Operation: Endurance (When the Mission Ends) (35 page)

He had her down to her panties and bra when she began tugging at his t-shirt. Holding her hand still against his chest, he asked, “Are you sure you want me in there with you?”

For the first time all evening, she truly met his gaze. “I need you. I can feel his breath and his weight on me. I need you to help me erase that feeling. Replace it.” Her voice pleaded.

Knowing that if he tried to speak, his voice wouldn’t cooperate, he simply nodded and began to pull off his clothes. When he got down to his underwear, he glanced at her again just to make sure this was still what she wanted. Fierce determination glinted through the tears in her eyes. His Butterfly was resilient.

He pulled off his underwear and then unfastened her bra. As it fell off her shoulders, the full extent to the bruising on her torso was livid in the purple, blue, and green colored patches across her fair skin. He hissed in a harsh breath and clenched his jaw as anger surged through his system.

She cupped his cheek, concerned. “I don’t know what they told you at the hospital, but you need to know. He didn’t get the chance to rape me. Toni killed him before he did.”

Relief surged through him and he wondered if his legs were going to continue holding him up. Tears filled his eyes as he drew her against his chest and kissed her forehead. “Remind me next week to give Toni a raise.”

She gave a watery laugh, pulled off her panties, and then tugged him into the shower with her.

She scrubbed the soap over every inch of her body for five minutes before he couldn’t watch the abuse anymore. He took the soap out of her hands and began to work it over her in a slow, methodical, massaging manner. As he slid the soap over her, he followed with his lips, caressing the bruises and marks on her, including extra care around her shredded and torn wrists and ankles where she’d been bound.

He wanted to worship and love every part of her, but she had other ideas. She pulled him up off the tile floor where he’d been kneeling to demand, “Chris, make love to me.”

Up to this point, this had been all about healing her and making her feel better. As with anytime he was near her naked flesh, he’d been aroused, but with that simple sentence, his cock
now went rock-hard with need. He needed to show her how much she meant to him. How much he loved her.

Tugging her out of the shower, he wrapped her in a towel and spent long, erotic moments drying every nook and cranny, and then re-wetting it again with his tongue. By the time they made it to the bedroom, she was moaning and writhing up against him. “Now, Chris, now. I need you inside me.”

Slowly he eased up over her as he laid her back on the bed. Starting at her feet, he kissed her, tasting the arch of one foot and then the other and then nibbling at her toes in turn. He skimmed his tongue along the curve of her calf and settled behind her knee where he discovered she had a tiny ticklish spot. He spread his large hands up the inside of her long, toned legs, feeling them flex and twist under his caress. When he reached the apex of her thighs, he inhaled her unique scent of jasmine and pear. “Butterfly, your scent drives me insane. It’s fucking perfect.”

She bucked underneath him. “Chris, you aren’t being very nice. Well, actually you’re being incredibly nice, but I need you to be nice in another way. Chris,” her voice lowered seductively, “I need you to be nice inside of me.”

“Hmm, I do think I can do that.” He slid up her, stopping for a moment to pay some attention to her breasts and then gradually eased inside her, one torturous inch at a time. They were both groaning by the time he was fully seated.

As soon as his groin met her clit, she began to clench around him. He held still and enjoyed the pure rapture as the currents of electricity zinged down his spine. His forehead leaned up against hers as she regained her ability to breathe. Still holding in position, he asked, “Are you okay?”

“Oh yeah, I’m good. Now it’s time to take care of you.” She moved her ankles further up his back and twisted her hips up against his.

He shuddered as ecstasy slammed through his every sense. His hips snapped against hers as control shredded and instinct took over. She opened her gorgeous hazel eyes, the love shining there slaying him. He leaned down and kissed her, pouring all his love into the gesture as his tongue tangled with hers. She
orgasmed for a second time and the convulsing of her walls dragged him down with her. His cock pulsed inside her hot, silken passage as wave after wave of delicious release barreled out of his shaft and into her. He couldn’t hold back the deep groan his release brought.

Finally spent, he rolled over onto his back, pulling her onto his chest. He lay there catching his breath and rubbing his hand up her back. Tears rolled onto his chest. He sat up and lifted her chin to look at him. The tears spilling over her lashes broke his heart.

“I didn’t think I’d ever feel this again today. I never thought I’d get to feel your arms around me again. I thought I was going to die.” Silent tears racked her and he pulled her tight into his embrace.

“It’s okay. You’re safe now and I’ll do everything to make sure you stay that way for the rest of your life. You took ten years off of mine today when I realized you were in that house. I never want to go through that again.” He kissed her softly on the top of her head just above her stitches. “Try to go to sleep now and I’ll work to keep the nightmares at bay.  You’ve taken away my nightmares. Let me do the same for you.”

Slowly she relaxed against him, but he didn’t release his hold on her. He never wanted to let her go again.

Julie glanced up in surprise when Chris threaded his hand through hers as they walked up to the office building. He hadn’t strayed far from her side since he’d found her at Pete’s. Chris’s hovering helped her to feel safe and he seemed to need the reassurance of her presence just as much as she needed his. The attack yesterday had shaken them both.

That was the reason she was here today. It had been so tempting this morning to hide out at Chris’s house and ignore what happened from the safety of his embrace. But that wasn’t the healthy thing to do, so here she was, keeping her therapy appointment. The difference was Chris came with her—he just planned to wait for her in the reception area. Neither one of them were ready to separate from the other yet, even for only an hour.

Chris gave her hand a gentle squeeze when the receptionist told her that Dr. Eckert was ready for her. “I’ll be waiting right here when you’re done,” he told her.

That right there helped to give her the strength to walk across the room and into Dr. Eckert’s office to talk about one of the worst days in her life.

