son. Sacrificing herself for him.
I unfurled my fingers, clenched into a fist at my side, and touched her face, a calming gesture, but I think I needed calmed more than she did.
Meia didn't meet my gaze. Instead, she pulled herself up to a sitting position, moved her back against the bed, and tucked her knees up to her chest. She wrapped her arms around her legs the way a small child would. If I hadn't had the impulse to protect her before, there's no way I couldn't now, looking at her. She seemed fragile, tiny, curled up there in a ball.
"There's more than that, Hammer," she said. "Aston's not some abusive boyfriend or husband. It's not that simple." She was silent for a long time as she ran her fingers over a locker that hung from her neck, rubbed it over and over like a talisman or something.
“Is that your son in the locket?” I asked, nodding toward the piece of jewelry.
She smiled sadly, opened the locket, and I saw a photo of a girl inside. She shook her head, averted her gaze, and sat there silently. I thought she wasn't going to answer. Finally, she did.
"My sister," she said. "She hung herself, a long time ago. I was thirteen. She was a child. We were children."
"Christ, Meia." I exhaled the words, barely able to speak. Her sister had not been much older than MacKenzie.
"No one knows," Meia said, her voice little more than a whisper. "About any of this. Other than the...people involved."
"I can be trusted, Meia," I said. "Whatever it is, you can trust me with it."
"Growing up in my country - Burma - things became...difficult," she said. "My mother and father thought they were doing the right thing to send my sister and I over the border with men who would find us jobs - you call them coyotes here, I believe."
I sat up beside her on the bed, trying to listen to what she was saying, all the while my mind racing, thinking about the implications of what she was telling me, the horrors she had been through. I don't know what I'd expected when I ordered her to tell me everything, to bare herself to me. A crazy husband, a kidnapped child...not something like this.
"We were not given jobs," she said, with a bitter laugh. "At least, not reputable jobs. Instead, we were taken to a place in Bangkok. They called it a finishing school. It was a place for girls like my sister and I. They called us lost girls, women no one would try to find. We were girls who didn't matter."
"Things were...difficult," she said, her voice trailing off. "Whatever you imagine, it was worse. Far worse."
"Shit, Meia." I didn't have the words to say how I felt. It was like someone had kicked me in the gut. I felt sick for her, at the thought of the hell she had gone through as a kid.
"The men there," she said. "They had to teach us the...skills we would need for them to be able to sell us. But we had to remain virgins. It was brutal. And Lily, she was smaller than I was. I tried to protect her, but there was nothing I could do. I tried to help her, to teach her to put herself in a far away place, to go somewhere in her mind, but it was just too much for her. They broke her."
The thought of what had happened to Meia and her sister made me want to vomit. It made me enraged.
"She hung herself there in that hellhole," Meia said. "I vowed that one day I would destroy the man responsible for her death."
"And Aston?" I asked.
"Aston." She spoke his name with disgust. "Aston was one of the men at the school. He was just barely an adult then. Not older like the other men. His father was the man responsible for everything."
"So he was given free reign to do what he wanted," I said, the gut-wrenching realization of what was happening finally beginning to dawn on me.
Meia nodded, anger flashing in her eyes, no longer looking like the timid, frightened little girl I'd seen a moment ago. "Yes, and he did whatever he wanted. He wouldn't leave me alone, even back then. Told me he wanted to own me, that his father would give him anything he wanted."
"So his father gave you to him," I said.
She shook her head. "No," she said. "His father sold me, to a man here in Las Vegas."
"He sold you. Like a piece of property."
"A child bride," she said. "To an old man here. I thought that it couldn't be worse than Aston, that at least I was getting away. But the old man was - not a nice man. He enjoyed...inflicting pain." When she spoke the words, her eyes brimmed with tears and I could tell there was so much more behind the words that she couldn't say.
I took her hand in mine, feeling her tremble as she continued to speak. "When I became pregnant, he left me alone. It was a blessing. At the time, I only cared about the pregnancy because he stopped touching me. The torture finally ceased. But then I started to care about the baby forming in my belly, terrified that he would rip him from me. But Ben was born, and he didn't take him."
"How could this happen?" I asked. "How could someone just buy you, keep you in secret? Keep a baby in secret?" It was unfathomable, that this was something occurring in this city.
"When you have unlimited resources, you can make anything happen," Meia said. "It's easy to pay a doctor to make house calls. Easy to pay for someone to look the other way. I had no paperwork. No identity. Ben and I have no identity. We are ghosts."
"How did you get away?"
"The old man died," Meia said. "And I was finally free. He left us money, Ben and I. I think it was his apology for what he had done. Or some kind of attachment to his child. I'm not sure. He never held Ben, never asked to see him, so I never understood why he would care his son. But I thought I was finally free, that I could leave, take Ben with me somewhere far away from all the reminders of what had happened. I was wrong. Aston had never forgotten about me."
