Nature Of Desire: Mirror Of The Soul Page 18

  “Next time you might mention when you’re going out, so I’ll know to arrange for that.”

  She gave him a tiny smile. “I know it’s not realistic. It’s just a feeling.” She bent, unlaced her shoes, removed them and pushed up the fabric of the bodysuit covering her calves. Rising, she moved to the water’s edge.

  “So how long have you done this?” He looked up as a Piper Cub buzzed over for a landing.

  “About ten years. I could take you up one day. I’m a trained instructor.”

  “Not happening.”

  Her attention flicked over to him. “It’s really wonderful. Falling at over a hundred miles an hour, just you. Sometimes it’s nice with others, too, because you don’t talk. You’re just up there together, feeling the same thing, not having to explain or understand anything.” She sloshed her feet in the water and shivered, enjoying the coolness. He enjoyed watching her indulge in the almost childish whimsy and wondered how often she’d had moments like this by herself, these many faces she revealed when no one was there to see.

  “I’m afraid I’m just going to have to watch you fly, angel.”

  Her brows lifted. “Surely you’re not one of those people who are afraid of flying? You know they’re safer than cars.”

  “So I’ve heard. And I think that argument is more effective for someone who’s never crashed in a plane. I have. Twice. I totaled a car once. I’m here to tell you that the car crash, as scary as it was, was nothing next to the plane.”

  “Twice?”

  “Both in small surveillance planes, bad weather conditions. Both times we went down where we’d have been executed if we were caught. If we were lucky.”

  “Well, it makes it hard to argue, putting it that way. But…” She slanted him a glance beneath those silky lashes. “Did you know there’s such a thing as nude skydiving? A growing chapter.”

  He chuckled. “You think the overwhelming male desire to see a woman naked can overcome any fear?”

  “Just about.”

  He grinned. “As long as I can see you naked down here, angel, I’d prefer to enjoy the pleasure on the ground. But I’ll think about it.” He surveyed the planes lined up on the tarmac. “You know there’s very little I’d refuse you. You just have to ask me.”

  “Always conditions…” He heard the humor in her voice and smiled.

  When Marguerite came back to him, wet clay from the banks of the pond was between her toes, across her feet, even up her ankles. She shook her head over them. “I’m afraid you’re seeing one of my private rituals. A balancing thing. Coming from the sky, I always like to do this grounding in the earth.”

  When he didn’t reply, she raised her gaze. Marguerite found him staring at her feet, his expression distant, almost empty. “Tyler? Tyler.” She said it sharply when he didn’t respond at all. Reaching out, she touched him, seeking a response.

  He started. His gaze jerked up to meet hers. “I’ll get some water.”

  He dumped the water cup he’d brought with him from the classroom water cooler, rose and strode down to the water’s edge.

  Her brow furrowed. “I keep a towel and some towelettes in the trunk of the car. And there’s a hose back there. It’s okay.”

  Again, he acted like he didn’t hear her. Genuinely concerned now, Marguerite started after him, but he’d already turned. Drawing her by the hand to the bench, he pushed her firmly down to the seat. He knelt there before her, poured the water over her toes, rubbed his hand over them, trying to remove the sticky clay. He went back to the pond several times. There was something in his face, something about the determined way he scrubbed at her feet that kept her silent, watching him. There was nothing left on her feet that she could tell, but he poured a fourth cup of water over them, lifting her foot to check the soles, parting each toe to ensure each one was completely clean.

  When he started to rise again, she’d had enough. She caught his hand, held on firmly. “Tyler, quit it. They’re clean. Tell me what’s happening. And don’t tell me nothing.” She increased her grip, alarmed to see his face was growing paler by the minute, his eyes unfocused as they moved in the direction of her voice. “Sit. Now.”

  She was familiar with the signs of an impending faint. Fortunately she had a bottle of drinking water she’d brought with her to replenish her own fluids. When she practically shoved him into a sitting position on the bench, she used the head cover of her jumpsuit as a towel, dampened and pressed it to his forehead. He pushed her away after a second, leaned forward to put his head between his knees, taking deep breaths. When she tried to close in, he shook his head, lifted his hand, warding her off.

