Jaxxon fisted her hands in the bed-sheet as he pinned her still and ferociously hammered into her. At that moment Connor was sheer male domination. It was like that ravenous appetite he had for her had taken over and was manifesting itself in this frenzied pounding. The combination of the pressure of his size filling her and his feverish movements was the ultimate in bliss. Considering that she had already had three unbelievably intense orgasms it was no surprise that the friction was already building again. Startling her, a hand came down sharply on her arse. The bloke was obsessed with spanking!

He did it again, harder this time, and her muscles clamped tight around his dick. “That’s what I like, babe; your body gripping me like it never wants to let go.” He spanked her again and she jerked at the impact but groaned and her muscles clutched him again. More moisture swamped his dick. “I told you that you loved it, didn’t I?”

She wouldn’t have thought it was possible but his pounding actually became more frantic. She was groaning feverishly, restlessly squirming in his grip as the friction inside her intensified. “I’m going to come.”

He drove his fingers in her hair and wrenched her head back. “I want you to scream my name, Jaxx. I want to hear you scream it.” He raised one knee and tilted her hips slightly, allowing him to go that much deeper, and then he was plowing into her again. “Come for me right now!”

Her climax spiked and rippled through her shuddering body, completely fragmenting her. She screamed his name and a second later he was growling hers as he slammed home one last time and pulsed deep inside her. Then they both collapsed.

In that state where ‘awake’ wasn’t far off but opening your eyes felt like too much effort, Connor rolled over in bed to snuggle against Jaxx. His arm found nothing. The surprise of it – strange how waking up with her for a few mornings in France and then a couple here in his bed felt more familiar than a lifetime of waking up alone – made him squint. No, she wasn’t there. Her side of the bed was cold. He lifted only his head, intending to call her name, but movement in the corner caught his eye. There she sat on the stool that was usually kept in the bathroom. Two things registered: She was fully dressed, and she had a strange glint in her eyes. He lifted enough to support himself on one elbow. “Jaxx?”

“You once said that you nearly came to see me on my fifteenth. If you had gone to the Glennons’, I wouldn’t have been there. And if you had asked them where I was and then gone there, you wouldn’t have seen me with some boy. You’d have seen a police car.”

Aware that she was now about to open up to him, he sat up straight and gave her his full attention. Then what she said sunk in: she wouldn’t have been at the Glennons’? Police car?

Jaxxon clasped her hands together. “The night after you left, Nick Crawley’s gang turned up at the house. They wanted to know where you were and figured you wouldn’t have gone anywhere without telling me where. I guessed by the bruises and cuts Nick was covered in that you’d beat him senseless. A couple of his mates were in a similar shape – especially that Sean Beckett.” Who was still a sick shit and she could only hope he hadn’t found Celia and the little girl. “They knew I wouldn’t lie about where you were because they knew you wouldn’t have cared if they found you, so when I told them I didn’t know but that you’d be coming to see me they believed it.” So had she. “They kept cornering me outside school, wanting to know if you’d been in touch. I always had Leah with me and whatever boyfriend she had at the time so they never did much.”

He wanted to know what exactly she meant by ‘never did much’ but he didn’t want to interrupt her flow.

“But then, six months after you’d gone, she left. The day after that, Nick, who had reached the conclusion that if you hadn’t been in touch yet then you weren’t going to, cornered me outside school. I was on my own. He said that if he couldn’t give you the beating you’d given him, he’d settle on using me. Their plan was to take turns on me. What Nick wasn’t expecting was for me to fight. When I got a good opening I booted him in the bollocks and legged it. You remember how fast I was. When I ran into the Glennons’ with my hair looking like a bird’s nest, my clothes ripped and bruises already forming they were concerned. Until I mentioned Nick’s name. He was their nephew, remember. They didn’t phone the police, they phoned Social Services, made me out to be some Jezebel and said they wanted me moved.”

“Jaxx,” he said in a quiet voice, shaking his head, “I’m so sorry.”

She smiled a sad smile. “Why, are you a god? Did you make all that happen?”

“You know what I mean.”

