Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 89162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Torus shook his head.
“I still don’t understand why you were raised to ignore the needs of your own body.”
“Well, I didn’t ignore them in college,” she said dryly. “I had a roommate who was a free spirit—she encouraged me. Well, I guess I should say we encouraged each other—we went to a sex shop and bought our first ‘toys’ together. Vibrators, you know,” she added.
“Like the one I saw you using on yourself in the vid?” Torus asked.
She winced and he felt her deep embarrassment through the TET link.
“Yeah, like that.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” He squeezed her shoulder gently. “Please don’t be ashamed. You’re beautiful when you give yourself pleasure. Go on—tell me more, please.”
Molly sighed.
“Okay, so I didn’t care for drinking or smoking or drugs but I did find out I had a really high sex drive. I mean, I guess I always had but I’d been repressing it for years, you know?”
Torus nodded.
“So I got quite a collection of toys and I really enjoyed, uh, using them on myself,” she went on, her cheeks getting pink again. “But when I got together with Zach, he didn’t like it that I used them. He thought that he should be enough for me—no toys needed.”
Torus gave a snort of derision.
“What? When he refused to even taste you?”
She shrugged.
“Yeah—well he did…other things.”
“What things?” Torus asked softly. He wanted desperately for her to come clean with him—to admit how her ex-Mate had abused her. It seemed to him that if she could acknowledge the abuse, she could begin to heal from it.
But Molly only shook her head.
“Never mind. The point is, he wanted me to throw my toys away. But I hid them instead. Even after we got married—which only happened because I had a pregnancy scare—I kept using them.” She laughed bitterly. “Of course, that’s how he got me on tape. I never knew that he was recording everything and watching me do…what I did to myself.”
“Don’t make it sound dirty,” Torus said, frowning. “You were giving yourself pleasure. And why shouldn’t you? It doesn’t sound like your ex-Mate gave you any!”
“He didn’t.” She shook her head. “But I had never been with anyone else. I lost my virginity to him, you know? It, uh, wasn’t very nice, but I thought that was just because it was my first time.”
Torus caught a glimpse of her memories then—he saw her crying in pain as that bastard of an ex-Mate forced himself inside her.
“Just loosen up, babe!” he was panting as he shoved harder, despite Molly’s tearful protests. “It’ll feel really good if you just fucking loosen up! God, what’s wrong with you anyway? Why are you so fucking tight? Stop whining—it doesn’t hurt that much!”
Torus’s hands curled into fists and he felt the Rage start to rise in him. Gods, he should have broken the worthless male’s neck rather than just his arm and leg!
How could Zach hurt such a soft little female? He had been given a gift—Molly’s first sexual experience had been laid in his hands like a precious flower and he had crushed it with callous disregard, only interested in his own pleasure.
The Kindred didn’t set a great store of importance on a female’s virginity, but they did believe that if the Goddess granted that gift to a warrior—the gift of a female’s first time and her sexual innocence—it was incredibly important to make certain it was a pleasurable experience for her. The fact that Zach Wyndham had used and abused Molly and ruined her first time made Torus so angry he was literally seeing red!
But he knew that Rage wasn’t what his Mate needed right now—she needed compassion and someone who would listen to her. Taking a deep breath, he forced the furious anger down and away.
“He hurt you, didn’t he?” he asked in a low voice.
Looking down, Molly nodded.
“Well, yes. But part of me thought…thought that maybe I deserved to be hurt. Because we were ‘having sex out of wedlock’ that’s what they called it when I was growing up,” she added. She looked up at him. “That’s why I don’t feel bad about you and I doing…er, what we’ve been doing. Because even though we’re going to go our separate ways after this is all over, we’re technically married—at least for now.”
“Go our separate ways?” Torus repeated, frowning.
“Well, yeah. I mean, we’ve already established that Bonding is impossible for us…” She trailed off and he felt a deep sadness in her—a regret that she wasn’t able to take his shaft into her body, to give him what she thought he needed.
“Hey, little bird.” Reaching down, he tilted her chin up with one finger and looked into her lovely hazel eyes. “You don’t have to feel that way. You’re what I want—what I need.”
“But we can’t Bond,” she protested. “I’ve heard so much about how important a Soul Bond is from my friend, Lana and from all the other girls who have Kindred husbands. They say that there’s nothing like it.”