Dirty Little Boy
All your secrets.
Dallas paced the basement ops center, Jane’s words still running through his head.
It was still early, not much past eight, and when she’d suggested going to the kitchen for some breakfast, he’d lied and told her he had to take care of a couple of things first.
He didn’t have shit to take care of. Or, rather, he didn’t have anything to take care of that wasn’t inside his own head.
Secrets.
God, they just kept piling up. She’d flat out asked him what they’d learned by investigating Ortega. And though he’d told her the literal truth—because they had nothing concrete on Colin yet—it was still a goddamn lie.
And although she hadn’t pressed when he’d essentially admitted that he was holding things back, that didn’t mean that she’d be okay with his silence about Colin once the truth came out. Hell, even if Colin was innocent, Dallas was going to catch shit for staying quiet. And he could only hope that she’d understand his reasons for keeping her removed.
But he was holding back more, too. Things she deserved to know because they affected their physical relationship. All the shit in captivity that had fucked him up. That had ripped away any possibility that he’d have a normal sex life, a normal relationship.
Those were the big ones. But there were other things, too. Like the letters—he should have told her before about some crazy female sending him stalker letters. At least he’d rectified that last night. But he still hadn’t told her about Adele; about the strange attraction they’d shared, and the way Adele had understood his need for kink, for the dark. She’d gone there with him willingly. Maybe even too enthusiastically—because eventually she’d crossed the line, and Dallas had been so disgusted with her and himself that he’d called it off.
But that had ended months ago, and it wasn’t as if Jane needed a rundown of every woman who’d shared his bed. But where Adele was concerned … well, the woman was practically family.
He bit back a derisive laugh. Family.
Apparently sleeping with his family was his goddammed MO.
Christ, he was screwed up.
He was standing at one of the workstations, and now he pressed his hands to the cool metal and bent over, giving himself a moment to just breathe.
He heard her the moment she stepped into the room, and he expected it when she came to him. When she put her arms around him and held him close, her face pressed against his back.
She said nothing, just held him, and it was her touch that gave him strength. This was Jane, after all. The woman he loved. And even though it would hurt, he knew that he could tell her the truth. Not about Colin. Not yet. Not until he was certain.
But he had to tell her about what happened to him. He owed her that. More, he wanted her to know, even if he didn’t relish the thought of actually talking about it.
But oh, Christ, where the hell did he begin?
He didn’t know—for that matter, he was still pondering the question—when he heard himself saying, “She raped me. Over and over, and in so many ways.”
Jane’s arms tightened around him, silently giving him support. But she said nothing, and he was grateful. If she’d offered him even the tiniest of condolences, he thought he’d clam up for sure.
Instead, he spoke into the quiet of the room, knowing that she was there, but still speaking for himself. For the sensation of once and for all, finally, expressing what happened.
“That wasn’t the first thing she did, but it sure as hell stands out the most. She had a dildo. She said I’d like it. I didn’t. But damned if I didn’t come. And damned if she didn’t tell me she knew I’d enjoy it. That it would make me hard.”
He sucked in air and closed his eyes, fighting back the memories. He could handle them singularly, but not the flood. Not everything rushing at him at once.
“She’d stroke me, too. Get me hard. Sometimes she’d use a cockring. Keep it on.” He almost turned to look at her then, but didn’t. Instead, he said, “I won’t use them, you know. Won’t even try, even if it would keep me hard. Even if I could be inside you. I can’t. Just the thought makes me sick.” Hell, he felt ill just thinking about it.
“I understand,” she said, her voice low and soft. “I do.”
“I didn’t have a choice then. She’d do whatever she wanted, but in the end, I’d be hard. And she’d get on me. Ride me. She said I wanted that as well. That I wanted to fuck her. That she was a woman and you were a girl and that with her I was a man.”
Behind him, he felt Jane’s body shake, and he knew that she was crying. He closed his eyes, trying not to think about her pain. About his. Trying to just force the words out, because if he let emotion get to him, he wouldn’t be able to go on.
“Those were the good days. On the bad ones, she’d stroke me and make me hard, then slap my face and tell me I was nasty. That I was thinking about you and that I was a sick little boy. She’d pour ice water on my genitals. She’d use electric shock on my cock and hold a knife to my balls. If it was vile and painful, she’d do it.
“And if I was hard, she’d tell me I was a pervert. If I was soft, she’d tell me I was a pussy. And every time she made me come, she’d tell me to close my eyes and imagine it was you touching me.” His voice was hard, the words coming fast, heavy with fury. “You hitting me. You jamming some goddamn dildo up my ass.”
“Dallas, I—”
She broke away, and he mourned the loss of her warmth against his back. He wanted to turn to her. To comfort her. But he was terrified of the disgust he’d see in her eyes when he turned around.
He had to, though, and when he did, he saw her curled up on the concrete floor, her body shaking with tears. He froze—he just fucking froze.
