After, he shifted her so that she curled into the curve of his arm. And stroked her. Her eyes grew heavy. Now, she thought as she began to drift. He would ask her now while they were both still glowing.

Waiting, she slid into sleep.

HE WAS TEN, AND THE last beating she’d given him had left his back a maze of purpling bruises and scarlet pain. She never hit him in the face. She’d learned quickly that most clients didn’t care to see black eyes and bloody lips on the merchandise.

She’d stopped using her fists, mostly. She found a belt or a hairbrush more effective. She liked the thin, circular brushes that were all hard bristles. The first time she’d used one on him, the shock and pain had been so unspeakable that he’d fought back and it had been her lip that had been bloody. She’d used her fists then until he’d found escape in unconsciousness.

He was no match for her, and he knew it. She was a big woman and strong with it. When she was drunk, she was stronger yet and more ruthless. It didn’t help to plead, it didn’t help to cry, so he’d stopped doing both. And the beatings weren’t as bad as the other. Nothing was.

She’d gotten twenty dollars for him the first time she’d sold him. He knew because she told him, and promised to give him two dollars for himself if he didn’t make a fuss about it. He hadn’t known what she was talking about. Not then. He hadn’t known, not until she left him in the dark bedroom with the man.

Even then he didn’t know, didn’t understand. When those big, damp hands were on him, the fear was soblinding bright, the shame so dark, the terror so loud, as loud as his screams.

He’d screamed until nothing could crawl through his throat but a guttural whimper. Even the pain of being raped couldn’t push more out of him.

She even gave him the two dollars. He burned it, there in the dirty sink in the horrible bathroom that stank of his own vomit, he watched the money curl up black. And his hate for her was just as black.

He promised himself, staring at his own hollow eyes in the spotty mirror, that if she ever whored him again, he would kill her.

‘‘Ethan.’’ Her heart tripping in her throat, Grace scrambled onto her knees to shake his shoulders. The skin under her hands was like ice. His body was rigid as stone, but trembling. It made her think wildly of earthquakes, volcanos. Boiling violence under a hard layer of rock.

The sounds he made had wakened her. They’d made her dream of an animal caught in a trap.