f or the second time in two days, the elevator opens in Andrew’s penthouse.
He rushed us away from the area of the collapse as fast as he could, refusing to let us linger until the authorities arrived. Due to my shoes being gone, he lifted me into his arms a block from my building and carried me to our rendezvous point with Finn, maybe ten or so block a way.
Also refused to lower me as we rode the elevator to his place.
Which is fine. I’m clinging to him with everything I’ve got, the beat of his heart my only anchor right now.
“Seriously, are you two okay?” Finn’s concerned gaze travels over us.
Ignoring him, Andrew walks into his place, past the small seating area in front of the elevator bank. It isn’t until we’re near the bar that he jerks to a stop at the sound of the television on in the living room.
“The exact number of casualties is unknown at this time. Due to a fire sparked during the building’s collapse, search crews haven’t been allowed on site to begin the search for survivors. There was no seismic activity reported in the area during the time and no cause is yet known. Our crew will remain on site to report any new developments as they occur.”
Finn, Drew, and I exchange looks. Against my side, Drew’s heart pounds as hard as my own. Placing a finger against his lips, he lowers me to the ground slowly.
“That won’t be necessary,” a familiar voice says, followed by steps.
I turn my head in time to see Shell emerging from the living room, hands in his gray slacks.
“How the fuck did you get in here?” Drew snaps.
“You should know by now I have my ways to achieve things.” Nodding in the direction of the living room, he steps aside to make room for us. “You might want to sit her down. Looks like it’s time to have our second discussion of the day.”
Cursing under his breath, Drew walks in that direction.
Finn follows us. “Um, second discussion? What’s going on here? I thought working with this dude was a one-time deal?”
Drew places me on the light brown, suede couch, and kneels in front of me. Cupping my face, he kisses my forehead and pauses to inhale me, thumbs caressing my cheeks. “Tell me you’re alright.”
“It’s all my fault,” I whisper, tears gathering once more.
“Shh,” he breathes against my forehead, clearly worried Shell’s going to hear.
“Too late,” Shell comments calmly from his spot feet from us. “And considering you two have information my bosses don’t, I think it’s time we promise each other honesty.”
Jaw clenched, Drew eases away enough to glare up at him. “You need to promise me two things before I give you anything. One: Lexi’s left out of this. None of this is her fault and she won’t be held liable. Two: when it’s all over, Menahan’s dead by my hand.”
Finn cups his face, mumbling into his hands. “My friend’s a murdering psychopath. What that makes Stephen, I don’t fucking know.”
“Hey!” I hiss.
Shell’s auburn eyebrow rises. “After all the help that I’ve given you?” he asks Drew.
“You helped us because it suited you,” Drew shoots back.
“Not entirely.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
“I had my reasons.”
“Alright. Alright,” Finn interrupts, coming over to sit next to me. “Enough. Both of you. According to Lexi, Stephen Menahan just brought down an entire fucking building just to prove a fucking point!”
Drew’s scowl is vicious, his stare promising a world of hurt for Finn.
“Drew.” I place my hand on his arm, bringing his attention to me. “It’s okay. I deserve to be punished for helping him invent that thing anyway.”
“Lexi, don’t—”
“What exactly did you help him invent, Ms. Berkman?” Shell asks in that even tone he always uses.
“I wrote up the software for it, but it’s nanotechnology.” Tears run down my face as I get sucked back into the vortex, imagining all the families that died thanks in part to my work.
“Mininukes,” Shell says.
Drew stands to his full height and faces him. “That means there’s no fucking telling if there’s toxic radiation levels on site, no way to warn them.”
“I’ll handle that, but when I return from this call, there’s a few things that need to be set in place. Mainly? If you can’t provide adequate security for yourselves, I will have to do it for you.”
