You Are Mine (39 page)

Too late. He was already undone.

“It's not me, is it?” The tip of one finger traced his lower lip. “What happened, Zac? You can trust me. Was it the prison?” A pause. “Your parents?”

He'd been protecting her a long time. Her story. Her memory. The girl he couldn't save, no matter how hard he tried. The girl who wouldn't let him save her.

Theresa.

He met Eva's perceptive gaze. Out of all the people he could have told, she was possibly the only one who would understand. Perhaps she might even know why it had happened, because even now, some twenty years later, he sure as hell fucking didn't.

One thing he was sure of though. He'd pushed too hard. Pushed when he shouldn't have.

“Don't shut me out, Zac,” Eva whispered. “Please.”

“Don't shut me out, Theresa. Tell me what's wrong. Tell me what I can do to help you.”

“I had a little sister,” he said, not even knowing he was going to say it until it came out. “Her name was Theresa.”

The crease between Eva's brows deepened. “You never mentioned her.”

“No, I didn't.” He never did. He kept Theresa's memory locked up safe in the box in his mind. Where no one could get to her, harm her, ever again.

Eva's caressing thumbs paused. “What happened to her?”

The filthy squat he'd found her in was still there in his head. An abandoned building in Brixton she and her junkie friends had taken over. Peeling wallpaper and dirty mattresses on the floor. Blocked toilets and moldy showers. The smell of vomit and cigarettes, and spilled alcohol heavy in the air.

And Theresa, splayed on one of those mattresses like a broken doll, without dignity or care. Her mouth open, her eyes glassy, stringy black hair everywhere. So pale.

Dead at eighteen.

“She died,” he said. “It was my fault.”

*   *   *

Eva stared into Zac's dark face, her heart going tight and small in her chest. The expression in his amber eyes had gone flat, but she could see the barely concealed pain in them. It leaked out like blood in a pool of water, staining everything. His features were stone, his jaw tight with control—she could feel the muscle go hard beneath the tips of her fingers.

She wanted to comfort him in some way but she didn't know how. No one had ever comforted her when she'd been in pain, and she wasn't sure what was involved. Hugs and such probably, but hugging, any kind of touch, wasn't exactly something she'd had experience in either. Then again, he hadn't pulled away from her fingers on his face. Perhaps he liked it. Certainly she did, the feeling of his warm skin and the roughness of stubble along his jaw a sensual pleasure she'd never imagined.

So she kept her fingers where they were, stroking him lightly, hoping it helped the pain she saw in his eyes. “Tell me what happened,” she said and she didn't make it a request.

“There's not much to tell. Theresa was three years younger than me and I tried to protect her from what went on with my parents. Tried to give her the attention they didn't, make her childhood as normal as I could. Which wasn't very normal all things considered, but I did what I could.” He paused, the look on his face going distant. “I told her all about addiction. How it could leave you an empty shell. How it destroyed you. How it destroyed our parents.” His gaze met hers. “They usually took their drugs in their bedroom, and once I let her see them passed out on their bed. They never cleaned, would never let any of the maids inside, and the room was filthy. It stank and there was rubbish everywhere. I wanted her to see all of that though. I wanted her to see the squalor of it so she'd know what addiction led to.”

Foreboding twisted inside Eva's chest. Fear for the boy he must have been, trying to do the right thing for his baby sister.

She shifted in his lap, letting her fingers trail down the sides of his strong neck then back up again. Again, he didn't pull away so she kept doing it. “I take it…” she broke off.

“No,” he confirmed. “It didn't work. She fell in with a bad crowd when she was fifteen. Started smoking pot, dropped out of school, then got hooked onto other things. I tried to help her. Got her into another school, did some tough love with her friends, imposed a curfew. And that helped for a little while.” There was stark pain in his eyes, a brief flash of it, bright as a freshly sharpened blade. “She was good for a year, at a boarding school that helped kids who went off the rails. I'd joined the army by that stage and visited her as often as I could. But somewhere along the line, she slipped away from me. I don't know why. I don't know what she was looking for or what she got out of the drugs she kept injecting. All I know was that the more I tried to hold onto her, the more she escaped.” His hands came up all of a sudden, gripping her wrists and pulling her fingers away from him. “She ran away from school and disappeared. It took me weeks to find her. For some reason she'd fallen back into her old crowd and they'd found a squat in a shady part of London, an abandoned building they started living in basically.”

