by Mary Hughes
The frown disappeared, replaced by the warmest look of sympathy—no, the warmest look of compassion I’d ever seen. “As you wish.”
He swept me into his arms and despite the crowd, in an instant we were downstairs in the cool half-dark of his room, and he was kissing me.
Friction heated my skin, his stubbled jaw rasping against my mouth, the rough strokes of his long-fingered, strong hands.
Ice melted, pooled warm in my groin.
It was less lovemaking and more exploding together like a bombshell. Somehow we were naked. Somehow I was on my back on the broad mattress. Somehow he was plunging inside me as I raked my nails on his back.
Somehow, his mouth was at my throat, biting down, driving shafts of intense pleasure into my flesh.
We came together in a shattering fireball. Climax sheared my head off. I arched and clamped and took him with me. His balls tugged at me as he shattered too, and I arched even harder.
I came to with him lapping at my neck, purring like mad. “Alexis,” he was whispering. “Alexis, Alexis.” My name, over and over between licks and swallows.
I stroked his sleek hair. Loose of its confining braid, it spilled over us like a comforter. “Luke? Thank you.”
He gave my neck one final lick and raised his head, his eyes unfocused, pupils as big and dark as dinner plates. He frowned down at me. As his gaze cleared, an expression flashed across his face, full of blame—I couldn’t tell if it was self-recrimination or censure.
Monster. Probably censure. No less than I deserved. That hadn’t been simple, endorphin-releasing sex, that was taming my monster.
“Wh-what’s wrong?”
He shook his blond head as he slid off me to snatch up his clothes. “Nothing.” He averted his face, but not in time.
“It’s me, isn’t it?” The words tumbled out. “That wasn’t just sex, you knew that, and now you hate me.”
“What? No.” He raised his head, staring at me with the oddest combination of disbelief and chagrin. “Not you. Never you.”
“Then what?”
“It’s nothing,” he repeated.
But I saw the pain slash him and even I could tell his trauma, whatever it was, wasn’t physical.
Whatever was causing that much misery, it was not nothing. Luke was hurting, and hurting badly. And if it wasn’t me causing it…maybe I could help.
Not as a doctor, analytically with proper detachment. Not as a mother, burying his face in my bosom and rocking him.
But as a friend. Talking. Listening. Opening my heart, as he opened his to me.
If he’d let me.
Slowly, tentatively because this was so far outside the rational as to be laughable, I asked, “Can I help?”
Luke paused snatching up his clothes, his nerves still wowing with the aftershocks of the most amazing orgasm of his life.
Can I help?
He wanted to die. He hadn’t thought of Adelaide once.
Guilt didn’t stab, it smothered him. He couldn’t breathe. He stood there clutching his clothes and hated himself. He hadn’t thought of his dead wife once. Only Alexis.
What was wrong with him?
Yet Alexis said, “Can I help?”
Impossible. She should’ve been stunned senseless, dazzled by her own climax.
Luke took pains to keep up the illusion of virility, despite centuries of junk that didn’t work. When it came to vampire politics and fighting, reputation was as important as actual strength. He took multiple partners for both the confusion factor—whose arm or leg or cock was that?—and the boost it gave his street cred. And he always, always made sure his partners were blown away. Unable to ask awkward questions. He’d gotten amazingly good at it, wowing them with his agile tongue and clever fingers and the judicious scrape of fang.
After going to bed with him, women and men were too dazed from the orgasm he’d given them to remember their own names, much less notice anything as subtle as his emotional state. No cuddling and no pillow talk, which frankly suited Luke.
Yet Alexis had noticed. Asked.
Cared.
He glanced at her, and his eyes hurt like he was staring at the sun. It hurt to look at her, but he couldn’t look away. She was too beautiful, too soft…too naked.
Adelaide. He had to remember his wife. He’d never forgotten her before, not until his first time with Alexis. And every time after.
Three times, now.
It made him turn from her to tug on his pants. “Julian’s not kidding, you know. He’ll get those townhouses. You can’t run from reality.” He glanced over his shoulder.
