The Dangerous Hero (21 page)

"It was my bad," he went on. "This kinky stuff is new to you. How are you feeling? A little better now?"

She nodded. Again she thought, he is being so nice. Why is he being so nice? Derek wasn't nice when he hurt her. And unlike Stephen, he didn't stop when she panicked.

He lay back down on the bed and patted the space beside him. "I won't touch you if you don't want me to, but you're shivering. Will you lie down beside me and get warm?"

"You can touch me. I shouldn't have said that. Forgive me. I didn't mean it."

"Come here, then."

She lay back down beside him. He drew her close, and she snuggled into his warmth. She felt uneasy still, but it was undeniable that there was something comforting about being in his arms. Chemistry. Not even panic could dull the physical affinity that made her body want to merge with his. "I’m confused," she admitted. "As if I can’t trust what my own body is telling me. I mean, one minute I’m all—you know, aroused and excited, and the next I’m climbing the walls trying to get away."

"That’s why we have safewords and quick-release restraints. You need to know that you can trust me, even when everything goes to hell."

Keeping up the slow, steady breathing, she tried to relax. "Thank you for responding so quickly. It must have been hard for you."

"If I couldn’t trust myself to respond to a safe word, I wouldn’t play these games. I’m sorry I didn’t notice sooner that you were upset."

"It was sudden. I was fine, until—" she stopped.

"Until I started getting literary? I didn’t realize I took my own silly dialogue so seriously." In a lighter tone he said, "Should I be flattered that you have passages from my novels memorized? How did you even know that was one of Bart’s lines?"

"It was in the scene you were writing last night. And I think he says it in more than one book."

"You're right. He does. It's his signature I'm-going-over-the-edge line."

"Right before he tortures somebody to death."

"Well, yeah." He sounded rueful now. "But I—I wouldn't, I mean, I am never going to—"

"I know," she said, squeezing his hand. "Stephen. There's something I haven’t told you." Her heart started to beat faster again. Was he going to be angry? He had asked her about this, and she hadn't told him the truth. "I should have mentioned it before, but I didn't even want to think about it. I thought I was over it."

He had gone very still. "Somebody hurt you, didn't he? Your husband?"

She swallowed hard. "I thought I'd owned it. Banished it. I guess I was wrong."

"Tell me."

"It was my husband, yes. Derek." Her own voice sounded strange to her, and she realized she was close to weeping. She made an effort to contain it. No self-pity, dammit. "I divorced him because he tried to kill me. That's why Bart's attacks on women freak me out so much."

Chapter 20

I knew there was something, he was thinking, even as he cuddled her closer. He sensed that something had changed in her. "Viola," he said in as gentle a voice as he could muster. "I'm so sorry. I should have realized."

"How could you know? Abuse happens all too often to women, but I never expected it to would happen to me."

He was surprised at the depth of the anger that was writhing inside him at the thought of some fucking bastard hurting his Viola. If he could get his hands on the guy, he'd break him in half. Deep breaths, Silkwood, he ordered himself. The last thing she needed to hear right now were his own violent thoughts. Cool, calm, and reassuring, that was the ticket. "Your husband was closer to your father's age, wasn't he?"

"Yes. He was controlling like my father, too, although I didn't realize it at first. He was charming—he put on a great act. He even charmed the cops. Even though he put me in the hospital, he got off with little more than a slap on the wrist."

"Where is he now?" Stephen asked, trying not to sound as if he cared too much. He did, though. He wanted to pay the creep a visit.

"I don't know. After it happened, he went back to Australia. I hope he's still there. Sometimes I dream about him coming back."

She shifted restlessly, and he resisted the urge to hug her close. This was not the time to remind her of his fetish for immobilizing his partner.

"What did the bastard do to you?" Should he even ask that? Damn, this was difficult. He couldn't gauge how much she was willing to tell him. "I don't know what you feel like sharing, but you can tell me anything."

"It only happened once. The physical abuse, that is. The psychological abuse went on for a lot longer than that, although it took me a while to recognize it as such. I was stupid in that regard. He
Gaslighted
me." Her voice dropped, trembled a little. "But I was at fault in some respects, too. I—" She hesitated. "I wasn't perfect, either. It takes two people to make a marriage and two people to break one."

If the physical abuse had only happened once, it meant she had gotten out as soon as the creep had crossed that line. That was a good sign. Healthy. His fingers went to the scar on her throat. "He gave you this, didn't he? This was no accident."

Her fingers seized his, trying to move his hand away from her scar, but he did not permit it. He bent his head and pressed his lips to the scar.

"Yes," she whispered. "I lied to you."

"Never lie to me. Lying is not okay."

"I'm sorry, Stephen."

"What did he use to do this with? A knife? Was he trying to slash your throat?" His own voice was trembling now, imagining it.

"A chunk of glass. At the time, it felt as though he was trying to kill me, but he was out of his head with rage, but he might just have been lashing out. I don't know. I've never known."

"Will you tell me how it happened?"

There was a silence. She shifted again, pressing close to him. "Hold me."

He gathered her close. He could feel her heart beating much faster than normal. "I can't tell you," she said at last. "That is, not now. I will, but at the moment, I need to push it aside. It hurts, Stephen. Help me not think about it." She pressed her mouth to his. "Please."

His body responded instantly—the heat between them was so powerful. As her flesh slid against his, arousal flooded his senses and he turned almost painfully hard.

"The abuse wasn't sexual," she said in a low voice. Her hand moved to caress him. "It was horrible, but it didn't touch that part of me."

He believed her, but he knew it might not matter whether the abuse had been sexual. Where fear was concerned, sex wasn't the issue. The issue was trust.

