Into the Fire (12 page)

He reached for the snap of his jeans, and she shut her eyes. She heard the rasp of his zipper, she could feel the shudders of panic wash over her body. He moved between her legs, and she tensed, waiting for him to touch her.

“I'm not going to help you,” she said in a low voice. “Paul made me help him. He was too drunk, and he hit me, and he made me—”

“I don't need any help.”

She heard the sound of paper tearing, and she almost opened her eyes. A condom, she realized. He was going to use a condom.

She made one last attempt. “You're wasting your time. I tried to get over this once. I even got this far, but he couldn't…I was too…” There was no way she was going to explain it, and now she was sorry she'd started.

“You were too dry,” he said in a prosaic voice. “And too tight. And you didn't really want him.”

“I thought I did….” Her voice disappeared in a little squeak as he put his hand between her legs. His long fingers touching her, sliding inside her, that fast.

“Well, you're not dry now. And you want me, whether you admit it or not. And I'm not going to give you a chance to change your mind.”

She started to tell him she'd never said yes in the first place, but it was too late. She'd expected kisses, caresses, practiced attempts to still her fears. Instead he'd moved between her legs, pressing against her, and before she could protest he was inside her, pushing deeper, holding himself above her as he slowly invaded her body.

He was too big, but there was nothing she could do about it. This time her body didn't stop him, and then it began to betray her, letting him in, until she could feel the whole length of him inside her, her hips cradling his as her fingers dug into the torn cushions beneath her.

“Breathe, Jamie,” he said in a tight voice. “It's not going to kill you.”

Because she didn't have much choice she took a breath, and somehow he moved even deeper inside her, when she hadn't thought he could.

He was holding himself above her, only the weight of him inside her, and she felt him lean down, bring his head toward hers, and she knew he was going to kiss her. And she couldn't stand it. She jerked her head away, so that he couldn't reach her mouth, and she bit her lip.

“All right,” he said, and she could hear the iron tension in his voice. “Do you want this fast or slow?”

“Fast. Get it over with.”

“You don't know what you're asking for, baby girl.” He started to pull out, and she let out her breath again in momentary relief. Until he pushed inside her again, deeper than ever. Again and again and again, and there was nothing she could do but shiver and find that dark spot inside herself where she could hide.

But that dark spot was filled with sparkling lights, and he was in there, too, in every part of her, and there was no escape, and she could feel the heat spreading through her, rich and languorous, and the more she tried to fight it, the more it spread through her body like a warm, sweet poison.

And he knew it. He could feel it. “Open your eyes, Jamie,” he said. “I want to watch you.”

She could no more resist than she could stop her
heart beating. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she stared up into his face, half dazed.

“We're going to do this again,” he whispered. “And again. And again.” Each word was punctuated with his body rocking against hers. “Every way I can think of, every place, every time of day. You'll be thinking and breathing and tasting me. And I'll be thinking and breathing and tasting you.”

She was shivering, inside and out, but she wouldn't touch him. Her fingers dug into the sofa, her hips cradled him, and he thrust hard, deep inside her, over and over again, until she felt his body go rigid, saw his eyes close, heard his voice let out a strangled curse as he caught her hips in his hands and pulled her up even tighter against him.

She watched him almost from a distance, and for a moment she felt almost serene. It was a strange kind of power, to feel him climax inside her, to feel his total loss of control, when she was the one who always felt powerless.

And then he collapsed on top of her, sweat-slick, panting, his heart hammering against hers. She noted all these things with detached interest. It was a kind of revelation. She hadn't hated it. Hadn't hated it at all. There was even a moment when she'd begun to feel something almost like…

He rolled off her, off the narrow sofa and onto
the floor, where he sat, cursing. “Shit,” he said after a moment. “That was a fucking disaster. That wasn't what I had in mind at all.” He turned his head to look at her. “Stay put,” he growled. “I have to go clean up, and then I'll be back.”

She closed her eyes, shutting him out, until she heard the door close, the water running. And then she sat up.

A disaster was something not to be repeated. To be talked about. The inevitable had happened, and somehow she'd known it would. But now she was getting out of here, as fast as she could go.

