Into the Light (Untwisted series Book 3) (13 page)

Nathan’s mouth opened as if he were going to speak, but then it snapped shut a second later and I watched as light-hearted Nathan closed up to be replaced by the shuttered man that I was used to. A sigh slipped from my lips as I visibly saw him change in front of my eyes. My messed-up mercurial man. So tonight had all been a show to impress his brother then? Some kind of sick one-upmanship? The idea made me feel excessively depressed, not to mention used.

Closing my eyes briefly I opened them again to find Nathan staring at the floor. ‘I need to check my emails, it's late, you're probably tired, so why don't you go to bed and I'll see you in the morning.’ Pursing my lips I held in the desperate words that were perched on the tip of my tongue. So now in addition to the return of his bad mood he was dismissing me without any kind of sexual stuff. Nathan never, ever went to bed without something sexy happening first so this wasn’t a good sign at all.

Hiding just how crushed I felt I glumly made my way to my bedroom and miserably brushed my teeth whilst feeling ridiculously disappointed at how the evening had ended. Pulling off my dress I threw it on a chair before flopping on the bed and removing my high heels and flexing out my toes. The only positive was that I was tired enough from cooking and the stress of hosting that I began to fall asleep almost as soon as my head touched the pillow, which would at least stop me dreaming nightmares about Nathan leaving me or throwing me out again.

I wasn't entirely sure what had woken me, but I was suddenly sitting up in bed rubbing sleep from my eyes and frowning as I wondered what had pulled me from sleep and caused me to leap upright. My room was lit only by the pale light of the moon seeping through the curtains and casting eerie shadows on my furniture, so fumbling for my bedside lamp I clicked it on and looked around through sleep blurred eyes. All was normal, nothing had fallen down and disturbed me. How odd, perhaps it had been …

‘Nooooo! Don't touch him!’ A savage cry rang out from somewhere in the apartment and interrupted my thoughts making me yelp in surprise. Clutching at my chest my heart rate accelerated rapidly and goose pimples flooded my skin.. Bloody hell, that shout had been loud and anguished,
and Nathan.

Jumping from my bed I didn’t stop for a robe or slippers, I just ran from my room barefoot and clad only in my sleep shirt headed straight down the corridor to where I knew Nathan's room was. I'd never been inside before; he'd explained his need for extreme privacy at the start of our agreement and I'd adhered to it … up until now. But if he was in trouble I had to help,
I just had to
, so when I reached his door and heard another muffled yell from inside I didn’t hesitate and I flung the door open immediately stumbling to a halt in the complete darkness of his room.

Jeez, he must have some serious blackout blinds in here because I couldn't see a frigging thing. Behind me the swinging door bounced off the wall and closed with a loud click cancelling out the pale light from the hallway completely immersing me in inky blackness. Extending my hands I felt around blindly, hoping to find a wall or a light switch. My heart was hammering so hard in my veins I thought one might burst from the pressure, but then, over the course of the next few seconds my pulse spiked even further, as events unfolded quicker than I could properly follow; first I heard muffled movement from somewhere in the room, then without any warning I was being gripped around the neck and forcefully pushed backwards until I hit the wall painfully hard. ‘No, Father!’

What the hell?
My head throbbed from where it had connected with the wall and my breathing was laboured from both the hands around my neck, and the winded sensation in my lungs. God I wish I could see so I knew what the hell was going on.

‘No … don’t touch him … beat me, not him!’ It was Nathan's voice, somewhere close to my face, close enough that flecks of his saliva hit my cheeks as he shouted and his hot breath fanned across my lips. His voice sent an immense shiver through me, it was more gravelly and tortured than I'd ever heard it and I suddenly suspected that he was somehow still asleep. ‘Please …’ a sob escaped his throat, ‘… not Nicholas …’

Nathan's grip on my neck was so tight by this point that a strangled choking sound escaped my throat as white specks of light started to spin in front of my eyes as I struggled to stay conscious. Flailing wildly as I desperately tried to pull in air I just about managed to kick out with my legs and make contact with his shins, which abruptly eased his hold on my neck and brought a string of expletives flowing from Nathan’s mouth as he seemed to finally wake up.
Thank God.

