Third Strike

by Zoe Sharp

  “I’ll go back to New York, see if I can help Parker untangle things at that end.” He sounded matter-of-fact, as though he had nothing to gain or lose by the action.

  For a moment I couldn’t react, couldn’t break the paralysis his announcement caused. When he could bear my shocked gaze no longer, Sean lifted himself abruptly away from the wall and moved further into the room, almost restless as he pulled off his tie.

  I found my voice, used it to say, “I don’t want McGregor,” and hated the plaintive note.

  “Why?” Sean turned back, impatient now, hands on his hips. He carried the Glock high on the right side of his belt, with a slight forward cant. “He’s young but he’s good, and his experience is solid.”

  “But he’s not you,” I said, small and subdued. “I want you.”

  He let his head snick down and left, biting off whatever retort was forming on his lips, closed his eyes and took a breath.

  “You don’t know what you want, Charlie,” he said wearily. He glanced up and the defeat in his eyes terrified me. “I thought, last summer when we were in Ireland, that you knew, that you’d made up your mind. But it only takes a few days in the delightful company of your parents before your resolve all goes to shit.”

  He sucked in a breath, let it out slowly as though willing the fragile hold on his temper to last just a little longer. “I’m tired,” he said, flat. “Tired of not being sure how you feel about me. Tired of being shunted out of sight when it suits you, like some dirty little secret—okay to fuck in private, but God forbid you should ever have to acknowledge that fact in public.”

  “That’s not fair,” I said, grinding out the words over my distress. “You know damn well we can’t make a show of being a couple, not in the job we do. Even Parker doesn’t quite trust us not to let it get in the way!”

  He shrugged, like it wasn’t worth arguing about anymore, and started to turn away, unfastening the cuffs of his shirt.

  Fury blazed. I shoved away from the wall and reached him in two fast strides, grabbing his arm, flipping him to face me.

  If I’d been expecting to catch him off form, off balance, I should have known better. Sean twisted out of my grip with the kind of fluid, practiced ease that had always made him so deadly at hand-to-hand. He sidestepped, graceful as a fencer, and sent me sprawling onto the bed like he was brushing away an unwanted fly. Now I wasn’t even worth the trouble of fighting properly.

  He’d been carelessly gentle but, even so, I had acquired a lot of new bruises lately and the thump as I landed reminded me of every one of them. I elbowed up and stared at him, my vision starting to shimmer.

  “Is that all I am to you, Sean?” I demanded, using anger to drive the shake out of my voice. “A quick fuck?”

  He went very still and stared down at me, the only movement in his face a muscle jumping at the side of his jawline.

  Nothing good will come of provoking him, my mother had warned.

  Maybe if that cautionary note had been sounded by anyone else but her, I might have paid more attention. As it was I cast aside all sanity and threw another stupid, reckless challenge his way. “Only, I’ve been fucked before, and I didn’t think what we had together was quite in that category.”

  For a moment he didn’t react. Then, with an almost feral growl deep in his throat, Sean pivoted and swept the ornate lamp off the desk behind him with a single backhanded blow. It yanked the plug out of the socket and spun the glass base against the bathroom wall, shattering it into fragments. The explosion of violence was stark and shocking.

  Appalled, I threw myself sideways off the bed, dropped onto my feet on the far side of it, scrambling to meet his eyes. They were burning, ferocious, in the face of a stranger. The fear caused a massive spike like an electrical short. I’d always sensed the beast in Sean ran very close to the surface but he’d never fully uncaged it before. Never with me. Until now.

  He advanced, head down, utterly focused, kicking aside a chair. I backed up, my heart thundering against my breastbone, the blood roaring in my ears as the adrenaline rampaged shrieking through my system.

  He reached me, reached for me, ramming me backwards until the wall brought us up short. I told myself I could have stopped him, could have evaded him, but I wanted—no, I needed—to know how far he would take this. How far he would hurt me.

  Because then I’d have my final answer.

