Dangerous Exile by K.J. Jackson

{ Chapter 21 }

“Not fit to protect…” Her head shook, her forehead wrinkling against the worry that had lined her face. “What are you talking about, Talen?”

Immersed deep in a pit of darkness and suddenly, there was Ness, in the light, bringing him back to reality. Back to the present.

He blinked hard, his stare finally able to focus on her. On the terror on her face.

Blast, where were they? A coaching inn? How had they gotten there? Where were his clothes, his boots?

He blinked again, the one revelation he’d forged in that well of blackness hammered into his brain, unable to let go of him. “Death follows me, Ness. Death. Destruction. You need to get away. Get away from me now.”

“What? No.” Her head flew back and forth. “No. I don’t need to get away. You’re not death, Talen. You’re the farthest thing from it.”

“I froze, Ness. I froze.” He sucked in a breath that only partially made its way down his tight throat. “I freeze and I fail. I am death. Death for sure, for you.”

She stilled in front of him and Talen could see her slipping, slipping away from him. Whether she wanted to or not, she was recoiling.

Her arms drew inward across her body, her right arm cradling the bandage wrapped along her left arm. She wore only her shift. What had happened to her clothes?

Her eyes wide orbs, she stared at him. “You froze? When?”

“The brothel that burned down—the one Juliet saved me from.”

“The Selkie South Brothel?”

“Yes.” He nodded, his look dropping to the fire just beyond her skirts, not able to keep the long-held shame from his voice. “There was a reason it was set aflame. I had taken over the house, adding to it a cadre of women enticed over from a brothel across the river. I told you of them. All wanted to join my house, it was clean, they would be paid well, and I’d hired Juliet to see to all of that and she did an admirable job of making sure every girl wanted to be there and was content.”

His voice became wooden, hollow to his own ears. “But I needed a shining star, a woman men would clamor to see, to be with. So I stole one. Layla Hodwell. A beauty. Charming. Men would extol on her theatrics in the bed all about town. She was the shining star I needed, but she was also the property of Filmore Bloodwater, a wretched, toothless cur. I convinced Layla to come to my house, paid off her debt to Bloodwater, and told her she would be safe with me. I would protect her. Except I didn’t. I couldn’t. A month after she came to the brothel, Bloodwater came for her. He got to her in the Selkie South when I wasn’t there. By the time I’d arrived, rushed into her room, Bloodwater and two of his cutthroats had already severely beaten her.” 

Ness’s fingers lifted, pressing against her mouth.

“I could have saved her. I had the brawn, the skill. But I didn’t save her. I froze. I had a split second to act when I walked into that room and I didn’t—couldn’t do it. I saw her face, the brutality of what he’d done to her, and my body locked up upon itself. I couldn’t move my arms, my legs. I froze and I couldn’t control it.”

“Talen—”

“I failed her. I told her I would protect her from Bloodwater—swore it—but I didn’t. And I never knew why I froze like I did. It had never happened before. But it makes sense now—her face…her face was what happened. The blood, the pus, how she could only see out of one eye.”

His words choked, he had to pause, running a hand over his eyes, as though bitter hope promised he could erase the past with just one swipe. “It was the same thing I felt when I first saw you. I froze then, too, when you stumbled into the room. You didn’t see it, didn’t know it, but I froze. I froze because you and Layla looked just as my mother did at the end—face crushed, one eye open, staring at me.”

He swallowed hard, his voice catching. “I froze that day and Bloodwater’s men jumped on me before I could recover. I’m deadly because I’m fast and that day…that day I was nothing. They beat me into unconsciousness. Juliet pulled me from that building—saved me, saved all the girls, but Layla…”

His head shook as his fingers curled into fists. “They took her away and I never saw her again. Never heard of her. No one did. She was just gone. Dead.”

“But you didn’t kill her.”

“I did just as much as if I’d slipped a blade into her gut.” His stare lifted to Ness, self-loathing eating away at his chest. “I was the one to convince her to come to my house. I was the one that swore to protect her. And I didn’t. After that, I swore off anything to do with whores and brothels.The women at the Alabaster come and go on their own accord. We have rooms available if the man wants to pay for it—and my men oftentimes have to step in when there’s danger to a woman from men that are out of control on our property. But I will never be the cause of another woman dead because of me.”

“Talen…”

“It’s why you need to get away from me, Ness.” His legs suddenly useless, unable to hold him, he wanted to sink back down to the chair. But Ness needed to hear this, understand it, and she only would if he was looking down at her. His lips pulled into a terse line. “I am death. I can’t be trusted to protect anyone, especially you.”

“Except you aren’t death and I’m not going anywhere.” She didn’t even blink at his words.

