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Her eyes clouded for a moment.
He caught the shift. ‘Hey, no overthinking things,kara. Like you said last night, we’ll get where we need to in time.’
She leaned over and gave him a long sultry kiss, and he bent forward for it.
They came apart, panting.
‘You OK, love?’ Kage growled against her lips.
‘Better than I’ve been in a very long while.’
‘Why’s that?’
Harlow settled back into her seat, searching for the right words.
‘My life hasn’t been all fun and games,’ she finally confessed.
‘I gathered. Care to share?’ he asked.
Harlow turned to face him fully. ‘You ready for this girl’s sob story?’
‘You don’t have to be anything but real with me,kara.’
Harlow took a deep breath. ‘Here it is. I’m Allorian by birth. My sperm donor was a war criminal. He moved our family to Dunia on false papers. His guilt or whatever other cruel things he’d done during the civil war drove his madness and his urge to control any shit he could. So he became the leader of an obscure cult, giving him the green light to abuse my mother and me. He forced me to do unimaginable things, not sexually—just disgusting rituals. My mother never stopped him. Sometimes she egged him on. They raged at me, demeaned and belittled me. I took their abuse until I was at my limit and old enough. So I divorced my parents. At 15.’
Kage’s eyes widened, and he nodded slowly. ‘Damn baby,’ he murmured. He was genuinely shocked. ‘I’d no idea.’
‘It’s a well-kept personal secret. I also changed my name and got a new ID from the Dunian government. That’s why your amazing surveillance powers didn’t uncover this aspect of my past.’
‘True,’ he murmured. They’d done a full background check before even negotiations had begun with Selene for Harlow to work on her project with Sable. None of what she was revealing had come to light, so it must have been tightly sealed by the Dunian government back in the day. ‘Does Selene know?’
Harlow shook her head. ‘I’m planning on telling her - at the right time.’
Kage’s heart thudded. She was trusting him with her life, and for that, he was deeply touched.
Harlow kept speaking. ‘My sperm donor’s treatment of me harmed me and my relationships with men. I was attracted to the wrong type. I felt used by them. I’m not the kind of person that thinks that all men are awful or that the dating world is entirely and perpetually flawed for women like me. But, typically, I have poor judgement regarding the intentions of the men I’m dating, which has led to a string of bad calls on my part over the years. I needed a break, so I left the dating scene - funnily enough, on the night we met.’
‘The problem is that I still get trauma nightmares about those early years - of the beatings and torture inflicted on me. They’re not constant, but I sometimes get a little tense at night and struggle with vivid dreams. It’s not an every-night thing. It comes in fits and starts, usually lasting a week, maybe two if it is a bad go and then fades back. Very rarely, I have extremely intense dreams that wake me suddenly.’
As she spoke, she scanned Kage’s face. His eyes had narrowed, and she saw a dangerous energy roll off him. He grit his teeth, and a tic appeared in his upper jaw above one of his scars.
‘You doing fine?’ she checked in.
‘Not about me. Keep going,kara, this is all you.’
She dipped her head in appreciation and then looked up at him carefully. ‘Thing is, you’ll need to be patient with me, Kage.’
‘Got all the time. Ain’t going anywhere.’
‘I’ve never gone this far with anyone, as in told them my truth. I think sometimes the truth is not what people, particularly men, in my experience, really want to hear. My ex-boyfriends gave me a hard time. They said I could be emotionally unavailable and closed off. They got angry about my inability to be open with them. One even said he felt parts of me were dark to them, which drove our relationship into places he couldn’t deal with.’
‘I see that. Doesn’t excuse any of their poor decisions or behaviour.’
Harlow sighed. ‘My ugly is not pretty at all.’
Kage dragged a hand over his scarred cheek. ‘I got my ugly too, love, and maybe one I’ll tell you one day ‘bout it. But this is not a one-up play. Today is ‘bout you. All you.’
Kage paused for a beat. ‘Sante,kara, for sharing your truth with me. It only amps up how amazing my woman is.’