  His fingers clamped around my wrists, jerking my arms up and out, pinning me against the wall. He crowded me with his body, forcing an awareness of the height and the breadth and the weight of him.

  The memories triggered by that deliberate act ripped through me, caving my chest until I could barely breathe. He leaned his face close to mine and watched with a cold hard gaze as every scrap of color bleached out of my face and I struggled to hide the sudden bloom of panic in my eyes.

  “Sean!” The words were torn from me, weak and watered. “Please …”

  I’d pleaded that night, too—begged and pleaded. For all the good it had done me then.

  Donalson, Hackett, Morton and Clay.

  “I’m not them, Charlie,” he said, almost a whisper that I struggled to hear above the rasp of air in my clogged throat. “I’ve never been them—except inside your head. And every time you flinch away from me—yes, just like you’re doing now—you’re blaming me for what they did to you.”

  “I don’t blame you.” Was that pathetic little voice really mine?

  “Yes, you do,” he said, certain as stone. His eyes flicked down to my mouth and back up again. Eyes so dark they were almost black, with the tiniest flecks of gunmetal and gold around the pupil. “Just as your bloody parents blame me, for not teaching you better, for not protecting you.”

  “Sean, you weren’t even there!” I protested, still reedy but stronger than before. “You didn’t know—”

  “I blame me,” he said, and the quiet admission undid me. He let go of my wrists and stepped back, a flicker of selfloathing in his face as he saw the reddened marks his grip had left on my skin.

  Just then, there was a tentative rapping at the dividing door. My father’s voice from the other side: “Charlotte? We heard a noise. It sounded like … Is everything all right in there?”

  Sean raised his eyebrow in my direction.

  Well, are you going to lie to them again? Pretend there’s nothing wrong?

  “Everything’s fine,” I said, a pain in my belly like a twisted knife as I watched the light fade out of Sean’s eyes. “We knocked over a lamp. It’s fine.”

  There was a long, dubious pause. “All right,” my father said heavily. “If you’re sure.”

  “Yes,” I said, almost normal. “I am.”

  Sean started to turn away from me, closing down. I knew I was losing him and I couldn’t have been any more scared if he’d been dying.

  I levered off the wall and went for him again. This time, when he tried another almost dismissive throw, I countered, stepped in close, got my hip under his and used his own demonstrated advantage in size against him.

  The room was too small for fighting. Sean landed hard and awkwardly, halfway onto the bed, and jackknifed straight back onto his feet again, light as a cat, but there was a glitter in his eyes now. I told myself that anything was better than the dull-eyed beaten stare he’d had before.

  “You knew what you were taking on with me, Sean,” I told him harshly. “If you wanted somebody perfect, you should have taken Madeleine home for real, while you had the chance.”

  “I never wanted Madeleine,” he said, quietly vehement. “I only ever wanted you, from the very first moment I laid eyes on you. Wanted you so badly it was like a bloody sickness. I’ve never changed my mind about that. But sometimes I think you have.”

  The words were spoken with such soft certainty that I felt something break inside. It must have been something connected to my eyes, because they began to flood with tears.

  “You know how I feel about you, damn it,” I said, keeping m
y chin up and my gaze on his even though my sight had blurred away. He tilted his head to one side and regarded me as though he could see right through to my soul. He probably could. I’d laid it bare for him. “I love you. That’s never changed for me, either.”

  “Hasn’t it?” He held his arms out, in challenge as much as invitation. “Then prove it.”

  I moved into him without hesitation, reached up and fisted my hands in his hair and pulled his mouth down to mine. Despite that, the kiss started out slow, smooth, tender. I had no intention of letting it stay that way.

  Something ignited, as it always did when I was with Sean. Sometimes I thought that fire was never entirely extinguished, like a pilot flame waiting for the explosive rush of fuel to become a full-fledged ferocious burn. All consuming, unstoppable.

  In moments, I had his shirt peeled open and was fumbling with his belt. He yanked the holstered Glock out from his waistband and dumped it behind him onto the bed. He’d already done the same with my SIG, had parted my shirt from my trousers and jerked it upwards to dance his fingers across the heated gap of skin between the two.

