Heir to a Dark Inheritance (14 page)

“Teach me what it means to make love.”

No
. Her heart screamed in denial. The request, so simple, was scarier than anything else she’d faced with him. And now she wondered if she should have simply been content with their encounter on the couch. If she should never have told him she needed more. Because this was too much. Too close to her deepest fear.

She’d been with him so many times, and yet, this was the time she feared might break her. Because he wasn’t asking for her body. He was asking for her soul. Asking her to go deeper than she felt she could.

The further she went with Alik, the more distant her past became. The less her image of the past appealed, because the woman she was turning into wouldn’t fit into it.

She was terrified of losing it, of dishonoring it. Of what it would mean if she took another step away from it, another step toward becoming this person who seemed almost entirely different than the one she’d been with her husband.

All she had were her memories, and the way she saw those was changing, too.

She was trembling inside, but as she looked up into Alik’s eyes, she knew she could deny him nothing. “Yes. I’ll teach you, Alik.”

He had the strongest desire to get drunk. To ask Jada for a reprieve when they got back to his town house so that he could stop by the bar and down a few shots.

But when he stopped and looked at Jada in the bright light of the entryway, in her short red dress that revealed her tanned, toned legs, he was grateful for his sobriety.

Still, when she approached him, he shook like an adolescent. He couldn’t recall ever feeling nervous before sex. Not even his first time. He’d been too filled with the kind of bravado a teenage boy who’d spent his life on the streets needed in order to survive.

But he felt on the verge of coming undone now. Yet if he did anything to dull the experience, he knew he would miss something. Because with Jada, he always wanted to feel it all. Hot, rough, perfect. And every time she left him hungrier for more.

She was already beneath his skin in a way no other woman had ever been. Was there any point in fighting? Not tonight. Not now. Now he was going to embrace it, because this was the kind of feeling he’d been chasing all of his life.

There was no drug, no alcohol, no beautiful woman, who had ever brought him this close to the edge of ecstasy. Just looking at Jada put him there. And it wasn’t just the promise of physical pleasure. It was all-encompassing heat. Like standing in front of a fire, warming every piece of him, burning inside and out.

He had tried to create something like this for most of his life. Had tried to heat the frozen spaces, tried to bring to life parts of him that were dead.

Here he was now, and he was afraid. Afraid he couldn’t handle it. Afraid she would be displeased with him. When all of his protection burned away, and left only Alik, would she still want him?

He didn’t have time to dwell on that. He couldn’t. Because she was walking toward him now, and her eyes were focused on his. As though she saw into him. As though she saw everything. It was impossible, of course. Because if she could truly see into him, if she could see all he had been, if she could truly understand the pain, the damage that was beneath the stone walls around his heart, she would turn away.

But she didn’t. She kept walking to him.

“As exciting as I found the couch, I thought we might make use of the bed tonight.”

“You’re in charge tonight,” he said. “This is all you.”

“No, Alik, this is us.” She held her hand out and he took it, her soft, delicate fingers curling around his, her thumb skimming a rough patch of skin on his wrist. Her fingers were unsteady and he saw that her eyes were glistening. He couldn’t figure out why. And he cursed his inability to simply understand her emotion. “This whole night is about us. That’s the first difference between sex and making love. It’s not my pleasure. It’s not your pleasure. It’s ours.”

He nodded slowly, his heart thundering, low and steady. She led him from the room and up the stairs and he felt a tremor go up his spine. He laughed.

“What?” she asked, turning to him, the light from the top of the stairs backlighting her, hiding her expression.

“I have faced down enemy gunfire and not felt any fear. There is little fear in death to me. And this, connecting with another person? That’s frightening.”

“I trust you’re brave enough to withstand a night of making love with me.” She leaned in and kissed him, her lips soft, perfection.

And he wasn’t so sure. It took everything in him not to
pick her up and carry her in the room for a bit of hard and fast. That was easy. That was all physical release. This, this slow walk was forcing him to let the pressure build.

He wanted to hide behind what he knew. Wanted to take charge. But he was too fascinated, and he was far too self-destructive to turn away from something that had this much power to wound.

A sobering and very true realization about himself. Hadn’t he spent all of his life acting like whether he lived or died didn’t matter? Hadn’t he spent his life daring whoever was in charge of the universe to simply finish the job? Rather than having him exist, a physical, intact body that was empty inside?

