Hard As You Can

by Laura Kaye

  So when Bruno had called after lunchtime and said he’d like to come over after all, there wasn’t really anything she could do but agree.

  How was it possible that conversation had only been a few days before? It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Twisting the hot pads in her hands, Crystal thought back over the week. On the outside, she appeared just the same. Same woman. Same job. Same sorta boyfriend. Same miserable reality. But on the inside, it was like there’d been a flood, and when the waters receded, everything had been reshaped and relocated into a totally different landscape.

  The buzzer on the oven screeched. Crystal flinched from her thoughts and shut it off, then she very carefully removed the glass dish from the wire rack and set it on the stovetop to cool.

  Lasagna was Bruno’s favorite. It was a shame, really, because as much as she liked it, if she ever got away from him, she might never eat it again.

  As the scent of warm cheese, spicy sauce, and garlic bread filled the air of the small apartment, Crystal could reduce every bit of the raging storm that was her life right now to two words: Shane McCallan.

  The man for whom she’d asked the questions.

  The man she’d gone and fallen for. Like an idiot.

  The man she could never, ever have.

  Not that he’d want her after he’d felt the ruined mess that was her back. If he hadn’t thought her a spineless loser before, he surely would now.

  The backs of her eyes stung with regrets and grief, and Crystal let herself wallow in those feelings for exactly one more minute. When the LED on the stove clock flickered from 4:58 to 4:59, she forced herself to box that crap up tight and put it away. For good.

  She needed to be a convincingly adoring girlfriend tonight, in every way Bruno expected. In any way Bruno expected. Which was why she’d worn her skinny jeans and the black shirt she’d made with the deep vee in the front that he liked so much. Tonight was all about pleasing Bruno. Grabbing a Sprite from the fridge, she gulped down a large swallow, washing away the sour bile that crept up the back of her throat when she thought of what that likely meant.

  You can do it, Crystal. You’ve survived worse.

  True. But using that as a benchmark was a helluva way to have to live your life.

  Eight months. The hustle and bustle of New York’s Seventh Avenue popped into her mind’s eye. She’d been there once for a long weekend her freshman year of college, and the dynamism of the city had imprinted itself on her forever. Surely, she and Jenna would be safe in a place so large, so busy, so crowded with people.

  A key sounded against the door handle, then the door opened.

  She pushed the musings away. Showtime.

  Crystal swept out of the kitchen with a big smile on her face. “Hey. You’re here.”

  Bruno smiled and grasped her face in his hands. “Yes, I am, baby. And something smells good,” he said, kissing her roughly and walking her backward into the kitchen.

  Too wet, too much tongue, too much alcohol on his breath, she thought, completely aware she was using a very particular point of comparison in the form of a sexy former soldier with the most charming smile she’d ever seen. But none of that mattered right now, so she threw herself into it and laughed as he backed her into the counter. “Me?” she said, laughing.

  Bruno pulled a piece of cheese from the corner of the dish and popped it into his mouth. “Well, you’re okay, too.”

  She smiled because since he thought that was funny, she had to react like it was. “You hungry now? Because everything’s ready. I can dish it up right away.”

  He stepped back and whipped off his leather jacket, revealing the double holster hidden underneath. “Yeah. Starving,” he said, leaving the kitchen. His coat and guns fell on the couch with a heavy thump. He sat at the small dining table and tapped out a message on his cell phone. Waiting to be served.

  Despite the fact that Crystal’s stomach was seriously flirting with a full-scale rebellion, she plated two servings of lasagna and bread and carried them to the already-set table. “What would you like to drink?” she asked, realizing as she said it she’d slipped into her waitress voice. Which when you thought about it made a lot of sense. She lived to serve.

  Thumbs still moving over his phone, Bruno shrugged. “You know what I like,” he said without looking up.

  She returned to the kitchen and grabbed a can of Natty Boh from the fridge for Bruno and her Sprite. Back at the table, she set the drinks down with a smile and joined Bruno at the only other chair.

  Bruno dove right in, taking big forkfuls despite the fact that the sauce was too hot, causing him to suck in mouthfuls of air and gulp down swallows of beer.

