The impact of his hand goes straight to my pussy, and I do rock my hips against the pillow. Humiliation burns my cheeks as I realize how I must look, humping a pillow in the bed. The worst part is, I could have just gone to sleep. If I wasn’t so turned on by this, I wouldn’t have to do it. It’s my own desire that has trapped me here, fucking this pillow, struggling to get friction from the soft sheets. I have to press down hard to get enough—hard and fast. My cheeks must be red with how embarrassed I feel, but somehow that only makes me hotter. Ivan watches me struggle with my arousal, with my humiliation, offering nothing more than a small, pleased smile and a stroke of my thigh.
When I come, my pussy feels rubbed raw. It feels less like pleasure and more like an end to the pain.
But something is different, because when I collapse onto the sheets, exhausted and wet, Ivan pulls me against him. He doesn’t turn his back on me this time. His arm is supporting my head, and my hand is stroking his chest.
For a few minutes I let myself drowse like this, content despite the indignity of how I came.
Or because of it.
Then the texture of his scars underneath my fingertips becomes too much to ignore. “Who did this to you?” I whisper.
He tenses, and I know I’ve ruined it. He’ll push me away. Maybe he’ll even leave the riverboat.
Maybe he’ll leave me on it.
Except then he does what I least expect. He answers me. “I lived with my father. My mother was… not in the picture. My father, he wasn’t always around either. He left often, for long periods, drinking binges and gambling, shacking up with someone. It was always a relief when he was gone.”
My hand tightens into a fist, and I have to force myself to relax, to stroke him again. Ivan has always been like a force of nature to me. The thought of him as a young boy—vulnerable, hurt—makes me want to punch something.
“It was my grandmother who raised me. It was her house we lived in. She did her best, but she had a soft spot for her son.” He laughs abruptly. “More like a blind eye.”
I flinch.
“When I was eight, he left for the last time. To this day I don’t know what happened to him. I’m assuming he died soon after that, because there was no trace.”
My heart aches to imagine a young Ivan not knowing where his father was, even after what had been done to him. Love can survive in the darkest, coldest places. I know that as well as anyone.
“I stayed with my grandmother for a while. Her house, the land… it’s a beautiful place. Peaceful. But I was wild. Violent. I fought with everyone I met. She was very old, and my presence only made her life harder. I knew that even then, so I came to the city.”
“On your own?”
“I was fourteen.”
A year younger than I was when I came to Tanglewood. I’d been a child then, and he’d taken me in. He’d taken care of me. “Who took care of you?” I ask softly.
He shakes his head, impatient. “I knew enough about the foster care system to know I didn’t want to be in it. Some people I knew from school were in it, and their stories reminded me of what it had been like before my father left. So I lived on the streets for a while.”
I make a rough sound, and he shushes me. “It wasn’t bad. Really, it wasn’t. During that time is when I learned how to deal with people from all walks of life. It’s when I learned to love this city, for all its darkness.”
I kiss one of his scars, closest to me. A low rumble comes from his chest, and it’s another minute before he continues.
“I tried to stay away from adults as much as possible, unless they also lived on the streets. But one day I was too cold and too hungry. I had heard about a shelter in a church. I went there because I thought…I thought they might not turn me in to the authorities.” Ivan’s voice is completely even, almost mechanical, and that’s how I know how much this costs him. “And I was right. Father Michael didn’t turn me over to the authorities. He kept me there for three years.”
In the absolute flatness of that final sentence, I know exactly what happened in those three years. I know exactly how Ivan became the hard man he is today. His father may have left scars on the outside, but someone else left scars on the inside.
And I know that he understands exactly why I had to leave Harmony Hills, more than anyone else ever could. He understands what came after.
We were both born to a different world, one both simple and cruel.
That world spat us out, leaving us to find out own way among the thorns and brush of the city. Ivan had fought with fists and a cold-hearted determination.
I had fought with my body. With sex.
Where does that leave us? Both of us are broken, in our own ways.
Both of us are longing for home.
Chapter Twenty-One