FRACTURED (10 page)

I shrugged, biting my lip to fight back the tears welling in my eyes.

He turned away from me, pacing the room as he ran his hand through his hair slowly.

Then he put it through my wall.

“Fuck!” he yelled, slamming his other arm against my bedroom door. His anger startled me, and I once again found myself shaking uncontrollably. The rage that had simmered was bubbling over again.

Whatever shield he had in place wasn't capable of retaining that.

“This is not what I wanted,” he grumbled, his words coming from deep within his chest. “Not what I planned.” I said nothing in response, thinking that playing possum on the window seat was the best game plan.

He seemed to be talking more to himself anyway. “
She's
the one who needs to pay,” he said aloud as he paced alongside my bed. “Not you.

This is all
her
fault, and now she's conveniently gone.”

“Sean?” I asked, moving towards the edge of the seat. I'd never seen him so unraveled, uncomposed―unhinged.

“Do you have any idea how
maddening
losing you has been?”

He jumped the bed in a single, effortless leap to land right at my feet. “All this time,” he said, staring out the window above me with vengeful eyes that seemed to fluctuate in color by the second. “All this time I thought you
chose
to leave me...wanted to escape me, and yet here you are.”

In that moment, I did want to escape him.

“Why would I choose to leave you when I only just got you, Sean?

That makes no sense,” I protested gently, reaching for him before dropping my arm to my side.

“And you're the queen of rational thought?” he asked in a mocking tone, his dark eyes overtaking him.

“Hey! You have no idea what I did to keep you safe. I
begged
Scarlet. Threatened her. Did everything I could think of to make her stop Matty. In the end, she did it to avoid her own destiny. She knew Matty was becoming what made him and she would not be suffocated by his love,” I said, standing to face him finally. Apparently, submission wasn't what Sean wanted after all. He appeared to want to know that I had some skin in the game and that I didn't just walk out on him at the most convenient opportunity. I could give him that in spades. “All I thought about when I was locked away in my own body was how I could get out and get to
you,”
I told him, steeling myself against his glare. “
You
consumed my every thought. I didn't even know if you’d survived, Sean!”

He gave me nothing in response but a steady stare.

“You want to know the first thing I said when I woke up in Janner's cabin?”

Again, he gave me nothing.

“Is he alive?” I shouted, ramming my palm into his chest, his heart.

“I asked them if
you
were alive! So don't you get all fucking pity party on me, like this whole thing has been a vacation for me. Do you know how maddening losing
you
has been? How crazy I made myself in my darkened prison, wondering if I was ever going to come home to you at all, and if I did, and you were still alive, wondering if you'd ever want to have me again? You wouldn't even talk to me when Cooper called you! I thought we were over, Sean, over...and that you hated me so much you couldn't muster the decency to tell me. Not even over the phone.”

With my face so near him, I could finally see a flinch of emotion, however fleeting it was. All it left behind was the tiniest trace of green in the blackened pools of his eyes.

“I'm sorry, Sean. I'm so sorry that I couldn't trust you with what I thought I'd done to Matty. But you have to understand that you don't make it easy for me,” I said, collapsing back down to the seat behind me.

“When reactions like this,” I said, waving my hand at him, “are what I can expect, I tend to choose a different course.”

“What I did tonight...,” he said, pausing slightly. “It had a purpose.”

“Scaring the shit out of me is one helluva way to make your point.”

“I didn't do it to scare
you
,” he said, eyes blazing. “I did it to get to
her. She
was going to pay for her actions, not you.”

A flash of nerves ignited down my spine at his words.

“But Scarlet doesn't feel pain, Sean,” I admitted softly. “All you would have done was hurt
me...
”

He looked stunned for a moment, then I realized that maybe that was yet another little detail I hadn't bothered to share with him over time.

“I didn't know,” he said quietly. “I just...there's so much anger. I needed to get it out. Needed someone else to share my burden.”

