Francine was at it again. She had him bailed up in the kitchen, he could feel the heat of the stove at his back and the press of the oven door handle in his spine. He knew it was his fault, he’d knocked over the glass of juice in his excitement to get to the meal. His mother didn’t cook very often and the roast beef had smelt so good his stomach had rumbled loudly. Francine had been different lately, like she was actually trying to be a mother and the instances of rages and hitting had slowed, but then he had to go and ruin it all by knocking over his glass. She’d flown into a rage, violent and hot. The plates on the table had been shoved to the floor, the roast he had been so eager to taste hit the linoleum and rolled under the table. She’d grabbed him and hauled him across the small wooden table where they ate their meals and had thrown him against the upright stove, the same one which she had him pressed up against now.

“Francine.”

It was his father’s voice, the voice he hadn’t heard in so very long. His father worked on a long haul fishing boat and he spent months away from home. He’d been back only a couple of days and Francine had been on her best behaviour. Until now.

“Shut the fuck up, Jamie,” she roared, “The little shit messed everything up, just like he always does.”

“It was just juice,” his father said, stepping closer, his hand outstretched.

She whirled around, snatching at the carving knife that was on the counter and holding it up in his face.

“You’re never here,” she screamed, “You don’t know the shit I have to put up with from him.”

“Come on, Francie, he’s just a kid. Kids mess up sometimes, you need to give him a break.”

His father spoke in low, soothing tones, like you would to a wild dog.

“Give him a break?” she screamed as she plunged the knife into the man’s chest, “And who’s going to give me a break?” The knife arced up again and then another plunge into the chest of the man who had fathered him. Mason watched in horror as his father’s eyes met his, filled with sorrow and apology for leaving him behind with this crazy woman. He fell, the man who was his father who had always seemed so big and tough and able to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“NO!” the scream was wrenched from Mason’s throat as he watched the light dim in his father’s eyes as red bloomed across his chest. So much blood.

Mason reached for his mother, grasping her twig-like arms, trying desperately to hold her back from inflicting anymore pain on the man he loved. She turned on him then, the blood drenched knife lifted high over her head, madness in her eyes. Mason scrabbled with her, getting his hands around her throat and trying to push her away, squeezing as he did.

Abby’s eyes flew open as the constriction on her throat increased. Mason was above her, his eyes open but unseeing, and his hands were around her throat. She panicked, began hitting him, trying to wake him up, but he was lost in his nightmare. Her heart pounded as she felt his fingers bite into her neck. Fingers that had given her so much pleasure, fingers that had combed soothingly through her hair and caressed her so lovingly now causing pain and fear.

She reached up and cupped his face, her own hands trembling as she tried to do something, anything to bring him back to himself. He jolted with the contact, like he’d been burned, and he squeezed her throat.

“RED!” she cried out, her voice scratchy and hoarse, “RED! RED! RED!”

The pressure immediately lifted from her throat, although Mason was still straddling her body. He blinked his eyes, and she kept as still as she could, not wanting to spook him. She saw the moment his eyes focused in on her and widened in horror. He reared up and off her, off the bed, his hands going to his hair and his eyes squeezing shut. She lay there, waiting, waiting for him to calm. She didn’t want to make any sudden moves. He crouched in the corner, banging his head against the wall and she could see his body tremble.

She didn’t think about her next moves, she just reacted. She was off the bed and crouched next to him before she could stop and think rationally. She wrapped her arms around him fiercely and dragged him against her body, overbalancing and landing on her arse, but she didn’t let go of him. She held his head against her breast and felt his sobs wrack through him. She didn’t speak, she didn’t caress him, although she longed to do so, she just held him and waited it out, knowing that he needed her but not knowing just what to do.

His body heaved a few more times as he dragged in deep breaths and then he was moving. In one motion he stood and scooped her up in his arms, carrying her across to the bed. He sat on the bed, holding her in his lap as he shuffled up to lean against the headboard. His fingers dug into her flesh, but she relished it, knowing he wasn’t going to hurt her, but that he needed the feel of her in his arms to ground him.

“I’m so sorry, Abby,” he mumbled into her hair, “I’m so fucking sorry that I did that to you.”

He kissed her crown, her forehead, tilting her head so he could cover her face with little kisses.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Shh,” she said, kissing him on the lips, “It’s okay, I’m okay, it was a dream, it’s okay.”

His arms tightened around her and he began to rock her, soothing them both with the gentle movement. She’d been scared when she woke up, but when she’d been able to think clearly and called out her safe word, he’d ceased immediately, just like she knew he would. Whatever he’d been dreaming about had been obviously horrific and as much as she wanted to probe and find out just what was going on in his head, she knew he had to tell her in his own time.

Mason battled with the panic that was still bubbling in his veins. He could have seriously injured her, he could have killed her, if she hadn’t managed to wake him. The dream had felt so real, like he was back there, experiencing it all over again and once again he had been unable to save his father. Francine had killed him, right there in front of him and there was nothing he could do to stop her.

The comforting weight of Abby on his lap grounded him, helping him to fight off the dream that clung to him like cobwebs. He knew he needed to explain his past, but how do you tell the woman you loved that you’d watched your mother kill your father and had done nothing? How did you explain that a knocked over glass of juice caused a tragedy so big that you still hadn’t recovered from it so many years later?

At the beginning.

