"Every time I get in the shower," I replied and watched as his face transformed, a smile spread across his lips, his eyes no longer hard granite, but the most alluring shade of chocolate instead. It was mesmerizing.
"Is that right?" he drawled. I shook my head at him.
"It's Ben, right?" I asked, and he nodded, still looking quite pleased with whatever imagery he had going on inside his head. "Ben what?"
"Tamati," he said, then asked, "What name does this persona belong to?" His hand waved from top to bottom, indicating all of me.
"Chrissie, a bastardized version of Chrystal Kerr."
His eyebrows shot up. "Not Abi Merchant anymore, huh? I liked Abi."
"You did?" I asked and received a grunt and head nod in reply. "I liked her too," I admitted.
"Then why leave? Why not stay a little longer?"
"Truthfully?" I asked and watched his lips quirk at the edges. He nodded for me to continue. "I thought you were Roan's man. My cover was blown, so it was time to move on."
He scowled at me. "You always just drop everythin', no lookin' back, as soon as you feel threatened?"
"Of course," I replied, but didn't bother to qualify my answer. It was pretty self-explanatory. I wouldn't have lasted this long running, if I hadn't been able to walk away.
"But I'm not Roan's man, as you put it," he pointed out. "No need to run."
I snorted. Was he mental? "You may not be Roan's but you're shadowing me for a reason. And my guess is, it can't be good."
"Yet you haven't run from me tonight."
"What do you call me walking away from you back there!" I said, pointing in the direction of Carl's Nissan Pulsar.
"A hissy fit," Ben said with a smile.
I glared at him, his smile widened.
"So, Ben Tamati, I ask again. What do you want with me?"
He held my gaze for several seconds. I couldn't see what he was thinking behind that beautiful face he wore like a mask. I was sure the cogs were turning, but on the outside he seemed calm and still, nothing else. He was the most frustrating man I had ever met.
"You're not even meant to know I'm following you," he said quietly, when whatever he'd been working out in his head must have fallen into some sort of place.
"You're not that good," I said, but offered a smile to soften the words.
"Woman. I'm the fuckin' best," he shot back, all smugness and cocky confidence now. I rolled my eyes.
"So, now your cover is blown" - just like mine coincidentally - "what's the plan?" I asked.
He sighed and then rolled his shoulders in a shrug. "Nothin'."
"What?"
"I'm gonna do nothing," he emphasised. "Leave, don't leave. The choice is yours. But I'm not McLaren's. I'm not here to take you back to that scumbag. I'm just here to watch."
"Why?" I asked, dumbfounded.
He stared at me for a long time, it was difficult to meet that level of intensity. I wanted to shift my feet, scratch my nose. Do something to break the connection we had.
"Come back to Auckland, red. Let Abi live a little longer. You've no reason to run." Yet. The word hung unspoken at the end of his sentence.
God I was so tired of all of this. The temptation to believe him was almost too much. I did like Abi. I did want to go back. But who the hell was this man?
"You're really not Roan's?" I asked, out of desperation to believe in him. In this.
"I am not, nor have I ever been, associated with Roan McLaren." The words were so precisely spoken, not his usual lazy English. Almost as though he was pledging something, willing me to believe the truth in his words.
"Then who are you?" I asked after a long pause.
"Can't I just be a friend?"
A disbelieving laugh came out on hearing those words. Friend huh?
"Friends don't follow friends about, hiding in shadows," I pointed out.
"They do if they think their friend is in deep shit," he threw back at me.
"You don't even know me." How could he want to be a friend?
"You run because being caught ain't an option you'll survive. You hide in plain sight. You're good at it. You've lived a lifetime in the past five years, and yet you haven't lived at all. You're tired. You know the end is near, but you've got a strength inside you, something that makes you keep going, when all you really want to do is lie down and sleep forever. There's a reason why you keep doing this, and I'm guessin' it's a fuckin' good one. I'd like to know what. I'd like to know more. But I ain't gonna push you, because I've been there and those ghosts only get released when they're good and ready to be. You're a lot like me, red. I see it in you and for some fucked up reason I'm blowin' off years of professionalism and lowerin' my guard... around you."
