Third Strike

For a moment he didn’t react. Then, with an almost feral growl deep in his throat, Sean pivoted and swept the ornate lamp off the desk behind him with a single backhanded blow. It yanked the plug out of the socket and spun the glass base against the bathroom wall, shattering it into fragments. The explosion of violence was stark and shocking.

Appalled, I threw myself sideways off the bed, dropped onto my feet on the far side of it, scrambling to meet his eyes. They were burning, ferocious, in the face of a stranger. The fear caused a massive spike like an electrical short. I’d always sensed the beast in Sean ran very close to the surface but he’d never fully uncaged it before. Never with me. Until now.

He advanced, head down, utterly focused, kicking aside a chair. I backed up, my heart thundering against my breastbone, the blood roaring in my ears as the adrenaline rampaged shrieking through my system.

He reached me, reached for me, ramming me backwards until the wall brought us up short. I told myself I could have stopped him, could have evaded him, but I wanted—no, I needed—to know how far he would take this. How far he would hurt me.

Because then I’d have my final answer.

His fingers clamped around my wrists, jerking my arms up and out, pinning me against the wall. He crowded me with his body, forcing an awareness of the height and the breadth and the weight of him.

The memories triggered by that deliberate act ripped through me, caving my chest until I could barely breathe. He leaned his face close to mine and watched with a cold hard gaze as every scrap of color bleached out of my face and I struggled to hide the sudden bloom of panic in my eyes.

“Sean!” The words were torn from me, weak and watered. “Please …”

I’d pleaded that night, too—begged and pleaded. For all the good it had done me then.

Donalson, Hackett, Morton and Clay.

“I’m not them, Charlie,” he said, almost a whisper that I struggled to hear above the rasp of air in my clogged throat. “I’ve never been them—except inside your head. And every time you flinch away from me—yes, just like you’re doing now—you’re blaming me for what they did to you.”

“I don’t blame you.” Was that pathetic little voice really mine?

“Yes, you do,” he said, certain as stone. His eyes flicked down to my mouth and back up again. Eyes so dark they were almost black, with the tiniest flecks of gunmetal and gold around the pupil. “Just as your bloody parents blame me, for not teaching you better, for not protecting you.”

“Sean, you weren’t even there!” I protested, still reedy but stronger than before. “You didn’t know—”

“I blame me,” he said, and the quiet admission undid me. He let go of my wrists and stepped back, a flicker of selfloathing in his face as he saw the reddened marks his grip had left on my skin.

Just then, there was a tentative rapping at the dividing door. My father’s voice from the other side: “Charlotte? We heard a noise. It sounded like … Is everything all right in there?”

Sean raised his eyebrow in my direction.

Well, are you going to lie to them again? Pretend there’s nothing wrong?

“Everything’s fine,” I said, a pain in my belly like a twisted knife as I watched the light fade out of Sean’s eyes. “We knocked over a lamp. It’s fine.”

There was a long, dubious pause. “All right,” my father said heavily. “If you’re sure.”

“Yes,” I said, almost normal. “I am.”

Sean started to turn away from me, closing down. I knew I was losing him and I couldn’t have been any more scared if he’d been dying.

I levered off the wall and went for him again. This time, when he tried another almost dismissive throw, I countered, stepped in close, got my hip under his and used his own demonstrated advantage in size against him.

The room was too small for fighting. Sean landed hard and awkwardly, halfway onto the bed, and jackknifed straight back onto his feet again, light as a cat, but there was a glitter in his eyes now. I told myself that anything was better than the dull-eyed beaten stare he’d had before.

“You knew what you were taking on with me, Sean,” I told him harshly. “If you wanted somebody perfect, you should have taken Madeleine home for real, while you had the chance.”

“I never wanted Madeleine,” he said, quietly vehement. “I only ever wanted you, from the very first moment I laid eyes on you. Wanted you so badly it was like a bloody sickness. I’ve never changed my mind about that. But sometimes I think you have.”

The words were spoken with such soft certainty that I felt something break inside. It must have been something connected to my eyes, because they began to flood with tears.

“You know how I feel about you, damn it,” I said, keeping my chin up and my gaze on his even though my sight had blurred away. He tilted his head to one side and regarded me as though he could see right through to my soul. He probably could. I’d laid it bare for him. “I love you. That’s never changed for me, either.”

“Hasn’t it?” He held his arms out, in challenge as much as invitation. “Then prove it.”

I moved into him without hesitation, reached up and fisted my hands in his hair and pulled his mouth down to mine. Despite that, the kiss started out slow, smooth, tender. I had no intention of letting it stay that way.

Something ignited, as it always did when I was with Sean. Sometimes I thought that fire was never entirely extinguished, like a pilot flame waiting for the explosive rush of fuel to become a full-fledged ferocious burn. All consuming, unstoppable.

In moments, I had his shirt peeled open and was fumbling with his belt. He yanked the holstered Glock out from his waistband and dumped it behind him onto the bed. He’d already done the same with my SIG, had parted my shirt from my trousers and jerked it upwards to dance his fingers across the heated gap of skin between the two.

I don’t remember him unclipping my bra, but suddenly my breast was in his hand, his mouth. I let my head fall back, gasping, as any logical sections of brain fell over and refused to reboot.

Eyes blind now, I was barely aware of his hands lifting me onto the desk. My trousers and the rest of my underwear had gone somewhere along the way and those diabolically knowing fingers teased and tormented until it was all I could do not to implore him for release.

My shirt was off my shoulders, bunched and tangled around my elbows, riveting my arms behind me. I fought the terror of being restrained, battled it down, opened my eyes as Sean leaned in close, bit my lower lip oh so gently.

“Trust me,” he murmured and I knew he’d seen both the fear and my attempts to resist it. “I’ll never hurt you, Charlie … .”

“I know.”

He smiled at me, an utterly beautiful, heart-stopping smile, and began to trail slow burning kisses along the length of my neck, almost reverently across the scar that circled the base of it, and down the bow-tight, quivering arch of my body.

His breath accentuated the sweat dewing my skin, created an acute sensitivity that made me flail helpless under his touch. The thrumming moan in my throat was guttural, barely human. The need was prowling through me, starting to rage as he kept me teetering on the knife edge of utter ruin. My hands thrashed weakly and the telephone followed the lamp onto the floor, crashing off the edge of the desk.

Glazed with desperation, I lifted a weighted head on the end of a feeble neck and found him watching me through slitted lids. And then I understood what he was waiting for. I’d spent the last few days kicking him squarely in the ego and now he wanted total surrender by way of recompense. More than acceptance, only a kind of mindless subjugation would do.

I gave it to him.

His hands and mouth demanded more. I was panting, crying, clawing towards a peak I couldn’t quite reach.

“Sean! For God’s sake …”

“What?” he demanded, and the grip he was having to exert on himself made his voice sound coldly furious. “What do you want?”

“You!” I nearly shouted it, throat raw. “I want you!”

“Careful, Charlie.” He spoke in my ear, whisper rough, almost mocking. “These walls are terribly thin, you