Sin of Fury (29 page)

Nervous, anxious tears burned her
eyes. She couldn’t be here any longer; it was too much like it had
been before. Every piece of clothing that she grabbed onto felt
like it weighed a ton, and it was so hard to put it inside the
large purse. By the time she had her second outfit in there, Jamie
thought her arms were going to fall off.

And then the sound of a door opening
shot through the room and right to her head.

Jamie froze like a deer caught in
headlights. For a brief instant, she tried telling herself that it
was Talon, and that Jessica had told him where she had went. But
Talon moved with a silent grace. Chris liked to slam things
around.

Just as he was now.

“
Oh god,” she whispered,
grabbing onto the purse and closing it shut as quietly as she
could. The metallic clasp was like a bomb in her
eardrum.

Large, thundering footsteps came
closer to the door, and then — they stopped.

Taking a shuddering breath, and
praying that her heart wouldn’t explode out of her chest, Jamie
pushed the shoes back into the closet and did the smartest thing
she could think of — she climbed into the closet and pulled the
door shut.

Hopefully he would make a beeline for
the bathroom and she would be able to sneak out while he was in
there. When his footsteps sounded close to her ear, she almost died
of a heart attack. There was no way she was going to get out of it.
Chris would find her and she would die and Talon would…most likely
go insane.

It took all of her
willpower to
not
slam the door into his face before she could open it. After
meeting Talon, so much had changed about her. Just thinking about
him had her blood boiling, strength from memories of him making her
courageous, and a new resolution to face her fears.

It figures that her thoughts would
vanish the second the door was open.

Now she was close to
whimpering and crying and shaking from head to foot.
Great
.

Jamie raised her hands to her face,
preparing to be hit. She flinched against the wall, tears already
welling in her eyes. She had been so stupid to come here, to think
that by getting clothes she wouldn’t be a burden. What if this were
Talon, and she lost him somehow?

At the thought, her heart broke and
the first tear fell. Even though Talon would never let himself die,
it still tore her at the soul to even think about it and knowing
that he would be hurt by her death…

“
Jamie, what are you
doing.”

The bored, almost condescending tone
had her head snapping up. It wasn’t Chris, coming to beat the
ever-living crap out of her. No, it was the man that hadn’t had the
time of day to talk to her for a whole week, who had ignored her
and left her in the mornings, and now had the look of a completely
irritated man.

The tears dried, replaced by
shock.

“
Talon?”

“
Obviously. Now, what are
you doing? Were you breaking into this house?” He looked around
them slowly, taking in their surroundings with a sheen of disdain
covering his eyes.

Her face turned a flaming red and she
brought her hands to her cheeks, not knowing what else to do. He
wasn’t moving from the doorway, nor was he making any move
to.

“
Actually, no…” she
stuttered, wiping her cheeks. Talon stared down at her with mute
concentration. She tried again. “I used to…well I do…live
here…”

His eyes zeroed in on the pair of male
loafers that were set next to her heels. An unreadable look clouded
his eyes, and he looked at her with an even stonier silence. “Who
lived here with you?” The abruptness of the question had her
flinching.

“
My boy…
ex
-boyfriend.” His eyes narrowed at
the falter, and the emotion she saw flash through them had her
knees buckling. She backed farther into the closet at the blatant
fury within him.

“
You had a boyfriend, and
you let me —“

A door in the front slammed shut,
signaling that another person had entered the house. Just as she
thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. Talon’s body went
rock solid as tension flared between them, not just because of the
fact that Chris was home but because of what he had been about
say.

Her face had already been pale, but at
the sound of him getting closer to their room, it became almost
impossible to breath. As weakness overcame her, she stared at Talon
and thought that, for a moment, he really wouldn’t do anything to
protect her — but why should she rely on him? That was all she had
been doing, even from the first moment at the mansion.

“
What the fuck….who the
hell are you?” Chris’s familiar voice shot through her. Killed her.
Made her remember. Made her frightened.

Jamie pushed her hands through her
hair and then looked around Talon, who had moved to the side. She
stepped into Chris’s view and watched him as his eyes changed from
shocked, to suspicious, then downright furious.

Talon stayed where he was,
watching
her
with
cold eyes.

“
Fucking
bitch
,” he snarled,
storming forward and grabbing onto her arm. The second his hand
touched her arm, all of the faint gusto she had been building up
crumbled and shudders wracked her body. Chris was going to hit her
— she could
feel
it — and Talon wasn’t going to do a thing.

He simply stared at her. Quiet.
Waiting. Like he was watching a boring game of golf and he wanted
nothing more than to leave. Humiliation stung her while Chris
jerked her to his side.

“
You leave me for a
motherfucking
week
! I come home and another man is in my room? In
our
room?” His malicious
voice flowed into her ears like poison. Jamie tried to pull out of
his hold, forgetting for a moment that Talon was there and watching
this all happen.

It was just as it had been before.
Except now? Chris didn’t care if they had an audience. No, it
seemed to empower him because Talon sure as hell wasn’t doing
anything to stop it.

And then she felt his hand in her
hair, wrenching her back at a horizontal angle. The fear drained
out of her in a slow trickle, replaced by anger. Fury. Humiliation.
Shame. Jamie acted on instinct, bringing her foot down on his with
enough force to make it crack. When he doubled over, hand falling
from her hair, she took the opportunity to drive her elbow into his
back.

