FIFTEEN
She woke up groggy. Squinting into the bright room, she was completely at a loss for what time of day it could be. Morning? Afternoon? When had they finally fallen asleep?
Sometime during the night, Xander had rolled onto his back, pulling her with him. She had been sleeping pressed up against his side, her face on his chest. One of her legs was wrapped across his waist. The blankets were at their feet.
Xander was still beneath her. She glanced up to make sure his eyes were still closed before she started running her fingers over his skin. She lavished over the hard knots of muscle, the dips by his hips, the strange smoothness of scars. Her fingers stroked the big, nasty-looking one up his side when she felt his arm squeeze her tighter.
How long had he been awake? Knowing she was just... really into his scar? She felt her face heat at the idea, her fingers faltering. Feeling the need to explain, she took a breath, and asked, "How did you get this?"
Xander took an exaggerated breath underneath her, yawning. His hand moved down her arm to her wrist, pulling off her hair band and stroking the mark he found there. "I'll tell you that," he said, sounding half-asleep still, "if you tell me how you got this."
Ellie's hand froze, hovering over his skin. Because she wanted to tell him. She actually wanted to take a breath and tell him every awful, sordid thing that Nick had done to her while she lived with him. What he did when he caught up with her on occasion. All the horrors that weren't physical scars but hurt just as much.
Xander kept stroking the scar, waiting. "I know there is more to the stalker story, baby," he said, hoping it might open up the line of communication.
Of course he did. Because he was good at what he did. He knew stalkers. He knew victims of stalking. And she didn't fit that mold.
She bit into her lip. She could tell him. She could tell him without actually telling him. He didn't need to know who. That would only make it more complicated. But she could tell him the whats: the things that made her look over her shoulder, the things that made her scream in her sleep. She could tell him that. And, more, she wanted to tell him.
"He was my first boyfriend," she started, her voice small, making him strain to hear her, "and he was older and sophisticated. He showered me with gifts and compliments. And within a few months, he asked me to move in with him."
"How old were you?"
"Eighteen," Ellie said, shaking her head slightly. So naive. So easily persuaded. "I stayed with him for two years despite..." her voice trailed off, feeling the shame in a heavy, strangling wave. Because there was no good reason. No reason that, looking back, she could pinpoint. There were no children. There was nothing to keep her there but herself.
"It's okay," Xander said, his hand moving up her arm, "tell me."
"He beat me," she said, her voice sounding tear-soaked, though her eyes were dry. "For no reason really. And, at first, not all the time. Just when he thought I was being... disrespectful or ungrateful. A backhand in an alley because I didn't do what I was told. A broken rib in our bedroom because I didn't wear the necklace he bought me..."
Xander's arms went up and around her, holding her tighter. He had known a lot of scumbags in his line of work: lowlifes, people who hurt other people for a living, people who hurt other people for fun. It never got any less horrifying. But there was always something worse about a man who put his hands on a woman, about a man who took advantage of a woman who trusted him. A man who misused his strength.
And the idea of little, fragile as a bird, Ellie being assaulted in an alley and attacked in her bedroom made a tight feeling settle in his chest. She had been so young. And she had put up with it for years.
"I knew better," she said, thinking of her father, thinking about the statistics, thinking about the PSA's she had seen, the articles she had read. "I knew all about domestic abuse. But I thought I loved him. And he said he loved me. And there were good days or weeks. There were vacations and picnics in parks. He knew what he was doing. He isolated me from what few friends I had. And my family. He had me quit my job and drop out of college..."
Once she started, the words just started tumbling out. She barely got a chance to censor the details of Nick and his business before she was mumbling away. "These," she said, holding up her wrists and looking at the scars, "are from the first time I tried to get away. I had just found out I was pregnant. I... I couldn't risk losing the baby because of the beatings. Or, worse yet, raising a baby with him. If he was willing to hit me, he would be willing to hit his baby too. So one day, I just made a run for the back road..."
Xander tensed underneath her, knowing she must have gotten caught, trying to not feel the hysteria that she must have felt when she saw him coming.
"I didn't get very far. It had been too rash a decision. I hadn't planned enough. He found me within fifteen minutes and dragged me back to the house," she recalled, still able to feel the sting in her scalp from him pulling her back to the house by her hair. "He threw me in the basement in... handcuffs. And left me there for a long time. Some days he came down to beat me, others not." Silently she added: he killed my father.
And she felt the tears then. Hot and furious.
