Chapter 8
Anna steps into the apartment like nothing's happened.
She throws her stole over the back of the sofa and stops at the mirror to take off her earrings.
"Nice evening with Wisdom, neh?" I ask her in as neutral a tone as I can manage. I thought I'd succeeded, but maybe I didn't, 'cos her eyes lift to mine in the reflection, and the look she gives me is almost quizzical.
"It was good," she says. She doesn't elaborate, and it isn't halfway to being enough information considering how touchy-feely he was gettin' with her outside. Why is she bein' so coy? She knows I saw it all.
"Good to hear," I deadpan. Or did I? Maybe I didn't. I head to the kitchen and pour myself a drink. When I turn back I see her standing in the doorway.
"If there's somethin' you want t'say," she says quietly, "just say it, Remy."
There's zero confrontation in her tone, just an invitation for me to speak what's so obviously on my mind. No confrontation – yet somethin' about those words hits me more than it would've done if she'd been pissed and screaming at me. I give a sardonic little laugh, say:
"Ya need me ta spell it out for you, chere?"
At my sarcasm, her expression hardens.
"Yes. Please. You obviously have a problem with me tonight, the way your tone's been since I got in. C'mon. Just say it."
I swear I'd hidden my thoughts better. Either I'm losin' my touch, or she's getting better at reading me than I thought.
"Ha," I can't help but snark belligerently. "You figure I'm gonna watch that li'l show Pete Wisdom put on for me out there and not respond to it?"
She's far from sympathetic with my sudden flirtation with honesty. In fact, she's hardly impressed at all.
"Seriously? You're gonna blame Pete Wisdom's little games on me?"
"Well, you were hardly pushin' him away—"
"For fuck's sake, Remy, he's a client! What am I supposed to do?!"
"Client? Pfft. Don't give me dat bullshit. Sure, he's contractin' our services, but dis ain't no normal business relationship, an' you know it!"
At my outburst, she goes still, quiet. She gives me the once over and declares in a half-enlightened, half-derisive mutter:
"You are so fucking jealous."
The words are a dismissal. She turns her back on me and walks away, just like that.
I follow her into the bedroom, my feet thumping against the wooden floor.
"Why the fuck would I be jealous of Pete-fuckin'-Wisdom?!" I shout at her.
The question has her instant attention. She whips round, her eyes sparkling coldly, snaps:
"Because you are so fucking like him, Remy! You're exactly the same kind of arrogant, egotistical, manipulative prick he is, and you can't fucking stand to look at him and see the kind of man that you are! How does it feel, huh?! To see someone who can play the game as well as you can, who can charm his way through life like you do, who can lie and cheat and steal exactly the way you lie and cheat and steal?!"
She kicks her heels into a corner and glares at me, waiting, watching, as my mind and my mouth scrabble to formulate a denial… and nothing comes out.
"What is it you're afraid of?" she continues in a blaze when I say nothing. "Are you afraid he'll lie and cheat and steal me away from you? That I'll fall for his seductions like I once fell for yours?!"
She yanks the zipper down her cocktail dress so hard I'm surprised it doesn't break. Is this what she thinks? That this is what is between us? Just some seduction? Is she really comparing me – and everythin' we've been through to get this point – to Pete-fuckin'-Wisdom?
"Non," I reply, with a quiet controlled anger I can't quite hide. "I think you're far too fuckin' clever to fall for that kinda scam, Anna."
Her smile is mirthless, almost disdainful.
"Oh, really? What if I told you that I've thought about it? More than once? Me, fucking Pete Wisdom?"
She slides the straps of her dress first down one shoulder, then the other. I clench a fist. Unclench it.
"I'd say you were tryin' to get under my skin," I murmur thickly.
"Right," she says furiously. "'Cos this all revolves around you, Remy. Around your thoughts, your feelings, your desires." She shoves the dress down over her hips and past her thighs. "But I don't belong to you, Remy. I'm not yours. I'm not anybody's!"
