“It wasn’t because you were a virgin. It was because I didn’t know you were a virgin.”
She wasn’t sure that made it any better. “I don’t really see how it was any of your business.”
“It was my business because I would have done things differently. In case you didn’t notice, I’m told it hurts the first time. I took you up against a goddamn wall and I wasn’t gentle about it. I was afraid you’d hate me and you’d have every right to. If I’d taken five goddamn seconds to pay attention I should have figured out you hadn’t done any of it before.”
“That’s what bothered you? That you weren’t gentle?”
She wasn’t making fun of him, but it must have come across that way because he snapped, “I’m sorry if you think it’s funny that I thought I should have been considerate.”
“I don’t think it’s funny, Random, it’s just... as far as pain goes? That was nothing. It hurt way more the first time Dad broke my nose.” Or my collarbone. Or every one of the fingers on my left hand. Really, the entirety of her childhood had hurt a lot more than the temporary pinch she’d felt when Random had thrust inside her. Since she’d still been in the grips of the orgasm he’d licked her to she really hadn’t given a single damn about the pain.
Random tensed around her, and his voice was a low, warning rumble. “The first time? How many times has your father broken your nose, Kyrie?”
Shit. She hadn’t meant to say that. Keeping her mouth shut had been a lot easier when she hadn’t had anyone to talk to. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, it really didn’t hurt. And I liked the wall.” She’d liked everything about their encounter, right up until the end. “Is that—thinking you hurt me—is that why you kept hanging around, then? Guilt, or—”
He swore and flipped her around to face him.
“Kyrie, I want to be very, very clear about something. You don’t have to do anything with what I say. I don’t expect anything from you, but I need you to understand it.
“I. Love. You. I have always loved you. It has nothing to do with your damned virginity. If you’d fucked everyone in Seclusion before we’d had sex, the words still would have come out of my mouth because I was idiotically incapable of stopping them. You were the first woman I ever kissed.”
“You were eighteen by then,” she whispered.
“Not everyone starts young. Besides, I was a romantic idiot. I wanted you to be my first kiss. Maybe if I’d practiced beforehand you wouldn’t have punched me.” He shrugged. “The point is, when you didn’t feel the same way, I tried to forget you. But I never did. And then you finally noticed me last year, and I knew I wasn’t ever getting over you.
“When you let me keep hanging around, I thought maybe I could convince you I was worth it. That I was at least worth trying. There hasn’t—you should know there hasn’t been anyone since you.”
That comment Meredith had made about Random being “unavailable” for the last year cast itself in a new light.
“Random.” She couldn’t get anything out other than his name. The full impact was settling onto her, the memory of every time she’d snapped at him in the last year. Every time she’d made snide comments about his sex life and implied that someone with his tendencies wasn’t really capable of love. She hadn’t meant any of it. She’d just meant he wasn’t capable of loving her. Because who could?
“It’s okay.” He smiled at her, a small, sad smile that broke her heart. “I know you don’t love me.”
He was so very, very wrong about that.
“But if there isn’t anyone else, if you want me at all—I’ll take anything you’re willing to give me.”
Valkyrie’s heart thudded in her chest. The voice of caution, the one that had been with her since the first time her father had threatened Jace, urged her to be careful. But careful had gone out the window the moment she’d walked into StellaMia’s at Random’s side. Had probably gone out the window in the parking lot at Savado’s.
What did holding back from him now accomplish, except to make them both miserable? If she couldn’t be honest with him now, when he’d just bared his soul to her, when could she?
Maybe she couldn’t tell him she loved him. She didn’t think the words would go past her lips, for the visceral terror they incited in her. But she could tell him something.
“Random, I—”
Her phone’s message tone cut her off. She would have ignored it, but it sounded again. And again. Random’s chimed soon after, and then the phone calls started. She retrieved her phone, a sick feeling in her gut, and opened the message from an unknown number first.
You said you didn’t care what I did with Elijah. Let’s see if that’s true.
The other two messages were from Meredith.
Has the Council contacted you yet?
Call me as soon as they do.
The missed call was from DuPont. She had a feeling she knew what it contained before she started the voicemail, but she listened anyway.
“Ms. Winters.” DuPont sounded as if he struggled for composure. “It’s your father. It’s Elijah. He’s—he’s returned. Call me back and report to Council headquarters immediately.”
Valkyrie ended the voicemail and called Meredith.
“You heard?” Meredith asked.
“Yes.”
“DuPont wants me to come in. He left a message, I haven’t spoken to him yet. I’m the only Truthfinder of any real power in the state. Whatever they want me for, if I don’t go, it’ll take them a day at least to contact someone else and fly them in. What do you want me to do?”
Given the length of time Elijah had been gone, the Council wouldn’t reinstate his full legal authority without an in-depth investigation of his missing time. With a Truthfinder of Meredith’s caliber, that could be as simple as a Q-and-A session.
“You’re out of town. And I mean that literally. Out of the state would be better. Out of the country would be best.”
