Eternal Rider - Larissa Ione [103]
Something in his chest tightened into a cold fist. “They what?”
She nibbled her lower lip thoughtfully, as if searching for the right words. A decent man wouldn’t have pressed. But Ares wasn’t decent. And he wanted to know what happened, because he wanted to know who he had to kill.
“Cara? They. What?” Silence. His gut turned inside out. “Did they violate you?”
“No.” Her voice was small, and experience told him her trauma was big. “I think they were going to. They threatened me at first. Like they got off on my terror. It made them laugh to see me cringe when they pointed a gun at my face and threatened to blow my brains out. They slapped me around a little. Stuff like that. And Jackson had to sit there and watch.”
Ares had to force himself to breathe. The bite of shackles cutting into his wrists as he was gutted by helplessness and horror came back to him in a rush. He could even smell the tang of blood in the dank dungeon air where he’d been chained so he could witness his wife being murdered.
“Then what?” He was pretty damned proud of the fact that his voice was level, even if his emotions weren’t.
“My gift… the one I use to heal…”
I’ve killed with it. Oh, Jesus.
“One of them told me to strip. When I refused, he hit me. Fractured my cheekbone, I found out later at the hospital. The other men laughed.” She covered her ears as though hearing the laughter, and shit, that was enough.
“Cara, hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to say any more.”
But she was on a roll, as if she needed to spill it all before her time limit ran out. “He unzipped his pants and I… I… he died.”
“How did he die?” he asked quietly.
“The other men ran.” She didn’t answer the question, but Ares let her keep going. “They were gone and Jackson called the police.” Her breathing became ragged, and he ran his hand up and down her arm in a futile attempt to soothe her. “It’s kind of all a blur.”
“How did the man die?” he repeated, and she swallowed.
“The official report said heart attack.”
“And unofficially?”
Her entire body trembled. “I felt my ability surface, but it was different. It felt kind of… oily. When he grabbed me, I tried to push him away, and it just… happened. Like he’d touched a power line.” She closed her eyes, but Ares knew from experience that doing so didn’t block out the visions. “I killed him.”
“You did what you had to do, Cara. When your life is at stake, you can’t take any chances. Better him than you.” When she said nothing, he had a feeling she was torn on that point. “There’s something more, isn’t there?”
“Yeah.” She cleared her throat a couple of times. “Your brother, he asked if I got off on it.”
Ares growled. “My brother is an asshole for saying that.”
“No.” Her fingernails dug into his chest, and he wondered if she even realized it. “You’re going to think I’m awful.”
“Never.” He tipped her face up, forcing her to see the truth in his eyes. “There is nothing you could do to make me think badly of you. Understand?”
Her nod was full of uncertainty, and he wished he could do more to ease her fear. “Thanatos was right. It was horrible. But some part of me liked it. I can’t ever do that again.”
The guilt she’d been carrying around with her must have eaten her alive. “Cara, listen to me. What you felt was a rush of adrenaline, mixed with relief that the monster was dead.”
“But it felt good,” she whispered brokenly.
“Fuck yeah, it felt good. Felt good that the asshole was dead and never going to hurt you again. It’s okay to feel that way.” He doubted he was going to convince her that what he was saying was true, not in one five-minute counseling session, but he’d let her digest that for a while. “So what happened after that?”
Tension bled out of her body. She was obviously relieved to be off the subject of killing the guy. “The two other men ran off. Jackson and I did the police and hospital thing, but our relationship was never the same. He refused to talk about what he’d seen me do, and he couldn’t ever deal with the fact that he’d been helpless and unable to save me.”
Ares got that. But he also