“My earliest memories of my mother are of her verbally abusing my father. She’d scream at him and I would hide until my father would eventually come to find me and tuck me into bed. He worked away and wasn’t always home, but when he was, she would lay into him. At first it was just the yelling and then she started hitting him. My father was a big man and my mother was small, and he would stand there and let her beat on him until she collapsed in tears and then he would scoop her up and hold her close while she cried.” Abby had gone still in his lap, listening to his voice with every cell in her. “I remember my grandmother would come and stay with us when he was away and my mother, Francine, would be almost rational and sane as long as my grandmother was around. She died when I was six and then things changed. My father still had to go away for work, he was fisherman, but now when he was gone, Francine would drink and when she drank she would get nasty. It started with the verbal abuse, the yelling and cussing at me because I could never do anything right and everything I did angered her and then she started hitting. Just a slap here and there and then it was a strap or a switch. She still liked to slap, usually across my face, which is why I have problems with people touching me. Her touch always brought pain. When my father was home, her abuse was focussed on him, but when he was away I copped the full brunt of it.”

He felt her fingers trace the scars on his chest as she lay snuggled against him and for once her touch didn’t cause him to panic. He closed his eyes and let the feel of her fingers on him soak into his damaged soul.

“She did this?” Abby asked softly.

He nodded and swallowed.

“She did all of this?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“Oh, Mason.” She kissed his chest then, one of his scars and he forced down the lump in his throat to continue.

“When I was nine, she put me in hospital. I’d decided that I would no longer cry when she hit me, I would prove to her that I could take it just like my dad did. When she took me to the hospital, she blamed my injuries on a skateboard accident. I’ve never owned a skateboard in my life.” He took a deep breath to continue. “She got away with it, they didn’t question her further and then she found ways to hurt me without the marks showing. I never took off my shirt when I was around people, not even to go swimming. She told people I had a skin condition and couldn’t be in the sun without a shirt on. Again, no one questioned her.

“When I was twelve, she changed. I remember that for a couple of weeks, she seemed to really be trying to not drink and when she didn’t drink, she wasn’t violent, or not so violent anyway. I was taller than her by then and I thought that maybe, just maybe, things were going to be different. My father was due home and she had spent days cleaning the house and shopping. The day he arrived home, she spent the day cooking, making all his favourite dishes and I thought that from then on everything was going to be better.”

Abby tilted her head up to him and kissed the underside of his jaw. He felt her wet tears on his neck as she nestled into the crook of his shoulder and he took a deep breath to tell her the next part.

“That night the table was set and the food was all laid out and I was so happy. My dad was home and my mum was normal and it felt like Christmas. Then I knocked over a glass of juice and everything changed.”

He could feel his pulse ratchet up as he relived it again, the dream and the reality. “She flew into a rage, all the food she had cooked, all the plates, everything ended up smashed on the floor. She dragged me across the table and slammed me into the still hot stove and held me there, berating me. My father tried to intervene and she turned on him, stabbing him with a carving knife. She stabbed him twice before I could do anything and then she turned on me.” He held out his arm and fingered the long scar that shone silver in the ambient light. “This is from the knife that night.” Her hand coasted over it like she could erase it from his skin and he closed his eyes, wishing she could. “He died on the kitchen floor amidst the smashed crockery and destroyed food. The police came and she pleaded self defence saying it was my father who had beaten her, that he was the one who flew into a rage, that he had threatened me and she’d picked up the knife to protect us both. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t dispute what she said. I knew if I did, she would make my life hell. She managed to spin a whole story about the abuse that I had suffered at my father’s hands and that I was so traumatised by it that I would defend him if given half the chance. They believed her, barely even questioning me and then they left me with her.

“I finally got away when I went to university. I cut all ties with her and only found out that she’d died when the police came to me to identify her body. She wrapped her car around a tree when she was drunk, killing herself instantly. It was the last day that I ever cried, with relief that time.”

“Mason,” Abby said, her voice soft and broken, “I can’t even imagine what you went through. I can’t even imagine what it was like for you.”

She sat up and shifted so that she straddled him, taking his face between her hands, her palms rasping on his whiskers. He looked into her eyes and saw the love there and the pain that she felt for him and the desire to make it all better and he kissed her, pouring all his pent up emotions into the kiss. Her hands skated over his skin, the first time she had touched him, and instead of making him freeze, it freed him and his heart filled with love for this woman who could heal him with her lips and her hands and the way she loved him.

He gripped her hips as she rocked against him, her nails scraping across his nipples as she explored his body and he exhaled harshly, needing her more than he’d needed anything before, even breath. Her hands squeezed his biceps and roamed up over his shoulders, tracing the indentations of his muscles and the lines of his tattoo and the scars. Nothing was off-limits to her as she showed him that his past was behind him and that she was his future.

He groaned as his cock found her hot, wet entrance and she slid down over him, taking him inside her. His hands moved up over her ribs, faint red marks still visible on her skin from his ropes, and cupped her breasts, tweaking her nipples. She bit down on his neck over his pulse point as she rode him, her rhythm hard and fast. He let her have control, he let her heal him with her body and closed his eyes, leaning his head back as the woman of his dreams gave him pleasure. He’d never given a woman this much control over him, not since his mother had kept him so utterly powerless, but he wasn’t panicked, in fact he could feel his climax building, the base of his spine tingling as his balls drew up tight to his body. One of his fingers found her clit and pressed against it, causing her rhythm to falter as her breath hitched and then she was coming apart in his arms, her core rippling around him as he let go and came inside her. She sagged against him and he wrapped his arms around her, keeping her close while he was still buried inside her. She was his heart.

Mine.