‘Ow, fuck! What the bloody hell?’ One hand left my throat and there was more fumbled noise in the dark shortly before soft lighting came on all around us. Blinking several times in the light I wheezed and sputtered as I sucked in much needed oxygen to my system before looking up to find Nathan, naked as the day he was born and staring down at me with his mouth hanging open in total horror.

‘Holy shit … Stella?’ Rubbing a hand across his eyes as if clearing them, Nathan then stared at me again, his eyes cloudy with confusion. ‘Stella! Fuck! I'm so fucking sorry … I was dreaming and I thought you were my father coming into my room again and I …’ Nathan's teeth actually cracked together as he brought himself up short, obviously deciding that he’d already said too much.

Tension radiated from every muscle in Nathan's body and as he suddenly dropped his gaze to the floor I watched his chest heaving as he tried to control himself. As I clung to the wall and continued to stare at him an awful realisation dawned on me, just his few words about his father, combined with the chilling ones he’d uttered when asleep,
‘Don’t touch him … beat me, not him’,
were enough for me to get a pretty good idea of what he must have gone through as a child. Some kind of punishment or abuse from his father given to both him and his brother, from the sound of it.

Bloody hell,
if my guess was correct it would certainly explain a thing or two about Nathan's domineering ways. Maybe he was taking control now because he’d never been able to when he was younger, perhaps it even explained his need for giving out some mild punishments of his own every now and then. It also explained just why he was so protective of his younger brother too.
Fuck
. I could hardly take it all in. This day just got crazier and crazier.

Now the lights were on and Nathan seemed marginally recovered from his nightmare I was fully expecting him to send me away back to my room, but instead he chewed furiously on his lower lip as he raised his wide eyes to my throat and gently ran his fingers around my neck checking for damage. He looked utterly broken. ‘I'm OK,’ I whispered softly, instinctively knowing he needed my reassurance at that moment. Flattening my palms on the coolness of the wall to hold back from the temptation of reaching out to soothe him, I instead risked a small question. ‘Are you?’

His expression was tortured, eyes so filled with sadness and half-hidden by a frown, as his hand continued to rub my neck with feather light touches, but he remained silent. I could almost hear the cogs of his mind spinning as his thoughts seemed to run wild. He didn’t answer me directly, but he didn’t send me away as I'd expected either, instead he finally sighed, lowered his hand, and then made quite a random request seeing as it was the middle of the night. ‘I need a shower, come with me.’ It was said as a demand, but somehow it almost seemed like Nathan was pleading with me to go with him. Like he
needed
me.

‘OK.’ I accepted his outstretched hand without hesitation and allowed him to lead me to a frigging unbelievably huge bathroom – Kenny would die if he saw this place; twin sinks, Jacuzzi tub, and a walk-in shower big enough to hold at least six – where Nathan started the water and after pulling off my T-shirt he promptly dragged me under as soon as it had warmed.

‘I want to bathe you,’ Nathan murmured, then picking up a sponge and shower gel he began to soap me all over my body. It wasn't in any way a sexual act, he just seemed to need the task to focus his mind away from whatever horrible dream had been trapped in there a minute ago, but it was lovely to feel so close to him for a change without it being about sex.

Tilting my neck to give him better access to the skin below my ear I noted that I now had the answer to a question I’d been wondering for a while; the scent of his that I always craved wasn’t an aftershave, it was this shower gel. It was masculine and musky and Nathan, and I rather liked knowing that I would smell like him for a while after this.

Nathan dropped to a crouch and began lathering my legs, he was so incredibly thorough with his washing that I was left quite amazed. ‘You are very hygienic,’ I whispered softly as an observation, thinking of how he always scrubbed his hands too, but at my words Nathan halted in his washing of my knee and looked up at me with an expression of utter torture on his face.
Crap
, what the hell had I said wrong now?

Standing up stiffly Nathan pushed his wet hair off his face, paused for a second and then turned silently to exit the shower, but reacting to his anxiousness I placed a gentle hand on his forearm and stopped him. ‘It’s OK, I don’t mind. Cleanliness is good.’ I joked lightly. ‘I'm sorry if I've upset you.’ I added softly, cursing myself, this was twice tonight that I’d done something that had made Nathan look like he had seen a terrifying ghost of some sort, but I had no idea what to do about it or how to make it better.