  “Is it good, baby?” Crystal asked, not yet having touched her own.

  He grunted affirmatively and forked in another mound of noodles and sauce. God, he even ate aggressively. How had she never before noticed? With the sounds of Bruno’s eager eating filling the room, Crystal sliced the edge of her fork into the corner of her portion of lasagna and scooped a small bite into her mouth.

  It must’ve been good, because Bruno was absolutely hoovering it down, but it tasted like cardboard in her own mouth.

  “How was your day?” she asked.

  “Um,” he said around a swallow. “Okay. Busy getting ready for tonight. You know how it is.”

  “Yeah. You always have so much on your plate.”

  He sucked a bit of sauce off his thumb. “That’s why I have you. To relax me. Help me blow off steam.”

  Yes, that’s what Crystal was good for. At least as far as Bruno was concerned. She smiled and tucked into another bite, but all she could think about was Shane’s wanting to talk to her, wanting to get to know her. For an instant, she wondered what it would be like to cook dinner for Shane, to have him over to her apartment, to go out on a date with him. Would he hold her hand again? Would he want to hold her again? Would they talk all night or just sit in the quiet peacefulness of one another’s arms?

  “Crystal? Crystal?” Fingers snapped in front of her face. “Where the hell’d you go?”

  “Oh, sorry,” she said as warmth crept into her cheeks.

  “More,” he said, pushing his plate toward her.

  She scurried out of her seat and grabbed the plate. “Of course. Coming right up.” She nearly collapsed against the counter. Get your head in the game, Crystal. With a deep breath, she got Bruno’s seconds and ran them out to him. “Here you go. I’m so glad you like it.”

  He grunted around a bite. God, was he always this much of a cretin?

  Probably. Definitely. Now it was so prominent because she had something—someone—to compare him against.

  Pushing away the thought, Crystal forced herself to eat more than half of her portion of lasagna while he responded to another series of text messages. She didn’t want to do anything to draw Bruno’s attention and make him wonder any more about her behavior.

  “Jenna around tonight?” he asked, wiping his mouth on the paper napkin and throwing it onto his empty plate.

  “Not ’til later,” she said, knowing where this conversation was going. “She’s staying on campus to do some research at the library.” And thank God for that. Because after the way they’d been fighting the past few days, the last thing Crystal wanted was for Jenna to witness her little performance here tonight.

  “Hmm.” Bruno tipped his beer against his lips and took a long pull from the can, eyeing Crystal the whole time.

  “Dessert?” Crystal asked, acting like she didn’t know where his thoughts were going. She rose and reached for their dirty dishes, but Bruno grabbed her wrist and hauled her around the table and in between his spread knees.

  He grabbed her breasts and kneaded. “Definitely dessert.”

  Too rough. Too scary. Too much about him—always. The gentleness and affection of Shane’s touch was maybe her favorite thing about him, which was why Bruno’s groping now felt so hard to bear. “Well,” she said, clearing her throat and trying t
o hide a wince from a particularly hard squeeze. “The nice thing is that you can have your cake and eat it, too.”

  Bruno stopped and his gaze dragged up to her face. “You made cake?”

  Sucker. She smiled. “Yup.”

  “What kind?”

  “Red velvet with cream cheese icing.” Bruno’s eyebrows flew up. The first time she’d ever made him red velvet had been his birthday four years ago, which had only been about two months after he’d pulled her out of that hole in the basement of Confessions. It was the first night she’d let him between her legs, although she’d quickly freaked out when he’d tried to position his weight there. It had taken another month before she could manage sex with him. She cried for an hour afterward. He’d only stuck around for the first ten minutes of it.

  So many things she loved had been ruined by their association with Bruno Ashe.

  But not Jenna. Never Jenna.

  “Yeah, cake,” Bruno said. “Thanks, baby.” He patted her ass and let her go.

  Releasing a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, she cleared the table and took the dirties to the sink. She removed the cover from the cake plate and stared at the creamy swirls of white frosting—then she cut him almost a quarter of the cake.

