Winter's Fire

by Christie Adams

  So that was how she wanted to play this. “Mind if I sit down?” He gestured towards the edge of the bed, and took her answering shrug as permission to park his arse. “Last I heard, her father was sending her to Switzerland to ‘recuperate’.”

  Now she was frowning at him. “Last you heard? What’s that supposed to mean? Shouldn’t you be with her?”

  “Why in God’s name would I be with her, when the woman I love is right here?”

  He’d intended to break the news to her in a rather more controlled manner. Lucy’s reaction, however, wasn't what he expected—eyes wide with shock stared at him from a face devoid of all colour. Had he made a mistake, after all? “Are you all right?”

  She didn’t appear to have heard him. Instead, she looked as if she were trying to work out the most complex puzzle in creation. “Lucy?”

  She was looking at him again. “She said… you love her. That she’s a real submissive, and I’m not, and—”

  “When did she say that?”

  “When we were left alone. She told me… about you and her. Repeatedly.”

  “And you believed her?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Her gaze took on that air of distance before she looked away again. “When I thought about it, it made perfect sense.”

  His girl spent way too much time in her head—something he planned to take care of at the first opportunity. “What made sense?”

  “She’s everything you want. Everything I’m not.”

  She still wouldn’t look at him. Something about the end of the bed must have been fucking fascinating. “What do you think I want? And what makes you think you’re not it?”

  She ignored his questions. “I didn’t—don’t want to get in the way of you two.”

  “And if I told you there’s nothing for you to get in the way of?”

  That got her attention. Hope briefly lit her gaze, then it flickered and died. “You still wouldn’t want me.”

  “Explain.”

  The sadness in her gaze set off an ache deep in his chest.

  “I’m not submissive enough.”

  “Submissive enough? For what? To be a ‘true’ submissive? For who? Me? Or some dickhead Dom wannabe you haven’t even met yet?” His tone alone should be enough to get the truth out of her.

  “I’m not like Diana! I can’t do clingy and coy.”

  “Thank God. Get your head out of your arse. Don’t you think that if I wanted to be with Diana, I would be? But ask yourself this first—why would I want to be with her when I could be with a strong, courageous woman, who’s beautiful inside and out? That’s if she’ll have me.”

  When Lucy looked at him again, it was with that wide, unguarded gaze that made him long to be worthy of the incredibly special woman she was.

  “You said…”

  “What?”

  “You love me.” She said it as if his declaration had only just got through to her.

  “Too damn right I do. Are you going to ask me if I meant it?”

  “I don’t need to. You’ve never said anything you didn’t mean.”

  Her eyes were shining, and even as he watched, a single tear left a glistening trail down her right cheek. Logan remained calm, determined not to let the moment—or the tear—get to him. The choice was hers to make—he prayed she’d make it with her heart and give him the right to lay his hand against her cheek and brush that tear away… the right to ensure she never had cause to cry again.

  “Right. So why would I start now?”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  The very idea was crazy. She looked at Logan, and saw a man with nothing to hide. Almost in a trance, she lifted her hand to cup his cheek. Stubble rasped her palm, but that was nothing with the heat of his hand enveloping hers.

  “Are you going to put me out of my misery, princess?”

  Lucy teared up again. “I hated it when you first called me that.”

  “I know. Do you still hate it now? If you do, I’ll stop.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve kind of got used to it now. I missed it while you were Lucan. If you did stop, I think I’d miss it even more.”

  Hope flared in his beautiful eyes, just for a second. She could hardly believe he was real, that he’d come to her family home to find her. He’d run the gauntlet of her embarrassingly over-protective brothers—and must have at least met with their conditional approval, given that she couldn’t see any fresh signs of physical damage—and laid his heart and his feelings on the line.

  Lucy tucked her legs under her and knelt as close to her Master as she could. Without saying a word, she drank him in, from the tousled hair, to the shadows beneath his eyes and the slightly gaunt cheeks. He was still wearing the effects of their imprisonment. How she wanted to wrap her arms around him and give him comfort.

  Could a sub to do that for her Dom? He’d given her chapter and verse so many times on how it was his job to protect her, but who looked after him? It seemed so unfair if she couldn’t.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “That this whole Dom/sub thing should be a two-way street. I should be able to take care of you.” Lucy gently laid her palm against Logan’s cheek. “Will you let me do that?”

  His arms wrapped around her, pulling her half onto his lap. Lucy snuggled into him. Logan smelled so good, but the explosion of memories that came along with the reminder was too much. The tears started again, and she curled her fingers into his shirt, trying to pull him even closer.

  “Lucy? You okay?”

  The words clogged her throat. She shook her head, unable to explain the pain and grief that had carved her into little pieces from the moment Diana had first staked her claim back in that filthy cell.

  “Talk to me, Lucy. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  He was rubbing her back. There was nothing sexual about the contact, just warmth, and comfort, and love, combining to give her a wondrous sense of belonging. And with the passage of each second, clarity returned. Logan was here—he’d come to her… come for her. The pain, the aching… it all should have stopped, but it hadn’t.

