Free Escaped Artist (Untamed #3) by Victoria Green, Jinsey Reese Page B

on.
    “It was at a party my parents threw for his father—who was running for governor at the time. I’d gone down into the wine cellar to find a special bottle my father wanted…and Jack followed me.”
    Reagan…beautiful, beautiful Reagan.
    Memories of that night flittered into my mind. The lights going off in the cellar, sending me tumbling into darkness. The smell of the sweat on his skin mixing with the alcohol on his breath. The scent overwhelmed me in the damp, dark basement when Jack had come up behind me and whispered in my ear.
    Shh, shhhh. I’m here. No need to cry. I’m going to give you what you’ve been asking for all night.
    I heard the fucking grin on his face even as my skin crawled and my heart froze at the threat in his voice. Then his iron grip was suddenly around my arms, his erection already pressing into my back.
    I’ve seen you watching me, Reagan. At school and tonight. I know you want me. I know you want this.
    And then…
    “How old were you?” Dare’s voice was tight, tortured.
    I looked down at my hands, unable to stand the agony etched on his face. “Fifteen. He was a senior.”
    Dare groaned as if he were in pain, and shot up out of his chair, sending it flying backward. I could feel the anger radiating out of him as he stormed over to the window, and I half expected him to smash the glass panes. Instead he yelled “FUUUUUUCK!” at the top of his lungs, his chest heaving.
    Then he turned and, before I knew it, was across the room, kneeling at my feet, his hands clutching mine, his eyes misty and brimming with so many raw emotions I couldn’t even identify them all.
    “I would kill him if I could,” he said. “Hell, I will kill the bastard if I ever get the chance. I’m so sorry, Ree. For everything that happened. For everything he did. I’m so fucking sorry.”
    Tears rolled down my face and I reached forward to touch his cheek. He leaned into my hand and kissed my palm, his expression so dark and devastated I could physically feel his agony.
    “Why are you sorry?”
    “Because you didn’t deserve it,” he said. “You didn’t deserve what that piece of shit did.”
    I lost it at those words, letting the tears spill out of me. Dare wrapped his arms around my waist and I hugged his head to my chest, sobbing out my relief at his acceptance along with all the years of hurt I’d been holding in.
    When I’d told my parents about the attack, their first reaction had been disbelief, telling me I was being overly dramatic and making things up, fabricating a lie much worse than what had actually happened. They’d said I couldn’t go around making up stories about the future governor’s son just for attention.
    But then when the evidence of what he’d done grew to be undeniable…they’d said it was my own fault. My skirt had been too short, my shirt too tight. I’d flirted with him too openly, smiled too much, given him the wrong idea. I’d let him do it, I obviously hadn’t said no and afterwards I must have panicked and regretted it.
    I was a slut. A whore. A disappointment to my family. A stain on the McKinley name.
    My shame was complete.
    And in a single sentence, Dare had blown that all away.
    I never imagined I would have someone in my life who would love me no matter what. Someone who would see the good in me even when I couldn’t. Someone who would choose to believe me even when the truth was a horror.
    I’d never known what I was missing until Dare.

twelve

    I stared out of the small window in Ree’s room, feeling like I was suffocating. I had never harbored this much hatred toward someone in my life.
    Pure, raw hatred.
    Any guy who’d force himself on a woman wasn’t a real man. He wasn’t even a fucking human being.
    Rage built up like a tight fireball in my chest, spreading into every crevice of my body and mind. I tried my damnedest to rein it in, if only to not wake Ree.
    We’d come back to her room, curled up on her bed, and I’d held her until