  “Give me a moment.”

  She couldn’t stop herself from easing onto the bench next to him, reaching out and touching his hair lightly, tentative, one stroke, then another. Sweat was beaded on the back of his neck, staining his shirt, the man she’d never seen truly out of control, the passion of sex notwithstanding.

  “The watch. Don’t take it. Leave it all alone.”

  “I will,” she assured him. “Tyler, it’s Marguerite. I need you to be here, with me.” Pressing her knuckles against his temple, his jaw, she leaned down and put her lips over his.

  He bolted up off the bench, startling her so that he knocked her backwards, made her land hard on her hip on the ground. Lifting his hand to his lips, he pressed where her mouth had been. He shook his head as if clearing the confusion, reminding her of a horse she’d seen run into a barn once, trying to get his bearings back. His attention moved to the planes, down the runway, then to the bench, to her on the ground.

  “Oh, Jesus. Angel, are you okay?” He was by her side in two strides, his arms under her, lifting her, putting her on the bench, checking her arms and legs, cupping her face. “I didn’t…please tell me I didn’t hit you.”

  “Not recently.” At his look of horror, she caught his hands, held them. “Yesterday, the spanking. I was teasing. No, you didn’t hit me. You’re fine. You just made me lose my balance when you got up so abruptly. Ssshhh…it’s okay. I’m fine. I’m fine.”

  He stared at her and Marguerite squeezed his hands. “Tyler, are you all right? Can I do something for you? What’s going on?”

  “Your feet…”

  “They’re all clean. You took care of them. They’re fine.” She guided his face away from the pond and back to her, not wanting to set him off again by letting him see the pond’s banks, the muddy footprints she’d left.

  Tyler pressed his forehead to hers, drew in a deep shuddering breath. Let it out after a long moment. “Jesus, that was embarrassing. I haven’t done that in a long time.”

  “Yes. I’m disappointed to find you’re human. I was arranging to have a big ‘S’ tattooed on your chest for your birthday and now I’ll have to come up with another gift.”

  His jaw flexed and he drew back. “I’m sorry. That was inexcusable. And you don’t have to make jokes to make it less awkward.” He rose. “I should go.”

  “Pardon me?”

  He shook his head. “I shouldn’t be subjecting you to this.”

  “What?” She rose and slapped a palm on his chest as he began to stride away. “Could you please stop for a moment?”

  He laid his hand over hers, cupped her cheek. “It’s all right. I just need a few moments and I’ll be fine.”

  “You’re sure? I mean, I need to know this for certain.”

  He straightened at the temper in her voice. “Yes, I’ll be fine. It won’t happen again. I just need to go.” He started to step around her and she moved with him, this time catching hold of his shirt with both hands, making it clear if he wanted to escape he was going to have to drag her. His eyes narrowed dangerously, his hands latching on to her wrists. “Marguerite—”

  “Of course it won’t happen again. I mean, it was obviously planned this time. I’m sure you can control it in the future.”

  “Marguerite—”

  “Tyler, shut up. I mean it.” She dug her fingers into
him. “We’ve been to this doorway before and you keep leaving me in the cold. I’ve beaten the hell out of you, tried to stab you, tried every conceivable way to shut you out and yet that’s okay. But you won’t even tell me what’s going on in this one moment, where you’re obviously a greater danger to yourself than me.”

  “I’m fine,” he snapped. “I just have to get away from it.”

  “No, you’re trying to get away from me.” She walked in to him, surprised him by putting her head down and bracing her arms, backing him like a tug pushing a freighter many times its size toward dockside, only she was pushing him back toward the bench.

  “Marguerite, what are you—”

  “Sit.” She sat down next to him, took his hand, put her shoulder against his. “Tyler, I need you to tell me what just happened.”

