Astrid flashes a startled look at Joshua. Fletcher’s face falls. Fortunately, the other kids are already walking over to the changing area, and they don’t hear it.
I grab Joshua by the arm and pull him aside as Fletcher heads over to the changing area, shoulders slumping.
“How dare you treat him like that?” I snap. “He looks at you like you’re a god. You have the power to crush him just using your words. So don’t.”
Joshua’s toweling the sweat from his hair as I speak. “If my words alone can crush him, then he needs to toughen up a little.”
I lower my voice so nobody else can hear. “You are not your father, and you don’t have to act like him!”
He drops the towel on the floor and walks out of the room without a word.
I change my clothes, and hurry after Astrid and the kids as they’re leaving.
“Fletcher, you did great. Way better than I did on my first day sparring. Joshua just has a hard time relating to people. It’s nothing personal,” I say to him. Fletcher nods, but he doesn’t look convinced.
Since sparring is done, we eat lunch, but Joshua doesn’t join us. We all go outside afterward. The weather is mild and balmy, in the sixties. I join them in a few games of basketball, then we stroll through the gardens. Fletcher’s quiet and subdued all afternoon long, which puts Paul in a bad mood too, and Astrid watches them with worried eyes. I’m furious with Joshua.
When they go back inside, I head over to the obstacle course, but I can’t haul myself up the ropes. I need to build up my upper body strength if I want to make any headway, and that’s probably going to take me months.
Then again, I don’t have anywhere else to be, do I?
The thought fills me with gloom. I sit down cross-legged on the ground next to the wooden tower I just failed to climb.
I’m staring into the distance at the mountains a few minutes later when I feel a tingling that sweeps throughout my whole body. I don’t have to look up to see that Joshua’s coming; there’s this connection between us that makes me exquisitely sensitive to his presence.
He walks up to me and stops, waiting. I twist around to scowl up at him.
Silently, he holds out a bottle of Gatorade, and I climb to my feet and take it without a word. I drink half the bottle before I turn to meet his gaze.
“Come to tell me what a lousy job I’m doing with the rope course?” I snap.
He frowns. “No. Why would I do that?”
I keep forgetting that his brain doesn’t make connections like other people’s do.
“Because you’re being very critical today. You were way too hard on Fletcher.” He looks as if he’s about to argue, so I say “What do you want to achieve? Do you want to crush his self-confidence so he gives up? Is that your goal?”
“Of course not. Why would I want that? It would be wasteful and serve no useful purpose.” He’s genuinely confused.
“The way that you snapped at him will not help motivate him to improve. It will have the opposite effect. Please trust me on that, Joshua.”
He sighs, staring off into the distance. “You know I don’t have good interpersonal skills,” he tells me. “For most of my life, I only interacted with people until they gave me what I wanted, then I left as quickly as I could. I excel at a lot of things, but socializing isn’t one of them. Being around people for more than half an hour feels like rolling on a bed of nails.”
“You spend tons of time with me,” I point out.
He smiles with a deep weariness and caresses my mouth with his finger. “I never get tired of you.”
I find myself softening, but I struggle not to. “Are you sure? You just about bit my head off earlier.”
“People in relationships get angry with each other sometimes, don’t they?” He looks at me questioningly. It’s like he really wants the answer to that question.
“Yes,” I say. “But I meant what I said back there. You have to realize that the way your father treated you is influencing how you’re treating Fletcher.”
It’s true, but it’s also the wrong thing to say. He goes rigid with anger and suddenly he’s a million miles away from me. He takes a couple of steps back, and his eyes have gone stormy again. “Don’t mention my father to me again.” His voice snaps like a whip, stinging me.
I swallow my frustration. Joshua’s father is like a lead anchor dragging him down, and he won’t acknowledge it or try to deal with it. But the more I push, the more he’ll close himself off to me. “All right. Please just go easier on Fletcher tomorrow, and don’t hold a twelve-year-old boy from the suburbs to your standards. Or stop having him spar.”
