“Jane…”
“What did he do to you?” I asked suddenly. “Really. I need to know.”
Eric stilled. “Who?”
I turned so I could see his face clearly. He didn’t have to look at me, but I wanted to look at him during this conversation.
“Carson,” I said quietly. “Why—what are you so scared of? Really?”
There was a long silence—long enough that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then Eric’s hand stretched and took a harsh grip on the sheets.
“He…kept me in a room,” he said. “In the dark. Only ten days, right? Long enough to make me feel like I was going crazy.”
I sucked in a breath, though I had a feeling this was only the tip of it.
“And when he did come in…he was angry, Jane. He was angry I’d defied him. He was angry about you. So he punished me. And he did everything he could to make sure I would associate that punishment with you.” He laughed, then, a sharp, blistering sound that hurt my ears. “He did a pretty good job of it at first.”
I waited a bit longer for him to elaborate, but it soon became clear he wouldn’t. Well, not without my prodding.
“How?” I pushed as gently as I could.
“Jane, you don’t want to hear about this.”
“Yes, I do. You went through this for me. At the hands of my fucking sperm donor. Tell me. Please.”
There was another chest-moving sigh. But eventually, Eric told me what happened.
I stared at the wall with my cheek buried into my pillow, wishing I could touch him while he spoke, but also sensing it would not be welcome. Because his story was gruesome.
It had taken two days, maybe three. There was a hatchetman, some former KGB goon who wielded torture tools like a musical conductor. Rib-cracking kicks to the side, or blows to the temple that made him see stars. Some casual waterboarding. Dutch scratching, which was a far too humorous name for beating the hell out a man’s crown jewels with a knotted rope. They’d made Eric hate almost every part of his body—including the one I loved most. And when they weren’t doing that, they’d forced him to watch a slideshow of photos…photos of me. Right before they would start it all over.
“That’s insane,” I whispered as he finished his terse, but effective descriptions.
“He is,” Eric said. “Carson got mad, though, when he left a bruise. The point, he said, was always to remain discreet.” He barked a sardonic laugh. “That black eye wasn’t very discreet, was it?” He pointed at the skin around his eye that had all but healed at this point.
“Seriously, though.” I pushed up from the bed, full of anger. “Who the fuck does this guy think he is, Vito Corleone? You can’t just rip people off the streets and torture them, for Christ’s sake!”
“Most people can’t, no—”
“We need to call the police.” I wiggled insistently, like the extra movement would make me feel like I was doing something. “You should have told Zola all of this. He could call the FBI. Someone needs to know.”
“Jane,” Eric said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“But he—
“It doesn’t matter,” he crooned, stroking my back like I was a frenzied animal. “It really doesn’t matter.”
“What? How can you say that?”
“Don’t you see?” he asked. “It didn’t work.”
I blinked, sucking in breaths to tame the rage burning in my chest. “It…didn’t?”
“John Carson wanted me to walk out of that room hating you, Jane,” Eric said, pulling me up his body so I sprawled over him, but we were face-to-face. His hands slid up and down my arms. “But I couldn’t. I knew it the second I saw you again in my apartment. That he hadn’t even scratched the surface of what I felt. I could never hate you. Not even close.”
His gray eyes suddenly looked so much older than they had even two weeks ago. And was it just me, or had a few new silver hairs made their dashing appearance near his temples?
“I’ve been waiting for you to come back,” I whispered, suddenly terrified by the truth that had been haunting me: that maybe he never would. All the anger I’d felt over the past few weeks really just came down to protecting myself from the fact that this man could hurt me more than anyone else. And had.
“Maybe I thought if you knew…you wouldn’t want the real me,” he admitted when I thought he wouldn’t respond at all.
I smacked a palm half-heartedly on his chest. “Haven’t I shown you everything I am? Crazy dyed hair and all?”
“That’s just cosmetic. My secrets run pretty deep.”
“What did you say? You just wanted me? Well, I just want you.”