  He started to rise. Seizing his shirt collar, she jerked so that he lost his balance and sat back down, not expecting the rough movement. She put her hands on either side of his neck, drew his gaze to her fiery one. “I’m not going to run because you’re not invincible every moment of every fucking day. And guess what? I’m a pretty smart woman. I know what post-traumatic stress syndrome is. So why don’t you tell me what triggered it.”

  She swore at his indecision and cupped his face, pressed her lips to his, opened his mouth, explored him, tangled with his tongue until his hands were at her hips, gripping her with strength, his lust rising as she deliberately stoked it, drawing the animal up in him, giving him back his pride. She drew back, not surprised when his hands tightened, holding her fast, his amber eyes roused. “Any sacrifice to help,” she repeated his own words, gently teasing now. “You’re frightening me. You’re shutting me out, not trusting me to be strong enough to take it. To help. To listen.”

  Relief, sudden and strong, flooded her chest at the rueful curve of his lips.

  “Marguerite, I think of the two of us, I’m the least courageous.”

  “Hush,” she reproved. “Tell me about clay.”

  He turned, leaned forward to run a hand behind his neck. She caught it there, tangling their fingers together on the back of his shoulder. She heard him sigh.

  “We were in Panama with the right intentions, but so many things went wrong. And then there was this day… You find yourself doing so many things you never think of doing. Standing there, watching bodies be bulldozed into a mass grave because there are so many of them that they can’t be properly buried before they’ll rot, creating disease.

  “Then I see this boy walking through a pile of bodies that hasn’t yet been scooped up. Looking for something he could barter. He’d been in blood so long he didn’t notice it dried on his feet. Over his toes, his ankles…” He reached down, passed his hand over her foot, as if reassuring himself it was clean and pale, cool to his touch. “This kid was wearing a Led Zeppelin T-shirt. We surround ourselves with all these things that are civilized to make us feel safe. A rock band T-shirt, linoleum for our kitchens…and yet we’re not civilized. Just like you said that very first night at Tea Leaves. We never have been.

  “I had to chase him off from stealing a watch. I don’t know why it mattered. But I looked at his feet and remembered walking on the banks of the river in Georgia, near where I was born.” The shadows moved behind his eyes and he turned his gaze back to the pond. “Now I have these dreams of it, walking in Georgia, but the mud becomes blood and the bodies come out of the river toward me like some horrific zombie film, only so real.”

  A quiver ran through the muscles under her fingers. “Sometimes Nina is dancing among them, on top of the bodies, standing on their backs, walking on her toes. Tears of blood are running down her face. She tries to kiss me and I smell all those corpses on her breath. When I have that dream, it makes me never want to sleep again.”

  “What happened, Tyler?” She trailed her fingers on his nape, soothing, stroking, keeping her other hand linked with his. “Why did you leave the CIA? You said you couldn’t refuse me anything. I need to know.”

  Tyler knew he was going to have to answer her, to say the words. The pregnant silence, the strength of what lay between them now demanded it. He could not turn away from it unless he wished to turn away from her. But it might turn her from him.

  He rose, squeezed her hand and took two steps away. She didn’t stop him this time.

  “There are things you do to keep your country safe that no one wants to talk about. That we all know happen, deep in the shadows of our soul. Those of us that do it know that people are not all basically good, as many sheltered souls like to believe. That there are places where there are not shades of gray, where it comes down to good and evil, places that are so far from our idealism that those who spout about political correctness and peace can’t even comprehend the high price of having the freedom to speak their opinions. And those of us who are immersed in violence for that high price, who try to do the right thing in such an immoral world, know that they’re right about one thing. Violence eats your soul. Eventually you become what you fight in order to destroy it, in order that there may be people and places untouched by either your filth or your enemy’s. All those movies about the soldiers being taken to another planet, where their barbaric natures, which protected the people, can’t be turned against them…”

  “Tyler.” There was love in her soft voice, so much he just wanted to fall on his knees and let it cover him like a blanket tucked around a child’s shoulders by his mother’s hands. A shudder ran through him.

