by HELEN HARDT
When the spasms started to slow and my cock lost a bit of its hardness, it slid out of her. She sighed against me, snuggling into me backward. In a few minutes, a soft snore escaped her throat.
I sniffed her hair once more, the coconuty goodness making me smile. Though I knew she couldn’t hear me, I spoke anyway.
“Jade, I love you.”
“I like it.”
The boy’s voice cracked as he said the hateful words. Again he said them to save his own life. To keep the cool knife that one of the masked men held on his throat from plunging through the layers of skin. As he was pounded into from behind, he said it again and then again.
“I like it.”
Even as he said the words, the boy detached himself from what was happening. He had to—to survive. Why? He would die here. He knew that. He’d accepted that. Why did he say those horrid words to ensure his survival for one more second in this hellish nightmare? As if their torture and abuse wasn’t enough, he had to humiliate himself by telling them that he liked it.
Because…
He wanted to survive.
So he would survive. No matter what. One day, he would find a way out of this prison.
When they were done with him, they threw him back on the blanket that had become his bed. It was tattered and gray, covered in his own filth now. How long had he been here? The boy didn’t know. He had stopped counting the days long before.
Sometimes the boy dreamed while he was asleep. The dreams were always the same. He had grown big and tall, as big as his father, over six feet with broad shoulders and a muscular build. When the masked demons came for him, he overpowered them, beat each one of them. Executing martial arts moves, snap kicks, roundhouse kicks, axe kicks, knife hand punches and regular punches to their faces, their noses, their throats.
And when they were all on the ground, lying on their backs, choking on their own blood, the boy took the one with the tattoo, straddled him, and clasped his hands around the demon’s throat.
“How do you like that, boy? Do you like it when I choke the air out of your lungs? Tell me that you like it. Tell me that you like it.
Tattoo gasped, struggling.
“I said tell me you like it, you fucking bastard.”
“I like it,” croaked Tattoo.
And the boy crushed the masked man’s throat, squashing the life out of him.
He liked it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jade
Talon was kissing me. His lips softly grazed my cheeks, my neck, my throat.
The kiss became harder, little bites, harsh suction around my throat, around my larynx.
Still good. I sighed.
I inhaled and—
Air. I could breathe, but…restriction. Had to work a little harder.
My eyes shot open.
A jagged scream ripped from my throat.
“Stop!” I yelled, but it came out as a haggard gasp.
Talon was on top of me, straddling me, his fingers around my neck.
His eyes were glazed over. He didn’t look right. He didn’t look like…him.
“Talon!” I could still speak in rasps, but I feared where this might go. He wasn’t responding to sound. My heart beat against my chest, my nerves racing. What was he doing? Why? Why was this happening?
I punched his arms. No response. My legs were of no use to me—from my position lying on my back, Talon straddling me around my hips, I couldn’t get enough leverage to kick him with my knee or my foot.
No, I would have to depend on my arms. I hit him again and again, and still no response.
Needles danced across my skin. Panic. Sheer panic. Something was wrong. Very wrong. This wasn’t Talon.
I drew short breaths as best I could, attempting to gather my will. My fingernails were short, but they were thin and sharp…and the only weapon I had. It had to work. It had to, because I didn’t know what I’d do if it didn’t. I reached as far as I could up his arms, sank my fingernails into his flesh, and clawed them downward, scratching him so hard I drew blood.
His eyebrows launched upward. “What? Oh my God, Jade!” He pulled his hands from my throat and stared at them, horror flowing over his features.
Quickly I inhaled, gasping. “Talon!” I shouted, my voice slightly hoarse. “What the hell were you doing?”
“Damn it!” He flew from the bed, visibly shivering. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
I inhaled again and then again. Then I rose, scooted to the side of the bed, and sat up.
“No. You can’t go. Not until you tell me what the hell that was.”
He turned to me, his dark eyes sunken. “Blue eyes, I am so, so sorry.”
Sorry. He’d said he was sorry, and he hadn’t choked out the words. Something had changed inside him, for the better. I hoped what had just occurred wouldn’t negate that.
I sat in silence as he dressed, his body moving as if separate from his mind. Short jerky movements, his features laced with fear.
I was scared, yes, but he needed me. I went to him, not touching him. “I know you would never hurt me,” I said.
“How would you know that?” His eyes smoked, turning nearly black. “I just tried to choke the life out of you.”
The urge to comfort him overwhelmed me, despite what I’d just been through. “No, you didn’t. Of course you didn’t. I was breathing. I could speak. You just weren’t hearing me. Something was going on. Tell me, Talon. Tell me what it was.”
“You really want to sit here and talk to me after I just nearly killed you?”
The strained look in his eyes nearly fractured my heart. “You’re not hearing me. I’m fine. You would never hurt me. I was never unable to breathe or speak. Something else was going on. I know you’d never hurt me.”
“You keep saying that. But look at what I did.”
“I know what you did. And you didn’t hurt me.”
