Sweet Seduction Shadow (16 page)

He'd probably never had to. How many women in his life would have caused this kind of trouble? Not many. Just me. I decided I'd make sure he didn't ever regret revealing himself here, in front of these people. I took a step forward, wormed my way under his right shoulder, and wrapped his Tiki tattooed arm around my frame. He let a huff of air out and pulled me closer. Every single eye in the room was trained on us. A strange mixture of disbelief, shock and wonder graced their faces.

Shit. Had they never seen Ben be affectionate to a woman before?

Someone let a low whistle out; a release of tension that seemed to set a domino effect off. One by one the men in the room began to relax. The whole dynamic shifted. Pressure subsided, relief rushed in. Ben curled me further into his frame, his left hand came up and cupped my cheek, pressing me gently into his chest. I wrapped both arms around him and grew strength from his warmth. I was right. Ben Tamati
was
my giant. Even when he'd doubted,
I
had seen the truth for both of us.

I almost wanted to sob with utter relief. For so long I've been alone, for so long I've had to look out for myself because no one else did. But in this brief moment, when faced with accusations and adversity, Ben Tamati stood up for me.

A little more of my heart cracked open. And when he leant down, in front of all those still watching, curious gazes, and kissed me on the temple, the crack burst open further. The sound of me letting him in, a deafening roar inside my head. I wondered whether something similar was happening inside of him too.

"Well," Nick finally said, breaking the silence. "I guess that settles that. Abi is one of us. If you don't like it, you can fucking leave. There's the door," he pointed at the door. No one moved an inch. Not even Koki. "Now more than ever, we stick together. We back each other up. This is a family," he said and received various noises of agreement in response. "If one of us needs our help, we come running. We do not leave a man behind. Clear?"

"Clear," rang out in unison from each man in the room. My eyes shifted over the congregated group. A sense of utter astonishment washing through me. Just like that, I was part of their "family". I didn't quite understand it, but it was plain to see, that whatever they'd just witnessed from Ben, was enough for Nick to issue the command and they'd accept it. As my gaze came to rest on Eva, she offered a warm smile in return. I tried to smile back, but my lips were frozen shut. Ben simply reached down and cupped my chin with his finger and thumb, tilted my head up and laid a soft kiss against my lips.

They melted immediately and I heard Eva chuckle softly at the sight.

"So, when should we expect Pierce?" Nick asked, getting up off his chair and stretching. He grimaced slightly at the pain still obvious in his injured shoulder. He brushed it off with a beaming smile at his woman, when Eva crossed her arms over her chest and started tapping her booted foot on the floor.

"He's pulling into parking right now," Eric replied, enlarging the screen which showed where the garage underground was.

"Please tell me the door isn't still open?" Nick asked, not happy with the fact he could see this Pierce person parking his car already.

"Course not, boss. We're in lock-down. I made him wait fifteen minutes while we sorted this mess out, then buzzed him in."

Nick smiled at Eric, who smiled back.

"Fucking brilliant," Nick announced. "He's probably wound up tighter than a jack-in-the-box." He didn't sound overly upset by that fact. "OK," he added, "you all know what to do. Check up on your families, grab a room and make it yours. No one leaves until we get an indication of what we're up against with King. Time for vigilance. Now get going."

The room dispersed within a matter of seconds. Some men offering a small apologetic smile toward me as they passed. Koki looked a strange mixture of contrition and lingering doubt. He wasn't completely won over, but I think he regretted the scene he'd caused right now. I guess that was as close to an apology as I'd get. As he brushed past us, Ben actually growled and took one menacing step towards him. If Koki wasn't such a staunch man I think he would have yelped at the look on Ben's face.

In the end, it was just Ben, me, Eric at the screens, Eva and Nick left in the room.

"I gather you have evidence to back this up with Pierce?" Nick asked Ben.

"Nothin' solid, just what I've observed. But when has he not acted on that?" Ben replied steadily.

Nick's eyes trailed over where Ben and I were still connected; wrapped up in his arms, flush against his chest. Protected. Claimed. His.

"You've never given him evidence like this," Nick pointed out, careful to phrase his words non-threateningly.

"He only has to listen to her side of the story and he'll be convinced," Ben answered, confidence in every syllable.