His forehead creases, and he looks away. “I should go back inside now.” And he turns and walks off without another word, shoulders hunched, and I sit down in the bright, warm sun, feeling cold and lonely.
Chapter Fifteen
Joshua
I fight sleep for days on end, but even a beast like me can only deny biology for so long. I’m sitting at my desk with my eyes fluttering shut when I lose the battle, sinking into the dark, sticky tar of my unconscious mind.
I come to with a start, my heart in my throat. What’s that sound?
Tamara. She’s screaming.
She’s facing a wall, hands tied over her head. She’s naked, her back raw and bleeding, and I can smell the blood. I can smell it, which must mean that this is real.
I shake my head to clear it.
We’re back at the old property on our cabin.
How did we get here? Was it Charlemagne? Did he slither his way through all my defenses?
I’m struggling to cry out. My tongue is thick in my mouth, and I can’t force out so much as a weak little snivel. We’re in the room where my father used to take his little girl prisoners. My stomach convulses when I hear thudding footsteps, then my father strides through the door, stripped to the waist, carrying a curled-up bullwhip.
He pushes past me, and I try to lunge at him, but I’m too weak to move. Always too weak.
“You like that, girl?” he roars at Tamara, and he slashes with his whip, tearing a long red wound into her back.
Her answer is a shrill scream of agony that tears my heart in two.
This can’t be happening. I killed my father.
And how did he get us here? How did he get past my men?
The old terror of my childhood days comes roaring back. My father is all-powerful. He can’t be defeated. He can’t be killed. Obey him or die.
My legs are weak. I struggle to move toward him, and fall to my hands and knees.
My father turns to look at me, scorn on his face. He hasn’t aged a day in fifteen years.
He’s a god. He’s immortal. I’m nothing.
He turns his back to me and whips Tamara again, not even paying attention to me. I’m beneath his notice. Her wails hammer into my heart.
No! I’ve let him take too much from me. I won’t let him have Tamara.
I’ll fucking kill him, as many times as it takes until he stays dead.
I struggle to my feet at last, but then Charlemagne strides into the room and launches himself at me, knocking me to the ground with a painful thud. I lie underneath him, helpless.
“You left me,” he says. His eyes are blue whirlpools of madness, his lips skinned back from his teeth.
Guilt makes me nauseated. I’ve never felt guilt before. It tastes like vomit and dirt stuffed into my mouth. “I thought you were dead. I checked your pulse. You weren’t breathing.”
The whip cracks again, and Tamara’s answering scream is weaker this time. She’s dying.
“Lying sack of shit.” His eyes are crazed. “You took Elizabeth and left me? I was your brother!”
Something smashes, and I’m falling, falling…
And I land with a thud on the floor of my bedroom. My heart is jack-hammering against my ribs. I scramble to my feet, crouching low, instinctively scanning the room for threats.
I’m alone in the dark, with the f
aint glow of a nightlight on the far wall.
I’m next to my bed. I was in bed. When did I get into bed? I thought I was sitting at my desk.
I’ve shattered my bedside lamp into pieces, and my hand is bleeding. I struggle to slow down my heart rate as I walk into the bathroom to rinse off the blood.
I’ve had this dream every night for more than a month now.
It’s been happening ever since I found Tamara. I did what I had to do while I was searching for her. I maintained an iron grip on my feelings, but the moment she was safe, I lost control.
All of those dammed up feelings came flooding out, just as I’d known they would. Every feeling that I’ve repressed for my entire life is raging through my mind. And the worst of it is, I need my focus more than ever. I’m trying to build a normal relationship with Tamara, and search for my brother, and maintain my mask of civilization, while every nightmare from my past is tearing into me the minute I close my eyes.
I shouldn’t have brought Astrid and her children here. It’s hard for me to maintain that veneer of normalcy in a crowd like this. I wasn’t lying when I told Tamara that, with the exception of her, being around people for any length of time is physically painful for me.