Chapter 21

Watching Viola run about on the beach with Rusty, throwing the stick and praising him lavishly when he actually retrieved it for her, Stephen felt an upsurge of joy. Her red hair was flying all over the place in the wind, but she didn’t seem to care. At one point, when Rusty deliberately veered into the waves and splashed around, even though his stick had not gone into the water, he ran back to her and dropped the stick at her feet, then violently shook the water off his coat, spraying Viola. Another woman might have yelped, but she laughed. Rusty could do no wrong as far as she was concerned, and the dog returned her affection in full measure.

He loved seeing her laugh. She was such a sunny creature, bright and happy, always quick with a smile. This made it all the more incongruous to remember the way her body had gone rigid with fear last night, and the way sorrow had wracked her as she had forced out, between clenched teeth, her confession that her vile ex-husband had abused her.

He was still processing that, and what it might mean for them. He didn’t know much more than she had told him last night. She really didn’t want to talk about it, so he hadn’t learned the details. He had tried asking a few questions, but her answers had been evasive. What she had wanted to do was make love, and he was certainly glad of that. Last night, after the panic attack, he had loved her in the gentlest possible manner. He had tried to arrange things such that she was on top most of the time, and free to move and, if she got anxious, to escape.

He had taken her out of the dungeon, closing and locking it behind them. He figured she'd be more comfortable in his bedroom, where there was little hint of his lifestyle. He had been so careful that she had laughed at him, saying, "It’s okay, I’m not fragile, you needn’t hold back."

This morning, when she had awakened him by initiating sex, he had relaxed and been more playful. Viola was not shy, and she loved sex. She still had the same adventuresome spirit she’d had at eighteen. In bed, she was lusty and uninhibited. She was inventive, too, and quick to pick up on his subtle cues. She gave pleasure as generously as she received it. Together, their bodies worked as a team, as if they’d been lovers for years.

Even so, instinct had warned him to stay away from anything that might cross the line into BDSM. No ropes, no restraints. No sex toys. He was even more careful about what he permitted himself to say. He had screwed that up royally last night. He had no idea why he had come out with a quote from Bart with the last woman in the world who would want to hear such a thing; it was a piece of idiocy that made him seriously wonder what the fuck was wrong with him.

A laughing Viola ran up to him with a panting, grinning, slobbering Rusty. She tossed him the stick and bent over, holding her sides in mock exhaustion. "Your turn! He’s run me ragged. He has so much energy!"

Stephen grinned, took the stick, and heaved it as far as he could throw it down the beach. Rusty happily shot after it while Stephen gathered up Viola in his arms and kissed her laughing upturned face. "You’re all wet."

"I know—he shook himself all over me." This didn’t appear to faze her.

"It’s windy; we should go inside before you catch a chill."

She sighed. "I should pack up and head for home. I have work waiting for me. Papers to grade and the end of semester stuff to prepare."

"Not yet. Stay a few more hours."

"I don't want to outstay my welcome. I know you writer types—you can only be social for a little while, then you need your creative solitude."

He snorted. "I'm hardly the archetypal author recluse. I'm a social butterfly compared to some writers. And I love having you around." He grinned at her. "Besides, I wanna fuck you again."

She laughed. "You're so romantic."

When she did finally get ready to leave a couple of hours later, she seemed to droop a bit. Something in the atmosphere between them seemed to tighten.

"Stephen?"

"Viola?"

She avoided his eyes as she said, "Maybe I shouldn't say this, but it’s still bothering me that you could quote a line from your nasty hero that means: ‘I’m going to torture you now and get off on it’ while you and I were having sex."

Uh-oh. He had a bad feeling about this. She wasn’t going to let it go. Worse, he couldn’t really blame her. Why had he done it? He didn’t know. Bart was in there, straining to get out? Like some fantasy figure from a horror movie who was trying to find a way to embody himself in the real world? No, that was insane.

"I know it must seem strange to you," he said slowly. "It might be because I'm working hard now. It's a creatively intense period." He tried to lighten the mood by adding, "That’s one of the hazards of dating a writer."

"It’s one thing to date a kinky writer, but it would be something else to date Bart."

"I don’t think he goes out on dates. I can’t quite picture that, can you? What’s the 16
th
century equivalent of dinner and a movie?"

She giggled, to his great relief.

"What does Bart do for sex? When he's not raping someone, I mean. He’s not married, right? I don’t recall any mention of a wife."

"He’s not married, no. He’s absorbed by his job. Protecting the realm and all that."

"Wouldn’t that have been a bit unusual in those days? Didn’t most people marry young and begin reproducing?"

"Yeah, I guess. I haven’t addressed that side of his life much. Maybe I should. Hmmm. A girlfriend for Bart? How would he handle that? Awkwardly, no doubt." He spoke lightly, but it was an intriguing idea. There was a huge hole in his current story. What if he added a new character, a woman who captured Bart’s attention for something other than the usual reason of being a threat to the Queen?

"I can’t quite picture him living happily ever after," she said.

"Neither can I, but I can see him falling for someone and not knowing how to deal with the feelings. He would fuck it up, of course."

"Just don’t make her turn out to be a bad guy whom he has to kill in the end. That would be such a cliché."

"Hey, don’t start reviewing the book before it’s finished. You’ll get your chance, Professor."

She laughed again. As long as they could laugh together, they could solve anything, right?

* * *

Before she left to drive back to the college, Viola seemed to get fretful again. When he asked her what was wrong, she shook her head. He grasped her by one wrist and pulled her to him. "You're worrying. I can tell. Talk to me, babe."