Living in Shadow (Living In…) Read online

  His breath was warm on her skin, his body still over hers. Then he said, “Keep still,” and he moved away.

  Trembling, Eleanor stayed where she was. She wasn’t going to move. She was going to do exactly what he said, no matter what that was. Ready for anything.

  It felt like she lay there for a long time with nothing but silence for company, tension pulling her muscles tighter and tighter.

  “Legs apart.” His voice came quite suddenly, and shock made her have to take a moment to process the order.

  But he didn’t give her a moment, powerful fingers on her thighs pushing them wide.

  She sucked in a breath, only to have all the air escape as something that felt both cold and burning at the same time brushed against one nipple.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, panting, trying to twist away.

  “I told you to keep still.”

  She tried to do what he told her as another pass of that cold thing slid over one nipple then the other, her brain struggling to make sense of it.

  Ice…

  He circled the ice cube around her stiff, aching nipples before moving it lower, over her stomach. Goose bumps rose everywhere, desire a hard, tight knot down low inside her.

  The fact that he was silent, that he didn’t explain himself or wait for her to protest, meant something.

  He was trusting her the way she was trusting him.

  Her heartbeat accelerated, hope and fear and desire tangling inside her. And love, a wild burst of it burning in her veins.

  She trembled. “Sir…”

  He shifted on the bed, a warm hand covering her mouth, silencing her. “You’ve been bad, Eleanor. Disobeyed my direct orders. And that means you need to be punished.” The ice cube tracked a cold, burning path down to her hip then over the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. “I’m going to tease you, tantalize you, but you’re not allowed to come. If you do come, I won’t let you have my cock. Nod once if you understand.”

  She nodded, trying to restrain the urge to lick his palm.

  “Good,” he said, removing his hand from her mouth. The ice cube moved slowly closer to her sex, the pleasure/pain of the cold making her shake. “Remember, if you want me to stop, you only have to say the word.”

  She gave a second, sharp nod, the darkness behind the blindfold beginning to flame.

  Delicious anticipation had begun to build and along with it the desire to prove herself to him. To show him that she was as worthy of his trust as he was of hers.

  She tried to stay strong as the ice cube traced the outer lips of her pussy, moaning, her hips lifting helplessly. But the contrast of the biting cold against her heated skin was so intense she couldn’t stop shaking. Especially when he slid the cube against her clit, pleasure/pain pulsing through her.

  Colors leapt behind her closed lids, flaring brightly in the dark as the sensations layered one on top of the other. As he ran the ice cube down her center, his finger taking its place at her clit.

  Holy Christ, she wasn’t going to survive this.

  She bit her lip hard to stop the orgasm that threatened, determined to obey him. To show him she could do what he wanted.

  And right when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, his touch vanished, leaving her shivering on the bed, her skin sensitized and burning.

  The sound of her breathing was harsh in the silence.

  Then the bed dipped again, intense cold meeting intense heat as she felt him push the ice cube inside her.

  She said his name on a gasp as she felt warm breath on the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. A gasp that turned into a cry as his mouth covered her sex.

  The burning pleasure became white-hot, molten, as he pushed his tongue deep inside her, tasting her.

  “Oh…Jesus…” Her voice didn’t sound like her own, thick and ragged.

  Arching her hips, she tried to move, only to feel herself suddenly hauled up, his arms wrapping her waist, her legs over his shoulders, his tongue pushing even deeper.

  “Luc!” Another cry burst from her.

  She wasn’t allowed to come. She wasn’t supposed to. And she fought it like a tiger.

  But he was relentless, devouring her, overwhelming her so completely she was helpless to stop the climax that smashed over her. Sobbing as she was washed away, with nothing to hold on to except him.

  He couldn’t wait. He didn’t want to wait. The taste of her was still on his tongue and she was quivering, naked in his arms, and all he wanted to do was blind her with even more pleasure, give her everything he could.

  It didn’t matter that she’d disobeyed him and come without his permission. What she’d given him when she’d handed him that blindfold, when she’d told him he was hers, was more important than punishment.

  Her belief that he wouldn’t hurt her, that he’d stop when she said her safe word, made him want to honor that trust. Made him want to be worthy of it.

  Made him understand what it meant to trust himself. And make amends for how he’d scared her. Hurt her.

  Lowering her to the bed, he slipped from it, pulling his clothes off before coming back to kneel once more between her spread thighs.

  Her whole body was pink, and there were tears on her flushed cheeks, glinting from underneath the blindfold.

  He leaned over her, wiping away the tears with his fingers then moving lower to where the ribbon of blood stained her pale skin. Moisture gleamed at her throat, sweat from her pleasure. He wiped the blood away with her tears, with her sweat, wiped her clean.

  Jesus…this woman…she made him everything he’d ever wanted to be.

  Reaching over to the nightstand, he grabbed a condom from the drawer. Protecting himself with shaking hands, he then leaned forward and pulled the tie from around her wrists, freeing her. She groaned, her hands coming up to his chest.

  He didn’t stop, trusting her to say the word if she needed to, but she didn’t. So he pressed into her slick heat, feeling her pussy close around his cock, gripping him tight, and he shuddered, unable to breathe for a second.

