Adrenaline helped kick Bianca into high gear. She returned to packing her bag with clothes while Grayson ran upstairs to inform his parents of their imminent departure.

Moments later, he was back, stuffing his own belongings into a bag. He raced to the bathroom to grab toiletries, and she ran right into him as they switched places so she could do the same.

They didn’t have much to pack and were headed upstairs in less than fifteen minutes.

Both of Grayson’s parents were in the kitchen, his mother busy rushing around putting sandwiches together. She lifted her gaze when Bianca entered the room. “Sweet girl, I’m so sorry you two need to leave like this. I hope you’ll come back soon.” She stopped working to cup Bianca’s face. “You’re a dear, dear woman. I hope you know you’re welcome in our home any time.”

Bianca leaned closer to give the woman a tight hug, unable to form words. The past few weeks had been the most relaxing weeks of her life. The first time she’d ever taken to relax and recuperate and heal her body and her soul.

Jane Maston was the closest woman to a mother she’d ever had, and although Bianca was a twenty-seven-year-old woman, she had enjoyed having a strong mother figure in her life.

“Thank you so much for everything,” Bianca said as she stepped out of Jane’s arms to find Charles holding his open next to his wife.

Even crazier than hugging Grayson’s mother was hugging his father, a man. A soft bear of a man who’d never struck a woman in his life. Tears came to Bianca’s eyes as he hugged her close.

Grayson was nervous. It was obvious by the way he moved around quickly, his brow furrowed. He retrieved the car from the barn and rushed them out the back door within minutes. After he had Bianca settled in the car, he turned to speak to his parents. His dad looked serious. His mother nodded over and over. Grayson hugged them both tightly before releasing them and stepping toward the car.

Bianca felt guilty about leaving them like this. They were unprotected. If her uncle came here looking for her, would he take off when he found out she wasn’t there? Or would he come unhinged and take it out on these innocent people?

She said nothing when Grayson climbed in the car and took off. After waving at his parents, she kept her gaze on the passenger window, watching the darkness fly by while she tried to keep from freaking out about their situation.

There would be no sense arguing further with Grayson. He’d proven he would no sooner let her leave on her own than he would cut off his arm.

It was difficult to process having someone in her life who was willing and able to stand up for her. It was even harder to embrace. But she was trying, and that was all she could do.

Grayson drove for several minutes before he reached over and took her hand, squeezing it and giving a slight tug to get her to lean his direction. She was practically flattened to the door.

She sighed as she gave him her attention.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said.

She shuddered and then stared at their connected hands on her thigh. It had been a long time since she allowed herself to think about her uncle. She never even permitted the memory of his face to enter her consciousness. Now, it was filtering in from every angle, bombarding her with nervousness.

Flashes of his anger kept surfacing. Visions of his face, red with ire, his eyes narrowed, his lips pursed as he would yank her by the arm and drag her across a room to the chair he liked to sit on while he spanked her. Images of his bare hand swatting her bottom when she was little were almost worse than the memory of him hitting her with his belt and then later his whip.

There was something more invasive about having his bare hand on her naked thighs and her panties when her dress rose up above them. Humiliation made her stiffen after years of chasing it to the recesses of her mind.

“Bianca… Honey…”

She squeezed her eyes shut, gripping Grayson’s fingers too tightly.

The car came to a stop, and Bianca jerked her gaze up to find them on the side of the road, Grayson leaning toward her. He took her face in his hands. She hadn’t realized she’d been crying until the moment when his thumb brushed away a row of tears.

“Sorry,” she murmured.

“Oh, honey, don’t be sorry. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. I’m going to get us someplace safe. I promise.”

He couldn’t promise that. No one could. She lifted her hands and swiped away the tears, taking a deep breath. “I let my mind wander. I never do that.”

“Understandable.”

She took a deep breath and held his gaze. “I’m ready to tell you everything.” Where the strength came from, she didn’t know, but it no longer seemed reasonable to carry the heavy burden of her childhood alone when Grayson so obviously was willing to shoulder some of the load.

He reached for her neck and pulled her closer to kiss her lips. “Let me get us someplace safer than the side of the road, okay?”

“Yes.” She blew out a breath and found herself relaxing against the seat. The decision to open up to him alone was enough to give her some relief. A small weight lifted.

