Conspiracy Game (39 page)

B
riony
watched Jack as he padded barefoot around the dark room. He had stayed up late reading, mostly, she was certain, in the hopes that she’d be asleep when he got to bed. Her close proximity had to be just as hard on him as being continually surrounded by his scent was on her. It was hard to lie in his bed and not fantasize about him.

“You should be asleep,” he said abruptly, standing over her.

His shoulders looked wide, arms sculpted with defined muscle, and in the darkness she couldn’t see the hideous name carved into his chest. He was breathtaking. Her pulse kicked up a notch. “So should you.”

He stood for a moment, just looking down at her, almost hesitant. “You took your vitamins today, didn’t you?”

He slipped into bed beside her—not under the covers, but on top, giving her a measure of privacy, but no real reprieve from the sexual need clawing at her so sharply. The moonlight caught him for just a moment, and his eyes gleamed silver, ice cold, and devoid of emotion, as if he’d stepped back away from her.

“You’ve been reading that book again, haven’t you?” she accused.

“It’s a good book, very informative, especially with all the new additions to it. I think we should find one specifically about carrying twins.”

“You’re just evil. You know I don’t want to think about twins. Every time you mention it, and you’ve got your brother doing the same thing, I get a stomachache.”

His eyes laughed at her.
Laughed.
Briony’s breath caught in her throat. How could eyes so flat and cold and devoid of emotion one moment be warm and bright and move over her with such raw passion the next?

“Jack.” She said his name and heard the ache.

He heard it too. She watched his face change, go hard, go blank, the light fading away. He lay back down close to her, but she felt his body tremble.

“Briony.” Jack’s voice was tight, maybe a little too husky, but he couldn’t sound indifferent or casual when he was going to make one last attempt to do the right thing. “I want you to hear me out and really listen to me for once.”

Her hand found his in the darkness. Comfort? An offer? Fear? He didn’t know, because he wasn’t opening his mind to her, not when he knew that what he was going to say would run her off. He wouldn’t be able to bear her terror of him, her disgust of him—disgust of the monster he knew himself to be. Her fingers tangled with his, closed around his as if holding him close. He shut his eyes and reached for inner strength. Why was it easier to talk after night closed in?

Briony didn’t say anything, but her hand, so tightly holding his, gave him the added strength to try to make her understand. He let out his breath and took the biggest risk of his life. “I’m not a good man, Briony. You keep thinking I am. I don’t want you to come to me without knowing what you’re getting into. When I go out on a mission and acquire a target, it’s simply that to me. Nothing more.”

“You’ve been trained that way, Jack,” she said gently.

“No, baby. It’s my nature. It’s who I am. I escaped the rebel camp, and instead of hightailing it out of there like anyone else would do, I went back and took out as many of them as I could. That’s not training, Briony, that’s my nature. You aren’t someone who likes conflict, and you don’t fight with me just for the sake of arguing, but sooner or later you’re going to be opposed to my point of view enough to fight with me—and you won’t win. You won’t. I’ll try to see it your way and I’ll want to give in, but in the end, if I think your safety or health or something else important to us is compromised, we’ll do it my way and you might want to walk out on me.”

“Couples fight, Jack. No one gets along all the time, but it doesn’t mean they walk out on one another. Look at you and Ken. He’s a very strong man and definitely thinks for himself. You must have arguments.”

“He knows my triggers and he backs off when we hit one. He accepts me the way I am. Believe me, Briony, if I could, I’d be different.”

“What happened today was a stupid mistake on my part, Jack. I put our baby in danger. I didn’t mean to, but I should have been thinking. I
asked
you to teach me. I want to learn. You had a right to be furious with me.”

“Babies,” he corrected automatically. “You’re damned lucky I didn’t turn you over my knee. I didn’t because you’re a grown woman and you’d probably take a gun and shoot me after, but I swear, Briony, you ever scare me like that again and I’ll risk it.” He pressed the heel of his hand to his pounding head. “Damn it, I know I would.”

Her fingers brushed his face. “You were so afraid for me—for us. Did you think I would blame you for being so angry?”

