by Dianna Hardy
It was amazing really, what the body and mind could accomplish when it wanted to.
Her admiration for him deepened threefold, and she felt it right there in the centre of her heart. But did he admire himself? Did he love himself? Could he? The pristine décor of the bedroom, the dressing table, the impeccable taste in clothes and the surprising warmth on entering the room indicated that he, at the very least, wanted to. And 'want' was the precursor to attaining any goal. She was in with a shot at helping him heal – she could make him happy after all, if they both just tried at it.
In her mind, her wolf lazed at her feet with a big, lolling-tongue grin on her face, completely contented.
With a smile, she put the leg that had fallen out of its rack, back into place.
It fell forward again.
And again.
Something must be stopping it from slotting in place.
She crouched and reached into the back of the wardrobe, behind the rack, careful not to dislodge all the other legs from their places. Her hand grazed the corner of something which wouldn't move backwards, so she gingerly pulled it out instead.
Lydia took in a sharp breath as her gaze fell on Elana, young, clear-eyed and happy, smiling back at her from the framed photograph. She knew it was her because she'd seen her face every night for the past four nights. Even if she hadn't, the white-blonde hair and pale blue eyes – exactly like her brother's, down to the last detail – gave it away.
Lawrence, about sixteen years old at a guess, sat next to her in the photo, an arm wrapped tightly around her and grinning from ear to ear.
Oh, my god … he was beautiful. Not that he wasn't beautiful anyway, but that smile … Jesus!
“I've got videos, too.”
She screamed and the frame slipped from her hand.
Too late to be saved, it landed with a clap on the wooden floor, the glass inside shattering.
“About fifteen family albums and just as many show reels. When you've finished your intrusion of my privacy, maybe we could sit and go through them with some fucking popcorn.”
She slowly turned to face him, realising she was scared to, because his tone was devoid of all emotion, and flatter than dead. The shutters were down.
She almost jumped out of her skin again when she realised he wasn't standing by the door where she'd expected, but right behind her.
Oh, hell … the way he was looking at her – it was like she was the enemy. What was he seeing? Because it wasn't her. Her heart split in two. “I wasn't intru—”
“Don't lie to me.”
All sound stuck in her throat. He'd never spoken to her that way before, accusing; as if she'd just betrayed him in the most horrendous way. Maybe she had. Heck, he never showed an ounce of feeling until pushed. Looks like she'd just pushed him too far.
“What did you come up here for? Did you need another good look at what a wreck I am? Does your disgust need confirmation?”
What? God, no… But she was mute in front of him again and had to force the words out. “You don't disgu—”
“Enough with the lying.”
“I'm not—”
His mouth landed on hers.
It caught her completely unawares, not that her body would know it – no. It responded as it always did nowadays, and moreso because it was Lawrence.
“You lied to me earlier.”
She had? When? “I never—”
His tongue invaded her mouth again, as he pushed her back against the wardrobe. “Is this the only way to stop you?”
She wished her body could just not react. Moonburn was right. She was burning at his touch and it was obvious – she could smell her own arousal fill the air.
“Is this why you're here? Relief?” Pain poured off him in waves. If his tone was void of all before, it was full of something now: self-loathing. “Ryan's left, Taylor's working – looks like you're stuck with the invalid.”
The first coil of anger rose up through her shock at his actions. She bit his tongue enough to cut it. It was an attempt to get him off her, but she realised her mistake too late: the taste of his blood filled her mouth and it acted like a splash of petrol on the flames of her desire. His scar throbbed on her neck and she throbbed everywhere else.
Fuck! This isn't right – not like this!
She heaved herself into him, arms pushing against his chest, but he pulled them up and pinned them against the wardrobe by their wrists. She might be lithe, but she was no match for him in strength.
“Don't you think I can give you what you need?”
With no warning, no teasing, no second to breathe, he slipped his hand up her dress, against her groin and entered her.
The moan left her before she could stop it.
“So wet for it…” he muttered hoarsely, yet clearly needing his own relief, his long, thick shaft pressing up against her hip through his trousers. She ground against him unable to help it.
He was so completely controlled, yet, in the depths of his eyes, behind the anger, behind the steel and the ice, a chaotic vulnerability flew around a chasm. It was that chasm that consumed him now, she knew – filled with his cries, and the cries of his sister, and the cries of his family … cries she heard every bloody night…
Not like this!
Finally, she found her voice from wherever it had gone. “This isn't what I came here for.” Although it might be too late, because he was thrusting inside her with deliberate force, stroking and stoking her in all the right places.
“Then tell me to stop.” A dare in his tone, coupled with an arrogant smirk that was all defensiveness and none of the truth she had seen in that photograph.
Tears burned in her eyes as her climax approached. She was a slave to her body and he knew it. That's why he was doing this. She had reduced him to the emptiness he felt by invading his past – he was reducing her to this.
'Do you know what it's like to have no choice? To be a true slave to another's will?'
