Chapter Thirteen
In the middle of thenight, Kira woke up thirsty.Without disturbing the guys, she got out of bed and padded to the kitchen.She got a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water, staring out into the darkness from the window behind the sink.
Guilt was a hard thing to live with, and she had plenty after having sex with two men.She’d been assaulted, had cried rape, and here she was fucking around.What type of victim did that make her?
In the glass, she saw Sinn’s reflection and turned.He leaned in the doorway, arms folded as he studied her.
“Couldn’t sleep?”he asked.
Unable to maintain eye contact, she lowered her lashes.“I needed a drink of water.”
“Hey,” he said, moving forward.“What’s wrong?”
The last thing she wanted to do was drag him into her fucked-up head.“Nothing.”
“No, don’t do that.”He took hold of her arms, warming them up.“Anything you feel is not nothing.We made a commitment to see where this relationship can go, so that means being there for each other.”
“I, ah, wonder how a woman who was violated, can have sex with two men?Doesn’t that negate everything I went through?”
“Oh, darlin’.”He pulled her into his arms and wrapped her up into his warmth.“This is not on you.Hetook away your power, and it wasn’t what you wore or what you said.This is on his head.Every survivor of sexual assault has their own healing journey, but this moment is not the end of your story.And that asshole doesn’t define how you reclaim your intimacy.Having sex after that type of trauma does not equal shame.”
A tear escaped her eye and rolled down her cheek.He started to sway, like they were dancing to a silent symphony.
“Saint and I ran away from the system three times.The first time was when we were separated.We were found almost right away, and the caseworker got smart enough not to do that again.The second time was because the couple only took us in for the money, only we never saw a penny of that, and what I mean by that, is food.We ended up stealing everything we needed, but after the couple was investigated, the judge went easy on us.”
His story calmed the anxiety racing through her nerves.
“The last time ...we were seventeen and got sent to a farm.The man put us to work from sun up to sun down, using us as manual labor he didn’t need to pay.Made us sleep in the barn.Then one night, he wanted to tell me something, so I followed him back to the main house.”
She had a feeling she wasn’t going to like where this was going.
“He locked the door, although I didn’t know it at the time.In the den, he pushed me down.Touched me.I fought back but the asshole was big.One hit and I saw stars.By the time Saint figured out something was wrong, the son of a bitch had my shirt off and my jeans sliced to ribbons.”
A chill gripped her.
“I won’t go into details.I’m sure you can figure things out.I kept fighting, even though I was hugely outmatched.Saint pretty much chopped the door down, and between the two of us, beat the shit out of him.I had to stop Saint from killing him because we would’ve been the number one suspects, obviously.Then we ran and ended up prospects with the Sons of Sin.”