  “Right from the start… when I asked you if you knew her, you didn’t give me a proper answer. You let me think she was a stranger to you. You lied.” By omission, granted, but it was still a lie.

  “Out of guilt. When Sir Guy told us we were looking for her, I couldn’t believe it. As time went on and our relationship changed, finding a way to tell you became… impossible. I have no right to ask, but can you—”

  “Forgive you? Logan, we all make mistakes, and contrary to what you might think, you’re only human. But… when they brought her to the cell and she… Why didn’t you stop her? Why didn’t you tell her about us?”

  “To protect you. Don’t forget—I’ve known Diana a long time, and I’ve seen her at her worst. I couldn’t take any chances. I had to divert her attention away from you.”

  And that was exactly what he’d done. Every time the other woman had been about to dig her claws in, Logan had distracted her in the only way someone with an ego the size of hers would respond to—by lavishing her with attention.

  “I feel like such an idiot. I never realised.”

  “You weren’t meant to. There was never a chance to explain, and if I’d somehow made it obvious enough for you to get the message another way, Diana might have seen it too, and her behaviour towards you would have been even shittier, especially when I… wasn’t around.”

  Lucy wasn't sure that was possible. Okay, it probably was, in which case, she was glad she’d never witnessed it.

  “Okay, what’s bothering you now?”

  “I know what you said about… how you feel about me, but I’m not… the person I was before all this started.”

  “Really?” Logan hooked his finger under a strand of her hair and stroked it with his thumb. He appeared deep in thought. “Why do you think that?”

  “Everything that happened… things I did… saw.”

  “Ah. You think that
changed you? I doubt that very much.”

  At that, she lifted her gaze to meet his. “How can you say that?”

  “Because it’s true. Your knowledge and view of the world, yes, they’ve changed, but it hasn’t changed the person you are inside.” Logan laid his palm over her breastbone. “The person you are here.”

  The heat of his touch seeped through her thin, lacy top. The tenderness of the gesture set up an almost unbearable ache for more.

  “This heart hasn’t changed,” he continued. “You’re still compassionate and caring—nothing could change that.”

  Lucy laid her hand over Logan’s, and pressed it tightly to her chest. “My feelings haven’t changed, either.”

  Logan stiffened, as if bracing himself for the worst. Lucy had no intention of letting him go. “I didn’t want to say anything while we were there, because that place was so unreal. I thought we’d come home, and I’d have a chance to be sure how I felt, and then I’d tell you. But Diana appeared, and things changed. Or I thought they did.

  “Seems as if I’ve been doing nothing but think. I thought walking away would be the best thing for all three of us. I thought you wanted her, and I didn’t want to make things awkward for you. But over the last day or so I’ve wondered if I was wrong, and I thought, even if I make a monumental fool of myself, at least I’d know for sure, so I was going to give it one more go.”

  “One more go?”

  “In this family, we don’t normally give up without a fight. I’d thought leaving you alone was the best thing to do, but then I had a heart-to-heart with Mum. And I realised that things didn’t add up.”

  “In what way?”

  “The man I thought you were wasn’t the man I saw with her. The only way I could be sure, though, was to ask you. I was going to tell everyone tonight that I planned to return to London in the morning.”

  “To see me?”

  She nodded. “I wasn’t going to make a scene—”

  “I know that.”

  His confidence and trust in her eased the tension tying her in knots. “All I needed was to know you wanted to be with her, and you’d be happy. If not…”

  “What?”

  Lucy looked him squarely in the face, touched her lips to his, and took a deep breath. “If not, I’d have taken that bitch down. I love you, too.”

  Logan wanted nothing more than to spirit Lucy away, back to London and back to his bed, where he’d use every technique he knew to convince her they belonged together. She was his, he was hers, it was as simple as that… and as complicated. She might believe she loved him, but once she knew the whole truth—how he and Diana had got together in the first place—it would destroy everything. His past weighed on him like a gravestone… her gravestone. And until he told Lucy about Sophia, she and Diana would always come between him and Lucy. Better to face it now, before he ended up hurting his woman any more than he was going to right now.

  “Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

  “We’d be fine in here, but… maybe we could go for a walk?”

  He helped Lucy into her jacket, and hand in hand, they headed for the farm track and the lane beyond.

  Her hand felt so small in his, but Logan wasn’t so foolish as to ignore the strength in it. He could still hear the crack of that hand slamming into the bad guy’s nose the night they were taken. His courageous sprite. He’d loved Sophia, but that was a pale imitation of the fierce, gut-wrenching need he had for this woman. No wonder the terror of losing her was poised to rip him to pieces.

  And lose her he would—he was almost certain of it. Whether he told her or not, the outcome would be the same. If he said nothing about Sophia, the prowling shadow of her death would hang over them, and his guilt would end up poisoning everything.

  In spite of the early autumn sunshine, Logan shivered. Who would have guessed fear could carry with it the chill of the grave?

  “Logan—Sir? Why don’t we go and sit down over there, and you can tell me what you’re so afraid of.”