This might be the thing that set him free, that took all the walls down, once and for all. Or it would be the thing that secured his place in hell.

He only hoped he didn’t bring Jada down with him.

They went into his room this time. They’d never been together in his room. Because it put Jada in control of what happened afterward. Whether she left. Whether she stayed.

“Take your clothes off,” she said.

He obeyed, and she did the same. Then when they were both naked, they lay down on the bed. She wrapped her arms around him and held him against her, burying her face in his neck, inhaling deeply.

She sighed. It was a sweet sound. One of contentment, of happiness. It made emotion swell in his chest, emotion he wanted to push down. If he just rolled her onto her back, he could take her, bring her to the height of pleasure and make her forget about this.

But he wanted to keep the torture going. Wanted to wallow in this newfound form of punishment. A vision of what could be. If only. If only he wasn’t broken beyond repair.

She leaned in and kissed him. Slow and deep, erotic torment for his body and soul. She was attuned to him, to every
tensing of his muscles, to every sound of pleasure. Her kiss was for him. Just for him. And he wanted to give her pleasure like it in return. Not just pleasure derived from his knowledge about sex and his experience with it, but knowledge from his experiences with Jada.

And so he did. He tore his mouth from hers, then dropped a teasing kiss back on her mouth, took her lower lip between his teeth and bit her gently, because he knew she liked it.

He was rewarded with a low hum and a sweet smile, and it only made his chest feel fuller. Made his whole body feel like it was trying to hold something far too big for one man to carry.

But too wonderful to pass off to anyone else. Jada was his. This was his.

He lowered his head, pressed a kiss to the valley between her breasts. “You are the most beautifully formed woman I have ever seen,” he said.

He cupped her, traced the outline of her nipple with the tip of his tongue before sucking it deep into his mouth. She arched into him, her fingers laced in his hair. And he smiled against her skin. She always did that. Always held on to him as though he was anchoring her to earth.

He loved it.

Her skin was soft beneath his hands, and he traced her curves with his fingertips, memorizing every inch of her. There had never been another woman like her. At the moment, he couldn’t even remember another woman. They were inconsequential. Everything was.

The violence, the pain, it all fell away beneath Jada’s hands. Her touch burned away the memory of everything else. Her voice, soft, sweet, whispering things in his ear, promises of pleasure, words of encouragement, drowned out the visions of violence, the hard, angry, ugly words he’d been exposed to from the time he was a boy.

And when he slid inside of her, it was like the world fell
away. And there was nothing but the two of them. And they didn’t even seem like two people anymore.

She wrapped her legs around his waist, moving in time with him, until he could no longer tell who was in control, could no longer tell where he ended and she began.

He felt her tense beneath him, felt her internal muscles tighten around him, and he let go. Let his release wash over him in a wave, drowning out sound and light, pouring through him, into every part of him.

He thought his heart would burst through his chest, thought the walls would cave in around him. But when he came back to himself, everything was the same.

And nothing was. He felt changed. Totally and completely.

Jada wrapped her arms around him, and he adjusted himself, pulling her against him. She rested her head on his chest, her hand over his heart.

And for the first time in his life, Alik wasn’t in a hurry to leave the woman by his side. He wasn’t on to the next time or place in his mind. On to the next lover. Jada filled his senses, and he was happy to leave it that way. Replete. Satisfied.

“The anchor doesn’t mean nothing,” he said, not sure why he felt compelled to share. Except it seemed right. After experiencing intimacy with Jada it seemed right to try and deepen it.

“The anchor?” she said, her voice sleepy.

He lifted his arm and showed her the tattoo. “They told me my father was in the navy. At the orphanage. At least, I think that’s what my mother told them. I have no idea if it’s true. But I thought…I thought it might make me feel closer to him. Sailors have tattoos like this and I thought we might share a trait. I was seventeen, on the run, making my way through Asia and I thought it might make me feel connected with someone. With something. It was stupid. It didn’t work, either. I like the tattoo, though.”

“I like your tattoos,” she said, tracing the line on the anchor
with her fingertip. “They keep the past close to you. Permanent reminders of a place you used to be.”

Jada looked up at him, the sadness in her eyes stealing his breath. And he wondered who had put it there. If it was past memories, or if it was his fault somehow.

“Memories are good,” he said. “But there is no time in my past I would choose to return to.”

