His face was set with a strange mix of demand and plea. The answer swelled in her throat until it hurt to swallow. Tears pricked the backs of her eyes. But as much as she wanted to shut down, something inside her encouraged her to open her scarred-over wounds.
“My first experience with kissing was with a man I didn’t want to kiss,” she admitted, her voice thick with emotions she’d rather not let surface but was helpless to hold at bay any longer. Much like the pain she could no longer balance on the precipice of her lashes. With her next blink, the first of many drops was overflowed, flaunting her secret shame. “He was much older, and for months he gave me these looks and seemingly innocent touches that made my skin crawl. One day he cornered me. His foul breath made my stomach turn, but I had nowhere to go. He put his lips on mine. I tried keeping them closed, but he pressed his thumb and finger into my cheeks to— Then his tongue— And it was so— S-so—”
She couldn’t complete a sentence to save her life. The nightmares flooded her memory, slicing through the signals in her brain, hindering her ability to speak cohesively. Irish gathered her into his arms, one hand stroking her back while the other pushed the stray hair plastered to her tear-streaked face. He whispered sweet words with his lips pressed to her temple, though he needn’t say anything. A certain amount of calm settled over her just by being wrapped up in his strong arms and his unique scent. With Irish acting as her anchor in the present, Kat took a deep breath and finished.
“It was disgusting. Not only was I unwilling, but he tasted like every bad addiction he had and it felt like he was trying to lick my tonsils. It made me gag really hard, which I guess he took as an insult. He stopped kissing me, but only because he split my lip open when he backhanded me for almost puking in his mouth.”
“Sonofabitch.” His body snapped wire-tight, and she felt the muscle in his jaw tic above her eye where his face was still tucked over hers. “Please tell me the next time he tried that shit, you kneed him in the balls before kicking his teeth in.”
She was surprised when a chuckle, weak though it was, bubbled past the tightness in her chest. “I probably imagined scenarios like that a thousand times, but no. I was only fourteen at the time and he knew all the things to say to keep me compliant.” Clearing her throat, she did her best to put a verbal punctuation on the subject. “So that is why I don’t kiss.”
Inside, Kat gave herself a few pats on the back and even tossed some mental confetti. It was the most she’d revealed outright to anyone. She’d never even told Nessie any of that, though she knew her older sister had plenty of airtight suspicions. Though she hadn’t wanted to tell Irish, a very small part of her felt relief. As though just by sharing it with him, it unburdened her, if even a little.
But that was all she could do for now. All her energy had leaked from the emotional toll, leaving her body wrung out. The only thing holding her on her side was the embrace of the man next to her.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Kat.” He pulled back slightly so he could see her face. Thank God it wasn’t daylight, or he’d see the puffy red mess she’d made of it. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Snapping it shut in obvious frustration, he looked up at the ceiling and blew out a long breath through his nose.
“Irish?”
“Gimme a second.”
Deafening silence filled the room and pressed in on her eardrums. Maybe now that he knew she’d been used at such a young age—even though she’d only revealed the tip of the very nasty iceberg that was her past—he wasn’t attracted to her anymore. And she knew all too well how pissed guys could get when you ruined their plans for a good time.
Suddenly, the idea of Irish reacting that way scared the shit out of her. Not because of anything physically he could do to her in an attempt to assuage his bruised ego—she’d learned how to deal and compartmentalize the physical pain when she was young, no matter how bad—but because she’d thought he was different. She’d thought that maybe he cared for her on some level. Even caring for her as a fellow human was a step above what most people had shown for her.
Kat tamped down the dread creeping up that Irish would ever harm her. She knew better than that. Her past might be shooting off warning flares, but her woman’s intuition recognized them as nothing more than bouts of old fear that had no place in the present.
But now he probably had second thoughts about getting involved with someone like her and didn’t know how to let her down easily after his bold statements earlier of wanting her so badly.
That’s okay, Kat told herself. She couldn’t blame him. He’d wanted a hot hookup with a woman who could match his heat in the bedroom. He hadn’t signed on for her kind of baggage. So she’d spare him the need to produce an awkward explanation. It was the least she could do after everything he’d done for her.