Wolf Tales 12 (11 page)

Reassuring her that all her worries were for naught. Reminding her they were in this for the long run. The three of them plus whatever babies they were lucky enough to have, together. Forever.

And at that moment, one of the girls kicked, or maybe it was an elbow. Whatever. It landed squarely on her bladder.

Moment ended . . . but what a perfect moment it had been.

Grumbling to herself, Daci ran the guys out of the bathroom so she could pee. Still feeling like a beached whale, she eased herself down on the pot, but she couldn’t stop grinning.

They weren’t just saying they loved her, that they loved the way she looked. She could tell by the heartfelt emotion in their eyes, the gentleness in their touch, that both her guys really meant what they said. She knew they loved her, and wasn’t Ric always saying that with love, anything was possible? Maybe she was worried about nothing. Maybe the changes coming to their family would be good for all of them.

What was she so worried about? They were a pack—they were family. She wished they were closer to more of their kind, but since they weren’t, then she, Daciana Lupei Rodgers-March was doing her part by adding two brand-new members.

All she needed to do was get through the next couple of months.

October couldn’t come soon enough.

They’d shifted once the sun dropped below the mountains, and now it was just the two of them, trotting along a narrow path with Millie in the lead. Ric had no idea where she was leading him. This was something that had been building over the past few weeks, and as much as he’d wanted to pry, he knew that Millie needed to work through whatever it was at her own speed.

She was such a loving woman. A strong, loving, goodhearted woman who had suffered too much, lost too much, and been forced to endure too many horrors. Whatever she needed, he would do his best to fulfill. All he hoped was to make her future brighter than her past had been.

He knew more than Millie wanted him to know, but Ric made a point of never referring to her past—not unless she brought it up. He was well aware she just wanted it to go away, even though he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

All he could do was be there for her.

The first time he’d shared her memories, Ric had felt physically ill. Seeing what this lovely woman had been through sickened him. She’d been raised by her uncle, a pedophile who excused his perversions under the guise of his religious fanaticism. He was a terrible example of a man with Chanku genes and the accompanying libido, who had never known of his true heritage—though Ric wondered if even knowing who and what he was would have helped.

He’d been a sick and twisted man who used his innocent niece for his own perverted pleasure. He’d raised her with equally twisted religious beliefs that defied everything the Good Book taught. Millie’d gotten pregnant—not by him, thank the Goddess, but by a young cowboy who, Millie didn’t learn until years later, had been killed shortly after they met.

When her twins were born, Millie had no one in her life except for her uncle, who told her the babies died at birth. She had no idea her babies had actually survived—they’d been taken away, separated, and sold in black-market adoptions.

For all Millie knew at the time, she’d been abandoned by her lover, and after hours of labor she’d been left with nothing but a broken heart. She’d wanted her babies more than anything, but she’d gone back alone to a home where she was hated and mistreated and eventually disowned.

There’d been so much sadness in her life. Ric was glad he’d been the one who helped Millie reconnect with her children, now grown. Both Chanku, Adam and Manda were now in loving relationships with healthy, well-adjusted children of their own.

Yet Millie still carried the guilt, both from her sexual abuse and the twisted quasi-religious teachings that had been drilled into her from such a young age. She’d suffered years of pain she’d never truly escaped. Somehow, he would help her through this. Now that he knew their lives were practically immortal, he wasn’t about to allow her to live forever with the unearned guilt of a tormented childhood.

This was probably the biggest mistake she’d ever made. Ric was going to be so disgusted by her. He’d never be able to look her in the eye after tonight, but she had to try. Somehow Millie knew she had to explain what was going on in her head, why she could barely look at her reflection in the mirror anymore.

It wasn’t fair to Ric, making life-altering decisions without explaining why she knew she had to escape the shadows of her past. She’d never be whole if she didn’t leave the place where it had all happened. She’d miss the wild wolves and she’d really miss Daci and the boys, but she had a feeling they were growing restless, too.

