He planted a kiss at the base of my spine and got back to work.
Screw Margaret and her judgement, her cold stare and unfeeling, ill-thought out words. I needed her to see, to understand, I had to do it. I bloody well had to. I used everything in my damned arsenal to make her see reason, and just had to hope that this time I had. Even if she didn’t believe my words, she would see how I was now and not want it for herself.
God, I hoped.
Even if she was brainwashed into believing their tales, their harsh words about me, I needed to protect her. She’d go to Rafael, be his slave, his wife or whatever, and end up just like me. Abused, broken. Damn suicidal and homicidal.
She deserved it about as much as I did. Even if she was a bitch. I couldn’t have that on my conscience, those things happening to any woman, any innocent.
I slipped into only semi-lucidity as Theo washed me, his soapy hands running from my feet to my thighs, between my legs, before trailing up my spine, around to my front. He scrubbed all of me, including my hair, his touch gentle and precise. Even when his erection prodded into my back, he carried on working.
Once he was done, I let him guide me into a towel and out of the bathroom, across the hall and into the bedroom we were definitely sharing despite Connor’s attempts to the opposite. It was where I’d confronted Margaret, but there were no signs of that now, like someone had tidied up. We were right at the end of the hall, and hopefully everyone would be too traumatized by the events of the last few hours to worry about where everyone was laying their heads. The house had fallen quiet. I didn’t know what had happened after my outburst, if Connor and Amaryllis had needed to chase Margaret down, bloody sedate her for all I care.
I tried to care, really. Tried to acknowledge that what I’d done was wrong, that we had was so very wrong, but after everything that had happened, it just didn’t matter. There was no capacity to give a shit.
Theo laid me on my front on the bed, peeling my towel away to reveal the back of my legs.
“I wish you hadn’t done this,” he muttered, his fingers grazing the edge of the wound before he dipped away, returning with the first aid kit. “I would have helped it be done safely.”
“I did it how I needed to,” I told him, turning my head so my cheek rested on the pillow. “It wasn’t for me, not really. It was for her.” I huffed at the sting of something on my wounds. More antiseptic, maybe. “For both of them.”
“Well, I think you’ve terrified them both. I don’t think they’ve ever seen a woman act so…”
“Insane?” I interjected, chuckling.
“Emotional,” Theo finished. Then he fell silent, and I focused again on the way he touched me, the stinging dabs of the ointment, the drying pats of a towel and the sticky padding of the bandage as he pressed it into my skin, holding it firm for a few moments.
I found my legs spreading, seeking that release from him that always seemed to become urgent after any violence, anything bloody. My body awoke as the last of the adrenaline rushed way, as the nasty wound was covered up and healing. I needed him to keep touching me.
“Sweetheart,” he breathed, his fingers grazing along the crack of my ass, then up my spine. “You’re so beautiful.” He sighed. “So sore…”
“Please touch me more,” I begged, beginning to tuck my knees under me to spread my cheeks, my pussy, wider for him. To show him right where I needed his contact, for him to give me that release. As always, sex wrapped up with violence in my mind, with the need to shift and change things, rewrite histories and pain. I ached for Theo.
But his hand withdrew, and the towel fell back over my body. I turned and looked at him with concern. “What’s the matter?” I asked, feeling like a sex pest, insecurity washing over me about how I’d presented myself to him. Of course, he wouldn’t want me after he’d had to fix me up yet again. It was ugly. Depraved.
Theo saw my spiral and came closer, climbing onto the bed with me, cupping my cheeks and planting a soft kiss on my lips. “It’s nothing to do with you. I want to eat you the fuck alive, Vi. You don’t even know how desperate my body is for yours. Fuck.” He paused, his eyes dropping down, then back up to meet mine. “But I have to tell you something.”
My muscles shuddered and ached, my brows furrowed as I looked at him, his expression all forlorn and… guilty? We had no secrets, nothing between us. But the way he was looking at me…
“That time I visited you, the first one, when I gave you that injection? It was birth control,” he spoke fast and sure, shame on his face, making his beautiful features turn down. “The reason you never got pregnant, the reason for all the torture, it was me. My fault, and I—”
I kissed him, a hard, urgent kiss to shut him up. I needed a second to process what he was saying, confessing to, how I was reacting. What he was telling me—
It wasn’t a huge surprise, not really. Though I half suspected that time he’d burst into my room had been some sort of mirage, a fantasy I imagined to help me get through the darkest of times — someone that still loved me come to comfort me — it had been so real. Of course, it was real. It had been the first time in ages I’d experienced anything other than despair. And the injection, that sharp stab he’d told me to trust, that was real too. The memory of it flashed across my vision again and again.
He’d injected me with birth control without my consent.
That was about the least of my issues back then. Now, even. So, unlike so much else, I let it go. Let it go until we could process it properly, talk about it and heal with no outside influence. Just us. I didn’t have the capacity to be angry at Theo, the man I loved more than anything, trusted more than anyone. This was a ripple.
“It was to protect me?” I asked, holding his head like he held mine. Our noses grazed, our eyes fiery on each other. “You did it to protect me?”
“Always,” he whispered with a gulp, the anguish clear in his voice. It was a lot to unpack, but during that time we were both floundering, both a mess of trying to understand what was growing between us. He’d spoken a little about how impotent it had made him feel, how clueless he’d been.
The torture I endured because I didn’t fall pregnant would probably have happened anyway. And not having to carry Rafe’s spawn was worth any punishment. Rafael was never going to stop, regardless of if he put a baby in me or not.
“I’m grateful,” I admitted, surprising myself a little. “Theo, thank you.”
“But you suffered so much…” He looked shocked, like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. His hair fell over his eyes, making him look even more disheveled as he picked apart my words.