That final admission, spoken with such a roughened, low voice, with such truth sounding out in each word, is what did it. Because I could see a lot of me in him too. The man who hid in shadows. He was there, you knew it, but you never saw him. But more importantly, I had lowered my guard around him as well. I didn't exactly know why and it scared me, like I think it was scaring him. But whatever we recognised in each other made us take this path to here. Now. Him staring at me and seeing me. And me staring right back.
And I think I saw him too.
Shit.
"OK," I said and watched his lips tip up in a smile.
"You always make such quick decisions?" he asked, reaching out casually to grasp my hand and tug me away from the main highway and back towards Huntly itself. I let him. I'd come this far, why stop now?
"Yep," I said on a exhaled breath. "Life's too short to muck about."
He was silent for a while, still holding my hand as though it was the most natural thing in the world to do.
Finally he said, "You're still young, red. Lotta life left ahead of you to enjoy."
I didn't bother replying. He could think what he wanted. But for too long I've felt like I was living on borrowed time. And as much as I wanted to believe him, I knew my time was running out. I was tiring, making mistakes, getting so paranoid I was fucking things up. Case in point: Ben Tamati, hired to watch me from the shadows, holding my frigging hand.
I let him lead me to a black SUV which matched what I had determined of the man. Dark, strong, rugged, rough. He beeped the locks and opened the front passenger door for me and without even hesitating I climbed inside. I was so damn tired, even though a part of me was still so damn scared he wasn't who he was making himself out to be.
I felt the tears roll down my cheeks before I felt the burn of them, so quickly and unexpectedly they came. I prayed my father would forgive me this lapse in vigilance. I prayed it wouldn't end the way my deepest fears believed. But I needed someone to lean on. I had no idea if my chosen "giant" was the right one or not, but Ben made me feel safe, when he shouldn't. Ben made me feel alive, when I'd been dead for the past eight years.
I wanted with all of my being for this to be true, to be right. To be the one. But I just didn't know and right then, while I wiped the tears away before Ben made it 'round to his side of the car... I didn't care.
We were both silent as he pulled the vehicle onto the highway in the direction of Auckland City. My brief attempt at escape had backfired. The first time I'd ever dropped a persona, taken on a new one, and had to backtrack. Inside me, I was still Abi Merchant, but outside I was Chrystal "Chrissie" Kerr. I'd missed an afternoon of work, without phoning Angela to give her the heads up. Kelly would be wondering where I was, no doubt aware of my failure to appear at Pennyworth's and now close to one in the morning, still not coming home.
Even if I had every desire to return to Abi's life, it wasn't going to be smooth sailing. I sighed. It sounded loud in the confines of the car.
"What's up, red?" Ben asked, adjusting the heat vents so warm air washed out across me and kept me toasty.
"Life is hard," I admitted softly.
"That it is," Ben replied, returning his hand to the steering wheel, the other resting along the window led
ge. I expected him to add more to that statement, but he didn't. He had no words of condolence, no words of comfort to keep me buoyed up. Just the simple knowledge that he agreed. That I was right. That life was indeed hard.
"I'm tired of hard," I admitted, for some reason wanting to fill in the silence with inane conversation, it seemed.
Ben's eyes flicked over to my side of the car briefly, then returned to the road out front.
"Do you want me to drop you at Kelly's?" he asked, voice low.
"Where else is there?" I said, staring blindly out the side window, watching dark shapes rush past in a blur.
Ben rolled his head on his shoulders, the movement making the leather squeak slightly.
"If you wanna time-out for a bit, you could crash at my place."
The air felt charged after that unbelievable statement. I don't think it was only me holding my breath. It took a concerted effort to turn in my seat and face him. His jaw was set, brow furrowed and knuckles almost white on the steering wheel before him.