She tried to pull her hands away from his imprisoning grip, but his fingers around her wrists were like iron.

“Theresa had started injecting. Heroin. I tried to stop her. I argued. I cajoled. I bribed. I even called the police to raid the building. She wouldn't talk to me in the end, wouldn't even see me. Whenever I came to visit, she'd turn her face to the wall and ignore me. And then, just after her eighteenth birthday, I got a call from one of her so-called friends. She'd OD'd.” Zac's voice had gone hard and flat, though she could hear the despair and hopelessness running through it, undermining everything like a stream of water undermines a bank of loose earth.

She swallowed. “How could you think it was your fault though? You didn't hold the needle. You didn't push it into her arm.”

“I pushed her, Eva. I pushed and pushed and pushed. Right from when she was little, I told her the dangers. I showed her the evidence.”

His fingers pressed against the fragile bones in her wrists. There would be bruises later, but she didn't pull away. She didn't want to do anything that might cause him to stop talking, to shut her out again. A few bruises were nothing. “You did what you thought was right, Zac. You were trying to prevent her from falling into the same trap.”

“But what if I hadn't shown her Mum drooling on her pillow. Dad lying in a puddle of his own piss? What if I hadn't talked to her about drugs and what they did to your body? I planted the seeds. I put the idea in her head. And then later, I pushed her too hard. Perhaps if I'd walked away, she might have come to it in her own time. She might have done better. But I couldn't leave it alone. I couldn't—” He broke off all of a sudden. Then he dropped her wrists, shifting her off his lap, and rose from the couch in a restless, fluid movement. Striding toward the ensuite, he disappeared inside, shutting the door firmly behind him.

The sound of it closing echoed through the room, heavy with finality.

Eva stared at the door, clutching the velvet quilt more firmly around her as the cold began to creep over her skin. Her chest hurt. She felt like she'd been taken from a cozy place in front of the fire and dropped into a snowdrift.

He was an intensely private man, she knew this about him. All those years and they'd never shared themselves with each other, and with good reason. Both of them had scars and clearly his were still bloody and raw.

The need to comfort him, do something for him, bloomed inside her, pressing insistently against her skin.

It would be easy to let him shut her out, to let him have the space he wanted, to not push him. Because after all, what did she know about helping someone with their pain? What did she know about comfort? About protecting someone, shielding them. Healing them.

Nothing. She knew nothing at all.

She swallowed, her throat thick.

The need to go to him pressed harder. Shoving at her insides. He had no one else, she knew that now. He was as alone as she was. Locked safe in the armor he'd protected himself with. The suit, the calm manner, the image of the perfect English gentleman.

But she'd seen underneath. Seen the heat and passion of the man inside that armor, a man full of anger and pain, with tattoos on his skin and scars on his heart.

She couldn't let him shut that man away. She had to let him know he wasn't alone. After all, he'd always been there for her. Why shouldn't she be there for him? He wasn't the only one who could push.

Eva gathered the quilt around herself and slipped off the couch, going over to the door of the ensuite.

“Zac.” She put her hand on the door. “Can I come in?”

There was no answer.

“Zac. Come on. You can't just tell me all that stuff then walk away.”

Again. Nothing.

The pain in her chest constricted. No, he couldn't do this to her, the prick. He couldn't lay her bare the way he had and then walk away when it was his turn. It didn't work that way.

She tried the door handle, but it was locked. Anger blossomed. She hit the wood hard with her palm. “Open the damn door, asshole! You think I'm going to let you walk away from me? You didn't let me do it so why should I let you?”

More silence.

