“Stop fighting me.” He seized her wrists in one big hand and started to pull her leggings off. “Relax. I'll make it good for you.”
It infuriated her that he wouldn't listen. She slammed her elbow into him, and he let out a startled grunt. She froze, horrified at herself.
He stared at her. “What the hell was that about?”
She swallowed over the hard, painful lump in her throat. “Don't use your strength against me.”
Raine shoved against the rigid circle of his arms, and he opened them, leaving her shivering and wobbling on his lap. She steadied herself against his shoulder, conscious of her near nudity, breasts bared, leggings yanked halfway down her thighs; at a total disadvantage. She searched for words to make sense of this tangle of incomprehension. Nothing came to mind.
“You liked it, Raine,” he said slowly. “I was making you feel good. I don't know what the goddamn problem is.”
“You use your strength too much,” she said, fighting back tears. “I want you to slow down. I can't control anything. It scares me.”
He peered into her eyes as if he were trying to read her mind. “Why should you control anything? What the hell do you think needs controlling? It was working great. You came like crazy. It was awesome.”
“Please,” she whispered. She reached out, touched his cheek with shaking fingers. “Just ease off, Seth. I can't bear it.”
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, shaking his head in helpless frustration. “Damn. I really don't want to wreck this.”
The baffled hurt in his voice pained her. “You didn't,” she blurted out. “You haven't. But I can't just let myself go like you want me to. Or at least... I shouldn't.”
“Why not?”
She threw up her hands. “Because I don't know you!”
He lifted his head. “So? You know how much I want you. You know how good I can make you feel. What more do you need to know?”
The abyss between their points of view staggered her.
“This afternoon, we both made stupid assumptions. We crashed and burned, and it was awful. I can't let that happen again,” she explained, in an earnest little rush. “I'm not the kind of person who can have anonymous sex with a stranger. It was ... a mistake.”
“A mistake?” His voice was dangerously soft. “No! I mean, yes. I mean, it was wonderful to make love to you, but it was a mistake to make love to a stranger. I don't want you to be a stranger, Seth. I can't make love to you again until I know you better.”
His silence was unnerving. “What do you want to know?” She threw up her hands. “Anything. The usual things.” He let out a short laugh. “There's not much that's usual about me, Raine.”
“Unusual ones, then,” she said desperately. “Be specific. What exactly are you interested in?” “Oh, stop making this difficult,” she snapped. “Where are you from? Where did you go to school? What's your family like? What do your parents do? What's your favorite breakfast cereal?”
“I hope you're not expecting any pretty stories.” She was taken aback by his flat tone. “No. Just the truth.” He laid his hands on tops of her thighs, stroking her skin. “I grew up in L.A.” he said. “I don't know much about my father. Neither did my mom. All she could tell me was that his name was Raul, he spoke only Spanish, and I look just like him, only taller. They didn't communicate much, except in bed. That's the sum total of my knowledge about him. My guess is that he was her supplier, and she was screwing him to get whatever her drug of choice was at the time.” She stared at him, aghast. “Oh, God, Seth.” “She OD'ed when I was sixteen, but with all the junk she did, she was pretty much dead to me a few years before that. There was a sort of a stepdad for a while, but he meant less than zero to me. I raised myself, more or less,”
She wrapped her arms around his neck. He stiffened as she pressed her cheek against his hot face. “Don't get mushy on me,” he muttered. “That's not part of the deal.”
“Sorry.” She pulled away. “How did you survive?” “I don't know. I ran pretty wild. Got into lots of trouble. Fights, lots of fights. I'm good at fighting. And sex, of course. I started real early with sex.” He hesitated. “I'm good at that, too,” he added.
He paused, trying to gauge her reaction. She waited patiently.
“My mom liked pills, and my stepdad liked booze, but my drug of choice is adrenaline. I'm good with my fists. Good with a knife, too. I was a talented thief. I can pick locks, I can hotwire cars. I was into drag racing for a while, that was a lot of fun. I was good at that, too. And I was an awesome shoplifter. Never got caught once.”
He waited. She gave him an encouraging nod, petting his hair.
“I never did deal drugs, though,” he said. “Watching my mom turned me off to that but good.” He stroked his knuckle over her cheek, a slow, lingering caress. “Am I scaring you yet, Raine?”
His tone was almost taunting, but she heard the message behind it as loudly as if he were shouting it. It could not be easy for a man like him to tell her such painful and intimate things. His blunt words were a sacrificial offering. She was moved by the gesture.
He didn't scare her. He broke her heart, maybe, but she wasn't intimidated in the least In some ways, his childhood had a lot in common with her own. The alienation, the loneliness. Probably the fear, too, though she was sure he would rather die than admit it.
She stroked the short, soft hair at the nape of his neck and rubbed her face against his scratchy cheek. She smiled at him,
“No,” she said softly. “You're not scaring me at all. Go on.”
Chapter 9
Raine's words sent another tremor of raw emotion through him. He was jacked up and out of control tonight, his armor suddenly cracked. The grisly details of his past were nobody's else's goddamn business, but the words had just fallen out of him. She was the one with almost no clothes on, but he was the one who felt naked.
He splayed his fingers around the yielding softness of her waist and tried to remember if he'd ever discussed his hard-luck childhood with any of his other women. It wasn't much of a turn-on, as conversational topics went. Seemed to work for Raine, though. There was always the possibility that she was pumping him for info for Lazar, but when he looked at her shadowy eyes, her soft, trembling mouth, he doubted it.
Her hands were so gentle, petting his face. It distracted him.
“OK,” he muttered, trying to gather his thoughts. “So one day I'm burgling this guy's house, and he pops up out of nowhere and sticks a Para-Ordnance PI4-45 in the back of my neck. Turns out he was a retired cop, a guy named Hank Yates. He roughed me up a little, just to teach me a lesson, and he started to haul me down to the station—”
His throat closed down. He swallowed, and stopped. He couldn't go into how Hank had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck to shove him into the car, and realized that the smart-mouthed, thieving kid was burning with fever and coughing up blood. In the end, he'd taken Seth to the emergency room instead of to juvie, where he'd been diagnosed with pneumonia brought on by untreated bronchitis. When he recovered, the gruff, self-righteous old bastard had felt so bad about having smacked a sick kid around that he'd taken it upon himself to rescue Seth from a life of crime. God, how embarrassing.
What a royal pain in the ass that had been. Hank had been a stiff-necked authoritarian, a solitary widower who had long ago alienated his own grown children. He and Seth had clashed violently at first, but after a very stormy period, they had both recognized that they needed each other. Hank had meant well, and in his own way, Seth was grateful to him. Particularly because with Hank's help, Seth had been able to make sure that Jesse got a fighting chance, too.
At least until ten months ago.
Raine was patiently waiting, still stroking his face. He struggled to remember at what point he had left her stranded in the tar-pit of his childhood. “Where was I?” he demanded.
