Page 237 of Those Who Are Bound

“It’s not his fault,” Jonah said quickly, grabbing her arms. “There was more going on with him… Lucy told me she’d found things. Beckman told me a few things. My beautiful, strong, smart woman… you know this. Deep inside, you know this. Stop blaming yourself.

“You aren’t a demon; there are no monsters inside you. This… drive of yours. No one told you, Elliott, but they should have, about what happened to you when you were a baby.”

She frowned. She knew about what had happened.“What do you mean? Are you trying to blame this on some form of pre-birth trauma?”

Jonah shook his head. “Oh, honey. No.” He assessed her curiously. “Do you have any idea why you might be afraid of storms?”

Elliott stared at him. He wasn’t making sense. Has this all affected him in another manner? Had he lost his mind? She shook her head. “Kids are scared of storms.”

He pointed out, “You’re all grown up.”

“So, I never outgrew it. What’s your point?”

“And rope?”

She felt her cheeks flush. “Just a kink. People have them.” She dropped her gaze.

Jonah reached out and grasped her chin, tilting it up so she looked at him again. He gave her a full smile this time. “Unlocked the same kink in me, kitten. I love what my ropes do to you, for you.”

Elliott smiled back. There was a freedom in being able to share that part of her without it being associated with something painful. Jonah didn’t judge her for it, he embraced it—and boy, how he did.

“And your so-called demon that demands a sacrifice even though you’re a submissive. You find weak men to test so you can pretend to have power because that’s how you control.” He gave her a pointed look. “Until me.”

Elliott had never been so boldly called out before, and she fought the bristling. She wanted to argue with him, but he was right. She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she watched him, waiting for him to continue.

“Beckman told me when you were little, around three, you went missing from a petting zoo.”

Jonah tilted his head, watching her for signs of recognition of the story. She didn’t have any. It was the first she’d heard this.

She frowned at him, giving her head a small shake.

“They found you in a lake.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “In a lake? When I was three? I knew how to swim when I was three?”

Jonah shook his head. “You weren’t swimming. You were naked. And it was storming.”

Elliott madly searched her memory for some shred of recollection, some random comment dropped that now made sense, but she came up with nothing.

“You’d managed to wrap yourself in rope. It saved you from drowning.”

Elliott ran a hand over her face. “I don’t… Why would Becks tell you something like that? No one ever said anything about this to me. Naked in a stormy lake with rope? How did I get there? How did they find me? Was it a swimming line? Was it near a dock? Why didn’t anyone ever say anything?”

“Some of these questions I can’t answer, you’ll have to ask Beckman.” He shifted, gaining her attention. “But Elliott, I’m telling you this for a specific purpose: there’s no demon inside you. You’ve been misinterpreting and acting out on survival instincts.”

He was using his pastor’s voice, calm and patient and an overdose of understanding. She tensed; it was alarming. It meant he thought—knew—this was worse than what he was saying. She didn’t appreciate him using that tone, but she pressed, “Do you know why I was naked in the water?”

“I don’t.”

“Becks knows.” Her memory. “But it’s probably pretty bad.”

Jonah gave her a short nod.

“Was I assaulted?”

Again, the short nod.

Elliott didn’t remember it. She had absolutely no memory of it, but her lower lip trembled. “I was a baby.”

Jonah took her into his arms. “You were a baby.”

She watched the sparkling of the river as it rushed by in the twilight. She gasped. “I wasn’t supposed to come out of the water.”

He pulled her head to his shoulder and stroked her hair. “But you did.”

“Because of the rope.”

He echoed, “Because of the rope.”

---