Don't Let Go (12 page)

“And that’s it,” I finished.

“You never got a good look at him?”

“No,” I said, and at least that much was honest. “I never got a good look at him.”

The master of disguise and evasion. He could have been anyone. He could have been any man I passed on the street, and I wouldn’t even know it. And wasn’t that the fucking tragedy.

“Hell no,” Lance said over the phone.

“Please.”

He swore. “I can’t believe you’re still hung up on Hennessey after…”

“After getting raped?”

“I just would have thought you didn’t want company. Not that way.”

Yeah, I would have thought that too. Instead, I felt the opposite. Whereas before I had been satisfied with steamy moments and hot kisses, they were no longer enough. They were too weak to counter the memory of handcuffs and whips, of hard phallic objects inside me. The memory of pain. I wanted something more,
needed
the closure pleasure could give me. That Hennessey could give me.

“Never mind,” I told Lance. “I’ll find it another way.”

He swore again, low and vicious. “Fine. I’ll get it for you. But you know he’s just going to drop you as soon as he gets a new assignment. Don’t come crying to me when he does.”

“Okay. And Lance?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

It took him an hour to find out where Hennessey was staying by pulling his credit card receipts, and then I was on the road. He didn’t live too far from me, but this being Houston, that meant a thirty-minute drive time. The streets were mostly empty this late at night, with only the streetlights to guide me, like candles left in the window. For all I knew he wouldn’t even be home. And even if he were, he might not want me. Like Lance said, I was a passing interest for him. The rookie he could kiss in the supply closet for a little mutual stress relief. That was okay. I thought of the future differently now. It wasn’t about reaching toward some picturesque future with dinner dates and presents at Christmas. I couldn’t ever be that normal, and I had more pressing goals at the moment. It was about survival, body and soul. My soul needed this.

The hotel was in Montrose, quaint and built for extended stays, like an apartment with housekeeping service. The office was dark, appearing closed. I circled around back counting the numbers on the doors until I found the one Lance had told me. This was it. The phrase
do or die
had never felt more real to me than now.

I knocked on the door.

A minute later, Hennessey opened it. He covered his surprise quickly, leaning on the door and blocking the entrance. His bare chest gleamed, the sprinkling of hairs silvery in the moonlight. Drawstring pants hung low on his waist, revealing angled hipbones and a V-shape that drew my eyes down. My gaze skated over the bulge visible through the thin fabric and down to his bare feet. He was casual. Sensual. Perfect.

“How did you find me?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

I flashed back to when he’d shown up at my apartment. “FBI Agent.”

“Stalker.”

My voice came out husky. “I come bearing gifts.”

His gaze dropped to the jacket I wore. A plain trench coat that ended at my knees. Not dirty in the slightest, except for the red heels I’d paired with it. They sent a different message. They hinted there was nothing underneath the coat, except maybe a few scraps of lace. They hinted at a present waiting to be unwrapped.

A muscle in his jaw ticked. His eyes stared at some point beyond my shoulder. I expected him to protest.
You’re only doing this because you were damaged.
Even a token protest seemed likely. I only hoped he wouldn’t turn me away completely. He had to know I was only here because I needed to be.

 “Forgiven,” he finally said, stepping back to let me in.

I sighed in relief that he wasn’t going to fight this, fight me. Maybe getting beaten and violated should have already broken me, but they hadn’t. I’d wanted to know how it felt for so long; the anticipation had been a form of preparation.

The reality had been more and less than I had expected. More, because everything hurt worse and cut deeper than I could have imagined. I’d received bland disinterest from my foster parents and rote chivalry from the men I had dated. It had been like living in a world of black and white, like having that world slashed with red. Beautiful and alarming.

The experience had also meant less, because I never understood why Laguardia had taken me. I only skated the surface with him, so distanced by metal and leather and glass and every other type of material he’d used between our bodies. Whips and restraints and dildos had formed a barrier between us. That was
why
he’d used them. But that hadn’t been fair to me. I was left with half an obsession, one side of the deviant coin. Now I needed to reach out and touch someone. I needed to
be
touched.

