So many I can't remember their faces, much less their names. Too many for even my memory to handle. Was she trying to hurt him on purpose? That she had the ability to do so enraged the leopard. Keeping that anger at bay only by dint of years of experience, he pushed off the car. You weren't like that. Talin got in, conscious of a deep sense of self-loathing. She'd never intended for Clay to know the depths to which she had sunk, but it had been like someone else was controlling her mouth, as if some defiant part of her wanted him to know.
Now he did. And whatever chance they had had, it was gone. Talin couldn't blame him for his reaction. The counselor she had finally gone to for a short period after beginning her work for Shine, had assured her that her acting out as a teenager and as a young adult had been an understandable reaction, something often exhibited by victims of childhood abuse. The woman had classified it as a kind of self-harm, said there was no need for Talin to feel shame.
But even after eight years of celibacy, except for -. No, she wouldn't think of those times. Her fists turned bloodless. It had been eight years since the final therapy session, eight years since she had begun to try to treat her body as something good, something worth holding precious, eight years Maybe she was the slut Orrin had tried to make her. Maybe that defect was built into her genes. The clinic where she'd been abandoned as a baby had been a free one, utilized almost exclusively by prostitutes after all.
Orrin had called her the daughter of a whore. Like mother, like daughter. Snapping upright at that cold question, she realized they had reached the outskirts of San Francisco.
Lips dry, mouth full of cotton wool, she gave him directions to the small high-rise where Shine had leased her an apartment. A split second later, he had opened the door and was gone, a lethal shadow invisible against the rising fog. Eyes stinging, she shifted into the driver's seat and drove the Jeep down into the underground parking area.
