Pursued Read online

  “Hey, baby.” He reached down to cup her cheek but she ducked away from his touch.

  “Don’t.”

  “Why not?” Merrick’s heart ached. “Are you afraid of me again? Because of what you remembered?”

  “Not just remembered—re-lived.” She sat up shivering and put her arms around herself. “That was awful—much worse than what the AllFather did. With him, I only had to watch my past up on a giant IMAX kind of screen. With this…” She shook her head and looked down at the floor.

  “Elise…baby…” Merrick reached for her again, tentatively.

  “No.” She moved away from him. “You don’t understand. I felt it all over again, Merrick. Everything he did to me. Everything he made me do to him. Oh God, I wish I was dead.”

  “Don’t say that!” Merrick took her by the shoulders and shook her—not hard but enough to get her attention. “Don’t ever say that, Elise!”

  “Why not?” she demanded, pulling away from his hands. “It’s true! This is why I kept you at a distance, Merrick. Because I was so afraid anything we did might bring it all back. And I knew…” Her voice hitched in a sob. “Knew if I ever remembered it, I’d never be able to suppress it again.”

  “Some things you can’t suppress forever,” Merrick said, trying to make his voice gentle. “Some things you eventually have to deal with, baby.”

  “I never wanted to deal with it.” Elise swiped at her eyes. “You know James thinks I’m a virgin? That’s why he’s been willing to keep his hands off me until we get married.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth.”

  “If he really loved you, he wouldn’t care about that,” Merrick growled. “Just like I don’t care.”

  “How can you not care?” She looked up at him, her eyes wet with tears. “It wasn’t just that once, you know, Merrick. It…it went on all weekend long. And after too.” She looked down again. “After awhile, I lost count of how many times he…he raped me. I just wanted it to be over so I could bury Buck and try to forget.”

  Fury surged inside him, almost as strongly as the agony he felt coming through their bond. “Was there no one you could tell?” he demanded hoarsely. “No one who could help you?”

  Elise shrugged. “I tried, after…after it was over. My mother didn’t believe me, so I went to the police. But my stepfather told them I was just upset with him for ‘accidentally’ running over my dog and wanted to get him in trouble.” She swiped at her eyes. “I’m pretty sure he paid them off, too. That’s the way he operates—he thinks he can buy anything he wants.”

  “Including the right to take an underage female who was under his protection against her will.” Merrick shook his head grimly. “There isn’t a painful enough death to pay for what he did to you.”

  She laughed brokenly. “It doesn’t matter—it’s over now. And at least now you can understand why I can’t…can’t be with you.”

  “What do you mean?” Merrick’s heart stopped a moment in fear. “I thought we agreed we wanted to be together, even after the bond is broken.”

  “I want to, but I can’t,” Elise whispered. “Try to understand, Merrick. I’m broken. Used.” She looked away from him and he saw her swipe at her eyes again as more tears fell. “The things he did to me can never be wiped away. I’m dirty inside. Stained…filthy…disgusting.”

  “No, you’re not! Not to me.” Merrick pulled her into his lap and held her despite her struggles.

  “Let me go!” She pushed against his chest and then broke down, sobbing. “How can you even want to touch me after what he did?”

  “I don’t give a fuck what he did,” he growled, still holding her. “The only thing I care about is you—keeping you with me. Spending the rest of my life with you.”

  “You say that now.” Elise pushed away from him and he finally yielded and let her crawl out of his lap. “You say that now,” she repeated. “But what about after the bond is dissolved? Then you’ll see me for what I really am—damaged goods.”

  Frustration welled up inside him. “Elise, Goddess damn it! How can I show you? How can I prove to you that I don’t care about the past? How can I—?” Suddenly, he knew. “Wait here,” he told her. “And don’t move an inch.”

  Then he ran out of the hut in search of Mother-Healer who had stepped out of the hut earlier, presumably to give them some privacy. The old woman had something he needed—needed desperately if he was ever going to prove to Elise that he loved her no matter what.

  * * * * *

  Elise sat on the leafy bed and stared down at her hands. The hut was lit only by a pale blue flame in a light fixture hanging overhead, which threw shadows everywhere.

  She shivered and it occurred to her that she was still naked, but someone—perhaps Mother-Healer—had left her robes by the side of the bed. Elise put them on and then sat back on the bed in the dim blue light.

  Her hands were cupped in her lap and the shadows filled them like cool, dark water. She tried to make her mind a blank, tried not to think about what had happened, about the memories that now crowded her head like corpses raised from the dead. But she knew they would always be with her. Her days of living on the surface of life were over—from now on she would have to wake up every morning, get through every day, and go to bed every night with the memory of what had happened to her haunting her like a ghost.

  It was almost more than she could bear.

  “Here. Here it is.”

  She looked up and saw Merrick holding the skrillix branch in one hand and a carved wooden cup filled with red liquid in the other. Immediately, she recoiled.

  “Get it away from me! I won’t go through it again—I won’t!”

  “No, no, baby,” Merrick soothed, sitting down beside her on the bed. He’d gotten his trousers back on though he was still bare-chested, and he looked very big in the dim light—like a shadow come to life. “You’ll never have to go through that again—I swear,” he said. “This time it’s for me.”

  Elise looked at him blankly. “I don’t understand.”

  “Remember on our flight here, the first time you let me touch you—really touch you—and I told you I’d tell you about my scars when you told me about yours?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Elise said cautiously.

  “Well, this is it,” Merrick said simply. “You did more than tell me—you showed me. And I want to show you, too.”

  Elise frowned. “I appreciate the offer, Merrick, but I’m not sure how that will help. I mean, just because we went digging through my horrible past doesn’t mean we have to go digging through yours too.”

  “Yes, we do,” he said. “I need to show you, baby. Although I warn you…you may feel differently about me when you see.”

  “You don’t have to show me,” Elise said gently. She put a hand on his knee. “Don’t do it, Merrick—you’ll be sorry. Believe me, I certainly am.”

  “I’m sorry too,” he said roughly. “I never should have let you go through that. I should have offered myself right from the start.”

  “No.” Elise shook her head firmly. “You’ve taken enough punishment for me already. Which is why you don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, I do,” Merrick growled. “I want you to know me the way I know you. I don’t want there to be any more secrets between us to keep us apart. This is the only way to do that.”

  Elise was touched. He really cares for me. Cares so much he’s willing to re-live the worst experience of his life just to prove it.

  “Goddess-damned right, I care,” Merrick growled.

  Elise frowned. Was their bond so deep that he could read her thoughts now? But she didn’t have much time to speculate. Merrick pricked his finger with one of the wicked-looking skrillix thorns and let a single drop of blood fall into the carved wooden cup. Then he put the skrillix branch carefully to one side and looked at her.

  “I’m going back, Elise. Back to when I got this.” He traced the jagged scar that bisected his eyebrow