Читать книгу Behind Closed Doors - Tara Quinn Taylor - Страница 9

T he sun had risen. Driving home from the hospital, Harry could barely tolerate the brightness. There was no new day for him this morning. Only a spotlight shining in the darkness that had overshadowed everything else.

Snuggled up against him in the car, Laura sighed, but didn’t speak. She was awake, just not talking.

Harry didn’t have much to say at the moment, either. What could possibly make a difference?

Detective Boyd had said he’d call as soon as they had news.

He prayed that would be today.

Not that catching the bastards was going to allow Harry a night’s rest. He doubted that he’d ever be able to go to bed and sleep again.

“You sure you’re okay driving?”

Her words held only a hint of Laura’s spirit.

“Of course.” He was perfectly capable of seeing them safely home.

The doctors had said his left shoulder had only been partially dislocated, but the agonizing jolt they’d administered to move it back into place had nearly knocked him unconscious. Hours later, immobilized by a sling, it still ached. The rest of him was pretty numb.

“I’m going in to shower,” Laura said the minute they were in the house. Harry nodded. He had things to do and he’d be happier if she wasn’t watching.

Following, Harry almost ran into her as she stopped abruptly outside the guest bathroom door. Without so much as a look back, she went in and shut the door. Seconds later he heard the shower running.

And understood. She couldn’t face their bedroom yet.

Gathering underwear from her drawer, a light summer dress from her closet, her favorite pair of flip-flops, and toiletries, Harry once again stood outside a closed bathroom door with his wife on the other side. When he turned the knob, the door opened.

He’d half feared she’d locked him out again.

“It’s just me,” he said, staring at the shower curtain. “I brought your things.”

“Thank you.”

Turning to leave, Harry reminded himself of what the counselor at the hospital had told him. He was going to have to give her time, a lot of it, as much as she needed.

He’d give her forever.

And in the meanwhile, he’d see those men in hell for doing this to her.

The curtain rustled as he grabbed the door. “Harry?”

He turned back to see her soaked blond hair plastered to her head and face as she held the curtain up to her chin.

“Yeah?”

Her gaze met his. “Thank you.”

Choked up, all he could do was nod. But he stood there, letting his love for her shine through his eyes, until she slipped back behind the curtain.

They needed to recaulk the tub. Grayish green shadows of mold showed through the clear plastic that lined the surface. Laura didn’t know a lot about mold. It reproduced from spores that were in the air and landed anyplace there was moisture, where they would feed off whatever was there.

It caused respiratory problems in people who were susceptible.

It could grow anywhere. There wasn’t a part of the world that didn’t have mold.

A species of mold, Penicillium notatum, had been discovered by accident on dirty dishes in a laboratory sink after World War I. Penicillin was later born from that and saved millions of lives.

When her back started to feel raw from the pounding water, Laura turned. There was soap scum on the tile just beneath the built-in ceramic dish on the wall. She’d obviously missed that spot when she’d cleaned.

Sometimes it took effort, but she could get it off. She’d do it before hard water stains made it impossible.

Was there salt in the water softener? She couldn’t remember if Harry had recently put some in.

She’d never worried about it before. He always took care of that.

She didn’t have to worry about it now, did she?

Frowning at the soap scum, she made a mental note to look in the softener the next time she was out in the garage. That would have to be soon. Her truck was there.

Except… The garage was dark.

Laura turned again.

The bed had been stripped. Boyd had warned them. Everything, including the gown the forensics officers had pulled out of the toilet, had been taken down to the police lab.

Staring at the bare mattress, Harry considered spray disinfectant. He considered slashing the damned thing with a knife.

Instead he hauled it up with his good hand, flipped it on its side and dragged it out to the trash. He’d call someone to take the mattress away.

They had a bed in the guest bedroom they could use if they couldn’t get a new mattress today.

At eight o’clock, fifteen minutes after he and Laura had returned home, he called his office at the university and left a message for the History department secretary telling her he wouldn’t be in that day.

Next he called the Botanical Garden where Laura worked, and spoke with her assistant and friend, Kelly Holbrook, saying only that Laura was under the weather and wouldn’t be in. His wife, who had a federal grant to study the medicinal qualities of desert plants, was her own boss. The garden where she did her research was city-owned and had even become something of a tourist attraction.

He cancelled their appointment at the fertility clinic, then arranged to have the sliding glass door barred and pin-locked until he could get a wrought iron dead-bolted security door placed on the outside.

And when he rang off, he was standing in front of his closet door. The pistol was right where he’d stashed it years ago. Uncle Clement had owned a cleaning business in Manhattan; he’d believed that a black man always had to protect himself. He’d insisted, when Harry spent a summer with them as a teenager, that his nephew learn to shoot.

There were bullets under the sweaters he never wore in the bottom drawer of his dresser. He wasn’t sure he’d remember how to load it, but surprised himself when the bullets slipped in easily. He was competent even with a swollen face and one arm tied to his body.

“What are you doing?”

