Ridge, p.18
Ridge, page 18
“Nah,” he said when he’d dropped down onto the chaise again. “We’re going after them,” he told her because he knew someone was after her. He just needed her to tell him who and he’d take care of the rest. “Tell me who they are.”
She reached up a hand to tentatively touch the white strips holding the gash on her forehead together. Then she used both hands up, rubbing them over her hair from the top of her head to the back. Holding the mass together for a few moments she sighed and then released it. He suspected she wanted a band to tie it back but since he preferred she leave it out, free to be the curly natural mess that made him want to bury his fingers in it each time he saw her, he didn’t move to grab any of the bags that had traveled to the island with them.
“I don’t know,” she replied finally. “I don’t have any names or any way to contact them. I only know that they want me with them.”
“Why and to do what?”
She turned to stare at him. “To kill.”
“What?”
She let out a heavy sigh. “They’re a part of my father’s fan club. A bunch of people who’re just as disturbed as my father that think because I share his blood that I should be a part of their sick and demented legion.”
This was not what he’d expected her to say. It wasn’t even near what he’d thought this was about. “Who the hell starts a serial killer fan club?”
“Sick people,” she replied. “People who at some point have suffered from some form of mental illness and didn’t seek treatment, or were just born with some kind of deficit that keeps them from functioning with normal right and wrong reasoning like most. I mean, I’m no professional, but that’s my best guess.” She shrugged as if she’d just rattled off the recipe for pound cake.
“So, you’re telling me that there are people walking around out there who want to recruit you to become a killer. For what? I mean, what do they get out of this?”
“It’s a kind of glory,” she said. “When I used to allow myself to think back to the time I was Talaya Brennan, I can recall my father reveling in his power. He loved that wherever we went, people knew who he was. They stopped him to talk, ask for his help and he loved telling them that he’d be there for them. He’d do whatever he could to make their life better. He loved our big house, the prestigious schools I attended, the fancy cars and clubs my mother was part of. He loved the control.” Rubbing her hands over her thighs—which were now covered but he’d seen the lovely dark brown of them bare when she’d walked to and from the bathroom—she thinned her lips and shook her head.
“Killing all those women and not getting caught for so long, fed that need for control,” she said.
Ridge let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He knew what it was like to need control, to search for it and hold tightly to it when it was found. But his had been found in the boxing ring as a teenager and in his early adult years. Later, he’d found it within the walls of The Corporation. But never, as a killer.
“How do you know all of this?” he asked.
“Because this isn’t the first time they’ve come for me.” She held his gaze then. He suspected it was to gauge just how much she should tell him. How much she thought he could handle. Well, she obviously didn’t know him very well.
“When else?” he prompted.
“My senior year in college.” Now she moved, straightening her legs in front of her before swinging them over the side of the bed.
She let her feet fall to the floor and then she tugged on the hem of that nightshirt as if she thought she could get it to cover her legs. When that didn’t work, she simply shook her head and dropped her hands to her lap. He continued to watch her, noting the composure she hadn’t possessed when she’d talked about Talaya Brennan before. Now, she was the woman she’d had to become. The one with confidence and resolve to be someone else.
“Ashton Palmore was an IT tech at some firm in the city,” she told him. “I met him at a coffee shop and he was…nice. There’d been a boyfriend before, one who’d been the son of close friends to my parents. We were going to have a future together, to become another Black power couple in the circles our parents’ had not only navigated, but had dominated. That relationship was over the night my father was arrested.”
She shivered, as if the thought alone had shaken something inside her. “Having Ashton like me felt normal. It felt like I really could go on after my mother died.”
He wouldn’t push her to talk about that even though he’d glimpsed her clasping her fingers together tightly.
“Anyway, he wasn’t who he said he was and one night when we were alone in my dorm, he admitted that. He pulled out his phone and had all these pictures on there. Pictures of eyes, dead eyes and he’d been so excited to tell me when he’d taken them and how it’d felt to watch them die.” She shivered. “I was disgusted and afraid because everything he’d said he’d done to those girls had been things my father had done to his victims.”
She fell silent and Ridge didn’t push. Partially, because he needed a second to wrap his mind around all this madness. To keep himself firmly planted in the reality where there were people who thrived off of killing. Pierce was still working with Cade to get more information on Talaya’s background in both states where she’d lived, so there were gaps in what he knew. But Ridge really wanted the full story from Talaya. He wanted her to trust him enough to share her past with him so that he could what? Help her build a better future?
“He touched me,” she said softly and then glanced down at her wrists, twisting her arms so she could see the insides of them. “After he’d told me all this…stuff and showed me those pictures, he’d thought it was okay to touch me.” Her tone was incredulous and she brought her hands to her face, covering it for a few seconds, then yanking them away. “I shot him.”
Those three words came fast, as if she’d had to push them to come out right at that moment, or she’d lose her nerve.
“I shot him so that he wouldn’t touch me again. And so that he wouldn’t kill another girl.”
