Ravished (The Teplo Trilogy #1) (36 page)

People like Lillian.

He slumped onto the freezer, his gaze catching on something inside.

No. No, no, no!

Lillian stared up at him. Her beautiful brown eyes were clouded with death, her mouth open in a soundless scream. Her lovely skin was hard and grey, lifeless.

No.

No, no, no.

What little air remained erupted from Tristan's lungs in a strangled rush. A bolt of terror shot through him, adrenaline firing his synapses and causing him to jerk against the cold steel. He tried to cry out for her, to apologize for failing her, for not protecting her, but it was already too late.

Like thick blinds falling closed over windows, everything went black.

Tristan shot upright in the bed, a strangled moan breaking from his lips. His heart raced. Sweat drenched his body. He took a deep, gasping breath, trying to calm the panicked roar of his mind. To assure himself he wasn't dying.

He wasn't.

Lillian.

He whipped his head around.

His ballerina lay beside him, her hair spread across the pillow. One arm draped across his stomach. Her feet were tangled with his beneath the blankets.

She was safe.

A sigh burst from his lips.

They hadn't been separated by a steel army of mortuary freezers. She wasn't dead.

It was a dream. Just a dream.

"Fuck," he swore, his hands shaking as he lifted them to grasp at his hair. He let them fall and reached for her instead, needing to touch her, to assure himself that she was really there.

"Tristan," she mumbled as he swept his hand across her cheek, pushing her hair away from her face so he could feel her skin beneath his palm. She was warm, soft.

He sighed again as the last of his panic began to blur and fade away, and slid back down onto the pillows, pulling her closer in the big bed. Her form molded to his.

Safe. She was safe.

He took a deep breath, but did not close his eyes. Every detail of that nightmare stayed with him – the doors, the panic. Her lifeless body. He had no doubts the rest of the freezers were full of people the drug war had already killed. He'd had similar dreams before, but none like this. None so terrifying.

He buried his face in Lillian's hair and breathed her in. He didn't want to lose her. He
couldn't
lose her.

She was killing him, completely undoing him. In the dark, with her body wrapped around his, the truth shook him to his core. He was falling in love with her, not in stages, not bit by bit, but all at once, completely. And taking her into
Teplo
every night was driving him insane.

Before she ever gave voice to the thoughts in her mind, he'd heard them. Saw the determination in her eyes. How long until she put herself in harm's way because of him? Until
no
didn't stop her from taking a risk and approaching the blond? A week? Less?

He couldn't let that happen.

As the clock crept through the pre-dawn hours, his thoughts grew more restless. Despite having her tucked as close as he could get her, she still felt too far away. As if she truly were locked in one of those damn freezers, out of his reach.

He dropped his lips to her forehead and then slipped from the bed, unable to get that image out of his mind. With his iPod and
nunchaku
in hand, he headed for her spare room, once again driven to work himself to exhaustion by a mind and heart that would not stop battling.

Duty. Responsibility. Lillian.

He wanted nothing more than to be able to juggle it all and know he would not fail her. That she wouldn't take that risk for him. But what if he couldn't? What if… what if being with him got her killed just like he'd gotten his parents killed?

"Please, no," he whispered. "Not her."

Chapter Twenty-Six

Early morning light spilled across Lillian's face. She rolled toward Tristan, hesitant to leave the warmth of the bed, only to find the sheets on his side of the bed cool. Empty.

Lillian opened her eyes reluctantly.

He wasn't there.

She groaned and stretched. "Damn," she cursed as muscles relaxed in sleep protested, plunking her back down into the reality her sleeping mind so often forgot. In dreams, she danced as gracefully as ever, her leg unbroken. Waking up to the truth every morning sucked.

Rolling across the bed, she dragged herself up before she refused to leave the bed at all. Using her dresser for support, she limped across to the closet and grabbed a leotard, once again foregoing the tights, before heading into the en-suite bathroom to clean up and dress. By the time she was done, her leg throbbed, the muscles protesting every little move she made.

Tristan had taken her hard last night, pounding into her as she sprawled over the arm of the couch until she screamed his name, and then he'd carried her to bed and started all over again. With words, his hands, and his mouth, he'd taken her higher than even dancing had. She'd lain awake half the night afterward, guilt pricking at her heart as he tossed and turned, unable to rest as he mumbled her name over and over.

She wasn't sure what had haunted his mind, but she knew she'd put that thought there.