Laura’s shocked voice jolted him. He hadn’t expected her to be out so soon.

She was standing there dripping wet, a seldom-used guest towel wrapped around her. He didn’t see any visible signs of the trauma she’d been through.

“I just loaded this.”

“Why?”

“I would think that’s obvious.”

“Not to me it isn’t.”

Her gaze was resolute, harder than he was used to seeing, her chin raised.

“Laura, I was caught once. I will not be unprepared again.”

“You’ve never used that thing. You know what the statistics say about civilians with guns, Harry. They’re often turned against you.”

“This one won’t be.”

“Harry—”

“Laura.” His voice was sharper than he’d intended, but didn’t soften much as he continued. “I am not going to back down on this. From now on, I will be able to protect you. Period.”

Frowning, her lips a straight line, she stared at him. Her eyes welled with tears. But eventually she nodded.

“Harry?”

Lying in bed that night, Laura gave up trying to sleep. Her husband, his sling off now, was sitting up, his swollen face turned toward the door of the spare bedroom. It stood open, and the hallway light was on.

“Yeah?”

“I need you.”

“I know, love, I need you, too.” Though his voice quivered with emotion, his eyes didn’t move from the door.

“No, I mean, I need you.”

He’d understand what she was saying.

“Please?” she whispered when he remained silent.

“Laura, I don’t—”

“Please,” she interrupted, infusing more strength into the one word. He had to do this for her. He just had to.

And…she believed that he needed her to do it for him, too.

“I can’t relax, can’t go to sleep,” she told him.

“Did you take one of the sleeping pills they gave you at the hospital?”

“Of course not.” He should know better than that. She rarely even took aspirin. But she had taken the morning-after pill the doctor had given her.

“Maybe you should, just this once.”

Laura lay there looking up at him. He was still talking to the open door.

“Harry, it’s killing me, knowing they were the last ones… I need to feel you inside me. I need you to fill me up. To wipe them out.”

Her voice rose with an intensity that was foreign to her. “Please, Harry. Please do this, for me? I want you there, only you…”

Laura hadn’t even realized she’d started to cry until Harry wiped a tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb.

“Sshh. It’s okay, baby. I’m right here.” He took her into his arms and Laura rubbed his chest with desperation and a kind of frenzied passion, teasing his nipples. That always worked for him.

“Laura…”

“Please, Harry…”

“The doctor said—”

“That I’m perfectly fine.”

“She also said you can expect a period of frigidity.”

Following her finger with her tongue, flicking across the wiry, sparse curls on his chest to his nipple, Laura said, “I’m not frigid.”

Groaning, Harry pulled her face up to his. Kissing her softly, gently, not in the least passionately.

Laura slipped her tongue inside his mouth.

“Laura…”

She slid her hand down his belly and beyond, fondling him into the beginning of an erection. “Please, Harry.” She wouldn’t have to beg much longer. Harry could never resist her seductions.

With one more groan he said, “If you’re sure this is what you want…”

“I am,” she said, her voice quavering, but not with doubt. “Completely sure.”

He kissed her then, fully, passionately, his lips hardly swollen compared to the right side of his face and nose, and she opened her mouth eagerly. The warm possession of his lips always made her lose sight of everything and everyone around her. From Harry’s very first kiss—outside her embryonic plant life class at the University of Arizona—she’d felt that peculiar magic talked about in storybooks and scoffed at by pragmatists. She kissed him back, remembering how it used to feel. Trying to find that feeling again.

“Mmmm,” she moaned against him, her arms clutching his neck, holding him to her with a fervor that scared her.

And then he moved, lying half on top of her, straddling one of her legs with both of his—his weight resting on one elbow. She recognized the position, his touch, told herself how badly she needed his warmth. More from habit than sexual drive, she moved her leg to tease the hardness that should be there.

It wasn’t.

And all her motivating self-talk vanished, Laura froze.

Harry pulled back immediately.

“I was afraid it was too soon,” he said softly, his fingers pushing strands of hair behind her ear. “It’s okay. And understandable. It’s just going to take a little while…”

“It’s not me,” Laura said, although she knew she wasn’t being completely honest about that. Her head welcomed Harry. Her heart did. Her body felt dead. “It’s you,” she told him, rubbing a hand over his crotch. “You don’t want me. I’m dirty now. Used. You saw what they did to me and—”

“Laura!” It was the second time that day Harry had spoken so firmly. The first had been that morning, when she’d caught him loading his gun—a gun that now lay beside them between the bed frame and the mattress.

He slid over, fully covering her, moving his body against hers. In only a moment, he was fully hard.

“Don’t you ever,” he started, his breath coming in spurts as he continued to move, “ever think I don’t want you.” His mouth was an inch from hers and he kissed her hungrily, his tongue leaving her lips wet. “You are the most desirable woman in the world to me,” he said. “Tonight even more so, not because of what I did or did not see, but because you are you—a woman who’s soft and gentle, a peacemaker who’s also a survivor. No matter what. I can’t get enough of you, Laura. If we live to be a hundred and fifty, I will never have enough of you.”

