by Lynn Graeme
He tightened his arms around her. “What is it?”
She rested her ear on his chest, right above his heart, and shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
She shrugged. “This. It’s nice. Talking. Even if it’s just about little things. I’ve never really had that before.”
Liam splayed his hand over the small of her back, pressing her close. He closed his eyes and buried his face in her soft mass of hair, curly and abundant, no longer constrained and tied back.
He could do this, he thought. He couldn’t follow her on her Council missions, or protect her when she was more than capable of protecting herself. But this he could do. He could be her sounding board. It didn’t matter if he stumbled with words or didn’t know the right thing to say. He could be with her like this, hold her when she needed the comfort of physical contact, embrace and shield her when she needed her defenses to fall.
That, he could do, and the knowledge came with great relief.
Their wild mating last night had been earth-shattering in its heat and passion, but this was good too, Liam realized. The quiet moments, the tender touches, the gentle warmth imbuing their skins. In many ways, this moved him a lot more.
He’d never felt this way about anyone before.
He didn’t know how long they stood there, in each other’s arms, but when Isobel shifted in his hold, he placed a gentle kiss on her forehead.
“Do you still want me to stay?” he whispered.
She thought about it for a while. “It’s been a long day. I know earlier I intimated that we could … tonight… .”
“We don’t have to.” He kissed the inner curve of her ear. “That’s not what I’m asking. I can just hold you, if that’s what you want. I would love to just hold you.”
A soft sigh. “Then yes. Stay. Please,” she added, and Liam wondered if she’d ever just been held. If sexual pleasure was all she ever got from those men on her list.
She was used to hard, fast loving. He could see that now. She’d had to take physical respite wherever she could, whenever she could. She wasn’t used to simple intimacy.
Liam was hardly an expert himself, but he could learn. He was broken and bruised and incomplete, but he would learn, for this woman.
Together, they turned off the lights in the kitchen, living room, and hallway. Then Isobel linked their hands and led him up the stairs. Her bedroom was like the rest of her house—soft fabrics, plush furniture. Exactly the type a cat liked to curl up in.
“What’s got you smiling?”
He shook his head. He hadn’t realized he’d been smiling. Isobel stood near the window, shrugging out of her top. Moonlight, the only illumination in that dark room, cascaded over her lush curves.
She crooked her finger at him. He joined her by the window.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret.” She leaned against him and pointed. “Sometimes, at night, I look at your light from here.”
Liam glanced in the direction she pointed. The small, dark structure of his cabin loomed in the distance. Without taking his eyes off it, he lowered his head to hers.
“I have a secret too.” His lips grazed her ear, and he felt her shiver. “Sometimes, when I’m out on a run, I see you come home after a late night.” He paused. “You might want to invest in some curtains.”
Isobel looked startled. Then she laughed. “Why, you sly old wolf. Have you seen me undressing?”
He felt his smile widen.
“Your ears are turning red.” She grinned. “Well, now. I definitely have to make a production out of it from now on.”
He was still smiling when he turned her around, framed her face with his callused hands, and touched his mouth to hers.
*
The nightmares devoured Liam whole that night.
Bodies froze in mid-shift, mouths opening in silent screams as their hideous, misshapen, morphed selves lay trapped in that in-between place between animal and human. Faces melted into rivulets of blood, streaming to the ground, joining into one coagulated, voracious pool of red. It weaved its way across the cell to where Liam struggled in his chains. He scrabbled back uselessly, pressing himself back against the stone walls. The river of blood rose up and hovered in a broad wave to tower over him, coalescing to form the disembodied heads of his fallen comrades.
Liam came awake violently. He stared up at the unfamiliar ceiling, his breath escaping him in rough, frantic pants. He only realized he’d been thrashing in his sleep when he felt Isobel’s fingers encircling his wrist, lifting his forearm two inches from her face.
The horror crashed into him then. His arm had whipped out at her in his sleep. He’d almost hit her.
Liam rolled off the bed and onto his hands and knees on the floor. It took him several seconds before he could hear above his own bellowing lungs.
“—okay? Liam. Talk to me. Liam.”
Cool fingers grazed his shoulder. He flinched out of reach. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Isobel sit back on the bed, watching him.
Then he realized she could see the scars on his back. He’d been so careful all this time to never turn his bare back to her.
“Are you all right?” she asked quietly.
He pressed to his feet, fumbling for his clothes. “I should ask you that same question.”
Had he been screaming? He didn’t even know.
“Did I hurt you?” Had he struck her before she’d caught that accursed flailing limb?
“No, of course not.” She reached for him again. “Liam… .”
He whirled on her, shirt in hand, bare-assed and damn well lacking in dignity. “There’s no ‘of course’ about it. Goddammit, Isobel, I could’ve hurt you!”
“You didn’t.”
“Stop making excuses for me!”
He was furious. With himself, for jeopardizing her safety. With her, for not punishing him for it.
She should’ve had her claws out. Just because she had quick reflexes to anticipate a blow didn’t mean she had to subject herself to that risk, especially in her own bed. What the hell was wrong with her?
