“Oh my God!” I shouted, scrambling to get off the bed. It was a good thing I was wearing leggings, or I would have flashed him as my sundress rode up to my hips in my hurry. “I’ll call Tommy?—”
“Don’t,” Tangaloa snapped. He pulled his hand from the wall, and I saw red liquid and white dust coating his knuckles.
I grabbed a towel from the hamper—it was the closest thing tome—and rushed over to him. “Please,” I begged as I covered his hand to try to control the bleeding. “You could have broken something.”
“No doubt,” he grumbled. “But we’re only to age fifteen of your confession. I have a feeling there’s going to be a few more holes in the wall before we’re done, and it seems more efficient for him to fix all my boo-boos at once.”
I glared up at him, not appreciative of his flippancy. But I did not argue with him. He wasn’t wrong that there was more, and far worse, to tell him.
Tangaloa reached up with his other hand to touch my face. “You know I’d never lay a hand on you or Samantha, right? I’d die first,Ku?uipo.”
“What does that mean?” I was trying to learn Hawaiian, but for some reason, I picked up Japanese a lot faster. Not only was Samantha’s English improving, but she was also learning Hawaiian just as easily. I was trying very hard not to be jealous of my four-year-old daughter.
“‘My love’ or ‘my sweetheart’,” he explained, still touching my cheek. “Whichever you prefer.”
“Both,” I answered honestly, even though the question might have been rhetorical. “I want to be both.”
Tangaloa had to bend almost in half to rest his forehead against mine as we were both flatfooted. “You’re everything,” he whispered.
I took the moment to breathe him in, sand and leather and musk. I’d been searching for a lotion like it for months and nothing came even close to it. “I know you’d never hurt me,” I told him, answering his original question. “I wouldn’t have come with you to Hawaii if I thought otherwise.”
After another moment, Tangaloa sighed and lifted his forehead from mine. He kissed the top of my head before taking a step back. I was grateful he kept the towel wrapped around his hand. “Why did your parents go to your wedding? Were they trying to stop it?”
I shook my head. “My dad’s a Wall Street hedge fund manager. He used to work alongside That Bastard, but personally, he and my mom were being trained by him.” I shrugged, like I was trying to shake off the memories. “That’s when I learned I was nothing more than property to them. Something to be offered,” I spat out the word, “and traded for goods and services.”
Tangaloa encouraged me back over to the bed. Rather than having me sit, though, he sat, and then he pulled me down onto his lap. I curled into his chest as he wrapped his arms around my knees and back. He was so large—or I was so small—that my butt could sit on one thigh and my feet on the other, and he was still able to overlap his arms around me.
He rested his chin on my head. “I knew you were going to say that your parents weren’t there to stop it, but a part of me still hoped for your sake. I’m sorry,Ku?uipo.”
I nodded against him. “Me too. I started…acting out after that. I took some heavy punishments. The older I got, the harsher they were. From spanking to paddling, and one time he flogged me. Nothing like…” I had a hard time saying her name. “Nothing like Nishi. Most of the time, it was taking away my privileges. One time he didn’t let me outside my bedroom for six months.”
A string of curses was released above me. “Fucking hell, baby. You’re making it really hard to be grateful he’s already dead.”
The chuckle that escaped me surprised both of us. I blushed at his admiring look when he glanced down at me.
“I was sixteen, maybe seventeen, the first time he took me into the basement. I truly had no idea that was where he disappeared to. And when I saw the women…” I buried my face into his strong, bare chest. “He made me watch. Other than our wedding night, he did not touch me. Not like that. I thought it was because I was behaving like a bad wife. I thought that I was somehow punishing him alongside myself, not allowing him access to my body. But I wasn’t, because he had other…” I flinched, not knowing how to describe it while also remaining respectful to That Bastard’s captives. “For several days, he kept us in that basement. I watched every disgusting, depraved thing he did to those women. At the time, there were three of them, and the things he did…” I paused for a minute, my hand over my mouth to keep my stomach from rejecting the food I’d eaten. “I did not know sex could be like that. I did not know a lot of things about sex, even with my lessons before my marriage. But what I saw…”
“What you saw wasn’t sex, Mase. It was rape. Pure and simple.”
The nickname soothed me. “I know that now. Dr. Akamu has been working with me on learning the difference. She’s even had me watch porn to help teach me.”
Tangaloa pulled back from me. He didn’t move me off his lap, just moved back enough to see my face. “Your therapist watched porn with you?”
“Notwith me.” My cheeks could have set a forest on fire. “But she gave me specific videos to watch and books to read so I could learn what I liked.”
He was still frowning. “Because of me?”
I shook my head. “Because ofme.” I put my hand over his bare pec. “Yes, I want to have a healthy sex life with you, Tangaloa. But Dr. Akamu said I needed to know what was right for me and my body before I could experience it with you. You should have heard her scolding me after I told her about our shower.”
Tangaloa snorted. “Pretty sure she couldn’t have said anything I wasn’t already saying to myself.” He covered my hand on his chest with his uninjured one. “I owe you an apology for that day.”
“No, you don’t,” I insisted. “We were both compliant that day. There was a lot I should have confessed to you long before you kissed me.”
He brought my hand up to kiss my fingertips. “If I remember correctly, you tried but I kept shutting you down.” He paused for a second. “Youweretrying to tell me, right?”
I nodded. “But in all honesty, I’m not sure I could have. Not then. I wanted to, but there was so much I was still processing myself.”
“You’ve come a long way in three months,” he told me, pride in his voice.