His infuriated roar bounded off of the
walls. Jamie flinched, but moved back from him quickly, despite all
of her shaking. It didn’t occur to her that she could be
hyperventilating till Talon’s hand fell on her shoulder. How did
she know this? Because the sudden half of her panting left her
light headed.

Jamie jerked, curling her hands into
fists.

Chris had all but forgotten about
Talon, focused on her instead. He braced his hands on his knees,
catching his breath and still managing to scare the hell out of
her. The hot, comforting feel of Talon’s hand dropped from her
shoulder and she wanted nothing more than to throw herself at his
chest.

“
Little whore. Where did
you think you would go?” he sneered, taking a rough breath then
standing up. “Think that bitch mother of yours would take you
back?” He laughed, the sound sadistic and daunting. Jamie pressed
her lips to keep from saying anything that would get her slapped.
She was amazed that he hadn’t yet.

Was it because of Talon? No, Chris
didn’t even seem to notice he was there anymore. He was so silent,
almost blending into the background. How could he not have noticed?
Was he that obsessed over Jamie? Her skin crawled.

And then, so fast, a dark
blur shot past her head. Suddenly Chris was flying into the metal
base of their bed. Jamie whipped around and met Talon’s eyes. They
were still emotionless, still detached and almost
bored
, yet his body was
rigid and ready to attack.

Everything after that happened so
fast, it was more than a blur. It was as if Talon hadn’t moved, but
when she looked back he was on top of Chris, driving his fists into
the other man as if he were nothing but a punching bag. They were
dealt so mercilessly that it looked like he was going to kill
him.

Jamie cried out, Chris’s screams of
pain mixing with her own.

She grabbed onto Talon’s swinging arm,
but he just pushed her back with a soft shove before going back to
beating the shit out of Chris. While she hated him with everything
inside of her, Jamie had had enough violence to last her a life
time and watching Talon work himself into jail wasn’t an
option.

As the punching got worse, so did
Chris’s high pitched cries. Ears grating, stomach roiling, eyes
stinging, Jamie took a breath and then slammed into Talon, pushing
him off of Chris with her body. At first, she felt a moment of
triumph, thinking she had knocked him off with just her strength.
But when his arms came around her, she realized that it had been
because he had let her.

Even though, her eyes closed with
relief as his comforting warmth surrounded her. She almost forgot
that he had been about to murder Chris.

Behind her, Talon stood up to his feet
slowly, all the while helping her to her feet. She could feel Chris
staring at them, hating her even more than he had before. Fear shot
to her stomach, at least before Talon’s hand came around her
shoulder and soothed her nerves.

She turned her eyes away from Chris,
listening to his intake of breath. “The next time I see
you...”

Talon snarled and bent
down, hand shooting out to wrap around his throat. The veins in his
neck and face were bulging within seconds. Talon snarled, “If you
want to continue this, I’d be more then glad to. But I don’t think
my
fiance
would
handle seeing you scream like the fucker you are. Come after me,
you’ll lose something...” His eyes, as dark and deadly as evil
itself, flickered over Chris’s body. “Important. But if you
even
touch
her,
you will die so slowly, so
painfully
, that you’ll feel it in the
afterlife.”

He shoved Chris away from him and he
slammed against the wall, the sound crashing around the room like
an explosion.

Talon bent down, seeming to forget
about Chris, and grabbed her purse. He set it on the counter and
looked straight at her. “You won’t wear anything from this place
ever again.” His command broke no argument, so she nodded and tried
to keep her lip from trembling.

He took her from the house by her arm
-- not by her hand, but her arm. Not personal. Not caring. Nothing
but business.

When they got to the bike, she didn’t
have enough pride to argue with him about riding on it. Quiet,
shaking, and in turmoil, she held on for dear life as he started
the bike.

The whole time, tears streamed down
her cheeks.

~*~

“
You fucked me while you
were with another man?”

Jamie’s face drained of
color at the anger, betrayal, and disgust in Talon’s voice. She
hadn’t
been
with
Chris, hadn’t since he had started the abuse. Was it right to
consider a man who took pleasure in harming her, her lover? She
hadn’t thought so. The only salvage she had found during hours of
pain was that she hadn’t considered them an item, had detached
herself as much as she could from him.

“
I wasn’t with him... I was
leaving him, before I met you.” Even to her own ears, her voice was
soft and watery. She prayed he couldn’t tell that she was about to
cry.

Going by the look in his eyes, it was
a lost hope.

He sneered at her, shedding his jacket
and throwing it at the chair. “Should I really believe
that?”

Jamie stared at him, broken and at a
loss for words. What could she say to him? Everything that Chris
had done to her, and then have him call her a liar? It seemed to be
the direction that things were heading in. Her heart was torn in
two as he turned away from her.

“
I don’t know why you
wouldn’t,” she whispered, falling against the bed.

He had taken them to their rooms after
picking her up off the bike. Her heart had fluttered dangerously in
her chest before he had set her down and walked away from her
without so much as a second look. Lucian had laughed when he’d seen
her, Vladimir had grimaced, and Jessica had looked so pitiful that
it had hurt Jamie to look at her.

She had made her way to their room
slowly, not expecting him to give her the time of day.

At first, she had wished he would come
to her. Now, though? She wanted to shove him out of the room, lock
the door, and cry herself to sleep. Talon didn’t look like he
planned on giving her a shed of mercy, and she didn’t expect any.
After everything that she had done to them, why should
he?

It was just as Chris had
told her, over and over again. It wasn’t the people around her that
were the problem -- it was
her
.