He watched her face closely, watched pain flash across her face. He reached out to cup her cheek and she turned away from him. Then she sat up, clutching the blanket to her chest. “I should go back to bed. I need to be by Leena’s room.”

“You should be able to hear if…”

“But I might not be able to,” she said. She got out of bed and picked her clothes up off the floor, dressing quickly.

Was this how she felt every night when he left her? Bare? Exposed? Rejected? Because he felt every bit of that and more.

“Don’t go.”

“It’s just…better. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She turned around and left, shutting the door behind her. Tonight, Alik had had his first taste of true intimacy. And his first taste of what it was to have intimacy rejected.

The latter made him feel that the former was unbelievably overrated.

There was no way he was sleeping tonight. He got up and put on his sweats and running shoes. He had to think. And in order to do that, he needed to run. And he wouldn’t stop until he came up with an answer to the burning hunger in his chest.

“G
OOD MORNING,
A
LIK.”

“Good morning,” he said, sitting down at the breakfast table. Leena was in her usual position and Jada was in hers.

Funny how they all had usual positions now. Jada wanted to scream and run from it. Why hadn’t she realized just how much making love with Alik would cost her? She’d thought she could do it. She’d thought she was strong enough. And now she was coming apart inside. Over crepes and coffee. Which was about the stupidest thing ever.

“Breakfast is really, really good this morning,” she said, her words shaky as she spooned a bite of banana, wrapped in crepe and cream, into Leena’s mouth.

“It looks like it.” Alik sat down across from her, his expression sober, and his eyes far too perceptive. “Finish eating because I want to talk to you.”

“I’m taking Leena out for a walk so maybe after…”

“I have called Marie and she will be by to walk Leena. You’re going to talk to me.”

She nodded slowly. “I’ll just finish up my coffee.”

“Or bring it into the sitting room with me.”

Just then, the lovely, dark-haired woman who took care of Leena walked onto the patio.
“Bonjour.”

“Marie, can you finish giving Leena her breakfast?”

“Of course!” she answered far too brightly. So brightly it gave Jada a headache. And stole her excuse for avoiding Alik.

Jada stood grudgingly and Alik did, too, but not before he dropped a kiss on Leena’s head. The sight made Jada’s heart crack further. He loved Leena. She saw it whenever he looked at her, and now…he could even show it.

It was all she’d needed. For Leena and for him. And it made what she had to do now, what she had to do for her, easier.

Not easier, nothing would make it easier, but it made it less risky. She’d taught Alik to love and he didn’t need her anymore. Not as a lover.

And she couldn’t afford to play with fire anymore.

“Why are you running from me, Jada?” he asked when they were alone.

“I’m not. But now that you mention it, there is something going on. Something I’ve been thinking about since last night.”

“What?”

“We always said this…this thing between us would end, and I think it needs to end now.”

Alik looked like she’d slapped him. “What?”

“It’s going to end, Alik, and I want to do it now. While we like each other. While we respect each other and…you’re such a good father. You’re doing amazing with Leena and…”

“Bull.”

“What?”

“You’re lying. You don’t want to end things while we like each other. I don’t believe you.” He was right. She was lying. But she had to do it. Everything she’d been, everything that had mattered, was starting to get fuzzy in her mind as Alik grew clearer, sharper. She didn’t understand her feelings. She didn’t understand herself.

“We talked about this. It was always going to end, and I think we need to do it while everything is healthy between us.”

“What is healthy about two people who can’t keep their hands off each other, Jada? Tell me. What is healthy about
that? I am not an expert on healthy human behavior so I can’t comment.”

“It’s passing,” she said.

“Is it?” he bit out.

“It is for me,” she said, the lie stabbing at her deep.

“Don’t end things.”

“Why?”

Alik looked down, then at her, his gray eyes blazing with intensity. “I have fallen in love with you.”

It was the admission she’d longed for most. The one she’d feared the most. The one she absolutely couldn’t answer. “No, Alik, you haven’t.”

“Are you going to tell me now what I feel, Jada? Because you are an expert on emotion and I know nothing?”

She almost laughed. She’d never felt less expert in her life. She felt so confused, so crippled by pain and uncertainty. But she had to do this. “That’s not it, it’s just…this has been a very different and challenging time for you and I think you might be…”

“No. Jada, if you don’t want this then say it, but don’t you dare question what I feel. I damn well love you and I will not have you force me to deny it.”

