by J. D. Robb
“He’s wondering if we’re going up there for some quick sex,” Eve said. “You don’t own this place, do you?”
“I don’t, no, but he’s certainly wondering if I’m going to.”
The elevator opened and yawned, Eve thought, like a big, greedy mouth. She stepped into it. “I could’ve used my badge, kept your name out of it.”
“This was simple enough.”
“I guess. Anyway, it took my mind off things, watching you work him. Another ten seconds of you, and he’d’ve babbled.”
The elevator doors opened again. She stood where she was, staring out at the quiet hallway.
“It was dark,” she managed. “I think it was dark, and he was pissed off. But there were so many places, I’m not sure if I’m mixing it up with somewhere else. I was only outside the room twice, once when we went in. Once when I went out. I’m sure of that. It was almost always that way.”
“He can’t lock you in anymore.”
“No.” She stiffened her spine and walked out into the hall. “It smelled like wet socks. That’s what I thought. Like wet, dirty socks, and I was tired. Hungry. I hoped he’d go out, get us something to eat. But more, I hoped he’d just go out. It’s that way.” She gestured toward the left.
It was to the left, and five rooms down.
“I’m scared stupid. Don’t let me run.”
“You won’t run. Eve.” He turned her face to his, touched his mouth to hers. “You were always stronger than him. Always.”
“Let’s see if you’re right. Open it.”
You just go through the door, she told herself. That’s what you do.
How many times had she done just that, knowing death waited on the other side hoping to take her? There was no one on the other side of this door but ghosts.
The roar in her head was nearly a scream when she stepped in.
It was tidy, clean, pleasantly appointed. Viewing discs were fanned out artistically on a low table beside an arrangement of fake flowers. The floor was carpeted in a pale beige.
Was there blood on the floor under it? she wondered. Was his blood still there?
The bed was covered in a spread exploding with what she thought might have been poppies. A work area had been built into a corner and held a small, practical communication center. The kitchenette was separated from the sleeping area by an eating counter. There was a bowl on it holding a display of nubby fruit.
Through the window she could see another building, but there was no sign, no flashing light, no wash of dirty red.
“Looks like they redecorated.” The feeble attempt at humor echoed back at her. “We never stayed in places like this—as nice as this—that I remember. Nothing this clean and, well, tended, I guess, as this is now. Sometimes there were two rooms, so I had my own bed. But sometimes I slept on the floor. I slept on the floor.”
Her gaze was pulled down, over. She could see herself there, if she let it happen, see herself huddled on the floor under a thin blanket.
“It’s cold. Climate control’s broken. It’s so cold it hurts my bones. There’s no hot water and I hate washing in the cold. But I have to get his smell off me. It’s worse than being cold to smell him on me after he’s . . .”
She hugged her arms now, and shuddered.
He watched it come into her, and it tore him to pieces. Lanced through his heart till he could all but feel the blood pouring out of it for her.
Her eyes widened and blurred, and her face went more than pale. It went transparent.
“I slept there. Tried to sleep there. There’s a light through the window, flashing off and on. Red then black, red then black, but the red stays like a mist. He goes out a lot. Places to go, people to see. Keep quiet as a mouse, little girl, or the snakes’ll get you. Sometimes they swallow you whole, the snakes do, and you’re still alive inside them. Screaming.”
“Good Christ.” He barely breathed the oath, had to jam his fists into his pockets for there was nothing and no one to fight, to punish for terrorizing the child that was now his wife.
“If someone’s coming here, I have to stay in the bathroom. Children aren’t to be seen or heard. When he brings women up, he does to them what he does to me. It’s safe when he does it to them, and they don’t cry or beg him to stop unless he starts hitting them. But I don’t like to hear it.”
She covered her ears with her hands. “He doesn’t bring them back very much. Then it’s not safe. Sometimes he’s drunk, drunk enough. But not always. When he’s not, he hurts me. He hurts me.”