Eric sighed. “I don’t want to keep secrets from you anymore,” he said quietly.
“Then don’t.”
“Even if that means we have to be a secret together?”
“You’d walk in, and it was like I wasn’t there,” I said as a tear escaped. “All those years we fought. We yelled. We sparred. But you were never like that. You never treated me like I was invisible.” I sniffed and swiped at another tear. “I gave you everything, didn’t I? But you held yourself back.”
Eric didn’t move, his tortured expression cast in stone as he listened. But then, suddenly, he pulled me to him, clasping my head against his broad chest so hard that his fingers dug into my scalp.
“I was protecting you,” he said fiercely. “Do you understand now why? He’s a monster, Jane. I didn’t want you anywhere near him. And when he grabbed you—even the fucking suggestion that he would do anything to you like what he did to me…”
“I…I know.” My voice was muffled against his chest.
“I couldn’t talk because they were listening, but I wanted to tell you everything, Jane. Everything.”
“What about before?” I pushed, though I didn’t fight his embrace. “Even before the wedding, you kept things from me.”
“I didn’t mean to. I swear to God, I didn’t mean to. I—fucking hell. Before the wedding, those months…”
He finally released me, and I pushed up on my forearms, still balanced across his chest. He cupped my face between his hands, cradling my cheeks like he was mining for gold.
“Every moment I’ve spent with you—from the beginning, Jane, not just the last six months—every fucking moment has been the happiest of my life. Fighting, fucking, laughing, talking. I’d take them all again. Every single sorry one of them, so long as they were with you.”
I watched him for a long time, doing my best to read his face. That mask still didn’t appear. Every fear he had was still written plainly over his features. He looked tired, sad, worried, and upset. But more than that, he looked very much in love. With me.
“I’m still mad at you,” I said as I closed my hands around his wrists, holding them where they were.
“Then why?” he asked. “Why fight so hard? With me? For me? Because you do, Lefferts. I know I’m not worth it, but I’m so goddamn glad you do.”
“Because the fucked-up truth is, I’d rather be mad at you than pleased with anyone else.”
A small smile peeked through the gloom. “No one loves to fight me like you do?”
I couldn’t hide my own smile either. “Something like that.”
And then, because I couldn’t not, I kissed him again. It wasn’t an angry kiss, or the kind of kiss so steeped in lust it choked. It was the kind that just belonged. Like we always had, against all odds, right here. With each other.
Eric’s mouth opened to mine naturally, and he released my face so he could wrap his strong, lean arms around my body and roll me to my back, caging me against the bed. Caging me and freeing me all at once.
“Jane,” he whispered as he nuzzled my neck, pulling away Skylar’s black cardigan, and then tugged at the thin straps of the red dress. “Jane, please.”
But I didn’t want him to beg. Not now. More than anything, I wanted to make him feel strong.
My hands wove into his thick blond hair, pressing his face l
ower as he inhaled my skin. My fingers slid lower, under his collar, helping him from his shirt as well until finally he pushed up on his knees, giving me a fine view of his solid, muscular form as he removed the shirt completely.
“Come here,” he urged, pulling on one of my hands until I was kneeling with him.
We quickly shed the rest of our clothes, eager to find skin to warm skin in the dark. The world was so cold beyond the secure walls of this house, surging toward us, closer every second. And yet, we couldn’t do anything but this. Because if Eric and I were going to win this battle, we had to find each other here in the dark. We couldn’t stand alone.
He pulled me back on top of him once we were both free of all our impediments. Even my hair was stripped of pins, cascading all over my shoulders, a shadowy waterfall to shelter us both.
“Give me your mouth,” Eric said even as he took it, his kisses hungrier this time, lush and full.
“I missed your voice,” I mumbled against his lips. Living in silence, him unable to speak. I hadn’t realized until now how much I thrived on his thoughts, not just my own.
He hummed into the kiss, then slid his tongue to co-mingle with mine, twisting and dancing in that delicious way that prompted deep moans from both our chests. Another kind of language, but ours just the same.