But when she looked up at him, it wasn’t disgust he saw, but rage. Not at him, but at the Woman.
“That fucking bitch,” she whispered, and the words were like a trigger. He sank to the ground, and when she crawled to him and held out her arms, he collapsed into the comfort of her embrace.
“The fucking bitch,” she repeated.
“Not disagreeing,” he said.
She released him long enough to lean back and study his face. “Are you okay? Right now, I mean. Is this—do you want to stop talking about it?”
He considered saying yes, but he shook his head. “I can’t say I want to talk about it,” he admitted. “But I think I need to. I think I’ve needed to for a long, long time.”
She nodded, then bit her lower lip uncertainly.
“It’s okay,” he said. “If you want to ask me questions, it’s okay.”
“Did you try to fight?”
“I tried. I couldn’t.” He sighed. “You know how you crave control now?”
She nodded. “Avoiding crowds. Taking my self-defense classes.” Her smile when she met his eyes was tremulous. “You’re the only one I let go with. The only one I really feel safe with.”
He knew that, of course, but still the words were like a knife. Safe. Safe with him was a goddamn joke. If he let himself go too far—
Stop.
He pushed the thought away. He needed to move, and so he stood, holding on to the worktable until he had his bearings again, then he started to pace. “You surrender that control to me,” he finally said. “I don’t. I don’t surrender it to anybody. Not anymore.”
“I know. I get that.”
“You don’t. Not really. I don’t think you can.”
“That’s bullshit, Dallas. But you have to tell me. You have to lay it out for me.”
“But that’s just it. I don’t know if I can. She changed me, but I’m not sure even I understand how. I mean, Christ. Why the hell can’t I fuck a woman? What’s the correlation between what that bitch did to me and the reality I’m now living with? I thought it was you, Jane. I thought that if I ever had you in my bed, that little problem wouldn’t be a problem anymore, because she’d tied sex up so tightly with the thought of you that I figured you must be the goddamn cure. But you weren’t. You aren’t. Shit.”
He gritted his teeth and turned away. He hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. To cover her with all that bile.
Across the room, she climbed to her feet and came to him, then gently laid a hand on his shoulder. “What do you mean she tied sex up with me?”
A shiver cut through him—he didn’t want to go there. Didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to bring her down into all of that. But goddammit, they were already halfway there. “Like what I was saying earlier. She’d touch me. Do things to me. And she’d tell me to close my eyes and imagine it was you. She’d tell me you liked it. Wanted it. But then later she’d flip it around and she’d say you were a nasty girl who liked nasty things, and on another day she’d say that you were an innocent, and I was tainted now, and why the hell would you want me?”
“I do want you. Desperately.”
“She changed what I want sexually. What I need. I like it rough, baby, and that’s on her—”
“A lot of people like rough sex. Including me. Don’t tie everything you feel back to that bitch. Don’t give her the power.”
“She already has it. She’s between us every time we’re together because she planted you in the middle of every fucked up need she created in me. So how the hell can we ever be normal, Jane? How can we ever do this right?”
“Normal?” she repeated. “Right?” She stepped back from him, and damned if the compassion hadn’t faded from her face, replaced instead by anger. “You like it rough? You like it dirty? Well, guess what, Dallas, that’s your normal. And that’s okay. I mean, seriously, what’s normal anyway? Because all I know is that you make me feel good. You make me feel better about myself than I ever have. And all I really care about is do you love me? Do I make you happy?”
“Yes,” he said, reeling a little from the force of her speech.
“Well, then what more are you looking for?”
He shook his head, not sure how to explain. He believed her words, but also knew that she didn’t really know what she was talking about. How could she when he didn’t even know how far down he wanted to drag her?
“I’m serious, Dallas. What else do you need?”
He drew in a breath. “I need her out of my head.”
“Then do it. You couldn’t fight back then—but now you can. Overpower her. End her.”
“Why do you think I founded Deliverance?”
“Not like that. Right here. Right now.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Go back. In your head. In your memories. Let me be her. Fight me. Fight me, then fuck me. She took control? Take it back.”
His blood ran cold, and he remembered the times that Adele had suggested Dallas pretend that she was Jane. That idea had horrified him. So did this one, but for a completely different reason. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking? What kind of door you could be opening?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I do.”
“You’re basically saying that I need to rape her. I need to act out my fantasy, overpower the bitch, and hurt her the way she hurt me.”
“Pretty damn politically incorrect, I know. But that about sums it up.”
“With you playing the role of the Woman. No. No fucking way.” He couldn’t. It was a screwed up idea. But that wasn’t what scared him. No, what terrified him was how much he wanted to do exactly that. Not because she was a stand-in for the Woman, but because he wanted to claim Jane fully and completely. He wanted to make her his. He wanted to be that damned Neanderthal and drag her by the hair around after him.
