Time to Heal Read online

  “He didn’t stop.” Skahr’s voice was flat.

  She shook her head. “Not until he was…finished.” Her stomach clenched and she squeezed herself tighter. “By then my screams had drawn the rest of the party to us and he said…Jack said…” She fought for a moment to get the words out. “He said I had tempted him—that I had offered myself and he was simply taking me up on that offer. He acted like I wanted what he did to me!”

  Her jaw was trembling now and something hot and wet was stinging her eyes.

  “I didn’t want it,” she gasped and the words came out in a sob. “I never wanted it! I didn’t even know what he was doing to me! Until it was too late…too late…”

  She crumpled in on herself, rolling into a ball on her side, her eyes shut tight as the tears came. She cried as she had that day in the park, cried for the pain and shame and fear and for the way her life had changed forever afterwards.

  Behind her, she heard Skahr shifting indecisively.

  “Emmeline,” he murmured. “Delora…” One big hand rested tentatively on Emmeline’s heaving shoulder and she surprised herself by pressing close to it rather than jerking away. The aftermath of rape—of any attack—was a lonely business, she thought. The feeling of being violated, of being vulnerable to the world with no one to understand what you were going through was the loneliest feeling in the world.

  Everyone had pulled away from her afterwards. None of her friends were ever allowed to visit her again—not that they wanted to. Even her lady’s maid—who was Emmeline’s age and very like a friend—had been taken away and she had been confined to her room with no one to talk to, no one to confide her fears to. No one to hold her as she cried.

  Now the big Kindred behind her seemed to offer the comfort she had been lacking for so long. And Emmeline found she didn’t have the strength to refuse it.

  Turning towards him, she buried her face in his broad, bare chest and gave into the tears completely.

  “I never wanted it,” she sobbed, the grief wracking her—wringing her out like washing through a mangle. “No matter what he said, I never wanted it!”

  “Of course you didn’t.” Skahr’s voice was a low, gentle rumble and he rubbed a big, warm hand up and down her spine soothingly. “Of course you didn’t, delora.”

  Then he simply let her cry, stroking her shaking shoulders and holding her against him as she wept and wept as though her heart was breaking all over again. It was a long time before he spoke again—not until she had almost cried herself out did he comment on what she had told him.

  “He was a male without honor. The lowest of the low. His life should be forfeit for what he did.”

  “Oh, it was.” Emmeline swiped at her eyes and looked up at him. “Richard called him out and shot him for me. He…he was the only one who listened to me. Who cared about me after I was ruined,” she added, sniffing.

  “Do not call yourself that.” Skahr’s voice was a low growl. “You are not ruined—bruised and battered perhaps, but not broken beyond repair. What was done to you should not determine your status in any way.”

  “But it does—in my world, anyway.” Emmeline sniffed and shook her head. “I will never be welcome in polite society again. Although I would have been—if I had married Torrington as he wished me to. As my parents wished me to.”

  “He had the gall to suggest a Joining after he attacked you?” Skahr’s tone was incredulous.

  She nodded. “It was why he attacked me in the first place. I had been resisting his suit for months. He knew—or thought he knew—if he had me, I would have no choice but to marry him.”

  “But you chose not to,” Skahr said.

  “That’s right.” Emmeline lifted her chin. “I refused to be married to my attacker, though my parents tried to force me to marry him. They might have succeeded but I asked Richard to call him out for me and so he did. He shot Torrington dead and that was the end of that.” She sighed deeply. “Of course, shortly after that it became clear Jamie was on the way. And that was when my mother threw me out of Hastings Hall and I had to make my own way in the world.”

  “Your own mother forced you out?” The look on his usually stoic face was one of pity and incredulity. “After you had been attacked and were expecting a child?”

  “She threw me out because I had been attacked and a baby was on the way,” Emmeline corrected him. “She said I had already done enough to stain the family’s good name and she wished never to see me again.”

  He shook his head. “How could any mother do such a thing to her child? Among my people it would be considered a great shame.”

  Emmeline sighed. “Among my people, I was the one with shame. I still am, I guess. Though the people I live among now don’t care about such things.”

  “Mother Griffith and the other females who live in her house?” he asked curiously.

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Mother Griffith found me in the park after my mother threw me out. I was almost attacked again but that time I managed to fight the man off with a branch. She saw the way I whipped him and decided I would be a good fit for her flagellation bordello.”

  “You certainly have a good arm,” Skahr remarked thoughtfully. “Though my skin will not bear the marks of a beating, I felt it well enough.”

  “I don’t think I ever apologized for that sufficiently.” Emmeline felt a hot blush rise to her cheeks. “I am so sorry I mistook you for one of the Jonnies.”

  He shrugged, his broad shoulders rising with the movement.

  “It matters little. You didn’t hurt me. And I suppose it was a natural misunderstanding if you beat every man you see. Do you?” he asked, curiously.

  Emmeline sighed again and ran a hand through her tangled hair wishing for a brush.

  “Most of them. Some of them wish to be made to dress as women and forced to do domestic tasks. While others wish to grovel on the ground and kiss or lick my boots.” She made a face. “It just depends upon their preference.”

  Skahr looked confused.

  “I don’t understand. Why would they wish such things?”

  “I don’t know,” Emmeline said honestly. “Mother Griffith says she believes it is because some of them were punished excessively at school or at home as children and they miss it. Who knows why anyone wants to be beaten? Or why anyone wants to beat them?”

  “Do you like doing it? Beating them?” There was still no judgment in his voice—only curiosity.

  “I did at first,” Emmeline said honestly. “I was filled with so much rage—so much hurt at what had been done to me by Torrington that I wished to make the entire male sex pay for his sins.” She sighed. “But after having Jamie, I found I could not hate all males quite as much as I had. Though I still do not trust them…much,” she added, her eyes flicking up to his and then away again.

  Skahr seemed to take her meaning.

  “I do not blame you for your mistrust,” he rumbled. “And I understand your reluctance to sleep next to me now that I know you have a clouded past.”

  “A clouded past? Is that what you call it? Instead of ruined?”

  He nodded. “It reflects no judgment on the female who has been hurt but it does allow those who are around her to understand that she has undergone violence and has reason for wariness.”

  “So…there are women like me—women who have gone through what I went through—among your people?” Emmeline asked.

  He frowned. “Not many for such things do not happen often—at least in my Clan. Any male who attacks a female is immediately stripped of all weapons and clothes and cast out and all his possessions are forfeit to the female he attacked. A male wandering naked and Clanless will not survive for long unless some other Clan agrees to take him in. Which does not often happen, since no one wants an abusive male in their Clan.”

  “That’s amazing,” Emmeline breathed, frankly impressed. How was it that his frankly primitive society could be so much more progressive than her own civilized one?

  He shr