The old voice whispers in my ears, the cruel, calm voice that has guided me through the world for years.
These people are nothing to me. If they all die, I will feel nothing. Their presence here is not helpful. They’re nothing but noise. When I see Fletcher and Paul, in particular, I keep flashing back to my childhood. I see weakness, and I want to beat them until they’re strong. So they have to go.
But Tamara is right. I do actually care about them. Not as much as Tamara, of course. If they died, I’d feel mild sadness. If Tamara died, I’d burn down the world.
But as angry as I am with Paul and Fletcher for being weak little boys who don’t even seem as if they’re trying to be fierce, I also feel a strange protectiveness toward them.
I should send them all away. They are a distraction, so having them here doesn’t benefit me.
But I can’t send them out into danger. I won’t.
I’m changing, and it should be a good thing because I was a monster before. The problem is that I don’t know what I’m changing into. I’ve shattered and am trying to put the sharp, broken pieces back together, but they don’t fit together right.
With a sudden start, I realize I’ve washed my cut hand and put a bandage on it and picked up all the shards of the lamp, all without even noticing. I’m standing in the middle of my bedroom That’s another thing that’s happening to me these days; I find myself doing things without even noticing. And considering what I’m capable of doing at my worst, that is very bad.
Clenching my fists, I hurry to Tamara’s room to make sure she’s all right. She’s sleeping on her side, curled up, and I see faint lines creasing her forehead. She doesn’t sleep easy these days either. Maybe she’d sleep easier if I was lying next to her, holding her in my arms, but I’m afraid that if I do that, I’ll end up killing her the next time I have a nightmare.
Watching her breathe, my anger and panic fade. She’s here. She’s alive. The hell I lived in for those eight days that felt like eighty years is over. This place is crawling with security, locked up like Fort Knox. Nobody can hurt her.
The demons of my past will not defeat me. I am stronger than my demons. I killed my father, the devil in human form. If he couldn’t best me, nothing can. I draw strength from my Tamara.
I fetch a broom and dustpan and sweep up the lamp’s shattered lightbulb. When I’m done, I stand in the middle of the room and close my eyes and take deep breaths, drawing them in slowly and then releasing them.
Since the day I killed my father, I have never been defeated by anyone or anything. I will force the dark parts of me down into the depths where they belong, and I will not let Tamara slip through my fingers.
* * *
Tamara
Joshua doesn’t join us at breakfast, and he doesn’t bathe me, so I shower by myself and wonder if I did something wrong.
When it’s time for us to spar, though, he shows up. His hand is bandaged, and he still has circles under his eyes, but he seems perfectly cheerful—so cheerful that I ask him if he’s made any progress with the search for Micah.
“Not yet,” he says. “But he can’t hide forever.”
He and Garrett start putting us through our paces. Joshua takes Fletcher and Paul aside and watches them with the intense concentration of a hawk, and at the end of our session, my stomach twists as Fletcher and Paul stare at him with huge eyes.
“Better,” he says to them calmly, then walks out of the room without a word. I see them start to breathe again, and I realize that my hands had clenched into fists. They high-five each other, and Astrid breaks out into a smile of relief.
When he said that single word, I saw the tiniest quiver of his jaw, then I saw him flick the quickest of glances in my direction. He was lying to them. He thought they were awful. But he spared their feelings. Because I asked him to.
And I realize that I can do this. I can be with him. I will be with him. Whatever it takes, I’ll do it. Joshua will never be whole, he’ll never be sane, he’ll always be a psychopath. But he’s my psychopath. He’s pledged himself entirely to me, and he’s changing as much as he is capable.
He joins us for dinner that evening and sleeps in his own bed again afterward. But the next morning, he eats breakfast with us all, then he takes me into his bathroom again.
Days pass by, stretching into a week, falling into a routine.