  She carried the hunk of sugar out to him with a fresh can of beer and sat opposite as he devoured it.

  Why aren’t you having any?” he asked around a too-big bite.

  “I made it for you. Besides, I have to watch my figure, you know?”

  “Yeah, I guess you do.” His gaze dragged over Crystal’s breasts, and it made her want to shrink into herself.

  As his slice of cake got smaller and smaller, her heart raced and her stomach knotted. It was like facing a trip to the gallows. She knew what was about to happen was inevitable, but that didn’t keep her soul from howling in protest.

  And then his forked clanked against the empty plate.

  “More?” she asked brightly.

  He licked his lips and shook his head. “No. I had enough cake. Now I want dessert.” Bruno lifted his hands, urging her to come to him.

  For a moment, her muscles refused to respond. But then her survival instinct kicked in, and she got her butt out of the chair and rounded the table to stand at Bruno’s knees. He helped her straddle his lap and pulled her down as far as her snug jeans and his thick thighs allowed. He fisted his hands in her hair and slowly pulled her mouth to his.

  And then his lips smothered hers, and his tongue penetrated her mouth. Crystal was drowning in the sweetness on his breath until she felt like she was suffocating. Bruno grew hard between her legs and slid down in the chair to force them more tightly together. He gripped her hips, hard, and ground her down against the ridge of his erection, unleashing a grunt into their kiss.

  Crystal’s throat went tight and her eyes stung, but she responded the way she always did, the way he expected. She kissed back. She moaned. She writhed. But everything within her revolted against his touch and his taste and his scent. Her skin crawled, her mouth soured, her nose recoiled. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get out of her own head. Usually, she could tolerate, she could compartmentalize, she could rationalize. It won’t last long. It’s not that big of a deal. You’ve done it before. Once, you wanted him.

  Now, none of those worked. None of those appeased. None of those made her feel any less like she was back in that basement room of Confessions, watching a total stranger undo his belt and leer at her like she was his for the taking whether she wanted him or not. She had been then. She was now.

  “Get up, baby. I don’t have a lot of time,” Bruno said, pushing her off his lap. “And I gotta get inside you. It’s been too long.”

  Crystal found her feet, though her knees felt soft, like they couldn’t possibly hold her weight. The walls seemed to spin around her.

  Bruno grabbed her, kissed her, pulled at her clothing. Her shirt went up, her bra got tugged down. His hands were everywhere, big and hot and harsh. He opened the button on her jeans. Then the zipper. He shoved the denim down over her hips. It chafed at her skin.

  “Turn around and brace yourself,” Bruno said in a ragged voice.

  And that was when Crystal got out of her head. Out of her body, actually. She had the weirdest sensation of floating, and then somehow she was on the other side of the room. Or, at least, it seemed that way, because instead of seeing the dull white of the plaster wall in front of her face, she saw a couple about to have sex up against a wall, as if she’d become a casual observer not involved in what was going on. The woman’s bottom and thighs were bared, as well as her lower back, showing just the tail ends of her scars.

  The man shoved down his own jeans, baring the heavy, corded muscles of his glutes and thighs. He reached a hand in between them and grunted in frustration. She was too tense, too closed. He yanked her hips farther away from the wall. Another moment of attempted consummation. More frustration. Because her body wasn’t responding. Refused to respond. He smacked her ass hard enough to leave a red handprint against the fair skin.

  “Damnit, what the hell’s wrong?” Spitting into his hand, he reached between them again.

  Keys rattled at the door.

  Crystal-the-observer slowly turned her gaze away from the couple, who hadn’t yet heard the sound, and watched the door ease open.

  Bruno gasped. “What the fuck?” He jerked his pants back around his waist. “Jesus, Jenna, what are you doing here?”

  Crystal boomeranged back into her body. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. It was damn close to every nightmare she’d ever had converging into a real moment in time.

  Jenna’s expression was total abject horror—brow furrowed, mouth agape, cheeks flushing with anger. “I live here. What are you doing here?” Her eyes were like blue fire as they whipped between his open fly and Crystal’s disheveled clothing.