He could feel her struggling to understand what he was trying to tell her. He sighed. “My father was a very abusive man. He didn’t want to just love my mother—he wanted to own her. She
belonged
to him. She was his possession, and he became more and more jealous of anything or anyone—including her children.”

Memories flooded and he tried to hold them off, tried to keep from smelling the blood, Ken’s blood, his blood, tried to keep from feeling the beatings, so many of them they all blended together until he couldn’t remember not being beat. Broken bones, bruises, swollen faces, and hiding the evidence so no one would know. Moving constantly so no one would ever suspect, so none of them could make friends—so no one ever shared his mother, cared for his mother.

His fingers tightened around hers, his thumb sliding over the back of her hand. “I feel possessive toward you. I don’t like anyone else touching you or getting too close.”

Briony drew in her breath, frowned, thinking of Ken teasing her, laughing with her, and Jack sitting there looking so relaxed. “Tell me what happened, Jack,” Briony encouraged, because he had to get it out, needed to get it out.

“He got worse and worse, to the point where she hid us when he was drunk. He wanted us dead because we took her love away from him, because we took her time. She thought about us, tried to do for us, and God help her, she loved us. He was jealous even of his own children. Eventually she tried to leave him—for us—and he killed her.”

“Oh God, Jack. How terrible.”

“I walked outside the little shack she’d found for us and saw him standing over her with her blood covering him and the baseball bat in his hands. Ken had come up on him first and was covered in blood. He was still swinging the bat at Ken. Blood was everywhere, all over the ground, smeared on the steps, splashed on the walls, and Ken’s arms were broken—both of them.” Jack held up his hands. “I don’t even know how it got on me—probably when I jumped him to get him off of Ken, but I remember her blood on me, Ken’s blood.” He shook his head as if to clear his vision. “It was everywhere.”

She wanted to comfort him—soothe him, hold him in her arms—but there was no way to give a child comfort when he found his beloved mother murdered, and right at them moment, Jack was a young boy reliving his mother’s murder.

“I swear, I felt something in me snap, Briony. I told Ken to run, but he didn’t—he didn’t—he wouldn’t leave me.” He pressed his fingertips to his temples. “You can never wipe the memory away, no matter what you do. You can never forget the smell of blood, or the hatred in someone’s eyes. He wanted to kill us, and if he hadn’t been so greedy to make us pay—because of course it was our fault he’d had to kill her—he would have succeeded.”

Briony bit down hard on her lip to keep from allowing the small sound of horror to escape her throat. Jack was seeing every vivid detail, so much so that it was spilling over into her mind as well.

“He came at me so fast—he was always so fast—and big.” Jack looked at her. “Like me. Damn him to hell, just like me. Big beefy shoulders and arms—natural muscle, not from working out in a gym. He was strong. When he hit me, I knew he meant to kill me. She wasn’t there to stop him, and he was going to beat me to death with his bare hands. I tried to fight back, and instead of running, Ken jumped on his back to keep him off of me. Even with two broken arms, Ken tried to defend me. When I went down, my father kept hitting and kicking me, until I couldn’t breathe. I think he thought, with so much blood, and the sound of the breath rattling in my lungs and throat, that I was dying. He left me there, lying in my mother’s blood, and he turned on Ken. Ken could have gotten away, but he wouldn’t leave me.”

“Any more than you would have left him,” Briony reminded him.

“I don’t know how I got up, or where I found the strength to move, but my body had somehow separated from my mind. I didn’t feel pain. I don’t know if I was really breathing. Later, they said my ribs were caved in and it was impossible for me to stand, but I did. I could see Ken’s face, the tears running down through all the blood. And I saw
him
—the monster who ruled our lives. My world narrowed to him. I picked up the baseball bat and I took him out just the way I take out every other target—coldly, precisely, and quite thoroughly.”

“God, Jack.”

“I didn’t feel anything at all. I should have, he was my father, but I didn’t, Briony. I didn’t—and don’t—feel remorse or horror or even joy or satisfaction that he’s dead. I felt nothing then and I don’t feel anything now. When I line up a target, it’s always that same way. My mind separates and it’s nothing more than a job.”

