Boarlander Silverback (Boarlander Bears #3)(28)

She yelped as he smacked her ass. “Kirk Slater, I’m not just some cavewoman you can drag anywhere you want. We’re having a fight. There are rules.”

“Don’t care much for rules. Admission one,” he said as he stomped onto the beach and toward the thin trail up the side of the falls. “When I was seven, I stole all of my half-brother, Aaron’s, baseball cards, because he was a huge douchebag, and I blamed it on my other half-brother, Byron, who was also a douchebag. And then they got in this huge, bloody fight on the front lawn of my house, and my dad got involved, and I still don’t feel guilty.”

“On account of them being douchebags?”

“Yep. Age ten I met a human girl in town while my mom was shopping, and when she asked where I was from, I told her Lowland Gap. She told me it was a commune for a cult, and I called her a titty-witch. I didn’t know what a commune or a cult was, so I snuck into my dad’s office when we got back to the house and researched it on the computer. It sounded pretty damn familiar, so I ran away from home.”

“How far did you make it?”

“Well, since I only packed three pair of underwear and five beef jerky sticks, not far, and my dad tanned my hide when he found me.”

“None of this makes me want to leave.”

“Give it time. Age eleven, the blackback in me started wanting to fight. So I did. I fought everyone, all the damned time. I even went after my dad, a fully mature silverback, a time or two.”

Alison let her arms go limp as they bumped and bounced across Kirk’s bare, flexing, sexy as hell back. “What’s a blackback?”

“A young male gorilla. I started fighting early and pissed off everyone in my cult.”

“Don’t call it that.”

“A cult is what it was, Ally. You should know that. Accept it. I wasn’t raised like you, or the Boarlanders, or even Kong. His mom took him away from their family group. She raised him in regular schools with humans. I only knew my family for the first half of my life.”

They were really high up now, so Alison closed her eyes against the dizzying height. “My mom used to get high before we went grocery shopping. She would be leaning against buildings as we walked there, and I’d have to hold her upright and make sure she kept up with her purse. I was in charge of getting groceries while she would be sagging against the shopping cart.”

“How old when it started?”

“I don’t know. I remember being really young when I started being embarrassed of her in public. Six maybe?”

“Jesus.” Kirk crested the top of the steep incline and settled her on her feet.

“My point is your unconventional upbringing isn’t a deal-breaker for me. Now tell me more confessions. I like this.”

Squaring up to her, he tucked her short hair behind her ear. “You like what?”

“Knowing you. It makes you feel more like home.”

Kirk huffed a disbelieving laugh and searched her eyes. He gritted his teeth, then said, “That’s because I haven’t told you the bad stuff yet.”

Alison slid her arms around his waist and hugged him tight. “You won’t scare me off.”

“No,” he rumbled. Kirk kissed the top of her head and murmured, “I can’t imagine much scares you anymore.” He turned her slowly in his hands and gripped her uninjured shoulder as he faced her toward the storm.

For miles Alison could see rolling mountains covered in a blur of green and brown, and in the distance, the storm clouds created a wall of dark gray. The deep rumble of thunder echoed across Damon’s mountains, and she leaned her back against Kirk’s chest as she took in the beauty of the place.

“This is part of me,” he murmured low, his cheek resting against her temple.

Her shoulder hurt with him pressed against her, but she maintained a straight face and didn’t grimace away from his touch because this was an important moment.

“I come up here when my head gets messed up. And when Clinton is pissin’ me off and I want to murder him. This is where I come when the guilt gets too bad and I can’t control my Changes.”

“Why guilt?” she whispered, her heart breaking with his admission.

“I signed a contract. One that said I wouldn’t have sex with women, just in case Fiona called me up to head a family group. I didn’t want to sign it, not because I wanted to have sex, but because she was a new leader and had been killing off her opposition. I’d already slept with a couple women and didn’t like signing away something that belonged to me. I wanted to choose my family group and have them choose me, too. I denied her, and at the time, I was working in town, away from my family group because I was getting too dominant to stay in the same place as my dad. She had me taken and beaten until I signed it.”

“Oh, my gosh. How long did it take?”

“Three days.” He sighed. “I was to guard Kong with another silverback named Rhett. He didn’t have to be broken. He signed it willingly. I don’t know why. Maybe he thought he would be assigned a family group later or something, but I could see what was happening for what it was. We were being broken, like she’d done to her personal guards. I was there when they brought Kong in. She made me watch because he was going to be mine to keep in line. He was tortured for three weeks, and I was chained in the corner because I tried to stop it. Fiona thought it would be good for me to watch. She thought it would desensitize me. Rhett helped them break him, and then he helped bring in Kong’s mom, Josephine, and Kong finally gave in.” Kirk swallowed hard. “In those three weeks, something went hollow in my middle. All I smelled was blood, sweat, and pain. Something died inside of me, or got erased, I don’t know. I stopped feeling. I was telling Kong to just sign the contract so we could both escape that place, but he had been raised outside of our people, and he wanted a single mate. He wanted to keep his old life. And by the end, I was hoping he would stop breathing because…shit.” Kirk slipped away from her and stood five feet back, out of reach, like he didn’t want her touching him when he told her what he’d been through. “I was hoping he would stop breathing because I could see both of our futures, and they were empty. He would be saved for a massive family group. He would f*ck them mindlessly when they went into heat, give all of himself to provide for them, and he would never connect with another living creature. Not really. And I would help keep his life dark. He’d known freedom. He’d been away from our people, and his mom had raised him in a loving environment. I only knew a half-life, and to get him back to accepting our f*cked-up peoples’ ways, he would have to be dead inside, just like me. And I thought maybe if he just stopped living, it would be the easy way out. But he didn’t, and for the next several years, I limped along beside him, watching him wither, watching him pine for Layla, watching Rhett make his life a living hell. I was part of the torture, Ally.”