Daci had mentioned how isolated she often felt, especially now that she was pregnant. She needed other women around her to share this time—young women with a lot better experience at pregnancy than Millie—but all she had, other than the guys, were Millie and Ric, two folks old enough to be her parents. Millie often felt that Daci really wanted to be back in Montana, closer to their friends. Maybe this would give her the freedom to choose.

Ric trotted along behind her. His steady, loving presence was the only reason she’d come this far. She would find the strength to tell him.

She had to.

They reached the foundation of her uncle’s old home long before Millie was ready. The house was gone, burned to the ground in a fire years ago, but the foundation remained.

Concrete piers, burned timbers, a few pieces of twisted metal and old pipe cast bizarre shadows in the soft glow of the new moon. A porcelain bathtub, stained and filthy with one side caved in, reflected silver light.

Millie paused in a dark swath of shadow beneath a big cedar and shifted. Ric shifted and stood beside her. Quietly he wrapped his arm around her waist as he studied the refuse scattered about—all that was left of the home where she’d spent the first years of her life.

She couldn’t look at Ric, but at least she managed to get the words out, even though she felt compelled to whisper for fear of disturbing ghosts she hoped were long gone. “Did you know I come back here sometimes, all by myself? Just to reassure myself it’s really gone. That he’s really gone.”

Ric remained silent, but his presence, the warmth of that strong arm around her body, gave Millie the courage to go on. “I’ve told you what it was like with my uncle. How he enjoyed punishing me, spanking me on my bare butt well into my teens.”

Her skin went hot and cold all over, merely from saying the words out loud. She stepped away from Ric. He didn’t try to hold her, but she heard his soft footsteps as he followed close behind. Walking carefully on bare feet through the thick grass, Millie paused at what was left of the front steps.

“What I haven’t told you . . .” She took a shuddering breath. “What I haven’t wanted you to know is how much I grew to anticipate the punishment. How I looked forward to his spankings. To the way he touched me.”

She turned and gazed solemnly at Ric, blinking back tears. “I hated him, but I think I hated myself more. I knew what he did was wrong. I tried to deny it, but when I was old enough to understand, I was well aware he took sexual gratification from punishing me, from the things he did to me. What I haven’t had the courage to tell you was how much I enjoyed it.” She coughed and cleared her throat. “I didn’t want you to know I was as bad as he was.”

“Not true, m’love. There’s nothing bad about you. Nothing at all.”

Ric’s arms slipped around her waist and he rested his chin on her head. She felt the steady beat of his heart and wished she could feel as calm. “But there is, Ric. When I knew I was going to get a spanking, I had my clothes off so fast it wasn’t even funny. I learned to tease him with my body. I’d rub my breasts against his arm and make it look like an accident. I’d position myself on his lap so that I trapped his erection between my thighs.”

“Was he naked when he beat you?”

Ric’s soft question was so matter-of-fact, Millie didn’t even hesitate to answer. “No. Not entirely, though at some point he’d unzip his pants and free himself. He was always erect when he beat me.” She swallowed back the gorge rising in her throat. “I learned to rub him against me so that I’d climax during the spanking. He would, too. Then he would curse and call me a slut, and beat me harder, because obviously that was evil, and it was my fault. I would come again, just from the pain alone. He made me like it, Ric. I didn’t fight the pleasure, and it was wrong.”

“What he did was wrong, sweetheart. Your reaction was perfectly normal.” He took her face in his big, callused hands and forced her to look at him. “It’s called survival. Don’t you know by now . . . that’s the way pedophiles work. They groom their victims. They twist everything around so that you feel as if you owe them your compliance. He turned his punishment of your childhood infractions into an excuse to molest you, but I bet he also made certain to touch you enough that you felt physical pleasure even when you were little. And think about this—he raised you from the time you were a toddler. He taught you. There was no one telling you it was wrong. His sick reality was all you knew.”

Once again he wrapped his arms around her and held her close. Protected by his strength, Millie opened herself to the memories she’d tried so hard to deny. They rushed into her mind, dark and viscous, covering her with filth. He had touched her, even when she was tiny. He’d taught her to touch him as well. How could she have forgotten? He’d rewarded her with attention when she did as he ordered.