He wanted to tell her she didn't have to tell him. He wanted to tell her to push the memories away, focus on the present. But she needed it. He could feel the urge in her, the need to bleed the poison out. How long had she been keeping it all bottled up?
"I lost the baby in that basement," she added, taking a long strobe-like breath through her tears. "I think he only let me out because I got a really bad infection." She remembered the fever, the bone-deep coldness that the cool cement walls and her ripped clothing did nothing to stave off as she hung by her wrists and shook, teeth chattering, sweating uncontrollably. "I was hallucinating with a high fever," she remembered. The hallucinations being the only bright spot in her world at the time. Images of her happy and safe with a squishy pink baby in a new town with new people. Her father was by her side. One of the worst feelings in the world was coming down from that fever and realizing it was all fake, "And I was thrown into the maid's quarters for them to fix me."
Was that too much? Too close to the truth? Revealing too much about him? But there were plenty of abusive men with money. Nick could be one in a million.
"As soon as I got better, I started working on a real plan. For months. Then I ran. And I never stopped running."
"Until now," Xander said, squeezing her tighter.
"Until now," she agreed. For now. It wouldn't last. She would have to run again. She always did. But, perhaps for the first time since she had to leave K, she felt sad. Not just sad, completely devastated at the idea of having to go.
Xander let her have her silence. He let her put her guards back up. She sniffled and wiped her tears. If he was being honest, he needed a minute too to pull himself back together, to push the anger away, to process what she had said.
It was, in ways, exactly what he had expected: an abusive relationship. But it was worse. It was so much worse than the scenarios he had worked up in his mind where he imagined some kind of brute of a boyfriend who just liked to push her around. And became a little too infatuated.
If, like Faith suggested, Ellie's ex was a crime boss, he was a different kind of monster. The kind of man who could break bones of people who didn't settle their debts or kill people who threatened the organization was a lot more dangerous than the neighborhood drunk with an anger problem.
Because it wasn't the same kind of anger. It wasn't the red heat that made you lash out. This was the cold, calculated kind of anger, the kind that made you have a place in your house where you could truss up your girlfriend for a weeks and no one would call the police, ask questions, freak out.
He was the kind of man that when he was done torturing the woman he claimed to love, he could throw her at the help and they wouldn't report him. They didn't help her escape. They just did what they were told and patched her up so she could continue to get beat.
But she had escaped, he reminded himself, almost choking on his disgust. She had planned and calculated. She had withstood beatings while she waited for the right moment. And she had managed to get away. And stay away.
If she had been eighteen when they met and she was with him for two years... she must have been on the run for four or five years. He tried to imagine that life: different apartments, different jobs, different paths to walk, never making any connections, never setting down roots, never being able to reach out to the family and friends you left behind to tell them you're okay, that you're alive, that you got out.
Five years was a long time to be looking around corners and checking the locks.
But she must have never slipped up, gotten sloppy. Because she managed to slip away. Narrowly maybe, he thought, recalling the night she came to him bruised and bleeding. But she always escaped.
And he never gave up.
Was it pride? Why would a man who was obviously rich and powerful chase after his ex-girlfriend for years? To save face? In front of his friends, his connections? People who had seen them together over the years. Wouldn't it just be easier to say she had an accident? She started talking too much? He took care of it.
But, no, he kept looking for her, taking off to new cities to find her when he thought he found a trace.
That was obsession. Or possession. She belonged to him. She wasn't allowed to leave him. He would find her and he would drag her back.
He needed to figure out who he was. He couldn't help until he knew.
And he didn't want Ellie to leave. He wanted her to stay right where she was... wrapped up in his arms...
What the hell? Xander shook his head. He wanted to help her because she needed help. No other reason. He certainly didn't want her to live with him forever. Definitely not.
Xander's hand slid down her arm and to his side where she stroked his scar. "This," he said, making her jump because they had both been silent for a long time, lost in their own thoughts, "is from one of my first jobs. I wasn't exactly licensed at the time. But I had a reputation..."
"How old were you?" she asked, unable to think of Xander as anything other than the giant, hulking, dangerous-looking figure he was now.
"Probably about... twenty. There was a stockbroker who heard about me. He grew up in this neighborhood before he got his life together. He had a son who used to come visit here, see old friends. But as they got older, the friends started joining some of the local gangs. And you know how teenage boys are," he said, thinking of himself, "always full of displaced anger and testosterone. Drawn to all things stupid and dangerous, no matter how comfortable their lives are. So he decided he wanted to join one of the gangs."
"And his father wanted him out," Ellie guessed.
