TWENTY-FIVE

 

 

Standing against the handrail of Raid’s balcony, Shea looked out over the compound and beyond. Even from that position, almost as far from the front door as she could get, she heard Raid coming home. Shea didn’t turn around or go inside; she just stood there, watching the men moving around the perimeter, and the lights illuminating the corner towers.

There was something almost romantic about the night. Surrounded by the soft light of the balcony that offered a cocoon separate from the evil they kept trapped below, the night felt mellow and peaceful. Shame all this serenity she’d found was about to be shattered.

Raid moved around inside for a while, but she didn’t budge. There would have to be a confrontation, and she had no idea how it would end. For this moment, she wanted to breathe the clean, woodland air and memorize the feel of the breeze on her skin and the taste of family beneath her. It had been such a brief spell of belonging, but there wasn’t a man on the compound she would forget, on either side of the gate, past or present, and she’d read about them all.

The sound of the sliding door moving on its runners signaled Raid coming out onto the balcony. Shea elected to keep her attention on the home she’d come to love for as long as she could, for as long as he’d allow before exiling her.

A few seconds passed, her hair moved, Raid hooked it around a finger and guided it back over her shoulder. Bowing, he kissed the skin he’d uncovered. Tipping her head, Shea let him kiss her pressure point, and gave him access to caress the side of her neck and the sensitive spot behind her ear with his mouth.

His mouth was losing itself in her hair when his arm came around her. Instead of embracing her, he held a glass of red wine in front of her. She smiled and took it from him. When his hands were free, they slid around onto her belly and he pulled her body back against his.

“Is this what you want?” she whispered, moving in time with his kisses, unable to fight the weight that dragged her eyelids down. He mumbled something she didn’t hear. “I always thought we were too exposed here. I never thought you’d choose this spot to screw me.”

With the guard tower just beneath, if someone wanted to watch them there at the edge of the balcony, they could. Though, she wasn’t talking about sex. Raid would think she was, but that wasn’t what she meant by him screwing her.

The conversation she’d had with the doctor had been enlightening. In exchange for her not throwing a fit or doing irreparable damage to either him or his equipment, she made him promise not to tell a soul about their discussion. Of course, she had threatened to throw him in a cell in the abandoned section of solitary if he did try to drop hints to anyone. That might have had something to do with his compliance too.

“We’ll go inside for that,” Raid said and slipped the strap of her dress from her shoulder.

Following the strap with his fingertips when it fell to her breast, he cupped her in his palm before sliding his hand across to the other breast, slipping it inside her dress at her cleavage so skin could meet skin.

Putting the wine on top of the wide wooden handrail, she turned to him and spread her hands on his chest before sliding them up to his shoulders. “Dance with me, Raid,” she whispered.

He pushed her hair to the back of her shoulders as she rested her temple against him. “Are you okay, Poppet?”

“Mm,” she said. Her eyes closed; her body secure in the circle of his arms. Although he was leading, she was making him move. It was a shame that the subtle symbiosis of their bodies wasn’t replicated in their minds. Their physical forms wanted to rely on each other and co-exist, while their minds seemed constantly at war. “We should’ve done this more often.”

“Should have?”

“Mm hmm,” she said, clasping her hands around each other beneath her chin, squashing her forearms between their bodies. “I always wanted to dance with you out here. I wanted to hear you play in the music room. I wanted to make love with you in my cell and make out with you on movie night… now none of that will ever happen.” Giving in to the inevitable, she stepped out of his arms, and picked up the wine. Staying in his embrace, ignoring the truth she’d learned, would be easy. Except, it wasn’t real. Shea was invested in something that repulsed Raid and she had to face that truth. “Is this it?”

“It?”

Swirling the glass, she watched the liquid coat the inside and thought about the first time her Laird had shown her where the alcohol was kept in the basement of the stilted house. It wasn’t really a basement at all, but a lower floor accessed from the dining room. That hadn’t been so long ago. They’d been happy… or maybe she’d just been oblivious.

Edging closer to the rail, she tipped the glass, letting the liquid pour out onto the forest floor beneath. With the glass still suspended there, she turned to him and knew from the look on his face that he knew she knew.

“I never had you pegged for a coward, Raid.”

“Diego,” he said, assuming his lieutenant had been the one to betray him.

Her Laird wasn’t the one who’d been betrayed by their friend. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It should’ve been him. But, it wasn’t.”

“Who was—”

Spinning around, she hurled the glass past him. It flew through the air and shattered on the glass frontage of their home far behind him. “It doesn’t matter!” she screamed. He reached for her; she pulled back. “No! I don’t give a damn if they hear us! Look me in the eye, Raiden Laird. Look me in the eye and tell me it’s a lie.” She gritted her teeth. As much as she wanted it to be a falsehood, she wasn’t that naïve. “Tell me it’s not your plan to drug me and send me out there alone.” Though his jaw moved, his lips were silent, giving her all the confirmation that she needed. “You’re a sonofabitch.”

Storming past him, Shea didn’t care about the glass under her bare feet. She strode through the house and into the kitchen. Raid must have followed her inside, but she wasn’t paying attention to him. She was too busy opening drawers.

“What is it?” he asked. “What are you looking for?”

