He gave a harsh laugh, trying to ignore the feel of her hand because it was a pleasure he sure as hell didn’t deserve. “How do you know I didn’t have intent? I was glad he died. And I was even glad I was the one who’d taken him out.” The night outside pressed in on him, like the darkness inside him pressing against the clean, smooth shell of the man he’d been pretending to be for so long he’d forgotten it wasn’t actually him.
Her fault. She makes you remember.
With her hands and her mouth, and the tight, wet heat of her pussy around him. She made him into the man he thought he’d left behind. The passionate, angry teenager, who’d lost his head, given in to rage. Desperate for something he didn’t have a name for from the man who was supposed to have given him more than just pain.
Connor smiled and the reflection in the window in front of him showed him it wasn’t a pleasant one. No, he’d left that furious, needy boy behind. And if he kept believing hard enough, that perfect shell would become part of him and there would be no division whatsoever.
“Of course you were glad he was dead,” Victoria said fiercely. “He hurt you and he hurt your mother. That doesn’t make you a murderer, you should know that.”
“And yet a man is still dead. And I’m still glad.”
“You want to punish yourself? Is that what this is all about?”
“You can’t escape justice, Victoria. Or at least, you shouldn’t be able to.”
“Connor—”
“What?” He turned around and tried to tell himself he didn’t regret the loss of warmth as her hand slipped from between his shoulder blades. “You have your explanation. What more do you want?”
There was a crease between her brows and the look in her eyes was something he didn’t want to name because he thought if he did, the shell would crack. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“Why do you think? Did you really want to know your perfect husband killed someone once?” She opened her mouth to reply, but he kept going. “Besides, you’re a fine one to talk. Why should I tell you about my father when you never breathed a word to me about the daughter you put up for adoption?”
Her jaw went tight, her arms now folded across her breasts. The hem of his shirt only barely covered the soft curls of her sex and if she moved, he’d be able to see, he was sure of it. Sick fuck that he was, to be thinking of that now.
Abruptly she looked away from him and only now did he see how the color had leeched from her skin. “Well,” she said. “I guess neither of us is perfect after all. What a terrible shock.”
He could feel something on the other side of the barrier he’d erected between himself and the kid he’d been. Something hungry and desperate pressing against it, clawing to get through. Wanting something from her like he’d wanted something from his father. Something he’d never gotten.
It made cold crawl through his veins.
Perhaps it was time he stopped indulging himself, at least for tonight. He had defenses to shore up, a wall to rebuild.
“Good thing I’ll be signing the divorce papers at the end of this week then.” His voice was icy. “Perhaps it’s time you left, Victoria. I really think it would be for the best.”
Her head turned, her gaze coming to his. “I thought neither of us would be running away tonight?”
“Oh and you’re happy to spend it with someone like me?”
“What do you mean someone like you?”
The hungry thing battered against the wall, pushing, wanting out. “A killer.”
“Why do you keep saying that? What do you expect me to do? Run screaming from the room?”
“Don’t you think that’s the wisest course of action?”
“I’m not afraid of you, Connor. I never have been.”
“Why not?” he demanded, suddenly needing to know. “Because you should be. You should be fucking terrified.”
And something in her face changed, an intensity of focus. “In case you lose your head and kill me too?”
“Jesus Christ, this is not a joke, Victoria.”
“Do you see me laughing?” The look in her eyes pierced him. “From the moment I asked you to sign those papers, you’ve been angry. In fact you’ve been furious this whole week. And not once, not for one single second, have I ever been afraid of you or your anger.” The certainty in her voice made that hungry desperate thing tremble. Made it yearn. It wanted her certainty. It wanted to believe it.
But no. What kind of man had no regrets about killing his father?
“What about you?” he said in a graceless change of subject. “I still don’t know what happened with you.”
She blinked then waved a hand. “I slept with a boy at a school dance. I lost my virginity and then had the bad luck to fall pregnant. He didn’t want anything to do with me and my parents thought it would be best if I gave up the baby. They were right. So I did. What more do you want to know?”
It felt much safer not to have the focus on him, allowed him to beat back that hungry emotion, not let it get the upper hand.
“So it was as easy as that, was it?” He knew it hadn’t been—she wouldn’t have kept it from him all these years if it had. But the way she’d said it…as if it had happened to someone else.
She flushed. “No, of course it wasn’t. But I had no choice.”
“We always have choice, Victoria.”
Something sparked in her eyes and he knew what it was because he was better at reading her now. Pain. “In that case I made the best choice for Jessica. The father didn’t want either her or me, and I was only sixteen. My parents worked two jobs each to pay for my schooling and they’d sacrificed so much. I couldn’t support her by myself and I couldn’t ask my parents to help either, not after what they’d already done for me. Giving her to a family who could afford to bring her up was the best choice.”
She never spoke about her family in the same way he’d never spoken about his. He’d only met her parents once, when they’d gotten married, but not since. They didn’t have much to say, a quiet reserved couple who’d nevertheless seemed very pleasant. His ideal kind of parents in many ways, which had only cemented his opinion he’d made the right choice in marrying Victoria.
