Total pages in book: 178
Estimated words: 163885 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 656(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163885 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 656(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
“You were a child; we were all just children,” Absinthe said, pushing both hands through his hair. “We were just trying to survive.”
“I survived by teaching girls to accept pain with sex. To like it,” Savage said. “I was so fucking good at it, they branded me. They put that shit into my skin permanently, just the way they branded it into my soul so that I needed it.”
“If you hadn’t trained those girls to accept or even like pain with sex, they would have been tortured repeatedly. Reaper would have been killed. Alena and Lana would have been. Hell, Savage, the sacrifices you made saved us over and over. None of us had choices. We lived in hell and we got out alive. None of us are ever going to be what the world calls normal. We live with what they did to us, and the women who love us have to live with it as well. That’s what we ask of them.”
“How are we supposed to do that?”
“It’s called free will, Savage. It’s her choice. You shouldn’t make that choice for her. If you think she cares at all for you, you have to lay it out for her, not walk away from her. If you don’t at least give her the chance to say no, she’ll never know why you walked away in the first place. She’ll always think she was never good enough for you.”
Savage swore under his breath. Absinthe had no idea what he was talking about. He didn’t know the extent of what Savage would be asking of Seychelle. Once he trained her to need pain, to crave it, she wouldn’t magically get over it if something happened to him. She would always be that way, with or without him to take care of her.
“You have to give her back something of equal value to what she gives you,” Absinthe added quietly. Before Savage could protest, he held up his hand. “I’m not saying you have to think it’s equal. Only she has to think that. You have to find something that matters to her. And you have to give her back everything she’s giving you.”
There wasn’t anything here for him. Nothing was ever going to change for him. He was always going to be a monster, craving things others found abhorrent—others knew were wrong. Absinthe could talk about laying that shit out to a woman one fell in love with, asking her to join him in a life of pure hell, knowing what he was asking of her, what he was going to do to her . . .
Shit. What was he going to do? Give her up? Never see her again? She was already so deep inside him. She’d crawled right in and wrapped herself around his heart. He didn’t know how or why. It made no sense to him, when he barely knew her. Except she was honest and direct and she saw him. Saw inside of him and didn’t flinch away. She might be scared, but no matter what he said or did, those blue eyes of hers would meet his when he called her name.
Savage knew nothing was going to change who he was, and no one, not even the smartest man on the planet, was going to make it happen, not even if they both willed it. “Not sure I want to thank you, Absinthe, but you gave me your best advice. I’d better get back to Sea Haven. That woman can get into trouble in a heartbeat. Tell Scarlet I had to get back to building the porches, since I initiated it.”
He couldn’t stay there. Abruptly, he spun around and stalked out, lifting his chin at Scarlet as she came toward him in the hall. She’d most likely taken her time making the coffee, giving him time to be alone with her husband. She was intuitive when it came to the Torpedo Ink brethren, and she respected the members of the club. Savage held Scarlet in high regard. She was an asset to the club as well as being perfect for Absinthe. He was happy for his brother, that Absinthe had found the right woman for his wife, but comparing Absinthe’s fetish to his monstrous cravings was simply ludicrous.
He took the ride not to Sea Haven to work on Doris’s porch but to Caspar and the house he’d bought the moment he’d laid eyes on Seychelle. He’d found it a couple of years earlier. It had been everything he could want, but the price was steep, and what the hell was he going to do with a house? He knew eventually he was going to have to take that last ride in order to keep his brother or Czar from having to put a bullet in his head.