Hidden Currents (35 page)

She reached out a hand to him, but he jerked away from her, backing to the other side of the bed, feet on the floor, hands still rubbing over his face in agitation.

“Jackson—”

“Don’t. Just fucking don’t. Call Sarah and tell her to come and get you. I’ll come over in the morning. Take Bomber with you.”

“I don’t think so.”

Temper hissed in her voice, making him turn his head and meet her glittering gaze. “What did you say to me?” he asked, his own voice lowering, taking on an edge.

“You heard me very well, Jackson. I’m not leaving. You had a nightmare. A flashback. Whatever. It happened. We’ll deal with it.”

He glared at her. “Are you out of your mind, Elle? I could have shoved that knife in your throat. Right then, in that moment, you were the enemy. You sat there looking at me, totally without defending yourself. You didn’t even put up your damn hands. Who does that, Elle? Lies there offering herself up like some sacrifice?”

“I didn’t want to add to your nightmare. I just talked to you to bring you out of it.”

Now her voice irritated him. She’d gone all soft again, understanding. He leapt up, paced across the room to his jeans and dragged them over his hips. “Well, you didn’t talk me out of it, did you, Elle? You became part of it. And I could have woken up with a knife sticking out of your belly and my hand on the hilt.”

“Nothing happened, Jackson,” she said, obviously struggling to keep her voice soothing.

“Don’t use that voice on me. I’m not a fucking child.”

“You’re certainly acting like one. You think by saying ‘fuck’ to me that makes you Jackson the badass? I’m not afraid of you, Jackson.”

He swung around, crossing back to her side of the bed with purposeful, long strokes, deliberately looming over her. “Well maybe you should be.”

She refused to drop her gaze. “I’ll
never
be afraid of you. Not if you come at me with a knife and not if you yell the ‘F’ word at the top of your lungs. I love you. I’m in your mind. You’d never hurt me, not for any reason. So get over your big bad mood.”

He glared at her again. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re not the most soothing woman in the world?”

“The idea isn’t to be soothing,” Elle said, “it’s to knock some sense into your incredibly thick skull.”

They stared at each other, Jackson breathing heavily. He shook his head, looking away first. “Damn you, Elle. You don’t seem to have one ounce of self-preservation left in you. Do you think this won’t happen again? It happens on a regular basis. I’ve stabbed the mattress more than once. I don’t sleep for days on end. It isn’t going to stop.”

“No, you’re right, it isn’t going to stop. You have scars on your body, Jackson, and the worst ones are where no one else can see them. They aren’t going to disappear. You said that to me, because you’ve lived it and you know. What happened is a part of you. Sometimes everything will be fine, and other times it won’t.”

She threw his words back in his face. If they were good enough for him to tell her, then they were good enough for him to live by. “That’s just going to be a part of our lives. I can live with it. And you’ll have to live with my scars, because believe me, Jackson, I have plenty of them. You told me what happened to me wouldn’t come between us. I’m not a coward, and I love you. I refuse to walk away and you’re damned well not walking away from me.”

She stood up, stepped right up to him, refusing to be intimidated by him. “Not after you made me live. Not after your promises to me. You don’t have that option.” He stood there, looking back at her, his black eyes glittering with heat. He looked savage, mean even, but she didn’t blink, staring up at him defiantly, even accusingly.

“Do you know what they made me into, Elle? You think I was an animal crawling on that floor, blind and sick and broken. I was a monster learning hatred, finding ice in my veins, a place I can go where I feel
nothing
—nothing at all. A place I can go to kill. That’s what you’re living with. That’s who I am. That’s what Kate saw that night.”

She didn’t flinch or turn away as he expected—as she should have. Her eyes softened and he saw—
love.
“Kate saw what I see. A man who tries to save the world. A man who doesn’t run from a fight. One who stands and can always be counted on. When I was alone and terrified and half out of my mind with pain and revulsion and even shame, I knew absolutely without a shadow of a doubt that you would come for me. I knew you would never stop looking, no matter how many weeks, months, even years. I knew it in my head, in my heart and in my very soul. That’s the man you are. That’s the man I see standing in front of me. And if you don’t see him, get your ass in the bathroom and look in the mirror.”

