AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I lowered my head, my shoulders coming up to my ears as I stared, unseeing, down at the bubbling pancakes. “The scars.”
I heard the scrape of Laeth’s stool, and a moment later, his heat was at my back. Using a hand, he brushed my hair off one shoulder, revealing my neck to him, and brushed a delicate kiss behind my ear. Something about him doing that, being close for such an ugly thing, fortified me somehow. It felt as though some of his strength bled into me.
“I won’t push you, Deva. If you don’t want to talk, just say the word. But the thought of someone hurting you...” I could feel the rage coming off him in waves, and it meant the world that he cared enough to get angry on my behalf. “I can’t fucking stand it.”
I steeled my spine, determination squaring my shoulders as I used a spatula to flip the pancakes.
“They were my punishment.”
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
LAETH
I feltlike all the air had been sucked out of the room at her confession. My lungs felt like they were full of quick drying cement, making it nearly impossible to take in a full breath.
Herpunishment?
Rage coated my vision in red.
Her throat worked on a labored swallow, almost as if her mouth had gone completely dry. “Usually, the Oakes’s only did stuff like I told you about, with the closet. Or they had this hunting cabin even deeper in the woods where Sherman and Mathias would stay for days on end whenever they were hunting large game. It wasn’t anything special, but twice a month, I was ordered to go into those woods to clean it. There was a game shed as well, where they’d skin and butcher the deer they shot. I had to clean that too. It used to make me sick. The blood and the gore.” Her lips curled in disgust. “They’d drain the animal, cut it up, then leave everything but the meat for me to clean. Usually, it sat there for weeks at a time before I had the chance to get to the cabin.
“But occasionally, if Agnes felt her lessons weren’t getting through, she’d use physical violence.”
My hands came down on her hips, my fingers pressing in so hard I knew they would leave little indents. I forced myself to work past the swirling tidal wave of anger swirling inside of me. “Just her?” My question came out as a growl, and when she turned to look at me over her shoulder, I was sure she could see I was barely holding on. The muscle in my jaw popped from how hard I was clenching my teeth.
“Well, she wasn’t strong enough to do it herself, so usually she had her husband and son hold me down while she burned me with cigarettes. She wasn’t a smoker. After all, smoking was a sin,” she clarified on a laugh that was steeped in bitter sarcasm. “But she kept them on hand to use on me when she needed to burn the sin out of my body. Her words.”
“Fucking hell,” I grunted.
She moved on autopilot, scooping the finished pancakes off the griddle and depositing them onto plates, the fluffy circles the perfect golden brown. Even distracted by bad memories, she outdid me in the kitchen. She reached for the ladle, prepared to pour more batter when I reached around and shut the burners off, gently guiding her away from the stove, putting her in much the same position as I had the night before right before we kissed for the first time.
“Don’t worry about breakfast, Deva. It’ll keep.” I didn’t give a shit about the food. All I cared about was her. “Talk to me.”
She closed her eyes and lifted her chin, and I watched in fascination as she latched onto a bravery that left me in awe. She really was the strongest person I’d ever met.
“She didn’t need a valid reason to do it,” she finally started. “She’s a bitter, miserable, unhappy person whose only pleasure is derived from making those around her as miserable as she is. She’d do anything she could to drag you down to her level, just so she’d have some company down there.”
She heaved out a breath and shook her head. “She only did it twice, she said it was because I’d trampled carelessly through the vegetable garden. I hadn’t, of course, but like I said—”
“Misery loved company,” I added for her.
She gave me a small, sad smile, those dimples I’d come to love nowhere in sight. “Bingo. Anyway. The second time, she said she’d seen me lusting after some boy in church. I didn’t know who she was talking about, not that it mattered. After the first time, I’d figured out she got the most pleasure out of hearing me scream, so, as hard as it was, when she started to burn me, I kept quiet. I bit my cheeks so hard I was swallowing blood, but Irefusedto give her what she wanted. Mathias and Sherman had been holding me down, but when I didn’t start fighting them, they weren’t sure what to do.” She shrugged. “I took the fun out of it for them, so they stopped.”
It took everything I had not to run out of this house, jump in my truck, and drive up that mountain to end each and every one of those fuckers.
“Hey,” she said softly, reading the struggle brewing inside of me. Her dainty hand came up, resting against the side of my neck so her fingers could gently scratch at the stubble on my cheeks. “It’s okay. I’m okay now. I got out, and I started this new, incredible life.” Her smile was genuine now, and the sight of those dimples nearly slayed me. “I’m not being dragged down into someone else’s misery anymore. I get to be happy. I wake up each day, and instead of wishing I were somewhere else, I count my blessings that I’m right here.”
Strongest. Woman.Alive.
“I love you,” I grunted out, the words slipping free before I realized what was happening. But instead of wishing them back, I kept going. “I’ve never said that to another woman, not in my whole life. I don’t mean to freak you out. I just thought you should know. I love you.”
She blinked, those wide Bambi eyes growing glassy as she stared up at me. “No one has ever said that to me before,” she whispered, and I felt the sudden urge to burn the world to the ground for mistreating this unbelievable woman. “I like to think that my mom used to, but I can’t remember. This right here, this is the first time for me, and I can’t imagine wanting that with anyone but you.”
I lowered my forehead to hers, breathing in her roses. “Well, I’m glad I got to be your first,” I said, my breath fanning against her lips. “In more ways than one.”
My cock started to swell, and I wanted more than anything to take her again, but I knew she had to be sore this morning, and I didn’t want to make it worse. We could wait.