“We’re not doing any kind of witness protection bullshit, so stop thinking that right now. And anyway, you need us out here, working on our plan, in order to bring him down. If it was Stephen’s nanotech, I can guarantee you one thing from the information I’ve been able to hack: you won’t find any trace of it. No way to link the attack back to him.”
I nod at Shell. “Andrew’s right.”
He narrows his light green eyes, studying Drew. “Be honest. How much of this is about your revenge?”
“All of it. And it just got worse. He’ll fucking die for everything he’s done. Go ahead. Try to stop me after you helped me kill one of them.”
One corner of his mouth curling, Shell nods before turning away. “Don’t threaten me, Drevlow. It won’t really get you anywhere. Be right back.” He walks towards the elevator, slipping a black cell out of his pocket.
“What the flying fuck, guys? What. The. Flying. Fuck?” Finn hisses at Drew and I.
Drew holds up a hand in his direction and walks back to me. “Come here.”
Incapable of denying him, I stand on shaky legs and let him bring me back into his arms.
“This isn’t your fault, okay? He owned you. Forced you to do things.”
I jerk back, eyes wide. “How—”
“Baby, I don’t need all the details. I know enough now to guess.” Tilting my head back, he stares at me solemnly, the edges of his mouth curling down in a slight frown. “And for that, as well as what he did today, he’s going to die. I swear that to you.”
chapter 24
i hug my knees to my chest, staring in the direction of the bathroom door. Beyond it, the shower’s still running.
It’s been running for half-hour now.
I should go check on Drew, make sure he’s okay, but his demeanor after Shell and Finn left makes me wary. Not because I’m afraid of him. On the contrary, he’s all I want at this moment. Yet it’s clear he needs time to himself.
Time to process everything.
I still can’t get over how he asked me those questions when I came out the shower, just before he went in.
“How many times, Lexi? How many damned times did he hurt you?”
There was no answer to give him. Not only because I lost count throughout the years, but the bleakness in his gaze . . . my Drew is close to the edge, just like I am.
Moving my damp hair over my shoulder, I tuck my knees under the hem of the large white t-shirt I stole from his closet. He hasn’t worn it, it only smells like whatever detergent his housekeeper uses, and the urge to find his dirty clothes hits me strong.
I need him closer. Any part of him. Between my legs, my pulse beats strongest, craving the thickness of him back inside me.
I’ve only truly had him once. Well, twice, if one counts the fact he came in me two times on the hood of his car last night. The way he took me was beyond savage. Some with my history—and hell, some without it—would consider it barbaric and callous.
I call it baptism by fire. An utter shattering of the woman Stephen created, a demolition that left nothing but raw passion in its wake. Drew managed to morph me into a creature of pure flesh, pure need, one that, for those few moments in time, was never abused. One that yearned for more of the pleasure and frenzy he can provide.
That same creature stirs in me and my focus on the closed door becomes laser-like. He’s hurting beyond that door, in that shower, as much as I’m hurting on this bed without him.
This isn’t just about what happened tonight, however. It’s not eve
n just about what happened to me while imprisoned by Menahan.
This runs much, much deeper, and as I turn the facts over in my head, those news headlines come back with a vengeance.
He almost died and it’s your fault you weren’t with him. Because you didn’t trust him. Because you ran away. He almost died. He almost died. He. Almost. Died.
Drew told me a lot last night, up to the point where he lost me. However, if he thinks it’s lost on me that he left out what happened after, he’s sadly mistaken. What’s worse? Something tells me Andrew’s trying to protect me by keeping his distance, that he wants what I want just as bad and is afraid to hurt me.
Fuck this.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed to go to him.
The shower shuts off as I take my first step. Undeterred, I head straight to the bathroom door and twist the knob.
It doesn’t budge.
He . . . he locked me out?
A ridiculous lick of pain cuts through my heart. I try to push it back, to be logical and understanding about this.
Bullshit. It hurts. I need him more than ever and he’s distancing himself due to whatever is going through his own mind.
Hugging myself, I step back.
