Surely I heard her wrong. That’s the only thing that makes sense.
Because the idea that her security, the person Storm hired to take care of her while she was away from home, the person I personally interviewed before I left to make sure she would be safe in my absence, abused her to the point she’s scarred.
Wynter takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. The sight of her standing in the middle of the room naked is almost enough to settle my racing heart. Almost.
“Craig, my primary personal security while I was in Boston, took a liking to me.”
She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth as she considers how to tell this story without me losing it, but there’s no chance I’m not going to flip my lid when it comes to someone putting their hands on my woman. “After you left, I discovered the only way to stop the emotional pain I was in was to feel physical pain. It started small at first. Just snapping a hair band on my wrist was enough to pull me out of the dark place I found myself in. Then it escalated to a rubber band on the leg. I didn’t think of it as self-harm, it was just a way I dealt with the pain in my heart.
“A friend of mine noticed and mentioned there was a club that might help me channel the pain in a more productive way.”
“A BDSM club?” I ask carefully.
The girl I knew wouldn’t have even known what BDSM stood for, but the woman staring back at me with apprehension in her eyes isn’t the same person I fell in love with, and maybe that’s a good thing. I’m not the same boy she remembers, the years I spent away from her hardened me, and maybe it’s a good thing she’s not the fragile version of herself she once was.
Wynter nods. “Yes. And it was good for a while. On my forms, I stated that I didn’t want anything inherently sexual, because I wasn’t ready to…” She lets out a heavy breath. “I wasn’t ready for any other memories to compete with our first time. I wasn’t ready to let go of it, and I thought if I slept with someone else, if I allowed them to touch me like that, that maybe it would taint our time together somehow.” She pauses and shakes her head as if frustrated with herself. “The first few times I went, I managed to slip Craig so he wouldn’t know where I was going and what I was doing and so he wouldn’t tell Storm.”
“So if you didn’t go to the club to fuck, what did you go for?” I know the answer to the question even before I ask it, but I need to hear her say the words. I was always gentle with my dove, but that never came naturally to me. And the mere idea that she knows about the things I crave is almost enough to calm the thundering anger pulsing through me.
Wynter sighs. “This is so embarrassing,” she mumbles. “It started off as spankings. The endorphins seemed to help distract me from my heartbreak and being able to slip into that happy place.” She smiles sadly. “It was the only time I felt alive. After the first few times I went, one of the guys there encouraged me to try a few of the other things. The flogger, paddle, even the whip, and it was… I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Freeing?” I offer.
She nods. “It felt like coming home.”
I reach for her for the first time since I climbed from the bed, pulling her toward the sofa under the window. I bundle her up in my lap and immediately I’m more calm. Just having her in my arms settles the beast fighting to break free. I have a feeling I’m going to need something to ground me through the end of this story, and she’s the only thing that can. “Go on,” I tell her quietly.
Wynter closes her eyes and leans into me, and I can tell she’s struggling to find the words. “One night I didn’t do as good a job as usual when losing Craig, and he followed me. When I got back to my dorm room he was there, and he started telling me I was a whore, and that I needed to be cleansed by God. He said that I was living in sin by going to that club, and that he needed to be the one to absolve me of those sins.” She winces.
“I didn’t know Craig was religious,” I say as softly as I can manage. I ran the background check on him myself, and I remember everything about the people I assigned to her care. That definitely didn’t come up.
She shrugs. “He started quoting Bible verses to me, and when I tried to run… he grabbed me and told me the only way to repent would be to lay with a man who was one with God.” She blanches as the words leave her lips. “And when I said no and told him Storm and Rayne would kill him for even suggesting that, he laughed.”
The question is on the tip of my tongue. She said she hadn’t slept with anyone since we were together, but what she’s getting at wouldn’t be the same thing. What she told me before wouldn’t be a lie. “Did he…” I can’t get the words out. I can’t ask the woman I’ve loved since before I knew what love was if the man I hired to protect her violated her.
Wynter shakes her head against my chest and lets out a shaky breath. “No, thank god. But he told me I needed to be punished under the eyes of God, that if I wouldn’t lie with a godly man, then I would need to be punished by one. It all happened so quickly I didn’t even have the chance to fight him off. One minute I’m walking into my dorm, and the next he had me tied down.”
I tighten my arms around her, reminding my little dove she’s safe, and reminding myself that nothing is ever going to happen to her again because I will never be far away. I thought I was protecting her all those years I spent away, but I should have realized there was nowhere safer for my girl than by side.
“I’ve never been so scared in my life, Ev. I’ve never felt more vulnerable or exposed.”
She buries her face into my shirt, trying to find the strength to get through whatever is left of the story I’m not sure I’m strong enough to hear.
“I had had a particularly intense scene with someone at the club, and my ass was already on fire when he pulled my dress up. Normally I liked feeling it for a couple of days because I could lean a certain way and the pain would pull me from the dark places in my mind. But then he started calling me a whore, telling me I needed to repent for laying with a sinful man like those at the club. I tried to tell him it wasn’t about sex but he’d made his mind up. And then he told me if I liked pain so much, he would deliver God’s will with his belt.”
An involuntary shudder rolls through her body.
“It was like nothing I’d done at the club. It was excruciating from the first strike, and every one of them after was harder than the last. I thought I was going to pass out from the pain, but I knew I had to stay awake, I couldn’t leave myself even more vulnerable by losing consciousness because he could have done anything to me then.”
Anger vibrates through every fiber of my being, and even holding Wynter isn’t enough to calm the overwhelming fury. I should put her down so I don’t inadvertently hurt her, don’t hold her too tightly and mark her beautiful skin more than it’s already been marked. But I can’t bring myself to let her out of my arms. I need her close, I need to know she’s okay.
“You don’t have to keep going if you don’t want to.”
Part of me hopes she’ll take the out I’m giving her, because I don’t know how much more of this story I can handle, but she shakes her head once and takes a deep breath before continuing.
“It went on for so long I didn’t understand how his arm wasn’t sore. I could feel my own blood running down the backs of my legs, and I was questioning whether I wanted to survive or not. But then, by some miracle, my roommate walked in and heard me begging for him to stop, heard me sobbing and Craig sprouting bullshit scripture to make what he was doing to me okay. She knocked him out with a lamp and tied him up with the belt he used to beat me. She tried to help me but everything I did hurt. I couldn’t stand, or sit, or lay. I couldn’t get the cuts wet even though I knew they needed to be cleaned. I thought I liked pain until that day, and now the idea of a punishment brings me to the edge of a panic attack.” Tears roll down her cheeks in hot streams as she tries talk through her sobs. “I called Storm and told him what happened. I left out the part about the club and he flew out straight away and took care of Craig. My roommate was the one to deal with him, because I couldn’t get dressed and it took hours for the doctor he called to clean the wounds.
“Storm hung around for a few days, sleeping on our couch and making sure everything was in order with the school seeing as I couldn’t attend classes, and when I was finally ready to talk to him once I could put clothes on, I begged him never to tell you what happened. I didn’t want you to come back because you felt obligated to, or because you had some bullshit sense of guilt. He didn’t like lying to you, I could tell, but I thought it was for the best at the time. I was in such a bad place that I think if you came back just to leave again, I probably wouldn’t have survived.”
