“Sweetheart, you’re brilliant and creative. You were shaped by your past and you were just a kid. Don’t blame yourself,” Max insisted, running a soothing hand up and down her back. “He came back after he was released from prison, threatened me and your brothers, was ready to blow my brains out? How did you keep him from picking me off? From what I understand, he could have easily made the shot and was crazy enough to do it.”
“He was much worse than before,” Mia admitted. “He blamed me for everything and was completely delusional. He thought I really wanted to be with him, and he was willing to do anything to get what he wanted. I knew he’d do it.” No more secrets. No more secrets. “I was unfaithful to you, Max. I’m so sorry.” It was the most painful statement she’d ever made, but Max wanted honesty and she needed to tell him the truth.
Max released her, standing up to walk to the fireplace. Bracing his arms against the stone mantel, his head turned away from her, every muscle in his body appeared to tense. Mia held her breath as she watched his profile. He was almost motionless, the only visible movement the rise and fall of his chest as the breath sawed in and out of his lungs unevenly.
Mia’s future hung in the balance as she watched him, waiting to see if he would look at her with revulsion, scorn her love for him now. But they needed complete honesty between them, and it was something he deserved to know. She wasn’t the same, frightened woman anymore. However, it hadn’t made telling him any easier. The changes she’d made in herself just made it possible for her to tell him.
“The bastard raped you, didn’t he? He should have gone back to jail.” Max turned back to her, his arms dropping to his side, his face filled with rage, his fists clenching and releasing. “Death is too good for a bastard like him.”
Mia could feel Max’s entire body vibrating with anger, but she realized that he wasn’t angry with her. She held out her arms to him, and Max strode toward her, scooping her off the sofa and settling down with her on his lap, his arms tight around her. He hated Danny. And he trusted her, knew she hadn’t betrayed him willingly.#p#分页标题#e#
“He violated me. He didn’t rape me. He wanted me to suck him off...and I did. You were almost on the plane. You just needed a few more minutes. I didn’t care, Max. I would have done anything he wanted right at the moment, as long as he didn’t hurt you,” she told him desperately.
“Fuck! I would rather the bastard had killed me than to force you to do that…” Max’s voice trailed off, his face blanching, his expression slowly changing to one of realization. “The night you recovered your memory, in the shower…?”
“I still have nightmares about him. I was dreaming about it, and I woke up with my memory returning. I wanted to replace the bad memories with good ones. And I did,” she confessed.
“Shit. That had to be hard. You didn’t have to—”
“I wanted to. I wanted to so very badly. And it was hard. But it wasn’t difficult,” she said with a tremulous smile, trying to dispel some of the remorse she could see on his handsome face. “I’ve always wanted to, but you never seemed to want that, so I stopped trying.”
“Oh, baby…I wanted it. I wanted your sweet mouth on me so badly that I knew if it happened, I wouldn’t be able to stay controlled,” Max told her bluntly.
“It was good,” she told him with a tiny smile. “It will keep the nightmares away.”
“I’ll keep the nightmares away. You’ll never have bad dreams again. I’ll replace every moment of sorrow you’ve had with happiness. I swear I will,” he said fiercely, though his expression lightened.
Mia doubted that Max could force the Sandman to make all of her dreams good ones, but looking at his display of savage determination, she almost believed he could. And she certainly knew he’d try like hell to do it, even if he had to drag the fabled creature of folklore to their bedside every night to sprinkle magic sand in her eyes. Lifting her arms around his neck, she murmured, “Just love me like this forever. It’s enough.”
“I’ll never stop,” he agreed, the tension starting to leave his body. “Just promise me you won’t ever try to protect me again. Not at your own expense. I would have rather died than to let him lay a finger on you,” he growled.
Mia’s eyes filled with tears, the sincerity of Max’s statement, a re-avowal of what he’d said earlier, hitting her like a slug to the stomach.