“I don’t want you to love me.”

“I don’t care,” he said, advancing on her, grabbing her hands and tugging her against his chest. “I don’t care what you want. I love you. I have never loved anything in all my life until I saw that child in the courthouse. It burned me, Jada. It burned my heart to see her. My flesh and blood, the only flesh and blood I have. And then there was you. So bright and fiery, challenging me, tempting me.” He dipped his head, his lips a whisper from hers. “You let me inside you…doesn’t that count for anything?”

She felt light-headed, pain slicing through her like a knife’s blade. But it was nothing compared to the fear. Nothing compared to the terror she felt at the idea of losing him. The
thought of caring enough, of giving enough of herself to him that if he were ever gone from her she would never be able to put herself back together.

She pulled away from him, swaying on her feet. “You don’t understand, Alik. I’ve had love,” she said. “And this isn’t it. This isn’t…this isn’t what it feels like. This isn’t me.”

“Of course it’s not the same—I’m not the same man he was. You’re not the same woman you were. You’ve walked through hell. Did you honestly think you would come out the other side needing the same things you needed before you went in?”

“Of course I’m not the same! There’s no way I could be. But what you’re asking? It’s impossible. You want me to just forget him, to…”

“I never said I wanted you to forget him.”

“What other option is there? I’m getting further and further away from him and I can’t even…I can’t even capture the way that I used to feel anymore. I have been…drowning in this grief and pain for so long, and before that I had a life. I had a life and dreams enough for the future, and if I just keep…moving away from it, then what did it mean? It’s like I’m making it so it doesn’t even matter.”

“Why can’t it matter, too? Why can’t you just let it go and…”

“How would you even know what I can and can’t let go of, Alik? What any person could? You’ve clung to your pain, shielded it, all your life. You’ve spent all these years running from your feelings, from your pain, so don’t you dare tell me what I should let go of!”

He advanced on her, his lip curled into a snarl. “You’re right—I’ve spent enough time running, Jada, so I know what that looks like. But you aren’t even running. You’re just standing in the same spot, glued to it because you’re afraid to move on. I know your path changed, I know it’s rough and scary and I know it hurts, but you still have to walk on it, dammit.
You were the one that told me life moves on. But you aren’t moving, Jada. You’re standing still.”

“So I should just go on like he didn’t matter? Like everything is fine?”

“You didn’t die three years ago. He did,” Alik said, his voice hard. Angry.

“Stop. Just stop.”

“No. You listen. You are alive, Jada Patel, but you choose to bury yourself. To try to live unchanging and unmoving. There is life here. There could be life with me. But you won’t take it.”

Her eyes glistened, with tears. With anger. “Just because I don’t want you doesn’t mean I don’t want to live,” she said. “I did change. I got Leena, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t change—you simply didn’t have anyone standing in the way of what you always wanted. Because he did stand in your way, Jada, whether you want to admit it or not. He stood in the way of Leena. Of who you are.”

“He didn’t, Alik. He was a good man, he—”

“Better than me?”

“Yes.” He jerked back, as though he’d been slapped. But still she kept going. “I want a simple, normal life that doesn’t hurt all the time. I want to raise my daughter, with you because you’re her father and it’s right, but I don’t want to be your wife.”

“You are in luck, then,” he said slowly, taking an envelope off the desk. “The adoption is finalized. You don’t have to be my wife.”

She blinked slowly. “I don’t?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“You listen to me,” he said. “I will divorce you. I will give you what you ask for. I will put you in a house of your choosing. Here, in Attar, in New York, back in Oregon. I don’t care. But before I do that, I am going to say it one more time and
when you reject it, you be sure that you don’t want it because I will never say it again…do you understand me? Reject me again and I withdraw it.”

She closed her eyes, a tear sliding down her cheek. And she nodded, biting her lip, trying to hold the pain at bay.

“I love you.”

She shook her head, a sob escaping her lips, more tears falling. “No.” It was all she could say.

“Then that is the last time I will torture you with the words. Now get out.”

“Alik…”

“Out.”

Alik watched Jada walk out of the room, and he felt his chest tear in two. It was like everything in him had come to life, new and raw and bleeding. He felt it all now. The loss, so intense, crippling, and with it, the love that beat behind it. Too strong to be wiped out, no matter how cruel the rejection.