The door opens and Drew emerges among a billowing cloud of steam, dressed in a pair of black sleeping pants and a long-sleeved black shirt.
The hell?
He catches sight of me here, of the way I’m holding onto myself, and his expression twists with immediate concern. “Baby, are you okay?”
The familiarity of how we speak to each other after only being back in each other’s lives a little under a week—and my spending the first four days of that trapped in my misguided hate of him—only breaks my heart further. “You’re distant,” I reply, cutting to the chase, as if he’s my man and I’m his girl and this is a couple’s issue we need to resolve ASAP.
Drew steps out of the bathroom fully, hitting the switch to kill the lights. “I’m sorry, baby. I don’t mean to be. I’m just worried about you.” In a single stride, he’s before me, pulling my arms away from my midsection and around his own.
I melt into him instantly, his clean scent engulfing my senses. When his arms wrap around me, huge and warm, I can’t help but cuddle up to him and purr.
His cock throbs against my stomach, going from semi-hard to fully erect in a second flat.
Groaning, I rub into him, working my hands under his shirt.
Drew, tenses, trying to ease away.
But not before my fingers glide along his sides and I feel the vicious, raised scar along his left side.
He’s out of my arms in a flash, rushing to the bed and tearing back the covers.
“Drew?” I whisper in a small tone.
“Come baby. It’s been hell the last two days. You need rest.” He won’t look at me.
Striving for a steady tone, I say, “Take off your shirt, Andrew.”
He switches off the lamp on the nightstand and begins making his way around to the other side. “It’s late, bab—”
“Andrew. Fucking. Drevlow. If you ever want to know what happened to me with Stephen, you will take off that shirt.”
Pausing mid-step, back facing me, he clenches his hands into tight fists, massive shoulders rising and falling with his rapid breaths. “Lexi, you don’t understand.”
“Make me, understand.” Show me what happened to the man I love because I was stupid enough to fucking leave him! The words clog in my throat, triggering tears to flood my eyes.
“You don’t get it.”
“Andrew, you said you want me to trust you but you’re shutting me out . . . take off the freaking shirt!”
“Fuck, fine!” Reaching back, he fists the collar and yanks the shirt over his head, bearing his muscular back—
And the monstrous, gigantic knot of scar tissue covering half of his back and curving around his side.
Blood abandons my head, the world spinning, and with a sob I feel my legs give out as I fall to the floor.
chapter 25
d rew calls my name, rushing to me, and the sight of his front obliterates another damaged portion of my psyche.
The scars are so much worse from the front, and it isn’t just that ghastly mess curling around his obliques.
His arms . . . what. The. fuck. His arms!
“Lexi.” Eyes shimmering, he kneels before me, and how many times does that make it now? This beautiful, beautiful, broken man has no problem dropping to his knees before me.
Me. The most unworthy being on the whole fucking planet.
Sobbing, I lunge to grab his right arm. “What—what—oh God, Drew, what is this?” Even as I ask it, I already know. There’s no mistaking those dark pink, barely faded dots covering the thick expanse of his forearms.
I’m shaking, trying to push the knowledge back out of sheer preservation, but my mind isn’t having it.
My heart isn’t either.
Track marks. Those are fucking track marks.
Drew tries to pull his arm out of my grasp, reaching for me with his left hand, expression twisted at the sight of me finally breaking apart for him. “No, baby. Stop. Breathe. This is why I didn’t want you to—”
“Oh God!” I drop his right arm to latch onto his left, nails digging in to stop him when he tries to move away again.
Track marks here, too, but they’re nothing.
NOTHING.
It’s the deep—lord help me, it’s so fucking deep—thin line running from his elbow down to his wrist that finishes crushing my identity, an ego-death powerful enough to unleash sheer darkness through the caverns of my damaged soul.
The pain is more than I can handle, more than Stephen’s years of abuse combined, and I’m sobbing so hard I can’t even make a sound. My back curls from the force of it, my face near his lap, my body struggling to breath past this force.