What the hell was wrong with him?
He shoved his legs into his jeans. “I’m going home.”
“Liam—”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Isobel!”
He’d never raised his voice before. The burst of rage felt too close to the edge of his control. It reminded him of the days when he’d been drenched to his elbows in blood, when his ears had echoed with the shrieks of the dying.
That was enough to snap him back. He struggled to regain control of himself. He never wanted to return to that place again.
And damn her eyes, Isobel was still watching him.
“You have flashbacks,” she said softly.
He shook his head as he pulled his shirt on. “Not the waking kind.” There’d been a time when the least bit of noise would set him off, but he hadn’t had that in years. Small blessings. “Only when I sleep. Just dreams.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Do you—”
“Leave it, Isobel.”
She rose to her knees on the bed, a magnificent warrior tugging at his desperately churning gut. She wore lace panties and nothing else. Liam remembered drifting off to sleep with her ass nestled right against his groin, the curve of her breast cupped in the palm of his hand.
She was so damn beautiful, and he was still shaking like a fool from the disembodied heads still lurking in his peripheral vision.
Her words came in a low, careful brush of air. “How long have you had these dreams, Liam?”
One look at her face and Liam knew he’d said too much in his sleep.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said brusquely. “I know. It’s been seven years since the war. I should be over it.”
“Is that what you think? After all you went through, the combat and trauma, you should be ‘over it’?”
Liam turned away from
her disbelieving tone. After he’d been discharged, his doctors had told him to hang in there, that things would get better, that the memories would fade. They’d lied.
His packmates had impatiently queried when the hell he was going to get on with his life. It’s been two years. It’s been three years. It’s been four years. He’d bitten down hard on his tongue, unable to tell them that four years wasn’t enough.
Now four years had stretched to seven, and there was still no end in sight.
Being with Isobel had brought him some solace from his demons, but didn’t vanquish them entirely. Neither could he expect it to; they were his demons. She didn’t deserve to have him lay any of them on her.
Dammit, he didn’t want to be this way anymore.
Concern creased Isobel’s face. She started to reach for him, then let her hand fall. Because of him. He’d been the one to flinch away, to reject her. “Have you ever gone for counseling, Liam?”
A bitter smile crossed his face. He didn’t answer.
“It should’ve occurred to me sooner,” she admitted. “I go in for mandatory psych visits from time to time. I should’ve thought about whether you’d ever done the same.”
“This doesn’t go away by talking, Isobel.”
“But have you? Talked about it, I mean. It’s not like your packmates would lend a willing ear. Then you were consistently on the road for years, and out here, you don’t socialize much.”
“I’ve never been the type to invite confidants.” He grabbed his shoes. “What do you want to know, Isobel? Whether I’ve been to a professional? They gave me a therapist as part of the recovery process. Fuck lot of good that did.”
He regretted the expletive almost instantly. Judging from Isobel’s expression, it told her far too much.
He hated that expression. He’d never wanted her to see him so weak.
“It can help,” she said softly.
“Helps some people,” Liam shot back. “Not me.”
“Your physical recovery took, what was it, sixteen months? Mental recoveries can take far longer.”
He crammed his useless, clumsy feet into his shoes. “All they want you to do is talk. I don’t want to talk. What good have words ever done me?”
He left the bedroom and stalked downstairs. Isobel followed without putting her clothes on.
“Liam—”
“Go back to bed, Isobel. You’ll wake Naley.”
“The bedrooms are soundproof and you know it. Liam, wait. Talk to me.”
“No. I’m not telling you what I dreamed of. I can’t give you excuses for almost hitting you. I don’t want a shrink. You can’t fix me, Isobel. I tried, okay? It didn’t take.”
“Do you think there’s a time limit on getting better? That if you don’t meet it, you’ve failed?”
Liam jabbed his code into the front entrance panel. His skin felt tight enough to tear.
“Everyone takes their own time to cope, Liam. Some are still coping, each and every day. There’s no fixed deadline.”
“And you, Isobel?” He turned around to face her. “Tell me how long you and your Council agents are out of commission after a hard day’s battle before you’re back on-duty again. You recover speedily enough.”
“You think we’re well-balanced? Newsflash, Liam: we’re just getting by ourselves.” She followed him down the driveway, and he cursed at the chill that surely had to be snapping at her barely-clad body, even despite her being a shifter. “Every single day, we have to focus on getting by. I have colleagues who are incapable—literally incapable—of forming any sort of relationship, even platonic ones. Some go their entire lives knowing they’ll never be able to take a mate. Some isolate themselves off-duty, shutting themselves in their basement apartments waiting—counting down the minutes—until they can get back in uniform and cut down their prey.”
He looked at her. “Some make lists.”
She flushed, but met his gaze without flinching. “Yes.”
“And yet they get back on their feet every single day.”
“That doesn’t make them perfect! Open anyone up and you’ll find their broken pieces inside. We’re all in varying states of disuse and disrepair, Liam. That’s the cost of living.”
