Their Virgin Mistress (Masters of Ménage #7)(89)

He sat beside her, feeling so much older than his thirty-one years. They'd never talked because he hadn't wanted to. He'd never wanted to trek down this memory lane again and remember what a mess he'd made of things by being weak. "There's nothing to tell. The scars prove everything."

She leaned forward, her midnight eyes steady on him. "Scars are what you make them, Oliver. They're reminders of the things that happened to us, but yours are lying to you. I was there, and I didn't have a bullet in me so I remember everything with perfect clarity. Yasmin walked in, called me a bitch whore-I don't know where she got that mouth-and shot you. She then talked for a really long time. Do you not remember that? She told me everything. In fact, she couldn't wait to tell me she'd been behind all of it."

Sometimes in his dreams, Yasmin kept talking while the pain in his gut had him praying for death just to put a stop to her incessant chatter. "She loved the sound of her own voice. I learned to tune her out or go mad."

Alea leaned forward. "The whole time she was talking about what she'd done, you were getting up. I kept her attention on me because I didn't want her to see that you still had so much strength."

He didn't remember that at all. He shook his head because her words didn't make any sense. "I was on the floor over there."

He pointed to a spot on the other side of the room.

"That's where you ended up, but that's not where you fell. You fell ten feet that way." She nodded to a place in front of the sofa. "If you look at the crime scene photos, you'll see a large pool of blood there. It's yours. I'm sure Tal has them buried somewhere in the records. She shot you the first time right there. You went down, but you didn't stay there."

He stared at the spot, reality shifting deep inside him. The scenario Alea described didn't match his memories. He remembered being weak and helpless and soft. He hadn't fought. He'd just lain there and waited to die like some hapless prey. "How did I end up on the opposite side of the room?"

Alea took his hand in hers. "You ended up there because you got to your feet and you attacked her. She was busy threatening me. It would have been easy for you to get to the door. At that point, you only had one bullet in your body. That wound wasn't life-threatening. The second shot was. You could have left me and saved yourself, but you didn't. You got to your feet, told her she wasn't getting away with it, and you wrapped your hands around her throat." 

Her words sparked some memory in the haze of that day. Some little whisper that told him Alea was telling him the truth he'd forgotten in the thickness of shock and pain.

I disagree, bitch.

That day was beginning to come back to him. "She said she wasn't going down for your abduction or my death. She intended to blame everything on you and me."

She said those things and he'd replied with I disagree, bitch. He remembered his mouth making the words. He'd had to force them from his throat.

Alea nodded excitedly. "Yes. She did and I tried to keep her attention on me so you could make your move."

"You didn't think I would run?"

"I knew you wouldn't. The minute I saw you forcing yourself up, I knew you would fight her. And you did. You're the reason I made it to the balcony. You're the reason I'm alive today, Oliver." There was a sheen of tears in her eyes. "I know you came here, at least in part, because you had some misguided notion that you should apologize to me. There's no need, but there is something left unsaid between us. Thank you. Thank you for being as strong as you were. Thank you for fighting."

Memories like flashes of lightning sparked through him as more of the terrible incident came back to him. He stood suddenly because the world blurred. Shock steamrolled him. "Thank you for coming. I need to be alone for a bit."

He knew he was being terribly rude, but he couldn't help it. A dam was about to open, and he couldn't contain it another second.

As she hurried to leave, he shut the door between the parlor and the bedroom. It seemed like forever before he reached the bathroom. He locked himself in and fell to the floor, cool marble beneath his hands.

He'd been wrong. For the last several years, he had been about deriding himself for his weakness, for his inability to fight, but now the day came back with righteous clarity, like a dream he'd forgotten but that lay beneath the surface of his consciousness. He remembered how hard it had been to stand that day and fend off his own wife. His legs hadn't wanted to work, but he'd forced them to. It flooded back, the sights, the sounds, her voice. The pain. And the rage. It had pooled and boiled inside him. He'd been a volcano of fury. But above the anger, there had been something else. He'd been dying and he'd refused to let Alea die, too.