"Not at first. He came to me and asked me to keep an eye on him. I think he thought the gangs would be like the gangs he had grown up around: vicious and with no tolerance for rich kids who wanted to play ghetto on the weekends. He thought his son, Derek, would piss the members off, get his ass kicked, and be sent home with a bruised ego."
"That didn't happen?"
"No. It was weird actually. The existing members acted like his best friend, taught him some of their secrets, took him out to bars and clubs, got him laid, made him feel like part of the group. But it was all just an act. One night I got a call from the dad who told me one of the guys had called him asking for ransom for Derek back. There was a video, Derek with his face all messed up."
"He didn't want to pay?" Ellie asked, not wanting to believe a parent would prefer to keep their money and let their kid be beaten.
"He would have paid," Xander said, smiling a bit at the memory. "But that wasn't the point. The point was..."
"He hired you," Ellie said, propping herself up on his chest and looking down at him, smiling. Headstrong Xander.
"Exactly," Xander agreed, reaching down and putting his hands on her ass. "So I did some looking around, found a group of them hiding down an alley. They had him stashed behind a dumpster, half conscious. So, young and invincible as only a twenty-year old guy can be, I barreled into that alley and took them all on. One of them got this on me," he said, looking down at the scar, "before I knocked him out."
"You got Derek back home to his parents?"
"Mmhmm," he said, remembering the huge chunk of cash he had gotten. "Derek still keeps in touch. He calls if he needs any help with anything. He's a lawyer now."
"Good job," Ellie said, leaning down and planting a kiss on his chin. Xander was silent, watching her for a moment. "Guess what?" she asked, a strange glint in her eyes.
"What baby?"
"I think it's your turn to be in charge," she said, rising up onto her knees and enjoying his eyes raking over her skin. She moved and settled down on the bed, waiting.
Xander chuckled, reaching across her for the condoms before kneeling down by her knees. "Spread your legs," he said, looking down at her. Her legs fell open on either side of his legs, unashamed.
He lowered himself down on the bed, grazing his teeth over her inner thighs. Her hands reached down, grabbing at his hair. His tongue found her clit fast, stroking in slow circles, barely a whisper of a touch, making her hips rise up to meet him, begging for more as her hands reached down and fisted in his hair.
"Oh, my God," she panted, her feet running up and down the sheets impatiently. One of his fingers slipped inside her, tilting, crooking to stroke the sensitive spot on the front roof of her depths. He rubbed against it in fast swipes, his tongue on her clit spinning in quick circles. A desperate plea escaped her lips and Xander pulled suddenly away, looking up at her with a wicked smirk. "No," she ground out, trying to push him back down to finish. She was so close. Just another couple seconds and she would be falling over the cliff.
"You said I'm in charge," he said, smiling at her frustration. He stroked her calves, grabbing her knees and pulling her legs up in the air to rest on his shoulders. Turning his face, he planted a kiss on the inside of her ankle. It was chaste in comparison to what he had just been doing, but she felt the intimacy somewhere deep inside her chest, unfamiliar yet recognized and welcomed.
He reached for her hips, grabbing and pulling her slightly up onto his bent legs, her legs on his shoulders. He took a deep breath and thrust deep inside of her, hearing her gasp, her hands reaching to cover his.
But he didn't move. He just stayed there, buried deep inside her until she was whimpering, trying to move her hips against him. "You're evil," she said, lowering her brows at him.
Which only made him smile, leaning forward slightly and pressing a hand hard against her lower stomach, making her feel him even deeper. And then he started moving, the pace fast, each thrust feeling deeper than the last.
Ellie cried out, loud, wild, completely lost in the feeling. The angle made his cock feel like it overtook every inch of her depths, his hand pressing on her belly, making each thrust more powerful. His other hand slipped from her hips, moving between their bodies and stroking her clit, pushing her harder and faster toward her peak. The heels of her feet dug into his shoulders, the muscles feeling strained, her legs feeling heavy.
His eyes were locked on her face, his jaw clenched tight, his brows lowered. His dark eyes were intense, seeing through her. A strand of dark hair fell over his forehead, sweaty, and she wanted nothing more than to reach up and brush it away. But his thrusts became uncontrolled, frantic, and she knew he was as close as she was. She felt the suspension, was held there for the barest of seconds before his cock thrust forward and his finger pressed harder on her clit.
And then there was only pleasure.
Fireworks.
And she knew with a new and blinding clarity that she was falling a little bit in love with her private investigator.