I had no idea who this Pierce was I needed to convince, but I understood the gravity from the men's look alone. I had Ben on my side, and by extension his boss Nick. Both pretty formidable people, I was picking. But I knew my battles today were not over. I just couldn't stop feeling petrified of who or what this Pierce person was, and what it would ultimately mean for me.

I'd just found Ben. He'd just let me in. He'd shouted to the world I was his. I didn't have any desire to lose him. I really didn't. I was done with this running. With this looking over my shoulder and living in fear. I was so done.

I sagged against Ben, he took my weight, well aware I was at the end of my ability to cope.

"Can you stall him?" Ben asked, voice gravelly and delicious against my skin as he scooped me up before I collapsed completely. I was vaguely aware of the shocked and worried looks on both Nick's and Eva's faces. I couldn't see Eric from where I was cocooned in Ben's strong arms. Ben tucked my face into his neck protectively, but must have received a nod of Nick's head in reply, because he took a step towards the door and said, "I'm claiming the safe room for Abi and me. Give us ten minutes and we'll meet Pierce in interrogation room one."

It sounded so formal; an interrogation room. It sounded so final. I had the unusual sense that this was a pivotal moment in my escape from Roan McLaren. I couldn't be sure, but something told me, that this
interrogation
was going to spell out the rest of my life.

And the outcome could go only one of two ways.

Freedom.

Or Roan.

Ben carried me down a corridor and around the corner. We didn't cross anyone's path. He came to a room, stood still for a moment, looking up at a camera on the ceiling, and then when the door clicked open, kicked it softly with his boot to make our way inside. He walked over to a bed, after the door swung shut behind us, and lay me gently down on the mattress.

He stood there for a moment and just looked at me. There was a sense of wonder on his face, a look of utter disbelief mixed with a little shock, I think. But not the kind of shock that indicates an unwanted surprise, this was more of a Christmas morning wake-up, to exactly what you wanted sitting under the tree.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, voice so low and rough it was hard to make the words out.

I shook my head to indicate no.

"Do you need something to eat?" he asked, same rough, low voice.

Again a shake of my head to say no. I couldn't stomach food right now and I couldn't open my mouth to speak. He ran a hand through his hair, then left his palm wrapped around the back of his neck. Eyes still on me.

"I'm no good at this," he declared almost in a roughened whisper. "I don't know what to say," he added, before I had a chance to acknowledge that last statement. "Back there," he removed his hand from his neck and pointed in what I guessed was the direction of the room we'd just been in, "it was a gut reaction. I didn't have to think." Oh shit. I sat up on the bed and crossed my legs, lotus style, all the better to face his next words. "I wanted to tear his head off. It took everything in me not to break his fuckin' neck." Oh. Good news, not bad. I came up onto my knees before him, but he kept talking, this time as he began to pace across the floor at the end of the bed. "They know me," he said, breaths coming a little too quickly. It pained me inside to see him so upset. "I don't get involved. I don't show my hand. When I want somethin', I take it. But not in front of them."

I had the sudden feeling that this was a heartfelt speech. This was Ben opening up to me. Peeling off a bandage and letting me see him raw. I sat back on my heels and just watched him. If he wanted me to see this, then I wouldn't even blink.

"You," he said, his eyes flicking towards my face and then just as quickly averting his gaze again. The pacing continued. "You came into my life and tipped it upside down. I didn't believe it at first. I refused to believe anyone could get to me, the way you did. You were a mark. A fuckin' mark! And I found myself sitting outside your bedroom window for reasons other than I was paid to do."

My eyebrows rose on those revealing words. Shit. Ben outside my open window, the scent of his cologne wafting in. What did I say to that?

Ben stopped pacing and looked me in the eye, taking in my surprise, letting my reaction sink in.

"Sick, huh?" he said softly. "But that's not the worst of it. I told myself I wasn't sleepin', I wasn't restin', because
you
needed
me
." But I did. Didn't he see that? Didn't he know he was my giant, the one man meant to stand between me and the monsters in the world. Couldn't he tell? "But fuck, red. You didn't
look
like you needed me. You looked completely fuckin' in control of your world. You were Abi Merchant. Completely. Utterly that girl. Then you hopped on a fuckin' bus, three weeks after I started trailing you, three weeks after I thought I knew who you were, in a hippy skirt and beads in your fuckin' hair, and you were someone else."

He shook his head from side to side, disbelief coating his expression again. His hand rubbed the back of his neck, a movement I was beginning to see he did when really stressed.