Because how else could he be certain she wouldn’t pack up and leave the moment she finally got through her thick head just how screwed up he was?
He heard her voice in his head telling him that she’d give him whatever he needed. But how did he know what he needed until he went there? Even in The Cellar, he hung back. Didn’t matter that it was a full-on kink club and he could indulge any whim there. He still pulled it in, because those weren’t the women he wanted on their knees. That honor belonged to Jane, and until he had her—until he took her—how would he know how far he would go? How much he would crave?
And the thought of going too far—of breaking her limits, of scaring her, of having her look at him like he was broken beyond repair—he couldn’t risk that.
He had to hold back.
Had to fight for normal.
Had to draw a line in the sand and not cross it.
Everything they’d done had brought them together.
But everything they couldn’t—that he wouldn’t—do would keep them that way. Crossing the line just might rip them apart.
He needed time to think. To regroup. This was too much too fast, and he was reeling.
He pressed his fingers to his temples and rubbed, fighting a building headache. And then, regretfully, he raised his eyes to hers. “Anything I need, right?”
“Of course.”
“All right.” He swallowed, hating what he was about to say, but knowing that he needed to say it. That he needed it. For a little while, at least, he needed it.
He drew a breath, then said, “I need you to go.”
The hurt that cut across her face was like a physical punch to the gut. “Dallas, no. I didn’t mean—I didn’t want—” She sucked in air. “I pushed too hard. I should never have suggested—”
“No. We said no secrets, right?” God, he was a hypocrite. He was keeping some damn juicy secrets. But that secret was about Colin. That secret was to protect her. But this? This, he had to tell her.
“No,” he said again, forcing the word out. “What you said makes sense. I just don’t—”
“Want to try it,” she put in. “I get that. But—”
“Jane, no.” He drew a deep breath. “That’s not the problem,” he said flatly.
“Then, what?”
He met her eyes, certain his were as cold as ice. “The problem is that I do.”
She’d been gone for less than fifteen minutes, and already the house seemed desolate. He’d watched the pain cross her face, and then seen the true depth of her strength as she’d schooled her features and nodded.
“You want it,” she’d said. “You want to play out the fantasy. You want to use me as a stand-in for that bitch. You want to take her. To win.”
He’d nodded, feeling sick even as he did. “Yes. I do.”
“But you won’t do it? Even though I’ve told you it’s okay? That I understand? That I’m consenting, fully and completely? All that, and you won’t, even when we both know this is important? Critical, even.”
He’d met her eyes, and he’d held fast. “I won’t,” he said. “I can’t.”
She’d nodded slowly. “Okay, then. I’ll drop it. We can just forget I said anything. But I don’t have to go.”
Once again, he’d held firm, even though all he’d really wanted was to pull her close to him. “You do. I need time. An hour. A day. I don’t know. But I need to clear my head. Besides, things will have piled up at the Sykes offices that I need to take care of. And you have a screenplay to finish.”
She’d scowled at that, but it was true. She’d done no work for almost a week, and he knew she had to be pushing up against a deadline. “Go home,” he’d insisted. “You have work, and so do I. We should both step out of the bubble for a while. You know I’m right.”
She hadn’t agreed, but she had gone. And now he was alone in the house and missing her already.
He may have suggested that he was going into the city to work, but that was utter bullshit. He was too ripped up to be around other people. Better to stay in, go through some loose ends for Deliverance. Maybe watch five or six hours of mindless television so he wouldn’t have to think about how maybe he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life by sending her away.
It was all true—he needed to think. He needed time. He needed to figure out what he wanted, what he needed.
Because right now, he only knew one thing—he needed her. He just didn’t know how to have her without hurting her. Without dragging her down to a place she said she was willing to go, but he knew damn well she didn’t belong.
Dammit all to hell. He was a fucking mess.
A fucking mess, and at loose ends.
He’d meant it when he said he needed to clear his head, and the best way he knew to do that was to take a walk on the beach. He was back in his bedroom, and now he looked for his headphones, finally finding them on the bedside table. He pulled up a playlist on his phone, then started toward the door.
He paused, then stripped off the slacks he’d pulled on to go meet Bill. He crumpled the damn things, tossed them in a corner, and then searched out the jeans he’d worn at the party. He picked them up, then breathed in the scent of her, grateful that Archie hadn’t come through to gather up the laundry.
After telling himself he was being ridiculous but not much caring, he pulled on the jeans. Because, dammit, if he couldn’t have the woman, he at least wanted the memory.
He hurried downstairs, then out the French doors to the pool deck—then stopped short when he saw the woman on one of the deck chairs.
Not Jane—Adele.
“Adele,” he said, forcing himself not to frown as he crossed to her. “I didn’t know you were here.”