It's almost as if she's ranting to herself. I watch as the dress falls to her feet and she steps out of it, a single step towards me. She's staring up at me like the wildcat she once was. Still is.
Some sort of emotion is bubbling up inside me, right up under the surface, and it's ugly, it's visceral, it's unpleasant.
"If you're askin' for my permission—"
"I don't need to ask your permission for anything!" she cuts in above me in a heated rush.
I fall quiet.
Resentment is welling inside me, slapping up over the edges of my consciousness.
She came here because she wanted it, goddammit. She came here 'cos she wanted me.
"Non," I find myself saying. "You don't. You don't need my permission for anythin'."
I turn aside. I half head back into the lounge, but I stop myself. There's stuff I want to say to her, but I don't even know how to begin to broach it all right now.
And Anna… she is literally seething behind me. I can feel it.
"This ain't just about Pete Wisdom," she says between grit teeth. "Is it?"
Her voice is soft, her accent breaking through the words. I can't answer. I dunno where to begin.
"You've been shitty about this since day one," she continues. "Since Wisdom first approached us about this job, in fact. It's more than just him. It's about Logan. It's about Weapon X. Isn't it."
I turn to face her. She's standing there in her underwear, ready to fight. I don't want to fight. But it feels inevitable right now, and I'm pissed enough to go with it.
"If you know what the problem is," I snipe at her belligerently, "why even bring it the fuck up?"
"So it is the problem, huh?"
Her stance is like a panther's, about to strike, her body all wound up tight as a coil about to spring. She's a volcano about to burst, and she is pushing me in ways I hadn't thought possible till now.
"Weapon X was our past, Anna," I try to rationalise it out slowly. "We left it behind when we left the States."
Her mouth crumples into a bitter frown.
"You did," she states. "Maybe I didn't."
I shake my head at her.
"Y'can't really mean that, chere. Weapon X was some toxic shit and all it ever did was poison you. You can't want that life back, Anna. You can't."
And she glares at me like she can't believe I'd dare to presume what she can and can't want.
"It was the only life I knew!"
"Yeah," I nod. "And now? Now you have your childhood back; you have a life here. There's more to you than Weapon X, Anna. Don't let it drag you back."
I want to say more, but I can't. Honesty has never been my best quality, but I'm being honest now. The idea of her being pulled back into this thing I thought we'd both walked away from… it hurts. The truth hurts.
"This isn't my life," she bites back at me angrily. "It's yours!" She spreads her arms out with such adamant dismissiveness that I'm dumbfounded. "Everything here… it's yours! I never asked for it!"
She whirls around and stomps towards the bathroom. And I can't move. I can't say a word; I can barely formulate a thought as she yanks the door open and the lights flicker on above her.
"Anna—" I begin; but she snaps back round to face me, her green eyes flashing fire.
"This apartment is yours, not mine!" she rages. "Gavin & Lord is yours, not mine! This city was your choice – not mine! The bed we fuck in… it's yours, Remy! Not mine! The only thing I have that's mine are the things I'm good at and the memories I have of the only thing I ever knew! They're everything you came here to get away from, everything you hate! But Pete Wisdom needs them! Logan needs them! These are the things that are mine! And you can't stand the fact that someone that isn't you needs them!"
I'm stunned into silence. Until that very second, I'd never known, never even guessed, how much she resented being here. How much she resented me for bringing her here. My throat is burning. Words are pushing at my mouth, but even now they come out wrong.
"I just don't want to see you get hurt…" I murmur… and it sounds so fucking impotent.
"No," she says on a breath, her eyes bright with anger, with pain… and I don't think I've ever seen her looking so beautiful. "You just don't want to be hurt! You know the truth, Remy – that the person I am isn't the person you want me to be. Weapon X made me; it broke me too. It made me who I am today. It made Logan who he is. An empty shell without a past. He is my people, Remy. He's mine! Yah want me t'just walk away?!"
