Knight In Black Leather by Gail Dayton (ebook reader ink .txt) 📕

She reached for him and he stumbled back, horror in every line of his face and body. Her tears spilling over, Marilyn wrapped her arms around herself, wishing she knew how to get through to him.

"You knew?" he whispered. "Before--? When we--the first time?"

"The first time we made love?" She swiped the back of her hand across her cheek, rubbing away tears. "Yes, I knew. I had a pretty damn good idea, anyway. Eli, you were a child. What happened wasn't your fault."

"You knew," he said again, "and you still--you made love to me even though you knew what I did?" He slumped against the wall as if his legs could no longer hold him.

"Eli--" Again she cupped his face in her hands, leaning forward to kiss him, needing his kiss.

He caught her wrists and pushed her away. "I wasn't forced, Marilyn. At first, yeah, but not later on. Hell, I fucking volunteered. I'm not the victim you make me out to be."

"What would have happened if you didn't?"

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"If you didn't volunteer. If you didn't go with those men."

"It wasn't always men. Sometimes, once or twice, it was a woman."

"What happened?" She couldn't let him get away from her point. "What would have happened?"

"Shit." He pushed himself off the wall and released her wrists, slipping past her to pace the room. He ran his hands through his hair, making it stick out all directions. "You don't understand. I wasn't--"

"What would have happened if you didn't do what Fat Fred wanted? Is that when he burned you? Is that how you got eighteen fucking cigarette burns?"

Eli jerked his head around to stare at her. "No," he said finally. "The burns were--" He shrugged. "You never knew when he'd do that. It kept you scared, on your toes, afraid to cross him. And if you did cross him, didn't keep the dates he made or didn't bring in enough cash..."

He rubbed one hand slowly over his other arm, gone away inside himself again. Marilyn shivered, a graveyard chill stalking her veins as she watched him remember old pain. Finally he spoke. "Let's just say it would be a couple days before you could move again."

"And you think you weren't forced?" she whispered through the chokehold horror had on her throat. "When you knew if you didn't--?"

"I volunteered. I talked the other kids into giving me their dates."

"Why? Because you liked it?" She didn't believe that. Couldn't.

"No, I--" He fell silent again, still rubbing his arm. His left arm, not the one just out of the cast. "Some of the clients could get rough. I was used to it. So, I'd take those dates sometimes for the new kids, if they were too scared."

Tears streamed down her face, unstoppable. "My God, Eli, how can you possibly think--" She had to stop, wipe her eyes so she could see, clear her throat so she could talk. "Even then, you were a hero. You protected the others the only way you could. Where is the bad in that?"

"I..." He faltered, shaking his head. "...don't know. God, Marilyn--don't cry. Just don't--" His hands lifted, hovered, as if he wanted to offer comfort but didn't dare.

Even now, when he was the one in desperate need of comfort and healing, he was trying to help her.

Marilyn raised one hand, letting it hover near his. "How can you stand for anyone to touch you? How could you--?"

"It's different with you." Eli brought his hand closer, enough to feel his warmth. But he left it up to her to close the gap, lace her fingers through his, and hold on tight.

"It wasn't your fault, Eli." She had to try again to make him understand. "It wasn't something in you that made those things happen, it was something in them. You're not the bad guy."

He swallowed hard. He held her hand so tight, her skin went white under his fingers. "I want to believe you, but--"

"Do you blame Stevie for what happened to him? What about Pete? Is it his fault--?"

"No!" Eli's shout echoed through the living room. Marilyn glanced over her shoulder toward the stairs, hoping it hadn't disturbed the boys. "No," he whispered. "I could never think that. Not about Pete--or Steve."

"Then, why do you want to blame yourself?" She needed to make the first move. Otherwise, he might never believe that she held him blameless, that she truly saw him as a good person, worthy of everything she had to give. Marilyn laid her free hand along the hard-angled tension of his jaw.

Eli shuddered under her caress, his eyes staring into hers.

"What they did to you left scars," she said, moving a step closer. "But that's not the same thing as what is inside them. It's not evil, Eli. It's pain."

She slid her hand higher, caressing his face, daring to smile a little. "Believe me, lover, I know pain. I wish you'd let me help heal yours the way you helped heal mine."

He shifted his eyes, staring over her head, but he didn't pull back, didn't let go of her hand.

"Please?" she whispered. And she kissed him.

A simple touch of her lips to his, soft, damp from her tears. Her eyes drifted shut and she kissed him again, pleading silently with the parting of her lips, the brief touch of her tongue, for him to participate. His free hand came to rest on her hip. She took it as a signal to kiss him a third time.

Again, her tongue slipped out to touch his lower lip, ask for entry. This time he granted it, returning her kiss with one so sweet it made her throat go tight and happy tears gather.

Marilyn drank him in, stroking her tongue along his in an intimate caress, giving before he could ask. She melted against him. The instant she did, his hand lying soft on her hip vanished as his arm whipped tight around her. She rocked into him, needing to feel his erection, to know he