Living in Shadow (Living In…) (23 page)

With some reluctance, she let him go and he slipped out of the bed, vanishing into the en-suite bathroom. A moment later he returned though and she opened her arms to him as he came back to the bed.

“You know how I said you could tell me anything?” she said into the darkness, wrapping her arms around him. “How about you tell me all of it now?”

He was silent a while and when he began to speak, his voice was brittle as shattered glass, listing the things that had happened to him. The first government soldier he’d shot, a gun held to his own head until he’d pulled that trigger. How he’d been sick after it. The rapes, the tortures he’d seen, powerless to stop any of them from happening until he’d been made lieutenant and could command his own squad. He’d shot members of that squad, anyone who perpetrated violence on others. Yes, he saw the irony of that. And yes, it had killed a piece of him.

She couldn’t speak for the anger that overwhelmed her then, at what he’d been made to do. At the people who’d done this to him. At the injustice of it all, furious tears filling her eyes.

He noticed, shifting in her arms, putting a gentle finger to her cheek and wiping the tears way. “Don’t,
soleil.
Please don’t cry.”

She caught his finger, holding it. “Why shouldn’t I cry? Someone has to.”

“I don’t want to make you unhappy.”

“I’m not unhappy. I’m fucking angry.” She kissed his finger. “Do you know how strong you are? How amazing that you survived that? That you even came out of it sane is incredible.”

“Sane is a debatable term.”

“Well, you’re certainly not mad,” she said fiercely. “You were a child made to do terrible, terrible things. Like I told you before, you don’t come out of something like that without scars.” Closing her fingers around his wrist, she pulled it up between them, the fabric cuff sliding down his forearm. “Like this. This is a scar, Luc.”

He dropped his gaze to the cuff and stared at it for a long time. “I had to keep that,” he said quietly. “I had to carry something with me. I had to keep it to remember. Because I was afraid of forgetting what I’d done. When you’re…numb, it’s easy to forget.”

“But scar tissue is numb, Luc. That’s why you can’t feel anything. And I don’t think it’s forgetting you’re afraid of. It’s remembering.”

His gaze remained on the material around his wrist. “You’re making me feel, Eleanor. That’s the thing. I’m…waking up. I’m feeling things and it’s…dangerous. That’s why I had that flashback. I haven’t felt anything for so fucking long and now…Jesus, it’s all coming back.”

Her throat closed up. “I want to apologize for that, but I won’t. You can’t live your life pretending it didn’t happen. That it didn’t affect you. Take it from me, I know how well that works.”

Luc’s gaze lifted to hers all of a sudden, the look in his eyes sharp, piercing. “No,” he said softly. “I’m starting to think that too.” With an abrupt movement, he shifted, getting off the bed and going over to his bag where it lay in the middle of the room. Crouching down, he took a long, black shape out of it.

A knife.

Pulling it out of its sheath, her breath caught as he came back over to the bed, handing the weapon to her, hilt first. He didn’t speak, only held out his wrist.

“Oh, Luc…” There were more tears edging down her cheeks.

“Cut it off,
mon rayon de soleil.
I don’t want it there anymore. Because…I don’t think I’m numb anymore.”

She looked up at him, her heart too full to say a word. And she could see the certainty in his eyes. And the pain. Wordlessly, she took the hilt and put the blade of the knife against the threads, cutting through the strands in one movement, the cuff falling to the ground. Then she bent her head and kissed his wrist.

His hand spread, his fingers cupping her chin and lifting her gaze to his. “You can leave,
soleil.
I’m giving you this one chance. Because, if you stay, it’s going to be forever. I don’t think I can walk away from you again.”

“Well that’s good,” she croaked. “Because I didn’t come here intending to leave.”

His thumb moved, stroking away the tear that had fallen down her cheek. “Eleanor…”

She moved her head, rising onto her knees on the mattress, taking his face between her hands, pulling him down for a kiss that was sweet and said everything there weren’t words for.