Eva pulled her hand back to hit the door again, when suddenly the lock clicked and it opened a crack. Zac's face was like iron, his amber eyes cold. “Get dressed. I'll get Temple to take you home.”

“Fuck that.” Propelled by anger and a fear she couldn't name, Eva dropped the quilt from around her shoulders, then shoved the door open with as much strength as she could.

Taken by surprise, Zac shifted back and she took the opening, stepping into the bathroom before he could close the door again.

She didn't stop, moving forward, sliding her arms around his waist, pressing her naked body up against all that bare, bronze skin. She didn't know what to say to him to show him he wasn't alone, but she could show him. Like he'd shown her. Touch had a language all its own and she was only just now discovering how powerful that could be.

“Eva, stop.” His fingers were tight around her upper arms and the cold look in his eyes had given way to anger. “It's best if you go.”

She ignored him, locking her arms around him, tilting her head back to meet his furious gaze. “Why? Because you don't want to talk about it? Because you don't want to remember? Well back at you, asshole. You can't take all my secrets from me, make me remember all the most agonizing things in my life, and then refuse to do it yourself. I won't let you.”

His hands tightened painfully. “I told you pushing me was a bad idea.”

“So you keep saying. And I still don't know why.”

Gold flashed in his eyes. And suddenly she was being lifted in his arms without any ceremony at all and shoved onto the white marble vanity behind him. Then he held her there, his fingers pressing into her hips. “I don't want you poking and prodding at my fucking life,” he said fiercely. “And if I don't want you to talk about it, I don't want you to fucking talk about it!”

She ignored him and the painful grip he had on her hips. “I get it. You're still protecting her. And, God, I'm not trying to take that away from you, understand?” She reached out, took his face in her hands again, held him as tight as he was holding her. “I only want to show you you're not alone. That I'm here if you need me.” The tight feeling was back in her chest again, the hurt that wasn't hers, but his. How strange to take someone's pain like that, to feel it like it was yours too. “You helped me, Zac. You were there for me. Please let me be there for you.”

The look in his eyes burned into her, no longer cold. Fierce and hot as a lake of fire. “You want to be there for me?” He released her quite suddenly, stepping back in a quick, sharp movement. “Then get on your knees.”

*   *   *

Eva's eyes widened and for a moment she only stared at him. Then her jaw firmed and she pushed herself off the vanity, dropping gracefully to her knees on the floor.

This wouldn't be what she wanted but he didn't care.

She'd gotten too close. Too close to memories he didn't want to dredge up again. Of a failure he couldn't quite put behind him no matter how hard he tried. And he was pissed, that anger that was always there, that wouldn't leave him alone, boiling up inside him like all his blood had been superheated.

He couldn't lock it down. Not with her. She seemed to get underneath all the walls he'd put in place to protect both her and himself. No, not get underneath. She fucking kicked them down, smashed them. With only the touch of her hand and the soft heat of her body. The look in her eyes that told him she knew. That she understood.

But he didn't want that look or that understanding. Didn't want any of it focused on him. Because he needed those walls. Or else the pain and the anger of his failure to protect the only person in the world who meant anything to him would destroy him.

He had to protect himself, protect Theresa's memory. And there was only one way he knew of to do that.

Distance Eva. Take control.

Eva looked up at him, a beautiful flush staining her cheeks and neck, reaching further down. She must know what was coming, what to expect.

He wasn't going to disappoint her. Already he was hard, the press of her body and touch of her skin enough for his dick to get the message and declare an interest.

“Open your mouth,” he ordered, a harsh edge entering his voice. The anger starting to bleed through.

She did, without hesitation.

He reached for her jaw, holding it with one hand. “Suck me.”

Her throat moved, uncertainty in her eyes. But she reached for him, the soft touch of her hand on his cock making him ache. Then she leaned forward and swirled her tongue around the head.

It was not what he was expecting, the slick warmth sending his heartbeat racing and his mouth dry, ripples of electricity arcing through his body. She licked him again, her tongue running down the length of his dick then back up.