Unconsciously she pressed a hand between her legs and rocked. “If I can’t hold it back, if I cry, if I scream, if I beg, he hurts me more. This is what you’re supposed to do. You better learn, little girl. Pretty soon you’re gonna earn your goddamn keep. You remember what I told you.”
She looked at Roarke, looked through him, then took a staggering step forward. She didn’t see the poppies now, or the pretty flowers, the pale, clean rug.
“I’m so cold. I’m so hungry. Maybe he won’t come back. But he always comes back. Something bad could happen to him so he couldn’t come back. Then I could get warm. I’m so hungry.”
She stepped toward the kitchenette. “Not supposed to touch anything. Not supposed to eat unless he says so. He forgot to feed me again. There’s cheese. It’s green, but if you cut that off, it’s okay. Maybe he won’t know if I have just a little. He’ll hit me if he finds out, but he’ll hit me anyway, and I’m so hungry. I forget I’m not supposed to eat because I want more. I want more. Oh God, God, he’s coming.”
The hand she’d fisted opened. She heard the knife hit the floor.
What are you doing, little girl?
“Have to think fast, make excuses, but it doesn’t help. He knows, and he’s not very drunk. He hits me in the face; I taste blood, but I don’t cry. Maybe he’ll stop. But he doesn’t stop, and now it’s his fists. He knocks me down.” She crumpled to her knees. “And I can’t stop myself from begging him. Stop, oh please, don’t. Please, please, it hurts. He’ll kill me if I fight, but I can’t help it. It hurts! And I hurt him back.”
She peers down at her hand, remembering using her nails to claw at his face, how he’d howled. She could hear it.
“My arm!” She clutched it. Heard, felt the dry snap of that young bone, and the hideous bright pain. “He’s pushing into me, pushing in, panting on my face. Candy breath. Mints,” she realized dimly. “Mints over whiskey. Horrible, horrible in my face. I see his face. They call him Rick, or Richie, and his face is bleeding where I scratched him. He can bleed, too. He can hurt, too.”
She was weeping now, the tears pouring down her face. Watching her, knowing he had no choice but to watch her live the nightmare, Roarke broke inside.
“I have the knife in my hand. My hand closes over the knife I dropped on the floor. Then the knife’s in him. It punches into him, a little popping sound. And now he screams, and he stops. The knife made him stop, so I push it into him again. Again. Again. He rolls away, but I don’t stop. He stopped, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop. He’s staring at me, and I won’t stop. Blood, the blood’s all over him. All over me. His blood’s all over me.”
“Eve.” She was on her hands and knees, snarling like an animal. Roarke crouched in front of her, took her arms. She hissed at him, but he tightened his grip. And his hands trembled. “Stay here. Stay with me. Look at me.”
She shook violently, fought for breath. “I’m all right. I can smell it.” She broke, and shattered into his arms. “Oh God, can’t you smell it?”
“We’re going to leave now. I’m taking you away from this.”
“No. Just hold on to me. Just hold on. I remember what it was like. Like not being human anymore. Like the animal that lives inside us had leaped out. Then I crawled away, over there.”
She shivered still as she looked over at the corner, but she made herself see it, see herself, as it had been. “I watched him for a long time, waiting for him to get up and make me sorry. B
ut he didn’t. When it was light, I got up and washed his blood off me in the cold water. And I packed a bag. Imagine thinking of that? I hurt—my arm, where he’d raped me again—but it was buried under the shock. Still, I didn’t use the elevator—had enough wit for that. Used the stairs. Crept down the stairs and went outside. I don’t remember a lot of that, except it was bright out and my eyes stung. Lost the bag somewhere and just walked. And walked.”
She eased back. “He never called me by a name. Because I didn’t have one. I remember that now. They didn’t bother to give me a name because I wasn’t a child to them. I was a thing. I can’t remember her, but I remember him. I remember what he said the first time he touched me. What he told me to remember. That was what he kept me around for, and when I’d learned, that was how I’d earn my keep. He was going to whore me. Nothing like young pussy, he said, so I’d better learn to take it without the whining and crying. He had a fucking investment in me, and I was going to pay off. We were going to start here. Here in Dallas, because I was eight and that was old enough to start carrying my weight.”
