I dip two fingertips inside her and then swirl them around her clit. She widens her legs for me without realizing it, opening her body as if to welcome me inside. I stifle the groan building in my throat by biting her shoulder, and Ivy screams at the same time her body releases, a gush of warmth sliding over my fingers. Spasms rock her core as her breath hisses between her teeth. She’s still coming back down from her high when I smear the evidence of her own body’s betrayal over her lips.

She jerks in my arms, and I breathe against her skin, relaxing the grip on her waist as I resume the long, exacting strokes over the expanse of her body. I’m studying her. Taking in all the details of this unfamiliar landscape. The freckles on her shoulder. The dip in her lower spine. The way her ribs press against my fingers when she leans into my touch. I want to memorize them all, filing them away like the data on my computer. I don’t understand why, and I don’t want to examine the reasons too carefully just yet.

Before I can give it much more thought, I notice some bruising on her arm. I investigate it thoroughly, pressing my fingertips into the purple ovals as undiluted rage boils inside me.

“Who did this to you?” I demand.

She sucks in a breath but doesn’t answer. I’m tempted to shake her. Choke her. Force the words from her lips. But my eyes are already roaming the rest of her, scanning every inch for an injustice that hasn’t quite formed in my mind.

There are additional bruises on her thigh, knee, and calf. And I know they must be from someone because she has stiffened in my arms. She’s hiding something from me, and I won’t accept it.

“Who did this?” I repeat.

When she doesn’t answer, I wrap the length of the rosary around her neck until it bites into her skin. She strains against the rope to lean back into me, fighting the tightening of my fist.

“Who, Ivy?”

“Perhaps it was your doctor,” she snarls at me with such vehemence, it shocks me into loosening my grip.

The beads cascade back over her breasts, settling between the mounds.

“Doctor,” I echo, my mind coming back to Abel’s hand-delivered purity test.

“The nightmare of a doctor you sent me to!” She hurls the words out with a bitterness that catches me off guard.

“Who told you I sent you to him?”

She falls quiet again, chest heaving in anger. There is a fire in her I didn’t expect, and I find that I like it.

“Answer me.”