Her head was lying on his shoulder, her face turned in to the muscled wall of his chest. Somehow it was easier that way, as if she could neither see nor be seen.
“He had knocked me out,” she began. “When I came to I was naked, lying flat on my back on the floor, with my hands tied to some kind of pipe, maybe an old radiator. Gleen was naked, too, sitting astride my hips with the knife in his hand, smiling and waiting for me to wake up. Dusty was tied to a cot about five feet away, watching the whole thing. He was such a pretty little boy.” Her voice was soft and distant as she remembered. “Auburn curls all over his head, and big, round blue eyes. He was so scared. He cried the whole time.”
Dane looked down at his big hand lying on her belly, almost completely spanning her. The thought of Gleen seeing her like this, and using a knife on this slender, womanly soft body, was so obscene that he barely stifled the growl that began rumbling up from his chest. She seemed to have forgotten that she was all but naked now, her mind lost in the past, but Dane was very aware of it. Even in his rage, he looked at those soft, round breasts with their tender pink nipples, and felt the desire burning low in his belly. He controlled it, forcing it aside so he could hold her, and listen to her. Had anyone ever held her, given her comfort? He thought not, and that added to his anger.
“I don’t know why I did it,” she continued, her head lying trustingly in the hollow of his shoulder. “But something in me refused—I couldn’t give in to him. I would rather have died than give him what he wanted. He wanted me to beg, but I wouldn’t. He wanted me to be afraid, and I was, but I didn’t let him see it. I laughed at him. Oh God, I laughed. He cut me, and I yelled at him that he was a pitiful excuse for a man. He pulled my legs apart and tried to put it in me.” She hesitated uncomfortably. “You know—it, not the knife.”
“I know what ‘it’ is,” he growled.
She buried her face deeper into the curve of his neck. “He couldn’t, and I laughed at him. I made fun of him, I told him what a miserable little worm he had, and what a miserable little worm he was. He was wild with it, I could feel how out of control he was, all that hate and fury pouring out, but I just kept pushing. I could feel Dusty, too, so terrified, reaching out for me, begging me not to let the bad man hurt him again.
“So I kept laughing at Gleen, and kicking at him as much as I could. Somehow I managed to kick him between the legs, not really hard because my foot slipped off his thigh, but he … lost it. It was like he exploded, somehow. One second he was on me and the next he was on Dusty, and Dusty was screaming. I still hear him scream. I could feel him, the absolute terror, the agony. It was like a black wave, all over me, all through my brain, and I was screaming too. I screamed and screamed and screamed. Blood was everywhere …” She paused, and after an interminable silence that lasted only a few seconds, said simply, “I don’t remember anything else. Dusty died, and I died with him.”
Dane knew what had happened after that; the professor had told him. Her screams had pinpointed Gleen’s location to the sheriff and his men, and they had killed Gleen before he could turn his murderous fury on Marlie. But they hadn’t been in time to save Dusty, and in a way they hadn’t been in time for Marlie either. As linked to Dusty as she had been, his death had been her death, too, and it was a miracle she had survived the shock.
He smoothed her hair behind her ear, and stroked her cheek. “But you came back,” he said with controlled ferocity.
“Eventually. It was a long time before I felt anything, any kind of emotion. Before, I had felt everything, everyone else’s emotions, and after that I couldn’t even feel my own. I didn’t have any.”
“You healed, Marlie. It’s been a long time, but he didn’t win. He couldn’t break you.”
“He came damn close,” she said. She quietly rested against him for a minute. “If I hadn’t pushed him, if I’d given him what he wanted, probably Dusty would still be alive.”
Dane snorted. “Yeah, it’d be nice if we were all omnipotent.” He wasn’t going to waste his time babying the natural guilt she felt. He jostled her a little, forcing her to look up at him. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said deliberately.
She managed a fragile smile. “So am I. And sometimes that seems like the most callous thing of all, that I’m glad to be alive. I wasn’t thinking beyond the moment when I was laughing at Gleen; the only thing I knew was that I absolutely couldn’t bear for him to rape me. The thought of him being inside me was so revolting that I was willing to push him into killing me, rather than tolerate his touch. Of all the things that gave me nightmares, sex was the worst. I can watch some violence on television or in movies, but I still can’t watch a sex scene. I can’t think of it as love. I remember Gleen’s face, the smell of his breath, the way saliva sprayed when he screamed at me. I remember the feel of him against me, between my legs, and I still want to gag.” She took a deep breath. “Not that sex was ever good for me anyway,” she said honestly.
“How so?” His voice was undemanding, and his touch almost absent as he stroked her hair back from her temple, but his hazel eyes were intense.
She had never talked about the difficulty she’d had with sex, but somehow, lying cradled in his protective arms, with the rest of the world held at bay, she could. She felt oddly dreamy, caught in a combination of fatigue and the aftermath of stress, as if nothing else were quite real. “It was awful. Mentally, I couldn’t bear it. I had to work so hard to build a shield, to protect myself from everything,” she explained. “It was the only way I could function, and the shield was at best only a partial protection. All my life I wanted to be normal. I wanted to love someone, I wanted a relationship, I wanted what normal people had. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted intimacy to be wonderful, but it wasn’t. Being intimate, physically, just blew away my mental shields. I couldn’t block out anything. The mental interference was enormous; all I could feel was his emotions, blotting out any physical enjoyment I might have felt. It wasn’t very flattering, either.” Her mouth quirked. “He wasn’t overcome by fondness for me; all he wanted was sex. And he was feeling proud of himself for daring to have sex with a weirdo psychic.”