Every morning after breakfast, Joshua cuffs me in the bathtub. I remember how I fought it when Joshua first kidnapped me. It made me feel so exposed and vulnerable to be chained up and splayed open. Now it’s a ritual I’ve come to crave. It’s a time of peace for both of us. We’re silent when he bathes me, and I drift off into my own world. The pure sensual pleasure of him running the sponge over my naked body, the light fragrance of the bath suds… and the way he’s entirely focused on giving me pleasure.
After he bathes me, we end up with me on my hands and knees on the fluffy bath mat, with him lapping at me from behind until I cry from frustration and beg him to fuck me. Or I’m on my knees, taking him into my mouth and glorying in how the swirling of my tongue wrenches cries of pleasure from him.
Then we have sex. It’s not making love, because neither of us want that softness or tenderness. It’s raw, hungry fucking. He pounds into me, and I come explosively every time.
But that’s the only time he gets close to me. During the day, he’s there in body, but I feel as if his mind is somewhere else. He spends hours poring through computer programs, tracking down private flights, train and bus passenger lists, car rentals, border crossings, facial recognition programs, anything that might give him a clue as to where his brother is.
He’s withdrawn and not speaking much. The only time we have sex is in the morning. He walks with me sometimes in the afternoon, making conversation. And he yawns a lot these days. I see him doing it, but I don’t ever dare bring it up.
A dull resentment is starting to brew inside me.
I realize that when he kidnapped me this time and swore he’d make me his, part of me was angry, but part of me was expecting the full court press. I thought he’d try to seduce me. Woo me. Talk to me all night and day, drown me in flowers and chocolates, open himself up to me as he’d never done before. I remember how passionate he was the first time he took me. This is a man who could make love to me half a dozen times in a day, who never seemed to tire of pleasuring me. A man who wanted to know every part of me, my mind and body.
This is my man.
I can’t deny it to myself. There will never be another man for me. It’s Joshua or nobody.
Who could replace him? The madness that he calls up in me, the intensity of our relationship, the swooping highs and terrifying lows, have opened me up to a new kind of feeling that I can’t even name. And I thought he f
elt the same way about me.
So why isn’t he fighting for me?
I keep waiting for him to snap out of it, but instead he’s more and more remote with each passing day.
One morning, he snaps at Fletcher again while they’re sparring.
Fletcher freezes where he stands. Astrid flashes Joshua a look of hurt and confusion, and the girls look at us in bewilderment.
“Joshua.” I clench my fists and stalk over to him. “Whatever the hell is bothering you, don’t take it out on Fletcher!”
Joshua turns and walks out of the room without a word.
“I’m done for the day,” Fletcher says miserably.
We all finish up early and head back to our rooms.
At lunch, Joshua doesn’t join us. Garrett tells us that Joshua won’t be taking part in the training anymore.
He disappears for the rest of the day. I end up sulking in my room, boiling with frustration. Is it going to be like this forever? Is he growing tired of me and is too chicken to say so?
Before dinner, his butler-slash-bodyguard comes and tells me Joshua wants me to have dinner with him out in the garden.
I join him at a round table inset with colorful mosaic designs of salamanders, under trees that are festooned in tiny twinkling lights, and we eat prime rib and steer clear of talking about what happened earlier today.
“Any progress at all on your brother?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “Nothing at all. He’s gone to ground.”
He spears a piece of meat savagely and shoves it in his mouth. He chews it and stares off into the distance.
“You’re not even tasting that, are you?” I ask him.
He looks back at me, startled. “What?”
I push my plate away. “You should go on a hunt. You said you would. We’re safe here, Joshua. We’d be fine if you went away for a few days.”
“I told you, I can’t do it until Micah is gone.” His brow knits in frustration. “I won’t leave you.”
“You already have.”
“What do you mean?” He sets down his fork and stares at me in blank confusion.
The Trials of Tamara (Blue Eyed Monster Book 2) Page 14