But for all that, she didn’t speak of them and she didn’t ask them to visit. From time to time she’d go down south to Wellington where they lived to visit them, but that was all.
He’d never bothered to ask why they never came here. Perhaps there was a reason. And that pain in her eyes had something to do with it.
“It might have been the best choice,” he said quietly. “But was it your choice?”
Another flicker in her eyes. “Yes, of course it was my choice. I wanted what was best for her.”
“Then why do you look like you’re in pain?”
Her chin lifted. “I’m not.”
“And yet you won’t contact her.”
“No. I told you, she didn’t leave any details. If she’d wanted contact she would have said. Now can we leave the subject?”
“That’s an excuse, Victoria. And you know it.”
The pain in her eyes flared, changed. Became hot. Turning into anger. She took a couple of steps forward suddenly, closing the distance between them a little. “So, what? You have no excuses for your behavior? Your whole career is a crusade, Connor. And I used to think it was merely because you were passionate about the law. But it’s not, is it? You’re trying to atone. You’re looking for people to punish because you never were.”
Of course she was right. And he knew that. He’d always known it. “What’s your point?”
“My point is that’s an excuse as much as mine is. You hide behind your crusade, your reputation. Your whole, perfect, respectable life. And the fact is you’re still hiding now.” She took another step toward him. “You think I don’t see the anger in your eyes? You try to pretend it isn’t ther
e, but it is. And it’s been there for years.” One more step, until she was only inches away, all dark-eyed heat and vibrant life. “Why are you so angry, Connor? Why are you still so angry with your father?”
It had all suddenly made sense as he’d confessed what he’d done. Telling her about his father and the violence he’d endured at the man’s hands. It had been when he’d told her about his mother, about his father standing over her, the searing blue flame of rage burning so brightly in his eyes she would have been blind not to see it.
But there was something else behind that anger. Something he’d tried to mask, yet she’d seen it anyway. Anguish and a complex kind of betrayal. And no wonder. A father was supposed to love and protect his family not hurt them.
Connor was still shirtless, his broad chest rising and falling fast and hard. The tension in him was obvious in the flex and release of all those impressive muscles, though he didn’t move an inch.
She could sense all that rage behind those cold eyes, locked away like he locked all the rest of his emotions away. Before she’d seen him in court, she’d used to think he didn’t have any, that he was as passionless as she’d wanted to be. But of course he wasn’t. He had emotions like everyone else. He just hid them better, like he hid his terrible secret.
Well, she didn’t want him hiding them anymore. It was bad enough him seeing through her own paltry excuses when it came to Jessica. Seeing the guilt she thought she’d hidden so well herself. And beyond that, the fear she didn’t let herself think about.
No, she wasn’t going to be the only one with all her insides out on display. It was his turn now.
“What makes you think it’s got anything to do with him?” His words were careful, measured. And yet the look on his face was not.
“I saw the way you looked when you told me about him. What didn’t he do, Connor? What didn’t he give you that you wanted?”
Bright blue flared in his eyes. “Nothing.” He virtually spat the word. “I wanted nothing from that fucker!”
But she knew that anger. And she knew the deeper, more complicated emotion behind it because it was the same thing she’d wanted from her own parents. The thing they wouldn’t give her without conditions. Because nothing she did was worth the sacrifices they’d made for her and she wasn’t enough on her own.
“Yes, you did. You wanted him to love you.” She raised a hand to his face because she couldn’t help herself.
Only to have his fingers lock around her wrist. “Don’t touch me,” he said roughly.
She ignored him. “But he didn’t, did he? He didn’t do what a father was supposed to do. And that’s why you’re angry. That’s what’s eating you up inside. Why did he do those things to you? What was wrong with you that made him hate you so much?”
His fingers tightened impossibly, making the bones of her wrist ache. But she didn’t flinch, only stared into his face.
“No,” he said in a voice like sand and gravel. “The problem wasn’t that he hated me, Victoria. The problem was that he loved me.”
She blinked, not understanding.
“That was love,” Connor went on in his rough, grinding, menacing voice. “That was how he showed it. He hurt me because he loved me, that’s what he told me every single day. And he wanted me to be hard because he wanted me to take over his goddamned fucking business!” His fingers tightened even more, making her gasp. “I used to wonder, what the hell I did to make him love me so very much. And it wasn’t until I was standing over him, laying my fists into him that I knew what it was.” He was breathing faster, a stain of red on each high cheekbone, his eyes glittering. “There was something of him in me, Victoria. That’s what he saw. He saw himself. And that’s why he loved me.”
There was so much rage in his face. Yet it wasn’t that which made her ache but what lay behind it. A kind of bleak acceptance. As if he believed it himself.
“No,” she said forcefully, ignoring the tight grip on her wrist. “That’s bullshit, Connor Blake.”
“It’s not bullshit! I beat him into unconsciousness. And I fucking loved it. I was glad when he died. And I’d do it again if the opportunity provided itself. That’s my father, Victoria. Violence and anger. That’s all he was and that’s all I was too.”
She understood it now, his earlier insistence she should be afraid of him. Because he did believe it. And he was afraid too.