  Her hands pressed harder. “I want to see you.”

  “No.” It felt as if it were too much, to watch her face. To see her come. As if he wouldn’t be able to bear it.

  “Please.”

  At this point he could deny her nothing. Reaching up, he pushed up the blindfold, revealing her flushed face. And her eyes…they weren’t dark. They burned silver.

  His heart kicked hard inside his chest. And he couldn’t look away, staring down into her face as he began to move. Slow. Deep. Her hands slid up his arms, around behind his neck, her legs wrapping around his waist. Holding him tight. Surrounding him.

  The cracks through his soul began to shudder. And it wasn’t because he was falling apart. It was because a dark shell he hadn’t even realized was there was beginning to disintegrate. And there was something underneath it.

  Something shining. Golden.

  He bent his head, burying his face in her neck as the shell broke apart revealing the shining thing at the center of him. The thing that had been there all along, from the moment he’d seen her.

  Love.

  As it shone in his soul, she held him. And when it burned away the dark shell of the man he’d once been, he let it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  She could feel him shudder, the storm breaking through him, and she didn’t let go, holding him tight. Even afterwards she didn’t loosen her arms around him, didn’t stop stroking the smooth skin of his back, feeling all his muscles relax against her. He was heavy but she didn’t care. She just wanted to anchor him somehow.

  “Hey,” he said thickly, some time later. “Can you give me a minute?”

  With some reluctance, she let him go and he slipped out of the bed, vanishing into the en-suite bathroom. A moment later he returned though and she opened her arms to him as he came back to the bed.

  “You know how I said you could tell me anything?” she said into the darkness, wrapping her arms aroun
d him. “How about you tell me all of it now?”

  He was silent a while and when he began to speak, his voice was brittle as shattered glass, listing the things that had happened to him. The first government soldier he’d shot, a gun held to his own head until he’d pulled that trigger. How he’d been sick after it. The rapes, the tortures he’d seen, powerless to stop any of them from happening until he’d been made lieutenant and could command his own squad. He’d shot members of that squad, anyone who perpetrated violence on others. Yes, he saw the irony of that. And yes, it had killed a piece of him.

  She couldn’t speak for the anger that overwhelmed her then, at what he’d been made to do. At the people who’d done this to him. At the injustice of it all, furious tears filling her eyes.

  He noticed, shifting in her arms, putting a gentle finger to her cheek and wiping the tears way. “Don’t, soleil. Please don’t cry.”

  She caught his finger, holding it. “Why shouldn’t I cry? Someone has to.”

  “I don’t want to make you unhappy.”

  “I’m not unhappy. I’m fucking angry.” She kissed his finger. “Do you know how strong you are? How amazing that you survived that? That you even came out of it sane is incredible.”

  “Sane is a debatable term.”

  “Well, you’re certainly not mad,” she said fiercely. “You were a child made to do terrible, terrible things. Like I told you before, you don’t come out of something like that without scars.” Closing her fingers around his wrist, she pulled it up between them, the fabric cuff sliding down his forearm. “Like this. This is a scar, Luc.”

  He dropped his gaze to the cuff and stared at it for a long time. “I had to keep that,” he said quietly. “I had to carry something with me. I had to keep it to remember. Because I was afraid of forgetting what I’d done. When you’re…numb, it’s easy to forget.”

  “But scar tissue is numb, Luc. That’s why you can’t feel anything. And I don’t think it’s forgetting you’re afraid of. It’s remembering.”

  His gaze remained on the material around his wrist. “You’re making me feel, Eleanor. That’s the thing. I’m…waking up. I’m feeling things and it’s…dangerous. That’s why I had that flashback. I haven’t felt anything for so fucking long and now…Jesus, it’s all coming back.”

  Her throat closed up. “I want to apologize for that, but I won’t. You can’t live your life pretending it didn’t happen. That it didn’t affect you. Take it from me, I know how well that works.”

  Luc’s gaze lifted to hers all of a sudden, the look in his eyes sharp, piercing. “No,” he said softly. “I’m starting to think that too.” With an abrupt movement, he shifted, getting off the bed and going over to his bag where it lay in the middle of the room. Crouching down, he took a long, black shape out of it.

  A knife.

  Pulling it out of its sheath, her breath caught as he came back over to the bed, handing the weapon to her, hilt first. He didn’t speak, only held out his wrist.

  “Oh, Luc…” There were more tears edging down her cheeks.

  “Cut it off, mon rayon de soleil. I don’t want it there anymore. Because…I don’t think I’m numb anymore.”

  She looked up at him, her heart too full to say a word. And she could see the certainty in his eyes. And the pain. Wordlessly, she took the hilt and put the blade of the knife against the threads, cutting through the strands in one movement, the cuff falling to the ground. Then she bent her head and kissed his wrist.

  His hand spread, his fingers cupping her chin and lifting her gaze to his. “You can leave, soleil. I’m giving you this one chance. Because, if you stay, it’s going to be forever. I don’t think I can walk away from you again.”

  “Well that’s good,” she croaked. “Because I didn’t come here intending to leave.”

