Retribution (25 page)

He stepped back. The loss of contact with him sent her discontent soaring even higher.

“Before
you
get frustrated?”
Oh, lookee, you’re yelling now.
“You’re getting frustrated? Well how about this? You go for a full year having what amounts to wet dreams about a man you hardly know but find yourself crazy about. Then when you have the opportunity to fulfill those dreams, you find the man can’t open his mouth for two seconds without putting his foot in it.” She stomped her foot. “That’s frustrated, buddy!”

“My foot won’t fit in my mouth, smart-ass.” He glanced down at her feet and then grazed her mouth with his fingertip. “Yours would fit in here pretty nicely, though. And that stomping thing? It makes me hot.” His voice was silk-covered gravel as he stepped closer to her.

Her eyes nearly crossed as his heat wrapped around.
Don’t give in. No, wait, do give in.

“Mine would fit in my—you ass! You know what? Never mind. Just leave. I need to put some clothes on,” she bit out as she turned her back to him.

The breath anger hadn’t stolen was filched pretty easily when he moved the small distance that separated them and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight against his front.

He rested his chin on her head. “I understand you’re frustrated. Believe me,” he groaned and laughed at the same time. “If you think for one minute of any day since Afghanistan that I haven’t felt the same, you’re wrong. You’ve consumed every minute of my time. Hell, woman, when I’m on ops, I think of you. That could have serious repercussions.”

She tried to shrug him off. He ignored her efforts.

“The point is, I understand the intensity of your feelings.” His lips drifted over the curve of her neck and shoulder. He sighed and then licked and blew on the spot just below her ear. “It shook me for a second when you told me that you were a virgin.” He licked again and chuckled. “But I have to admit that the idea of you being all mine has made me hard as hell and dying to get inside you. I wanted to be the best you ever had. Now all I want is to make sure everything is perfect for you.”

He nudged her chin with his fingers and turned her head, meeting her gaze.

“You have to know what that does to a man, Sasha, hearing that the woman he’s mad crazy about has never been with anybody else. I’m going to be the first man inside your body. The only man inside your body. ’Cause I’m playing for keeps, or we don’t play at all.” His gaze pinned her, and finally he lowered his head and captured her lips in a soul-sucking kiss.

That melding of mouths, so hot and full of promise, put her back on solid ground. Confusion slipped away, and her virginal fears dissipated, leaving behind a woman hungry for her man. She turned in his arms and pressed her body against his.

She put her face in the crook of his neck and inhaled. His scent steadied her shaking world. “I’m sorry, Dray. I was such a ninny in there. I panicked because I knew I needed to tell you, and I had almost allowed things to go too far.”

His hands cradled her, soothing and kneading her flesh, offering succor in the storm that was them.

“Baby, you did everything just fine. I need to know that you understand what you are to me, so this happened just as it was supposed to. You and I, we haven’t talked much. Our mouths seem to prefer action, but we need to clear the air about some things. Maybe it’s time to do that.”

“Okay,” she said hesitantly, unsure where he was headed with this.

His hands dropped to her waist, and even though his cock was a flagpole between them, the tension dissipated. It just felt right being held in this man’s arms.

He smiled and her heart galloped. “Tell you what. I’ve made a chicken casserole and there’s a bottle of wine chilling in the fridge. Let’s get dressed and go eat, drink some wine, and talk.”

The most gorgeous man in her universe was standing butt-assed naked in front of her, sporting a hard on of massive proportions, asking her to go eat some dinner, drink some wine, and
talk
?

He was her hero, no doubt about it.

Confusion tattooed his face. “Is that funny?”

She laughed, but it quickly turned to a moan as his hands stroked upward and brushed the sides of her breasts. She sobered instantly, stifling a groan lest his ego multiply in triplicate. “No, Dray, it isn’t funny at all.
I
tell
you
what, we must get dressed or we’ll never make it to the table to eat your chicken casserole. And I agree to talk if you promise a little more mouth action later on. What do you say?” She stepped back and held out her right hand.

“You’re on, assuming our talk goes well. I’m not pushing you into anything. And you and I both know that mouth action leads to other things. I want to make sure you’re ready for everything I have to offer you,” Dray countered.