Not, so he wouldn’t take her, which would’ve been a valid reason as well.
“Self-defense,” he said.
She nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly what the police said when I gave my statement.”
“The statement that didn’t include the pictures of dead bodies or his confession to killing them,” he added.
“No,” she said. “I didn’t tell them any of that because I didn’t want to be connected to it. And I changed my name right after the incident because I didn’t want to continue being connected to my father. I didn’t want anyone else coming to look for me because they thought I was one of them. And it worked,” she whispered. “For a long time, it worked. I moved to Colorado for a few years before finally figuring I needed a bigger change, a cleaner slate. I found that in the UK and things were good.”
“Until now.” It was his turn to run his palms up and down his thighs. She’d changed her name prior to graduating in her senior year, so her degree was in the name of Talaya Richmond, which is probably why Pierce hadn’t stumbled upon the shooting in his preliminary background search. He was certain it would come up in the next meeting he had planned with Pierce and Cade tomorrow.
“And now,” he continued because hearing how she’d dealt with this on her own was all that mattered at this moment. “Because you won’t join them and they missed their opportunity to just kill you, they’re opting to frame you instead.”
A couple hours after Talaya had been in the hospital, another press conference had taken place. As long as Ridge lived, he promised he’d never participate in another press conference again. The second press conference of Friday afternoon had been hosted by Detective Meldrick who’d announced that Talaya was their number one suspect in the murders of two women that she was connected to.
“They won’t kill me. He wants me alive,” she said evenly.
“Who wants you alive?”
“My father.”
She’d gotten up from the bed, moving on wobbly legs, but at a much improved pace than he’d seen in the past few days to run into the bathroom. The sound of her heaving and ridding her stomach of whatever was left in there after all these days of barely being awake loud in the room where he still sat because she hadn’t closed the bathroom door. He dragged his hands down his face, sucking air into his lungs praying it would provide some light within the fog of all he’d just learned. Releasing the breath and slowly bringing his hands away from his face, Ridge could only sit there.
He could only attempt to register the demented circle of events he now found himself in the middle of. It was like an episode of one of those crime shows, a weird procedural drama that would be wrapped up neatly at the end of an hour, at which time he’d only need to switch the channel to find something else to watch. Something lighter, happier, that would allow him to eventually dismiss the fictional scenario that had circled around death. But for that woman in there, the one who’d somehow crept inside him, burrowing herself in his thoughts and now his actions, this was real. It was her life.
No wonder she was sick right now. By all accounts she should’ve probably been broken, a fractured part of a human wondering what she’d done to deserve this. And maybe she was—fractured, that is. Maybe the new life she’d built had been her way of saving the only whole parts she’d had left. Perhaps it had been her last-ditch effort at survival. And if that were true, what was she going to do now? How was she supposed to rebuild from this now that she’d told him?
She’d shared all of this with him. And while that’s what he’d wanted, had hoped she would do, the magnitude of that wasn’t lost on him and he stood with the weight of it. Letting his steps guide him over to the windows where there was more air, more space to breathe and process this, he wondered why she’d told him. Why she hadn’t fought harder against telling this most ragged part of her past to a man she’d only known for a short amount of time? Probably for the same reason he’d barely left this room in the time they’d been here. For the same reason he’d taken his brother and sister’s calls in those days but hadn’t been able to accurately explain what he was doing and why. The same reasons he’d been pushing to the back of his mind in the midst of all this drama.
Because there was an undeniable connection between them. One that surpassed logical thought. It’d been there since day one, sucking them into this sort of vortex that combined good, bad and the unexplainable, stripping them of what they’d thought was their path and leaving them both bare. But why? What was supposed to happen now? How was this thing between them going to play out?
He turned around to see the bathroom door was still open but she hadn’t returned to the bed. She was no longer heaving, no longer trying to purge herself of a darkness that had haunted her for so long. He could totally relate to an invasion like that. To holding that broken part of himself so close and so tight the thought of releasing it made him physically sick.
In the next moments he was standing at the bathroom door, staring into the space to see her standing at the sink, that short ass shirt barely skirting her upper thigh. Her movements were slow as she squeezed toothpaste onto a toothbrush, then brought the brush up to her teeth. She stared at herself in the mirror as she scrubbed her teeth. It was a seemingly normal activity after being sick, but he knew instinctively there was nothing normal about it. Not the way her eyes blinked slowly at her the reflection in the mirror, the one she was probably trying to figure out if she knew. How many times had he approached his own reflection with those same questions.
Who the hell are you? What the fuck are you doing? And the most frequent, why can’t you stop?
That last question echoed in his mind right now because he was doing the very thing he couldn’t bring himself to stop doing. Watching.
With her free hand she turned on the water and then lowered the other hand to put the brush under the stream. When the brush was clean, she set it aside and then leaned forward to cup a hand under the water and bring it to her mouth to rinse. That shirt rose higher with her motions, giving him an unfettered peek of her ass cheeks unrestrained by the white bikini panties she wore.