She didn't try to track him down after dressing, heading instead straight for the spare room. It was a cowardly move, but what would she say to him? All she'd wanted to do was help him, but instead she'd made things infinitely worse. A simply
I'm sorry
wouldn't fix that, especially when she didn't really understand why he'd reacted so strongly to her suggestion. It was more than just not wanting to put her at risk, she knew it. But he wouldn't talk to her about it. As usual, he'd shut her out when she'd tried to broach the subject after returning home from
Teplo
, instead distracting her with his hands and mouth.

Pushing the door to the studio open, Lillian drew to a stop.

Tristan was inside, his chest bare and a pair of dark sweats low on his hips. He had ear buds in his ears and his iPod tucked into his waistband. Sweat drenched his hair. Little beads rolled down the tattoo on his chest, too.

He looked so fierce, so beautiful.

The sight of him took her breath away.

Lillian's heart stuttered.

The nunchucks in his hands spun fast, slicing through the air in neat arcs. She leaned on the doorjamb to watch as he worked his way back and forth across the room, his step never faltering or slowing. She'd never get used to how gracefully he moved, or to the raw power he exuded. Even without the weapon in his hands, he moved like a leopard. But when he worked through the
kata
, he was something else altogether. Something feral, beautiful, and dangerous as all hell.

He noticed her standing in the doorway and dropped the nunchucks to the floor.

"Hi," she whispered when he pulled the ear buds from his ears.

He panted, his chest rising and falling in rhythmic exertion. "Hey," he answered.

She slid her hand along the wall for support, and moved into the room.

His gaze roamed across her body, taking in every step she made. "You're hurting. How bad is it?"

She started to lie to him, but couldn't. "It's pretty bad."

He stepped toward her, regret rippling through his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault." Despite the ferocity in his claiming the night before, he hadn't hurt her.

He didn't answer, instead reaching out to pull her into his sweaty arms. She melted into him, clinging to his sweaty body. "God, I missed you," he whispered as if he had not seen her in weeks.

"I missed you, too."

He pressed his face into her hair, breathing deeply.

"How long have you been up?"

"You need to stretch." He pulled back and unwound her arms from around him, avoiding her gaze.

She let him help ease her down to the floor, hurt whispering through her. Even when he settled her down, he didn’t look at her again.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing's wrong."

"No?"

"Nothing," he reiterated in a monotone.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice cracking under the strain of guilt settling down around her. Tears stung her eyes. She closed them. Took a deep breath.

Why was he so mad at her?

"Lillian…."

She waited for him to say something else, but he didn't.

When she opened her eyes, he was no longer in the room.

"Lillian, wait."

Tristan reached out and grabbed her arm as she started to limp by him into the hallway. She stopped, but didn't look at him. She hadn't really looked at him since she'd emerged from her bedroom half an hour before, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy. She'd kept herself locked up in there all day, hadn't even come out to eat breakfast with him after she'd finished stretching and showering. She hadn't eaten lunch, either.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, hating that he'd made her cry. "Christ, I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry for." She turned toward him, her expression carefully blank.

"No?"

She shook her head. Took a deep breath. "I'll call Jason. Just let me do it alone, okay?"

"What?" He gaped at her, blindsided. "You think I want you to-?
Why
?"

"You know why." She shrugged as if it didn't matter, but her mask crumpled. Hurt swam in her big, brown eyes.

"Beautiful, no." He tugged on her arm, forcing her to step into his arms.

She stood rigidly, her head lowered.

"Please don't do this," he whispered. "I need you here. I
want
you here."

"Tristan, you haven't talked to me all day," she pointed out. "You're angry with me."

"I'm not angry, Lillian." He made soothing circles on her back, trying to reassure her. He wasn't angry. He was just an idiot. He'd stared at her closed door all fucking morning, trying to work up the courage to open it and tell her… he wasn't sure what he needed to tell her, actually. That he was falling in love with her. That he couldn't keep dragging her into
Teplo
every night. That he was on the verge of doing something monumentally stupid. He had a thousand different things he needed to say to her, and he didn't know how to say any of them. The words caught in his throat, choking him.

"No? Then what's wrong? Talk to me, please."

"I had a nightmare. Shit I've seen. Shit I've caused. Shit I don't want to see." A fucking army of mortuary freezers sucking the life from him. Her lifeless eyes staring up at him.

"You had a nightmare?"