His head cocked to the side, his voice low. “Ness—”

“No. I won’t hear such ridiculousness from you.” Her arms unfolded and she reached out, her fingers wrapping around his forearm. “You are not death because of a few short minutes in an entire lifetime. Those moments in the whorehouse, those moments that your parents died—they aren’t everything, Talen. They’re not all of you. You have always been so much more.”

His mouth clamped closed. She was denying what he knew full well. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I do.” She nodded, her face solemn as her hand fell away from his arm. “I know because I touched death. Touched it on my own accord. And those minutes do not define me. They can’t.”

His breath stilled in his chest. “Ness, what did you do?”

She let out a breathless scoff, the side of her mouth pulling into a strained smile. “You weren’t the only one that Juliet saved.”

“What happened?” His voice hard, he didn’t want to know what she’d done to herself. Yet he had to know.

Her head bowed, her shoulders sank as remorse washed over her small frame. “It was just after Gilroy had broken my arm, broken me. Broke me so completely, set so much pain into my body that it was all I thought I had left. My own death. My own death, under my control. My room was high—so high in that castle. I climbed up onto the window and at the very moment I let myself go, falling to freedom, Juliet tackled me away, pulling me back into the room. Pulling me back into life. Yet I still didn’t want it. Hated what she’d done. Hated her actions until…”

His eyes closed for long seconds. To imagine her drowning so far in that pain that she would leave this earth on her own volition set agony deep into his own chest. Her scars, so deep and wounding becoming his own.

His eyes opened and he stared at the top of her bowed head, wanting nothing more than to erase the past for her but knowing he couldn’t. Instead, he prodded her onward. There was nowhere to go but forward. “Until what?”

Her eyes slowly lifted to him, the golden strands in her irises glowing with intensity, a sheen of tears glossing them. “Until I opened my eyes and you were there. You were dead. Long dead. But then you weren’t. You were alive, breathing when you shouldn’t have been. I know death, Talen. And you. You are not death. You are the opposite. You are life. You brought me back to life.”

She stepped closer to him as her chin lifted, her stare desperate as it pinned him. “When you were young, you were funny and smart and mostly kind, except when you got that wicked gleam in your eye and wanted to make me squeal. But your heart…your heart has always beaten gold, no matter the iron you’ve since shackled it in. It is still in you. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it.”

He closed his eyes to her. “But I don’t remember that—what I was. I don’t remember anything more.”

“Nothing else?”

“I only remember that night. That one night.” His hand lifted, his fingers rubbing across his forehead and eyes. “Why can’t I remember more?”

“I don’t know. But if you remember the worst of it, maybe the rest will follow.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

She worried her lip for long seconds. “Did you recall anything more from that night? What happened after your mother dropped in front of you?”

He shook his head slightly, his eyes still covered, then he shrugged. “Just that I was choked. I remember that. After my mother died, they found out I was alive and I was choked.”

She gasped. “It’s the rasp in your voice. It was never there before. But it is now. I thought it odd, but it makes sense that is where it came from.”

His hand dropped away from his face and he found her eyes. “I couldn’t speak for a long time on the ship. Weeks it took, my throat barely able to let breath in and out, much less talk. That’s how I became Talen. Talen Blackstone. Some old sailor named me because he was sick of calling me boy and he said I had eyes like a hawk—watching everything with intent to strike.”

His eyes opened wider and he swayed, the blackness he’d just emerged from suddenly threatening to swallow him again. “I never remembered that. Never. The memories of it, of my first days on the ship. All of it just slipped away. Forgotten when it never should have been. I should have remembered. Remembered everything.”

He swayed again, his body threatening to collapse and she stepped into him, wrapping her arms around him to balance him, the splint on her left arm jutting into his side.

So unsteady, his body wavering, shards of black cutting across his vision.

His face buried into the top of her head, drowning himself in her scent. “Hold me. Hold me against this. I can’t go into the blackness again.”

Her arms tightened around him. It had to pain her left arm, but dammit, he needed this. Needed her to keep him from slipping away again.

“I have you, Talen. I do. Always.” She pulled her head away from his chest so she could look up at him.

Worry strained her face. Worry he hated. She shouldn’t have to worry, not on him.

But he didn’t know how to stop the blackness from taking over again. How to stay here with her when his mind was determined to make him abandon everything around him.

Abandon her.

Her amber eyes pinned him. “Even if you slip away, I am here. Waiting.”

His left hand moved up and he found her jawline, holding onto her, her face cutting through the black shards cutting across his vision.

She could hold him here. Hold him in the present.

His head dipped, his mouth finding hers, his kiss desperate and pleading.