Jackson felt a burning behind his eyes. His throat was raw. She was a stick of dynamite when she got going, she always had been. He loved her so much it terrified him. He’d never needed anyone. He’d never wanted anyone. Elle was different. She’d taken hold of his heart and there was no getting it back. He was a danger to her, maybe to others, but she just stood there in front of him, small and delicate and made of steel.

He damn well wasn’t going to let her see him cry. He turned on his heel and left the bedroom, striding down the hall in the dark, toward the one room in his home where he could lose himself. He didn’t bother with lights; whenever he was like this, restless and edgy and screaming with rage inside, he needed the darkness and shadows.

Outside the windows the mist had enclosed the house like a blanket, cocooning them in a mystic embrace. The wind blew through the trees so that they swayed and danced outside and when he stood at the window, he could see vines growing up along the fence, thick and strong, entwined around everything, with heavy sprays of blossoms. Those flowers grew thick and strong all along the Drake home’s fences—and they bloomed through the winter season.

He shook his head and turned away from the strange phenomenon and looked at his masterpiece—the one thing that made sense to him when the world was all wrong. The baby grand piano was beautiful. The lines, the shiny black, the ivory keys—he’d spent a fortune on it and it had been worth every penny. Perfectly in tune, without a single blemish, it was as beautiful to him as the music it created.

He sat on the bench and placed his fingers over the keys and everything in him that had been chaotic and wrong settled. He closed his eyes and let his fingers drift over the keys, listening to the pure notes that poured from the instrument, a perfect pitch, a melody from another place, somewhere without sadistic maniacs, without rape and torture, somewhere his mind could go and see the beauty of the world around him.

The music allowed him to see the ocean, the waves crashing, ebbing and flowing like the earth’s lifeblood. He could feel the pulse of the earth, the hills and mountains rising majestically in the minor and major chords as the music flowed from him into the keys and out again into the room, filling it with the sound of peace, giving him a sense of peace.

And Elle, beautiful, fiery Elle. He was more broken over Elle than what had happened to him. He could escape his own past, he could let hatred and rage for his captors fade and die in him, but not Gratsos. He couldn’t live with the threat of Gratsos hanging over Elle’s head. The way the man terrorized her, the way the man had treated her. He could live with a lot of things, but not that. He knew he would hunt Gratsos and he would kill him and he would have to come back home and face her. He couldn’t live without removing the man from the earth permanently and he wasn’t certain she could live with him once he’d done it. His heart stumbled and so did his fingers.

He let the music carry him away from his thoughts and back to what was his world. Back to sanity and peace. Elle. His fingers flew over the keys, pouring passion and fire into his concerto, seeing her in his mind with her long red hair spilling around him like a silken, fiery waterfall. Her skin, so soft, pale in the darkness, rose petals in the candlelight, his hands moving over her body, taking her into his, shaping and memorizing every sweet curve.

He closed his eyes and made love to her with his music, joined them in his mind without even knowing he did so. Each separate note was a stroke, a caress, a gift to her. The song was his message of love, one he could never adequately say, but this instrument could and did, the melody rising with his own passion.

Elle watched Jackson play, his head bent over the keyboard, eyes closed, body swaying as the music moved through him, out his hands and into the instrument. She stood in the doorway looking at his face. He was completely absorbed in the music, his fingers moving over the keys, his thoughts far away. He was in the shadows, with just the small glow of candles allowing her to see his expression. She knew he had the heart of a warrior, fierce and loyal and deadly in a fight, yet looking at him now, she knew he had the soul of a poet.

She looked around the room. It was obviously built for the acoustics and the sound was incredible. There was a gas fireplace built into the wall and the hardwood floors gleamed. Near the fireplace was a thick carpet with two deep armchairs and a small table between them. Little else, other than candles, decorated the room. The candles gave off a soft light, but otherwise the room was veiled in shadows, just as Jackson often was.

Jackson stole her breath with his song, with the images in his mind. The notes played over her body, teasing her senses into a leaping fire until she couldn’t take a breath without breathing him in. She ached inside with need for him, with the need to please him, to take him from that dark place inside him, to sheer bliss, to the ecstasy of his music.