When she turned off the water and instead of reaching for one of the plush sky-blue towels from the stack in the center of the double vanity, placed her palms on the marble-top and kept her head lowered, every muscle in his body tensed. She was definitely struggling and he should walk away to let her do that in private. To fight the battle he knew she’d fought many times before and pull herself together as she’d obviously done successfully before. But he could only move forward, taking slow enough steps that at any moment if she decided to turn to him and tell him to get the hell out, he would.
But she didn’t speak. She didn’t move. And he continued to close the distance between them. He walked around where she stood, close enough to touch her, but not extending his hands to do so. His feet were bare and so they made no sound on the cool tiled floor. He took one of the towels from the stack on the vanity and moved closer to press it against her face. She still didn’t move. Didn’t lift her head and turn it toward him to accommodate the action, just continued to stand there, fingers gripping that marble as if she were holding on for dear life.
And she probably was, holding on, that is. Grabbing hold of every part of herself that she wanted to keep, to salvage in the midst of this storm. It was a death-grip, he knew because he did it daily. Each day he awakened, dressed and went into the office like he was supposed to do, he was holding on. Dangling sometimes, like his feet were hanging over that ledge and only the strength of his fingers, of something buried deep down inside him, kept the grip on the here and now. Kept him from falling and falling, forever.
He dropped the towel into the sink and tucked his finger and thumb beneath her chin, slowly easing her face up until he could stare into her eyes. Almost translucent coppery tinted eyes that were warm and turbulent at the same time. She kept so much there, in the depths of her eyes. Emotions, assessments, passion. His breath caught on that last word because that’s where their initial connection had been made. That first day when he’d opened the door instead of ignoring it because there was no security or his house manager at his house to answer it. When he’d dismissed the security system and had instead decided to face the person on the other side of the door on his own. The second their gazes had locked their fate had been sealed as that passion he now saw brewing in the yellow-brown orbs had reached out to the sensation he knew lurked in his darker more tumultuous eyes.
His lips parted, air whooshing from his lungs as if he’d been holding his breath and hadn’t known it until this very moment.
“What are you doing to me?” he asked in a gruff voice.
She didn’t answer and he hadn’t expected that she would, but she didn’t move away either. Not when he continued to hold her gaze another few moments, or when he finally gave in and leaned closer, until his lips were just a whisper away from hers.
“I can’t stay away from you.” The words fell from his lips as his body trembled with a need much stronger than any he’d ever experienced. “I can’t walk away.” He brushed his lips lightly over hers. “I can’t think of anything else.” Touched the tip of his nose to hers. “I can’t see anyone but you.” Rested his forehead against hers.
Her eyes remained locked on his as her tongue slowly snaked out to lick her lips. He caught it, just the tip, extending his quickly to brush over it before she could pull it back into her mouth. It wasn’t enough. He pressed his lips to hers again, still watching her as he pulled them back just a bit, then touched them again. She blinked, but didn’t look away, didn’t touch him with her hands, but didn’t stop him when he licked the seam of her lips this time. Dragging his tongue back and forth along them, outlining them once and then again. Titling his head slightly he pressed his lips against hers again, applying just a little more pressure. Holding right there, his lips on hers, his eyes boring into hers, the sound of his heartbeat echoing in his ears, he let himself fall into her gaze, bared a part of himself to her in those moments that he’d never shown anyone before.
On a heavy sigh, she parted her lips and brought her hands up to grasp his arms. He didn’t waste a second but shifted them so that his butt was now pressed against the vanity and she was standing between his legs. The hand at her chin slid around to grasp the back of her neck and pull her face into his while his other hand went around her waist, holding her midsection firm to his. Tilting his head, he kissed her, tongue immediately snaking out to find hers and when it did heat exploded between them, around them, fuck, probably throughout this entire room.
Her blunt-tipped nails dug into his arms as he took the kiss deeper, stroking his tongue over hers, then sucking her tongue into his mouth. He bit her bottom lip, then sucked that into his mouth too. She didn’t seem to mind, her moans told him so and he moved his hand from the back of her neck, up to bury into her hair. Finally. He groaned and kissed her with every ounce of desire blazing through him at the moment.
She reached for the hem of his shirt, pushing it up until her hands were moving over his stomach, up higher to press her palms against his chest. Her touch was fire hot, searing through to his soul and he gripped her ass, pressing her into his throbbing dick. She broke the kiss, pulling back so she could get his shirt off. He readily assisted and when she tossed his shirt to the floor, he reached for hers, lifting it up and over her head before sending it soaring to join his.
“Shit.” Her bare breasts called to him, big round dark nipples already puckered as he palmed them both, squeezing and twisting them between his fingers until she gasped.
Then he leaned in to take one into his mouth, humming over the feel of that tight bud against his tongue. She arched into him, her hands going to the back of his head to hold him in place. He sucked in a ragged breath as he went from one breast to the other, lavishing both with his tongue and tender bites.