“It ended here.” He brushed tears from her cheeks. “And what started, darling Eve, was you.”
Chapter 14
He ignored her request to head straight to the central police station and drove to the hotel, one he did own, and where the owner’s suite was prepared for them.
The fact that she was too tired to argue told her he was right, again. She needed time to pull herself together.
She went through the enormous parlor into the equally sumptuous master bedroom and left Roarke to deal with the bellman. She was already stripping when he came in.
“I need a shower. I need to . . . I need to get clean.”
“You’ll need some food when you’re done. What would you like?”
“Wait on that, will you?” She was in sudden, desperate need for floods of hot water, for waves of clean, fragrant soap. “Let me think about it.”
“I’ll be just in the other room then.”
He left her alone as much for himself as for her. The rage he’d managed to chain down was threatening to snap free. He wanted to use his fists on something. Pound them until his arms screamed for rest.
She’d shower, he thought, with water that was brutally hot, because once she’d been forced to wash in cold. He never wanted her to be cold again, to shiver as she had shivered in that room where the ghosts, the viciousness of them, had been so tangible he’d seen them himself.
Watching her relive that night, as she too often did in dreams, had ripped him in two. It had left him helpless, useless, and with a violence borne of fury he had nowhere to vent.
To have birthed and bred her, beaten and raped her all for selling her to other scum. What god made such creatures as that and set them to prey on innocents?
Riding on rage, he stripped off his shirt as he strode into the small workout area. He yanked the speed bag into place. And attacked it, bare-fisted.
With each punch his anger grew, spreading through him like a cancer. The bag was a face he didn’t know. Her father’s. Then his own father’s. He battered at it with a concentrated rage that bloomed into hate. Pounded, pounded, as the black haze of that hate narrowed his vision. Pounded, pounded, as his knuckles went raw and bloomed with blood.
And still he couldn’t kill it.
When the bag snapped off its tether, plowed into the wall, he looked around for something else to hammer.
And saw her standing in the doorway.
She’d wrapped herself in one of the white hotel robes. Her cheeks were nearly as pale.
“I should have thought how this would make you feel. And I didn’t.” His torso gleamed with sweat. His hands were bleeding. When he saw her there his heart shattered.
“I don’t know what to do for you.” His voice was thick with emotion, with the accent that took over when his defenses were most compromised. “What to say to you.”
When she took a step toward him, he shook his head, stepped back. “No, I can’t touch you right now. I’m not myself. I might break you in half. I mean it.” His voice whipped out when she took the next step.
She stopped. Because she understood it wasn’t just her that might be broken. “It hurts you as much as me. I forget that.”
“I want him dead, and he’s dead already.” He flexed his battered knuckles. “So, nothing to be done about it. Still, I want to beat my fists into his face; I want to rip the heart out of his chest before ever he laid hands on you. I’d give everything I own if I could. Instead, there’s nothing.”
“Roarke—”
“My father was there.” His head snapped up, his gaze boring into hers. “Maybe in that very room. We know that now. I don’t know as his various and filthy appetites ran to young girls, but if the timing had been just a bit different, you might have been sold to him.” He nodded, reading her face. “I see that’s occurred to you as well.”
“It didn’t happen. There’s enough that did without adding to it. And don’t say there’s nothing. Most of my life I kept all this buried, kept it in the dark. I’ve remembered more in the past year than I could in all the years before. Because you were there, and I could face it. I don’t know if I’ll ever have it all. I don’t know if I’ll ever want to have it all. And after today, I know that it’s never going away. It’s there.”
She clenched a hand between her breasts. “It’s here, inside me, and it’ll bite off pieces when it can. But I can take it because you’re there. Because you know how it feels. You’re the only one who really knows. And because you love me enough to feel it. When you look at me, and I see that, I can take anything.”