"You were fuckin' spectacular. I knew then," he paused, licked his lips, then finished with, "that for me, you were way more than just a mark."

I let the breath, I'd been holding, out so very slowly, in the hopes he wouldn't see it. I think I failed, because his face shifted from tortured openness, to a smug sort of relief.

"Ben," I managed to get out, but he moved to sit beside me on the bed. The sudden change in positions, the sudden loss of space between us, had me sucking in breath again.

"Abi," he said taking my hand in his. Those stunning chocolate eyes held mine captive, I couldn't breathe, move, think. "I'm a fuckin' wreck. You gotta know this. I live in shadows. I hide. There's a fuckin' good reason for that, or at least, that's what I believed until ten minutes ago in the control room with you." I gathered the room we'd all just been in was what they called
control
. "If you don't open up and let anyone in, then you can't be cut in two," Ben clarified.

"You've been hurt," I blurted out, some semblance of sense coming from his words at last.

"You could say that," he murmured. I saw a battle start up behind the darkening granite chips of his eyes. I watched him wage it with himself, and then he stunned me, by saying, "I lost everything because I thought the woman I loved, loved me back." He won his internal battle, opening up a little further to me, and in the process cracked my heart a little more.

"What happened?" I asked, hoping my question was the correct move right then.

"She took everything I owned," he whispered, voice harsh. "Cleaned me out," he added, and that battle took up residence in his eyes again.

I shuffled forward, curling myself up in his lap. Words of encouragement just weren't enough right now. He needed to have unfettered access to me, unequivocal evidence that I was his. I wasn't going to run from whatever fucked up history he had. Shit, he'd run directly into mine.

"Then used the money from pawnin' it all," he continued, pulling me closer with both arms wrapped around my frame, "and got herself and my little sister high as kites. She drove the car they were in off the edge of a cliff. My sister died. She didn't. My family blamed me. I might as well have been the one who shot them up. It was my possessions that paid for the drugs. It was the woman I had introduced to my baby sister who gave them to her and drove them both off a cliff."

His head came down and rested against my chest in defeat, for a moment he just breathed through the pain of remembering. I had no words. He wasn't to blame, of course. He didn't make her steal his things and sell them. He didn't make his sister take those drugs and climb in that car stoned. He certainly didn't drive them off the cliff.

But I know this type of guilt. I have lived with it every day since just before I left the Compound. It is not explicit, it is not easily explained. But it is honest. It is just. And anyone who has experienced it, must find their own way to shoulder that weight. But he was not alone.

"Three weeks before I left Wellington I came back to the rooms I shared with my Dad to find Roan waiting," I said, softly running my hands through his dark hair, just as Eva had done for Nick.

It wasn't lost on me that the comfort and closeness I'd seen those two have, was now mine to claim also. Ben stiffened slightly at my words, but didn't shift his head from my chest. I think he knew I needed to get this out without looking him in the eyes. He understood... me. I cleared my throat and continued with this walk down reality's lane.

"He was breaking their contract." I huffed a laugh out at that. "Hardly a surprise, but had my father been there, he would have had just cause to retaliate. Even Roan's guards wouldn't have interfered, unless it became lethal for their boss. Anyway," I said, moving on from drug lord law, "he looked smug. He looked pleased with himself. Even as I slowly walked toward him, trying not to show the fear I felt at being alone in the hallway with that man, my gut clenched at what he had to tell me."

Ben sat up then and laid a kiss against my cheek. He pulled me closer, twisting me in his lap, so I had his support at my back, his arms securely wrapped around my front. He was cosseting me, holding me up. He had my back, he had all of me. I didn't need to do it alone anymore, just like him. I relaxed into his hold, despite the unwanted topic.

I took a deep breath in and continued. "He gloated that there were only three more weeks until my eighteenth birthday. Until I was his. He told me, as of that moment, he was saving himself for me." I stopped for a while and had to swallow hard to work through the bile in my mouth. Ben started rocking me gently. "He said it would make him more eager," my voice became a whisper. "That I'd never forget my first night beneath him." Ben made a sound that should have frightened me, but somehow gave me strength instead. "He told me... things. That he would do to me. He was very explicit."

