by Abbie Roads
“I’m Marissa Main”—impatience permeated her tone—“lead investigator for Sunny County Children’s Services. I’ll be supervising your visit today.”
“I’m being investigated?” Confusion dominated Mr. Goodspeed’s tone.
“Allegations of abuse have been made. Right now, that’s all we have—allegations. It is my job to investigate those claims. Today’s supervised visit is one way of working toward that goal. By seeing how you interact with your son, by seeing how your son reacts to you—”
“My ex is stuffing his head full of shit.” Mr. Goodspeed stood and moved toward Marissa with the loose-limbed walk of a farm boy used to strolling through his fields. He towered over the investigator, but the way his shoulders hunched forward and his head hung on his neck lent him the defeated, saddened look of someone used to being a victim.
No way. No way would Isleen ever let herself look like that. Pitiful.
“Ever since the divorce, my ex has made my life miserable. It’s been one thing after another.” The look he gave Marissa overflowed with intensity. “I bet she told you that I drugged her for sex. That I hit her. That I locked her and Rory out of the house during a snowstorm. That I punish Rory by busting his ass with a belt. Oh, and her favorite claim is that I get off on touching him.”
Marissa nodded her head at each of the ugly statements, but wore the best poker face. “Those are serious claims.”
“Rory is four years old. He’ll say whatever his mother tells him to say. This isn’t the first time she’s said I hurt Rory. Every few months she concocts a new story. Always right after I’ve had him for the weekend. I’m sure you have a record. If you look closely, none of this started until she left me. Doesn’t that tell you something? She’s trying to take him away from me. And why aren’t you concerned with her filling his head with lies about me? I want you to open an investigation on her. Fathers have rights too.”
Marissa quieted. Isleen could practically see the wheels in her mind turning, processing Mr. Goodspeed’s words. Score one for him.
Finally, she spoke. “This isn’t about anyone’s rights other than Rory’s. We will still need to investigate, but I assure you our policy is reunification. We want you to be with your child. We’re not against you in any way. We just have to see that being with you is a safe environment for him. That’s all.”
Mr. Goodspeed nodded his head. “I get that. So when he gets here, I want a moment alone with him to explain everything that’s happening. He’s a kid. He’s got to be confused. I can help him understand.”
Marissa cocked her head slightly to the side, her eyes squinting. The look either conveyed confusion or suspicion. Maybe both. “No. You are not allowed to be alone with him or to speak with him alone.”
“He’s my son.”
“You are not allowed to be alone with him or to speak to him alone.”
Mr. Goodspeed straightened from his hunched, victim-like posture. His face changed from concerned, conciliatory father to hard-edged, barely restrained rage. This guy had the Jekyll and Hyde thing down.
“You will not prevent me from being with my son.” His voice, so mild mannered before, boomed in the enclosed space.
Marissa’s impassive expression faltered, and she stepped back from the palpable menace emanating from the man. “Mr. Goodspeed…” Her voice trailed off when the door opened.
Isleen’s head turned again. A petite woman entered, carrying a small, carrot-haired boy. The boy clung to his mother’s body, arms locked around her neck, legs pinioned around her waist. Something about how he held on was sweet and sad at the same time.
Isleen’s head swung back to Mr. Goodspeed so fast her eyeballs almost couldn’t keep up.
The expression on Mr. Goodspeed’s face was purely human—no animal could ever show so much hate and anger. “I told you what would happen, Molly. I told you. So this…this is all your fault.”
“William, you’re scaring Rory.” The woman tightened her arms around her child and began backing away.
Isleen’s attention locked on Marissa. Her cool demeanor had slipped completely away, leaving wild fear rolling in her eyes. “Mr. Goodspeed, if you—”
Kkkrrr. A gunshot. The blast shot the rest of Marissa’s words—and her jaw—off her face.
Right after the blast, when the sound of it was only a ringing in her head, Isleen knew she was about to watch Mr. Goodspeed murder them all.