She stands there in the doorway, expecting an answer. Sure. If she wants one, I can give one. I just ain't sure it's the one she wants to hear.
"Takin' on this job ain't gonna help Logan," I tell her the truth she already knows. "It ain't gonna help you neither. You bring him back to Wisdom, you just end up enslavin' him again, the way you once were. You let Weapon X keep rulin' your life, you're gonna end up jes' the same as him."
Somehow, my words quiet her. Her body slumps; she takes a step back.
"Why can't you understand?" she asks me helplessly. "I can help Logan. I'm the only one who can. If I help him find his memories again, then I give him back what Weapon X, what MI13, took away from him – his choice." She pauses; her gaze is intense. "You gave me the same thing, Remy. You gave me back my choice. How can giving Logan the same thing be wrong?"
She knows I can't argue this point. What she doesn't understand is that everything I did for her was selfishness. I gave her back what she wanted because I wanted her. That was a risk worth taking. I gave her back her choice, knowing full well she might never choose me.
And she chose me. She chose my life and everything that came with it. I thought she was happy. I thought this was what she wanted.
Does she really want this altruistic fantasy more than this? The idea that, if she gives Logan back his past, he will – what? – choose not to be enslaved by either Weapon X or MI13? That he will somehow be saved?
"You can give him back those things, Anna," I say quietly. "But how can you be sure it'll make you feel any better about yourself?"
Her gaze hardens.
"This isn't about me, Remy."
"Yes," I counter bitterly. "It is. Essex made you t'be one thing – his fucked-up fantasy of Lady Justice. Righting the wrongs of the world. Look at you, Anna. You're exactly what he always wanted you to be. All that time you spent tryin' to run away from him, from Weapon X – and you're right back where you started. Right back to bein' Weapon-Fuckin'-Zero."
I've hurt her – hurt her in a way I don't think anything else could have. I can see it, in the way her eyes burn and her mouth goes flat. I don't care. She needs to hear this. She needs to know how fuckin' stupid she's bein'. For a few beats it feels like a Mexican standoff. When she finally turns, she slams the bathroom door shut behind her.
It's only when I hear the shower switch on that I head back to the lounge; and my vision is tunnelling, my skin is prickling with rage.
She was supposed to have chosen me.
I thought she'd chosen me, goddammit.
-oOo-
I sit in the dark and brood, the flickering, coloured lights of the TV dancing over my body.
I'm so fucking angry it's like a wildfire prickling under my skin, but deeper than that there's something else, something worse… It's a churning in my gut I can't ignore.
Fifteen minutes pass and it's still not gone.
I hear her come out the shower, and I just know she's gonna sit in the bedroom and brood like I am.
Except she don't.
Seconds later and the door to the lounge whips open… and she's standing there completely naked, looking at me. A heartbeat passes, and she opens her mouth.
"I'm sorry," she says.
I stare at her. She don't sound sorry. She sounds anythin' but.
She pauses a beat or two, then suddenly comes on over, her footsteps heavy, right into my space, dropping down to her knees right between my legs. She holds my gaze like somethin' feral I just caught and tried to cage.
"I love you," she says. Her voice is rough – almost broken – her southern accent so thick it sounds like someone else is saying it. I blink. Like a captor observing its prey, I can't trust her.
She takes in a breath, reaches out and grabs my face between her hands. She comes level with me, and I see a little – just a little – of the fire go out in her eyes.
"I love you," she says again, deeper, quieter. I believe her now.
I believe her.
Tenderness threads through the anger inside me, and I have to physically swallow it down. I know what she's playin' here. Our argument has turned me into just another enemy to her; my anger is just a challenge. She needs to squash it, she needs control. She pulls me into a kiss that's as fierce as it's passionate, and fuck if I don't respond. I want her right now. I want her in a way that's raw and brutal, in a way that will appease my sense of betrayal.
