Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
“No, what?” he asked, head tipped to the side as he watched me.
“Just… there’s a couch in your room,” I said, gaze on my feet, feeling so silly all of a sudden.
“You want me to sleep there?” he asked, wanting confirmation.
“It’s okay if you don’t want—“ I started, but he was already climbing off of the couch, gathering his blanket in front of him, then reaching for his pillow.
“Of course I’ll sleep there,” he said.
And it really was just that easy with him.
If I wanted it, he would give it.
And never seemed resentful of it, either.
Every day I spent with him just further proved that he was one of the good ones, one of the ones who could be trusted, who I could rely on.
And just knowing that seemed to shine a bit of light into all of the darkness inside of me.
Sure enough, with him on the couch in the room, I was asleep within minutes.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Riff
I woke up every fucking morning with my cock straining against my pants. It was so fucking chronic that I’d taken to sleeping on my side instead of my back, facing the couch cushions, so the issue wasn’t so clearly on display.
The last thing Vienna needed was to see that.
But there seemed to be no stopping it, no reasoning with it.
I hadn’t been so at the mercy of my body since I was a fucking teenager.
And the only thing I could conclude, much to my horror, given her trauma, was it was because of the woman I was currently sharing a room with.
For the first week and a half, she pretty much never left it, except to sneak across to the shower when no one else was around.
I brought her meals to the room, brought her packages up that she ordered, and did her laundry for her.
By the end of the second week, though, she was no longer stiffening when she heard the sound of one of the other men’s voices as they passed in the hall or boomed from down below. It was like she’d accepted that they weren’t going to hurt her. Since, if they wanted to, she was right there in the room all the time.
It was the first day of the third week when she finally came down into the common area, meeting the other guys one by one, though she clung really closely to me still.
By the middle of that week, she was coming down for meals, flanked on either side by me and one of the women, who just seemed to know she needed them there.
And by the end, she’d left the clubhouse for the first time since coming to Shady Valley.
With me in the driver’s seat, and Morgaine riding shotgun.
Because, apparently, Morgaine had ‘worked with’ a shrink once, a woman who knew Morgaine’s business and even sent her clients on occasion. I guess when you were in that profession, sitting and listening to the horrors women had endured at the hands of men, at some point, you wanted revenge for them too.
But Morgaine had been able to talk Vienna into going for therapy a few times a week with this particular doctor because of their history, because Vienna didn’t have to worry about the situation of her abuse, about the cops maybe getting involved in any way.
“Are you going in?” I asked when we got to the office building at the end of Shady Valley.
“I’m just going to be in the waiting room,” Morgaine told me. Then, lower, so only I heard, “She might need me after.”
With that, the women went into the building, and I sat in the car, stomach acid steadily working at burning a hole in my intestines as I worried about Vienna up there, reliving all of that shit that had happened to her.
Some part of me wanted to protect her from it. Even if I knew that therapy, that purging it all out, was likely the only way she could ever start to heal from it.
So I sat and waited.
As one hour turned to two.
Then almost three before the door finally opened, and the two women came out.
It was cold now in Shady Valley. Well, as cold as we got, anyway, as we were steadily into December now. So Vienna had two sweaters on under her bison coat, a scarf, a hat, and mittens on. But, somehow, she seemed even more fragile than ever as Morgaine almost seemed to pull her toward the car, then shuffle her inside.
I glanced in the rearview, finding Vienna’s gaze downcast, but her whole face was red from tears, and my heart ached in my chest at the sight.
Morgaine gave me a little nod as she climbed in, reaching for the heat, and cranking it up.
No one said anything on the ride back to the clubhouse.
But as soon as the car stopped, Vienna hopped out and rushed inside.