by Roze, Robyn
She stood before him, above him, and the intensity in her expression branded his soul.
If he even had one.
Holding his hand out low to the ground, he held her gaze and waited. One corner of her mouth lifted in understanding and she raised her foot, allowing him to rinse the sand from it, dry it with the towel, and then slip it into a sandal. After repeating the act of devotion with her other foot, he tugged her close, her suit damp from the ocean and pressed to his face, her sweet scent mingling with the salty tease of the sea.
His two great loves.
“I’m glad you’re here. I’ve missed you,” she whispered, her fingers threaded in the easy waves of his dark hair and holding him close. “I hoped you wouldn’t be angry with me for too long.”
He squeezed her tighter, breathed her in deeper, and wrestled with his growing hunger to overindulge in her, to show her everything he was feeling.
Discipline, Parker. Do this right.
Gradually, he rose to his feet, his nose brushing against hers. Taking her hands in his, he uttered the same two words, again. “Come here.”
Guiding her to the table with their messages held beneath a cup, he sat her on one side and positioned himself on the other; he needed distance right now, even if it was only the narrow width of a hand-hewn table. He needed to breathe his own air, clear his head, and do the one thing he had never done for anyone. Let her in all the way. Trust her with everything.
Knowing her to be a woman who appreciated actions more than words, he would show her his commitment to doing just that.
All Sean had managed after their lengthy, involuntary separation were two words, uttered twice. His near silence after being apart so long puzzled Shayna. However, the adoration radiating from him, the serenity in his eyes, the relaxed set of his jaw, the loose slope of his shoulders told her not to worry. Intuition informed her to hold back the questions wanting to tumble out, and, instead, let him begin the reset on their relationship.
He continued to watch her, as if seeing her for the first time. Then, plucking a piece of paper from his shirt pocket, he unfolded it on the table and smoothed it out in front of himself. Her letter to him from Paris. The click of a pen drew her eyes up, and his purposeful focus stayed on her, seeming to convey something important to her. Then he glanced down and initialed each of the conditions on the list, signed his name at the bottom, and dated it. He pivoted the paper around and slid it in front of her, his expression resolute.
The mere fact her stinging words had survived the fury he must have felt after reading them surprised her as much as witnessing him turn it into a pact. All of it. He had agreed to her terms without trying to change any of them, even a little.
Stunned by his action, her finger brushed over the fresh ink as she read the letter written weeks earlier. The night still clear in her mind, she recalled the intense emotions and steely determination that had compelled her to take pen to paper, leave Paris, and reclaim her life.
“You’re not property.”
The echo of her angry words to Mick, and penned on the paper in her hands, yanked her gaze back to him. He seemed different to her, but she could not put her finger on the change she sensed in him.
“I’ve never thought that about you.” His arms stretched across the table, and he grasped her hands. “But you are mine.” His fingertips circled gently against her palms. “You are mine, Shayna,” he repeated, the emotion thick in his voice, unmistakable in his striking eyes.
An unexpected tear raced down her cheek, the nuance underlying his sentimental words hitting hard, for she felt the same profound connection to him, their unmatched bond.
He patted away the salty stain on her cheek with his thumb. “I am sorry about the things I said to you that last night, the way I spoke to you. I should have apologized then and there. But I let my ego get in the way. And then the next day…” his words trailed off, his attention drawn somewhere beyond the horizon.
The next day. She would never forget her narrow escape at the high-rise infinity pool, and the organized chaos that followed.
His focus swung back to her. “It would have been the biggest regret of my life.”
“Mine too. I never would have forgiven myself if those had been my last words to you.” She squeezed his hand, feeling the watery sheen in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”
Her head tipped to one side. “My delivery could have been better.”
With a small, sad smile, remorse in his eyes, he shook his head in disagreement.
“I won’t pretend I understand the feelings you still have for him. But I accept that you can’t change how you feel. That I can’t change how you feel, either.”
She let his concession and silence rest between them, as he readied himself for what he was about to say next.
“You asked me that night why I broke my promise to you.” He waited a breath. “It wasn’t out of jealousy or insecurities. It was because I know men like him. I have for a very long time. And when a man does what he did to you,” he paused, “he’ll do it again. I couldn’t go to Mexico and risk leaving you alone, not with him around. Not when I knew the odds were against me ever making it back to you. That even if I beat the odds, I’d have to stay away for as long as I could.”
He leaned closer. “When Danielle was kidnapped, everything changed. I broke my promise to you not because it meant nothing to me. I broke it because you,” he gripped her hands tighter, “mean everything to me. It’s my job to keep you safe, and I couldn’t have done that back then without leaving you in danger.” The back of his fingers brushed against her cheek. “You don’t have to understand why I feel it’s my job to protect you. I just need you to accept that I do. I need you to accept that you can’t change that about me.”
