Cruel Water (The Dirty Heroes Collection Book 11)

by Dee Palmer

  Her eyes widen and she gapes. It would be comical if this whole situation weren’t so hopeless. “You don’t ever get turned on?”

  I shake my head.

  “Not even when they are panting, glowing, floating in subspace because you’ve taken them to the edge of their boundaries and beyond?” Her pupils dilate simply from her own description, and I can’t help the swirl of jealously in my gut. If only.

  “No, nothing.”

  “But you can get hard?”

  “Are we having this conversation?”

  “I’m intrigued.” She arches a brow, and as much as I don’t wish to air my sticky laundry, I also don’t need this conversation to become more than it is.

  “Yes, I can get hard. Yes, I can come. And yes, I masturbate like a fucking monkey, but no woman—or man—has ever given me sexual pleasure. I get pleasure from pain. No, that’s not entirely true. I get a different kind of pleasure from pain, and that gives me respite.”

  “So why do you think that is?” She slumps back in the padded high-back sumptuous chair, looking suitably perplexed. I’ll take perplexed over sympathetic any day.

  “I don’t know. All I know is I need their pain to survive, and unless they love it, truly love it, without wanting more from me, well, I won’t inflict my demons on someone who is misguided enough to believe I can change.”

  “Why is it so important to you? Can’t you just pretend? After all, they aren’t complaining.”

  “No!” I snap. Exhaling a deep and pained breath, I try and explain the unexplainable. "No pretense. I have to have some hope, Stephanie. Hope is all I have, hope that if I can find someone where the pleasure is real…then, it might just…”

  “What? Might what?”

  “It might break the spell and I might be able to feel desire, I might be able to have some peace without needing the pain of an innocent. I might not need the pain at all.”

  “Oooor the spell might be broken, and you find you are just as kinky as the rest of us and fucking love the pain.”

  “That would work also.” I sniff, and a flat laugh slips from my mouth.

  “Don’t give me that. I know you love it. You can try the tortured soul routine on me, but I’m not buying it.” Her second attempt to lift my mood is equally unsuccessful as the first. I only wish that was the case. She draws in a resigned and somewhat bored breath. “So you need to find someone that is basically mute, devoid of emotional needs, with nonexistent nerve endings?”

  “Yes.” I meet her gaze, her eyebrow raised high with cynical judgment.

  “You’re going to die a very lonely man, Eric,” she quips, sad amusement pulling her lips in a downward arc.

  “I know.” My flat response makes her wince.

  “Oh god, Eric, you may be a massive asshole, but I hate seeing you like this. I mean you’ve always been… a bit odd, but this? This is different. Ever since the accident last week. I don’t get it, you’d think cheating death like you did would give you a fresh zest for life.”

  “I didn’t cheat death, Stephanie, I was saved.” My jaw twitches with fresh tension. A whole other can of worms is about to explode onto my desk, and I curse myself that I’m engaging.

  “So you say, even after a massive concussion,” she mutters.

  My fist clenches around the tumbler and I jerk it up and slam it down. “Don’t fucking do that! I know what happened. I saw what I saw!”

  “Eric, you were unconscious.” Holding her palms up in supplication, her voice takes on a softer tone, as if that will calm the inferno this conversation ignites in my belly.

  “Exactly. My car tore through the barrier as if it was tissue paper and hit the ocean like a fucking expensive stone. I don’t remember trying to escape. I don’t remember struggling at all.”

  “You must have passed out when you hit the barrier. Your body shut down. I heard that happens sometimes when the brain is faced with a life and death situation. It’s a self-preservation thing.”

  Blinking slowly and with enormous effort, I try to block out what she’s saying and pull the events back to the forefront of my mind. I do this more than I care to confess in an attempt to feel a fraction of what I felt when it happened. And it did happen.

  “I remember that voice: a delicate yet powerful sound that I felt resonate in my soul. I heard it, Stephanie, felt it. I was aware, conscious, and for one single moment in my whole miserable life, I was happy.”

  “A dream then?”