I stopped talking then, that was entirely too much to get out. I felt sick to my stomach, despite Roan having never gotten the chance to act out his plans. The threat he'd instilled in me that day, has remained for years. It cut deep. It was a part of me now. I wasn't sure I'd ever be rid of it, when right now, it threatened to drown me, suffocate me, break me in half.

"Abi," Ben said, giving me a gentle shake. "Red. Look at me." My eyes came up to the dark chips of Ben's. "Babe, I'm glad you're telling me this, letting me in here," he placed his hand over the side of my temple, then added, "and here," he moved the hand down to over my heart. "But I figure there's a reason why you chose now to divulge."

I nodded, still staring unseeing into his eyes.

"Red. You need to finish this. As of this second, he no longer has any right to be in here," again his hand wrapped around the side of my head, then shifted to over my heart, "or in here. Fuckin' you up for anyone else. You're mine, red. Not his. Not anymore. Let it go."

I took a deep breath in and blinked a few times, bringing myself out of the pit Roan always dragged me into, and back into the fresh air with Ben.

"I asked him, why now?" I said, voice soft and shaken. "Why stop chasing skirt three weeks before I was his. I was young, Ben. I didn't know what I was asking. I didn't know he planned for me to ask that exact thing."

"He was playin' with you, red. A cat with a mouse." I nodded.

"He laughed, said he'd had his fill that morning and then pulled a handful of photos from his pocket and splayed them in front of my face." I stopped, a pure thread of unmitigated anguish washing through me. "I don't make friends. I don't have any. My Dad told me early on it would be better if I kept to myself. I didn't understand until that moment what he meant."

"Ah fuck, Abi," Ben said, feeling my distress with me. "I swear I'm gonna kill him."

"She wasn't really a friend," I continued, feeling a strange sense of delight at his heart felt vow. "But I liked her. And I'd seen her that morning, stopped and talked, shared a joke. Someone must have told Roan. Thought she and I were close. It also didn't help that she looked a little like I did. None of that really matters, because Roan had chosen her because of
me
."

"I understand," Ben said, pulling me closer. "I understand, red. You don't have to say anything more."

"So, you see," I persisted, but took his advice and didn't say aloud what I had seen in those photos. Ben could join the dots. He didn't need the graphic images. They alone would be my burden to keep. "I know guilt. I know it well. And even that type of guilt has a rightful place. But we have to learn to live with it."

"Or it sucks us down until we are no more," Ben finished for me.

We sat in silence for minutes, that seemed like seconds, but could have been days. Comfort, acceptance and a sense of strength wrapped around me, and I hoped with all my heart, wrapped around him too. I knew Ben Tamati. And he knew me.

It didn't matter that we'd only crossed paths three weeks ago. Well for him, it was three weeks, for me it was subconsciously three weeks, but in reality only a couple of days. Time was irrelevant when you found someone who understood you. Who connected to you despite everything else. I thanked my lucky stars that I chose Auckland. That I chose Abi Merchant. That Ben was charged with shadowing me. I'd never considered myself lucky until this moment, when the reality of my luck in finding Ben, the one person in the world who really got me, sank in.

Ben finally broke our silence by saying, "This won't be easy, red." I nodded, I think I knew what he was about to say. "I'm shit at this sort of thing," he added and I just smiled. "Get a woman in my bed and I can say anything. Let them know what I want, how to please me. But the moment I step out of that... scene, I clam up. I avoid emotional confrontation. I can't express myself. Fuck, this is killin' me right now. But I want you to know," - he shifted me so I was facing him, his eyes to my eyes, our hands resting on each others shoulders - "for you I would cut out my tongue if it made me clearer. Fuck," he said throwing his head back with a disgruntled shake. "Even that doesn't make any fuckin' sense."

"Yes it does," I said, reaching up and cupping his stubble-roughened cheek with my palm. "It means you're going to try. And so will I." I smiled up at him, my hand running over the well defined muscles of his chest. For a moment, I lost my train of thought. Too many delightful ridges demanding my undivided attention.

"Red?" he murmured with that smug smile.

I shook my head to clear it. "It won't be easy. But it'll be worth it," I whispered, my voice quite deep and meaningful right then.

"Yeah, red," Ben whispered back. "So, fuckin' worth it."

We stared at each other, losing ourselves in the intense gaze of the person before us, in the moment that we had opened up and let someone else in. Like me, I was sure, Ben was in new territory; a little scared of what was happening, but a whole lot relieved to finally find someone to share our dangerous world with.