She sat there, speechless, and he wanted to call his words back, wanted to pull her into his arms and stroke her hair and make that hurt little look go away.
Then her jaw kicked up. “Real doesn’t make right.”
Pride surged through him. No wimp she, instead brusque in return, and a little mulish. He admired that, so different from Adelaide. She stood, put fists on hips and glared, totally mindless that she was naked. “I have a plan for me and Lizelle—”
“Lizelle is willing to be flexible. She’s willing to ask for help.”
“And you can be sure any help she gets from her husband will have strings attached or worse.” She started picking up her own clothes.
Her mottled skin, her clenched jaw, and the way she imbued the word husband with such loathing startled him. I was a good husband, wasn’t I? A lousy protector, but surely a good husband…who’d forgotten his wife three times, like a Judas.
Stung, he automatically said, “Oh, come now. Surely Umbras couldn’t be that bad if she’s willing to go back to him?”
She froze. Spun to him and threw down her clothes so hard the belt buckle on her pants cracked.
“He beat her.” She stalked up to him, yelling the whole way. “Verbally knocked her around and used his fists where the bruises couldn’t be seen. Hurt her without leaving marks until that wasn’t enough for him. Until she had the kid and couldn’t escape. Then the bones started breaking, ‘accidentally’ at first, but it kept happening until it was too many to be accidental. The night she’d finally had enough, she came to me but couldn’t tell me what happened because he’d cracked her jaw in two.” She was shrieking in his face by the end, tears streaming freely down her cheeks.
“Then why is she going back?” Horror made his voice rasp.
“Because he’s a master manipulator. All he had to do was show up here, saying that he’s changed, that he’s better now. That their daughter deserves more than camping out in a run-down building I don’t even own. Playing on her guilt that she’s denying him the right to see his own ch-child.” She sobbed. “God, that hurts. He knows exactly where to press, what to kick, to make her crumble.” Swallowing hard, she went on in a low, emotion-choked voice. “He’s done it before. He calls, pleading that this time it’ll be different. Shows up, saying trust me. Lures her with the promise of a home, a family. He’s a Svengali, playing on her feelings. She doesn’t trust him but that’s not enough. The moment he walks into the room, he manages to worm his way in all over again. If only she’d see him for what he really is!”
“A monster,” Luke breathed, understanding.
She flinched. Fell back a step, color draining. A beat. She started trembling.
His heart stuttered, seeing her so suddenly fragile.
Then she spun and started scooping up her clothes, stuffing them into the crook of one arm. “I have to go.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Wait.” A big warm hand clasped my bare arm, gentle for such strong fingers. “You’re hurting…and I made it worse. I’m sorry. Let me help.”
I peered over my shoulder at him, blinking hot eyes. My throat was sore. God, what had happened to me? I’d shrieked at him like a Dementor.
He guided me back to the bed. Cl
othes fell from my hand, fingers shuddering from adrenaline aftershock, not answering my control.
Out of control. I didn’t know what had happened, or how, but I couldn’t believe I’d let loose like that. I hadn’t done anything like that since…
Monster. I never want to see you again.
He sat me down, settled next to me and took my hands in his, and I could see from his expression he thought there was more, much more to my outburst.
Emotions in the ER get in the way, and I’d learned early how to jettison them. I told myself this was Crisis Time.
Really, I didn’t want to dig into the morass that was me right now. “Look, I’m sorry I yelled. But I have to go.” I half-rose, but he only gently tugged me back onto the bed.
“Whatever it is can wait. I pushed an emotional button, sweetheart, and I’m sorry. Whatever it is, I want to fix it. I can’t leave you hurting.”
“Don’t be silly.” I turned from him and bent to retrieve my panties, finally managing to make my hands work enough to slip them over my feet and up my calves. “Well, yes, I yelled a little. But I wanted you to understand how dangerous Lizelle’s husband is.”
I wasn’t looking, but I could almost hear one blond brow rise.
“All perfectly logical, hmm?”
