Annie West - Sinful Revenge - Exquisite Revenge / The Sinful Art of Revenge / Undone by His Touch

‘Jesse, what is it? What happened?’

Her voice was muffled and she was out of breath. ‘Locked in … can’t get out … need help …’

Luc cursed his impetuosity. Carefully he tried to take Jesse’s arms from around her legs and put a hand under her jaw. His stomach clenched when he felt the unmistakable moisture of tears on her face.

She wouldn’t or couldn’t look at him. Her eyes seemed to be sightless. He recognised shock.

‘Jesse, you’re not locked in any more. The door is open. You’re here with me, Luc. It’s okay. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have locked you in.’

Jesse was shaking her head, the trembling in her body increasing. ‘No … you don’t understand. It’s my mother. She’s dead . She’s died and I can’t get out to tell anyone. He doesn’t believe me. I need to get help; I need to get out.’

Luc put his hands around Jesse’s face and turned it so she had to look at him. ‘Jesse, it’s me. Only me. Just the two of us. Your mother isn’t here.’

‘No,’ Jesse said brokenly, ‘because she’s dead . He killed her, let her die.’

Luc shook his head, trying to make sense of what she said. ‘Who killed her, Jesse?’

‘My father.’

Her voice scared him. It was so hard and flat.

Luc faintly remembered her saying that she didn’t know who her father was but clearly she did . He could feel her trembling turn into a violent shaking. Locking her into the room had obviously sent her back to some trauma in her life.

Luc cursed out loud, but Jesse was oblivious.

In one move, he stood and lifted her into his arms. He walked them both into the bathroom and put Jesse down for a moment, securing her limp body against him while he reached into the shower to turn it on. Soon steam was filling the room. He looked down at Jesse and saw how pale she was. He cursed again.

Without waiting, Luc put them both under the shower, and once under the powerful hot spray started to take off Jesse’s clothes and then his own. His heart ached in a peculiar way when he saw she was as unresisting as a child. When they were both naked he pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her, willing his body heat into her, stroking her head and back, saying nonsensical things.

He felt the moment she began to come back to herself. Tension came into her body—but a different kind of tension. She started to move, and Luc had to grit his jaw against the inevitable response in his own body. He was already as hard as a rock, and trying to angle himself in such a way so as not to draw attention to that fact.

He pulled back and looked down at Jesse. She was blinking up into his face, and a sigh of relief moved through him at the sight of colour in her cheeks again. He tried valiantly to block out the view of water running in rivulets over her pert breasts.

Reaching out, he snagged a robe and then turned off the water. He wrapped the robe around Jesse, rubbing up and down her arms and back briskly.

He stopped for a moment and looked at her. ‘Are you okay?’

JESSE looked up into Luc’s eyes. She had complete recollection of what had just happened, but it was as if it had happened to someone else. And in a way it had: to her child self.

Belatedly answering Luc’s question, she nodded abruptly. She was suddenly far too aware that she was standing in a steamy shower with a very naked Luc Sanchis. Praying that her legs would support her, she turned and stepped out of his hands into the bathroom, noticing their sodden clothes on the ground.

She found the holes for her arms in the robe and put them in, tying the belt securely around her. She felt raw, as if she’d been flayed. She heard Luc moving behind her and went into the bedroom to sit on the end of the bed. He was standing in the doorway to the bathroom with a towel around his hips. The light behind him was throwing his broad build into sharp relief, and Jesse felt that ever-present awareness curl into her belly.

He leant against the door and crossed his arms. ‘Do you want to explain what just happened?’

Jesse gulped and looked away. The strength of her reaction to being locked into the room scared her. She knew she’d always had a thing about it, but somehow here her past was reaching up to grip her around the neck with an ease that terrified her. She felt a strong urge to articulate it—as if she knew that it might be the only way to stop it happening again.

She glanced back to Luc and saw the lines of his face, intent and serious. She looked down at her lap and plucked at a stray thread.

‘When I was nine I was locked into a room with my mother for a night. She was sick, and during the night she died … I couldn’t get out. No one could hear me. I was with her dead body until someone finally opened the door the next day.’

‘Hell …’

She heard Luc moving, the muffled sound of a chair being moved across the floor, and then he was sitting in front of her, taking her hands. Reluctantly she looked at him, and the expression on his face made her feel a swooping sensation in her belly.

‘How on earth could something like that happen?’

Jesse grimaced. ‘I knew she was very ill. She’d been sick for days but hadn’t gone to the doctor … I went to get help, but he wouldn’t listen to me.’

‘You mentioned your father just now … Was it your father you asked for help?’

Jesse nodded. She felt numb inside. ‘He was hosting a dinner party that night. He was drunk and didn’t want to be disturbed. He took me back to the bedroom and told me to stop bothering him. When I went after him again he locked me in …’

Jesse remembered her father lurching unsteadily over to her mother in the bed and feeling her clammy forehead before declaring, ‘She’s fine. It’s just a cold.’

She looked at Luc, needing to erase that memory of her father.

‘By the time morning came and someone opened the door she was dead—had been for hours …’

Luc frowned. ‘Where was your father?’

Jesse shrugged. ‘At work …’

Luc frowned, and then he said, ‘But earlier you locked the door to the study …’

Jesse blushed. ‘I just pretended to lock it.’

Luc’s mouth tipped up wryly. ‘I didn’t even think to test it.’

Something infinitely delicate seemed to stretch between them at that moment.

Luc gripped Jesse’s hands tighter. ‘I’m sorry for locking you in. If I’d had any idea—’

Jesse put her hand over his mouth, and took it away again quickly when his warm breath feathered against her palm. ‘You weren’t to know. I didn’t know I’d react like that.’ She ducked her head. ‘It’s embarrassing.’

Luc tipped up her chin and looked at her. ‘No, it’s not embarrassing. Your father was a monster, Jesse, to do that to you and your mother.’

‘Yes, he was.’

‘Is that why you told me you didn’t know who your father was? Because you don’t like to talk about him?’

Jesse felt guilty. ‘Something like that.’

To her surprise Luc stood up, and Jesse blushed when she registered what part of his anatomy her eyes were on a level with.

He stepped back and said lightly, ‘You must be tired. You should get some rest.’

Jesse stood up too, some of those tendrils of icy panic reaching out for her again at the prospect of Luc walking out. Without thinking she put out a hand, curling it around his wrist. It felt vital and alive beneath her palm. His pulse was strong and powerful. She suddenly knew that she needed this, needed him, as she’d never needed anything before in her life. Right in that moment she trusted him implicitly.

Huskily she said, ‘Please don’t leave me alone.’