  He almost laughed. His woman had more courage in her little finger than he had in his entire body, and if they knew, his former colleagues in the Royal Marines would rip him a new one for it. Following her lead, he sat down on the patch of springy grass at the broad base of a tree and gathered his thoughts.

  “I ended my relationship with Diana about eighteen months ago. Stating the bloody obvious, it wasn’t a mutual decision. I’d been seeing her for about three, maybe four, months before that, but the story really starts with Sophia—Diana’s sister.”

  Logan forced himself to release Lucy’s hand. He didn’t deserve her strength or her support for this—it was his burden to carry, not hers, but when she slipped her hand back into his, he couldn’t find it in himself to break the contact again.

  “Sophia was a submissive, and in character, the polar opposite of Diana. Shy, gentle… I was completely smitten. I met her while I was on leave. We spent just about every moment we could together. She waited for me while I was on deployment, away on training exercises, and when I came back, she’d be there. For the first time in my life, I started to think seriously about settling down.

  “What I didn’t know—and what she never told me—was that she suffered from bouts of severe depression. Time passed, our relationship developed, and I still had no fucking idea.”

  Pain blossomed in his chest, a manifestation of grief for the future Sophia should have had, regardless of whether that future would have been with him or not. Another contributing factor to his shit-ton burden of guilt.

  “I was on deployment. I can’t tell you where, but it wasn’t in a good place. The mission was straightforward, or so we’d thought. Turned out our intel was wrong, and it all went to shit. I was a relatively brief, very unwilling guest of the enemy.”

  “Wait a minute—you were captured? You never said anything.”

  “It’s not something you bring up in casual conversation. Besides, it was a long time ago, and I didn’t stay captured for that long. But because Sophia wasn’t my wife, and we weren’t officially living together, no one thought to tell her what had happened. They think she had a bad depressive episode made worse by a lack of information about my delayed return, and when I finally made it back… if I’d been just twenty-four hours earlier, I might have been able to stop her.”

  He didn’t deserve the way Lucy was holding onto his hand as if she’d never let him go. He didn’t deserve her strength, her support… her love. He deserved to rot in hell for eternity, for the young woman who’d taken her life because he hadn’t been there to protect her from herself.

  “What happened? Tell me, Sir.”

  A strobe-like montage of memories exploded in his mind, each one as powerful as a physical punch, battering him with proof of his failure as a Master and a man. How could he describe that to Lucy and not lose her, and everything she’d become to him?

  “Logan.”

  Her fingers stroked his cheek, drawing him out of the quagmire of remorse and self-hate. Certain these were the last moments he’d ever have this, a fragmentation grenade of pain detonated inside him. As soon as he told her the whole sordid truth, the love in her gaze would turn to horror and disgust.

  “I’m your safe place, Sir. I’ll always be your safe place. Nothing you tell me can change that. Nothing. Whatever it is that’s hurting you so badly, give it to me. Let me take it away.”

  Desolation blasted through him. If only time could freeze and he could spend the rest of his life in this moment—he’d never have to tell her, they could stay like this, and she’d be his forever.

  But that was impossible, and now he faced the inevitable. He’d lose her, and that was the best thing for her. That frosty exterior he’d first known had guarded a generous, loving heart—something unique and special that should be protected forever from a monster like him.

  “She was only twenty-four. I found her in the bath. An overdose of painkillers before taking a scalpel to her veins. The w
ay she’d done it… There was nothing anyone could have done—except for me. If I’d been home a day earlier, I could have been there, I could have stopped her.”

  “You can’t know that, Logan.” Lucy’s voice was a cooling balm, flowing over the acid-like guilt that had eaten away his self-worth from the moment he’d looked into Sophia’s lifeless eyes. “If she was determined, she’d have found a way, whether you were around or not. It’s not your fault—you are not to blame.”

  Her lips found his mouth, granting him a blessing he didn’t deserve. Bastard that he was, he kissed her back with a starving man’s hunger, desperate to imprint the taste of her, the scent of her on his memory, a memento for the desolation he faced when reality corroded that belief in him and she walked away.

  “The inquest concluded it was suicide—there was no note, but she’d bought the scalpel just a few days before, they found evidence of research into methods of suicide on her computer. Then there was the… the direction of the wounds to her arms indicated intent, they said. Her family was there, they’d been there from the beginning, and not one of them blamed me, even though they were in so much pain—her parents… and her sister… Diana.”

  With an effort he relaxed his grasp on Lucy’s hand. Anything to make this as easy on her as possible when she rejected him.

  “Even though the verdict was what we expected, the grief was just as bad as the day she died. Afterwards, I headed for the nearest bar. It was in a hotel. By the time Diana showed up, I’d seen off most of a bottle of Scotch. She helped me finish it off, and then…”

  Shame robbed him of the power of speech. There was no justification on earth for what happened next. “I got a room and we ended up in bed together.”

  “And?”

  Wasn’t it obvious? “I used her.”

  Lucy seemed genuinely mystified, which her next words confirmed. “I don’t get it.”

  “Then I’ll spell it out for you. I used her, started a relationship with her, and then dumped her a few months later because I couldn’t bring myself to give her the collar she wanted. Now do you get it?”