  “The investigator said the car had been opened from the outside. There was no evidence that I had struggled. The airbag had gone off and tests showed it had been cut away with some sort of coral. Coral, for fuck sake! Not to mention I woke up on the damn beach with what felt very much like kiss-swollen lips.”

  “I can’t explain it, Eric, but you are a rational man. You must see that this sounds—”

  I growl my interruption. “Like I’ve lost my fucking mind. Yes, I’m well aware of that.” Standing, I snatch my jacket from the back of my chair and my keys and wallet from the desk. Striding purposefully toward the door, I’m suddenly tired of this conversation and even more exhausted from wanting that memory to be real, needing it like I need my next breath.

  “Where are you going?” Stephanie asks as I reach the door, concern etched on her immaculately made up face.

  “Home.”

  “Home?” She asks because my reply really hasn’t narrowed it down.

  “The castle. I need the solitude.” She nods with understanding and just as the door closes she rushes to call out.

  “You’ve been drinking Eric. You might not feel it, and you certainly don’t look it, but you are well over the safe limit to drive.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. And besides, another accident might mean I’ll see her again,” I mumble to myself, already hoping the weather is a treacherous as it was a month ago.

  3

  My knuckles are white with my grip on the steering wheel of the replacement Aston Martin Vanquish. The exterior damage to my car was minimal considering it sliced through the metal crash barrier on the bridge and plunged twenty feet into the ocean. The engine, on the other hand, is going to need some serious TLC. I’m thankful the low tide made it possible to retrieve the vehicle at all. Although in all honesty, I hoped the expense of recovering it would have at the very least provided some concrete answers to how I got out alive and not burdened me with more questions.

  I didn’t need to know why the car slid where it did, or how I wasn’t able to regain control before I hit the barrier. I didn’t care why the barrier failed to do it’s one job. I don’t even want to know how I survived the sheer drop into the ocean, or even how I got out of the sealed car unscathed. I just want to know: Who the fuck saved me?

  My foot slams on the brake at the far end of the bridge. My castle rises ominously in the distance on the ridge of the cliff face and high above the bridge that connects the mainland to my remote island. A temporary barrier has been erected complete with a multitude of red flashing warning lights. The V12 engine purrs, making the leather seats thrum beneath me. My foot pulses on the gas, igniting a thunderous roar, which mirrors my mood. It’s late, dark, and only the absence of a violent storm sets this night apart from that of the accident. My stomach churns, and tight knots pull and scrape painfully at my insides. Blood pumps wildly through my veins, and my heart thumps so loudly I can almost feel it hammering against my rid cage.

  I don’t do scared. I don’t do out of control, and right now, I don’t trust myself.

  Flooring the gas, the car explodes, lurching forward with enough G-force to pin me deep into the seat. The horizon approaches at an alarming speed, and I don’t let up. If anything, I press harder on the pedal. The inky backdrop of the night sky bleeds into the pitch-dark ocean below. The myriad of flashing lights ahead meld onto an intense bright red line. I see the weakened part of the bridge from where I crashed through the first time one week ago. The thought makes me jolt. Calm settles in my bloodstream
, and I blink slowly, drawing in a steady final breath. Yes, I mean final breath. Decision made. I’m milliseconds away from making the fatal turn of the steering wheel when everything changes.

  I. See. Her.

  From nowhere, she’s in the center of road. In front of me, looking directly at me, and in the fraction of a second it takes for me to pound my foot on the brake, I see everything from that night as clearly as any high definition action movie.

  The barrier disintegrating when I hit it. The airbag bursting in my face, knocking me back before the weightless feeling of flying through the air abruptly ends with the car slamming into the ocean. I can feel the water begin to fill the car as it glides so elegantly downward into the darkness. I blink, and when I open my eyes, I see her face on the other side of the window, the headlights are her spotlight, and she looks like a goddess, a silver screen movie star on a watery stage, mesmerizingly beautiful. Her hair moves like inky tendrils, swirling around her body as she darts around the sinking car. Her face is filled with panic, large blue eyes and perfect pink lips calling out something, which is swallowed by the silent ocean. I don’t feel her concern, not a bit of it. Why is that? Recalling that moment, I felt completely calm, reconciled maybe. I was going to die and I was going to die seeing something no one else has ever seen, something magical. A mermaid. I also knew I was dying because I was clearly hallucinating but it didn’t matter. For the first time, I felt at peace, and it was because of her.

