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“Go on, baby girl,” he murmured, stroking her cheek. “Tell me—tell it all.”
“They…they got me in a room alone—the head Bishop’s office,” Mia whispered. “There were three of them—four including my stepfather. He told them what he’d ‘caught’ me doing—only he made it sound like he’d been innocently going in to use the bathroom when he saw me ‘abusing myself.’ He never told them about the hole in the wall—I only found it myself later.”
“And they reprimanded you?” Sev asked.
Mia shook her head.
“It wasn’t just that,” she whispered. “They…they made me strip—strip completely naked. And then they made me point to the parts of my body that I liked to touch when I ‘abused myself.’ They made me tell them what I was fantasizing when I did it…how it felt…how long I did it for—if I used any other ‘objects’ to penetrate myself with—all these, horribleinvasivequestions.” Her voice began to hitch. “They…they made me spread my legs for them so they could see what they called ‘the most sinful part of me.’ And all the time they were looking at me, they kept saying what a dirty girl I was and how disgusting and sinful I had been and how I was probably going to Hell…”
Mia was breaking down now—the tears running down her cheeks and sobs choking her words. Sev held her tight, feeling like his heart was going to burst. He couldn’t believe the horrible psychological torture she’d endured and the sexual shame that must have come with it.
“How old were you when this happened, baby girl?” he asked, his voice low and hoarse.
“Seventeen,” she whispered. “And…and they did it more than once. They kept saying they were trying to get to the ‘root of the problem’. Back then I believed them—I thought I had been so sinful that I had to be ‘chastised’ as they called it.” Her voice grew stronger. “Now I know what it was—the bastards just wanted a peep show—they wanted to see me naked and ashamed and I was too afraid and ignornant to stop them. But every time it happened I just…I felt sodirty.Soviolated.”
“Gods, baby—of course you did.” Sev held her tighter. “Did you ever try to tell anyone?”
She nodded.
“I tried to tell my mom after the first ‘Conduct Review.’ But of course, she wouldn’t believe me. And they weren’t actually touching me—just looking and making me show them my body. So I thought that nobody else would care or believe me either.”
“I’m so sorry, baby.” Sev stroked her hair. “That’s fuckinghorrible!”
“It’s the reason I married Michael,” Mia told him. “Because there’s this idea in the sect that ‘it’s better to marry than burn.’”
Sev frowned.
“What the fuck doesthatmean?”
“It means that it’s better to get married so you can ‘scratch’ your sexual itch than to ‘burn’ with lust,” Mia explained. “And I knew that once I got married, they couldn’t call me up anymore because my ‘conduct’ would be my husband’s responsibility. So…” She sighed deeply. “That’s how I wound up getting married at eighteen to a man I didn’t even love. I just…was willing to doanythingto stop those horrible Conduct Review sessions.” She shivered.
“And they had to leave you alone after you got married?” Sev asked.
She nodded.
“But by then, I had no sexual feelings left. I locked that part of myself up.” She shrugged. “It didn’t matter to Michael, of course. In the sect, women aren’t supposed to get pleasure from sex—it’s only for baby making. So I could just lie there and make myself feel numb and he didn’t know any better. I didn’t think I’d ever have any sexual feelings again—and Ididn’t, even after I left the sect and divorced Michael. Until…”
“Until we went to the PPP Dome,” Sev finished for her.
Mia nodded, looking miserable.
“I think it was that damn Nutrient Crème that did it,” she said in a low voice. “It woke my body up and it let me…let me enjoy what you and I did together.” Her eyes flickered up to his for a moment and her cheeks got pink. “But I still feel so wrong…sodirtyif I try to…to touch myself. I was only doing it in that horrible recording they got of me in order to try and make the nectar flow,” she added quickly.
“I understand, baby—you don’t have to justify it to me—I’m not judging you,” Sev assured her. “But now I see how that fucking ‘Judgment Session’ with the Elders must have brought back your past.”
Mia nodded.
“It did—it washorrible. But all that about me ‘stealing orgasms’…” She laughed bitterly. “Nothing could be further from the truth. I can’t come when I touch myself—every time I try, I keep hearingtheirvoices—telling me how dirty and sinful and disgusting I am. Telling me I’m going to Hell for trying to give myself pleasure while all the time they werelookingat me and…and rubbing their crotches…” She shook her head and swiped at her eyes. “It’s like I told you, Sev—I’m fucked up in the head. You deserve so much better—somebody who’s not so fucked up.”
“You’re the only one I want and you’renotfucked up,” he protested. “Baby, you wereabused.”
Mia shook her head.
“Like I told you, they never reallytouchedme. They just…just made me take off my clothes and show them my body while they looked at me. So I don’t know if it really counts as sexual abuse.”
“Ofcourseit fucking counts as abuse!” Sev exclaimed. “I’m no therapist but I can’t evenbeginto imagine how psychologically damaging that must have been for you. The fact that they made you feel bad about something so natural—about giving yourself pleasure—while they were fucking staring at your naked body and getting off on it…”
The Rage was growing again, making it hard to think.