“Say it,” I whispered as his mouth floated over my neck again. “I want to hear it.”
Eric flipped me onto my back. “Say what, gorgeous?” He landed a kiss on one breast, then worshipped the other before he continued his path downward.
“My name.”
I felt a smile against my navel. “Jane.”
But I shook my head and pulled at his hair. “No, the other one.”
His chin balanced on my hip. Slowly, a sly grin twisted across Eric’s otherwise stolid features, casting it alight with fire and charisma. A fire blazed in my belly. The grin widened.
He pressed his lips to the soft skin of one inner thigh, then the other before he tugged lightly on the hair down there. Then he touched his nose to the quiver of nerves that made me shudder. “Pretty girl.”
I hummed and arched into his waiting mouth. “Again.”
“Pretty girl.” He said it again, but this time it was more of a vibration as his lips found my clit, and two of his dexterous fingers slipped inside me. They curled. He licked. And my entire body bloomed.
“Eric!” I cried as he took me closer and closer to that blissful cliff.
But just as I was about to topple over it completely, he pulled back and crawled right back up my body, maintaining that skin-to-skin connection both of us craved.
“Spread your legs.” His voice was low, but stronger than I’d heard it since before.
I hissed as the long, solid length of him pulsed against my thigh. It was like our hurried, animal fuck in the lab hadn’t even happened. This time every cell in my body wanted to unite with his.
He didn’t wait for my answer, just took my lower lip between his teeth and bit lightly. I did as I was told.
Eric’s eyes shuttered as he entered, one slow inch at a time, filling me, testing me, stretching my capacity. He waited a moment while I adjusted to his size. And then, as his poet’s eyes held mine in their thrall, he finally began to move.
His body found its rhythm quickly, muscles corded as he held himself to measured beats. With every thrust and pull, he drove us both higher and higher, past the point where any of the outside world could threaten our pleasure anymore.
Then he stopped, like he had just realized where we were.
“What?” I asked “Why—why are you stopping?” I rotated my hips toward him, but he didn’t move, just continued to watch.
“Are we really doing this?” he wondered. “You and me against the world?”
My body cried for him.
“Yes!” I whispered fiercely, clasping his face between my palms. “You and I were born to fight, Eric. Against each other, sure. But for each other…absolutely.”
He stared at me for a long time, and then he lunged forward.
“Eric!” I shouted, unable to hold it back. “Oh, God, p-please!”
“Give me all your screams, Jane,” he growled. “I’ll swallow them, every one.”
“ERIC!” I cried again, but he did as he promised, taking my cries with deep, forceful kisses, savoring the depths of my voice as an orgasm crested through us both.
Our bodies melted into each other, clinging to each other, slick and heated even as the cold from the outside pressed in on us more. Somewhere out there, a man who called himself my father wanted only to ruin a bond that now seemed critical to life itself.
I had never felt so sated. Or so scared.
“Eric?” My voice was smaller than it had ever been.
“I know.” He pressed his forehead against mine. Mind to mind. Soul to soul. “I know.”
“We have to go now, don’t we?” I refused to open my eyes. I didn’t want to see the answer I knew would be on his face. “We shouldn’t wait until morning.”
But I felt Eric’s nod anyway. In the dark, his arms tightened further, like he thought the wind howling outside our window might rip me away.
“Yes,” he agreed. “We have to go now.”
Interlude II
“Penny? Pen, are you home? I tried to call your cell, but it went straight to voicemail.”
Eric closed the door of his mother-in-law apartment as he entered the familiar dim space. He dropped his messenger bag on the crowded rumple of shoes beneath the coat rack and hung up his raincoat. He shook out his hair, absolutely soaked from the sudden downpour that had hit just as he was exiting his last exam of his undergraduate career. One final late nor’easter was pushing through New Hampshire that day, right on the tail end of spring, almost like it was trying to chase the Dartmouth undergrads out of Hanover for the summer. By this point every year, the small town itself needed a summer vacation.