“And you know I’m right. Anyway,” she paused and took a deep breath, aware that what she told him now might forever change how he looked at her, “I was supposed to go into a home – it’s not easy finding placements for troubled teenagers – but instead I ended up with this family who were religious fanatics. Other than taking their religion a little too far, they were alright. It was their son who was the problem. Obviously Matthew was the perfect Christian boy when his parents were around.”

The disgust as she talked about the boy said enough for him to guess what had happened. “He raped you,” he whispered.

She shook her head. “No. I let him do it.”

“But, Jaxx, why?”

“Because it was either I was a good girl and did what I was told, or he’d use the five year old girl who moved there the same day as me. And he would’ve done. It wasn’t about sex, it was about control and power. Teenager, kid, boy, girl – those details didn’t matter. To him, the foster kids in his house were toys. As long as I let him use me he left the others alone.”

“Didn’t you tell anyone?”

“You think anyone would have believed me after what the Glennons had said about me? And like I said, the parents only saw a good Christian boy. If you said anything about him you were punished.”

“But you told the Plod eventually? That’s why they came?”

“For the weeks running up to my fifteenth he kept saying he had a nice surprise for me, he was going to make sure it was a special night. I didn’t know what he meant, didn’t want to.”

Connor gritted his teeth. His fists were clenched so tight his knuckles were white.

“The night before my fifteenth I set my alarm for 2:30am to go meet him in the shed like he told me, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring my hand to even touch the bedroom door handle. It was about 3am when he finally came looking for me. I was in bed, pretending to be asleep. I could smell Vodka on him so he must have got trashed while he was waiting.” Even now the smell of Vodka triggered flashbacks. “It wasn’t ’til he got close that I saw the big knife. I honestly don’t remember thinking anything, I just reacted. I grabbed my art scissors from the desk near the bed and stabbed him in his side. His parents phoned the Plod, wanting me arrested. I didn’t tell the Copper everything, just that I saw someone breaking into my room and then the knife and acted on instinct. But he smelled the Vodka on Matthew and the good Christian boy couldn’t come up with an acceptable reason why he’d have a knife and be coming into my room at 3am. It turned out that some of the kids who’d been there before me had made a complaint about him so he’d already been on the Plod’s radar. A case was built and he was eventually prosecuted. I’d left foster care by then.”

“God, Jaxx.” He couldn’t even look at her – the guilt was swarming him. If he hadn’t been so stupid as to beat up Crawley or if he had at least come to see her he would’ve known and could have dealt with him. Then Jaxx wouldn’t have gone through all that.

“The blame isn’t yours, Connor. You didn’t put a gun to Nick’s head and make him try to rape me or put a gun to Matthew’s and make him do all that sick shit. If you take any of that blame then you’re relieving Nick and Matthew of it. I won’t let you do that, I want them to have that blame like they should.”

“Do you know why I beat Crawley to a pulp? He asked if my leaving meant you were fair game. I lost it. But if I hadn’t -”

“He would probably still have done something like that because he was a perv, always had been, just like Sean.” She sighed. “The way I always thought of it was that if I’d stayed with the Glennons then Matthew would have done what he did to me to little Annie. She was just five. I could never wish that on her or anyone else. As sad as it is, this kind of things happens a lot when you’re in care. And when you’re not in care. There are people who have been, who still are, going through way worse than me.”

“How can you not blame me?”

For a while she had been angry with him, but it was only last night that she realised why: not because he hadn’t helped her, because he hadn’t loved her like she loved him. “There are so many ‘ifs’, Connor. If the Glennons had done something about Nick I wouldn’t have had to be moved. If the social worker had sent me to a different foster home I’d never have met Matthew. If Matthew’s parents hadn’t been blind to what their son was like and ignored all the complaints made about him then he would’ve been prosecuted before I came along.”

He knew she was right, but still it was eating at him. He got out of bed and went to her. Squatting in front of her, he took her hands in his. “Whether you blame me or not, I’m still sorry. You’re such an amazing person to get through something like that and come out of it the person you are.” And he had every intention of twatting the life out of this Matthew if he could find him. “Thank you for telling me. It can’t have been easy for you to talk about. You’re a stronger and bigger person than I could ever hope to be, do you know that?”