Words he'd spoken to her the first time they'd joined; the only time they'd bonded. But, despite the words, that time had been different. No matter how tempestuous their union had been, he had been sharing something with her. This time, he was taking something from her because all he could feel at this moment, on seeing her disrupt his secret sanctuary, was his violation twenty years ago.
'I need you to understand.'
She understood all right. But it didn't make it okay.
The tears escaped her as lightning surfaced on her skin. “Lawrence…” Her muscles contracted, tightening around his fingers.
“Tell me to stop,” he growled out, his own need swelling against her; in his voice, the absolute certainty that she couldn't say that word.
And she couldn't, because if he stopped now, she'd be in burning pain until she found relief. She'd have to run to Taylor and beg him to finish her off which would lead to questions and she'd have to explain… What tumbled out instead, as her orgasm pulled her under were other words, as naked and raw as he'd plied her to be … “You said you'd never hurt me.”
It was as if she'd just hit him with a bulldozer. He froze; he cracked; horror marred his features. He went as white as a sheet, all trace of self-absorbed anger and hatred gone in an instant. He stilled inside her, but it didn't matter anymore. Her orgasm erupted and she had no choice but to ride it to fruition, tears now free-flowing until it peaked, before finally fading.
~*~
The warning bells had gone off ages ago – aeons ago – but they hadn't been loud enough. Not loud enough to be heard over the screams in his head, and that's all he'd been hearing. That had become his focus, his centre, the crux of his existence. For two decades.
Screams of the dead had drowned out the screams of his mate.
And the torment in his heart was second-to-none.
What have you done? And that was all his wolf said. For once, the animal had gone silent, as numb as himself.
He had never experienced mating pains to the same extent as other males. He'd
always suspected it was because every other affliction he felt was so much greater, that the aches of mating – or lack of mating – had been insignificant compared to all else. And then, four weeks ago, out of the blue, he'd been mated. So, any mating pangs he would have felt were gone.
Now, he'd discovered something much worse: the agony from hurting that mate – his mate. Directly. On purpose. He couldn't defend himself. Even taken over and blinded by his macabre past, it had been deliberate. He was responsible.
Lydia…
He wanted to say her name. He couldn't – had no fucking right to any longer.
He stumbled backwards, not really realising he was moving; having no clue what he was doing.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…
He couldn't say that either, even though the apology burst from his heart with a force that he was sure had broken it. That was the problem with ice, wasn't it? It broke. And now all manner of feeling flooded him. He'd thought it was bad when she'd found him, legless, on the study floor – he'd thought that was the lowest he could go. Turned out, he'd been letting fate lead the way for twenty years, refusing to participate in life. Nothing could be your fault if you didn't become a part if it – nothing or no one could hold you accountable, and you didn't have to feel, damn it! Fate had led her to discover what had happened to him… But this – what had just taken place – he had done himself.
He saw the shattered picture frame on the floor, Elana's eyes smiling out of it, then looked back at the woman he'd just ruined.
Was it possible for artificial legs to give way? Guess it was.
He fell down on his bed, shaking.
Lydia stood there not moving, saying nothing, doing nothing, and fuck it, he wanted her to shriek and rage at him in that way she was so good at. He wanted to feel her fury – anything to take him away from everything else he could feel, and by fuck … that was a lot of stuff. Surely there wasn't room in his body for it all.
She stared at him, her red-rimmed eyes still shiny with tears and haunted.
Lydia…
He still had no voice.
I'm sorry.
He said it with his mind instead.
Forgive me.
She blinked, having heard him, and it took her out of her reverie. He expected the maelstrom to come next – that fiery temperament of hers he'd started to admire, because it expressed everything he'd been afraid to for too long.
Instead, he got something he'd never have expected.
She straightened, held her head up, and looked him right in the eye. Her irises went from blue to violet. Her lips, marked red from where he'd all but bruised them with his kisses, tightened. Her wild hair, made wilder by his treatment of her, crowned her head with a red hue. She should look a mess. She looked magnificent.
When she spoke it was with a composure he couldn't find anywhere inside himself. “I know why you did what you did. I know because I have your memories. Every night, I dream – or remember – what happened to you, and to Elana. I feel what you felt – I guess because of your blood in me. I go through it. I know what they took from you. That's what I came up here to tell you.”
No! No, no, no!
Her confession winded him; drained the last bit of strength left in him.
“I don't hate you, Lawrence.” And now her composure wavered, the next sentence breaking in the middle. “But I don't forgive you. Not yet. That's going to take some time. But I'm here. I'm here for you. Although, I'm kinda sick of barging into a closed door. It hurts.”
She strode past him, towards the entrance to his bedroom, where she stopped. “I'll see you at the meeting.”
She turned the handle of the door, swung it towards her, and then paused once more. “I'm going to leave this open – wide.”
It took him a moment to understand that the faint, keening noises he heard were coming from him; from his throat trying to hold back twenty years all culminated in this one second.
“And there's one more thing, and it goes for all three of you…”
He waited for her words, knowing nothing she said could make anything better or worse. Turned out, he knew nothing.