She breaks away first, barely an inch, and she looks right into my eyes and says:
"But I haveta do this. And you haveta let me."
She doesn't give me a chance to digest the words. She kisses me again, brief though rough; and then she backs up a bit, puts her hands on my hips, and yanks down my pants, all the way down to my ankles.
She doesn't break eye contact and goddamn, some sort of expression has to be on my face right now, it has to be giving me away, and the conflict is so raw right now I can't tell what it is or where I'm at.
I'm being manipulated. This is all what she wants, and I can't say no.
Her fingers curl around me and I hold my breath as she leans forward and puts her tongue on me. Anger bleeds into lust bleeds into anger. I've already lost control to her; it's been a long time gone. There's resentment in that realisation… helplessness. She sucks just the tip of me into her mouth and I let out a pent-up breath that comes out as a moan. My body is like a sail unfurling, unwinding… but my mind is like a weight, dragging me down, sinking me below the waves.
I haveta do this. You haveta let me.
If I let her go she might not come back. Logan might kill her, and this conundrum, this grand dilemma, will all be over by default. But here's the real issue. That Weapon X, and everything it represents, might steal her back. That the life she led before me will draw her back in. That she's still not over the shit they did to her.
That I'm not enough for her.
It hurts. After everything I've done for her, given up for her… I saved her from herself. I gave her something to live for. Something to strive for. She did the same for me.
Fuck, can't she be grateful for that? Can't she want it like I do?
And I'm in her mouth with her green eyes on mine.
Just shut the fuck up, LeBeau… …
I switch off, just for a second. My hand rests heavily on her head, and I scoot down the seat a little. It feels like I'm handing her victory on a platter, but… this is a battle versus all-out war. I want her. I want her submission, even if it's on her own terms.
My fingers thread through her hair and I guide her over me. I lose myself in her. There are words in my head, but all I hear is the dissonant tune of my panting, of my moans. I'm in-love with her. And God knows I know intimately that love is not enough. I feel cheated. I feel fucked over in the worst kind of way.
Shut the fuck up… …
Lust layers over rage layers over fear. I can feel it, building up right in the root of me. Her liquid kiss reminds me that I'm just another captive to all the years she's spent playing seductress, and her power over me is erotically insidious, some dark voodoo magic from the depths of the bayou, the stuff your tante would always warn you about. There's nothing equal about this. No 'together'. Only her and me and the spell she conjures with her power play.
With her mouth.
I twist my fingers into the roots of her hair and I want it to hurt.
My hips are moving to this primeval rhythm and I hope she can't keep up.
The pressure of my orgasm bursts, and I pray she can't contain all the rage I pour into her.
And suddenly… it's over.
I'm nothing but the sound of my breath and the beating of my heart.
She kisses me. Presses her lips inside my thigh, lingering, tender. There is something so incongruous about it, about her gentleness. She leans back on her heels and looks at me. Then she gets to her feet and quietly retreats back to the bedroom.
I'm a blank.
I stare up at the ceiling, the fan turning lazily above me.
The afterglow of my orgasm prickles over my body, the pleasurable creep of some drug.
I feel empty.
I feel tricked.
She's sucked my anger into herself, taken it away; and it feels like a transaction. All under her own terms.
I can't stop her from going. She's right – I gave her her choice. If she chooses to walk away, that's the price I pay for giving her back her agency. It always has been. She doesn't owe me herself. She doesn't owe me a thing.
But if she loves me, she owes me my right to be angry. She owes me my right to fight for her. She can't just suck it all away.
Her stole is still lying over the back of the sofa, and I turn my face into it, smell her scent – the scent that Wisdom now knows. I wonder. I wonder what she's imagined in those private little thoughts of hers. The twist of her limbs in his. Her fingers in his hair, his name on her lips. All the things I do to her, done by him. My anger suddenly flares back into existence, a reignited flame in the pit of my stomach. She's mine. She's mine, goddammit. She doesn't belong to me, but she's mine, she's the only thing I want. She tells me she loves me… and in the very same moment she makes it feel like this is a rejection. The paradox demands a resolution – but under my own terms.
