Page 7 of Danger Close (Mourningkill #3)

Clad in Darkness

Teri

Six Days Before the Wedding

I moaned, after having the best sleep of my life. I was cocooned in a warm cloud, like a sauna, but the air wasn’t humid. It was just that bone-deep heat that soothed my aching joints and relaxed old, tired muscles.

I blinked my eyes open, the blurry white and yellow clouds coming into focus.

Puzzled, I stared up at a white ceiling with intricate, gold-brushed crown molding.

It was beautiful, glinting in the sparse light.

I must have stared at it for several minutes, just admiring the craftsmanship before I bolted upright.

This wasn’t my fucking my room. Where the hell was I?

The heated blanket and luxurious duvet were definitely not mine.

An expensive, fur-lined electric blanket warmed all the sheets underneath it, which was responsible for my relaxation.

The neat, hardwood furniture and navy blue and gold upholstery was not something I would ever, ever be able to afford! Not in my lifetime, at least.

“What the fuck?” I pried the blanket off my chest.

I was wearing an MIT hoodie and nothing else. Fuck! My mind reeled. I gulped down breaths trying to remember what had happened. I had to think rationally. I had to swallow fear. I had to think.

How do I feel, physically? Fine. My core wasn’t sore, nor did I feel…

abused. Then again, maybe it was the warmth that gave me such an illusion?

I couldn’t trust my mind or body, after all.

I covered my mouth, a blubbering weep crawling up my throat which I swallowed down like bile. Crying would not help me now.

Where were my clothes? I looked around, frantic, gasping for air that leaked out of my lungs which never seemed to inflate again. What had happened? Had I been drugged?

Someone knocked on the door. A burly man with graying hair, and a thick, but trim, beard walked in without permission. His piercing light brown and green eyes assessed me, giving me a wide berth as he leaned against an armoire across the room. “Morning, Princess.”

“Joe,” I said on a disbelieving breath.

It was him. He’d put on more muscle, and lost the smoothness of youth. His demeanor was cold, and far from the ray of sunshine he had been all those years ago… but it was him. Or was I hallucinating? Was I dead?

I looked away to stare down at my hand. I looked for the scars on my arm that I knew had to be there. Old scars. Hidden scars. Things that would not be there if I was dreaming, no? At least not in the detail in which I was seeing them. They wouldn’t be there if I was dreaming.

He chuckled, “No one’s called me Joe since…”

That voice. I knew that voice. I shut my eyes, fighting back tears as memories of better times washed over me. I clenched my teeth together to keep the flood of questions from falling from my mouth.

Where have you been? Why did you leave me? Did you ever love me?

I had to stifle the whimper, as more questions came. Do you know what happened? Do you know what I’ve been through? Do you care?

No. Of course, not. The answer was always no. No one cared.

“Jesus, Princess.” He used the same nickname he’d insisted on thirty fucking years ago. A nickname that tasted bitter with the weight of broken dreams. “No one’s called me Joe since you.”

His voice was deeper, gruffer. It had a texture and edge that had not been there when he’d sung to me on the Champs-élysées. I felt his voice crawling over my skin, as real as if he had reached out and caressed me.

“Most people call me Cobra, now.” His voice was so low, it was menacing.

The cold shiver of fear crawled up my skin like the legs of a spider. In my memories, Joe had never been like this. He would certainly not have fit the name Cobra.

A strange memory flashed in my mind. A dark night. Him, clad in leather on top of a black and silver motorcycle in some middle-of-nowhere gas station. Trinity, asleep in the front seat of a beat-up old car.

I shivered, as memories I’d kept locked far, far away came back, hard and fast like a baseball bat to my chest. A pain that I experienced both metaphorically, and literally.

“Did you drug me?” I pushed with my feet until my back was flush against the wooden, carved headboard, adding a few more inches between me and him.

I did not trust him.

Could Joe work for Raymond? How could that happen? Were they always friends? Had they conspired for my misery? If so, they did a brilliant job of it. Had my life been one cruel joke orchestrated by the two men I had trusted the most before they broke me?

“What have you done?” I felt the pain of bitterness mixed with indignation.

My life was a fucking joke. If there was a God, I was one of his most disfavored.

I shivered with fear. Would Joe—no, Cobra— steal away one of the last sanctuaries I had in my mind?

The brief moments of joy that I relived when life crushed me under its heel, and all I could do was endure the pain?

Would he taint those purest moments? Would that be taken from me as well?

“Woah-woah-woah! Breathe, Princess,” Cobra cooed, his hands up, palms out in a surrendering gesture. “Calm down. Other than moving you from when you fainted and into a car, and then from the car to in here I did not touch you. ”

I gasped, heaving as air came back into my chest, making me dizzy. Relief. That’s what this was.

“I sure as fuck didn’t drug you.” He looked offended. Appalled, even.

But I knew better. The men who were loudest about the things they’d never do to a woman were the very same ones that were capable of the absolute worst.

“My sister came in to change you into the sweatshirt so we could have your clothes cleaned.” He continued, “I stepped outside.”

He had a sister? I never knew that. And I was uneasy about a strange woman touching me… but it was better than him getting his hands on me.

He turned to the armoire, opening it to show several garments hanging, or folded. “Yuliya got you clothes to wear in the meantime.”

Yuliya? Was that his sister? I placed my hand over my heaving chest, my palms against the soft fabric of the sweatshirt.

“You’re safe here, Teri.” His hands came down, and he tucked them back into his jeans’ pockets.

He leaned back into the farthest wall, his brows drawn together, as he looked at me, perplexed. Our daughter had inherited those eyes, and that astute expression.

I’d forgotten how his brazen gaze could heat my skin, as astute as any camera lens. It was that gaze that had me on my back, legs spread for him until we’d conceived Trinity. I thought that gaze was the rapt attention of a man deeply in love.

I knew better now. I’d learned many dreadful things in my old age.

When the silence grew between us, molding like old bread, he said, “You’ve apparently turned into a Batman in the time we’ve been apart. Care to explain what’s happened in the last thirty years, Princess?”