“And so I should get over it?” he snarled dangerously.
“You know very well that’s not what I mean! I’m saying it’s all right to get help. You don’t have to shut out the world anymore.”
He reached the front gates, tried to wrench them open. They held their ground. It was only after he shook them violently that he remembered they required his access code. Access code and prints and scans and every goddamn manner of things. He nearly smashed the panel with his fist.
He clenched his hands around the bars and pressed his forehead to the cold, curved steel. He wanted to rage, but when the words came out they rated barely above a whisper.
“I hear voices in my head, Isobel. All the talking won’t make them go away.” He shook his head slowly, rocking it against the immovable gate. “I don’t care about the dreams. They’re the price I pay for surviving. But the voices… . All the talking in the world won’t get rid of the voices.”
He felt her hand on his back. The back she’d seen naked in her bedroom, with all its scars and ugliness far worse than any on his chest and face.
“Liam, what you’re going through… .” Isobel swallowed. “You went through a lot. More than I can possibly comprehend. That does things to a person.”
“I’m not right, Isobel.” And it tore at Liam, far worse than any jackal claws or human scalpel. “There’s nothing you or anybody else can do to make me right.”
Because some people would never win their own personal war, he knew. Some people would never return from the ravages of their own battlefield.
I don’t want to be this way anymore.
“Maybe. Maybe not. But please let us try, Liam. Don’t shut us out. Don’t shut me out.”
Her hand slipped around him, both arms snaking around his waist. She buried her face in his shoulder.
“You said you wouldn’t leave.”
He felt the muffled words on his sleeve, on his skin. Puffs of air containing a note of … something. The same something he’d sensed earlier that night, when he’d told her he wouldn’t leave, ever.
He raised his head. He turned his face to glance down the top of her head. He couldn’t see what she was thinking with her pressed along his side.
“I’m not going to disappear on you,” Liam murmured with sudden insight. “I’m not leaving. Not like… . Not like that. I just need some space.”
Isobel was silent.
“I’m not going anywhere. With you, I can breathe again. I told you that.” He paused. “I won’t ever be whole. I just have to learn to accept that.”
“Don’t say that.” She raised her head, eyes flashing. Ready to fight, this time for him. Liam tried to smile.
“You can’t fix me, Isobel.”
“Then let me help you be as whole as you can possibly be. We can both of us make a whole.” She straightened. “Look, it’s not my area of expertise. I get that. But we can do this.”
She was already planning a strategy of attack, his Council agent. His mate. Liam loosened his grip on the bars and turned.
“—professional. Or medication for the voices. I don’t know. Shifter meds have come a long way since the war. I have a friend in the industry who can help.”
“Isobel… .” He brushed his thumb along her lush lower lip, and she stopped talking. “Don’t,” he whispered.
Her breath tickled his thumb, lanced a bolt of heat straight through him. “Don’t what?”
He didn’t answer. He traced the outline of her jaw, the curve of her chin, the shape of her brows. His other hand skimmed her waist, down her hips. Her nearly naked body, so mesmerizing in its abundant curves, quivered under his touch.
“I never wanted you to see me like this.”
There. The confession he hadn’t wanted to m
ake.
Liam had no doubt she was masterful at eliciting such confessions from her suspects. Only with him, she didn’t have to force it out with a blow or coax it with an underhanded threat. All she had to do was look at him like this, weapons at the ready to slay his demons for him, and the admission slipped all too easily between the fingers of his tightly grasped fist. Things he’d never intended to say, revealed in the darkness of night.
Another confession. “I wish I were a stronger man, for you.”
She stared at him for the longest time.
The gates parted readily for him once he finally entered the code. He glanced at Isobel before stepping through.
“I’m just going for a run,” he told her, because he wanted her to know he wasn’t going to up and vanish on her. Needed her to know. “It helps when I run. After I… . After the nightmares. So I don’t have to think.”
He stepped through to the other side.
“I visited my sister at her home once, when Naley was five years old.”
Liam turned to look at her.
“I was a young hotshot agent then, bucking against the system. Thought I knew everything, that I was going to revolutionize things for the better. The Council had just implemented its rule about mandatory psych visits for agents coming down from a high-intensity mission.”
The breeze shook a collection of curls down her forehead, over one eye, but she didn’t move. There was a preternatural stillness about her that had Liam attuning closely to her every word.
“I fought against every visit. I objected to every attempt at ‘help’ I didn’t need. I could handle it. I had no grievances, no real stress or suffering. I’d won every fight, taken down every suspect, gained little to no injuries. What was the point of being put off-duty and sent to a shrink I didn’t need, wasting time, when I could’ve gone on to more missions and assignments, hunted down more rogues and faction fanatics?”
Her gaze held his, calm and unwavering in the shadows.
“I kept laughing and telling myself that, until one day in Kaya’s apartment when I pulled a blade on my sister while Naley was in the same room.”
Liam’s breath escaped in a slow hiss. He glanced down and saw that her knuckles had turned white.
