Page 94 of Steel Rain

I almost laughed. “The same way what your father did to Aoibheann was none of your concern, right? Did you ask for her forgiveness? Truly? What did you say?Sorry I let my father rape you, and beat you, and whip you …”I almost laughed! Relieved to finally be able to say the words out loud. Finally able to tell him what I knew. How much I knew. That his evil wasn’t kept in the shadows. “Just like you were going to whip me?”

“It’s different! I have never hurt her! I would never!”

“You already have! Why do you think she left?”

“Don’t you get impertinent with me, woman, I will whip you to within an inch of your life if that brought her back to me!”

“Then do it!” I screamed back. “Whip me, because I will never give her up. Whip me, whip everyone in your fucking Army if you have to. Hurt as many other people as you like …”

“You think I wouldn’t do the exact same thing to myself?” His eyes were crazed. Gone was any semblance of the boy I knew, and the only thing in his place was the madness of his father.

Eoghan fisted the front of his shirt, pulling it open until the buttons went flying everywhere. He threw off his blazer and shirt in the same movement, baring his back. It was covered in tattoos. Black, and angry. Celtic crosses, and tropical flowers. There was a totem of a lizard near his heart, which looked unusual. It wasn’t his style. It wasn’t remotely close to the classical style of a master. Far more… tribal… than anything he’d ever choose. Not with that great classical education of his.

I was so surprised by the markings on his body that I didn’t realize his intent until he grabbed a whip from a drawer at his desk.

In one swift move, the short whip in his hand crashed over his shoulder, whooshing through the air in a high-pitched hiss, and cracked over his bare back. An angry red line emerged, slow at first, but then very fast as the blood dripped down his flesh and pooled at the top of his waistband.

He flicked the whip again, and it went over his other shoulder, forming a red X on his back.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I finally shook off the stupor and moved, giving him a wide berth to approach him from the front.

“I would whip you, Dairo, Ajax, and my own fucking flesh if it meant finding my Kira,” he growled. Then he moved again, in a rhythmic lunge that threw the whip up into another bit of self-flagellation.

“You’re out of your mind!” I said, wondering if it was safe for me to reach out and grab his wrist. To stop this insanity.

“I am!” He screamed. “I’m out of my fucking mind! I need to find her before the Italians find her and she ends up dead! Just like my mother! So, tell me, Shiny!” His free hand came out and fisted the collar of my shirt. “How many lashes until you tell me? Is three enough? Six?”

With three angry strikes, the whip cracked again. Crack. Crack. Crack!

“Nine?” he asked, breathless and mad. Before he could hurt himself again, I lunged forward, grabbed his wrist and pulled the whip from his hand. “I’ll do it a hundred times if it means I find her!”

I threw it away. Launching it as far as I could. He didn’t look at it. He stared right at me, his hands clutching at my biceps, shaking me in his desperate fury.

“Tell me, Shiny, how many lashes until you tell me where she is!”

“Fine!” I screamed. “I’ll fucking tell you! Jesus! Stop this!”

The relief on his face was heartbreaking. If I doubted his love, his desperation, his need to find his wife before, I couldn’t doubt it now. I couldn’t deny it when he fell to his knees, his head in his hands.

He tugged at his blond hair as if the pain would relieve something in him, and he let out a strange, and feral roar.

The door slammed open, and there, like an avenging angel was my groom. Ajax, his fists clenched, his eyes furious as he surveyed the scene. He strode in and grabbed me, checking me over from head to toe.

“What the hell is happening?” He still scanned me, looking for any wounds. “I heard … I heard …”

Then he looked at Eoghan, the lashes on his back.

“What’s happening?” Ajax stepped between us as if he could protect me from Eoghan’s madness. As if his insanity was a disease that was contagious.

Maybe for the first time in my life, I realized that it wasn’t madness. Eoghan was truly in love.

I grabbed Ajax’s arm, and pulled him in.

“Get Dairo,” I tried to push Ajax towards the door. There was a plan forming in my mind.

“I’m not leaving you alone with this mad man,” Ajax growled.

But I touched his cheek, and his fury instantly soothed away.

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