She took the last step to him, slipped her arms around him, drew him close. “Be with me.”
He buried his face in her hair. His arms came tight around her, viced them together as the rage drained out of him. “Eve.”
“Just be with me.” She skimmed her lips over his cheek, found his mouth. Poured herself into him.
Everything inside him opened for her, opened to her so that she filled the dark corners. The violence that lived with them both shrank back.
Mouth against mouth, he lifted her, cradling her there for a moment. As he would something precious. Something rare. He carried her into the bedroom where the strong sun streamed through the glass.
They would love in the light. He laid her on the wide bed, centered her on soft fabric. He wanted to give her softness, comfort, and the beauty they’d both once starved for. He needed to give her the beauty of what this act was meant to be, a beauty so strong it could smother the ugliness some made of it.
The hands that had pounded with rage until they’d bled were gentle when they touched her.
It was she who drew him down, held him close. Who sighed when he sighed. They would comfort each other now.
Her lips met his, parted. The softest, sweetest of matings. Her hands stroked his back, along the hard ridge of muscle as his body fit to hers.
She loved the weight of him, the lines and planes of him, the scent and the taste of him. When his lips roamed to her throat, she angled her head to give them both more.
There was tenderness in long, lush kisses, in slow, sliding caresses. And warmth, shimmering over skin, then under it until bones melted.
He parted the robe, trailed lazy kisses down her flesh. Steeped in her, he traced fingertips over subtle curves, lingering when she sighed or she trembled. And watched with pleasure as color bloomed on her face.
“Darling Eve.” His lips found hers again, rubbed gently. “So beautiful.”
“I’m not beautiful.”
She felt his lips curve against hers. “This isn’t the time to argue with a man.” He closed a hand lightly over her breast, easing back to watch her. “Small and firm here.” He flicked a thumb over her nipple, heard her breath catch. “Those eyes of yours, like old gold. Fascinating how they see everything but what I do when I look at you.”
He lowered his head to nibble at her mou
th. “Soft lips. Irresistible. Stubborn chin, always ready to take a punch.” He skimmed his tongue over the shallow dent. “I love that spot there, and this,” he whispered, trailing his lips down to the underside of her jaw.
“My Eve, so long and lean.” He ran his hand down the length of her. And when he cupped her, she was already hot, already wet. “Go up, darling. Slide over.”
She was, helplessly, with a quiet moan that was both pleasure and surrender.
He made her feel beautiful. Made her feel clean. Made her feel whole. She reached for him now, rolling with him in a kind of dance without heat or hurry. The sun splashed over them as the air went thick with sighs and murmurs. She touched and tasted and gave as he did. Lost herself as he did.
When she rose to him, when he slid inside her, her vision blurred with tears.
“Don’t.” He pressed his cheek to hers. “Ah, don’t.”
“No.” She framed his face, let the tears come. “It’s so right. It’s so perfect. Can’t you see?” She lifted to him again. “Can’t you feel?” She smiled even as the tears sparkled on her cheeks. “You’ve made me beautiful.”
She held his face in her hands as they moved together, took that silky glide. When she felt him quiver, saw his eyes go to midnight, she knew it was he who surrendered.
After, they lay quiet, wrapped in each other. He waited for her arms to go limp, to slide away so he knew she slept. When they didn’t, he brushed a kiss over her hair.
“If you won’t sleep, you’ll eat.”
“I’m not tired. I need to finish the job down here.”
“After you’ve eaten.”
She might’ve argued, but she remembered how he’d looked, ramming his fists into the speed bag. “Something fast and easy then.” She lifted his hand, examined the knuckles. “Nice job, by the way. You’re going to have to take care of these.”
“Been awhile since I bashed them up quite this much.” He flexed his fingers. “Just scraped up though. Nothing’s jammed.”
“It would’ve been smarter to put gloves on.”