“Yes. I admit it was a blow, Julian disrupting my plan. But nothing I can’t get past.” I half-stood to slip the panties over my hips. “Thank you for the sex. It helped clear my head and now I’m fine—”
“Alexis.”
My name stopped me. Reluctantly, I turned my head to look at him.
All the tenderness in the world was in his eyes. “You’re not fine, and sex didn’t clear your head. You didn’t start shouting until afterward.” His gaze went inward and a slight line appeared between his eyes. Then his eyes snapped back to me. “And you didn’t fracture until I said he was a monster.”
The shaft of pain surprised me. I breathed through it. “He is.”
“No. Maybe.” His eyes turned inward again, rapidly tracking as if he were fast-forwarding through our exact words. “You were passionate recounting his abuse, yes.”
“I was emphasizing, not passionate—”
“But when I said monster, you flinched.” He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Like I’d hit, not him, but you.”
“That’s absurd.” I went back to dressing, but my fingers were trembling again and it was hard.
“Is it? All right, maybe I’m totally mistaken. Let’s just talk. It’ll ease the awkwardness next time.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Awkwardness. The next time we have sex, we’ll waste time being uncomfortable with each other before we get to the important release of endorphins—unless we chat some now. Simple chat, nothing deep. I know, tell me about Lizelle. How did you meet?”
I glanced cautiously at him. He was sitting at his ease, casually nude, as calm as if the implied accusations of emotional wreck hadn’t been hurled.
And maybe he was right. Maybe talking would clear the air. Relieve any awkwardness. It might even help him open up a little too. I wrapped my bra around my middle, hooks at my navel so I could see what I was doing. “We met in first grade.” The bra wouldn’t hook. I tried again. “I have a sister, but she didn’t come along until I was eight. I was an only child until then.”
“Sounds lonely.”
“Not really. My parents were away a lot, on archaeological digs, but they left me with my grandmother, and she was wonderful. I…well, I really liked being with her.” I love you Grandma. And again, only a few years later, beside of her coffin. I love you. Why did you go? I finally got the bra hooked, turned it on my torso and pulled it up over my arms like suspenders. “It was good, being with her. Stimulating. But because my early years were spent with adults, I grew up with an exceptional vocabulary and was…unprepared for other children at school. I’d use big words and the other kids wouldn’t understand and they’d mock me.”
“They were probably threatened.”
“Maybe, but what they didn’t understand was that I didn’t know any other words. I felt helpless. Floundered, trying to explain, to make friends, but I only made it worse. I felt alone and singled out until, in first grade, we were buddied up for a field trip.”
I slid my shirt on. That took my concentration. I didn’t start again until I’d found my pants. “Lizelle was funny and smart, and more, she liked me. She laughed when I used my big words instead of pushing me away. We became fast friends and did everything together. And as young girls do, we made plans.” I swallowed. Broken plans. Broken dreams… I snapped the dust from my pants and snapped out words with it. “Most children outgrow their childish plans. I committed ours to my heart.”
“What were they?” he asked.
“Really quite adult, considering.” Holding the slacks in one hand, I drew a 1 in the air and circled it. “Finish school.” I circled 2 twice. “Go to college together, followed by medical school.” And last, a 3, underlined. “Open a clinic together called ‘Healthy Women’s Choice’.”
“Those are wonderful plans.”
“Thanks.” A side glance showed him watching me closely, but his expression was all casual friendliness. Watching, not to see me dress, but to let me know he was listening.
I sighed and began donning my pants. “I sacrificed for those goals my whole life. Heck, after my grandma died and then Lizelle got more and more involved with her boyfriend, those goals were my life. I studied when other kids were playing, applying to colleges when my friends were planning for prom. I didn’t consider it a sacrifice, because it was for our future, mine and Lizelle’s. Then…”
My throat thickened, closing up on the memory. To give myself time to recover, I hunted around for shoes and socks.
Luke prompted softly, “Lizelle changed her mind?”