  I don’t remember him unclipping my bra, but suddenly my breast was in his hand, his mouth. I let my head fall back, gasping, as any logical sections of brain fell over and refused to reboot.

  Eyes blind now, I was barely aware of his hands lifting me onto the desk. My trousers and the rest of my underwear had gone somewhere along the way and those diabolically knowing fingers teased and tormented until it was all I could do not to implore him for release.

  My shirt was off my shoulders, bunched and tangled around my elbows, riveting my arms behind me. I fought the terror of being restrained, battled it down, opened my eyes as Sean leaned in close, bit my lower lip oh so gently.

  “Trust me,” he murmured and I knew he’d seen both the fear and my attempts to resist it. “I’ll never hurt you, Charlie … .”

  “I know.”

  He smiled at me, an utterly beautiful, heart-stopping smile, and began to trail slow burning kisses along the length of my neck, almost reverently across the scar that circled the base of it, and down the bow-tight, quivering arch of my body.

  His breath accentuated the sweat dewing my skin, created an acute sensitivity that made me flail helpless under his touch. The thrumming moan in my throat was guttural, barely human. The need was prowling through me, starting to rage as he kept me teetering on the knife edge of utter ruin. My hands thrashed weakly and the telephone followed the lamp onto the floor, crashing off the edge of the desk.

  Glazed with desperation, I lifted a weighted head on the end of a feeble neck and found him watching me through slitted lids. And then I understood what he was waiting for. I’d spent the last few days kicking him squarely in the ego and now he wanted total surrender by way of recompense. More than acceptance, only a kind of mindless subjugation would do.

  I gave it to him.

  His hands and mouth demanded more. I was panting, crying, clawing towards a peak I couldn’t quite reach.

  “Sean! For God’s sake …”

  “What?” he demanded, and the grip he was having to exert on himself made his voice sound coldly furious. “What do you want?”

  “You!” I nearly shouted it, throat raw. “I want you!”

  “Careful, Charlie.” He spoke in my ear, whisper rough, almost mocking. “These walls are terribly thin, you know, and we don’t want your parents to know what we’re about, now do we?’

  I fought my arms free, tearing my shirt into tatters in the process, and grabbed him with vicious fingers.

  “I don’t give a shit about my parents,” I managed through gritted teeth. “Just do it. Right now. And don’t you dare hold anything back or I swear I’ll kill you where you stand.”

  He was too far gone to laugh, but I just had time to see the triumph, the pure male exultation blaze into his eyes. Then he was inside me in one long driving thrust. I hadn’t touched him but he’d done enough for both of us. A wild cry leapt from my throat as my body closed greedily around him, and that was all it took. The twisted mass of frustrated tension that had been building up inside me burst loose, bellowing with wrath and glory as every sense overloaded.

  “Hold on to me!” Sean demanded, hoarse. “For the love of Christ, hold on to me … .”

  Still his hands gripped my hips, almost cruel, heedless of bruises old and new, balancing me at the edge of the desk and making it slam into the wall with every wild plunge of his body into mine. He’d tortured himself as well as me, making both of us wait. But by the time he let go with an almost primal roar, I followed him over again.

  And disintegrated, like an overrevved race engine, pushed too hard to the finish. I was dying and certain of it. No way could my heart hit that hard, that unevenly, without one or other of us going into full cardiac arrest.

  And then I realized the pounding was a fist on the dividing door.

  “Charlotte! Are you all right?” My father’s voice again, sounding shaken to the core. “Open this door! What the devil is going on in there?”

  Sean’s face was buried in my shoulder, arms wrapped tight around my body, muscles trembling violently. We both were. I let my head fall back against the wall behind me, closed my eyes and felt his lips brush against the side of my neck.

  “Haven’t you ever heard two people making love before?” I called back, croaky. “Go away and leave us alone … .”

  CHAPTER 22

  I faced my father’s staunch disapproval over breakfast the next morning.