“Are you kidding me? Of course I hurt you. Listen to your voice.”
I cleared my throat. “My voice is fine. My neck doesn’t hurt. I won’t have any bruising. You weren’t holding me that hard.”
“Are you listening to yourself, Jade? I shouldn’t have had my hands anywhere near your neck.”
“I know that. But Talon, I’m fine. Please. We just need to figure out what was going on.”
“What if you hadn’t been able to stop me?” He combed his fingers through his tousled hair and then clasped his head in his hands, unable to meet my gaze.
I wrapped my arms around him, aching to console him.
“You weren’t hurting me, and I did stop you.”
His eyes were rimmed with red. “What if next time you can’t?”
I had been so busy trying to calm Talon down, I hadn’t thought about what would’ve happened if he’d truly been choking me and I hadn’t been able to stop him. The thought made my skin chill. Still, in the innermost chambers of my soul, I was positive he would never do me harm.
He fisted both hands in his mass of black hair. “I can’t be around you anymore, Jade.”
My insides bled a little. The look in his eyes was so tortured. “Has this ever happened to you before?”
He shook his head. “No, but I’ve never slept with anyone…before.”
I jolted forward. “Really? You’ve never spent the night with a woman?”
He shook his head again.
“Why not?”
“I’ve never wanted to before.”
Emotion swirled through me. This man was such a conundrum. In the span of five minutes, he could scare the hell out of me and then make me melt into a big puddle of honey.
“We can’t see each other anymore,” he said again.
Nope. Not an option. “Do you remember anything?” I asked. “Do you remember why you wanted to put your hands on my throat?”
He rubbed at his forehead. “I never wanted to put my hands around your throat, Jade. Please believe that.”
“I do believe that. But do you have
any idea why this happened?”
He sighed. “I dream sometimes.”
“About when you were in the Marines?”
He scoffed, shaking his head. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Please, I want to understand. I’ve always wanted to. Let me help you.”
“I can’t let you anywhere near me, blue eyes. If I ever did anything to hurt you…” Remorse and fear were etched into his features.
“But you didn’t, Talon. I stopped you.”
“What if you hadn’t been able to stop me?”
I still didn’t think he would’ve done me any harm, but I did have to consider that question. What if I hadn’t been able to stop him? The answer came to me instantly, and in the depth of my soul, I knew it as pure truth. “Then you would’ve stopped yourself.”
“Neither one of us can be sure of that,” he said, putting on his socks and then his boots. He sat on the futon, his neck glistening with perspiration. Sweat dripped from his brow.
He was scared.
I had never seen Talon scared.
I stood, my knees trembling, and went toward him. I maneuvered myself between his legs and stroked his hair as I stood. “It’s okay.” I kissed his head. “It’s okay to be scared sometimes. Everyone is.”
“Not me.” He shook his head vehemently. “I haven’t been scared for twenty-five years. Until now.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Talon
Had to get out. Had to get away from her. For her. Couldn’t risk hurting her.
Fear coursed through me like a bass drum beating slowly, surely…like a clock ticking deliberately…my impending doom on a timer, each sand in the hourglass one more second until I hurt Jade. How many more grains would fall until I damaged the only thing I’d ever wanted in the world?
Why would she want to be with me? I had just tried to strangle the life out of her!
“There’s nothing to be scared of,” she said in her calm, sweet voice.
But I knew better. I knew what I was capable of. What I dreamed about.
Of killing those three bastards.
I had thought that joining the military, commanding an EOD unit and finding and disarming bombs, possibly killing—which I had done on more than one occasion—would satisfy the need to rid the world of those three demons who took me all those years ago.
It hadn’t.
I still had the dreams.
She was stroking my forearm, her touch both soothing and scathing. My hair stood on end.
I didn’t deserve her loving touch.
God…if I ever hurt her…
But you didn’t.
Her words echoed in my mind. I turned around and looked at her. She was still naked, her beautiful body glistening in a sheen of perspiration. Her golden-brown hair was in disarray and hung around her shoulders like tousled silk. Her blue eyes were searching, looking for something in me…something she would never find.
I had been kidding myself for too long. I could never have Jade. I could never have a life with her. I was too broken. Too fucked up. And I would never put her in danger.
I hated myself at this moment. Wanted to go find a bridge and hurl myself into the oncoming traffic below.
I’d tried taking my own life before, when I ran into that enemy fire under the guise of saving my men. Only I hadn’t been killed, and I’d been touted as a hero.
Some hero. I couldn’t even keep the woman I love safe—safe from that fucking ex of hers…or safe from me.
I didn’t want to leave her. I had promised I would stay by her side until court on Monday morning.
“Talon”—she squeezed my forearm—“there’s something good in all this, you know.”
I shook my head and let out a small laugh. “What in the world could be good in all this, blue eyes?”
She smiled and trailed her fingers down my forearm, clasping my hand in hers. “You were sleeping.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. I was a notoriously bad sleeper, and when I did sleep, I was usually plagued by nightmares. Just as I had been this evening.