He pulled slightly to the left, his lips still brushing against the skin of her cheek.

“I never needed anything from you, from anyone. But I need this, Ness. Need this to ground me in reality. Need you. Need you to keep me here, where I am. Not where I was.”

Without a word her lips moved to his, kissing him. Her mouth parted, immediately demanding more from him, her tongue flickering against his. A force he was not about to deny, his cock already an iron rod throbbing for her.

This was what he needed. Nothing but her. Her hands on his body. Her mouth on his. His body consumed with possessing her, the taste of her—leaving no space for anything else in his mind.

No memories. No anger. Just Ness.

Ness and the sweetness of her lips, her breath steamy fire on his skin, her sultry moans filling his ears when he set his hand behind her neck, tilting her head to deepen the kiss.

Sinking into everything she was. Hiding from everything he couldn’t control.

Without breaking the kiss, the tips of her left fingers fumbled in trying to help her right hand with the fall front of his trousers, nudging him backward as she worked the buttons. He was naked by the time his calves hit the side of the bed and her shift had fallen to the floor.

She broke the kiss and pushed his shoulders back and down, sending him flat onto the bed, then crawled in after him, straddling his thighs.

The blood in his cock pounding, he stared up at her as she hovered over him for a long breath, her golden eyes fixed on him, making sure he didn’t think to leave her again. The tips of her left fingers went along his cheek, her nails sinking into his skin. “You are here with me, Talen. Here.”

Then she lifted her hips, grabbing his shaft to center him and drove downward in one harsh motion. It pulled him into her, into a world where there was nothing but his cock buried deep in her tightness. The exquisite sensation of her muscles contracting around him.

With a gasp at her lips, she lifted up, and sank down again and again. His eyes locked onto her face, the gyration of her hips driving him to madness in less than a minute.

As if he could be anywhere else when she was on top of him.

He reached up and grabbed the back of her head, burying his fingers deep into the thick of her dark hair. Pins flew and strands fell about her as he yanked her downward, his mouth taking hers. Ravaging her lips, he buried himself in the soul of her. Her hips kept gyrating, lifting, descending. Furious and fast, her body pitching herself to the edge.

Her teeth bit his tongue as she slammed down onto him, sending her into a writhing orgasm with a scream. All of her muscles hardened under his touch, her body clenching viciously around his cock, drawing him deeper with every wave storming her muscles.

His mind consumed, his body desperate to devour her, he flipped her onto her back, slamming into her in time with every contraction of her orgasm. Thrusting until he was frantic, pummeling her so hard he was sure he was hurting her when all she did was scream, “More.”

Every piercing drive into her, “More.”

His hips moved in a fury until he lost his bloody mind, his body going carnal, his teeth raking over the skin on her neck, one of his hands holding her arms high above her head so her body stretched to accommodate the full length of him. His other hand gripped her breast as her hips bucked, meeting him with every thrust. And still she begged for more, her back arching, needing all of him.

It hit him in a furious landslide, his muscles shaking as he came into her, his seed spurting so brutally he lost all sense of time and place except for his cock buried deep in her. Her body taking everything he needed to expel in that moment.

Fury and anger and confusion and anguish.

She took at all.  Willingly, not buckling under the onslaught.

Before he could breathe, before he could think, he wrapped an arm around her and spun onto his back, dragging her body with him, capturing her fully between his legs. He wasn’t going to let her go.

Probably never.

He’d long since reconciled the fact that he had no control over himself when it came to his cock deep in her. He was a damned mess, never pulling out of her when he needed to. It didn’t matter. He was ready for the consequences. He’d been ready from the first moment he’d set his naked body to hers, whether or not he’d admitted it to himself.

His breath rasping in his throat, he searched for some semblance of sanity. Worried that the last he’d known of it was in the second before Ness had appeared at the Alabaster.

She’d gone limp atop him, her cheek nestled in the center crook of his chest, her body exhausted but her breath still gasping for normalcy. His arms stayed locked in place around her, not letting her roll off of him. He needed her there, atop him. The weight of her continuing to ground him to the present, if not sanity.

Her breathing finally evened out, each inhale sinking deep into her lungs.

Asleep.

He reached over on the bed and grabbed the sheet, pulling it up over her rear so she didn’t get chilled, not that it was possible for how hot his skin was on her.

She rustled slightly, all of her limbs stretching for a moment before she snuggled back into him. Her voice, raspy with sleep, whispered into his chest. “You’re not death, Talen. You aren’t. And I’m not going anywhere.”

He didn’t believe her.

But for that that moment, that night, he’d not argue it. Let it be.

For he’d never been at such peace.