My heart throbbed. I stopped looking, my limbs robbed of strength. “Not at first. At first, she only changed colleges—to be with John. I didn’t have time to apply for financial aid. So we went to different schools, and I hardly spent any time with her that year. But I didn’t worry. I didn’t even think of it, focused on our plan.”
“Why should you worry?” Luke’s tone was so warm, so compassionate. “You were best friends.”
I gave a nod, jerky because my insides were roiling again. Reliving it, even on the surface… I suddenly wanted it done and skipped to the end. “By leaving her alone, I left her in the hands of her boyfriend. He isolated her more and more. Then Lizelle…she got pregnant. They’d been using protection but ‘somehow’ the condoms went missing and her pills were mislaid… She came to tell me, excited. They’d eloped.”
My legs wouldn’t hold me. I wobbled on my feet until Luke’s hand closed on my elbow and gently guided me to sit.
I slumped, elbows on knees, eyes closed. “She was excited, I wasn’t so thrilled. It all hit me wrong, the birth control going missing and the rushed marriage and…and I blamed her husband to her face.” I tried to swallow. It felt like a brick in my throat. “She and I…we got into a fight. Said unspeakable things to each other. She slammed out of my life and I didn’t hear from her for nearly two years.” I shook my head. Those had been the darkest years of my life.
The first I knew I was crying again was when Luke gently brushed a tear from my cheek.
“What is it, Alexis?” He crumpled his shirt and used it to wipe my face. From the dark, spreading stain, I’d been crying a while. “What happened during that fight? What did she say to you?”
I shook my head.
“Please?”
I blinked at him. He shimmered in my sight, more tears welling. “I c-can’t. You won’t understand.” The remorse, the slicing shame…it hurt.
“You’re safe with me.” He wiped the other side of my face. “Tell me, ma chérie.”
That meant �
��my darling”. Darling was what Grandma called me… I’d never told anyone the details of that fight, but as if I were an eight-year-old child again instead of an adult, that simple endearment cracked my wall of silence. “Lizelle said…she said I was horrible to try to break up her marriage. She c-called me…a monster. A glass monster, all edges that cut. She said…God. She said she never wanted to see me, ever again.” My voice was less than a whisper. Even now the words hurt so much. “My best friend. My only friend. Didn’t. Want. Me.”
“Oh, Alexis.” He spread his hands as if to hug me.
I flinched. Most people enjoyed hugs and felt safe. But I—I was that glass monster, all shards on the outside. Sharp edges that cut the flesh of those who dared get close to me.
What people don’t know about glass monsters is that those shards cut on the inside too. Hugs hurt me, desperately.
He paused at the flinch. Seeing my prickly exterior, no doubt hesitant about getting hurt himself.
“Poor angel,” he whispered. Gently, he stroked my hair instead. Offering me the only comfort that didn’t crush the shards of pain deep into my flesh.
He understood.
I broke down and bawled. He only caressed my hair, silently supportive, and occasionally wiped the worst of the mess from my face.
Gradually even a hurricane blows itself out. The sobs waned, until I could hiccup through my tears, “I am a monster. Why couldn’t I have been happy for her? Why did I try to break up her marriage?”
“Because you thought he was using her. You wanted what was best for her. You were young.”
“And destructive.”
“A bit clumsy, maybe.” He smiled gently into my eyes. “It doesn’t make you a monster. Besides, you were right about him, weren’t you? Your instincts about John were bang on.”
“Except…” I couldn’t continue.
The bed rose, him getting up. Moments later, a soft tissue teased against my skin. I reluctantly dropped my hands, saw he had brought me a box. I used at least a half-dozen getting myself under control.
A deep breath, and I went on. “When she did come back into my life, it was the middle of the night. She showed up on my dorm room doorstep—with a black eye. He’d been abusing her verbally, but this time he’d actually hit her. That was the first time she left him and came to me.” I shook my head as if I could shake the past out of it. The pain out of it. “Then her husband called, coaxing her back. I should have done something, anything…but I remembered her calling me a monster the last time. When she wanted to return to her husband to try to work things out, I actually convinced myself that was a good thing. I was an idiot.”