Page 82 of The Devil's Scars

Scars started. He hadn’t thought about that man since he’d been gunned down by The Fallen Angels five years before. They’d never been close, but Bear had been one of his brothers. “You – you knew Bear?”

“Yes.” She took a shuddering breath. “Wolf introduced us, and we were together for about two months.”

Scars blinked, and suddenly pieces started to fall into place. If Zoe had been in love with Bear Ellis and he’d been brutally murdered, then no wonder she was fighting so hard against her attraction to Scars. She wouldn’t want to get involved with another MC guy, would she, not if there was any chance of him being blown off the planet.

It explained so much. Her lack of trust in relationships being more than temporary. Her attraction to him, and then repulsion. Her disdain and suspicion of all things club-related.

“I’m sorry,” he said gently. “It must have been horrible to lose him that way.”

She shot him a look, and it wasn’t one that made any sense. “It really wasn’t.”

“Ummmm.” And just like that, he was back in the goddamn dark that was his normal state of being when dealing with Zoe Parish. “No?”

“No,” she hissed. “I hated him. I wished him dead every day, and then when he was, all I thought was that the world was better off without him.”

“So… so you weren’t in love with him?”

“No. He’s the reason that I left Denver screaming and never looked back. He – he hurt me, Scars.”

Those amazing eyes were angry, intense. He set down his coffee. “Tell me, Zoe. Now.”

“I will,” she whispered. “It’s – I find it hard to talk about, Scars, so I’m begging you to please be patient with me. I know it’s the last thing that I deserve, that I’ve got a lot of nerve to expect one more second of goodwill from you, but please, just a bit more patience, and just a bit longer. Is that OK?”

“You got it, baby,” he said, starting to feel much less angry, and much more concerned. “Take your time.”

She nodded, looked away from him to the glorious mountains. She knew that she’d never be able to talk about this while meeting that mesmerizing blue gaze, so the trees and rocks and birds it was. She took a breath.

“Like I said, Wolf introduced us, and because Bear was one of his brothers, I was more open than I would normally have been to a guy from an MC. I mean, I had a vague idea by then what kind of world Wolf was living in, but he’d done a really good job of keeping the worst of it from me, and protecting me from too much knowledge. So when Bear started paying attention to me, I was flattered, I guess. I figured that he had his choice of women and hangers-on, and… well. He was called Bear for a reason, and I’ve always liked tall, strong men.”

She gave Scars a quick look as he sat there in the sun, and she admired his physique. Her whole body remembered what it had been like to be held against that mountain of muscle, and she felt a twinge of sadness that it might never happen again. She looked away, took another breath.

“I was incredibly busy working at a tattoo place from hell, and saving money to help Hailey through her hairdressing course. So even though me and Bear were kind of dating for two months, and I hung out at Satan’s when I could manage it, we never… you know. Never slept together.”

Privately, Scars thought that Bear would have been enthusiastically banging anything that moved, because no way that jerk would have held out for any woman. He knew that Zoe knew that, so he said nothing, just nodded.

“So this one night…” She cleared her throat. “This one night, I showed up at Satan’s in the middle of a huge party, and I was kind of… I was planning to sleep with Bear that night.” She flushed, shifted in her chair. “I guess I just – I felt like it was time, you know? He wasn’t the love of my life or anything, but I was twenty-six and horny and he was gorgeous and totally into me, I thought and… you know?”

“Yeah. I know.”

“So I was all dressed up for him, like a woman on a seductive mission. Stupid-short skirt and high heels and the tiniest, tightest halter top that you can imagine. When I walked in, all sexy and swaggering, Bear practically ran at me, then kissed me and dragged me into the back room. The one that you and I first went into that first night.”

He looked at her sharply. “Where you said, ‘any room but this one’?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, shit, baby.” His stomach had turned to a block of ice. “What the hell did that asshole do to you back there?”

“Nothing bad, at first. It was – it was good. Enjoyable, even. He undressed me, kissed me, touched me. He was – I thought that it was going to be fun. But then… he changed.” She shook her head, and made her voice go flat and emotionless for the next part. “There was no warning when he slapped me across the face, hard. Hard enough to knock me to my knees on the fourth slap. When I tried to get up, he punched me until he loosened a tooth, and when I tried to crawl away, he grabbed me by my hair and dragged me across to the pool table. He threw me down on it, and he hit me until I think I was knocked out cold. When I came to, I was tied down with my legs open… and there were about ten other guys in the room with us.”

“What?” Scars said, appalled. “He went and got a bunch of other guys?”

“His MC brothers,” she said. “Guys who were your brothers at the time, Scars. Yours and Wolf’s.”

“Oh, no,” he said, finally starting to see, to understand. “Zoe, please tell me that they didn’t –”

“Bear started touching me all over,” she said, and he knew from her numb, blank expression that she was starting to go back there in her mind. “He was saying – saying awful things about me. Calling me names. The other guys were watching and laughing, and when I begged them to help me, they just laughed more. Then they started telling Bear to do things to me, like putting his hand over my mouth and nose so I couldn’t breathe, and sticking his dick in my mouth by force, and they wanted him to – to rape me with the pool cue.”

“No.” Scars felt sick now, actually physically sick. “Tell me that he didn’t do that. Zoe, please, baby. Tell me that none of that happened.”

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