I opened my mouth to give him the out he obviously needed, from the look of his stiff frame right now. And then I thought of his speech. How I'd lived a lifetime in the past five years, and yet I hadn't lived at all. I thought of all the opportunities I'd passed up, for fear of distraction, for fear of falling in a trap and being caught. And lastly, I thought of my vivid lifelike dreams. Ben Tamati may not be everything I wanted him to be, I couldn't be sure, he wasn't giving much away. But I wanted him, like I had never wanted a man before.
And I think he wanted me too.
"What are you asking, Ben?" The words were out before I could second guess them.
His eyes flashed to mine, and for longer than they should have, locked on to my face. I almost began to feel anxious that he wasn't watching where we were driving, but at the last second, before I could scold him, he flicked his gaze back to the road.
"What do you want me to be asking, Abi?" he said, voice still sexy low, rough and delicious. It wasn't lost on me that it was the first time he'd called me by my name. Not my real name, but the name of the person I would be when we made it back to Auckland.
I almost didn't do it. This was so far out of my comfort zone, it wasn't funny. But I wanted that feeling Ben had unleashed in me, that sensation of being alive, to last. I wanted the dreams to become reality. And to do that, I had to jump off the end of the world.
"Just a place to crash, or more?" I whispered. It sounded a little husky, I licked my lips to moisten them, in the hopes my throat would miraculously unstick as well.
Ben took a couple of deep breaths in and out. I could actually see them, through the rise and fall of his chest. He didn't look at me, his eyes were all for the road ahead, but he was as aware of me as I was of him, I was sure.
Finally, after so, so very long, he murmured, "More."
If I was falling off the end of the world, it felt amazing. A rush I had never experienced in my life before. And in that moment, I knew, Ben Tamati would be waiting at the bottom to catch me.
"Your place it is then," I managed to murmur back.
Ben didn't even try to hide his reaction, his breath came out in a kind of hiss. He shook his head, released and then re-gripped the steering wheel tightly, and actually shifted in his seat. From the corner of my eye I could see why. I didn't even attempt to tell the blush off, as it stole up my neck and cheeks.
I started smiling, the grin just got bigger and bigger, it had a mind all of its own.
"Don't be so smug, red," Ben drawled.
A giggle slipped out.
"Fuck," he murmured, re-gripped the steering wheel and shifted in his seat again.
The giggle morphed into a chuckle.
Ben huffed an incredulous sound out. "Now, see, you got me wonderin' whether I can make you laugh like that when you're in my bed."
I sucked in air.
Ben chuckled.
Then I forced myself to turn just my head to look at him from under my eyelashes. He wore a grin and even in the dim lights of the dash, I could see how handsome he was. My eyes grazed over his upper torso. I think I leaned forward slightly to get a better view. His T-shirt stretched across his chest, he'd removed his jacket earlier, and the sleeves were tight around the muscles of his upper arm.
I could see that tattoo along the window ledge, too far away right now for me to touch. But the knowledge that I could be tracing it before this night was through, had my breath escaping on a sigh.
The car veered to the left of the road and suddenly stopped after bouncing up on the shoulder. Ben unlatched his seatbelt, turned around as far as the steering wheel would allow him, and reached over to wrap a hot hand around the back of my neck. I didn't even have a chance to utter a sound before his lips crushed against mine.
Firm, yet melding with me as though they were pillow soft. A growl worked its way up from the back of his throat. His teeth nipped at my bottom lip encouragingly. I moaned, let out a breath of air and his tongue charged in.
Sweet nectar of the gods, but he was glorious. My fingers dug into his shoulders, my body arched to bring my breasts against his chest. One of his hands wrapped around the back of me and hauled me tighter still. All the while he tasted, suckled, licked, and lavished my mouth.
"Ben," I managed to whimper, when he pulled back to lay kisses across my jaw and, I was thinking, to allow us both to breathe in much needed air.
"I've wanted you since the first moment I laid eyes on you, red," he rasped against my skin. "And those fucking beads," he added, twining a finger around a string of beads at the side of my face and gently tugging. "Abi keeps them, yeah?" he demanded, and my heart opened up a fraction. A feeling so foreign I almost made a sound.