Closing his eyes Nathan clutched at the wall with a fisted hand and shook his head, apparently struggling with whatever it was that he was seeing behind those beautiful lids of his. After an age of watching him visibly tense and tremble he finally turned to me, his eyes lowered to the tiles, ‘It's not you,’ he murmured, ‘but you’re right, I am obsessive about being clean.’ He paused, drawing in a huge deep breath, looking like he wanted to say something further and I held my own breath in anticipation, desperately trying to hold myself back from prying.

‘Being with my brother tonight brought back a lot of memories for me …’ he paused and swallowed loudly, running his free hand across the stubble on his chin, but I didn’t even dare breathe, he was about to open up to me and I didn’t want to do anything to spoil it. ‘My dad used to be really strict with me and Nicholas when we were kids, he’d come to our rooms and … and beat us regularly, but you probably guessed that from what I said in the bedroom.’ he paused and a look of torture flashed on his features as he shook his head repeatedly, ‘There were so many rules: no friends, no eye contact, and always the punishments …’ He heaved in a huge breath and squeezed his free hand into a tight fist by his side, ‘When you came in tonight I heard the door close and because I’d been dreaming about Nicholas I immediately thought you were dad coming to my room like he used to …’

His gaze briefly flicked to my bruised neck and then my eyes and his regret was so obvious, if unspoken. ‘I didn’t mind it so much, I think it was Father’s way of shaping me into a tougher person, but Nicholas couldn’t cope like me.’ Nathan ran a hand though his hair again, pushing it back from his face so it curled around his ears before rubbing furiously at the back of his neck. His next words were spoken in a rush as if he desperately needed to expel them all at one, ‘It went on for years, but one day my brother tried to commit suicide to escape the beatings … I was the one to find him.’ Nathan dropped this shocking line in a voice that was so gravelly and thick that I barely recognised him, then paused staring into space, his face completely blank and lifeless.

Blimey,
I had completely abandoned the no eye contact rule now and was openly staring at him, not that it helped because his eyes suddenly squeezed tightly shut. ‘Nicholas had slashed his wrist with some scissors. I carried him to the car and drove him to the hospital.’ Nathan choked slightly and coughed, but I suspected he was desperately trying to hold back tears, ‘I was covered in blood. Nicholas’s blood.’ Shaking his head I watched as Nathan started to tremble and goose pimples sprung up on his skin so I gently took his hand and guided him back under the warm water of the shower, adjusting the taps to make the water ever hotter.

‘When I was finally finished with the police and doctors that night I went for a shower but his blood had dried and it took so long to clean it from my body.
So fucking long
,’ he sighed and clenched his fists tightly at his sides until the knuckles went white, ‘I kept finding traces of it under my nails and on my skin for days …’ He stopped speaking suddenly, his lips closing and turning white as he rolled them into a thin, tight line between his teeth. Somehow I just knew that Nathan wasn’t going to say any more, not tonight anyway, but I was completely at a loss for what to do. I mean what do you say when someone drops a bombshell like that on you? It sounded like his feelings towards his father were complex to say the least, but just this one conversation totally explained his obsession with averted eyes, cleanliness, and discipline, not to mention his protectiveness of his brother. Talk about an enlightening couple of minutes.

Looking back at Nathan I saw he was completely lost now, shutting down and gazing sightlessly at the floor whilst rubbing his hands together as if trying to clean them. He was a shell of the Nathan I knew, and it was obvious that he was hurting deeply, but I didn’t know what to do to bring him back to me. I thought about how Nathan always said that actions spoke louder than words to him, and I suddenly knew what to do.

Picking up the sponge that he had used on me just minutes earlier I squirted some soap on it and began to wash him thoroughly all over his body just as he had me, careful not to miss any centimetre of his beautiful skin. Hopefully this was what he needed tonight, to feel clean and not tarred with thoughts of his brothers blood on his skin.

Normally something as intimate as this would have had me panting like a dog in heat, but he was so despondent that all I could think about was trying to soothe my poor, distraught man as he just stood there completely vulnerable, staring at the ground and letting me have my way.