“Start with Savage,” Scarlet said. “He scared me to death even when I asked him to help and I knew what he was going to do.”
“Did he touch you?” Absinthe countered. “Actually put his hands on you? You were naked, completely naked and vulnerable. He could have done anything to you. Did he?”
Scarlet thought about it. “He grabbed my hair and pulled it, that was scary, and it hurt a little bit. He threatened me mostly, just pacing behind me where I couldn’t see him and then when you didn’t respond, he took off his belt and cracked it. That was terrifying. He wrapped it around my neck, but after, I realized he put it over my collar.”
She raised her hand to her throat and rubbed her fingers along her skin. “I was having a difficult time really being afraid until that moment. I connected with his past somehow, when he was a teen. He had his shirt off and I saw the burn on his chest. Whip Master. I saw him whipping a girl. And then he fucked her. She seemed to want him to, but his eyes … He was so remote, as if he wasn’t really there.”
“Reaper was being tortured and assaulted to keep Savage in line,” Absinthe offered. “I’ll tell you more but I want to know what happened. Did he hurt you?”
“Not like you think.” She touched her hand to her throat again. “After he put the belt around my throat and threatened me, I was scared. I went back to being seventeen, that place where I was half-drugged and Robert and his friends attacked me. I felt helpless and so afraid.” She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.
He tried to touch her and she jerked away from him, shaking her head. “I swore I would never feel that way again. No one would ever do that to me. I knew how Priscilla felt. How so many other young girls feel. I was so angry with him. With you. But mostly at myself. I can’t be that person you need, Absinthe. I can’t save you when you refuse to save yourself. When you won’t even try. I can’t. I’m not sacrificing myself. I can’t do that. Not even for you.”
She was crying and that turned him inside out. “Scarlet. I wouldn’t want you to sacrifice yourself for me. You’re exactly who I need.”
She shook her head. “I’ll never let him do that to me again. Never. I thought he might really kill me. Even knowing ahead of time, I still thought that of him. He’s that dangerous and you know it, Absinthe.”
Scarlet took a sip of water, her eyes on his face. Steady. Expectant. When he didn’t respond and his gaze shifted from hers, she was the one who sighed. “You’re going to have to tell me why you so adamantly defend him. You touch people and you see what’s inside them. I don’t have one quarter of your talent and I’m in the room with him and I know he’s not a man you ever want to piss off. He could cut you into little pieces and not bat an eye. Tell me I’m wrong. What I saw of his past was very real, wasn’t it?”
Absinthe pressed the icy bottle to his pounding forehead, his gut churning. “Yes,” he admitted, his voice a whisper. “It’s true. For a long time, when he was just little, they used him. They’d take him from us and whip him, laying his flesh open, raping him repeatedly. He’d come back so bloody and nearly dead that we didn’t think he would make it an hour let alone through the night.”
He felt those green eyes of hers jump to his face, but he couldn’t look at her. He forced himself to look at the ocean, that beautiful sea with the sprays breaking against the rocks and bluffs. He felt like the rocks; slowing being worn down by the ever-present waves crashing against him.
“I wasn’t much older. None of us were. Demyan was alive at the time. Reaper, Savage’s older brother, would hold him and rock him, but Savage would try to push him away because it hurt so bad to be touched. Steele would try to heal him. We were all little kids with no real food, no medical aid, the conditions were unsanitary, it was freezing.”
He shook his head and shoved one hand through his hair. “I don’t know, Scarlet. We tried everything we could to make things better. Demyan and I would get on either side of Savage and just talk to him. We did it to all the kids that were beat the hell up. Girls and boys. We were beat up and raped and we’d do it for each other. We told one another that we were strong, stronger than the instructors were. We could be so much better at what they did than they could because we were so much stronger and more disciplined. They couldn’t defeat us. We would always be the best.”