Dalton

Some scars run deeper than others....

I understood pain and Id learned to live with it. My little house and my cabin cruiser that faithfully let me explore every part of Chesapeake Bay were enough for me and had been for a long time. I liked being alone and I was good at it.

I should have driven past him like everyone else. It shouldn't have mattered that his drenched clothes clinging to his slim body and his slow but determined pace as he put one foot in front of the other called out to me in a way I never would have expected.

The plan was to pick him up and hand him back over to the friend we had in common, nothing more.

That was the plan, but the funny thing about plans is they rarely go the way they're supposed to.

Silver

Never looking at the past is the key to surviving it....

After a lifetime of captivity with a cruel owner who'd purchased me for a bag of drugs and then stolen everything from me, I was finally free. I didn't care that I didn't have a penny to my name. I knew how to earn money. It didn't matter if I was on my knees or bent over whatever was convenient, I just needed to get enough so I could know what it was like to truly be free.

And then he appeared. A familiar face among the harsh torrents of rain and cruel asphalt beneath my feet. He was the last thing my exhausted, battered body needed, and yet somehow I knew he wasn't.

The ride was only supposed to get me to the closest bus station so I could start earning some cash, but by the time wed gotten to his house after he'd purchased my services for the entire night, I'd already started to see the man beneath the scars.

Scars like mine.

One night. That was all it should have been before beginning my life of freedom. So then why did I feel like a captive again after just a few hours with him? A very willing captive whose freedom didn't seem quite as important as before.