  He’d called horribly early—a little before six—and announced, almost defiant, that he intended to go down for breakfast and assumed one of us would feel obliged to accompany him.

  Sean was still spark out, lying in a facedown sprawl diagonally across the massive bed. It was odd he hadn’t woken at the phone, but considering the energy he’d expended during the night, I reckoned he deserved to sleep a little longer. So did I, come to that.

  “I’m just going to jump in the shower,” I said quietly. “Give me ten minutes—all right?”

  My father agreed, reluctant, seemed about to say more but changed his mind.

  “Very well,” he said instead, clipped, and left me to it.

  True to my word, I was out of the shower, dried, dressed and armed inside nine minutes. Sean stirred as I came back in, rolled towards me. His face was shuttered.

  “All right?”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling suddenly awkward as the memories resurfaced. “His lordship demands breakfast, so I’ll go down with him.”

  He nodded. “And, no doubt, an explanation about last night.”

  My face flooded and I paused with one hand on the door handle. “Well,” I said, “he might have to whistle for that.”

  My father answered his own door sharply to my knock, already dressed in another of his immaculate, conservative suits. He gave me a narrow-eyed stare as though looking for something he could complain about. Not finding anything immediate seemed to annoy him all the more. He was positively glowering in the elevator, and the waiter who intercepted us at the hotel restaurant entrance almost stepped back in the face of such an obvious black mood, stuttering through his seasoned greeting.

  I waited until we were both seated. My father took out his reading glasses and studied the breakfast items on offer with fierce concentration. He closed the menu with a distinct snap when the waiter returned to pour iced water.

  “Eggs Benedict and a pot of Earl Grey tea,” my father told him, brusque, peering over the top of his frames. “And please be sure to boil the water for the tea.”

  “Yes sir,” the waiter said, flustered. “And, er, are you ready to order, ma’am?”

  “I’ll have a half Florida grapefruit, a bowl of Raisin Bran with two percent milk, wheat toast—dry—and a decaf,” I said. “And a glass of juice. Do you have cranberry?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Great. Make it a large.” For some reason, I seemed to have worked up an appe
tite.

  The waiter almost grabbed our menus, took a last look at my father’s scowling face as though debating the wisdom of some further question, then fled.

  “You’ve picked up the language, I see,” my father said when we were alone once more.

  “Funny that,” I said equably. “What with us and the Yanks both speaking English.”

  He made an impatient gesture with his left hand. “You’ve picked up the inflection,” he amended. “You still sound English, but you ask questions like an American. And what on earth is two percent milk?”

  I shrugged, tugging the linen napkin out of its starched origami folds and draping it across my lap. “After the first few weeks you fall into the phrasing, otherwise you repeat yourself a lot. It seemed easier to adapt to survive—at least so I didn’t go hungry in restaurants.” I smiled. “And two percent milk is semi-skimmed.”

  “Adapt and survive,” he murmured. “Yes, I suppose that’s what you do best.”

  I would have queried that, but the waiter had hurried back again, with a pot bearing an orange tag for decaffeinated coffee, and my glass of juice.

  “Your tea will be right out, sir,” he said to my father, beating a hasty retreat before an opinion could be expressed.

  I took a sip of my coffee, which was unusually rich and dark and smooth, and propped my elbows on the table while I held the cup under my nose, just for the smell of it.

  And all the time my eyes were circling round the restaurant, checking out the other diners, the reinforced glass panels in the service doors that gave me a view into the harshly lit kitchen, the exits, and the positioning of the staff. It was all becoming second nature now and knowing that was so made the colors brighter, the sounds sharper. I lived in that explosive sliver between the what if and the when.

  “You better just come right out and say it,” I said mildly. “Whatever’s on your mind, I mean. Right now, there’s an elephant in the room that everyone’s avoiding mention of, and I don’t really fancy it sticking its trunk into my breakfast cereal.”

  My father’s face ticked before he could stop it. He took a moment to control the surge of his temper, straightening his knife and fork until they were exactly aligned with his place mat. His hands were absolutely steady but then, in his profession they had to be.