 

Mouser was the last person he expected to see when he emerged from the bathroom. He was so damned pissed at himself his savage mood spilled over onto the world in general. He'd planned to make her come, over and over again, until there was no way she could hide away in that pseudo-virgin body of hers. No way she could hide away from him.

And instead he'd lost control like a teenage boy and shot his load before he'd given her no more than the first taste of arousal.

He'd been planning to take care of that the moment he got back to her. But she was gone, and
instead Mouser was standing there looking at him like he'd murdered a kitten.

“What the hell do you think you're doing, Killer?” he demanded.

Dillon managed a grim smile. “I'm about to cut your throat. I happen to be busy. Go away.”

“I don't think so. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what's been going on here. Why don't you leave the poor girl alone? You don't need her. You'll only hurt her, and no matter how much Nate fucked you over you shouldn't take it out on his cousin.”

“It has nothing to do with Nate. I spent a year and a half in jail because of that woman. Don't you figure she owes me?”

“No. Any time you spent in jail was long overdue and you know it. That's no excuse, and you don't even believe it yourself. I figure you've got a major jones for that woman and it ain't her fault. Send her home, man.”

“Not yet.”

“You're a stubborn son of a bitch, you know that? Don't blame her for Nate. Any score you had to settle with him has already been paid in full, don't you think? You've never been a cold-blooded bastard, Killer.”

“That's where you're wrong. I've had lots of ex
perience being a cold-blooded bastard, and that's what she expects from me. I wouldn't want to disappoint her.” He leaned down and picked up the T-shirt she'd dropped in her escape. He'd had her. A good solid taste of her after God knew how many years of waiting. And it had just whetted his appetite.

Cinnamon. The T-shirt smelled of cinnamon. He couldn't let her go. Not yet. Even though he'd done his damnedest to atone for a lifetime of sins, there was a limit to his good behavior. And that limit was Jamie Kincaid.

“Get the fuck out of here, Mouser. We've had this argument before and it's just a waste of time. I'll do what I want with her, and she's not going to object. And next time knock before you walk in.”

“She probably doesn't know how to object. You're the experienced one. You could let her go.”

“I'm not going to. Lock the door behind you.”

“You're a bastard, Dillon. I love you, anyway, but sometimes you make it real tough,” Mouser said sternly. “Think twice before you hurt that girl again. You'll only end up hating yourself even more than you do now.”

“Go fuck yourself, Mouser.”

 

Dillon made no noise as he walked up the creaky stairs. Mouser was gone, the door locked behind
him, and no one was going to stop him this time. He wouldn't be able to start where he left off, but it wouldn't take long to get her back to the point of trembling surrender again. This time he'd do a better job of it. And to hell with Mouser and any trace of conscience that was bothering him.

He almost had his hand on the doorknob when he heard her. It took him a moment to figure out what the choking sound was. She was crying, and trying to stifle the sound against something. The pillow, the mattress, her fist. It didn't matter. She was trying not to make a sound, and it made it all the worse. She was probably huddled in some corner, waiting for him to come get her.

He'd never been susceptible to a woman's tears. He'd had more than his share cried over him, at him. Women trying to manipulate him, make him feel guilty. And Jamie Kincaid was the kind of woman who cried at the drop of a hat. Hell, she was probably just frustrated by his rushed attempt at fucking her and didn't know it. If she wouldn't open the door he could kick it down without any difficulty, and finish taking care of her as she needed to be taken care of.

And he knew he wasn't going to do it. Some latent sense of decency had cropped up at the sound
of her crying. He was a fool and a half, when he finally had gotten her where he'd wanted her for far too long. Shaken, trembling and willing, and it wouldn't take much to get her that way again. And he wasn't going to do it.

He was about to hang the discarded T-shirt on the doorknob, but he hesitated, bringing it to his face, breathing in the scent of her. And he moved down the hall, the shirt still in his hand.

 

Mouser shook his head ruefully. Killer had it bad, and he didn't even realize it. Far be it for his old friend Mouser to point out that the poor bastard was in love. Killer didn't believe in love, certainly not the romantic kind. He'd chalk it up to simple lust. But Dillon was way past anything as simple as lust when it came to Nate's cousin.