Except he said them anyway. Whispering them against her mouth.
“Je t’aime. Tu allume mon coeur.”

I love you. You light up my heart.

“So are you going to tell me about your tattoos?”

It was hours later and she was in his arms, her hair spread out on his chest as she held one of his hands in hers, tracing the lines and dots inked into his skin.

He watched her pale finger move, struck suddenly by the similarity to the way he’d touched her as he took the pain away from her that night. Had it felt like this? As if she were taking away something heavy? Erasing sharp edges of the anguish and leaving gentleness in its wake?

His arm felt strangely light without that cuff on it. Like it could float away.

“Inza tattooed all the boys in the child squads,” he said. And how fucking weird it was to be able to explain, to not feel like he was choking when the memories came. “His symbol on our hands so that if we ran we’d be easily identified and caught. No one wanted to hide a deserter. I tried once, to escape. I thought they were going to kill me when they caught me, but they didn’t. I spoke English, which made me valuable. I was whipped instead.” She was still touching him, stroking his fingers. “Squads used to get tattoos after a big victory. To celebrate. We’d drink, smoke weed if we could get it, listen to loud music. I wanted that fucking symbol off my hands that night so I got another boy in my squad to do it but he couldn’t draw. All he could do was bars and dots. I didn’t care, I wanted Inza’s symbol gone.”

“Didn’t someone notice you’d tattooed over it?”

“Yeah, but by that stage I was too important to them to punish.”

“What did you do for them?”

“I could translate English, and I was good at strategizing and planning. Plus, I was much better educated than some of the village boys and that was useful to them too.”

Another silence fell.

“What about the stars?” Her fingers traced up his forearms.

“Because they were cold. Peaceful. And I wanted some of that on me.”

“What about the tiger? Though I have to say, it’s a little cheesy.”

He found himself smiling, and that was weird too, considering where those tattoos had come from. Maybe it was the gentle amusement in her voice that did it. “I was drunk at the time. At least the guy who did that could draw. I was…sixteen, I think? We’d just won a major battle and since our squad was called the White Tigers, I thought it would be great if we all got a tiger tat.”

“The White Tigers, huh?”

“Yeah, I know. Hey, we were young.”

Another silence fell as she touched him, her hands like soft rain moving over his body. “I want to help, Luc,” she said after a moment.

“What do you mean?”

“What happened to you wasn’t fair. It wasn’t…just. And I know I can’t do anything about that now, but I think you were right when you said you wanted to do something for people like you. Well, I want to help. I want to get into human rights law, start making a difference.”

He shifted, twisting to look down at her, searching her face. “What? You mean give up teaching?”

Passion and determination burned in her eyes, along with a healthy dose of anger. “Maybe not completely. I could still teach part time, because I do like it. But I think together we could make a great team.”

He smiled, warmth spreading out in his chest. “Are you certain?”

“I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.” She touched his cheekbone in a gentle caress. “I’m going to be here for you, Luc. And that’ll include being here when you get the help you need.” She paused. “Did you ever get any psychological help after you were rescued?”

He sighed. “Some. But I really wasn’t interested in what they were trying to do at the time, to be honest. And I was very good at telling them the things they wanted to hear, because I didn’t want to deal with it.”

“Yeah, I can imagine. But I think you should try seeing someone again.”

He knew that already. He couldn’t afford another flashback, and if that meant dealing with all the shit he knew was waiting for him, all the pain, then he’d have to do it.

It was hard to realize that. Hard to understand that if he wanted a future with her, he was going to have to open himself up to his emotions. Open himself up to the pain of all he’d forgotten.

So, yeah, nothing about this was going to be easy. But the choice itself was not so difficult. He wanted her and she was worth any price he had to pay.

He turned his head, kissing her fingers. “I know and I will. As long as you’re there, I can handle it.”

“It won’t be easy, honey.”

“Yeah, I know that too.”

She sighed. “You’ll get through it. You’re amazingly strong.”

“So are you, Professor. So are you.”

“Uh, I’m not your professor anymore.”