She entered the room, padding across the floor to the fireplace to light it. Flames glowed a mixture of gold and red, low, just skimming over the logs almost in time to the music flowing around her. She felt different with the music, the pulse beating through her, stealing her fears away. The lower notes resonated deep in her most feminine core, throbbing there so that the sensation traveled through her body like a molten stream of notes, teasing over her skin and tweaking her nipples into hard peaks.

She took her time, going back for pillows and a light blanket, arranging them on the thick rug in front of the fire. This room was safe. No one, nothing, could get in and disturb their world here. She added a few long-burning candles to the rock mantelpiece above the fireplace and lit them before signaling to Bomber to lay outside the door for added protection, an amazing warning system. Then she closed the door firmly, shutting the two of them into the room and the rest of the world out.

She closed her eyes and listened to the music as it swelled in volume. She could feel her heart pounding in rhythm to the melody. She let it take her away to another place, somewhere sensual, the heat spreading through her body as she stepped out of her drawstring pants, folded them neatly and set them aside along with her underwear. She unbuttoned the long shirt and folded it next, placing it on top of the pants. Only when she was completely naked did she turn and pad quietly across the hardwood floor to stand behind Jackson.

She leaned over his back, her arms circling his neck, pressing her body against his bare skin while her mouth drifted over his neck in time to the sensual music flooding her body with wicked heat. Her teeth nipped, found his earlobe and tugged. His playing changed, the notes building from sheer passion to a swelling climax.

Her heart beat faster and her body ached for him, empty and needing him to fill her. She kissed her way down his spine, taking her time, the pads of her fingers sliding over his muscles, tracing scars while her mouth followed, soft and persuasive, kissing and licking, occasionally nipping. She went to her knees, her face pressed against his lower back while her arms slid around him, hands at the waistband of his low-slung jeans.

She felt his swift intake of breath, his body going still. She felt his mind move against hers, the waves of pleasure as she slowly opened the front of his jeans. He wore no underwear. She’d seen him pull his jeans over his hips, and his erection was thick and heavy, straining to be free. She moved her head around to his side so she could lick and nip at his ribs and lower along his hip as her fingers stroked and caressed and played along his thick shaft, following the movement of his fingers on the piano keys. The music swelled as did his shaft, and she cupped him lower, first at the base and then lower still, caressing the sensitive ball sac.

He lost his breath in a rush of heat. There was no hesitation in his mind, no questions as he turned to her, no fear that she might reject him. Like Elle, he seemed to have the same sense that this room was sacred and no one could touch them here.

He turned all the way around on the piano bench, his hands framing her face, urging her to look up at him. Elle never once stopped the caresses along his shaft, sliding her hand up and over him, moving between his thighs as she lifted her face for his kiss. He took her mouth with a tenderness that brought tears to her eyes. She tasted love. She tasted belonging.

“Make love to me, Jackson,” she whispered. “Make me yours.”

“You are mine, Elle. You always have been.”

He stood up, holding her gaze with his as he pushed the jeans down and kicked them away. He drew her up and found her mouth again, fusing them together and this time, his kiss was a demand, a promise, a taking.

He lifted her in strong arms and laid her over the piano, exerting pressure with one hand until she complied with his unspoken demand and lay back, giving him full access to her body. He kissed his way up her calves, then her inner thighs, before draping her legs over his broad shoulders. She looked so beautiful lying there, completely open and vulnerable to him, no fear, only trust on her face, only need in her eyes. He smiled at her, a wicked smile filled with the promise of pleasure and lowered his head to trail a series of bites inside her upper thighs.

Elle’s breath exploded from her lungs. His tongue rasped a long velvet caress over the stinging little nips. Deep inside, her temperature shot straight to raging inferno. He stroked his fingers over her sex and she shuddered. He smiled at her, another wicked smirk that sent her heart climbing into her throat. She couldn’t take her eyes from his face. The lust carved there, the love blazing in his eyes. He slowly sank his finger into her tight, wet channel, and she cried out, her heart giving another unexpected lurch as his eyes darkened and blazed.