“I love you.”
She left.
The keening turned into a wail, and the dam broke.
Chapter Ten
Holly's 'whoop' hurtled down the stairs two seconds before she did. “Bingo! We've got a location!”
No way… “Are you kidding me? It's only been three hours.”
Holly sprang into the kitchen, beaming proudly.
Sarah dropped her ham and mango chutney sandwich, her mouth full of her late lunch and looked at Beth.
“Spill, then,” said Beth.
“Pewley Down.”
“Near Guildford?”
“Yep.”
Sarah swallowed sharply. “How the hell did you get that info?”
“After I emailed Michael earlier, he phoned me to make sure I was really okay since I was asking for his help – he has so still got a thing for me – then I told him in more detail about Taylor and my last conversation with him, and he was asking about why I'd spoken with him, and I was like, yeah, we used to be friends, it's not like we don't know each other, although he was acting all weird and we hadn't spoken in forever, and—”
“Holly!” snapped Sarah. “Get on with it!”
“Right – yeah – he contacted the mobile phone company that Taylor's number belongs to. That's how we got a result. The number has been disconnected, but the contract was for a Taylor Harper and it used to be assigned to this address.
Sarah paled. Oh, fucking hell! “This one? This address? My address?”
Holly shrugged her panic aside. “I told you this was his home too. Anyway, just under a year ago, the address changed to The Manor, Pewley Down, Surrey. And I have a postcode.”
“The Manor? Is there a road name?”
“Nope. That's it. Oh, and he told me the last phone call to his mobile was from your number, Sarah?”
“Er … I called him from the theatre – that was the hot date night.”
“Right, well, I typed the postcode into my Sat Nav. Look.”
They all leaned over Holly's iPhone. A red marker hovered over a map in … the middle of nowhere.
“There's nothing there,” stated Sarah.
“Wait, wait, wait…” Holly clicked on 'aerial view' and the scenery changed to three-dimensional shades of green. “There's a house here.”
Sarah squinted. “There is?”
“Yes, I'm sure. It's hidden under all these trees. See?” She pointed with her finger to nothing Sarah could make out. “I can't zoom in any further on this phone, but this right here is a different colour – more like brown, not green – and it looks like a bit of roof, not a tree. It's a house.”
This was insane.
“Even if it is a house, and even if this is real information we've been given, it's clearly on private property. I can't even see roads around this place.”
Holly frowned, annoyed. “So we go in by foot, and of course it's real information. I told you, Michael's still—”
“Into you. I got it.”
“So, let's go,” said Beth, quietly.
Both women stared at her, shocked.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Holly raised her eyebrows. “A: you've said nothing for two whole minutes and B: you're agreeing with me?”
“I want this over with. And what can go wrong? Worst case scenario, we turn up, there's nothing there and we go home feeling stupid. We make sure our phones are fully charged in case of an emergency, we phone a couple of people to let them know where we're going, and we take the photo album with us in case this Taylor guy is real and living there after all, so he can't talk his way out of whatever's going on. I'm game. Let's do it.”
Sarah could think of much worse scenarios – things to do with broken down cars and dogs – but the memory of his voice on the phone, saying her name, and those green eyes in
the album … and the way they'd been looking at each other, so full of … love…
It would also get her mind off Amil.
“Okay.” she conceded. “Let's do it.”
~*~
Well, wasn't life interesting.
Gabriel sat in his car some distance away and observed the three ladies pile into the Citroen. The thinner brunette was driving – the one with the American lilt to her English accent.
The curvier brunette was more than alluring, and she was the one he was focused on because she had Amil's scent all over her, and it was really strong. Surprisingly strong, actually, since he could tell they hadn't mated. He had no idea why that would be, but what he did know was that if there was one reason the deserter might rear his cowardly head again, it was her. And he wanted to see Amil again. Wanted to see him so he could rip his eyeballs out and feed them to him.
He'd spent the morning trying to track the traitor himself after cursing the uselessness of Chris or Carlos. He'd picked up where Carl had left off at the Holiday Inn, and it hadn't been fucking hard, because Amil's scent – faint but clear – had led a trail back to here and he hadn't been alone: this curvy woman's spice had been mingled with his.
There had also been the fading stench of Operiphur to battle. It might have been four days old, but that stuff burned your nasal passages like acid so you couldn't smell anything else. Foul stuff. It signalled that Amil had been running from something, and Gabriel had since heard about the very public kerfuffle at the theatre with the werewolf – had he ever. He'd gotten a huge bollocking for that from Head Office.
With all the evidence at the Holiday Inn, it hadn't taken a genius to put two and two together, but Tridents were thick as shit.
Except him.
And Amil.
His eyes fell on the third woman. Now she was a pleasure to look at. Square-shouldered and strong without being manly, her mid-brown hair was clipped back simply and her outfit, practical. She had a firm jaw that matched her firm cheekbones – everything about her was firm and to-the-point. Beneath those clothes, he could tell that her muscles were defined, if not athletic. Her stance said she took no crap.