She turned on her side, easing her body against his, sliding her arm around him. “You feel remorse when you’ve done something that hurts Ken—or me. I’ve seen it in you. You’re careful with both of us. Is that what you’re afraid of, Jack? That you won’t love the baby and that if I walked out you’d follow us and murder us? Is that really what you think you’d do? You’d try to stop us?”

“
Babies,
” he corrected automatically. “And I wouldn’t try, Briony, I
would
stop you.” He sighed, the sound more sorrowful than hopeful. “I wanted you to have a decent man.”

“You wouldn’t murder us, Jack. It’s unbelievable that you could conceive of such a thing. You wouldn’t. It isn’t in you. Of course you’d try to stop us if you loved us. Any man would. You are a decent man, you dope. You’re just a difficult man. There’s a difference. And has it ever occurred to you that you’re so afraid you’re like your father that you examine your motives way too much? People get jealous and possessive and some try to hold on too hard. You know your weaknesses and strengths. Maybe you’d go a little overboard to keep a woman you love with you, but you’d never harm her.
Never
, Jack. I don’t
think
it—I know it with absolute certainty.”

“I frighten you sometimes.”

“Everything frightens me sometimes. I’m ashamed to admit to you that I’m pretty much the biggest chicken on the face of the earth. You’re an intimidating man—a little on the ruthless side—and I never know what you’re going to do.”

“Or what I’m capable of.”

“I may not know what you’re capable of, Jack, but I do know what you’re
not
capable of. I’m a good judge of character and I’ve been in your head. You’re not capable of murdering a woman—especially one you love. As for the babies, Jack, you would never harm your own children. You’d die to protect them. You’re so far from being your father you don’t even know it.”

“I love you just the way you are, but I’d want to dominate you, insist on you doing everything my way.”

“Like I’m not aware of that? I was raised with four brothers, Jack. While I don’t consider myself submissive, I also don’t argue for the sake of it. If it’s really important to me, I’ll let you know, and if you don’t back off, I’ll probably do it anyway and you can yell all you want.”

His eyes met hers, and there was something dark and dangerous flickering there, but looking beyond that, there was something else. Something deep and enduring, an emotion she wanted to wrap herself in.

“I’m giving you a last out, Briony. I’ll get the other team to take care of you. You can stay with Lily. It’s a fortress there. She’s an anchor. You won’t feel any pain around the others.”

“I’m not with you because you’re an anchor.”

“Damn it, Briony, are you listening to anything I’ve said? If you stay with me, I’ll never let you go. I’ll make you crazy… ”

“It’s a nice kind of crazy, but if you don’t want me here… ”

He actually snarled, like a wolf. She heard the growl of anger and his hand caught hers and forced it between his legs to rub over his aching, full erection. “Does it feel like I don’t want you? I can’t think straight with wanting you, and damn it, it isn’t all about sex either. Whitney may think he overdosed us with the right pheromones, but it’s a hell of a lot more complicated than that. My need of you,
this
monster of a hard-on, comes from my heart, not just from lust.”

There was a moment, a heartbeat, when she didn’t think she’d have the courage to seduce him, to take what she wanted, but then her will took over, conquering fear as it always did. She wouldn’t let Jack Norton slip away from her because she was afraid of the unknown. She wanted him with every breath she took, not because of the craving clawing through her body and making her breasts feel swollen and achy, but because she saw inside him and loved and needed what and who he was.

“Jack,” she said softly. “You always come to bed with too many clothes on. Do you think you could do something about that for me?”

He wasn’t wearing a shirt, but he had put on the soft flannel drawstring pants in concession to her modesty. His breath hitched and his body stilled, gray eyes moving over her face with something close to hope, something close to despair, and such a dark intensity of raw desire it robbed her of breath.

“You have to be sure this is what you want, baby,” he said, even as he pushed the offending material from his body. He wasn’t strong enough to keep her safe. He wanted her so bad he could feel her in his bones, right through his skin. He’d wanted her since the moment he’d seen her again, and the longer they were together, the more he knew she was right for him.

Part of him, the sane part, nearly pushed her away, knowing the outcome, but self-preservation kicked in, and he lay back, letting her hands caress his body, with soft, sweeping strokes that sent shudders of pleasure down his spine.
Save me, then, Briony, but God help you, I hope you know what you’re doing.