Hennessey remained by the door while I strolled around the room. He might have been a guard, a lock and key, if it weren’t for the troubled light in his eyes. I saw everything in terms of captivity now, in the cold continuum between freedom and pain. Neither had ever fulfilled me.

“Samantha.” The word was laden with questions, bending under their weight. Why I was here and what I wanted. Whether or not I was okay.

Who knew, really? Getting abducted might have broken my sanity. Or finding out my father was a serial killer. Or falling in love with my partner, a man who would never really respect me and never stick around. Any one of those was enough to drive me crazy, so what did it matter which one had pulled the trigger? If there was one certain victim in all this, it was my sanity.

My hands went to my belt. I untied the knot and held the sides of my coat together. I had to give him fair warning, so he could blot out the shock and pity from his eyes.

“There’s still some bruising.”

Something flickered in his eyes, but his expression remained stoic. “I see,” he said quietly.

He didn’t see. He couldn’t. I opened the coat and let it fall, closing my eyes at the sound of his stuttered breath. My front had mostly healed. Carlos had gone easier here, though I hadn’t realized it at the time. There were only a few lingering marks and some yellowish bruising. I looked like I’d been spray painted gold, uneven and whimsical. In the dim light of the lamp, the effect probably faded to a mere glimmer.

I turned, and felt the impact of my back hit him with resounding, utter silence. There was no pretty frame of mind I could put around red slashes and blue-black bruises. Perversely, it looked worse now than it had felt at the time. I’d gone into a kind of cloud-like space, floated away on endorphins and fear until the pain looked blurry and dark, like the earth beneath an airplane.

However it had felt then, it looked awful now. I’d stared at the marks in the mirror, looking over my shoulder. He’d turned me into some sort of abstract painting, something that could hang on a metropolitan museum with the title “A Dark Love” written on a little white placard. It was the most angry, meaningful, caring thing any person had ever done to me, but I could never tell Hennessey that. He wouldn’t understand. It was just another secret to take to my grave.

“Do you still want me?” I wouldn’t blame him for turning me away.

The air stirred behind me. I felt his heat at my back.

He dropped a kiss on my bare shoulder. “This was done to you. It wasn’t your fault. You know that. Don’t you?”

I shook my head. A lump formed in my throat, barring any words. But that was just as well. What I had to say couldn’t fit into the accepted language of a woman.
A survivor not a victim
, they said. As if the word mattered, when I could feel the lingering wounds with every breath I took. They may have been done to me, but they were a part of me now. Taken into my skin, my soul. My outside finally matched what was inside—that was the gift Carlos gave me.

Hennessey ran his fingers down my arms, feather light. “Let me in,” he murmured. “Let me in.”

I knew what he wanted. To take care of me, to comfort me. To control me. The same thing Carlos had wanted. They weren’t so different, and with a sigh, I closed my eyes and sank into him. My head rested on his chest, cradled by the hard muscles of a man who worked more than he rested.

His musk enveloped me like a lullaby.
Put your fears to sleep.
And in his arms, I found acceptance for my outward hideousness, if not the inside. He pressed kisses along my temple and down my hairline. He kissed the skin below my ear and continued until he found the seam of my neck and my shoulder. A sensitive place, one smooth and free of any bruises or whip marks.

 “You’re beautiful,” he murmured.

I had to close my eyes, because he didn’t know. Didn’t really see me. I wanted to blurt it out, suddenly, when keeping the secret had been my entire life’s work. I’d gone to see therapists and entered the academy, constantly moving, striving, running away from the truth. No one had ever hurt me, but that was a lie I told myself.

Turning in his arms, I faced him. The unadulterated sorrow in his face struck me like a lash. I’d done this to him, some way and somehow, and I was about to make it worse. The hotel’s A/C rained down cold air, raising goose bumps on my flesh. I was naked, brutally so. It was fitting, because I felt so exposed. Raw. Split open. Primed for a confession I’d barely even acknowledged to myself.