She glanced down. Couldn’t help it. A shiver worked over her skin and he chuckled.

“Yeah,
everything
,” he emphasized.

“Deal,” she agreed as they shook hands.

He turned and walked to the bathroom to re-enter his room. Oh, the man thought he was so smart, didn’t he? Connecting rooms, indeed.

He did have a fine backside, though, and she hollered out as much as he disappeared into his room.

“The front’s more impressive, though, don’t ’cha think?” he yelled back.

“Oh, forsooth. They both rock, my good man,” she responded in a proper English tone.

“Put your pajamas back on, and I’ll meet you in the kitchen in ten minutes,” he ordered.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do this, do that! Whatever,” she mumbled as she turned around to find some clothes.

A sharp crack followed by a sharp sting on her ass had her grabbing the offended area and turning to look for the source of her pain.

Dray stood in her bathroom again, holding a towel, which he casually draped across his shoulder as he smirked. “Your backside ain’t so bad, either.”

Picking up a pillow off the divan beside the bed, she threw it at him. “That hurt! Leave so I can dress, you ape.”

He laughed as he walked away.

“Payback’s a bitch!” she yelled, which only made him laugh harder.

* * * *

Twenty minutes later, they each had a plate and a glass of wine sitting on the coffee table while they lounged on a rug in front of the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Charles River. The man could cook, she’d discovered, and the wine was delicious.

The view was amazing. And the company? Well, the company was everything.

“So you’re from Boston?” she inquired.

“Yep. Born and bred in Beacon Hills. My brother and I grew up playing on these wharfs.” His tone was light, but his gaze was intense, tactile. “What about you, where you from?” he teased, going heavy on the Boston accent.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re joking right? Because I know damn, good, and well you have a file on me that probably tells you what I ate for breakfast on January eleventh, nineteen ninety-one.”

He didn’t even blink. “Fruit Loops with skim milk.”

Sasha laughed as she pushed her plate away and moved to sit beside rather than across from him. She took a drink from her wine glass, deciding that the man she’d chosen should have the right to know all the good and bad things about her. She took a deep breath.

“I hope you’re ready for this; it’s pretty ugly.” She risked a glance up at him. His gaze was steady on her. The connection she’d had with him from the first time she’d seen him shimmered and solidified in her soul. Her heart raced, her fingers itched to touch him, and her body ached to be held by him.

He had her, his look said, and she was safe. She nodded and began.

“One of my first memories is being dragged from a shelter bed while it was still dark outside, and having my mom hand me off to a strange woman who took me to her house for a while. I think I was three, maybe four years old. The woman must have been a saint because I did nothing but ask her, ‘where’s my mommy’ over and over for days until Irina came back.”

He reached over and grabbed her hand. His big hand engulfed hers, furthering her belief in the safety he represented.

“Looking back on it now as an adult,” she continued in a soft tone, gazing out at the lights scattered on the river, “I’m pretty sure Irina was off getting high and hooking. She left me periodically with random people. Some I would remember, and some I only saw once. I was put on their couch or in a corner. I always had to sneak food and water when they weren’t looking. The people she left me with were druggies too. Not the best of caretakers, obviously, but one woman I remember so well. She was a black woman who held and bathed me. She gave me warm, sweet bread and hot chocolate and patted my back until I went to sleep. She told me stories about things other than hateful men who would do nothing but hurt you. She once said, ‘You are such a sweet little girl.’ I think I cried when she said it.”

She shrugged. “Thinking about it right now, I want to cry. I remember that so well, Dray, because until her I don’t know that I had ever heard a kind word from anyone. Irina eventually came back, and we were off to another shelter or another crack house. You know, Atlanta’s hot most of the year. But the winters can be brutal, especially when you live on the street. Shelters get full, and sometimes we didn’t have a place to stay.” She shuddered slightly, the feel of small bones frozen with cold as genuine to her in that moment as it’d ever been in real life.