I had not forgotten the day Aston came to take Ben from me. How could I? It was etched in my memory, the last moments I had with my son. I had no idea what would happen when I started looking for a way out, trying to figure out how to escape the country with no passport and no identification. With a baby.
I was a naive child at the time. I should have run immediately, gone into hiding somewhere and used the money to buy Ben and I paperwork. But I didn't understand how anything worked. I didn't understand the urgency of everything. I was wrapped in this little cocoon, inside the walls of the old man's estate, where I thought I was safe from the outside world. The old man was dead, and the threat was gone.
If I would have had any foresight, I would have understood that the real threat was out there, still lurking, just waiting. The man who had been obsessed with me, who had tortured me as a child, who had broken me once before.
It was an idyllic week I spent with Ben, after the old man's death, and before Aston showed up. The truth was, it was an idyllic couple of years before the old man died. It was like all of the pain from before had never happened. He banished us to a guesthouse on the property far from the main house. Out of his sight. The prior torment was over, and Ben had room to run and play, an expanse of manicured lawns and a home that was vastly more than I had when I was a child.
Two years of relief in a series of years full of suffering.
And then Aston arrived. How he found me, I didn't know. I didn't understand the extent of his reach back then.
~ ~ ~
Ben pressed his little body up against my leg, his arms wrapped around my knee. I bent over to scoop him up, kept him against my chest as he whimpered, sensing something was wrong almost immediately.
"Meia," Aston said. "It's been a long time."
"Please." I begged him, trying to be calm, trying to keep myself from falling apart, there with Ben in my arms. I had to be strong. For him. I clutched him tight to me, as if by holding him I could keep him from being taken away. "Whatever you want, I'll do it. Don't hurt Ben."
All I could think about was that Aston would kill Ben, right there in the garden where he'd been happily playing, oblivious to any kind of evil that existed in the world around him. Please don't let Aston kill him, I prayed silently to a God that had never heard me before, pleading for my son's
life.
In front of me, Aston smiled, the expression only making him look more sinister and threatening. He gestured to the men who were with him. "Take the boy."
I screamed when they tore Ben from my arms. I screamed as he was taken from me, tears streaming down his chubby cheeks as he wailed, terrified of the men who carried him to the waiting vehicle. "Please, Aston," I pleaded, falling to my knees in the damp grass at Aston's feet, the first of many times I would beg him from this position. "Please don't do this. You can't take my child."
He looked down at me, his eyes cold. "Whether he lives or dies depends entirely on you," he said.
~ ~ ~
When I finished the story, I finally allowed my eyes to meet Hammer's. I felt his hand, still on mine, a comforting gesture. I couldn't imagine what he must think of me, the mother who let her son be taken away from her, who had been unable to figure out how to escape the clutches of the monster who did it for two years. Two years in relative freedom. Not chained. Not kept in a dungeon someplace. I had an apartment, designer clothes, access to a penthouse. Access to money when I needed it.
I was terrified Hammer would look at me and see someone who had not tried hard enough to find her son, who lived in fear instead of bravely trying to rescue him. I was terrified he would see me as irreparably damaged, soiled and broken.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Meia," Hammer said, his voice hoarse. "I can't...there's nothing I can say."
"You must think I'm horrible," I said. My heart raced, and I pulled my hand from his, anticipating his judgment.
A look of confusion flitted over his face. "What? Fuck. No. Are you kidding? What the hell kind of man do you think I am? Why would I think you're horrible?"
"All of the stuff that's happened -"
"Shit, Meia," he said. "I can't fucking imagine. Hell, my kid's not much older than your sister. I can't even..." He shuddered, his face contorted. "What those animals did...what Aston has done to you…”
“What I’ve done, Hammer…” I said. The things I’d done while with Aston were grotesque, made a thousand times more so by the fact that I was doing them in order to keep the bastard from killing my child.
“You survived. You've done what you had to do to survive."
"So much has happened, Hammer. I don't know if I can - I don't know what to do anymore." I didn’t know if I could have sex. Certainly not for pleasure. I didn’t know if I could feel anything for someone else in that way.
"Listen to me,” Hammer said, taking my face in his hands. “I swear to you on my life, I will do everything in my power to get your son back from Aston. You won’t belong to him anymore. I will kill Aston with my bare hands.”
I put my hands on his wrists, took his hands in mine, sliding them away from my face. “No,” I said. “Aston is mine. I’ve thought about how I would kill him since I was thirteen. That’s something you won’t take from me. No one will.”
Hammer’s face was expressionless for a moment, and then he smiled. “Good.”
He sat there, unmoving, holding me for a long time, his arm wrapped around me, my head on his shoulder. I was almost surprised by the gesture, by the fact that he seemed to be content enough to just sit there, holding me. He wasn't like the other men, with their rough demands, their need to constantly debase me.
I could hear his breathing, slow and rhythmic, comforting, and I felt his lips on the top of my head, his hand stroking my hair. It wasn't sexual, yet I felt warmth running through my body in response to his touch.