His eyes glistened in the dim light as he stared down at her. She loved him so much. Needed so badly for things to be okay between them.

“Please make love to me,” she whispered, spreading her legs to accommodate him. They were both still dressed, her in shorty pajamas she hadn’t worn in years but had put on because she’d felt too vulnerable in the light cotton gowns she preferred, and him in a pair of cotton pajama bottoms she’d forgotten he owned.

“I want to so badly, Laura,” he said, frowning as he drew back, his face a few inches from hers. “But I’m not sure it’s right. I’m not sure we should….”

Feeling a fire inside her that she’d only known once before, when her parents had tried to forbid her from seeing Harry because he was black, Laura stared into his eyes.

“You are my husband,” she said emphatically. “How could it possibly not be right?”

“I know the doctor said you weren’t physically damaged, but—”

“I’m no more affected, physically, than if you’d had sex with me.” She didn’t think it was her body he was worried about. “Please trust me on this, Harry.” She softened her voice. “I’m not going to fall apart on you, I promise. Not unless you refuse to do this. I feel as if the whole world’s been down there in the past twenty-four hours and you’re the only person I want there.”

“Oh, God, Laura, I want to be there. So much…”

He kissed her again. And slowly, as gently as he had the very first time, many years before, he made long lingering love to her, hardly missing a beat despite his sore shoulder. She seemed to be watching it all from above, noting every move he made, recognizing them from years of Harry’s lovemaking.

There was one bad moment—when she was naked and he saw the ugly bruise on her breast—but she pulled his head down to her nipple, and the moment passed.

And when he entered her, Laura was so desperate to have him replace what had been before that she pushed upward, giving him no chance to change his mind. She rode with him, thanking God for every thrust of her husband’s body, telling herself over and over that Harry was healing her.

And hating every second of his touch. It didn’t feel in the least exciting. It felt like a man invading her. Taking from her. Using her. And when he climaxed, he reached that particular summit alone.

Half an hour later—hall light off and Laura settled for the night—Harry sat propped up against the pillows, Laura’s head just below his rib cage, and watched. His eyes were fully adjusted to the dark, and so much as a speck of dust moved through the air he was going to know about it.

And if it posed a threat, he’d annihilate it.

The new alarm system was already installed—thanks to a friend of a friend—and the windows had double locks.

Harry stayed quiet and still, his hand in the middle of Laura’s back where it had lain for the past half hour as he did another mental check of their surroundings. Laura wasn’t asleep yet, he could tell by her breathing. She hadn’t spoken a word since her fervently whispered thank you as she’d pulled her pajamas back on before snuggling up against his stomach.

It was only 10:30. And it was going to be a long night.

The first bit of wetness didn’t register as tears. He’d figured, with her skin against his, that they were both sweating. But when Laura’s next breath, more of a sob, jostled his hand on her back, he knew better.

“Come here,” he said, pulling her up to rest her head against his good shoulder. And then, not caring about the ache in his other shoulder, he held her in both arms, rubbing her back, her hair, whispering to her as she released such wrenching sobs he felt his own eyes fill with tears.

Nothing he said seemed to get through to her—exactly like the night before, when she’d locked herself in the bathroom. She let him hold her but hardly seemed aware that he was there, didn’t nuzzle into him—didn’t relax at all. He could’ve been an inanimate piece of furniture for all she seemed to notice him.

His offer of sustenance, of comfort and strength, seemed to go unheeded.

More than an hour later, she settled down on her side of the bed, her head on the pillow, her back to him and, with a shudder, went to sleep. By sheer force of will, Harry stayed there in bed, watching her.

What the hell did he do now?

What could he do?

He couldn’t fix this for her. Couldn’t wipe out the violence. Or the fear.

He couldn’t erase the pain, the violation—or her memory of him being overtaken, bound and beaten, unable to help, while two men took turns raping her.

She hiccupped in her sleep and Harry’s entire body deflated. What kind of man allowed such atrocities to his wife without giving up his own life to protect her? Replaying the scene in his mind for the hundredth time, Harry tried to figure out where he’d gone wrong. What he could’ve done differently.

How he could have prevented the attack.

He should’ve put a better security lock on the sliding glass door. He should’ve invested in an alarm system, although their neighborhood was considered safe. He should’ve insisted on a guard dog, in spite of Laura’s allergy to pet dander.

He should have heeded her father’s warning and kept his black ass away from the white man’s daughter.

Harry reached for the pistol. The touch of cold metal against his skin didn’t take away the rage. It didn’t diminish the anguish coursing through him. It didn’t make him feel any less emasculated.

As he sat there, calling on every ounce of self-control he had, Harry knew one thing. His love for Laura was not weak, faithless or changeable. Somehow he was going to make this right.

Even if that meant keeping his black ass far away from her.

The thought filled him with despair.

Still resolute, he sat beside her, eyes wide open, offering protection through the long hot night.