She considered his impassioned words, and the complicated answer to why he had broken his promise to her back then. Sean had come back to her agreeing to compromises she was certain he had never given to another. All he wanted in return was this one concession from her, the importance of which weighed heavy in his eyes.
“I wouldn’t want to change that about you.”
He raised her hand and kissed the back of it.
“I just need you to handle it differently, like keeping me in the loop.”
His mouth curved in a half smile, finger tapping the piece of paper on the table between them, eyes locked on hers. “Number three. Got it all up here,” he said, finger patting at his temple.
She marveled at him for a moment, then a flash of clarity struck her. The subtle change she had noticed in his demeanor, his wholesale acceptance of her demands in the letter. The deeper implication in his words, Because I know men like him; I have for a very long time. He had cracked open the door to his past. And he was leaving it up to her whether, or when, to open it further.
Sitting across from him, he seemed at peace, ready to share his secrets. Willing to trust her with the demons that kept him awake at night when he watched her sleep, listening to her nighttime mumblings, and believing she would not love him if she knew the darkest parts of him.
Careful what you wish for…Because the burden of his secrets could soon be hers, too, the responsibility immense.
Her love for him far greater.
She would prove that truth to him; he was waiting for it. She could see it in his eyes.
All she had to do was ask.
Chapter 30
The unexpected chance to ask Sean about his past felt mentally paralyzing to Shayna, bogging down a slew of questions in a sludge of indecision. Where do I even start? After a few moments, she shook off the inertia, choosing to begin with two stories she had been following in the news over recent weeks.
“Remember our favorite café in Paraty, with the spotty Wi-Fi?”
He nodded in response.
“Whenever I go for supplies, I stop there. I get a cup of coffee, and I check the
news feed on my phone. I have a Google alert set for Singapore.”
He did not flinch.
“There’s been a lot of news about the arrests of some very powerful men involved in sex trafficking.” She watched him for a moment. “Did you have anything to do with that?”
“I had everything to do with it. Stings of that size don’t happen by accident. They take months, even years of planning, trusted connections, and a lot of patience.”
The lack of hesitation in his answer emboldened her to continue. “There’s another story I’ve read about, someone with ties to Hector Morales. It’s a name I recognized; he was a senator for a long time. Sounds like he was involved in the trafficking too. But he escaped the authorities.” She paused, her expression pointed. “Did he?”
“No. I made it look like he did.”
His frankness stole her breath for a moment.
“Is he alive?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
He shrugged. “If he is, he’d rather be dead.”
The matter-of-fact statement, blunt in its delivery and grave in its meaning, shocked her. What had he done? Did she even want to know the answer? She needed to decide, because he was not playing a game of chicken with her, betting she would back down first. It was clear he would answer any question she asked.
Was she prepared for his answers?
The drumbeat of her heart thundered in her ears and pounded in her chest. “And you’re responsible?”
“One hundred percent.”
Her eyes remained zeroed in on his, her fingertips brushing over the set of rules he had signed, reminding her she had demanded this kind of openness from him—and learning she might not want all the answers she thought she did.
In a hushed tone, she asked, “Why?”
He stretched back in his chair with a deep sigh and stayed silent for a while, still and in thought. “He recruited me for black ops. He was someone I respected back then. Before I found out what he was involved in—what he’d involved me in,” the disillusionment and self-loathing clear in his voice. “The sick stuff you’ve read about him is true, and he dirtied my hands with it a long time ago. When I realized my part in it, I had a choice to make. Ignore how random and ruthless this world is—not my problem to fix, or fight against it—my way. And I wanted him to pay for having to make that choice. I wanted him to pay for what he’d done to so many girls and their families. I’ve spent the better part of my life trying to set things right, trying to rid the world of men like him. Sometimes through legal channels. Sometimes by other means.”
By other means. The simple phrase evoked an image of a cliff top…Her ex-husband at the bottom of it…A shiver prickled down her spine.
He rubbed at his eyes and tipped back in his chair. “It hasn’t worked; it’s Sisyphean. I’ve been pushing a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down. Every fucking time. It doesn’t matter how many times I do it, nothing changes. The world is still random and ruthless. And my hands are still dirty.”
Pushing forward, elbows back on the table, he eased forward, trying to read her, and looking worried at what he saw. “Don’t waste a second feeling sorry for the senator; he got what he deserved. He’s exactly the kind of animal who would’ve gotten his hands on Danielle.”
He had read her wrong, though.
Any tinge of sympathy she might have otherwise felt about the harsh fate of the men her husband had admitted to hunting over the years sat unmoved, silenced by the personal nightmare that would be forever fresh in her memory. The news reporting over the last couple weeks had revived the terror and vulnerability she experienced during Danielle’s kidnapping, causing desperate, sleepless nights, then and now.
“I don’t feel sorry for any of them. I’m just grateful for you, and what you did for my daughter,” she touched his cheek, “and others.”
His relief was palpable.
“Danielle’s rescue wasn’t the first, was it?”