“No,” she repeated, stepping right up to him so his furious gaze inches from her own. Putting all the conviction she had into her voice. The fear in his eyes, the acceptance. It wasn’t right. He wasn’t that man and he never would be. “What you were was an eighteen-year-old-boy fighting for your mother’s life. You saved her for God’s sake. Because you know how those cases go, Connor, you know. You’ve seen them in your own damn courtroom. There’s the restraining order that never works, the promises he’ll change and never touch her again. And then one day she’s dead because those kinds of bastards don’t change, no matter what they say.”
He stared at her, breathing hard. Fast. “But there’s always a choice, don’t you see? I could have stopped. And I didn’t.”
His grip was like iron on her wrist, but she didn’t care. “You had no choice,” she insisted fiercely, willing him to believe it. “You were fighting a war. And in war there are casualties. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Remember? That’s not a reminder for you to live by, that should be your father’s bloody epitaph!”
He let her go, dropping her wrist as if she’d burned him. “What the hell would you know about war? About violence? About fucking choice?”
Her wrist ached but she let her arm hang down, made no move to soothe it. “I don’t know anything about war or violence. But I know what it’s like to have a choice in front of you, believe me. And I know how hard it is to make it. That’s why your father died. Because you didn’t have time to make one. It was survival, that’s all it was.”
“So you think I’m some kind of glorified…soldier?” There was a savage expression on his face now. “That I did something noble by taking him out?”
But she wasn’t having any of that. “Weren’t you? Isn’t the world a better place now he’s not in it?”
“It was a life, Victoria. A fucking life. It doesn’t matter whether the world is better or not.”
“Yes, and I’m sure your mother would agree.” The words fell into a crashing silence. It was a low blow, but she wasn’t sorry. She had to get him to listen somehow.
The savagery in his expression flared. “Stop it!” His voice was guttural, raw. “Stop making this okay. Stop pushing me. Don’t you understand? I’ve spent the last twenty years keeping myself under control, making sure I never lose it like I lost it with Dad. And I was damn well succeeding until you turned up wanting those fucking papers signed!”
Shock wound through her. “What do you mean?”
“I always wanted you. Right from the moment I first saw you at the law school ball. You were so cool and contained, and I wanted a piece of that. I wanted to know how you managed it.” And this time it was he who took a step forward, the heat coming off him like the sun at midday. “I learned from you, Victoria. How to keep it all locked down. How not to want. And you made it so fucking easy because you never wanted anything from me. You never seemed to want anything at all. Until that letter came and I saw what you’d been hiding.”
She couldn’t look away from him, all the danger and heat in his face. Mesmerizing. He was looking at her the way he had when she’d greeted him that evening. Like she was a drug and he was an addict desperate for a fix.
“I wasn’t hiding anything,” she said hoarsely, not knowing whether to turn and run or stand her ground.
“Yes you were. You were hiding so much passion. I could see it in your face. It made me so fucking angry because that’s not who you were supposed to be. So I let you go when you wanted to leave. And then yo
u had to come back with those damn papers and I knew, I just fucking knew, that I would never, ever be free of wanting you, never be free of that anger, unless I accepted it. Unless I had you for one last week, indulging every single one of my fantasies. And then I could be done with it. Only then could I be the man I always wanted to be.”
She felt herself begin to shake. Because this was a part of her fantasies too, late at night, alone in her bed with her husband just down the hall. She’d dream of him telling her these exact words: I always wanted you.
But in one fell swoop he’d negated it. He’d negated her.
That’s not who you were supposed to be.
Hurt and anger rose up inside her like a fire, searing her. Perhaps it was true. Or perhaps he was only looking to hurt her for the way she’d pushed him. Regardless of the reasons, that didn’t stop her from lifting her sore hand and slapping him hard across the face in a blow which echoed around the room.
The following silence was even more deafening.
She’d never hit anyone in her entire life and part of her, the part that wasn’t shaking with hurt and rage, couldn’t believe she’d done it now.
The color had drained from his face, leaving only the red mark of her hand on his skin. And the impossible gas-flame blue of his eyes, burning with such ferocity she thought she’d catch fire right then and there.
The power of that look made her even angrier. She held it, her palm stinging, her heart thundering. “So all of this is my fault?” she demanded hoarsely. “I’m the problem? Because I wasn’t who you wanted me to be?”
There was an aura of leashed violence all around him, of menace. He closed the distance between them, staring at her like he expected her to back away. But to hell with that. She wasn’t going anywhere.
“No,” he said roughly, now only bare inches from her, the pressure of his emotions like a physical force. “I wanted reserved and contained. That’s why I married you. But you weren’t either of those things up in the bar that night. With Raphael. You were so fucking sexy and you did everything I wanted. And you just made it worse.” He reached for her, his arm like a steel bar around her waist, bringing her up against him. So suddenly she had to put her hands out, palms against his chest to steady herself. “This is not who I am, Victoria. This is not who I want to be. Angry and out of control and wanting you all the fucking time. But I can’t seem to be anything else when I’m around you and yes, it’s your fault.”
Living in Secret: Living In..., Book 3 Page 15