-smelling but briny. Me? I was far from sated. I’d had her body, now I wanted more. I wanted her to know, every day of her life, that she could tell me all her thoughts and desires and secrets, and I’d never tire of hearing them. And for that kind of intimacy, I had to reciprocate.
“It turns me on thinking about that time I couldn’t have you,” I admitted.
She nodded lightly. “It’s the same for me.”
“No it’s not. You were underage. Innocent. It was wrong.”
She sighed, fluttering her fingers over the back of my head. “But you didn’t do anything, Manning, so it’s okay.”
“I wanted to. Very badly.” I lifted my head to see her reaction. “When I was in solitary, I’d jerk myself off thinking about fucking you—and you were seventeen, Lake.”
She bit her bottom lip. When she moved, I became more aware of my cock softening between her legs. “I’d be upset if you hadn’t thought of me that way. You have to forgive yourself.”
Should I be forgiven for all the things I planned to do to Lake in order to ensure she was always mine? I wanted to make her feel so good, she could never leave me. “It’s more than that,” I said. “There’s something you should know.”
Uncertainty crossed her face. “About?”
“My dad.”
The tension in her arms eased, but the wrinkles in her forehead didn’t. “What is it?”
I ran a thumb between her eyebrows, smoothing her skin. “He was . . . he is . . .” I worried once it was out there, Lake would see everything differently. I wouldn’t blame her. I was inside her right now. She might shove me off, disgusted with me. I was at my most vulnerable, and that was the reason I both wanted and didn’t want to tell her. “He molested Maddy before she died.”
Lake’s eyes instantly filled with tears. “But she was nine.”
I gripped both sides of Lake’s face as it screwed up, lowering mine right above hers. “Can you understand why I feel this way? Why being with you made me feel like I was no better than him? I can compartmentalize it better now, but back then, I couldn’t. I would think of you and feel like a monster.”
She covered her face and began to cry. “No.”
“Lake.”
She shook her head. “Stop.”
My heart pounded. This was exactly what I’d been afraid of. I thought of all the despair and rage I’d felt since learning this about my dad, and now I was passing that onto the one person I wanted to protect. “Do you want me to leave?” I asked.
“Leave?” she asked. “You’re so . . . why? Why do you do this?”
“Do what?”
“I’m so angry with you.”
I pulled her hands away, confused. “Angry?”
“How can you think you’re anything like that, Manning? How could you spend all those years living with this? I know you’re not a monster. You know you aren’t. Please, Manning, stop doing this to us.”
“Doing what?”
“Don’t put yourself, or us, in that box. It’s not you. You loved me, didn’t you? You understood me. You wanted to care for me.”
“Yes.”
“And you never, not once, touched me.” Redness rimmed her eyes. “There’s no way you can equate what we had with his actions. How could you? It makes me want to physically hurt you to get you to open your eyes, and your dad, he . . . he—” She couldn’t finish her sentence.
“I know. I know. Don’t cry.” I kissed the tip of her nose, still holding her wrists even though she struggled to cover her face again. “Stop.”
“How long have you known this?”
“I got the letter while I was in prison.”
“When?”
I looked her full in the face, trying to think of how to explain. She came to the conclusion on her own, though.
“I knew there had to be a reason you went to solitary,” she said. “Something that sent you over the edge. I knew it.”
I kissed her again. I was crushing her, so I let her arms go to lift myself off her, but she immediately hugged me closer. So much for her threats of physical harm. “I went to SHU a few nights after I read the letter,” I said. “One of the guards had seen you trying to get in to visit me—”
“He saw me?” she asked.
“Yes. He was a piece of shit, always trying to get under my skin. He’d talked shit about Tiffany before, but when he started in on you, and how young you were, and the things he wanted to do to you—”