  His thumb moved, stroking away the tear that had fallen down her cheek. “Eleanor…”

  She moved her head, rising onto her knees on the mattress, taking his face between her hands, pulling him down for a kiss that was sweet and said everything there weren’t words for.

  Except he said them anyway. Whispering them against her mouth. “Je t’aime. Tu allume mon coeur.”

  I love you. You light up my heart.

  “So are you going to tell me about your tattoos?”

  It was hours later and she was in his arms, her hair spread out on his chest as she held one of his hands in hers, tracing the lines and dots inked into his skin.

  He watched her pale finger move, struck suddenly by the similarity to the way he’d touched her as he took the pain away from her that night. Had it felt like this? As if she were taking away something heavy? Erasing sharp edges of the anguish and leaving gentleness in its wake?

  His arm felt strangely light without that cuff on it. Like it could float away.

  “Inza tattooed all the boys in the child squads,” he said. And how fucking weird it was to be able to explain, to not feel like he was choking when the memories came. “His symbol on our hands so that if we ran we’d be easily identified and caught. No one wanted to hide a deserter. I tried once, to escape. I thought they were going to kill me when they caught me, but they didn’t. I spoke English, which made me valuable. I was whipped instead.” She was still touching him, stroking his fingers. “Squads used to get tattoos after a big victory. To celebrate. We’d drink, smoke weed if we could get it, listen to loud music. I wanted that fucking symbol off my hands that night so I got another boy in my squad to do it but he couldn’t draw. All he could do was bars and dots. I didn’t care, I wanted Inza’s symbol gone.”

  “Didn’t someone notice you’d tattooed over it?”

  “Yeah, but by that stage I was too important to them to punish.”

  “What did you do for them?”

  “I could translate English, and I was good at strategizing and planning. Plus, I was much better educated than some of the village boys and that was useful to them too.”

  Another silence fell.

  “What about the stars?” Her fingers traced up his forearms.

  “Because they were cold. Peaceful. And I wanted some of that on me.”

  “What about the tiger? Though I have to say, it’s a little cheesy.”

  He found himself smiling, and that was weird too, considering where those tattoos had come from. Maybe it was the gentle amusement in her voice that did it. “I was drunk at the time. At least the guy who did that could draw. I was…sixteen, I think? We’d just won a major battle and since our squad was called the White Tigers, I thought it would be great if we all got a tiger tat.”

  “The White Tigers, huh?”

  “Yeah, I know. Hey, we were young.”

  Another silence fell as she touched him, her hands like soft rain moving over his body. “I want to help, Luc,” she said after a moment.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What happened to you wasn’t fair. It wasn’t…just. And I know I can’t do anything about that now, but I think you were right when you said you wanted to do something for people like you. Well, I want to help. I want to get into human rights law, start making a difference.”

  He shifted, twisting to look down at her, searching her face. “What? You mean give up teaching?”

  Passion and determination burned in her eyes, along with a healthy dose of anger. “Maybe not completely. I could still teach part time, because I do like it. But I think together we could make a great team.”

  He smiled, warmth spreading out in his chest. “Are you certain?”

  “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.” She touched his cheekbone in a gentle caress. “I’m going to be here for you, Luc. And that’ll include being here when you get the help you need.” She paused. “Did you ever get any psychological help after you were rescued?”

  He sighed. “Some. But I really wasn’t interested in what they were trying to do at the time, to be honest. And I was very good at telling them the things they wanted to hear, because I did
n’t want to deal with it.”

  “Yeah, I can imagine. But I think you should try seeing someone again.”

  He knew that already. He couldn’t afford another flashback, and if that meant dealing with all the shit he knew was waiting for him, all the pain, then he’d have to do it.

  It was hard to realize that. Hard to understand that if he wanted a future with her, he was going to have to open himself up to his emotions. Open himself up to the pain of all he’d forgotten.

  So, yeah, nothing about this was going to be easy. But the choice itself was not so difficult. He wanted her and she was worth any price he had to pay.

  He turned his head, kissing her fingers. “I know and I will. As long as you’re there, I can handle it.”

  “It won’t be easy, honey.”

  “Yeah, I know that too.”

  She sighed. “You’ll get through it. You’re amazingly strong.”

  “So are you, Professor. So are you.”

  “Uh, I’m not your professor anymore.”

  He smiled. “What else am I going to call you?”

  Her fingers trailed along his jaw then down the side of his neck, stroking his throat. “You can call me Sir, of course.”

  He laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so. If anyone’s going to be Sir, it’s me.”

  Her hand drifted lower. “Call me your sun. I’m happy with that.”

  “Mon rayon du soleil. You never were anything else.”

  Because now he was in sunlight, there were no shadows. No shadows anywhere.

  About the Author

  Jackie has been writing fiction since she was eleven years old. Mild-mannered fantasy/SF/pseudoliterary writer by day, obsessive romance writer by night, she used to balance her writing with the more serious job of librarianship until a chance meeting with another romance writer prompted her to throw off the shackles of her day job and devote herself to the true love of her heart—writing romance. She particularly likes to write dark, emotional stories with alpha heroes who’ve just got the world to their liking, only to have it blown wide apart by their kick-ass heroines.