Page 94 of Silent Threat
She was dimly aware that he was pushing down his own pants, that his hard, hot erection was bobbing free against her thigh. Then his fingers were on Annie’s pants again to remove them, so she could open her legs wider.
As the fabric brushed against her scars, she jackknifed, “Wait.” She had to push his hands because he wasn’t looking at her lips.
His gaze, startled and murderous at the same time, met hers. “What happened to you?”
She tried to shove him away. She might as well try shoving a boulder. She reached to pull up her pants, her face flushed with heat, but he wouldn’t let her.
“Annie? What is this?”
She yanked harder, and he let her go at last. She scrambled up the bed to the headboard, pulling her pants up and dragging the coverlet over herself as she went.
He pulled up his own pants, then remained kneeling on the mattress, sitting back onto his heels. “When?”
She wasn’t ashamed of her past. The past wasn’t her fault. But she didn’t like sharing the story. Still, after what had just happened, Cole was hardly a stranger.
“It happened after my mother and I left Broslin. After my grandfather kicked us out.”
“So you were what, eleven?” His voice was tighter than she’d ever heard it before.
She swallowed. “About that.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He waited. Silently. Unmoving.
“Randy had a thing for blood.”
“Is he still alive?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t seen him since we left him.”
The glint in Cole’s eyes said he might be looking into the matter sooner rather than later.
“What did he do?”
Her heart pounded. The only person she’d told was Dan, since he was her therapist. Dan had helped her deal with the past and put it behind her.
“All right.” Cole opened his arms. “You don’t have to tell me. Just come here, please.”
Instead, she pulled the cover up to her chin. “Both mom and Randy used to get paid on Fridays. So Saturday morning, my mother would go to the grocery store, and I’d be home alone with Randy all morning.”
Cole held her gaze, the skin tightening over his cheekbones, his mouth pressed in a near-flat line, his eyes growing cold, then colder.
“As soon as she was out of the driveway,” Annie said, “Randy would clean off the kitchen table.” Immaculately disinfected it with vinegar. The smell of vinegar made her nauseated to this day. “Then he made me climb onto the table, and he tied me to the legs.”
A muscle ticked in the left side of Cole’s face.
“He would lift my skirt.” She rushed now, wanting to get to the end. “Then he took his straight razor, made a cut, and just watched the blood well.”
Cole’s chest rose and fell as if he were struggling for breath.
“He said he was opening me up to let the naughtiness out. The blood washed it away. He was mesmerized by the cutting. He’d be staring for ten, sometimes fifteen, minutes before wiping off the drying blood then putting on a sliver of bandage.”
“For two years?” Cole’s voice was hoarse. “Every week?”
She nodded. She had more than a hundred white lines crisscrossing her inner thighs, making the skin look like the skin of a cantaloupe.
