Chapter Seventeen

Kelly

Somehow, they found their way to the couch. They lay there in each other’s arms, tangled and sweaty, their breaths racing at almost an identical pace. Gradually, Kelly’s heartrate slowed and she looked up at Blake, reaching up to smooth the hair back from his handsome face.

“I didn’t lie,” she said softly. “I’m a companion. Some people call it being an escort, but that comes so close to sex that I prefer some other term. All I do is meet with guys and talk and drink. Sometimes dance. But we don’t have sex, Blake. I swear, I’m not a prostitute.”

She choked up abruptly and sat up. Blake sat up beside her. “Whoa. Hey.”

“No.” She nudged his comforting arm away. “You need to hear everything. I didn’t deliberately hide it before. Not exactly, anyway. I just … we were so good. I kept thinking I would tell you eventually. And then Nolan preempted me.”

Getting up, Kelly grabbed a light robe and wandered down to the kitchen, with Blake following. She put on a kettle of water and held up a random bag of tea from a cabinet. “It’s warm, and I’m freezing. Want some?”

Instead of answering, he walked over and turned off the stove, then lifted her onto the counter, opened her robe, and pulled her into his big, warm body.

She felt immediately how aroused he was by their contact and her own arousal hit hard once more, but for just a moment all she wanted was to be exactly like this, her chest against his big bicep, his chin tucked into her hair.

“My mom was a prostitute,” Kelly began, feeling his large hands moving slowly up and down her back, leaning into their strength. “There’s no shame in it. Or, there shouldn’t be. My dad was a total deadbeat. Got her pregnant before she even got her high school diploma, so her family disowned her completely. I’ve never even met them.”

Blake gathered her closer, his arms far warmer than her robe. She reveled in the slight roughness of his palms as she unfolded her story.

“Mom didn’t have much in the way of a skillset, and there are limited professions here on the island. She tried to leave a few times, but this place was home, so she kept coming back.” Kelly sighed, turning her cheek into him, brushing her lips lightly over his sculpted chest. “She had me, and then she had even more bills to pay. So that was the work she turned to. She could have waitressed over whatever, but it doesn’t pay nearly as well.”

Wordlessly, Blake picked her up and carried her into the bathroom, as Kelly kept talking, he ran the water and settled into the tub with her in his arms, the water rising around them, hot and steamy, as she talked.

“For a while, I guess it was okay,” Kelly went on. “I didn’t understand, obviously, I was just a kid, but she made it work. She was with me during the day, and then at night she’d pay someone to watch me. She was always there when I went to bed and she was always there when I woke up.” She blinked away tears at the memory.

“Then, over time, I guess as I got older she needed more and more money and it was harder and harder to make it on her own.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Blake said, speaking for the first time since she’d begun. “I’m guessing you blame yourself, but it wasn’t, Kelly. A mom does what a mom has to. It’s instinctive. If I were a mom, I’m sure I’d have done whatever I needed to keep you safe. Plus, costs of life just go up on the year in general. It wasn’t you.”

While she didn’t entirely believe him, the words made her feel better, easing some of the ever-present guilt.

“So she started working for a pimp,” Kelly said, sinking lower into the water with Blake. “By then I was around eleven, so I was starting to get it. God, Blake. Eleven years, she sold herself to the highest bidder.”

He kissed the juncture of her neck, patiently waiting until Kelly gathered herself to continue.

“He got her more work, but the cut he took was hardly worth it, I’m guessing. He was around until I turned 17.” She shuddered at the memory. “Just this horrible, scrawny, meth-addicted louse. She kept him as far from me as she could, but by the age where I no longer needed babysitters, about 13, I had kind of figured some out. And I’d see him sometimes when she left the house, waiting by the car. I didn’t get the sex thing, but I knew he was making my mom do something.”

Blake picked up a sponge, soaped it, and began to move it over unhurriedly, not sexually, more reassuringly, giving Kelly something to take her mind off the painful memories.

“We had a lot of fights as I got older, when I realized,” she said softly. “I hated her for being different from other ‘normal’ moms. I was embarrassed and I was such a little shit. She was doing her level best to give me a good life and I threw it back in her face.”

“You were a kid. She got that,” Blake whispered in her ear, smoothing the sponge up and down her arms, then over her breasts. “Not your fault, baby.”

Her throat closed up and she fought past the lump to finish it. “One night he showed up at our house when she wasn’t home. I opened the door, not knowing it was him, and he shoved his way in and tried some shit on me.”

Blake stiffened beneath her, and not in a good way. His arms tightened around her waist wordlessly.

“He didn’t get what he wanted. Just a really good feel and an eyeful, before Mom showed up suddenly and tore into him. They went at each other so violently that I was afraid they’d kill each other in front of me,” Kelly said through clenched teeth at the memory. “But they didn’t. He staggered out, bleeding, and she stayed home for the next two weeks, black and blue all over. She swore she was going to quit, going to find something else to make money. I dropped out at that point and took a job at the hotel. She was so angry at me for doing that.”

Kelly shook her head and reached for Blake’s hands, moving them over her once more, trailing through the soapy lather he’d worked up, needing his touch badly. As he cupped her breast and slipped one hand between her legs, beginning to slowly touch her inside and out, Kelly closed her eyes.

“About three months after Mort—that was his name—tried to mess with me, Mom vanished. I came home from the hotel one day and she wasn’t there. She didn’t come back that night or the next or the next. They found her dead on the northwest side of the island. Raped. Stabbed. Shot. They butchered her, Blake. Like she was an animal. I couldn’t even recognize her face.” Her voice snapped in half and she trembled with the force of her grief.

“Let go, baby,” he said quietly, continuing to caress her. “I’ve got you. Lay it on me.”

So she did, working her way through her own personal storm while the one outside battered the house every which way. When she’d cried her way through the maelstrom, Blake turned her to face him and slowly, gently, made love to her, his body taking hers in a way that made her cry all over again with his tenderness.

Finally, he scooped her out of the tub, carried her to bed, and crawled in alongside her. In his arms, Kelly fell sound asleep and had no dreams or nightmares, for a change.