Sick and perverted, but it was still attention. Without a mother, without anyone else, she had craved attention.

You’re a slut, Millicent. Just like your mother.

But I didn’t know what he meant. It sounded bad, but I had no idea what a slut was.

Touch me, Millicent. Use your mouth, too, you little slut. This is what sluts and whores do. This is what they’re good for. It’s all you’ll ever be good for.

Ric’s deep voice drowned the sound of her ghosts. “It’s okay, m’love. It’s over. It all happened a long time ago, but he’s dead and he can’t touch you anymore. That brave little girl won. She was stronger and smarter and she won.”

Millie didn’t know how or when she ended up sitting in Ric’s lap on the dirty top step, but somehow she was no longer standing. He held her close, hugging her as she cried, telling her it was over, she was fine, her past was behind her.

But he was wrong and she wasn’t sure how to tell him.

It wasn’t over and she wasn’t fine. Not by a long shot.

Chapter 8

They trotted slowly back to the cabin. The moon had disappeared behind the mountains and the night was still and dark. Millie followed Ric along the familiar trail, but instead of feeling empowered by her confession, she was hot and edgy and more confused than ever. She’d confessed everything—the dark desires she’d felt as a kid, the fact her celibacy for so many years was as much a lack of opportunity as it was self-inflicted punishment. Saying the words out loud had felt strange, as if someone else confessed to all the disgusting things, but she’d said them.

And Ric had listened. Nonjudgmental and loving, he’d listened intently to everything she’d said. Listened and not said a word. In fact, he’d not reacted at all.

She’d expected to feel . . . different. Admitting she still fantasized about her own abuse seemed even more perverse than her uncle’s behavior, but somehow, she figured once she opened up to Ric and put voice to her disgusting thoughts, the way she still remembered and replayed the arousal she’d experienced when her uncle beat her, that she’d somehow be free.

She wasn’t. She was twitchy and aroused and uncomfortably empty inside, like a container that needed to be filled before it caved in on itself and imploded. Ric still hadn’t said a word. She’d tried linking, but he was miles away, his mind locked down tight, his thoughts a complete mystery.

Did he hate her? Was he as disgusted by Millie as she was by herself? Had she ruined everything by her selfish—and it was selfish—confession? She hadn’t shared those awful things for Ric’s benefit. No, it was entirely for herself. To make Millie West feel better.

So why the hell didn’t she?

They reached the cabin. She glanced toward the small one where the kids lived, but the windows were dark, and even with her Chanku hearing she couldn’t pick up any sound. Maybe they’d run tonight as well. She envied them their contentment, the love they had for one another—love that was free of the shadows she’d always known.

That’s not true, you know.

Ric’s soft admonishment brought her up short.
What do you mean?

Daci’s the illegitimate daughter of the man who made your daughter’s life a living hell, a witness to much of Manda’s mistreatment. She has to live with that legacy of hate and cruelty. Matt grew up in a totally dysfunctional home and ended up prostituting himself merely to survive. Deacon’s mother was a prostitute. He’s been on the streets since he was fourteen, and his experience was even worse than Matt’s. All of us, in one way or another, are damaged. No better, no worse than anyone else.

She jerked her head back as if he’d slapped her. Her entire body flushed with mortification. She wanted to crawl in a hole and hide. Dear Goddess, of course he was right. She was bitching and moaning and complaining about something that wasn’t any more horrible than what others had gone through—and survived. It was over and done. So why couldn’t she get past it?

You can, and you will. I’m going to help you, but you’ll have to trust me.

Ric didn’t wait for her. He reached the deck, shifted, and walked inside the cabin. Millie followed him, head down, still embarrassed but curious, too.
How?

He stopped and turned, and his expression was deadly serious. “Millie, you know I love you. I love you more than anyone or anything, but I’ve handled you with kid gloves from the time I first met you. I’ve treated you as damaged goods. My mistake. That ends here. Now. Tonight.”