She was bringing out the worst in him, that was for sure. Dillon could be utterly ruthless, but he didn't usually take it out on the helpless. It wasn't like him, and he'd hate himself for doing it.

The best thing a friend could do for him was to get the woman out, before Dillon made a mistake that he couldn't fix. A light snow was falling, and Dillon had locked the door after shoving Mouser out into the snow. But the door to the alleyway didn't have a lock. He figured he'd managed to ruin
the mood for at least the time being, long enough to get Jamie out of there. But he couldn't afford to wait.

The grim alleyway looked almost pretty beneath the thin layer of snow. Only a trail of footsteps marred the pristine white, and he frowned, trying to figure out who the hell had come in the back entrance. The prints were too small to be Dillon's feet, too big to be Jamie's.

He opened the door. The hallway was warm and shadowy, and he closed the door behind him, moving into the darkness.

And then he stopped, staring into the shadows in disbelief. “You're dead,” he said in a choked voice.

“No. You are.”

I
t took her too damned long to stop crying. All she could do was thank God he'd left her alone for a moment, so she could run. Because if she'd stayed, it would have been even worse. She might have grown to like it.

There was rape and there was rape. Dillon Gaynor could force her just by looking at her. For twelve years she'd kept her distance from men, only to come face-to-face with the worst of all of them. The only one who could get through to her.

She thought she'd been safe. He'd touched her. Kissed her. Slid his hands beneath her clothing and felt her breasts, he'd stretched her across the kitchen table and covered her body with his. He'd done almost everything she'd been terrified of, and she'd survived.

Until this afternoon, when he'd pushed her down on the battered old sofa and came inside her. He hadn't kissed her, caressed her, barely touched her. And he still almost made her want it.

She could hear the noise of his infernal music beneath her, the rumble of a car engine and the metal sound of tools. She needed to get clean, to get the feel of his hands, his body, off her, and then she needed to get the hell out of there. She sprinted down the hall, taking the fastest shower imaginable, but when she emerged the noise was still coming from beneath her.

His bedroom door stood ajar—at least, she assumed it was his. She pushed it open—if she could find anything at all to put on her feet she could get out of there before he even realized she was gone.

There wasn't much in the room. A big bed, unmade, sheets in a tangle. She stared at it a long moment, unnerved. She couldn't really look at that bed without thinking of Dillon. Lying in it. And her. Beneath him.

There was a splash of color against the white sheets, and she recognized one of the T-shirts she'd put on earlier. She must have dropped it in her flight. Typical of him to have taken it. If she was around for much longer she'd end up with nothing at all.

She grabbed the T-shirt and headed for the closet. No shoes, no boots, nothing she could put on her feet. She turned back to the room in frustration. There was a large-screen TV on the dresser opposite
the bed, and on impulse she pulled open the drawers. It was more than likely he'd taken her purse and shoes in the first place, and this would be an obvious spot to stash them. But the drawers held nothing but clothes—T-shirts and jeans and socks. No underwear, though. She wasn't surprised.

Until she saw the scrap of red and pink, wedged into a corner, tucked away underneath the T-shirts. She pulled it out, and she felt a weird clenching in her heart as she recognized it.

She hadn't seen it in thirteen years, but she would have recognized it anywhere. She'd gone out with her friend, Carly, the one her mother had always referred to as white trash, and she'd found it on a sale rack at Macy's. It was a dress made of a lacy pink-and-red-striped knit. The sleeves were long, with an uneven ruffle at the end, the skirt was short, and the neckline much too low. At fifteen she'd been flat-chested enough to get away with it—her now respectable 34B would make it as indecent as her mother had insisted it was.

Of course, there'd always been the little problem that the dress was see-through. It wasn't as if Jamie hadn't worn a full slip underneath, so that nothing showed. Carly wore things a hundred times more revealing, and Jamie had loved that dress. For the first time she'd felt beautiful. Even desirable. Back
when desire was a good thing. She'd put the dress on and felt like a sexy, sultry creature, and she'd reveled in it.