Dr. Eckert sat at his desk, writing, when Julie entered the room. He stood and came around his desk to usher her to the chair. He looked her over with a clinical but kind eye, taking in the red welts around her wrists and the purple and black bruise on the side of her head.

He stood, holding her hands for a moment in reassurance. “I know what’s happened and we’re going to talk about it, but you need to know, I’ve cleared my schedule this afternoon. We’ll talk as long as you need today. I know this has been traumatic.” He gave her a kind smile. “But first, I want to know how this past week, before yesterday, has gone for you? Have you been able to limit your lists each day?”

Relief flooded her. She’d been so lucky to find this therapist. Already, he got her and her needs. She knew that she needed to talk about the events with Pete, but he was easing her into it in a methodical way that appealed to her OCD. Talking about her week chronologically was perfect.

“It’s gone well. Honestly, it’s gone better than I ever would have thought. Just by knowing what causes me to need to make the lists has made it so much easier to not need them. The past couple of days, I’ve even found myself saving my three lists for when I really need a list, like my grocery list, rather than using it as an emotional substitute.”

He smiled his approval. “Were there any stumbling blocks before yesterday?”

“I’ve made a concerted effort to work through some of the lingering emotional things that have been causing me to be stressed this week. I talked some things through with my sister, Rachel, about the events when we were kids. I also told my boyfriend about the miscarriage and resulting health problems because of that. Neither was easy, but I did it and didn’t go over my quota of lists on those days.”

“Good, good. You’ve done well and I’m so proud of you for that.” He beamed at her. “Now, we need to talk about the events of yesterday. And before we begin, I need to confess my part in yesterday’s events.”

Julie frowned at him. How in the world could Dr. Eckert have been involved with yesterday? “I’m sorry. I don’t think I understand.”

“I know you don’t and you need to know that normally, I wouldn’t share any of this with you. But Pete is dead and he didn’t leave any family, so nobody will be hurt by what I tell you. I’ve made a professional decision to tell you this, because I think it will help you understand, and also help you with your own recovery.” He shuffled a few papers on his desk as he seemed to gather his thoughts.

She tried to wait patiently, but was a little leery about what he was going to tell her. So far, she’d managed to shy away from the thought that her friend, a person she liked and trusted, had attacked her so viciously.

“You need to know that I started treating Pete a couple of months ago. He was referred to me by the police department because during an investigation, he discovered the body of a girl. Something about that discovery triggered a remembrance of a childhood trauma.”

“Jocelyn’s death,” she murmured.

Dr. Eckert’s eyebrows raised in question. “He told you about her?”

Julie nodded and swallowed hard. “Yes, yesterday. He kept confusing me with her. He’d call me her name and he would say things like my sacrifice would free her from her sadness.”

“Yes, I should have seen it, but I didn’t. Something about that girl’s death triggered memories and an obsession with Jocelyn’s death. Like your own trauma, Jocelyn died when Pete was too young to truly handle it. He was only fourteen and she was thirteen. He blamed himself for that tragic, horrific death. She was tortured and raped before finally killed.” Dr. Eckert took a deep breath.

“When he found the other girl, the details were similar enough to Jocelyn’s murder that he began to have dreams about Jocelyn. Her memory haunted him, because he never had the resources to deal with her death when it happened. Unfortunately, it was a ticking time bomb in his mind. I should have recognized it, but I didn’t and I’m so sorry for that. If I had, maybe you wouldn’t have gone through the events of yesterday and those other girls would have been saved.”

What could she say to this? It was a lot to take in at once on top of the trauma from the day before that she was also trying to deal with.

He laid down his pen and rubbed his forehead. “I’m not telling you this to make excuses for him or my treatment of him. I just think it’s important to know why it happened. Why his mental stability broke. Pete stopped coming to see me a few weeks ago and I’ve been worried for him, but I never thought he would harm anyone else. That’s where I failed both him and you. I missed the signs.” He stopped and watched her for a moment as she considered all he said.

Tears filled her eyes. “I just don’t understand. He was my friend. That guy yesterday wasn’t my friend. I know he wasn’t the same person, but my friend died and I don’t know what to do with that loss. It seems wrong to mourn him when he hurt so many people—me included—but I just can’t see that man yesterday as the same man I knew. How am I supposed to make peace with that? I want to mourn him, but I don’t know how.”

“You’re allowed and need to mourn the Pete you knew before. That man was worthy of your grief. He did a lot of good in this world before the events a couple of months ago threw his mental stability off-kilter.”

As Julie considered Pete’s job as a police officer, something occurred to her. “He told me a few weeks ago that he became a cop because his best friend was murdered. He was talking about Jocelyn, wasn’t he?”

He nodded. “Yes. As with most fourteen year olds, she was the whole focus of his life at that point in time.”

“I just don’t understand how he could go from using her as the driving force for keeping criminals off the street, to then becoming one of those criminals.”

“I’ve gotten to read the police reports. From everything I know about what happened yesterday, somehow it all got twisted in his mind and he thought by hurting those girls he was actually saving them from their despair and sadness, which would in the end save Jocelyn. He was suicidal and obviously not thinking anymore as a sane person.”

He leaned forward. “But that’s something else to think about as you work through your grief. Pete wasn’t a sane person any longer. If he had lived, he would have spent the rest of his life in either an institution, or jail, or both. Even if it had been possible to fix his mind, his crimes were so horrific, he would have never been freed again. Hopefully, his death brought some peace to his soul.”

They talked for a while longer and Dr. Eckert helped her create coping mechanisms for the next few weeks. He told her that she’d probably have nightmares, but that it was very important that she talk it through with those around her, including Chris. He also mentioned that as his girlfriend, Chris would likely show some effects from the trauma of it, too, and how she could watch for that as well. He also offered to counsel him if he needed it.