I need to give him this pleasure before I give him the harsh reality of my secrets.

I use the tip of my tongue to tease him. I keep one hand on his thigh, but circle his cock with the other, and I can feel the way his muscles tighten. The way he shifts in the seat as he silently demands more. I feel it, and I like it. This sense of power. Of knowing that I’m leading him someplace sublime.

I can’t take all of him, I know. But I draw him in, using my tongue and my hand to stroke and tease, keeping my mouth tight and sucking, trying to take him to the edge and growing more and more aroused with each small sound he makes. With the feel of his fingers tightening in my hair. With the way his cock tightens in my mouth and twitches as he comes close, so very close.

“Stop.” His voice is a low demand, and he pulls me gently up. I release him reluctantly, but rise to kiss him, thrusting my tongue in his mouth, letting him taste his own pleasure.

“Are you sure?” I ask when I break the kiss.

“I want to be on the edge, too.”

“Oh, really?”

“I have plans for you,” he says.

“Isn’t that interesting?”

“Come here,” he says, and draws me into his lap. The armrest is down, and I’m cradled in his arms. I’m a little cold from the wind, but I don’t want to move to get the blanket. Instead, I snuggle closer, then sigh when he uses the control button on the dashboard to turn up the deck heaters aimed at the captain’s chair before wrapping his arms around me.

I feel warm and safe and protected, and begin speaking as if sharing this with him is the most natural thing in the world. “There’s more, you know. About Bob, I mean.”

His body tightens under mine, and when he speaks I can hear the precision in his voice, as if he has carefully chosen his words. “Do you want to tell me?”

“I don’t know that I want to, but I think I need to.” I look up at him just long enough to draw strength from the way he is looking at me. Then I snuggle against his chest, because it is easier to talk that way, when I am wrapped up warm in his arms.

“It was rape, what he did. I know that. But I don’t think I gave you the right impression when I told you the story before. It wasn’t—you know—he didn’t force me.”

“He seduced you,” Jackson says, his voice full of vitriol. “If that’s what you call that kind of behavior with a fourteen-year-old girl.”

I nod, feeling all of fourteen again. “He would touch me when he was adjusting a costume. He’d tell me I was pretty. That he wanted to touch my hair. That he just wanted to show me off.” My mouth feels full of cotton, but I press on, because I want to get it all out. For some reason, right now telling Jackson seems like the most important thing in the world. “Lots of that. Pretty words. And reasons why his staff couldn’t stay. And then he’d—”

I draw a deep breath and swallow. “In the nightmares, it’s never really the way it happened. I’m usually there twice. One of me is watching, and the other is with him. He usually ties me up. Or makes me stand a certain way. Or he’s more forceful. Shoving his hand into my shirt. Making harsher threats. He just traps me somehow.” I lick dry lips. “But it wasn’t really like that. I mean, I know—knew—what he was doing was wrong. But it was all sort of clean.”

I lift my head long enough to look up, and I can see on Jackson’s face that he wants to slap that word right out of the air, but I don’t know how to describe it otherwise. Because that’s part of what I hate so much.

“That makes it worse,” I say. “Because the thing is—the thing is—”

“You responded. You climaxed.”

I press my face back against his chest and nod. “I hated what he did—hated it—but I liked the way it felt. I couldn’t control it. It was intense. Overwhelming. And no matter how hard I tried to hang on, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to, but I—”

“He stole your control,” Jackson says. His words, tight and measured, are so full of fury I fear that one wrong word from me and they will go nuclear. “He perverted your pleasure. That fucker scarred you as deeply as if he’d had a knife, Sylvia.”

He gently tilts my head up so that I am looking at him. And now his voice is as soft as a kiss. “You did nothing wrong, baby, while he was a monster. And I swear to god, if I ever find him, I’ll kill the son of a bitch.”

nineteen

It’s getting late by the time Jackson ties the boat up at the dock. I’d considered going onto the island tonight, but the only lights are at the dock and the area around the helipad, and stumbling around with flashlights seems silly.