Her mother had taken it, of course. Ripped it and thrown it in the trash where it belonged, Isobel had told her, and proceeded to buy her a complete new sweater outfit that made her feel like a Catholic schoolgirl.

She shook out the dress and looked at it. Maybe it was a little tacky, in retrospect, but she'd loved it. The ruffle at the neckline was ripped, but even Isobel's strong hands hadn't been able to do much damage to virgin polyester. She held it up to her face, breathing in the past.

It smelled like the perfume she used to wear. Just a trace of it, something light and virginal that she'd gotten for Christmas. And the faint trace of gasoline and cigarettes. Dillon.

Why in hell did he have it? Why in the first place, and why after all these years? It was crazy—he hadn't even been aware of her when she was fifteen and had worn this dress.

If she were really honest with herself she'd admit the truth about who she'd wanted to impress with this dress. There was only one person she'd wanted to notice her, only one boy she wanted to realize
she was a grown woman. At fifteen, she thought ruefully.

And that boy was Nate's oblivious best friend, the wicked Dillon Gaynor from the wrong side of the tracks.

She'd never understood why her mother had let Nate continue his relationship with someone as problematic as Dillon, the baddest of the bad boys, and yet had ruthlessly cut off Jamie's relationship with Carly, whose only crime was a lesser pedigree. But then, Jamie knew the answer. Nate could talk his aunt Isobel into anything, and Isobel had gritted her teeth and bore it for Nate's sake.

She didn't even want to begin to think about how the torn dress had gotten into Dillon's possession. All she knew was she wasn't going to leave it with him.

It was past time she began to stand up to the people she loved. Past time she stood up to Isobel, with her plaintive demands and her disapproval. Hell, maybe she'd even wear the damned dress when she got back.

She wasn't going to let Dillon touch her again. The moment she heard him come up to bed she was going downstairs, climbing into the damned yellow Cadillac and driving out of there, even if she had to go straight through the wooden garage doors. She
wasn't going to be a victim to the people she cared about….

Well, not that she cared about Dillon. She despised him, always had, since the night when Paul Jameson had raped her in the back of Dillon's car.

But then, she'd never known what had happened afterward. Never known that Dillon had beaten him half to death. And now, staring down at the dress in her hand, the dress he'd kept for more than a decade, she realized she didn't know anything at all.

 

The Volvo took Dillon longer than he expected, but by late afternoon it was running better than it probably had in years. There'd been no sign of Jamie—she hadn't emerged from her fortress to eat or even to pee, as far as he could tell. Though he'd been blasting Nirvana again and it would have covered any noise.

She was still up there, he had no doubt of that. He could feel her there, underneath his skin. Like poison ivy, he thought savagely.

Mouser was right. Mouser was always right, damn him. He was like Jiminy Cricket, his fucking conscience. Friends you could trust were a hell of a lot more important than even the most longed-for piece of ass—he'd learned that the hard way.

He was going to let her go.

He backed the old Volvo out of the garage, feeling a trace of satisfaction in the sweet purr of the engine. The snow had almost stopped, the streetlights that were still in working order had come on, and the late-afternoon air was fresh and crisp. She had credit cards and a couple of hundred dollars in cash in her purse—she'd have no trouble finding a hotel room once she got away from here. He'd been prepared to put more money in her wallet if need be, but she probably would have noticed and had a fit.

He pulled the Volvo in front of the garage and cut the motor. He considered leaving it running. She was going to leave like a bat out of hell, and the gentlemanly thing would have been to warm it up for her.

But fuck it, he was no gentleman, and he was already being a revoltingly decent guy. Mouser was going to owe him, big time.

Except that Mouser would tease him, mercilessly. He always insisted that Dillon was a better person than he knew he was. And this would just give him more ammunition.

Couldn't be helped this time. He never drove the Cadillac without thinking of Jamie, and that wasn't likely to change. But he'd lived with it for twelve years—he could live with it for another twelve. Be
sides, he had other things to feel guilty about. Like Nate's bloody death.