Grayson took a random exit and secured them a room in an off-the-radar motel. “Let’s stay here for the night. Tomorrow we’ll put more miles behind us.”

She agreed and helped him carry their meager belongings into the small room. At the snick of the door shutting behind them, she swallowed. She was exhausted, and she knew Grayson was too. But she needed to talk. She wouldn’t be able to rest until she unburdened herself of her childhood.

Grayson had been a ball of nerves during the entire drive. He wasn’t sure how to read Bianca’s mood, but it seemed she’d turned some sort of corner for better or for worse.

She stood in the center of the motel room rubbing her hands together. He doubted she’d even seen the room. She was so far in her head. She was also shaking.

Needing to hold her, he dropped their bags on the floor and grabbed her hand to lure her toward the bed. He propped the pillows against the headboard, and sat, back to the wall. “Come here, honey.” He gave her hand a tug, and she came to him, climbing onto the mattress. He needed her closer, so he settled her on his lap.

For long minutes, he simply stroked her hair, wondering if she would talk or if she might fall asleep.

Finally, she took a deep breath and let it out on a long exhale. Her next words surprised him. “My mother was young when she got pregnant with me. I have no idea who my father was. I’m not sure if she did or not. She never told me.”

He stroked her back, not saying a word.

“She had no place else to go, so she went to her brother’s. He took her in and gave her a room. Maybe he was pissed and hadn’t wanted to. Or maybe we provided him an outlet for his anger. I don’t know. But he was strict, and there was no way to please him. I don’t know if he was always like that. Maybe my grandfather was also abusive. I have no idea.

“He thought women belonged in their place. My mother fell under his thumb and did whatever he asked of her, probably because she had no choice. She had no practical skills with which to get a job. She had no education beyond high school. And she had no self-esteem.”

Grayson stroked his fingers through Bianca’s silky hair as she spoke. He didn’t interrupt. Her gaze was fixed on a random spot across the room. But she was talking to him. Finally.

“I think my mother was so relieved to have a place to live, food, shelter, clothes, that she swallowed the fact that her brother was abusive. I don’t know when it began with her, probably before I was born. All I know is that he often turned his anger on me, and it escalated as I got older. I can’t remember a time when he didn’t hit me for some perceived transgression.”

Grayson pursed his lips to keep from making a sound. Who beat on a small child?

“I couldn’t please him no matter what I did. He thought kids should already be obedient from a very young age, so he spanked me nearly every day. He wanted me potty trained, so he spanked me when I had an accident. He didn’t think I should cry, so he spanked me if I even whimpered.

“It became routine. I was a shy kid. I didn’t have friends when I went to school. I didn’t want anyone to know about my home life. Hell, I was probably eight or nine before I realized other people’s fathers didn’t spank them.”

Grayson held his breath, his heart aching for the little girl who had no friends and no one to turn to.

“I learned quickly that nothing I did would alter his behavior. I lived in a sort of spiral. He would beat me as though it were somehow cathartic. And then he would stomp from the room. The next day he would wake up with a different personality, overly doting, making sure I had my lunch or money to buy hot lunch. He sometimes even told me he was so sorry he’d lost his temper.

“I held my breath during those calmer days, waiting for him to swing the other way again. I kept a tally on the corner of the wall next to my pallet to mark the days before it started over again.”

Grayson got stuck on the strange word she’d used—pallet, but again, he didn’t interrupt.

“I knew I needed to toe the line, do as I was told, and work my ass off to get out of that house as soon as I could. So, I buried myself in books. The librarian provided me with a world of books I could escape in. She knew how I loved science, but she always stuck a fictional story in my stack.

“I credit her with my life. She gave me an escape and an education that was far superior to anything I learned in my seven hours at school. By the time I went to high school, I knew I was way ahead of the other kids, but I did my work anyway, kept my head down, and impressed the hell out of my teachers.”

Grayson smiled. That part he could imagine.

Bianca sighed, a few moments of hesitation filling the space before she continued in a softer voice. “I remember the day he switched from spanking me to using a belt. I was seven. I spilled my milk at the dinner table. My uncle shoved his chair back so fast, I knew I was in serious trouble.

“He was livid, ranting about how clumsy I was and how much trouble I caused him after everything he did for me. That I was wasteful and ungrateful and inconsiderate.