“I turned my father in. For murder. For rape. A bunch of other charges.”

“I know,” he said simply.

“He’s there for life. I don’t really know how he escaped the death penalty.”

“You did the right thing.”

“Did I?” I laughed and the sound was hollow. “My own father. My own flesh and blood. How can you trust me if I’d turn on my own family?”

“I trust you.”

I shook my head. He didn’t understand. “I didn’t turn him in because I just figured out he had killed someone. I suspected all along.”

His expression didn’t change. “You were a child.”

“Yes. A child.”

I closed my eyes as the truth flayed me open, more brutally than Carlos’s whip had ever done.
What do you remember?
I remembered my father hurting me, and every time I’d told myself he hadn’t, it had been a lie.

“He molested me from the time I was six years old.”

Hennessey sucked in a breath. I felt his shock. I felt
my
shock, at the truth I’d barely acknowledged in my own mind.

This will be our little secret, okay?

This was what my father had meant. Not the murders, the other children that he’d thought were a secret anyway. He’d meant his abuse of me. That would be our little secret, and until this moment, I’d never told anyone. How obedient. I’d never even admitted it to myself.

I kept going. Couldn’t stop now. “Until I was eight. Then I guess I was too old for him. I don’t know. He just stopped coming. And you know what the crazy part is?”

He did know. I could see the painful knowledge in his eyes. He would have studied enough victim psychology to understand how the mind works, especially one so young.

“I missed it,” I whispered. “I missed him coming to see me. Even though it hurt. Even though I knew it was wrong. How fucked up is that?”

“You were a child,” he repeated, more forcefully. His jaw was clenched. His whole body vibrated with anger, with energy, but I felt just the opposite, strangely deflated. I had almost,
almost
been able to keep this a secret from myself. If I just didn’t
think
about it, I didn’t have to know the truth.

“That’s why I told on him. To punish him for going to other children instead of me. I knew…I knew other kids were getting hurt, but I said nothing. Not until I was
jealous
.” I spat the final word, disgusted with myself. Bitterness thickened my voice. “He knew, too. My dad. That was what he said to me the last time I saw him. In jail. ‘I should’ve killed you too.’”

In the span of a second, Hennessey grabbed me. Crushed me against his chest, his arms hurting, his chest comforting. Oh God. I was so fucking crazy. He was never going to want to be with me now. I’d lost more than just my fake sanity. I’d lost
him.

Still, I closed my eyes and let him hold me. I pretended he’d stay with me after this. I pretended he wouldn’t tell the Bureau I couldn’t work there anymore because I was insane and awful and broken inside. It would be a relief, in a way, for everyone to finally see the monster within. A relief to admit it to myself.

Every time I’d dreamed of someone hurting me, it hadn’t been because I didn’t know how it would feel. It was because I
did
know how it felt, and I wanted to have it again. The fear and the pain. It had become a drug for me in my formative years, and the addiction had never gone away. Never would.

I’d pretended to be normal for years, wished for it, but even as I stood in front of a man who could give that to me, I’d ruined it. A man who had built his career, his
life
around putting people in jail wouldn’t want a woman who had let a criminal go unchecked for so long. Being a child didn’t excuse me. Being a victim didn’t either. But just for tonight, I wanted to pretend. Another form of lying, but it was all I had left.

I moved against him, the slightest undulation to change the shape of our embrace. My breasts were already against his chest, tucked between my arms, and I rubbed them on him like a cat, marking him with my scent.

Turning my head, I kissed his chest, reveling in the coarse hairs that tickled my lips. He was strong where I was soft, rough where I was smooth. Distilled into the essence of masculinity and reformed in my arms, hard and pulsing. I wanted to hold him like this forever, to map every hollow and callus on his body, but there wasn’t time for that. This wasn’t a leisurely exploration; it was an invasion, quick and fierce, before he changed his mind. I placed open-mouthed kisses on his nipple. He jerked against me.