Pulling out the longest, sharpest knife they had, she slapped it onto the counter and opened her arms. “Prove to me you’re not a coward,” she said. “Prove to me that you’re the man I know you are.”

“What the hell are you saying?” he asked. “You want me to kill you?”

Seemed that was exactly what he’d been trying to do by plotting to tear her from her home. “Is it too messy up here? You don’t want the blood?” Rounding the kitchen island, she forgot the knife and grabbed his hands to pull them to her throat. “Do it. Do it! You want rid of me? You’re going to do it right!”

“Stop acting crazy,” he said, wrenching his hands from her grip to back away. “I don’t want you fucking dead! I want you away from here!”

She panted out her disbelief. “I thought we were done with this bullshit,” she murmured. “I thought you’d gotten over it. I thought you’d learned to trust me!”

“I trust you,” he said. “This is your freedom, Shea. I’m giving you a gift. I’m not making you choose.”

Shaking her head, she couldn’t believe his arrogance. “No, you’re making that choice for me,” she said. “It’s not your place!”

That fired him up and he pointed at her. “Everything that happens here is my choice. Everything!”

The man infuriated her at the best of times, but this was a level beyond the norm. “What about falling in love with me?” she demanded. “Did you choose to do that?”

She’d struck a blow that stole some of his gusto. “I didn’t say that I love you.”

“No,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and crooking a brow. “You act like this is all about sex. Like it’s just fun to get naked and play with each other.” She steeled herself. “But, the man today, in your office… the way that man trusted me, the way he put his seal on my request without so much as glancing at it… I’m sorry to tell you, but he loves me, Raid.” When she took a step toward him, he took one in reverse. “Where is it?”

He swallowed, and couldn’t seem to bring himself to look at her. “Where is what?”

“The drugs?” she asked. “Where are they?”

Sliding a hand into his pocket, he produced what she asked for. With one foot planted, he put his weight to the other, and reached over to put them on the unit beside them. Glancing at the small bottle, she gathered all of her gumption and swiped it up, knowing what she had to do.

Retreating to the kitchen, Shea retrieved the wine and took another glass from the shelf. “What are you doing?” he asked.

The first thing she did was fill the large glass with wine and gulp it all down. After she’d wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, she poured more wine. After tipping the drugs into the liquid, she swirled it around again, mixing both together.

Raid kept his focus on the glass in her hand as she strutted toward him. “I want to give my life to you,” she said, sure and clear of every word. “I want to have a home here. I want to be your wife. I want to have your children.” His attention rose to hers. It didn’t matter if he didn’t expect her to be so explicit, Shea wasn’t going to leave any room for interpretation and carried on her slow walk toward him. “It is my choice and I choose to be here. I want to take the pledge and work for your cause. I want to belong to my Laird.”

Stopping in front of him, she let the words percolate, and stopped moving the glass. This was it. The moment when he would have to make a choice too.

Raid must have sensed that because he exuded dubious expectation. “But?”

“If you’re not strong enough to be with me…” she said. “I told you once that this would never work if you couldn’t be with me all the way. There’s no denying my love for you, I wouldn’t even try. I could get mad and call you weak, except this decision has to be yours. You have to make it because you want to. We’ve proven we can’t both be here and not be together. Something brings us back together. It pulls us toward each other. It’s love, Raid. It’s not sex. It’s love that makes us feel this way for each other. I know you didn’t expect to have this kind of love in your life, but you do, it’s here, and we have to face it. I want to embrace it; you have to decide if you want to chase it away.”

“What’s that for?” he asked, his eyes remaining true to hers when his chin tipped toward the glass in her hand.

“I love my boyfriend,” she said. “But, I live to serve my Laird. If the first is strong enough to stand up to the second, he’ll tell me not to drink. But, if the second is so sure he can’t ever bring himself to love me all the way, I’ll follow orders. Love or duty. You can have both, but one has to be stronger than the other.”

“She—”

“Tell me you don’t love me,” she whispered. “Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t… and I’ll drink.”

Suspended in this moment, they searched each other. Shea was reminded of the first morning she’d been here. They’d stood, not so far from this spot, and wondered about each other. Now they knew a lot, though she wasn’t sure they’d made much progress.

Bowing, he brushed his lips on hers. Shea was sure he was going to take the glass from her and throw it across the room like she had outside.

Instead, he rose to full height. “I don’t love you, Shea Bonne.”

Though the words were gentle, they smacked into her with all the force of a freight train. For a second, she wondered if he’d plunged that knife into her gut after all. There were no words in her mind; there was no more sense in the universe. She’d been so sure that he’d…

Setting her resolve, she couldn’t beg and hadn’t been bluffing. Shea had asked him to make a choice, she had to live with his decision. Stepping back, lifting the glass to her lips, she tipped the liquid into her mouth, her eyes stayed trained on him as she drank every drop. As the last of the wine passed her lips, she heard the door behind her opening; she turned just in time to see Diego stepping inside.

“Shea,” he said, frantic when he looked past her to Raid.

In his defense, her once-upon-a-time-ally probably hadn’t expected her to still be standing upright, so of course he’d be surprised to see Raid hadn’t done the deed yet. Diego didn’t have to wait long. Her head began to spin and she tried to lick her lips, but failed.

“I forgive you,” she managed to breathe out before her legs buckled and she collapsed into Raid’s arms.