“Think back,” she said. “Think back about how you were feeling when we had just finished making love. That slow, sweet passionate love that was different from anything else we’ve shared. What were you feeling right then?”
I clasped my head in my hands. I knew the answer, and I forced it from my lips. “I was feeling relaxed, blue eyes. I was feeling…good.”
She smiled at me, that beautiful loving smile. If that smile could be turned into a sound wave and subliminally channeled across the entire planet, I had no doubt we’d see world peace.
I had been feeling good. I had been feeling so relaxed, so complete, so at peace. So…in love.
She squeezed my hand. Again. “So it’s a good thing, Talon. You were relaxed, and you felt good.”
I dropped my gaze to the floor. “I need to leave now.”
“Please, Talon. Stay.”
“How can you ask me that after what just happened?”
She cupped my cheeks and forced me to look into her eyes. The silvery-blue was misted over with tears, and my heart nearly broke.
“I trust you,” she said.
My eyes filled, and one tear dripped down my cheek.
She thumbed it away. “It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay. I had made the decision to get help, and I would still do that. I would not try to take my own life again. Because even after what had just happened, I still wanted to live. I didn’t want to put my brothers and my sister through the agony of losing me.
I let out a huff. That last thought was true, yes, but another reason existed. Of course I didn’t want my brothers and sister to suffer, but the real reason I wanted to live was standing right in front of me.
Jade. I would do this for Jade.
Even if we could never be together, just the thought of her being in this world gave me hope. Hope that I could heal. Hope that someone wonderful could feel for me. Hope that I could persevere.
I stood. “I can’t stay, blue eyes. I would never forgive myself if I slipped into a dream and did something terrible to you.”
She tugged on my hand. “I won’t let you. You won’t let you.”
I shook my head. “I can’t take that risk.”
“Are you saying this is…over?” Her beautiful red lips turned down into a frown, and her eyes were laced with sadness.
I should’ve told her yes, it was over. God knew I had told her that many times before. But not this time.
“No. I don’t think this will ever be over between us, Jade.” I stroked her cheek with my thumb and threaded my fingers through her disheveled hair. “But I have to put this…on hold for now.”
“Why?”
“Just some things I have to figure out.” I grabbed my shirt and put it on.
“What things?”
“Things I don’t have any control over right now.”
“You mean what happened overseas?”
“Sort of. I’m going to get some…” God, why was the word so hard to say?
She squeezed my hand, tugging a bit.
I forced the word out of my mouth. “Help.”
And just like that, a giant weight lifted itself from my shoulders. I was going to get help. I wanted to get help. Not just for Jade. Not just for Ryan and Jonah and Marj.
For me. I wanted to get help for me.
“What kind of help?” she asked.
I sighed. “The kind I’ve put off for far too long.” I kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry to leave you like this. I hate it when that asshole is in town.”
“Don’t worry about that. He won’t bother me.”
“No, he won’t. Because I mean to have someone watching this place and you night and day until he’s gone.”
“Talon…”
“No arguments, blue eyes.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. This has got to be the safest town on the planet.”
No,
it wasn’t. I knew all too well.
“Besides, you can’t control me, Talon.”
She was right about that. As much as I wanted to control her, there was simply no controlling the little spitfire that was Jade Roberts. That was part of what I loved so much about her. But I could control whether Colin Morse got anywhere near her. “Don’t worry,” I said. “Nothing will intrude on your daily life. Besides, only one day until court.”
“You’d better show up in court, Talon,” she said. “This is more important than I think you realize.”
Funny. She was right. I hadn’t realized. Oh, I understood the law and the trouble I was in for beating the shit out of that asshole. I understood that she had gotten me a sweet deal. And I knew more than anything how it felt to be locked up. Being locked up would probably have been the end of me.
But like I had for the last two-plus decades, I hadn’t let the significance sink into my brain. I had been existing for twenty-five years. Existing in a gray haze.
Now I wanted to live.
“Thanks for coming in on the weekend again.” I sat down in the hunter-green leather chair that I remembered from a few weeks ago.
Dr. Melanie Carmichael nodded. “It’s no trouble at all, Talon. I’m really glad you called.”
“I’ll make sure you’re paid double for seeing me on a Sunday.”
“Don’t you worry about that. My regular fee is fine. And I will bill you.”
A big lump clogged my throat. I had to finish this. I had to be honest with the therapist.
“So tell me. I’m curious,” Dr. Carmichael said. “What propelled you to contact me this morning?”
“My brother has the hots for you.” I had no idea why I said that. It just popped out. Joe would probably have my head, but it was way easier than telling her why I had called her.
She smiled, and her cheeks pinked just a bit. She glowed in a lovely way. I could see why Jonah was enamored with her.
“He’d probably kick my butt if he knew I told you that, so can you keep it on the QT?”
She laughed. “Perfectly fine.”
“I have to go to court tomorrow.”
“Why is that?”