“No!” Isleen screamed, the sound echoing around inside the rind of her body, never entering the world. She fought the prison of her flesh, clawed at the confines of her skin. Tried to break free, to stop what was about to happen. Mr. Goodspeed aimed the gun at his wife, at his precious child. The monster at her controls had a moment of mercy and allowed her to close her eyes. But Isleen heard everything; the frantic screams of mother and son, the two shots used to take down wife and child, the slap and splash of blood dripping on the floor—just before the final suicide shot.
Chapter 9
Xander paced the length of his porch, his bare feet padding across the wood, the sound pleasantly mixing with the chorus of nighttime noises rocking out on the hillside. But still turmoil roiled inside him. As much as he hated to admit it to himself, he was worried about Isleen. Worried about her health, her sanity, and—after finding that cross on her forehead—her safety. The thing that worried him the most was the simple fact that he cared at all. She shouldn’t dominate his mind. Was Matt right? Did the women in her family possess some strange power to enchant the men in his?
A rhythmic sound invaded. He paused in his pacing, trying to place the origin. It was the crunch of gravel under feet. Someone was jogging up the driveway toward his place. He leaped off the porch, oblivious to his bare feet, and raced toward the sound.
His eyes weren’t as sharp as his ears, but he knew—fucking knew—the figure that emerged from the curve was Isleen. She sucked and wheezed rapid breaths. Her heart beat a frantic duh-dum, duh-dum tempo. Her gait was all wrong—sloppy and disjointed, arms flailing almost as if she were swimming instead of running. With the way she’d acted earlier toward him, something had to be terribly wrong for her to seek him out.
Adrenaline bucked through his system, charging his muscles, readying him for a fight. He scanned the lane behind her, expecting to see someone pursuing her. Nothing. He listened for the sounds of a chase. Nothing.
He sprinted toward her. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
She didn’t answer, didn’t look at him, just continued on, ignoring him as effectively as if he were invisible. For only a fraction of a second, pissed-off-ness nearly got the best of him. Then he realized she was all lights-on-but-nobody-home. Again. “Shit.” He chased after her, nabbing her by the arm. Her body swung around to face him, her forehead thunking against his sternum. The sound—an unnatural wonk of bone hitting bone separated by thick skin—reverberated through his chest. His arms trapped her close to him. “Goddamn it.” The last thing she needed was a head injury caused by him. “I didn’t mean to…”
He lost what he was going to say in the sensation of holding her. She was so petite, barely tall enough to reach his pecs, and yet she fit every angle and curve of him as if they were two pieces finally fit back together to make one. He held her until her heart shifted out of warp drive, then stepped back from her.
Moonlight silvered her skin, giving her a luminescent glow, but her face was completely devoid of expression. Her gaze fixed forward, locked on an intangible spot in the air between them. He’d seen this look at the hospital right before she spouted off about a murder she could not have known about. And yet, did know all about.
“Isleen. Snap out of it.” His voice went deeper, carrying a strength beyond what it normally possessed. He shook her hard, one rough jerk that slung her head around her shoulders. “Wake up. Now.” Wake up? Where’d that come from? Did he honestly think she was sleeping? On
e moment she was lost, and the next, clarity and lucidity slammed into her features.
“Xander,” she cried and flung herself against him, clawing at the back of his shirt with her hands and pressing herself so tight against him that it felt like she was trying to hide inside his skin.
“It was horrible. He killed her. He killed them all, and there was nothing I could do.” Her words were run-on sounds, coming out so fast he could barely understand them. “I tried and tried, and all I could do was stand there and listen. I felt their blood… I felt their blood on my face, and I—”
“Shhh—take a breath.” He waited while she sucked in air, then let it go. “I’ve got you. You’re safe with me.” He kept talking, saying nonsensical soothing things to her, rubbing his hands up and down her back, feeling each ripple and ridge of her rib cage and spine. When she calmed, he tried to pull back from her, but she clung to him like burr.
