Page 54 of Gilded Locks
Would the abuse stop there? What if they went further than disfiguring her? Why had she thought this was better than confronting her father and brother again? She was insane to stay here with these men. She needed to leave, and she needed to leave now.
“Easy, Zayka.” Ash’s voice rumbled against her temple, warm honey in comparison to Stone’s arctic cold. “I’ve got you.”
Again, she surrendered.
“That’s it. Just relax and let me hold you like this. Give yourself time to process. Permission to feel whatever you’re feeling right now.”
The word permission loosened another knot inside of her and a shaky breath tugged from her lungs.
“It’s okay to cry, Zayka.”
What was that word, Zayka?
Ash gently stroked her arms and back as she wept silently, shaken by how much emotion this ordeal had stirred loose inside of her. As she allowed herself the long overdue chance to weep in the shelter of his arms, time moved differently. Her thoughts were thick like molasses, then sharp and vicious like shattered glass.
She tried to replay everything Stone had done to her, but it was a blur. One moment, she’d been furious and terrified, then she was suspended in that exquisite nowhere, nerve endings singing to whatever symphony Stone played into her body.
Now, she was here. Alone with Ash.
He would hurt her too, if she gave him time.
And after Ash, would come Hunter. She shivered at the thought.
Ash rolled to his back and pulled her closer, tugging a silk-lined fur over her shoulders. “Comfortable?”
She didn’t want to answer. Answering felt too much like consent.
But she reveled at the security of his arms, the way he cradled her close. Curled in Ash’s hold like a broken bird, wrapped in silk and fur that smelled of cedar and sin, she was as safe as a fool could be.
His massive hand smoothed down her spine, mapping each vertebra under the blanket. Not sexual. Not demanding. Just... there. An anchor when everything inside her threatened to float away.
“Would you like to talk about what happened?”
In that moment, words were foreign things, too heavy for her tongue. A whimper escaped instead, small, wounded, embarrassingly needy.
“Shh.” He shifted, cradling her closer against the furnace of his chest. “You don’t have to talk yet. Just breathe until the inner storm settles.”
The command was gentle, but it was still a command.
Her body obeyed without thought, lungs expanding to match the steady rise and fall of his. In. Out. In. Out. Each breath pulled her back from that razor’s edge of lunacy she sometimes worried she might have passed. Maybe the doctors at the clinic were right. Maybe she was prone to delusions. What if she really needed those pills and that awful electric shock therapy? At least then, she didn’t feel like she was spinning undone.
At Whitmore, they claimed her panic attacks were further evidence of her instability. Perhaps they were right.
Being gaslit as much as she’d been in the past year left her with a pockmarked memory. Events blurred with delusions and memories lost all tangible ties to reality. Maybe she imagined the worst of it. Maybe they were actually trying to help her.
But then she recalled Jordan’s rage and the way he slammed her head into the wall, spittle coating his lips and spraying in her face with every profane threat.
And at Whitmore… She could still taste the rubber. She could feel the orderly’s weight pressing into her… Taste the blood… Smell the urine…
“I’ve got you, printsessa. Just breathe…”
She frowned, her thoughts occurring on a delay. Ash said to breathe until the inner storm settled. He said it as if he’d felt what she was feeling, as if he’d been in her position before. But that was impossible. Men like Ash, Stone, and Hunter could never fill a submissive role. They were dominant predators through and through.
But somehow he knew she was battling an erratic storm inside.
She curled tighter to his side, her mind as wild as the ocean and his stability the breaker she needed to crash upon. A new sense of shame awakened as she accepted this existential appeal he held. Danger masquerading as safety. Logic couldn’t deter her from feeding that need for comfort and playing into the lie. It felt good to be held. That was all that mattered. The consequence would eventually come, and it might be the worst yet, but her short sighted heart needed this tenderness now.
She could face the fallout later.