But then he was kissing me again; slower, sweeter, as though he'd taken the edge off and now he was just enjoying the ride. As though we had all the time in the world to savour the taste of each other. As though he'd done this exact same thing a million times before inside his head, and finally got the chance to act it out.
"Ben," I said again, the words swallowed by his tongue and lips and mouth.
"Red," he finally replied, "I'm takin' you home to bed."
Chapter 8
And Not Just In My Dreams
"Red, I'm takin' you home to bed."
It was on a permanent loop inside my mind. And I didn't care. For the first time in my life I was doing something truly reckless. And I loved the feeling. I could become quite addicted to it, in fact. Sarah Monaghan wasn't reckless. Neither was Abi Merchant, or any of the other six identities I'd acquired throughout the years.
And I... Didn't... Care.
It was stupid and silly and made no sense at all. But it felt like my insides were bubbling up in a well of champagne. I was drunk on the feeling he'd created and I wanted more. I felt dizzy and carefree and I couldn't stop smiling, even though I tried to keep the grin to myself. Whoever this man was, whatever he meant for my future - good or bad - I couldn't walk away from this.
I can't exactly say I've lived a sheltered life. Even before Roan appeared at the end of my bed, I knew what world I lived in. My father tried to keep the worst of it from me. All those who lived on the Compound and had kids, did pretty much the same thing. And those kids that embraced the lifestyle, I avoided. Still, I knew what they were up to, even if I didn't know the specifics.
Then when I left, ran away, into the big wide world of New Zealand, I saw all aspects of "normal" life. And you can hardly say I haven't had an education in reality during that time. But, right now, even though I am not an innocent in the ways of the world, I was acutely aware that I also was not an expert either. I'd had a few affairs, lowered my guard enough to experience life. But always, always, with my eyes on the horizon and my awareness on my surroundings.
I have never let go of that. That need to be careful, to not trust, to never open up to another. To never forget why I was running, and why I couldn't stop.
Except in my dreams.
And I
didn't feel like I was stopping now, I still had every intention of grabbing Chrystal's ID when it was finished. But, I had never stood so close to the fire before, and welcomed the burn. Ben was more than fire, he was an inferno. He was following me for a reason I had yet to determine. But how does that saying go? Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
Not one my father had ever employed, but it felt appropriate here. Or maybe I just wanted it to be.
And I was tired. So very tired of running. I just needed a rest, for a short while, to replenish my reserves. Then I could face the next few years. I was sure of it. Ben was going to be my recharge. A chance to let my guard down in some ways, while still keeping options open for escape. If I could just get through the next three days until my ID was ready, using Ben as my shield, as the giant who stands between me and Roan, then I might just make it out of here alive.
I could never trust him. But then, he should never trust me either. I am a survivor. And I will do whatever I need to do to survive.
As Auckland's glowing skyline came into our line of sight, I was happy with where I had got my head to. I knew what I was doing was dangerous, but part of me recognised the danger for what it was. The reason behind feeling alive. Ben was forbidden, perilous, captivating fruit. I couldn't forget that, but I also knew I couldn't walk away either.
He'd gone very quiet since we'd had our little moment on the side of the road. Not that I was much of a conversationalist right now, too wrapped up in my head to talk. But I noticed the closer we got to the city, the tighter he held onto that steering wheel. The whiter his knuckles became. I may have got my head in the right space to do this, to taste the forbidden fruit. But I was thinking Ben was having second thoughts.
I decided to distract him, but even as I opened my mouth, I had no idea how to achieve that.
"So, where do you live?" I asked the first thing that popped into my head, shifting on my seat to be able to gauge his emotions by the look on his face and stance of his body.
He cleared his throat. "Downtown."
I paused, waiting for more information, like say, an address. Nothing. I pulled my satchel closer, hugging it to my chest.
Sweet Seduction Shadow Page 8