“He yanked me out of my chair by the arm, tugged his belt through the loops, took me over his knee, and struck me so many times I lost count. I screamed, but that only made him hit me harder. When he was done, I rushed to the bathroom to be alone. I was bruised and bleeding from several cuts.”

“Where was your mom?” Grayson asked softly, hoping she wouldn’t be jerked out of her story if he asked a few questions.

Bianca laughed, but it wasn’t a good laugh. It was bone chilling. “She was there. She often tried to intervene. She would beg him to take his anger out on her instead. Sometimes he would laugh and agree to punish her in my place. Other times, he simply backhanded her to keep her out of the way. She would cry and plead and beg, but she never took me away from that house.”

Grayson gasped internally, but he wasn’t breathing, so his reaction stayed inside.

“I cleaned myself up as best I could that night and went to sleep on my stomach because it hurt too badly to lie on my back. I sobbed quietly for a while and then went into my mind and started what would become a daily pep talk to get me through the next ten years of my life.”

“Did you have your own room?”

Bianca shook her head. “No. I had a pallet on the floor in the corner of my mother’s room. I slept in the bed with my mother when I was little, but when I was about six, my uncle forbade me from doing so anymore, and I switched to a mat on the floor. I slept there until I moved out.

“I never slept on a mattress again until I got to West Point. It felt so soft that it took me over a month to adjust. I even considered sleeping on the floor in my dorm room, but I didn’t want to cause my roommate to question my weird behavior, so I gradually grew accustomed to the mattress.”

Jesus. “Was that the only time he hit you with a belt?” Grayson knew the answer already, but he needed her to continue the story. Get it all out. Now. So there were no more lingering secrets.

That dry sardonic laugh filled the room again, bringing chills to his arms. “Not even close. No matter what I did, Jorge found a reason to beat me. He gradually got bolder until he switched from his belt to a whip. The kind you would use on a horse. He did, however, get more precise as I got older, carefully ensuring he didn’t strike me anywhere that would be visible, and choosing holidays and weekends for more serious beatings when I wouldn’t be at school where anyone might see my welts.”

Grayson winced. Unimaginable. He swallowed back the bile that rose in his throat.

“His hand and the belt were tolerable compared to the whip. He kept it in the corner of the living room, always visible. I learned young that I didn’t need to do anything specific to warrant a beating, so instead I made myself scarce as often as possible. I spent as many hours at school as I could, joining the track team in high school and staying late to work in the library until the last bus left.”

“And no one ever found out? No one suspected? You never told a teacher?”

She shook her head. “Like I said, he was careful when I got older. He often threatened to throw me and my mother out if we breathed a word about our family business. I needed to finish high school. I had goals. I had dreams. And they got bigger and bigger when some of my teachers started helping me by making suggestions about my future. I owe my admission to West Point to my high school counselor. Without her, I wouldn’t have had anything that huge on my radar.

“And,” she blew out a breath, “although my mother was not emotionally available to me at any point during my childhood, she gave me one silent gift. She must have known I was applying to colleges because one day I came home and she had signed all the forms and left them in a pile under my covers. Not a single word.

“I cried for over an hour that day. I cried for the mother who didn’t have the strength to save either of us. I cried for the little girl who had to grow up too young. I cried for the woman I knew I would never become.

“I made a decision right then and there. Although I would never trust a man to get close to me in my entire life, I would become the best damn scientist alive. I would work my ass off to prove to anyone paying attention that I was not the worthless scum my uncle claimed.”

She shrugged. “Maybe I partly did it because I wanted to thumb my nose at him from afar. But I also just loved science that much. In any case, after I left that house and boarded a bus to New York, I never looked back, and no one made any attempt to contact me.

“I suspect my mother never said a word, which would mean Jorge had no idea where I had gone. He probably thought I had run away, and that was my hope. As much as he obviously hated me, I assume at the time he was glad to be rid of me. A part of me knew he would have simply turned his wrath on my mother, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I had to save myself.”

“Did you ever seek medical care?”

She shook her head this time. “No, and Jorge had a pattern I learned. He would always strike me ten times. He counted. Each blow would be harder than the last. So, quite often it was the last strike that tore the skin and left a welt. I did my best to wash them and put ointment on them, but they left scars. So many scars, Gray.” She gripped his T-shirt with both hands, fisting the material.

