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Her throat worked. “Do you think he could still be alive?”
“Fucked if I know.” His voice was raw. “I’ve done everything I can for him. All I can do is try to learn how to live my life…not knowing.”
“I see.” She turned her back. “Well. Good luck with that, Sean.”
He took a step closer, reached to touch her shoulder. “Liv—”
“No!” She wrenched away, huddling into the corner. “Don’t you dare touch me! Not after three goddamnmonthsof shutting me out! Like I didn’t matter!”
“Not true,” he said. “I thought of nothing but you!”
“Thenwhy?” she almost shrieked. “Why did you do that to me?”
He shook his head, groping for words to describe the hell of shrinking fear, the bottomless, airless pit of self-loathing. The words wouldn’t come. “I was…afraid. For you,” he started, lamely.
She gave him a narrow look. “Excuse me?”
“Stress flashbacks,” he blurted. “I guess that’s what they were. Hallucinations. Real horrific fuckers. They were so real. You would walk into the room, and I would grab you and kiss you, and all of a sudden you were dead, and I was the one that had stabbed you, or shot you, or whatever. I was scared even to see you. Scared that I could still hurt you. I thought maybe Osterman had…that he could still…oh, shit.”
Her hands moved up to cover her mouth. “Oh, God. Sean.”
“I tried medicating it,” he plodded on. “It just seemed to get worse. I thought maybe I’d snapped, gone nuts, like Dad.”
“So you decided to do the hard thing?”
The cool tone in her voice made him wince. He was still in a world of hurt, with no end in sight. He clenched his teeth, and nodded.
“Of course. Expect me to understand,” Liv raged. “You had to be alone. You had to leave me alone. Wrong move, Sean!”
“Was it? What did you want me to say?” he broke in savagely. “Hey, babe, I’ve got this little bitty problem. I keep murdering you whenever I see you. Sounds like a real confidence builder, huh?”
“It’s better than being abandoned!” She lashed out at him, flailing.
He blocked her slap, and the flurry of frenzied blows that followed it, then pinned her hands to the wall. “I never stopped loving you,” he said roughly. “It’s been tearing me to pieces.”
She shook her head. “Let go of my damn hands. I need a tissue.”
He gave her one. She blew her nose, hid her face. “Just go, Sean.”
“No,” he said. “I just can’t do that.”
She dropped her hand, and glared at him. Her curling lashes glittered with tears. He could practically hear her spine stacking up. The look of fury in her beautiful eyes rang all his bells.
“Forget it. You can’t bully me into trusting you again,” she announced. “Let go of me!”
“No.” He scooped her up before she could wiggle away and lifted her, pressing her body against the wall so that she straddled his hips. He dug his fingers into the wind whipped hair, and kissed her, hard.
It was like lightning through a wire, the need that roared through him. The emotion, the sensations. Her soft female heat pressed against his crotch, her shabby skirt twined around his legs. She shivered, fighting him even as her thighs tightened and pulsed around his.
She kissed him back, angrily, hungrily. His heart revved up.
He tilted her face up. “You love me,” he said roughly. “I can make you want me. That’s enough for now. We’ll work on trust later.”
“No way, you arrogant jerk,” she hissed. “You got it backwards.”
“No, I don’t. I understand you perfectly.” He scooped her up, hands under her ass, and carried her to the couch. He sank down, depositing her on the cushions. “But if it’s the only card I have to play, I’m goddamn well going to play it.”
She pushed his face away with shaking hands when he tried to kiss her again. “OK,” she said. “Granted, you can muscle me around. You’re very strong. And yes, you’re good at making me come. But that’s all. It ends there. When you’re done, I’ll still tell you to leave. So leave now. Spare us. It’ll just hurt that much more.”
