She raised up, looking down at him. “I was desperate.”
“I know. And you were desperate when you attacked Rafe.” He kept his gaze on her. “You have to trust me, if we’re going to work together to defeat Tudor.”
“Yes.”
“Do you trust me?” he asked, watching her face.
“I want to.” She dragged in a breath and let it out. “But there has never been a man I could trust—starting with my father. He didn’t love me. He only saw me as something that might be valuable. And if I turned out right, he could sell me to the slavers. Then there were the men who kept us at the slave camp. They gave us training, but they didn’t care about any of us. They were like my father. They saw us as commodities. Only they knew they could get return on their investment by selling us.”
He clenched his teeth, hating what she was telling him but understanding.
He kept his gaze steady. “I understand all that, but I think you trust me more than you realize.”
She also kept the eye contact. “Why do you think so?”
“Because you asked me to chain you to the wall. If I’d chained you the way those men did at the station, I could have done anything to you.”
She looked thoughtful. “But instead, you did something that you knew would bring me pleasure—in the end.”
“And we both found out something about ourselves.”