He ran a hand up and down her arm, praying to God she would take this last step so they could start to move forward together. “Show me, honey.”

She tipped her forehead against his chest and held him tight, tears running down her face to wet his shirt. Her fist was tight against him.

He held her close, his hands running up and down her back. He didn’t pressure her again. The ball was in her court. If she was ready, she would show him. If not, he would wait for another day. Either way, he would be by her side.

She spoke against his chest. “I’m nervous. I’m worried I’ll never be able to fully relax in front of you or anyone for that matter. I’ll always be worried about what you see.”

He leaned closer and kissed the top of her head. “There’s nothing to be nervous about. I don’t care about marks on your body. What if the roles were reversed and you found out I had some deformity from an accident or something that you hadn’t seen? Would you walk away?”

She tipped her face back and met his gaze. “Of course not.”

“Well, this is no different. I don’t give a single shit about your scars except to feel rage toward the man who put them there.”

“But I don’t want you to feel rage or pity or sadness or anything at all. I just want you to go on picturing me perfectly whole in your mind. I don’t want the image replaced with the truth.”

“Honey, being whole is a mental state, not a physical one. You couldn’t be any less whole if you lost both arms and both legs. It’s your mind I’ve fallen for. Now, I’m not going to deny that emotions will rise to the surface the first time you let me behind your walls. It will be unavoidable. But they will stem from the fact that I care about you. A lot. Enough that it hurts my heart to know someone struck you and dared to mark your body.”

Seconds ticked by while she stared at him. There was a storm in her eyes. Fear.

Finally, when he thought there was little chance of her revealing herself to him, she pushed away from his chest, wiped her eyes, and met his gaze. She held it for long seconds, and then she crawled off his lap, turned her back to him, and drew her shirt over her head.

Grayson didn’t move a muscle. He held his breath as he let his gaze wander up and down her back. Dozens of stripes marred her otherwise perfect skin. Most of them weren’t raised but rather red lines that would never fully fade.

She sat with her back to him stiffly, wearing nothing but a white bra, her T-shirt balled in her fists.

After a minute, she started to move away, but Grayson reached for her waist and pulled her closer. He lowered her to her stomach on the bed, gently setting her head against the pillow. She kept her face turned away from him to the other side.

Grayson set a palm on her lower back and smoothed it up her skin. She was a beautiful woman with so much energy and life. He hated that some asshole had used her as a whipping post. He hated that she’d been so emotionally and physically abused from such a young age.

But he also knew he was falling in love with her. With the woman who was so strong she overcame her childhood singlehandedly. The woman who was a brilliant scientist. The woman who was so dedicated to her research that she’d spent the last few weeks studying every chance she got to catch up with the decade she lost. The woman who smiled at him and called him Gray. The one who’s breath hitched when he kissed her. The one who couldn’t keep her desire for him at bay.

He didn’t care about the scars on her back that extended under the waistband of her jeans and probably ran in crisscrosses over her butt and down her thighs.

He hated that the marks left her so emotionally scarred that she’d never shown a living soul. But he loved that she’d finally let him in. He knew how much guts it took. And he would cherish this trust for a lifetime.

After trailing his fingers up and down her back, he leaned in and planted a kiss on one of the small welts against her shoulder blade. When she didn’t flinch, he nibbled a path up and down her back, kissing every mark, every welt, every red angry line of skin.

When she sighed, relaxing into the mattress, he tugged his shirt over his head, eased his body to her side, and pressed his chest against her back. The skin-on-skin contact felt wonderful. The warmth. He slid his hand down her arm until he reached her fist, and then he wrapped his larger palm around her tiny hand and squeezed.

Her breathing evened out as he held her. She didn’t try to move away or cover herself. When he decided he was probably squishing her too much, he hauled her to her side, keeping her back pressed to his front, clasping her hand in his between her breasts.

He held her like that for a long time, his lips on her neck, still kissing her.

“Thank you,” she finally whispered when he thought she might have been asleep.

He couldn’t be sure what she was thanking him for specifically, but it didn’t matter. “Any time, honey. Relax. You’re okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

He had no idea if his words would ever be true.