“I just know it was impossible to trust most of the other children, and we could never let them see what we were doing. Even though we were just little kids, our skills with using homemade weapons grew over time, and we perfected our psychic talents. We spent a lot of time beat-up, cold and miserable, so we practiced a lot.”
He had opened the door in his mind, and those memories were playing in his head. The fists hitting him. A male dragging him by his hair into a room with two other men and two little girls, both with blond curls like him. That had been the first time he’d experienced pleasure, a mouth on his cock while he was instructed in using the whip. The pleasure had been a bright fire streaking through his body, lashes of fiery flames like the red droplets falling to the floor. Nothing had ever felt so good. He hadn’t known it could.
The man behind him, helping him wield the whip, had whispered to him how good it was when one could use a whip, how arousing it was. Did he see how good it felt? He was praised. Petted. The girl sucking his cock was forced to take him deeper while the whip cracked and someone else’s tears flowed, and that bright, hot flame inside began to burn because he’d experienced pleasure instead of pain for the very first time.
Savage admitted it to her. “I was nine or ten, I can’t recall what age I was. After that, they would get me daily and take me to a room with girls. Sometimes I was raped and whipped, used by two of the most brutal men, other times I was taught to whip females while girls sucked my cock, giving me so much pleasure I could barely stand it. Always, they praised me and whispered to me how great it was to be aroused like that. How good it felt, and it did feel good. So much better than hurting.”
He could barely look at her. “I wanted those times. I looked forward to them. I willingly and even eagerly learned those lessons.” He rubbed his pounding temples. “I never once considered that they were making me like them, that I would end up a sexual sadist, craving the things I was taught as a child. I only wanted the brutal rapes to stop. I wanted the pleasure, not the pain.”
“Savage.” Seychelle’s voice was gentle. Compassionate. “Any ten-year-old would prefer pleasure over pain.”
“I looked forward to those sessions, Seychelle. It was the only time I wasn’t getting hurt. I should have been looking at the kids I was hurting. But somehow, it was me against them. They were the ones ratting us out to Sorbacov, so somehow that justified in my mind what was happening to them. I don’t know why I didn’t go to Czar or Reaper. Why I didn’t tell them how mixed up I was. I couldn’t sleep. I was barely eating. Sorbacov was still giving me to his friends. There were beatings. Rapes. The lessons. I was getting good at learning how to assassinate the enemy. Top of the class at all things ugly.”
He risked a look at Seychelle when he told her that particular truth. He would have to confess more about that later, things she really wouldn’t want to hear and wouldn’t be so sympathetic about. Her lashes were wet, her hands folded in her lap, knuckles white. She held her fingers so tightly together, but she didn’t react.
“They brought in other boys and started teaching them the same way, only I was one of the ones they wanted to fuck up. They wanted to use me for the whipping boy. They wanted to fuck me and have me go down on the boy while he whipped the girls. No way in hell was that happening. I took that whip away and I beat the holy shit out of the kid with it. He was about four years older than me, and I laid out an intricate pattern on him, so the adults thought it was funny and cool. They praised me over and over, celebrating, treating me like I was one of them, someone special.”
Savage detested telling her. Detested remembering what that felt like. That high. That euphoria. That rush. Even for one moment wanting to be like those animals. Not understanding the difference. He should have known, even at that age. He should have known. He shook his head, his body reacting, rubbing his arms to settle the blood moving through his veins far too fast. His breath came in a harsh rush, and he deliberately slowed it. He was the master of calm. Of pain. Of control. He had to be.
“I was rewarded by absolute inclusion. I chose the girls to be trained, and I got to train them for the others. I decided who would be whipped, while they were pleasuring me or one of the other men. If the boys were there, I showed off my patterns while the men played with them. There were times when Sorbacov would suddenly show up with a few of his friends and they would drag me up to the room and tear the skin off of me while his friends used me brutally.”
He fell silent. Remembering. There was no way to forget, as much as he would have liked to. He had the scars on his body. The brands burned into his flesh. Front and back. No escaping. It was there for the world to see.
“You know they were grooming you, Savage. That’s classic grooming. A horrific way to do it, but still, treating you like one of them, giving you pleasure and then ripping it away from you, hurting you as much as possible without explanation so you wanted that pleasure. Dangling it just out of reach so you’d do anything to get it back.”
He nodded. He knew that now. At nine and ten and eleven he’d had no idea. Only that he’d rather feel pleasure than pain. Now he knew what grooming was. He knew how it worked. It didn’t make him feel any less guilty for having participated.
“They knew what they were doing, except they underestimated me. They should have known when I pulled the whip out of that boy’s hand when he was so much older. They didn’t even consider that.” He paced across the floor. Back and forth. Memories spilling over, crowding far too close. “I had Czar and Reaper, and they were keeping us human. We weren’t, you know. We were just surviving, trying to stay alive in the worst possible circumstances. Alena and Lana were just babies. At least I thought of them that way. They were ours to protect. We couldn’t, of course, but we all tried. This one day was so bad. So bad.”
He shook his head, rubbed his arms as if he could remove the blood from where they’d taken his skin. “They nearly killed Reaper. Broke Czar’s arm, a couple of ribs, they beat him so bad. The girls were a mess. Really bad shape. All of us were. I don’t think I had any skin left. Reaper and I couldn’t get down to the dungeon. We couldn’t walk. We were crawling. The girls …” He broke off, shaking his head. “Alena. So little. Lana. What the fuck is wrong with people, Seychelle?”
“Come here, honey,” she whispered. She had moved to the wide couch, and she sat the way she did in her bed, her back to the arm so he could lie facedown, his head in her lap, arms around her hips, his body beside her.
He didn’t hesitate to unbutton her jeans and give himself the comfort of her bare skin. He needed it. She didn’t stop him. She never did. Seychelle always seemed to know when he needed her strength. He breathed in her scent, that faint fragrance of wild strawberries and honey that somehow always transferred to his tongue. Her fingers right away were on his scalp, massaging, taking away the demons that were in his head, allowing him to breathe when his lungs had been raw and burning.
Her belly was wet, all that silky skin. He hadn’t known his face was wet—but she had. She’d seen. She simply had moved to the couch and used her soft voice to beckon him, like the angel she was. She never made a big deal out of anything. His woman. He rubbed the scruffy bristles along his jaw over her belly and took her in with another deep breath.