Where Lightning Strikes (Bleeding Stars #3)(42)

Somehow his question sounded like both encouragement and a threat.

A part of me wanted to tell him two months couldn’t take him as deep as those scars went. To throw his defense back in his face. Part of me wanted to hide behind the same kind of walls he hid behind.

There was no question now.

I heard it in his voice at night. In the words he sang and the sorrow it imbued. In the words etched on his skin. Most of all, I felt it in his touch.

But the stronger part of me? I just needed to tell someone something. But it wasn’t just someone. It was him. This beautiful, terrifying man who filled me with such trepidation and fear and need. The one who felt like peril and air and belief. The one who broke me down and exposed what was underneath.

That girl?

She wanted to lie here in the security of Lyrik’s arms and whisper her secrets into his darkness. Somehow I knew he would keep her safe.

No, I couldn’t take him all the way. That name had been a secret on my tongue for far too long. But I couldn’t stop myself from speaking. From giving him the pieces I wanted him to hold. “When I first met him, I thought he was everything I wanted.”

Like he’d been struck, Lyrik flinched. “You knew him? You were with him?”

I shuddered with the onslaught of memories, and I realized Lyrik had absolutely no clue about my past other than the fact I’d freaked out when he’d touched me. I wondered how many different scenarios had played out in his head. “Yeah.”

Old pain wove through me like a rusted needle.

Tamar King wanted to stand up and crush it. She wanted to lift her chin in defiance and sneer and shout to the world that no man had the power to hurt her.

Instead, I turned my head so I was speaking against Lyrik’s thundering heart, my voice barely above a whisper. “On the outside, he was a lot like you. Dark. Dangerous. Beautiful.”

Warily, I glanced up at him. “That’s why I hated that you made me feel the way you did. I hated the fact that the first man I was attracted to in four years physically reminded me so much of him. That you made me feel excited and alive. So I fought back the only way I knew how.”

Squeezing me, he pressed a fierce but tender kiss to the top of my head. “I would never hurt you.”

My insides quaked. I was sure that wasn’t true. This man was quickly gaining the power to destroy me in so many ways. But I knew that wasn’t what he meant.

I nodded against his chest. “I know.”

His silence urged me to continue. “He was older than me by more than ten years. At first, I wanted to be with him so badly…wanted to experience the intense way he made me feel…that I ignored the warning signs. I was such a fool. I look back now, and they all were there. I ignored my parents when they begged me to stop seeing him. I isolated myself from them so I wouldn’t have to hear the worry in their pleas for me to see reason.”

I stared unseeing into the shadows that played along the wall. “I think my mom knew it the first time she met him. We were always so close, and I couldn’t wait for her to meet my new boyfriend. Because all the boys I’d dated before had been exactly that. Boys. But he was a man.”

The words turned shaky and regretful as I thought back to that day. The memory so clear. Vivid. “I’d been so excited…proud to introduce him. My mother…she’d paled the second she’d touched his skin when she shook his hand. I can still almost feel it…the cold dread that had filled our tiny kitchen. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes…the fear. After he left, she’d grabbed me by the arm, pleading, warning me he was dangerous. If only I would have listened.”

He swallowed hard. “Blue.”

I just kept on, my voice a whisper as I told Lyrik things I’d never told anyone. “He was a monster. Twisted in the worst way. At the beginning, he’d taunted me that I was too young…too inexperienced…that I couldn’t handle his lifestyle and I’d just turned right around and promised I could.”

A lump grew so thick at the base of my throat I could barely speak. “I had no idea what I was promising. And I couldn’t handle it, Lyrik. No one should. It started out as rough play. Things I wasn’t really comfortable with, but didn’t really hurt me. But before I knew what was happening, before I could stop it, it was torture.”

Rage. It was tangible. The way it expanded and surged, rolls and rolls coming from Lyrik’s body.

“I hope he’s burning in hell right now,” he said as he tightened his hold. Like he would never let me go.

“I wish that were the truth.”

I wished he were dead or rotting behind bars, right where the sadist belonged. But no. He was free.

Because of me.

Because I’d thought I was brave and it’d turned out I was nothing but a coward.

Lyrik lifted my wrist and pressed the underside to his mouth, over the scars that remained there from where I’d struggled and fought to break the ties, where ink disguised the evidence of my bonds.

“The scars are my enemy,” I whispered hard. “I covered my wrists next, and again, it felt good. It became this sick pattern. Every time I got scared or felt small, I would get another tattoo. Even after the exterior wounds were covered. Until I’d built up this guise that warned everyone off. I never wanted anyone to see.”

He tucked his chin and at the same time he lifted mine toward him. Intense, knowing eyes darted all over my face. Searching. Seeking. Defining. “But you let me.”