“No!” she burst out.
Isaac looked at her in surprise, but before he could say anything else, she pushed his hands away from her cheeks and buried her face in her hands. She moaned in despair, because she knew she would have to confide her last shameful secret. The thing that had forced her to speed up her plan of escape.
“Baby, what is it?” Isaac asked in concern.
She lifted her head and saw him flinch at the rawness in her expression.
“You can’t go after them, Isaac,” she said hysterically. “The elders aren’t the ones who are after me now.”
TWELVE
ISAACstared at Jenna in shock even as his mind burned with anger. Fury like he’d never known was about to force him right over the edge, and now to find out there was more? A bigger threat to his angel than he thought? He didn’t even stop to have a “what the fuck” moment with himself over thinking of her as his angel—his anything. She’d been his from the very start, from the moment she’d shared the beautiful light of her soul with him. Now she was inside him, a part of him attached so deep that there was no hope or thought of ever digging her out. There were only two things he knew at this moment. She belonged to him and he would protect her from whatever the fuck threat she faced.
He reached out to touch her, but she flinched away, fear and self-condemnation clouding her beautiful eyes. Fuck that. He wrapped himself around her, holding her tightly against him until finally she stopped fighting him and went still, sobs wracking her tiny frame, and he swore to make those bastards pay for those tears. For every tear she ever shed because they’d made her life hell.
“Jenna, honey, calm down and quit crying,” he soothed, holding and rocking her back and forth as months—hell, years—of pent-up pain and misery worked their way from her system.
“I need you to tell me everything, baby,” he said softly. “I have to know how to keep you safe, and that means you tell me everything. There is nothing you can’t tell me. Do you understand? There is nothing that will ever make me feel badly about you and there is damn sure nothing that will ever make me let you go.”
She went completely still, her sobs halting. She went so quiet that it worried him. Then she turned, staring up at him with her heart in her eyes. She looked so innocent and utterly guileless, but then how could she be anything else having lived her life sequestered from the world, her only knowledge coming from fucked-up, twisted, sadistic minds?
“Do you mean that?” she asked, a note of anxiety in her voice.
His heart went completely soft, the hard steel around it splintering wide open.
“I never say things I don’t mean and I don’t make promises that I don’t keep,” he said, staring back at her intently, barriers down so she could see as easily into him as he could her.
She hung her head again and drew her hands between their bodies, twisting her fingers anxiously together.
“Baby, don’t look like that,” he said. “Tell me what has you so afraid so I can take care of it.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you or your men because of me,” she whispered.
“Jenna, look at me,” he said, beginning to sound like a broken record. “Do you forget that if not for you I’d be dead, and Shadow would be in the hospital getting stitches and raising hell about being forced to receive medical attention?”
Her expression only grew sadder. “If it wasn’t for me trying to steal your vehicle, neither of you would’ve been hurt in the first place.”
“But then I wouldn’t have you. Here right now in my arms. I’d say it was worth nearly dying,” he said softly.
She stared at him, shocked, swallowing multiple times as she tried to get her emotions under control.
“No one has ever cared what happened to me,” she said quietly. “Only so much as to make sure I was capable of doing what the elders wanted.”
Isaac put a lid on the red haze of fury that billowed up inside him and focused on the woman he held, waiting for her to confide the last of her secrets. He lifted her from his lap and laid her next to him, and then he stretched out his long length and turned so they were on their sides facing one another.
She blinked and then flushed, discomfort evident on her face. “This isn’t appropriate,” she whispered. “It’s a sin for me to be in your bed. I’m sorry. I didn’t even think when I came in here.”
“Jenna, I want you to listen to me and listen to me very closely. First, I’m very glad you came to me when you were scared. I want you to always come to me when something—anything—frightens you. Secondly, I want you to forget every fucked-up thing you were taught in that goddamn cult. They’re wrong. You know they’re wrong. It’s why you wanted to escape so badly. Not just because of the shitty way they treated you and the fact they abused you and then used you for their selfish purposes. Aside from all of that, their teachings are wrong. Not just wrong but so fucked up I can’t even wrap my mind around it. I get that what they taught you, what’s been instilled in you for most of your life, is hard to just discard in a few minutes, days or even weeks, but this is where I need you to trust me, baby. You being in my bed isn’t wrong, and not just because we aren’t doing anything but talking. It won’t be wrong when I make love to you either.”
A horrified look crossed her face. “No! I don’t want that. Ineverwant that.” She shuddered. “It’shorrible.”
A dull roar began in his ears and he had to clench his jaw to prevent the angry roar from escaping. “Did they rape you, Jenna? Did they put their goddamn hands on you? Did they force themselves on you? Did they ever force you to have sex withanyone?”
She shuddered again. “No, but I saw ...” She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. Please don’t make me talk about it right now,” she pleaded.
“I just want to know one thing and then no, sweetheart, you don’t have to talk about it right now.”
He purposely injectedright nowbecause theywoulddiscuss it later. It was obviously a traumatic subject for her and he had to know why. Even if the very thought of having to listen to his angel tell him that someone had violated her was enough to send him spiraling out of control.