I pick up the stole and walk into the bedroom.
Anna's in the en suite, brushing her teeth. I can hear her on the other side of the bathroom door – a mundane, everyday activity that sounds like yet another rejection. This time she spits. There's the splash of running water, the slide of the door opening. She stops when she sees me, her body wrapped in a robe of golden silk.
Silent seconds tick by as we stare at one another from each doorway. I'm the one to move first. I snap the door shut behind me, say in a low voice:
"Take your clothes off and get on the bed."
For a moment I think she won't. There's a look on her face – almost a smile – that only stokes the flame inside me. She drops the robe and walks over to the bed, positions herself in the centre, kneeling, facing me. Her posture is alert, upright; there's something almost defiant about it. Like this is just the kind of face-off she's pulled a thousand times before.
It fuels the fire in me, and I advance on her like a predator stalking its prey, snapping the stole taut in my hands as I do so. I have this screwed up urge to rip all £400 worth of that finely-spun silk into four equal parts; but it feels like I should be expending all the furious energy it'd take on her, not it.
Her hands are resting on her thighs in front of her, wrists pressed together, like she knows what's on my mind. I don't need to grapple for them, but I want to; I do. I bind them tight. When I push her onto her back, she looks up at me. There's something else in her eyes now… anticipation, with just the barest lick of excitement. Her lips parted, the breaths literally skipping out from between them. She's beautiful, acquiescent only because she's consciously allowing it. It's not in her nature to be like this. It's not in her nature to be pinned down.
I yank her arms over her head roughly, jarring that barely-there smile from her face, drawing a sudden exhalation from her mouth. It's so damn satisfying to wipe the prepossessed self-assurance from her, and a feral grin curls my lips as I knot the tapering lengths of the stole tightly to the headboard. My movements are violent, jerky, hurried along by the mounting pressure of my lust and rage. The gasp she gives is almost involuntary, and I look down on her as she clamps down on the sound, her bottom lip caught against her teeth. Her green eyes search mine. Beautiful. Unconsciously sexy, like she wants me to have her like this.
Merde. It's only been minutes since I got off, but I'm rock hard again.
There are things I could do to her… things I would do to her… She's so damn ripe right now, and on any other day I'd be feasting on her, lips and tongue and teeth eating up every inch of her delectable flesh, but this isn't what this is about; the kind of connection I want right now is nothing more or less than brutal.
She's breathing so fast now she's almost whimpering; soft little sounds escaping her mouth like some mantra urging me onwards. Hell if I need any encouragement, but the noises she's making right now are drivin' me into a frenzy. I position myself in front of her and put my hands on her knees. I shove her legs apart and slide my palms roughly up her thighs, my fingers digging into her flesh. She's slick and wet and inviting, and I plunge inside her without a single thought.
A cry is driven from her mouth, of pain and joy and triumph. The headboard twangs with the pressure as her wrists give an involuntary spasm. I glance up and see her fingers clawed into the fabric of the stole. I lick my bottom lip and thrust hard into her, watching her fingers, just her fingers. The way they clench with every stroke I take.
And God, she feels so damn good that God has nothin' to do with it… …
She's panting noisily, so damn sexily, that the wildfire under my skin burns. I can feel her legs move to cradle my hips, but I shunt them back open again roughly. I thrust up into her like a man possessed and she takes it, she takes it all. I want to possess her. I want her to be mine.
I'm a coiled wire, tight and taut as a bowstring, and she's the bow. She has me caught, she has me trapped – she has me in ways I never knew before this moment.
The bed squeaks, and I'm grunting like something feral as I pound into her. My eyes dart between the gripping tangle of her fingers and the place where our bodies join… and somewhere in the maelstrom, my gaze settles on her face. Her mouth is open, her eyes shut tight, tears squeezing from the corners.