“Don’t let me go. I think I might shatter if you do.”
A precursor to a smile twitched the corner of his mouth. “I won’t let you go.” He meant it.
“Xander?” When she spoke, he felt the heat of her breath against his chest.
“Yeah, baby?”
“How’d I get here?”
He wanted to be surprised by her question, but he wasn’t. This was exactly like in the hospital. “You ran.”
“I mean, just a minute ago it was daytime and I was at Sunny County Children’s Services and—” Isleen kept talking, and Xander kept listening to the fucking horror she was spouting about Mr. Goodspeed and murder. She had to be talking about a nightmare.
“You weren’t there. It wasn’t real. You were at the main house where I left you. Only two hours have passed. Not a day. It was a bad dream, and I think you were sleepwalking. Dad will know for sure. That’s his job. He researches that kind of shit.”
The relaxed, intimate way she clung to him vanished. She threw herself out of his embrace. Instinct had him stepping toward her to put her where she belonged. With him. Every step he took forward was one she took backward. He forced his body to stillness and his hands to fall to his sides. The heat of rejection ignited in his gut.
“I forgot. I forgot. I’m sorry.” Her voice was a complete apology.
“Forgot what? Sorry about what? What are you talking about?” He tucked his hands under his arms to keep the traitors from reaching for her. She didn’t want him touching her, so he’d abide by her rules. After what she’d endured, he needed to give her control whether it made sense to him or not. The best he could do was try to understand her feelings.
A pressured grunt escaped her mouth, and she slapped her palms on either side of her head as if she were trying to keep her brain from bursting out her ears. He was in front of her, his hands over the top of hers, before he even told his body to react. Where their skin touched, he went cool and began to sting—only sting wasn’t the right word. The sensation was a cross between a sting and an itch and something surprisingly pleasant, something similar to what he’d felt when she accidentally touched his scar in the hospital. He closed his eyes, feeling the sensation move up his arms, across his shoulders, and down his torso. A shiver rippled through him. What was going on? Whatever it was, he liked it and so did she.
She stilled, simply standing beneath his hands, and moaned a sound not of pain, but of pleasure. The type of sound he could imagine her making as he pushed himself into her—
Whoa. Where did that thought come from?
“Why are you so hard to resist?” She spoke in a sexy groan that went straight to his dick.
“Why resist?” What? Was he flirting now?
“You know why.” Her voice went sleepy sensual, and she moved the few inches into his body, leaning against him and trusting him to support her. “I’m so tired all of a sudden.”
“No, I don’t know why.” He held his breath and spoke through his clenched molars. “Is it the scars?” He’d never cared what anyone thought of his face until her.
“Scars? No, silly. They are beautiful. I’ve loved them since my first dream of them.” She yawned, and he felt more of her body weight leaning against his. He removed one hand from her head and wrapped it around her waist to support her in case she full-on zonked out. “I just wish… Oh, Xander, I wish you weren’t…”
An asshole. Your father’s son. Ugly. A piece of shit.
“…my uncle.”
“What?” The word exploded out of his mouth, loud as a cherry bomb in the dead of night. He ripped his other hand from her head, severing the sensation that felt so wondrous.
She nodded against his chest and wrapped both her arms around his waist. “I’m so tired. I could fall asleep…just…like…this.”
He pried her off his chest to look her in the eyes. Her lids were at half-mast, her eyeballs floating upward, not quite focused. “Wait, wait, wait. You think I’m your uncle?”
“We’re family. Gran and your dad are married.”
The simplicity—the stupidity—of her assumption shocked him. His mind rewound to their conversation in the hospital. Fucking damn. It was right after she found out about Gale and his dad that she pulled away from him and started acting weird. No wonder. She’d thought he was her uncle. Thank Christ that could be straightened out. He’d been on the verge of going into full-on creepy-stalker mode, sneaking around just to check on her.