Without thinking, I pulled away and faced him. I kissed him, hard on the lips. His lips parted, and I heard a rumble in his throat that sounded more like a growl than anything else as he pressed his lips to mine, so hard that I thought they would bruise. My body was warm, desire radiating from my core to my fingertips. It washed over me like a wave as Hammer pulled at my dress, struggled with it, unable to remove it from his position on the bed, then grunted and stood up, pulling me to the edge of the bed with him. Yanking it over my head, he tossed it on the floor, then stopped and stood there, looking at me. I felt exposed under his stare, but not in the way I’d felt exposed before, under the gaze of the men who took me.
With Hammer looking at me, I was more vulnerable somehow, more naked. My cheeks felt hot as he focused his attention on me.
"Shit," he said. "You are gorgeous."
Hammer kissed me, slowly this time, and I felt my heart race at his touch, dampness growing between my legs. His hand was on the back of my head, fingers laced through my hair, but his touch was gentle as he held me against him. I felt his tongue graze mine, and when he pulled my bottom lip between his teeth, arousal rushed through me like nothing I'd felt before.
"This is a first for me," I whispered. I pulled away so I could look at him, my heart pounding in my chest. It was terrifying, the prospect of having sex with someone just because I wanted to. It was completely unknown territory. I feared I was somehow fucked up, that sex had somehow become all twisted around in my head, muddled up with pain and terror and everything else that came with what I had been through.
Hammer nodded, seeming to understand what I meant. "I'll take it slow," he said.
I wasn't sure whether I wanted him to be gentle, or whether I wanted him to destroy me with his touch. I wasn't sure which I was more afraid of.
I reached up to pull off his shirt, running my hands over his smooth chest, his muscles rippling under my fingertips. He was hard, all muscle, not an ounce of fat on him, a product of hours pumping iron...and fighting, I supposed. I traced the outline of his muscles, wanting to linger, to memorize the way he looked right now in this moment.
"You need to stop doing that, or there's not going to be any taking it easy," Hammer said, his mouth close to my ear. He took the fleshy part of my ear between his teeth, and I heard a moan escape my lips.
When I spoke, my voice was breathy, somehow not like me. "I don't know if I want you to take it easy."
"Shit, I'm going to take it so easy you're going to be aching for me," he said, his voice gruff. The tip of his tongue was on a sensitive place near my earlobe, and I tilted my head to the side, letting his mouth roam down the side of my neck, tracing kisses along the length of my collarbone to the tops of my breasts. My head lolled back and I closed my eyes, reveling in his touch, his hand on my breast, the warmth radiating through the lacy fabric of my bra. My nipples hardened instantly under his palm, and I tangled my fingers in his hair, pulling his head closer, wanting his mouth on my breasts, needing his mouth all over me.
I wanted him to envelop me.
I felt heady, drunk with desire and the realization that I craved him. All of him. I had never wanted anyone before. Not ever.
I didn't know why this man was so different from the rest, but he was. And he was making me believe, for the first time, that there could be something more for me.
If I weren’t so consumed with my need for him, that thought would strike fear into my core.
He reached behind my back, slipping off my bra, kissing my shoulder where he slid the strap over my skin. He took my breast in his mouth, circling his tongue around my nipple, his touch exquisite torture, one I only wanted to keep going forever. When he drew his head away from me, I inhaled sharply. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
He smiled. “Nothing at all,” he said. “I just want out of these goddamned clothes so I can feel your skin against mine.”
I shivered as he yanked my panties over my hips so sharply I thought he would tear them from my body. He slid down to his knees between my legs, pulling them to my ankles, and I stepped out of them, gingerly, still on my heels. His hands were on my thighs, and arousal rushed through my body, heat between my legs.
He looked up at me from where he knelt between my legs, his expression one of unbridled lust. "God, you're fucking beautiful," he said. "Fuck my clothes - I need to taste you."
My body responded to him in the most visceral of ways, the throbbing of my pussy impossible to ignore. I shuddered
as he touched his lips to my inner thigh, and let out a moan. The anticipation of him was almost too much to bear.
Then he stopped, and I waited, holding my breath, wondering what he was about to do. Hammer inhaled deeply, loudly, and then looked up at me again. "Shit," he said.
A lump formed in my throat. "What? Is something wrong?"
He shook his head. "Fuck, no, there's nothing wrong."
"Then what?" I asked.
"The smell of you," he said. "That shit is going to make my cock explode."
Oh God. The way he talked - dirty and direct - I didn't know what to make of it, what to do with it. But my body did. I wanted him to touch me. I needed him to touch me.
"Spread your legs," he said, not waiting for me to comply before he pushed my thighs apart, forcing my rear against the mattress. "I want you on my mouth."
As he spoke, I could feel his breath, warm between my legs, the air teasing, caressing me, even before his tongue reached me. And when it did, when he finally stopped teasing me and ran his tongue from the bottom of my pussy to my clit, I thought I was going to explode.
"Oh, my God." My words were punctuated with sharp inhalations