This was why he had left himself numb for so long.

Because his life would have been nothing but an endless hell of pain if he hadn’t learned to numb it. But if he had spent his life feeling, then perhaps this moment wouldn’t be quite so devastating. Perhaps he could have built up a security system against it. As it was, there was nothing to prepare him for it. For how it felt to tell a woman he loved her. To have her throw it back at him.

He wanted to hurt her, as he was hurting. He wanted to take Leena from her. Just for one, small, ugly moment, he wanted it. And then he imagined the pain it would put her through and his own doubled.

Love was hell. To want to make her feel his pain, to know that if he did it would hurt him even more.

No wonder he had guarded himself against this. He had been smart.

He wished he could close himself up again. Wished he
could go back to life before Jada. Wished he could unlearn intimacy. Wished he had never made love with her.

But if he wished it all away, if he turned back to the man he was, then he would lose his love for Leena, too. And Leena was worth the pain. She was worth any pain.

So strange. He had lived his life for so long, and he had had nothing to live for. So he had flirted with death. With danger. Now he had something that was truly worth dying for. He would lay down his life for Leena without hesitation, but for her sake, for the love of her, he wanted to live now more than he ever had.

He also wanted to cut his heart out of his chest.

It was too damned early in the day to drink. And he had no way to numb his pain. So instead he walked out of the sitting room and back to the patio. Marie was still there talking to Leena.

“Let me take her,” he said.

He picked her up and smelled her hair, and a strange feeling of calm cut through the pain. He had Leena. No matter what, he had Leena.

He didn’t need Jada. He only needed his daughter. And he wouldn’t hurt his daughter by taking her from his wife. The woman who would be his ex-wife soon enough.

After giving Leena back to Marie, he walked outside into the chilly Parisian morning and did his best to ignore the word. Ex-wife. It kept repeating itself in his mind. Over and over again, in time with his footsteps.

He gritted his teeth. It didn’t matter. She didn’t matter. He had made a vow. He would not tell her he loved her again. He would not even think it. Jada had missed her chance with him. She could have her freedom. She could have her safety.

She could cling to the memory of a husband who could no longer hold her.

He would not look back. He would not offer his love again.

He’d sent Jada and Leena back to Attar, while he’d taken a different plane, had gone back to Brussels to check on his earlier deal. The one that had been interrupted by the discovery of his child. And the acquisition of his new wife.

Now he was walking downtown, the streets cold and wet, the clubs inviting. In there was every tool he needed to forget. Women. Alcohol. Especially women.

He jerked open the door to one of the clubs. The music, cigarette smoke and thick smell of sweat and booze hit him hard. It was all so familiar. So much more familiar than this feeling of raw vulnerability in his chest.

Here, there was no pain. No need to be honest. Here, there was oblivion. Shallow and perfect. The strobe lights were blinding, the bass deafening. A hostile takeover of the senses. Everything he could have asked for.

He went to the bar and ordered a drink, then surveyed his surroundings. Until he spotted her. Blonde, tall and bombshell curvy. All the things Jada wasn’t.

She was leaning against the other end of the bar, a drink in her hand. She lifted a toothpick from it and put it in her mouth, sucking the cherry from the end. Subtle she was not. Good. He didn’t want subtle.

He wanted easy.

He put his glass to his lips and made eye contact with her. And on cue, she worked her way down the bar toward him, her hips swaying. He felt no desire for her. But this wasn’t about her.

“Buy me another drink?” she shouted over the music.

He nodded and signaled to the bartender.

He knew the steps to this dance. Everything about it was familiar. Except for the sick feeling in his stomach. Except for the total absence of adrenaline. Of the thrill.

The woman approached him, put her hand over his, tilted
her head to the side. She talked. She played with her hair. She licked her lips.

His vision blurred. Until he saw Jada. In a white dress, walking down the aisle toward him like she was going to the gallows.

And then he heard their vows. Over and over again.

Promises of togetherness until death. Of faithfulness.

And Sayid’s words, echoing in his head.

You think what happened here today, the words you spoke
,
you think those won’t matter?

It mattered. Regardless of what he wanted to believe. It mattered.

She mattered. And the simple act of her not returning his love didn’t erase it.

“I have to go.” He put his drink down on the bar and turned away from the woman, walked back toward the door.