As soon as he began thrusting inside of her again, her crying picked back up. It was already done at that point, so he allowed himself a few peeks at her to keep up his stimulation, figuring it best for both of them if he powered through it as quickly as possible.
When he came, for a split second he was able to forget everything else, and have one last moment of peace.
Then he pulled out of her and she crumpled to her knees, hugging herself as she crouched in the floor, still crying.
Then he looked down at the condom, and it got a million times worse. There was blood on the condom. Quite a bit of blood. Glancing at the girl, he saw a streak of blood smeared on the inside of her thigh.
He knew he had to have hurt her, but as he reviewed the blood and the moment when she had cried out sharply….
His heart plummeted; his blood froze in his veins.
“Were you a virgin?” he asked without thought, and without containing his horror.
It was barely perceptible, but the tiny nodding movement her head made broke even more of his soul.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered to himself, bringing his hand to his eyes and tiredly passing his hand up over his forehead. “Jesus Christ, Lane. You gave me a fucking virgin?”
“How was I supposed to know?” Lane asked, without remorse. “I didn’t ask. As old as she is, I assumed she wasn’t.”
Looking down at the girl, Ethan so badly wanted to apologize. It wouldn’t fix anything, of course, he had already wronged her in a way he could never right, and that knowledge would eat away at him for the rest of his life.
But he wished there was someone to console her in that moment, even if it was him.
No one would. He couldn’t.
His stomach pitched and for a split second, he thought he was going to be sick.
He managed to keep from vomiting, but the roiling in his stomach was unpleasant and persistent. Guilt, newly blossomed, already began to eat away at him, and he hadn’t even taken the fucking condom off yet.
If they didn’t get out of there soon, he wasn’t sure he would have a life to go back to.
They finally nailed down the details.
In the two days leading up to the big one, Ethan had kept close watch on the gray-eyed girl—and more importantly, any of the guys who looked in her direction.
He still felt like a huge sack of shit, but he had already determined if another guy tried to rape her, he would do whatever he could to stop it. Short of gunfire, because he had mulled it over again and any way he looked at it, that was a bad option. He could feign being territorial over her—or, really, not even feign it. Since he wanted to ensure that she made it to safety at least without being gang raped, he would be territorial over her if it helped her.
Chuck went sniffing around her the previous night, but Ethan leveled a contentious glare in his direction. Chuck held his hands up in mock surrender and walked off smirking.
Since the rape, being around the guys who watched him do it made him ill. Before that, he had been able to stomach them by getting lost in the character he was playing, but actually harming someone… that had prematurely strangled his ability to pretend he was someone else.
Nope, he was Ethan Wilde, married father of three. He had a little girl—just like the girl he raped was someone’s little girl.
It made him absolutely sick.
He didn’t know how he was ever going to look his daughter in the eye again.
Virgin or not it was unforgivable, of course, but knowing that for whatever reason, she had chosen not to have sex with anyone up to that point—and knowing based on her looks it couldn’t be from lack of opportunity—seemed to amplify his sins. How was she going to cope with what happened to her? How would any of them? The other ones he had only been unable to help, but the one with the gray eyes…he damaged her himself, and he would probably be seeing her in his nightmares for the rest of his life.
She would probably be seeing him in hers.
It wasn’t until the day following the rape that he realized saving her would mean ruining himself.
If everything went as planned and they got out, the police would take her statement about what ills she had suffered while in captivity.
He was going to be arrested. For real.
And then, if Antonio was her father and he liked her enough to be protective, he was going to have a very bad time in the system. Hell, he might never make it out, and even if he did, Amanda would be gone, the kids would have grown up without him.