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Liam’s brows drew together in a frown. “Nine years ago? You couldn’t have been more than—”
“Sixteen. I was sixteen.” Self-mockery crept into her voice. “I wasn’t forced with repeated beatings, threats and drugs to service hundreds of men, like the other women. Oh no! I was Vishenko’s chosen one. He raped me, and then he kept me for himself...for two endless years.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I would rather have been among the other women.”
* * *
Cate’s despair ate at Liam, fueling his anger at the man who’d done this to her, who’d forced her into feelings of shame and worthlessness no woman should ever have to endure. He reached out to touch her, to comfort her somehow, but she shied away. “Please don’t,” she whispered. “I can’t. Not after what he did to me.”
“Cate...”
“You don’t understand,” she cried out, pain and self-loathing in her voice. “The scars you’ve seen—they’re nothing. Nothing!” She fumbled with the tie on her robe, then the buttons of her pajama top, her fingers clumsy in her haste. “At first he would just rape me,” she panted in a desperate undertone. “But it wasn’t enough for him.” Then the last button pulled free and she turned, exposing her bared back. “This is what he did to me,” she told him, her voice breaking. “When I refused to cry, when I refused to submit, this is what he did to me—to make me beg him for mercy. To make me beg him to let me go.”
“Oh God.” Liam closed his eyes and averted his face for a moment, fighting the sickness that rose in him. Not the sight of the scars themselves, but the realization of the agony Cate must have endured when each and every scar was inflicted.
Then he turned his gaze back to her. Gently, so gently he didn’t know he had that much gentleness in him, he pulled the pajama top up and turned her around. He drew the edges of the top from her unresisting grip and pulled them together. Then he buttoned the buttons with fingers that trembled slightly.
Her breathing was ragged as she tried to drag in enough air. “You wanted to know what Alec knows. I didn’t want that. Didn’t want you to know.” Her face was stony, her eyes bitter. “I wanted to keep my shame a secret from you as long as I could, but you wanted me to tell you.” Her next four words dropped like hard little pebbles thrown into a pool of water as smooth as glass. “So now you know.”
Liam couldn’t bear it. Those words were uttered as if she believed he’d turn and walk away from her now, as fast as his legs could carry him. As if she believed that would be any decent man’s normal reaction to her revelations. As if she was responsible for what happened to her.
He drew Cate into his embrace—taking her by surprise so she had no chance to pull away—and held her close, rocking her like a little girl. Comforting her the only way he knew how, the way his mother had comforted him when he three...four...five. Then he heard it, a sound he’d never expected to hear from Cate. Weeping. Soft, heartbroken sobs that ravaged his heart to hear.
He bent and caught her knees, sweeping her into his arms, cradling her against his chest as he carried her into his bedroom. Oh God, oh God, he begged. What do I do? What do I say? How can I make this right for her?
He laid her gently on the bed, then followed her down, still holding her—just holding her—as she wept. And every sound she made was a lash against his heart. It seemed like forever, but when her tears finally subsided, he reached over a grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the nightstand. He wiped her face, then held the tissues for her as she blew her nose.
“I’m sorry,” she said between little huffing sounds as she tried to catch her breath.
“Don’t be sorry, Cate. That was coming for a long time, I think.”
“I didn’t cry—after the first time,” she told him brokenly. “Tears didn’t soften his heart.” She didn’t have to name him for Liam to know who she meant. “He enjoyed hurting me—tears would only have added to his pleasure.” She was silent for a long, long time, then added so softly he had to strain to hear, “I have not cried for nine years.”
His heart slowly tore in two, knowing what she’d endured in silence for two years. And knowing, too, there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to take her remembered pain away, no matter how much he wished it.
She made as if to pull away from him, but he refused to let her go. “Don’t,” he told her after he cleared the obstruction in his throat. “Just let me hold you the way someone should have held you nine years ago.” What had happened to Cate should never have happened—not to her, not to any woman. The knight-errant in Liam wanted so badly to do something—avenge her. Make Vishenko pay in blood. But that wasn’t what Cate needed now. She needed to be held. Comforted. Not a sexual embrace, but a loving one.