  She saved me. She pulled me from the car and helped me swim to the surface. She lay with me on the beach, her fingers so delicate on my face, and her voice. I’ve never heard anything so hypnotic, a melodious sound surely only angels are capable of creating. I felt very much that, in her arms, I was perhaps in heaven. I wished I was. She kissed me, the dream ended, and I was back to my living nightmare, my cursed life.

  The tires screech on the tarmac, and I’m grateful for one thing: It isn’t raining. The ground isn’t wet and slippery because, when I jolt in my seatbelt as the vehicle finally stops, there is no distance at all between the front grill of the car and her trembling bare legs. If the conditions were the same as the night of the accident I have no doubt we would both be careering off the bridge, me once more in the car, and her plastered over the hood. I shudder with the notion that the former was what I wanted only seconds ago.

  I blink several times to make sure the vision before me is real and not something my desperate mind has conjured up. The headlights illuminate her naked body. Her pale skin has this ethereal glow. Her hair is soaked, hanging in damp wavy tendrils almost to her waist. Even in the darkness, her eyes seem to pierce right through me. A turbulent blue saturates her irises, a color the likes of which I’ve only ever seen in my nightly dreams since the accident.

  Blood rushes in my ears so loud I can’t hear my own thoughts. Is it really her? My hands have this vise-like grip on the steering wheel, and it’s an effort to divert my attention away from her enough to gather myself and move.

  What if I look away and she disappears?

  Get a fucking grip, Eric. She’s there, in front of the car, and you’re the only one here. Now get out of the fucking car and offer her your damn jacket.

  I reach over to the passenger seat and grab my jacket. When I open the car door, she jumps. A nervous, yet happy smile fills her face, and something strange happens inside my chest. An uncomfortable sensation, like some sort of foreign object, is lodged there momentarily. It’s not unpleasant, just something new. Ignoring whatever is going on inside me, I step around the front of the vehicle so I am now standing about a foot away from her. She’s maybe five foot five, and I’m six feet seven. I don’t want to scare the woman. She steps up to me though, closes the distance so there is zero personal space between us and instantly a shit-ton of body heat. I stiffen at the sudden intimacy, and it takes all my effort to remain still when my natural instinct would normally have me holding her at arm’s length. If I held her at all, that is.

  Still, this feels different, and in the absence of protocol, I decide to go with my gut and just let it happen.

  She tips up on her toes to get a closer look. Her hands reach for my cheeks, and she tugs me lower so she can look directly into my eyes. Her hands feel like silk on my skin, her touch electrifying dormant parts of both my mind and my body. She searches my face as if she’s looking for something specific. Her brow crinkles in cute little furrowed lines of concentration, and I find I’m holding my breath—with what, I’m not sure. It feels a little like hope. Hope I pass; hope I fit the bill; hope I’m what she is looking for specifically, because I can’t ignore the raging inferno coursing through my veins while I wait for the outcome.

  Every part of this is new to me. The feeling of uncertainty, the turmoil, the desire to claim, and the feeling of calm. It’s chaos in my head right now, yet the only thing I actually need is to hear her voice. Then I’ll know for sure it’s really her.

  She’s quite breathtaking when she smiles; the purity of it completely illuminates her face, and her eyes shine with wonder and undiluted joy. I feel something slightly more primal toward her, and it’s a relief that I seem to have passed whatever test she’s just silently conducted.

  I slide my jacket over her shoulders, and she shudders under my touch. Her expression is rightly wary; however, she doesn’t seem remotely scared. To her, at least, I’m not a dangerous stranger.