“What the hell is going on, Val?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
She ended the call but couldn’t bring herself to look at Random, and busied herself with putting on her boots. “Elijah’s back,” she said, her voice dull. She didn’t think she would ever manage to call him her father again. “The Council’s summoned me to headquarters. I have to go, I have to leave, I have to—”
“Kyrie. Look at me.”
She stopped and looked, realized her entire body was trembling. Her hands, frozen on the laces of her boots, shook. That wouldn’t do. She couldn’t see Elijah like this—this unwound. But the tactics that had seen her through life failed her now. She couldn’t breathe her way to calm this time, couldn’t will her heart rate into slow submission, couldn’t force her hands to steadiness.
Because the last two days—the events of this evening—they all added up to the one thing she’d fought so hard against. She loved Random Tremayne—and if she didn’t fix this, she was going to get him killed.
Random caught Valkyrie’s shaking hands in his. They were even paler than usual against his own. She’d gone the white of death and she was cold.
He’d never seen her like this. The closest to it was when she’d tried to pack his things and make him leave. Even with that, before this moment, he would have told anyone who bothered to ask that truly rattling Valkyrie Winters was impossible.
She was rattled, now. She hadn’t changed out of the dress but it was her combat boots she was frozen in the midst of lacing. The incongruity between the two alarmed him only because she hadn’t seemed to have noticed it herself.
“He’s back,” she repeated, and there was a world of disbelief and fear in her voice.
“I know.” He’d gotten the call, too, if only because DuPont had seen them together at StellaMia’s and tried Random when Valkyrie hadn’t answered her phone.
He rubbed her hands in his, trying to bring even a little warmth into them. She hadn’t looked at him since she’d listened to DuPont’s message.
She stared unblinking at a spot on his chest, and he knew what this was. He’d seen it enough times before, on enough clients’ faces.
Trauma.
He cursed himself again for not understanding sooner, even as he knew that sometimes these things were so well-hidden it was difficult to. Victims of domestic abuse often bore up better—outwardly, at least—while it was still ongoing. Because their bodies were on constant alert, constant survival mode. It was later, when it was over, that their bodies, their minds, gave them leave to fall apart.
Kyrie had been in survival mode her entire life and he thought, even once Elijah was gone, that she’d only halfway come out of it. Because she had expected him to come back at any moment, she had never been able to relax. Now that he was back, it would all be crashing in on her again.
“Don’t go,” he told her.
“I have to,” she whispered. “DuPont—”
“Doesn’t matter. There is no legal statute that says you have to be present for that asshole’s return.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Don’t I?” He ran his thumbs gently along her wrists. “Those chains I broke. It wasn’t Danvers who put them on you, was it?”
Her gaze flicked to him briefly before returning the spot she’d picked out on his chest. “No.”
He’d suspected—known, really—but hearing her confirm it made it real in a way it hadn’t been before. “When?” he asked tersely.
“After Mom died. Everything got worse after Mom died.”
“The chains are gone now,” he growled. “You don’t need to see him again. You don’t ever need to go back to that house again. You can stay here.”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
He didn’t take it personally. He understood well enough how that might feel like trading one unwanted dependence for another.
“Then somewhere else. If you don’t want to take things from me you know damn well Siren will do anything for you without wanting something in return.”
“You don’t understand,” she said again, and then the words started tumbling out of her. “It wasn’t the chains. It never really was. I fought them the moment he put them on, and I kept fighting him. Every day, every minute. I made holding the leash difficult.
“It took a toll on him, and I would have broken them eventually. I knew it. He knew it. Breaking my bones didn’t stop me, though it did slow me down.”
She said it so casually he could barely keep a grip on the rage that flooded through him. But this wasn’t about him, so he held it down, even as she turned her left hand over, the one he’d noticed shook ever-so-slightly whenever she talked about Elijah.
“The day I almost broke free, I destroyed his concentration so badly he lost a business deal he’d wanted. So he broke every finger on this hand. I was left-hand dominant, before that. But I think he knew that wouldn’t keep me down for long.” Her lips twisted bitterly. “So he found something worse to threaten me with. He told me how very easy it would be for him to kill Jace and make it look like an accident.”
Random’s blood turned to ice.
“He never liked Jace,” she said softly. “I ran him off whenever Elijah got bad, so he wouldn’t know. Kept Elijah busy with me so Jace wouldn’t get hurt. And he didn’t. Elijah never hurt him.” A sheen of water filled her eyes, tears he knew would never fall, and a desperate need to be believed limned her voice. “I never let him hurt Jace. I protected him. You have to believe that.”
“I do, love.” He took her face in his hands, his heart breaking for her. He’d only felt this helpless once before in his life. He couldn’t take away her pain, couldn’t undo what she had lived through. All he could do was offer her words, and truth, and he didn’t know if they would help. “But Kyrie, if he had hurt Jace, that wouldn’t be your fault. Elijah’s sins aren’t yours to pay for.”
“Aren’t they? I can live with everything else. But I can’t live with it if he hurts Jace.” She finally met his gaze. “I can’t live with it if he hurts you.”