Tears.
I remember the only time I ever saw her cry – the moment she gave up Essex's chip for my life. I'd been a bleeding, broken mess, shot to within an inch of my sorry existence; but the pain of those gunshots had been numb compared to what I'd felt when I'd seen her mount that stage with the tears pouring down her face, ready to give up everything that had meant anything to her.
There had been this feeling inside me, desperate and rash, the knowledge that I had grown to care for her enough that I would give up things for her I'd never contemplated for any other human being, sentiments I'd known she'd never return.
And then there she was. Giving up these things for me. Tears pouring down her face for me.
I know she loves me. She'd risked sharing that love with me, in a mem-chip that had told me her deepest, darkest secrets. I still dream about it sometimes – me, lying there half-dead in Raven's med-bay; her, with her hands curled round mine, the intensity of that love flooding her from the inside out… flooding me. Stolen memories… stolen emotions. Did she even realise that it was love she'd felt, love she'd given me in her memories? Did she even realise it as she'd given up that one chip she'd fought so hard to win – that it was love driving her, wringing the tears from her eyes?
Does she realise it now?
That I know exactly what her love feels like? That I can't let it go?
I feel it now, and it's sweeter than sweet, more intoxicating than alcohol. It wells up inside me so strong that I almost choke on it.
She gave this to me – the best reason to fight for her – and I don't think she even realises it.
Because I know the width and breadth of her love, better than she does herself. And I want to feel it now. I want to feel her hands on me, her mouth on me, her warmth all around me. I want to hear her voice say my name. I want her to do all the things she does to me when she's loving me.
And just like that, the anger inside me dissolves. I lower my head and I cover her open mouth with my own. My palms slide round her thighs, and I hike them up over my hips and round my waist. Almost immediately she's kissing me back, her legs locking round me in a vicelike grip. She falls into the rhythm of my body effortlessly, and suddenly we're in sync, we're together.
I reach above her head and loosen the knot in the stole one-handed. That's when I realise she's nearly worked herself free of the restraints already. I break the kiss, I pull back; I fix her with a grin that's all at once wry and appreciative.
Somethin' swells in me, and it's pride, admiration. She's my match, my foil. My Anna. I don't care if she rejects it or not – she just is.
We work her wrists free together, and as soon as the fabric falls away her hands come up and around me. Her nails dig into my shoulder-blades as she hangs on for dear life. Her moans are like some obscenely erotic soundtrack in my ear, and fuck, she drives me wild, hungry for something maddeningly out of reach.
She's up all over me, all around me, her hands clawing at what feels like every inch of my skin, both quenching and stoking the wildfire deep down inside me.
I twist my face into her ear and I say something to her, or imagine I do – almost simultaneously my climax hits, and I'm gone; my words are gone.
I can't tell you when I'm back again, when all the unanchored little parts of me fall back into place.
We're balled together into some tight little bundle, her arms and legs around me. It's like she and she alone has held me together, pieced me back into a single whole.
We breathe in the dimness, and there's no resolution – nothing's changed. Everythin' is exactly where it was when she'd first walked in this evenin', and it's ridiculously simple. Her, and me, and the space between us. The points where we intersect. The little grasping motions we make at each other, to keep us both still, within each other's greedy embrace.
I can't make her do what I want. I can't make her want what I want. She can't do the same for me. But we both want each other, badly.
Slowly we unwind from that tight little ball of tension. We sink into one another, cradle one another's trembling limbs. We breathe in one another. We breathe in the silence.
She told me the truth, when she said that she loves me. It wasn't a game. It was just a reminder. A starting point for everything that had followed.
Stupidly, I want to cry.
I hold her close, I listen to her heartbeat race against mine. It's what we are. This race.
I love you too, I think. I love you too, Anna Marie.
-oOo-