“I’m not Gale’s son. My mom died after I was born. Dad and Gale got together sometime before I turned a year old. I think your mom was eleven or twelve when they got together. That was why all of a sudden you didn’t want to have anything to do with me?”
She yawned. “I think I need to lie down.” Her lids fell, and she melted against him.
“Why are you so sleepy?” Even as he asked, he understood. It was the same as in the hospital. There was a pattern to this. A pattern only his father—the world’s most renowned dream researcher—would be able to explain.
* * *
Isleen floated in that sweet spot between reality and waking. The only thing penetrating her sleepy haze was the scent of warm graham crackers and autumn leaves. It was a scent she was familiar with, one she loved. It was the scent of all her favorite memories. It was the scent of Xander.
A predawn haze of gray lit the room, touching everything with its soft color. Her head was pillowed on his shoulder, her face pressed against his neck, her body encased in the security of his arms, and he had one of his legs tossed over her thighs. Not since she was a little girl—too naive to know pain existed in the world—had she felt this absolutely safe.
Something strange seemed to happen whenever she was near him. The sheer power of his presence salved the wounds of her past and shaped her into the strong and capable woman she was meant to be. The real her. The person she would’ve been if she hadn’t endured so much horror. The person she’d only had a chance to be in her nightly dreams of Xander. And weren’t those dreams doozies?
Memories of him from her dreams flooded her mind, heating her body. Their nightly escapades had always been vivid and oh, so intimate. Her female parts wanted to nestle and squirm in closer to him, to satisfy the longing building from the mere memories of dreams, but she was already as close as she could get with her clothes on. Just what would happen if her clothes were off? Didn’t that bring to mind explicit, triple-X-rated thoughts?
From her dreams, she knew what lay underneath his clothes, knew he was spectacular. Everywhere. And the hard length of him moving inside her, filling her so deliciously… It was a miracle that a body could feel so wanting and wonderful at the same time.
Her awareness of just how they were lying in the bed—groin to groin—gave her another flash of heat. Or was that longing? She could feel him through his pants, resting against her needy bundle of nerves. Her attention narrowed more and more until the only thing she could think about, the only thing she could feel was him rig
ht there, right where she wanted him.
She tried to hold still, not to move, not to disturb what was already the best moment of her waking life, but her body had other intentions. Excruciatingly slow, so she didn’t wake him, she rocked her hips forward and back, rubbing against him. Instead of offering any satisfaction, need blazed brighter. If she didn’t stop, she’d end up dry humping him in his sleep.
But then he pressed his hips forward, grinding into her. She gasped, nearly choking on air. What she’d thought had been pleasure went into pure bliss. Her dreams had always seemed so real, but they were old-timey black-and-white while this was vivid Technicolor, 3-D, HD, and surround sound all in one. His hand found its way underneath the back of her shirt, traveling up her side until it was just a whisper away from her breast. Breathing was too much of a distraction, so she didn’t do it, all her attention focused on him and his hand.
He stopped.
“Don’t. Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.” She wasn’t ashamed to be begging. Not for this. Being with Xander was compensation—no it was a reward—for everything she’d endured. He was her rainbow after the destructive tornado that had been her life. Being with him would be a weapon against her past. It would be something she chose. Something she wanted.
“Isleen…” Her name was a languid caress of vowels and consonants, but underneath the sound there was something… Hesitation? Reluctance?
“Why did you stop?” Part of her wanted to pull away from him, to see the look on his face as he answered her question, but she was too much of a coward. If this was all she’d ever have of him, she was going to soak it up and store it in her mind.
“Baby, we just met.”
“I’ve known you for years.” As crazy as it made her sound, she couldn’t not say the thoughts in her mind. “I dreamed about you.” She whispered the words against his neck, still not moving away from him.
“Is that how you knew my name?”
“Yes.”
“Were they good dreams?”