The words, the intensity in her voice, gave him hope he hadn’t had since Jace’s wedding. And wasn’t he a selfish bastard if the thing he was thinking right now was, Maybe she could love me, after all.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I do. Your birthday. When you kissed me the first time. He was watching.” She touched her fingers to his cheek, to the exact place her knuckles had landed her punch. “Hitting you—I didn’t know how else to keep you safe. To make you both think I didn’t care.
“And then I saw you again, after he disappeared, and I wanted you. I knew better, but I wanted you anyway, and I was selfish enough that I took you. And I told myself it would be fine because you don’t get serious with anyone, but then you...”
“Then I told you I loved you,” he finished for her, “and I wouldn’t let you go.”
She nodded.
Her attempts to drive him away without ever really telling him to go made sense now. Because she hadn’t wanted to let him go. He didn’t know if she loved him, didn’t know if that was something she would ever be capable of admitting to, even if she did. But he knew, now, that she hadn’t wanted to let him go anymore than he had her.
“I’m still not giving you up.” He tilted her chin up. “I’m not afraid of Elijah Winters. And I’ll damn myself to hell a thousand times before I let him touch you again. Bringing charges against a councilor won’t be easy, but—”
“No.” Her hands gripped his shoulders. “You can’t take him to court.”
His frustration hit its peak, and it took everything he had to calmly ask, “Why not?”
“Even if you could get the Council to convict him, and no matter how good you are, I don’t know that you could, it wouldn’t be his fate you’d be sealing. It would be mine.”
“I don’t understand, Kyrie.”
“I know.”
“Then help me to. Jace and I—we can protect ourselves if we know what’s coming. You don’t have to worry about us.”
“It isn’t that. Isn’t only that. There are things I can’t tell you.”
“Can’t or won’t?” he asked, and he couldn’t keep the hard edge from his voice.
“I don’t know. I’m trying.” She slid her hands down to his and threaded their fingers together. “But I need you to trust me on this. I need you to trust me when I say that I have to walk into Council headquarters and see him. Trust me when I say I can handle this.
“Because if we do it your way, I’m going to die. And I don’t want to die, Random.”
Those words were the complete unembellished truth. He felt it when she spoke, and it terrified him.
“Tell me I’m not going to lose you, Kyrie.”
“Trust me,” was her only answer. “If you do love me, trust me.”
He closed his eyes. Every instinct in him screamed to do the opposite of everything she’d asked. To hide her away somewhere safe and bury Elijah Winters so far in the legal system no one would ever find him again. But Valkyrie would never allow herself to be hidden. She would never allow herself to be kept safe.
“I do trust you.” He squeezed her fingers, still entwined with his. “But I need you to trust me, too. We’ll do it your way, but you don’t do it alone. Let me help you.”
For two long beats of his heart she held her breath. Then she let it out on a shudder. “Okay.”
His pulse thudded in his temples. “We go to headquarters together. You don’t try to cut me out. You don’t go back to your house. He doesn’t touch you again.”
“Okay.”
He could hardly believe she’d agreed. “What do you need from me?”
He expected her to say nothing. She never needed anything from him. Never needed him.
She shifted closer and her eyes fluttered closed for a moment before they opened into his. “I need this,” she said softly, and kissed him.
Valkyrie
poured everything she had into the kiss. All her need, all her desire, all her fear. She felt Random battle with himself in the way he yielded to her even as his hands went to her waist as if to hold her back.
He managed a few words between the joining of their mouths. “Probably” —kiss— “shouldn’t be” —another kiss— “doing this.”
Should or shouldn’t had lost all meaning for her. There was only Random, here and now and vibrantly alive, and she needed him. Especially when he opened his mouth to her and her tongue swept inside, glided against his, stoking the growing fire inside her.
“You said you weren’t thinking clearly,” he tried again, when they came up for air.
She didn’t need to think, didn’t want to. She kissed his jaw, his throat, fumbled at the buttons of his shirt before losing all patience and ripping it open, buttons scattering in every direction on the hardwood floor.
“Shit,” he breathed, then sucked the air back in on a sharp inhale when she trailed her lips down his chest, his stomach. His fingers dug into her hips. “Kyrie, love, I’m not made of superhuman restraint.”
“Good.” She bit at the firm planes of his abs and slid her fingers inside the waistband of his pants, grazing his head.
“Oh, fuck.” His hands came under her thighs and dragged her onto his lap, her legs straddling him. His erection pressed at her core and she ground against him, enjoying the sound of pure male need the movement elicited.
He grabbed the hem of the dress and pulled it off her, revealing the bra he’d picked off her floor that morning...and the matching underwear.
“So something else lacy was on sale,” he murmured, fingers skimming down her stomach, her thighs.
“Do you like it?” She’d worn it for him. She’d never thought he’d see it, but she’d worn it for him.
“Oh, I like it.” His voice was all rough heat, sliding over her like molten honey. “I’m going to like it even better when it’s on my floor.” He unclasped her bra and let it fall, took her nipple in his mouth and sucked. An answering tug of need shot through her. She arched her back and ground against him, the rough friction of his pants against her nearly-bared flesh an exquisite torture.
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