"Yes."

Pure skepticism crossed her face.

"You scared me last night, beautiful," he said. "The thought of you approaching him, of him hurting you…. I need you safe, Lillian."

"So you've said," she murmured without heat.

"You don't understand," he muttered. "Of course you don't understand."

"Then explain it to me." She shook her head, frustrated. "
Talk
to me."

"When I was thirteen, my dad's brother started using," he blurted out. "I knew, but I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. And I didn't know how bad things were, but he was in deep. He owed money – a lot of money – to the wrong people. My parents… fuck." He took a deep breath and raked a hand through his hair. "I was a pain in the ass as a kid, always in trouble, always fucking around. When I found out that he was using, I blackmailed him instead of telling my parents… told him I'd keep quiet if he'd hook me up. Nothing hard, just pot. I was just a fucking kid, but I knew what I was doing, and I didn't care. So long as he kept handing over pot for me and my buddies, I didn't give a shit what happened."

"Tristan-"

"Wait, okay? Just, wait." He needed to explain before that look in her eye – so soft and uncertain – broke him. "I got into a fight at school and was suspended the day my parents died. My uncle was with them when they got the call that they needed to come and get me. One of his dealer's people drove up on them at a stoplight half a block from the school. He killed them, and they didn't even fucking know why."

"Oh my god," Lillian whispered, her eyes wide.

"But I knew. And I never said a word to my parents about it. They died, and I could have stopped it." He blew out a sharp breath. "I heard the shots and took off running. There was blood and glass everywhere. My dad was dead by the time I made it there, but my mom, she wasn't. She was hurt badly, and she was screaming my name. I fought so fucking hard to get to her, but my teacher was holding me back, refusing to let me go.

"I watched them load her into the ambulance, and then I sat in the fucking waiting room with a bunch of strangers while she died in the OR. All I could hear was her screaming my name. My uncle – the one who caused it – he hung on for a week before he died. I didn't even go see him. I was pissed off at him, so I just let him die alone. And it wasn't his fault, not really. His dealer never should have kept giving him drugs when he knew he couldn't pay, but he did anyway so he could make an example of him. My family died, and he's still out there somewhere, free. People like my parents – people like you – get caught in the middle. They were there because of me; they died because I was a stupid fucking kid. And now you're here because of me, caught in the middle because of me, and I don't know-"

He broke off, shaking his head. The motion didn't clear his mind. Didn't make the words come any easier. "I went into this knowing what I was doing. I knew what I'd see, what I'd have to do. I knew what people like Anton Vetrov were capable of, but it didn't matter because I didn't have anything left to lose. But I do now. Because of you. And I can't – I don't want you to get hurt because of me. I don't want you to – fuck. I don't want you to
die
because of me."

"Tristan, I'm not going to die," she whispered. "I just wanted to help you."

"I know that." He looked up at her to see that same soft, uncertain look in her eyes. The one that made him want to crawl inside of her and stay there. "I know you just want to help, but I can't lose you. If he works for Francisco… it's not because he's merciful. He will kill you without hesitation. I can't lose someone else I care about because I fucked up. I just can't." He didn't know how else to explain it to her. To make her understand that he wouldn't survive that shit.

Losing his parents had torn a hole in his heart. One that had never gotten any smaller until she'd appeared in his life like a fucking dancing angel. She'd changed everything without even trying. Changed
him
. And if she got hurt because of him, it would destroy him.

"I'm not going to put myself at risk for no good reason, and I'm not going to do something in the club that you tell me not to do. I know I'm just a ballerina. I know I don't know what I'm doing. But I want to help you. You shouldn't have to do this alone. You already carry so much weight, already blame yourself for so much, and that's not fair to you. You were just a kid, Tristan. It
wasn't
your fault."

"Christ, beautiful," he groaned, hugging her to his heart. "You're killing me. You say things like that and I– Fuck." He gave up trying to explain something he didn't even understand. The way she made him feel, the things she made him want… no matter how hard he tried to sort it out and put it into words, he couldn't.

He kissed her until he couldn't breathe, couldn't think, and couldn't see. And then he eased himself down into the floor and just sat there, trying to calm down.

"Tristan?"

"Yeah?" He reached out and tugged her gently down beside him, readjusted her until she was in his arms.

"Thank you for telling me about your parents."

He pressed his lips to her forehead.

"I've never told anyone about them before."

"Never?"