Page 32 of Diamond in the Rough (The Diamond Trilogy 1)
I have this sudden memory, this recollection of tasting her.
You don’t know the way I have sex. It’s rough, Holly. It’s… disrespectful. Cruel. You deserve better than that, especially for your first time.
I’m embarrassed that I told her that. She was so innocent. Too innocent for me to even touch. What the fuck had I been thinking? I hope she found some kind, gentle person to take her virginity. Someone who would whisper sweet words and hold her afterward.
“He was cruel,” I say, though that’s an understatement.
It’s hard to explain for someone with loving, if quirky, parents. They can never fully understand what it’s like to know fear before you know love.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “Is that why you killed him?”
I was beaten and burned and battered to within an inch of death, but it didn’t hurt as much as the memory. Searing pain through my body that no amount of fighting or fucking ever really remove. I keep thinking that one more job will make me forget, but it won’t.
Soft hands move gently over my arm, my side, noting when I stiffen. She curls herself into the side of my chest like a cat seeking warmth. Or offering warmth. Her head rests on my shoulder. With shock I realize this is how it would have been—if I had fucked her eight years ago, if I had held her afterward. This many years later, we’re having that moment of intimacy I’d been too afraid to take. And why? Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed her away. What would have happened if I’d told her everything about the Louvre and the diamond?
It makes me want to test the waters here, in a place that couldn’t possibly end in a happy way. A church that has seen its share of death and pain already.
“I watched him kill my mother. He assumed I was too young to understand. Or remember.”
“Oh my God,” she says, burying her head deeper into my shoulder. It hurts, but I don’t tell her to stop. It also feels good. That pretty much defines my feelings for her.
Being near her is heaven and hell.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she says, her voice mournful.
I’ve never had anyone mourn me before. “She sang to me. I remember that. Only when he wasn’t around. But he came home early one day, or something happened. They were fighting. He pushed her. She hit her head. He dragged her body out of the house by her feet.”
“Did the police question you?”
“I was three.”
“Oh God. Elijah.” And then more softly. “Is that your real name?”
“Yes. I used my real name on my first mission only.” I would tell her anything in this moment. My full name. My social security number. My rank. My mission. She doesn’t know the power she holds over me. I would jeopardize an entire military operation because she smells so sweet. That’s the terrible part of being a man who cares about a woman. It makes him weak.
“And you remember?”
“Oh, I remembered. I remembered the way he packed her luggage and buried that, too. My brothers always thought she ran away. That she got fed up with the beatings and left, but she never would have left us behind.”
“I’m so sorry. What a terrible burden for you to carry.”
“I told him before I killed him. I told him what I knew. It didn’t have anything to do with all the times he backhanded me or all the nights I went hungry. It was for her.”
“Elijah, no matter what you think—he didn’t break you.”
How does she know? How does she know my secret fear?
Except she’s wrong, of course. I broke when I was three years old and saw my mother’s lifeless eyes staring at me. After that I became only a being with one purpose.
Every breath, every step had one goal.
To become strong enough to get revenge.
I kiss the crown of her head because I don’t want to ruin the ferocity of hope in her voice. It’s enough to let her believe there’s kindness inside me a little while longer.
We fall asleep to the sound of a distant drip, the sun moving over us, unseen and unfelt, taking warmth only from each other.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Elijah
The next evening Adam comes downstairs holding a lamp and what looks like a picnic basket. It’s made of wicker and appears heavy by the way he’s holding it. More valuable than gold, if there’s cheese and bread inside. My empty stomach claws itself from the inside.
He sets down the basket and sits on top of the flat surface it creates, crossing his legs in the way only elegant European men can do. “We had a good time yesterday, non?”
I lunge at him through the bars. Even knowing I’m going to be caught by iron against my throat, it doesn’t hold me back. I throw myself into the attack, growling, snarling, becoming feral in my desire to kick his ass. The torture isn’t cigar burns and whips.
