Slow Burn(72)

    He sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s not your fault, doll.”

    “Can’t you talk to me? I don’t understand.”

    He swallowed. He took a deep breath. He fiddled with his hands. He looked down at his stomach, staring at the crude tattoo there. He closed his eyes. “I can’t.”

    I touched the tattoo.

    He recoiled as if he’d been burned.

    And then, abruptly, it made sense. A horrible, repellent sense. “Oh God,” I whispered.

    He raised his gray eyes. They looked wounded and destroyed.

    “Griffin, did something happen to you?”

    His jaw twitched. His gaze flittered away from mine.

    “Did something happen to you in prison?”

    “Yes,” he choked out.

    “Oh God,” I said again.

    He stood up. The bedroom had two inlaid dormer windows that looked out over the water. He walked away from the bed, over into the alcove that contained one of the windows, and he rested his forehead against it. “Not some thing, though. It wasn’t like it was once.”

    “Oh God.” I didn’t seem to be able to say anything else.

    “I told you that I was a minor, but that they sent me to an adult facility, didn’t I?”

    “Yes.”

    He was still staring out the window. “I was a scrawny kid back then, and I’d never spent any time learning to defend myself. I didn’t need too. No one had ever tried to hurt me before. I was weak and tiny. I was their wet dream.”

    “Griffin.” I wanted to go to him. I wanted to say something. A comforting thing. But what could I say to something like this? I had no idea how to comfort him. And there was no way I could make it better.

    “It happened the first day.” It was like he’d somehow been released, like the words were tumbling out of him. “And it wasn’t just one guy. There were a bunch of them. They held me down, not that I could really fight back. I didn’t know how to do anything like that. I tried, but I couldn’t do anything. That was the worst part of it, I think. Fighting so hard and being completely helpless. There was a moment when I realized that I couldn’t do anything about it. That they were in control of what happened to my body. Them. Not me. It was like something in me snapped. It broke me.”

    I flinched. It was the worst thing I’d ever heard.

    “They forced me to do things. They...” Only now did he seem to falter for words. “Raped me.”

    The words hung there in the bedroom with the both of us. He was half-naked, silhouetted in the window, and he suddenly looked so vulnerable.

    I got up off the bed and went to him. Hesitantly, I wrapped my arms around him from behind. I waited for him to stiffen, or to stop me, but he didn’t. He put his hands over mine.

    “I’m so sorry,” I said. It was inadequate. It was stupid. It didn’t even come close to making up for the horror he’d been through.

    “It’s not your fault,” he said.

    “I meant that I...”

    He lifted my fingers to his mouth. He kissed them. “I know what you meant.”

    I lay my head against his back. He breathed.

    “It wasn’t just once either,” he said. “The tattoo was a mark. Who I belonged to.”

    “Jesus.”

    He shivered. “You know, when we were playing that drinking game at your house. Never have I ever given a blow job.”

    Oh. Oh, God. I shut my eyes against it.

    “I should have taken a drink.”

    “No,” I said, and I moved around to face him. “Because it’s not the same thing. You didn’t give anything. People just took it.”

    His eyes looked bright, like there were tears trapped in them.

    I wanted to hold him, to engulf him. But he was too tall, too much bigger than I was. I led him back to the bed. I pulled him down with me, and he crawled into my arms, his head against my breasts, his arms wrapped around my waist. I cradled him, trying to hold as much of him as I could.

    His shoulders shook.

    But he didn’t make any noise.

    And when he lifted his face, his eyes were dry. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “I want to make love to you, Leigh. I want it so bad.”