She took another sip of wine. Fortification? Probably. “I remember begging Irina to take me back to that woman. I caught her one day as she was coming off a high, and she slapped me for asking to be taken back. I was sick of eating other people’s leftovers from trashcans and sick of not having warm clothes and shoes. ‘
Nyet!
’ she yelled at me, ‘
Ty mo
ĭ rebenok, a ne yee. YA tvoya ma
ť
.
’ I laughed in her face. Four years old, laughing in my mother’s face because even at that age I knew what a joke for a mother she was.”

She hung her head, tired all of a sudden. Weary of the remembering already.

“What does that mean?” he asked her quietly.

She looked at him, her brows drawn. “What does what mean?”

“The Russian. What does it mean?” he asked gently. His thumb stroked over the pulse of her wrist.

Could he feel the pain running through her veins?

“It means, ‘No! You’re my child, not hers. I’m your mother.’ What a joke, right? I called her Irina from that day forward. Until the day she died, she never heard me call her mommy again. She didn’t deserve it, and I didn’t give it to her.”

The night lights of the cityscape in front of her blurred. She’d opened a floodgate, and the memories poured through.

“I always felt like an outsider, even with Irina. There was never really a bond between us, and she never hesitated to make me feel like I’d cost her something. I also always felt like a part of me was missing. I’ve never understood that. It’s like I’m not whole inside, and I have no doubt it has to do with Irina and the life we led. I would see other kids playing, siblings hugging, or mothers hugging their children and think ‘I’m all alone. There’s nobody left but me.’”

She shrugged and took another deep breath, another sip of wine.

“Anyway, I never saw that nice woman again, but ironically, it ended up being because of her the Bennoits heard of me. That’s actually a good part of the story. But we aren’t there quite yet.” Another drink of wine and she forged on. “Irina dragged me hither and yon for the next two years, and when she died, Social Services came to the shelter we happened to be in at the time. They took me away and placed me with a family in Stone Mountain.”

She laughed mockingly. “The Harts. That’s who they placed me with. Joe and Lisa Hart. Good ‘hearted’ people on the outside, complete monsters on the inside.”

She shuddered again, her gaze directed inward as the scene played out in her memory.

“I was six when Irina died. Six when I fostered with the Harts. They were miserable people. Mean in their indifference, and callous in the way they treated their own biological kids. I actually thought, up until I met Mama and Daddy Bennoit, that people should never have kids of their own because they never treated them as well as they treated other people’s.

“The Harts never hit me. They knew Social Services checked periodically for those kinds of things, but they beat the shit out of their own kids. Social Services never checked on
them
. Mrs. Hart home-schooled her children, so the schools never knew. I remember lying on my pallet at their house and listening to a belt strike flesh every night. I remember their nine-year-old daughter begging her daddy to stop hitting her.

“But it never stopped. I remember praying one night to please let me have the beating instead of little Joy Hart. She was smaller than me even though she was almost three years older. I wanted to take it from her at least once. You can’t know how it feels to listen to a child cry at the betrayal of their parents. It’s the worst sound in the world. I heard their son joined the Army, but the little girl died about six years ago. She took a bunch of pills and did herself in. The Harts only wanted foster kids for the money that came to them like clockwork every month. Their own kids didn’t bring in any money, so their worth was stifled.”

His hand tightened on hers to the point of pain, and she glanced at Dray. “Heard enough yet? This is really a barrel of fun, isn’t it?”

He reached for her, stroked her cheek. She moved into his touch, needing it to ground her. “
Leanbh
, there is nothing
fun
about this. You went through hell. But it’s made you who you are. There isn’t one thing that I am not enjoying about you, except for your pain. If I could take it away, I would,” Dray told her solemnly.

“What does that mean,
leanbh
? You say it a lot, and I want to make sure it means something nice before I keep getting all gooey inside when I hear it.”

His mouth lifted at the corner. “It’s Gaelic for baby. My mother’s father taught my brother and me Gaelic from the time we were babies. He had a beautiful voice, and he would sing little Irish ditties to us. He taught us some fairly bad words too.” He laughed. “Dare tells me I revert back to the old words when I feel something strongly. I don’t know if he’s right or not, but there you go. So far as I remember, you’re the only one I’ve called
leanbh
.” His voice softened as he stroked his hand up and down the side of her neck.