She tilted the brim of her hat back and smiled up at him, still stunning even past fifty. “Didn’t Archie tell you?” Her mouth pulled down into a frown. “He must still be looking for you.”
“So what’s up? Why are you here?”
“I’m meeting a real estate agent in forty minutes—there was hardly any traffic coming in and I got here so early I thought I’d drive over and see you and Jane.” She turned to sit up. Her dress was short, and hitched up as she shifted, revealing a glimpse of pink lace. Dallas looked away, certain the casual reveal had been intentional.
“Buying?”
“Considering.” She glanced around. “Isn’t Jane around?”
He shook his head, trying to look casual. “Why would she be?”
“She was here when I called,” Adele reminded him.
“Oh, that. She just came to gawk at the party,” he said, copying Jane’s earlier story to Bill. “She left well before it ran its course.”
“Did she?” She took a step toward him, and he saw the small beads of sweat in her cleavage. She reached for him, taking his hand in hers before he could pull away. “Did that upset you?” Her voice was low. Soothing. “Had you fantasized that she would stay? Maybe sneak into your room late at night?”
He tugged his hand free and stepped back. “Don’t even go there.”
She lifted a brow. “So that would be a yes, then. Poor little rich boy, can’t have the girl he wants.”
He clenched his mouth closed so tight it almost hurt. Adele knew he wanted Jane. But wanting and having were two different things, and no way was he telling her that he and Jane had crossed that line. She might keep it confidential—hell, the woman was a therapist, so she was trained to keep secrets—but she might also tell Colin. After all, she wasn’t Dallas’s therapist, but she’d once been his lover. If she learned about Jane … if she turned out to be jealous …
The thought made him frown. At one point, he’d actually considered that Adele might be his letter writer. But he’d dismissed the idea quickly enough. The timing was wrong, for one thing. He’d finally and fully broken off with Adele about four months ago, but the letters had started long before that.
Besides, Adele was hardly obsessed with him. She had a long string of lovers, including her ex-husband, Colin.
“Must have been hard.” She tilted her head to one side as she studied him.
“What’s that?”
“Having her in your house. Being civil to her. And not having her the way you want to.”
He kept his face passive. The woman had no idea how much she spoke the truth.
“I could ease some of that tension.” She stepped closer. “I’m sure that agent won’t mind if I’m a few minutes late.”
He had to chuckle. “I don’t think so, Adele. I don’t want fucked up. Not today.”
“No? What do you want?”
Wasn’t that the question of the hour? That was exactly why he’d sent Jane away, so he could figure out just what the hell he wanted. And, more important, how he could have it.
And now, standing here with Adele, he realized that it wasn’t fucked up that he wanted. Needed, yes. Craved, absolutely. And maybe they’d have to go there if they were ever going to get clear of all the emotional shit that surrounded them.
But what he wanted went deeper. What he wanted was normal, pure and simple. Dinner. A movie. Dancing and hand-holding. Something to ground them, to hold them steady and prop them up when he and Jane inevitably careened toward the precipice. Something solid to pull them back if they went over.
But he didn’t tell Adele any of that. Instead, he nodded toward the front of the house. “I think I want to walk you to your car.”
He headed that way and she fell in step beside him. “So we’ll see both of you next week?” Adele said. “Jane agreed to come to dinner?”
“She did.”
“Lovely.” Her smile was overly bright. “I look forward to seeing the two of you together. It’s so much fun watching a man with blue balls.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a raving bitch, Adele?”
She laughed. “All the time.”
They’d reached her car, and she pulled her keys out of her bag. She was heading toward the driver’s door when Dallas reached out and caught her elbow. “Quick question. Who was Colin with between my mother and you?”
Lisa had divorced Colin when he and Jane were little kids. And Colin had married Adele when Dallas was in college. If it turned out that Colin was the Jailer, then somewhere in that gap, he met the Woman. And it was just possible that Adele had heard her name.
“What on earth makes you ask that?”
And wasn’t that a damn good question? “I was thinking about my mom. You two are so different. I was wondering if there was a progression or if Colin just went from Georgia belle to European vixen.”
“Vixen? Well, aren’t you sweet.” She pursed her lips in thought. “Honestly, I have no idea about his other women.” She seemed entirely uninterested. “I suppose you could ask him at dinner.”
“Maybe I will,” he said as Adele got in her car, even though he knew full well he wouldn’t. But he did have another idea, and as soon as he had the chance, he’d give his mom a call. With any luck, Lisa had kept an eye on Colin after the divorce.
With even more luck, she’d lead Dallas straight to the Woman.
He turned to head back toward the beach, then stopped cold, realizing the import of his words. Somewhere along the way, his thinking had shifted. He was truly seeing Colin as guilty now. As one half of a team.
The possibility made him queasy, not just because Colin had become a friend. But because he knew that if he was right, he’d end up putting a bullet through the head of the man that Jane once called Daddy.