Fear washed over him quickly, overriding whatever emotional barrier he had erected earlier, and he pulled me to my feet, yanking my coat open to access the neckline of my dress. He drew it down gently, then ran his hand delicately over my collarbones and across my sternum, examining any damage I’d sustained when he’d pinned me to the wall.

“It's hard loving something so fragile...”

“I know,” I whispered, turning away from him. His statement was an observation of my physical fragility. Mine was of his emotional one.

With that realization, his reactions made far more sense. His rage wasn't driven by fear at all, and, as that anger waned, all I could sense was guilt. Guilt and need.

“I want nothing more than to be the man you need right now...the man you had hoped to come back to,” he said, walking away from me, distancing himself from the moment we'd just had. "But I can't. I don't know how to explain it to you. No matter how much my mind knows that you are not at fault―that you are not to blame―a part of me still wants someone to pay.” His eyes wouldn't meet mine when he expressed something about himself that he clearly detested―a dichotomous nature that I, of all people, could easily wrap my mind around. “I
need
someone to pay. The beast will not rest until then...”

“Beast?” I asked hesitantly.

“My rage, bloodlust, black void of hatred―whatever you wish to call it. It cannot be quieted. I'm fighting for control every second I'm here with you now. Can't you feel it?”

And boy, could I.

“Yes, but there has to be a way to fix it...isn't there?” I asked beseechingly. “If Scarlet never returns, it can't be like this forever. You can't feel this way every time you see me, can you?"

He looked up at my pleading eyes. All I saw was a sadness so deep that it threatened to engulf me. Then it disappeared entirely, leaving only the menacing blackness that had dominated just moments before. With the return of that pigment came the return of his rage.

“And if there was a way?” he asked, stalking toward me slowly.

“I would take it.” The confidence in my words was directly contradicted by the knocking of my knees. Dark-eyed Sean was not easy to get used to having around, especially when I was the subject of his undivided attention.

“Do you trust me enough?”

“To do what?”

“To take that option?” he asked, meticulously assessing my every response. “To not harm you...”

“What are you going to do?”

“There are only two ways to release what I feel right now,” he told me, his voice cold as ice. “Killing you is clearly not an option..." His words trailed off as though, whatever option number two was, it may not have been favorable either. It made me glad that I hadn't directly answered his question about trusting him, given that my personal jury was still out on that matter at the moment.

“And the other option...?”

He spun me around and pulled my back firmly against his chest in a flash, holding onto my arms in an effort to keep me there. He exhaled heavily in my hair while he struggled to keep his breathing controlled.

“Tell me you
need
me,” he said, rubbing his face slowly through my curls.

A jolt of fear shot through me, and I fought hard to overcome it.

“I need you,” I told him, my voice so quiet the words were barely audible.

A small rumble of satisfaction vibrated through his chest and into my back.

“Tell me you
love
me,” he demanded, his nose gently stroking the lobe of my ear.

“I love you,” I replied as my pulse quickened.

The rumble became stronger as he nipped my neck with his teeth.

Suddenly, I felt the raw sense of need coursing through him, and, as a result, through me. It quickly started to make more sense to me why he was so concerned about my trust in him. He knew he was about to tread on unstable ground for me―ground that I had only begun to reinforce before Scarlet abducted me. Even in all his menacing wonder, he still did not wish to harm me, physically or otherwise. Not even to meet his most inborn instincts.

“Tell me you
want
me,” he growled in my ear, his hold on me tightening.

“I want you,” I said, finding it hard to breathe, my mouth too dry to even swallow.

When his hands found their way to the hem of my dress, one thrust it up above my waist, the other plummeting down my pantyhose and underwear, settling on its clandestine destination.

“Say it again,” he ordered, body motionless, as if awaiting my permission to continue. My breath caught in my throat while I tried to respond.

“Sean―”

The second his name passed my lips, his hand instantly worked against the restrictive spandex surrounding it, furiously rubbing my body into a frenzy. My mind was overwhelmed, and I could barely process his words.

When his hand stopped and I caught my breath, I was able to comprehend.

“Say. It. Again.”

To reassure him that I understood, I pressed my body back into him as firmly as I could―as much as the weakness in my knees would allow.

