Vicious Carousel (Suncoast Society #25)(43)

He took a risk and added a little more Dom tone. “Why are you scared of us right now?”

“Please don’t punish me,” she whispered. “If I did the chores wrong, please don’t punish me. I don’t know your rules. We haven’t talked about your rules yet, and I was trying to do the best I could.” She broke down sobbing, her hair hanging, concealing her face as she slumped against the counter.

Rage and sorrow warred inside him. He instinctively shifted to the side to block Nolan when he heard his partner’s gasp of horror behind him and sensed him trying to step forward. He knew Nolan wanted to do exactly what Kenny wanted to do, and that was protect her and take away her fear.

Only she could do that, though. Only she could work through this.

He had to reach behind him and swat at Nolan to hold him back. “Sweetie,” Kenny said, “what did Jack do to you about chores?”

He couldn’t see her face through her curtain of hair. “If…I tried so hard. In the beginning, he told me how good I was. I tried harder. Then…it was like every day, even if I did stuff exactly the way he told me, he’d find something wrong. Or change it. Until I never did anything right, no matter how many times I tried to do it, it was always wrong, even if it was right before.”

He had to force his breathing to stay slow, steady. “And he’d punish you for it?”

She nodded.

He took another deep breath. “Sweetie, here is our rule about chores, and it’s the only rule we have about chores—we will never punish you about chores. Ever. Understand?”

She nodded, but tears still spilled down her cheeks and onto the counter, her body wracked with silent sobs.

He edged forward, slowly, not wanting to spook her. “Not even if you do them badly, not even if you don’t do any at all. You have our word, absolutely no punishments about chores. Understand?”

She nodded again.

“Is that why you got so scared when you asked if we wanted to see what you’d done?”

More nodding.

“Tell us.”

“As…as soon as he got home from work every day…usually…that’s what he did first thing. Find out what to punish me for. The…the first…in the beginning, he always made it seem like he felt badly about it. Like he didn’t want to punish me…but later it was for fun. I could tell. Fun for him. Why did I let him do this to me?”

“Look at me, sweetie.”

She finally did.

He opened his hand and held it, palm-up, showing her the necklace. “Do you trust us?”

She looked from it to him and back again, nodding.





Holy…f*ck. Nolan was desperate to shove Kenny out of the way, to get to Betsy and hold her, but then came the revelations and he realized exactly why his partner had stood firm and not let him pass.

He felt ill, physically sick. And angry.

And protective.

No, June wouldn’t get a chance at the f*cker if Jack got out of jail.

He’d make sure he took care of Jack himself.

“I found this for you today,” Kenny told her in that warm, soothing, but at the same time firm and commanding tone.

Fuck, it even made his cock stir despite the circumstances.

“If you’d like,” Kenny continued, “you can wear it as a symbol. A symbol of our promise to protect you and to never punish you. Something you can touch and hold onto when you’re afraid, when the fear hits you. Would you like that?”

She stared at it, then at Kenny, then past Kenny to him.

Finally, she nodded.

Kenny held his other hand out to her. “If you trust us, come to us.”

Nolan watched as she sucked in a deep, ragged breath before she stepped forward, still crying. Then she reached out and took his hand.

“Good girl,” Kenny whispered.

She looked up into his eyes, startled, but now her tears renewed as she folded against him.

He held her, turning so Nolan could step in, too, engulfing her between them in their embrace.

“Such a good girl,” Kenny soothed. “You’re our very good girl. We’re so proud of you for trusting us.”

Nolan wasn’t sure if this was exactly the right way to handle this, the healthy way to go with her fragile emotional state, but if it helped her, he wouldn’t argue with it.

She mumbled something against Kenny’s chest.

“What was that, sweetie?”

“Is that my collar?” she asked.

Now the men’s gazes met.

Nolan honestly didn’t know what to say. Kenny had gotten them this far, so he’d let him answer it.

“What do you want it to be?” Kenny asked her.

“I want to feel safe again,” she whispered.

“What would make you feel safe?”

Nolan wasn’t sure if she’d answer at first.

Then, “I want to be under your protection. Both of you,” she said.

Kenny gently turned her to face Nolan and unhooked the clasp on the necklace. Nolan reached up and held her hair back while Kenny fastened the necklace around her neck.

“Then you wear this for us,” Kenny said. “When you don’t feel safe, you touch it, you hold it. You think about us protecting you. You think about how you trust us, and how you trust Tilly and June and Eliza, and our other friends, and how they’ll protect you, too.”