“Baby.” Drew yanks me up, cupping my face, his own eyes tearing. “Stop. Stop. None of this is your fault. I fucked up. I didn’t know how to deal without you—”
“IT IS MY FUCKING FAULT!” I wail, the shriek of some unidentifiable creature that barely sounds human. “I did this to you! I left you and you were fucking innocent!”
I’m in his lap faster than I can process, pressed against his thundering heart.
His glorious, wonderful heart, that somehow kept beating for me despite multiple suicide attempts.
Because I know now, without a goddamned doubt, that he drove his car into that concrete divider on purpose. The scar on his left arm is proof. And, apparently, he fell into a drug-filled spiral before that, one intense enough to leave him scarred all these years later.
“Stop. We both made terrible mistakes. We couldn’t deal, baby.” He nuzzles my drenched cheek and I sob harder at the feel of his own tears beginning to leak out. “But this isn’t your fault.”
“No, you stop!” I scream, struggling in his hold, when the only person I want to truly escape is my idiotic, vile, despicable self. “I ran. Me. I ran simply because of who your father is—”
“He showed you that video, Lexi! What were you supposed to believe?”
“I could’ve stuck around and fucking asked you to clarify! Instead I begged my mom to take that money, I ran, I condemned you to this, and when Stephen came along and offered me proof of his innocence, I believed him over you!”
That last comment makes him flinch although he tries to hide it.
“Exactly!” I straighten, face-to-face with him, forcing him to look at the real monster in his life. The real reason for every bit of his suffering. “I. Believed. Him. When. I. Couldn’t. Believe. You.” I jab my finger between his pecs with every word, driving my disgusting point home.
And I am. I’m so disgusting. How could I do this to both of us? What the fuck is wrong with me?
Drew jerks his head, as if trying to dispel whatever avalanche of thoughts my words provoke, and suddenly my face is against his chest. I’m taken aback by how much harder his
heart is beating and even through the thick muck of self-loathing coating my cells, one thought breaks through loud and clear.
For me. That heart’s beating for me. It survived for me.
“You need to stop, Lexi. Right now. Because at the end of the day, I just got you fucking back and nothing in the world is going to make me lose you again. Not even yourself.” A hand fists my drying hair, the hold painful, anchoring me to him. “Do you hear me?”
There will be no punishing myself. The urge suffocates me, yet through the agony, one fact remains clear: this man needs me as much as I need him. Neither one of us can ever go back to living without the other.
That leaves only two people walking this planet—because the other two are already dead—that I can aim this vile, throbbing, all-consuming rage at.
Wrapping my arms around Drew, I press my face to his neck.
Some of the tension leaves him, as if my tight hold helps center him, as well.
“Then you’re going to finish telling me,” I murmur into his neck, sniffing back the tears.
“Lexi, n—”
“Andrew, enough. We both deserve to know what fully happened to each other. We deserve to know why Stephen and Kaylee need to fucking die. So start talking. Now.”
The fist in my hair pulls me back, until we’re eye-to-eye, heartbreak-to-heartbreak, our flawed, wounded spirits connecting on a visceral level. “Tell me you can handle telling me what happened to you, too.”
It’s the last thing I want to and it has nothing to do with the fact it feels like my heart can’t take a second more of this. It’s all about him. I’ve hurt him so badly already. How can I be responsible for adding to that pain?
But then again, how can I be a hypocrite, demand his truth to feed the homicidal, inhuman thirst in my gut, and not reciprocate?
Cupping his gorgeous face, with his hard, stubble-coated jaw, I stare into his nearly golden eyes. “I’ll give you anything, Andrew. From now on, anything you want of me is yours. I’m yours. I don’t even know why the fuck you still want me, but anything I have to give belongs to you. I won’t fight you anymore.”
Mortal Siege Page 9