“I want you,” I sighed, reaching my arm back over my head to touch his face. “Now.”

He intercepted my hand, pulling my arm back down to my side.

“No, no, no, little one. I'll be giving the orders tonight,” he whispered in my ear before violently pulling my underwear and tights down around my ankles. “I hope Cooper and the boys are out for a while.

I plan on taking my time.”

When his hand found me again, I gasped, trying to remain upright, but luckily for me, that wasn't part of his plan. Before I knew it my chest was pressed tightly to the window seat, arms splayed out beside me. I felt him press against me, the rumbling sound in his chest returning.

“I need you to know that I love you, Ruby,” he told me, sounding business-like. “Now tell me to fuck you...”

10

I startled awake in the middle of the night, shooting up in bed, still tangled in the covers. Beside me was nothing but empty mattress. He was gone.

I sighed heavily, slumping against my vintage wooden headboard.

I'd been naïve to think that everything would be fine after our encounter, which made me feel ridiculous for letting it happen in the first place. My head collapsed into my knees, which were tucked tightly against my chest, while I groaned in frustration with the situation as well as my stupidity.

“I'm over here,” a voice called from the shadows. My head snapped to attention, searching the darkness for Sean's location. It took me a moment to make him out, but sure enough, he sat motionless in my armchair tucked in the far corner of the room. “I was concerned that the
enthusiasm
you showed earlier might have worn off by the time you woke up. I thought it best to leave you some space,” he explained, moving into the scant light the moon provided. “I didn't leave you...” His voice was tender and soft―my heart nearly melted. Such a stark contrast to the brute who only hours early had demanded my love. Now, the man left behind was scared he may have lost it.

“So, you've just been sitting here, watching me sleep?” I asked curiously, trying to lighten his mood slightly.

“You'd be surprised,” he said with a subtle curl of his mouth. “It's highly entertaining at times.”

I forced a smile in return, but he saw right through me as always.

“Do you want me to go?” he asked, his words again carrying a rare softness.

I didn't know what I wanted. Only hours earlier I'd gone through a roller coaster ride of emotional highs and lows that still had my head reeling. It's what woke me up in the first place. When Sean came into my apartment, my heart skipped a beat―granted that was partly fear driven―but his effect on me was still as intact as mine was on him.

Regardless, his anger remained, and given how the whole thing went down, he was completely ill-equipped to deal with that anger.

As for the sex, that was the most complicated event of the evening. I couldn't explain it, but somehow I knew he
needed
that, not only for a release, but also for something deeper, darker―a punishment of sorts, meant to prove that he still had some level of control over me. As barbaric as that sounded, I understood it. It wasn't sex with the Sean I'd been with before, the green-eyed god who had saved me more times than I could remember. I’d had sex with his other half, his inner Scarlet, the black-eyed mercenary I'd grown to know and fear, and although he was intense, dominating, even brutal at times, I learned a very important fact from all of that.
He
loved me too. Both sides of Sean loved me equally, though they had decidedly different ways of expressing it. Submitting to him was exactly what he'd needed to move past his rage.

“I'll go,” he said, making his way to the door.

“No!” I blurted out as I stumbled out of the bed, wrapped in my comforter. I crashed to the ground before scrambling inelegantly to my feet. “I'm sorry. I was thinking about something.”

“And?” he said, pausing by the door.

“I think I get it...what happened last night—” I started before Sean cut me off, looking moderately embarrassed.

“Ruby, I—”

“You forgive me now,” I said, taking my turn to interrupt him. “You
both
do.”

I hesitated with my last statement, unsure that he would follow what I was attempting to say. Instead, he looked at me with wide eyes that clearly got my message.

“That's why you had to...why we...” I fumbled, trying to find a delicate way to describe the raw, angry sex that had occurred in my room that night. “It's like you have two sides too, but not literally, and yours isn't a wolf. It's something else, but oddly similar.
He
needed that from me―for me to
let
him have that, didn't he...er, uh, you? Am I making any sense here, or―”