“I finally got that paper back from Professor Lockhart, Pen,” Eric continued as he meandered around the kitchen. He pulled out a plate of the spanakopita Penny had made last night and pulled up the cellophane to sniff it.
Sweet, he thought. Still good.
They were down to the last groceries of the week, but Penny wouldn’t get paid until Monday. Eric hadn’t found summer work yet, and after they announced their engagement a few months ago, his allowance had been completely cut off. Penny, saint that she was, had insisted that he finish the semester strong instead of finding a job immediately.
“Forget about it,” she said, over and over again. “There’ll be time for that after you get your degree.”
The first phrase, pronounced “fuhggedaboudit,” had sounded so adorably Queens that Eric had teased that she sounded like Robert de Niro. She’d just smacked him on the arm, then dragged him into the bedroom to make him apologize the right way to her sweet curves.
Eric smiled to himself as he recalled the memory. Maybe he could tease her now so she could take her revenge again.
“So, I was thinking we should just do it, Pen,” Eric said as he meandered into the bedroom, pulling off his t-shirt and unbuttoning his dampened jeans. He rifled through the second drawer of the beaten bureau looking for a pair of shorts. “I don’t need to walk, you know? No one is going to be here to watch me anyway. The Grande Dame is still holding a grudge, after all, and Mother’s too busy in St. Tropez with that fool she married to bother. I’ll have the school send my diploma to your parents’ place in Astoria, and then you and I can just hightail it to Atlantic City. Then, I don’t know. We could still wait tables for a while. Maybe even save up for a little honeymoon before the move to Boston. Catskills, maybe, or what about Miami? Pen? What do you think?”
When she didn’t answer, he finally looked up. That had been the plan, after all, to save up for a year before he started law school at Harvard. He had deferred specifically for that reason. Meanwhile, Penny had been asking him to set a date for weeks, but he’d evaded her, waiting for his f
amily to come around before he made any other moves.
Today, though, when he’d called his grandmother’s house and been given the shake by the butler for the tenth time, it had finally sunk in. They were never going to approve of Penelope. It was them or her. But Eric had already made his choice.
“Did you fall asleep in the bath again?” he asked as he walked into the adjoining bathroom. “You really have to stop—”
And there, his heart stopped completely.
The water in the tub was the color of roses in full bloom, a deeper red than he’d ever seen. It was also cold. Chilled like the late afternoon air.
Penny’s wrists, neatly sliced up to her elbows, sunk to her pale thighs, the rest of her emerging from the opaque liquid like a freshly carved statue, her still-wet brown hair pasted back from her face. But her blue eyes, normally so bright, were open, glazed, and horribly dulled. The skin around her mouth and eyes bore the stains of tear tracks and tiny new wrinkles of horror. Perhaps at what she had just done.
“No.” The word, soft and hardly spoken, still ripped from his throat.
Eric fell to his knees before he’d even reached the big clawfoot tub, diving into the water to lift Penny out of the bloody mess. The red slashed across his shirt, his shorts, staining even the rain still pearled on his skin and hair. He fell to his knees, cradling the girl’s cold body against his chest.
“No, no, no, baby, no!” Frantically, Eric searched for a pulse—at her chest, her neck, her wrist, anywhere.
None, of course, could be found. The wounds at her wrists weren’t even bleeding anymore. The water had gone cold. She’d obviously been there for hours.
He dug his phone out of his pocket and had to dial the number four times before he could make it through.
“Nine-one-one?” He was shouting, but somehow couldn’t even hear his own voice. “There’s—oh, fuck, Penny—m-my fiancée. I—fucking, God, she…she’s killed herself!”
He answered the woman’s questions as best he could, stammering through the address, Penny’s state, what he’d found. As the operator spoke, keeping him on the line, an item in the wire waste bin caught Eric’s eye.
The Kiss Plot: Book Two of the Quicksilver Trilogy Page 23
