Free Wolf (The Henchmen MC #3) by Jessica Gadziala

half-covering my body with his. My hands went to his shoulders, digging in, holding on as his tongue pressed forward and moved into my mouth, toying with mine. My hands grabbed him, pulling him closer until he planted his arms on either side of my body and came fully over me. My fingers slid into his hair, holding him to me as his teeth nipped gently into my lower lip.
    There was no tentativeness in him. He kissed me like worship, like prayer, like benediction. He kissed me like it was the only thing standing between him and absolution, like together we could wash away our sins and start anew in the Elysian Fields.
    And I found myself wanting to believe in the promise he was offering me. But as his hand moved, sliding softly down the side of my breast, an image popped into my mind: unwanted, of a hand there, aggressive, violent, taking things I hadn't offered.
    My entire body went ramrod straight; my hands dropped from his shoulders.
    Feeling the change, his lips pulled from mine, his body weight shifted upward. "Look at me," he demanded as I kept my eyes clamped shut hard, trying to push the images away and failing. "Janie," he demanded again, his voice like velvet-coated steel- soft but firm. My eyes drifted open to find his watching me, taking in every nuance, seeking answers and finding them. He nodded slightly, rolling off onto his side and pulling me onto mine so we were facing each other. His hand rested gently at my hip, safe, undemanding, taking nothing and offering an anchor. "It's okay," he answered, somehow reading my struggle to try to explain.
    "No," I clarified in a small voice. "It's not."
    "Not what happened," he said, his fingers squeezing my hip for a second. "Stopping."
    On a choked whimper that gave too much away of what I was feeling, my forehead slammed into his chest. His arm went up my back and remained there, sifting through my hair as I tried to pull myself together.
    He was, at once, both right and wrong. It should always be okay to stop, to want to slow things down, to need things to go at my own pace. That was my right and no one should make me feel guilty for that. But he was wrong too. Because he didn't understand. He didn't know what it was like to not want to stop, but to need to. He didn't know how it felt to feel ripped in two with desire and fear. He couldn't comprehend the struggle to overcome an invasion and move forward from it, to fear hands that wanted to give pleasure because there once had been hands that had caused pain.
    "Janie," his breath made my hair flutter slightly. "Don't," he demanded.
    "Don't what?" I heard myself croak, the tears stinging at the back of my eyes, begging to be released once and for all.
    "Go there," he clarified. "Don't go there."
    "How can I not go there? I live there," I told his chest, my voice both strong and weak at once. "It's everywhere. It's in everything. It won't go away. It won't let me..."
    "You wear it."
    "How can I not? It's etched into my skin. I can't scrub if off. I've tried. I've tried everything." My breath hitched, making me bite hard into my lip to keep any other sounds from coming out.
    He silently pushed me backward and reached between us, taking the wrist of my un-burned arm and stroking up my skin, no doubt feeling the raised lines underneath the tattoos, touching the scars. "Covered them."
    "Didn't work either," I admitted, keeping my eyes down, not trusting myself to make eye contact when I was so close to tears.
    "No," he agreed. "But made it into something beautiful." My head snapped up then, looking for an excuse in his face to not believe him, to deny deny deny. But I found nothing there. "Beautiful," he repeated and it sent a shiver across my skin, soaking in like a healing salve.
    "Wolf..."
    "Don't regret me," he said, a vulnerability in his tone that I had never heard before, that I wasn't sure I believed he was capable of until that moment.
    It was my turn. To comfort, to soothe. It wasn't a role I was familiar with, it