  Oh, God, Jenna, stop. Crystal pulled her jeans up but couldn’t get her fingers to master rebuttoning them. “Sorry, Jen. We just got carried away, didn’t we, Bruno?” She smiled up at him, trying to distract him from what Jenna had just said, and the tone with which she’d said it. “Can I get a rain check?” she asked, wrapping her arms around his neck.

  His eyes unnarrowed, just the littlest bit. “Yeah, yeah, tomorrow. Or maybe Friday. I gotta see,” he said, his voice just a few degrees above frigid. “Wrap that food up for me.”

  “Uh, yes, sure. Of course.”

  Jenna glared at Crystal as she crossed the room, and Crystal threw her a look pleading for her to rein in her anger for just a few minutes. Once Bruno left, Jenna could dump as much of it on her as she wanted.

  Crystal’s hands were a jittery mess as she grabbed plastic bowls and matching lids from a cupboard and hefted big slabs of lasagna into one container and thick wedges of cake into another. She pulled a handled brown bag from under the sink and packaged everything up for Bruno.

  “What’s your problem?” came Bruno’s voice from the living room.

  Crystal’s stomach plummeted to the ground. For a long moment, there was silence. Crystal returned to the living room, still death-gripping her hope that things wouldn’t get worse. “Here you go,” she said, as he finished donning his jacket.

  “You wanna know what my problem is?” Jenna asked.

  All the blood rushed from Crystal’s face. She felt it, because the room started spinning again, and she perceived sound like it had traveled through a long tunnel. “That’s enough, Jenna,” she said as harshly as she could.

  Bruno wrenched the bag from Crystal’s hands and stalked toward her sister. He grabbed her jaw. “Yeah, I’d say that’s more than edamnnough, Jenna. Learn not to bite the hand that feeds you,” he said, shoving her away. She stumbled back a step, and he pushed by her, yanked open the door, and slammed it shut behind himself.

  Pale and shaking, Jenna gaped at Crystal for a long minute, then she slipped the security chain across the door. “You want to explain what that was all about, Sara? Why I just got
accosted in my own home?”

  Crystal grappled to respond, but whatever force had been holding her upright for the past fifteen minutes stopped working at that very instant.

  The room went wavy, her skin grew clammy, and her knees buckled. Crystal’s body went into a free fall.

  The tenor of Jenna’s words changed. From anger to panic. “Sara!” Jenna rushed to Crystal’s side, to where she’d fallen in a heap in front of the couch.

  Crystal curled into a ball and hugged herself as hard as she could.

  “Sara? Sara, please,” Jenna said, stroking her hair and her face and her arm. “Tell me what to do.” More stroking, and Crystal became conscious that Jenna’s fingers were wet from where they’d wiped at her cheeks. Someone was making the most mournful sounds, long, low wails of grief and loss. “Sara? Did he . . . did he rape you?”

  No, he didn’t rape me, she thought, shaking her head against Jenna’s thigh. The one bright spot in this whole mess. Her body had locked up so completely that he hadn’t been able to penetrate her. Though, had Jenna not come home when she did, Crystal knew Bruno wouldn’t have been deterred much longer. It hadn’t always stopped him in the past.

  “I’m gonna call nine-one-one, sweetie. I’ll be right back,” Jenna said, stroking her hair again.

  “No!” Crystal said, twisting to grip Jenna’s wrist before she rose. “No, don’t. I’m okay.” Her voice sounded warped, strained.

  “You’re not okay,” Jenna said, a deep frown on her face. Though it was one of fear and concern, not anger.

  Crystal shook her head. “He didn’t rape me. He didn’t hurt me. I promise,” she rasped.

  Jenna eased back to the floor. “You didn’t look okay. When I came in . . . God. Sara, you looked like you were three seconds from a panic attack.”

  “I know,” Crystal said, hiccuping. “I know.” She pushed onto her hands, but the sudden movement left her dizzy.

  “Don’t rush,” Jenna said. “Just lie here with me for a little bit.” When Crystal laid her head in Jenna’s lap again, Jenna rubbed her back. “You’re the one usually taking care of me,” she said.