  “You must be cold.” My voice sounds rough, and I have to cough to clear my throat. It doesn’t improve the gravelly sound one bit. “Put this on,” I add, and when she looks confused, I help her, holding the jacket open so she can see the arm holes. She slips her arms through the sleeves. The suit jacket completely drowns her slight frame, and I mentally kick myself when she pulls it across her body, hiding those perky perfect breasts. She shakes her head in what I'm guessing is her response to the first question, even if she’s now hugging the jacket to her body. It was an educated assumption, given the external temperature, even if her skin isn’t covered in the telltale gooseflesh from the chilly exposure. It’s luminescent, flawless, like marble lovingly carved by expert hands.

  “What are you doing here? In the middle of nowhere? At night?” Her intense gaze hasn’t left mine but she dips her eyes for a fraction of a second. When she looks up slowly through her long dark lashes, she has a shy smile tipping her lips upward. She points her finger in the center of my chest, and I feel more than a spark burst just the other side of her touch. I feel my cock begin to swell and my balls ache. What the fuck!

  “Me?” I take her finger and watch her pupils dilate. “What’s you name?” Her mouth drops, and she sucks in a breath just as I hold mine. This is it. She snaps it shut and pats her throat, shaking her head with frustration. “You have a sore throat?” She shakes her head again, patting harder this time.

  “You can’t speak?” She drops her head, the last negative twist of her head is painfully slow.

  My mind races, that can’t be true.

  Of course it’s true.

  “Oh.” I exhale all the hope I held in my lungs.

  The surge of emotions, adrenaline, or whatever this is and the aftermath of last week collide, explode, and disintegrate into tiny windswept ashes all around me. It takes a few moments to gather myself as the metaphorical dust settles. I draw in a disjointed breath, my reality snuffing out any remote hope of something changed, of the curse being lifted of me having a future, having a life. My erection softens, and my pulse returns to normal. Fairy tales are for little girls and little boys.

  I’m not a little boy. This woman is not a little girl, and my reality is the stuff of nightmares, where only twisted souls and demons survive.

  This is for the best. I have nothing to offer but a life of pain, and this woman and the woman that saved me deserve better. They both deserve to be worshiped by kings not tortured by a broken prince.

  “Do you live near here?” I ask and she nods.

  “Would you like me to take you home? I�
�ll need an address.” She vehemently shakes her head and grabs my hands with a sudden rush of panic streaking across her beautiful face. “Okay, okay, so not home.” My soothing tone sounds strange and unfamiliar to my ears; however, it seems to do the trick. She sighs, and the tightness in her face and frame evaporates before me.

  However, my mind is now troubled with the thought of why that might be. Why is going to her home a bad idea? Did someone hurt her? After all, she is naked in the middle of nowhere. Maybe she’s run away? My blood pumps violently with a sudden surge of anger, fueled by my imagination and only calmed when I look down at her feet. They look fine, not bloody or bruised from the rough ground or long distances travelled. Another quick appraisal up and down her body and it’s clear her skin shows no evidence of trauma. I’m an expert in both inflicting and identifying marks, and I’m happy there are none, or I guess they could’ve faded by now. How long has she been out here and why is her hair wet? Did she swim here? My head hurts with the litany of unanswered questions. Exhaustion creeps up my neck and behind my eyes and seeps into every muscle in my body. In an effort to hang on to my sanity, I know I’m going to need answers, and there is only one person that can give those to me. I draw in a deep breath and decide the inquisition can wait until tomorrow.

  “You’re coming home with me then,” I state, clipped and in a tone that brooks no argument. Contrary to the response I guess I was expecting, the woman flashes a brilliantly blinding smile and vigorous nod. She steps up flush to me and wraps her surprisingly strong arms around my waist. I was not expecting that.

  Peeling her arms away from my body I almost laugh when she grins impishly up at me. Who is this woman? Pinching my lips together, I fight the urge to smile. The last thing I want to do is encourage her, not when all I want is answers because my mind won’t rest, and then to send her on her way. As I walk her round the car to the passenger side, she bites her lip and winces with each step. Maybe the soles of her feet are sore after all? I open the door, and when she climbs in and folds her long slender legs underneath her, I can see that isn’t the case.