He smiled. “What else am I going to call you?”

Her fingers trailed along his jaw then down the side of his neck, stroking his throat. “You can call me Sir, of course.”

He laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so
.
If anyone’s going to be Sir, it’s me.”

Her hand drifted lower. “Call me your sun. I’m happy with that.”

“
Mon rayon du soleil.
You never were anything else.”

Because now he was in sunlight, there were no shadows. No shadows anywhere.

About the Author

Jackie has been writing fiction since she was eleven years old. Mild-mannered fantasy/SF/pseudoliterary writer by day, obsessive romance writer by night, she used to balance her writing with the more serious job of librarianship until a chance meeting with another romance writer prompted her to throw off the shackles of her day job and devote herself to the true love of her heart—writing romance. She particularly likes to write dark, emotional stories with alpha heroes who’ve just got the world to their liking, only to have it blown wide apart by their kick-ass heroines.

She lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her husband, the inimitable Dr. Jax, two kids, two cats and some guppies (possibly dead guppies by the time you read this). When she’s not torturing alpha males and their stroppy heroines, she can be found drinking chocolate martinis, reading anything she can lay her hands on, posting random crap on her blog or being forced to go mountain biking with her husband.

You can find Jackie at
www.jackieashenden.com
or follow her on Twitter
@JackieAshenden
.

Look for these titles by Jackie Ashenden

Now Available:

Falling For Finn

Black Knight, White Queen

Lies We Tell

Taking Him

Having Her

Living In…

Living in Shadow

Coming Soon:

Living in Sin

Living in Secret

Behind every heroine is the pain that binds her.

Having Her

© 2014 Jackie Ashenden

Lies We Tell, Book 2

Manga café owner Kara Sinclair has one burden she’s been carrying around so long it’s bordering on pathetic. Her virginity. Getting rid of it, though, means doing the one thing that scares her the most—letting down her guard with a relative stranger. Which makes her best friend’s older brother Vin Fox’s offer too tempting to refuse.

Vin barely has room in his schedule to turn around, much less worry about Kara and her crazy quest. When she insists on going ahead with a plan that he considers unsafe, though, enough is enough. If she wants to lose it, she can lose it with him. Bonus: he gets to play out his darkest fantasies, slave collar and all.

Kara thought dealing with a known entity like sexy-as-sin, controlling-as-hell Vin would smooth the way. But when it comes right down to doing the deed, not even the safety of a costume can fool her demons.

By then the game has gone too far…and the consequences could bind them together forever. Or tear them apart at the seams.

Warning: Contains a sexy, brooding “fix you” hero and a heroine who isn’t afraid of anything…except “normal.” More kinky cosplay losts-and-founds than you can shake a riding crop at. WTF Infirmary is booked up; please make an appointment before you read.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Having Her:

Kara dodged the crowds as she left the convention center’s bar, feeling bad about leaving Ellie alone. She felt bad about leaving full stop, but knowing Hunter was coming to get her friend helped.

Hiding the fact she was going to meet Vin didn’t.

Then again explaining to Ellie that she’d been sending the pictures Ellie had been taking of her, including the ones containing various potential suitors, to Vin all night, for reasons she couldn’t have explained even to herself, would also have been a little difficult. Ellie probably wouldn’t have cared but Kara felt awkward about it all the same.

Plenty of time to tell her friend later though. When whatever was going to happen with Vin had happened.

A small burst of excitement went through her as she went down the main set of stairs and out through the entrance into the brightly lit city beyond. An excitement she couldn’t pretend she didn’t feel.

I’ll tell you who…

God, did he truly have someone in mind for her or was he teasing her in return for the whole day she’d spent teasing him? Perhaps she’d get to the bar to find no one there.

Kara pulled the long duster-style black coat she wore tighter around her as she stepped out onto the pavement, concealing her costume.

No, that wasn’t Vin’s style. He was a straight-up kind of guy not a game-player. He was probably meeting her so he could give her another lecture, then he’d take her home. Like a child.