At least he'd managed to keep Jamie from seeing the room. There'd been no way to get all the blood out of the old wood, not without ripping out the floors and replastering the place. And he couldn't be bothered. Once the police had removed Nate's bloody corpse, once the yellow tape had been taken down, he'd dumped all of Nate's possessions in there and locked it. He should have sent the stuff back to the Duchess, but he'd never gotten around to it, telling himself he owed the old bitch nothing.

But he knew the real reason. He was hoping Jamie would come to find it. Find him.

She had, and now he was wishing to hell he hadn't done anything so fucking stupid. But he was making up for it, salvaging things before they exploded in his face.

The room still smelled like death, even three months later. The brown stains covered the floor and the walls, visible in the twilight, and he could see it all over again. The lifeless, battered figure, the face smashed in, the clothes soaked with blood. He'd seen a lot in his life, but that was something he wouldn't soon forget. He had sat downstairs at the kitchen table and listened to the distant sounds
of his former best friend being beaten to death. And done nothing to stop it.

He told himself he didn't feel guilt or regret. If he had to do it over again, he would, without hesitation. He simply had to live with the consequences. And he'd never complained about the price he had to pay.

He dumped the two cardboard boxes into the trunk of Jamie's car. She was as neat as she'd always been—no extraneous books or packages rattling around back there. It was as empty as her life.

And who was he to judge? His life consisted of his work, a couple of friends, and getting laid when he was in the mood for it.

That and meetings.

He would have killed for a drink right then. The moment she was out of there he'd find a meeting. Hell, there were at least three in the city on a Sunday night, and he hadn't needed one so much since he'd gotten sober. He should have known Jamie would put five years of solid sobriety in jeopardy. No woman was worth that.

He grabbed her purse and her shoes from the safe. It was already growing dark, but he didn't turn on the lights.

He didn't bother muffling his footsteps as he climbed the stairs—this time he wanted her to know
he was coming. Give her enough time to hide. If there was one thing he knew, it was that he absolutely never wanted to see Jamie Kincaid again. For some reason he couldn't see her without touching her, and he couldn't allow himself that kind of weakness. All he did was hurt her, anyway—the sooner she was out of here, the better. After all those years he was finally ready to put that part of his life behind him.

The door was still tightly shut, but there was no sound of tears from behind the thin pine. No sound at all.

Maybe she'd already left, but he didn't believe it for a minute. He'd developed a sixth sense about her, and he knew she was just on the other side, holding her breath, probably closing her eyes and praying for him to move on.

Which he would, in just a moment. He rapped on the door, loudly.

“Go away!” Her voice was still husky with tears, and he found he could smile. Fighting to the end. What would it feel like to finally be done with her? Liberating? Or empty?

He set the bundle down on the floor outside the door. “Your purse and shoes are here,” he said. “The Volvo's parked out front, with Nate's things in the trunk. Just a little word to the wise—if you're
going to drive such an old car you might at least keep up the maintenance on it. Your plugs and points hadn't been changed in years. You should have no trouble getting back to Rhode Island in one piece—it's running better than it has in a long time.”

No answer from the other side of the door, but he hadn't expected it. “If you need any more cash you'll find it in the safe in the garage. I left it open for you. And don't worry about having to see me again. I'll keep out of your way until you're gone.”

Nothing. He hadn't really expected a word, and God help him if she opened the door.

He walked the rest of the way down the hall, noisily, and closed his bedroom door behind him.

 

Jamie sat cross-legged on the thin mattress. The sound of his footsteps in the hall, his voice outside her door, only made things more complicated. She heard the thump of her shoes and purse on the floor, the sound of his door slamming, and then everything was silent.

She stared at the door in disbelief. It had to be a trick, but she'd heard him walk away, heard the sound of the slamming door.

Just when she thought she'd begun to understand him he'd thrown her a curve. She opened the door
cautiously, half expecting him to be lying in wait for her, but the hall was dark and empty. And at her feet were her shoes and purse.

She scooped them up before he could change his mind and shut the door behind her, scarcely believing her luck. He was letting her go, and nothing on God's green earth would make her ever see him again.