  “Information.” He spat out the word harshly. “When you know lives are on the line, information is extracted, no matter the cost. You learn to detach, to watch every subtle nuance of your enemy’s psyche, to know just how much they can take. And I was very good at it. I’ve been a sexual Dominant since I was twenty-one years old and the same talents that can be applied to pleasure can be applied to torture.”

  When he turned to face her, Marguerite saw his expression was hard, almost monstrous, the darkness there for her to see.

  “Torture is about psychological regression. You break the subject down until they lose their grasp on all their learned personality traits. They can’t handle complex tasks, deal with complicated or stressful situations. It’s all about stripping away the shields. Sensory deprivation, unbalancing them with the unexpected, over and over, removing their anchor on reality by confusing them, making them think it’s night when it should be day, day when it should be night. Sound familiar?”

  “Tyler.” She said it again, pain in her voice. Pain for him. He turned away from it, stared at the ducks.

  “During the Gulf War, we knew a bomb had been planted and we needed to know where. We caught the lover of the bomber. She was on the inside and knew what we needed to know. And we had to know fast. We didn’t have time for those types of methods.” He crumpled her head covering in his fist and Marguerite saw the muscles bunch in his shoulders as if he were preparing for a physical fight. “Ten years of intense, pretty much back-to-back operations, yet somehow I’d never had to use severe interrogation techniques on a woman. I removed nine of her nails, broke seven of her fingers before she told us. Fingers are one of the worst pains there are because the nerves are so dense there, even though people are more psychologically cowed by threats to genitalia, nipples. She was small-boned, like my wife. Delicate hands, like yours.

  “It’s funny.” He drew a breath. “That’s not the worst thing I’ve done. I’ve taken a lot of lives, buried them where their families will never know what happened to them. For causes I believed in. Even her… We got the information, we saved lives. But when I touched my wife… Even later, when I’d touch Leila’s hands or her face, or you… When I see Violet’s delicate fingers reach out toward Mac, see how large his hand is over hers… Sometimes I can’t help but remember that woman. I couldn’t do it anymore. Everyone has their threshold. I did the job that day, but that was the end. I was sick, inside and out. All I knew was I had to come home.”

  To the arms of a woman who
didn’t have the strength to heal you. Marguerite felt the tears rise in her throat.

  He sat down on a stump, still facing away from her. “In this civilized world…” The word came out like a curse through his teeth. “I don’t abuse women. I’d never strike one in violence, would lay my life on the line for any of them in danger. But somewhere, if she’s still alive, there’s a woman who dreams of me only when she’s in the grip of a nightmare.”

  The breeze moved over the pond, creating ripples, making the cattails dance, the lilies drift slowly back and forth. A duck entered the waters, paddling, her tail waddling, dipping her beak.

  At length, Marguerite stood up, moved to stand before him. For once it was he who was reluctant to meet her eyes. She watched the lashes raise, the golden brown gaze climb to her face. When he got there, she thought there was nothing that could tear at a woman’s heart like fear in a strong man’s eyes. Not fear of violence or danger. Fear of loss. Fear of rejection, fear of not being loved when he didn’t meet expectations.

  Reaching out her hand, she grazed her fingertips over his face and then moved in, nudging until he parted his knees. The position compelled him to wrap his arms around her waist and hips, hold her in close to him. His jaw pressed into her soft breasts, the tips of her braided hair whispering along his neck as she bent her head over his.

  “You don’t have to be the one who always takes care of someone else, you know. In a real relationship, so I’ve heard, people take care of each other.”

  He drew back and touched her face. “Is that what we have, you and me? A relationship?”

  “That’s a frightening term for me. But I think…we have something.”

  He nodded, laid his forehead on her shoulder. “I don’t deserve you. I’m not sure I deserve anyone.”

  “Maybe I’m your penance.” She lifted his chin, gave him an arch look. “And that’s why I put you through hell every several days or so. I’m a punishment sent to you by God.”

  He chuckled at last. The sound of it released the worry around her heart, made her arms close around his shoulders and hold him tightly to her. After a moment he returned the embrace, burrowing his nose in the tender pocket of her collarbone, breathing her in.