He shook his head.
“You’ve helped with other trafficking stings, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
She thought back for a moment, holding his gaze. His cryptic statements from a night in her bedroom back in Mt. Pleasant, feeling so long ago now, replayed in her mind. The once jumbled puzzle of her husband’s past became clearer, an amorphous shape taking solid form.
“You prefer to work on your own; your rules, your team,” she paused, her focus narrowing in on his words from the past admission, “with the help of connections higher than I can imagine, and lower than you’d ever want me to know about.” He seemed to recognize his own words repeated back to him. “Good or bad. Right or wrong. You’d be surprised how often you can’t tell the difference.” The brooding words he had spoken to her on a late night in her moonlit bedroom, before he had left her to disappear into the jungles of Mexico…
One corner of his mouth ticked up, his expression wistful. “Good memory.”
“You’re a hard man to forget.”
In sharing the darkest parts of himself, a fuller picture of the man she loved crystallized into sharper focus, the higher resolution breathtaking. The formidable man sitting across the table from her, both merciful and merciless, did not scare or intimidate her.
He fascinated her.
Her hands explored his. Strong hands that had touched her with kindness and love.
Brutal hands that had touched others with cruelty and violence, judgment and reckoning. The punishments he meted out over the years were beyond her imagination. Yet, it did not bother her; not at all. After almost losing Danielle to those same monsters, her conscience had formed hard limits. There was no forgiveness or compassion for the men he had punished.
Not from her.
Not from him.
Monster…A worried question he asked her their last night together in Singapore replayed in her memory, her answer more meaningful this time. “You’re not a monster.” Her eyes lifted to his. “You’re my hero.”
His head dropped, eyes shut tight. “I’m not.”
Fingertips under his chin, she tipped his face back up to hers and waited for his lids to lift. “You are to me. And you can’t change how I feel. You just have to accept it.”
He gripped her face and pushed closer, pressed his lips to hers, then rested his forehead against hers. He suddenly looked so tired to her.
Caressing the stubble on his cheek, she asked, “When was the last time you slept?”
He scoffed lightly. “You mean soundly? Or at all?”
She kissed him, lingering on his soft lips, then rose to her feet and extended her hands to him. “Let me take care of you.”
A long, low moan spilled out of him as his head fell forward, palms against the stone wall of the outdoor shower, a refreshing cascade of cool water pouring over him. She massaged deeper, harder, in tight circles down his neck, then kneaded along the knotted muscles in his shoulders, the residual tension evaporating under her skilled touch. When she offered to take care of him, he had envisioned something quite different. He was not complaining, though. This was an unexpected, incredible start.
Leafy bamboo and stacked stone encircled the private shower area connected to the bungalow by a short paver path. The shuffle of shade and sun swept across their skin from the lazy sway of palm fronds overhead. She had taken her time stripping him, lathering him, and rinsing him. Each draw of breath rewarded him with the relaxing aroma of vanilla and jasmine. He grinned at the thought of smelling like her, and liking that he did. He had wanted to pull down the zipper on her sexy swimsuit to return the favor, but she had spun him around and neutralized him with the potent power in her slender fingers.
A contented groan rumbled out of him as she worked her magic down his back, each point of pressure feeling like she was healing him, freeing him from the past, promising him the future. Let me take care of you, hummed in his head. No one had ever said that to him. Let alone done it. She had been his first for so ma
ny things.
Reaching behind and hooking her waist in the bend of his arm, he pulled her around to face him, the water sheeting down his back and shielding her. He could say those three little words, but they did not cut it. Not even close.
“With everything I’ve done in my life, I never thought I deserved this,” he squeezed her closer, “or you. I figured the choices I made a long time ago prevented it. I didn’t believe you could ever look at me the way you are right now, after knowing.” His finger traced the quiver of her bottom lip. “We haven’t had decades together—yet, but it feels like we stepped into the middle of something that’s always been there. Like we share some history that existed even before I saw you the first time. Like this is exactly where we’re supposed to be. This time. This place.”
She nodded, her eyes wet with unshed tears.
“I’m not angry anymore that I didn’t get more time with you from the beginning. Because I’m the lucky bastard who gets to spend the rest of his time with you. That’s all that matters.”
She graced him with a knowing smile. “We’re finally on the same page.”
Her reference reminded him of something. “Hold that thought,” he said, stepping away to retrieve the velvet pouch from his pants, draped on a nearby slatted bench. Spilling the contents into his hand, he walked back to her, dangling the full length of the necklace in front of her. “Same page. New chapter.”
Their smiles matched, then hers turned playful, her eyes the stormy gray of a sea squall. She drew down the zipper on her suit, slow and seductive. The beat of his heart picked up speed with each delicious inch of creamy skin revealed in its wake. Slipping the suit over her shoulders and down her arms, she peeled it off the rest of the way, letting it drop at her feet, then stepped out of it, scooting it away with her foot.
