Forget Me Not (Remember Me Series) (17 page)

“Nowhere…”

He moved towards me, his hand reaching out to me but I couldn’t help cringing away from him. If he touched me again I didn’t know if I would be strong enough to push him away. I didn’t know if I’d be strong enough to hide the truth from him.

“Bella, you don’t need to hide from me. I’m here, I’ll always be right here. You’re the love of my life… There is nowhere I’d rather be.”

His words washed over me and all the did was cause the ache in my heart to worsen. How could I walk away from him when he said things like that? It made it seem almost possible that he would be able to accept me for what I was now. Could he still love me even though I was so broken?

“I can’t do this.”

I sat up and moved to the edge of the bed but Aidan’s hand on my arm halted my progress. He pulled me backwards and I let him. Even his touch was addictive, I wanted to give in to him so much. I wanted to be his.

“Talk to me. Tell me where you go in your head? Is it back to him?”

I gasped, his words knocked the air from my lungs. Tears stung my eyes and I struggled in his grip.

“I don’t want to talk about it. I can’t talk about it.”

He fought me, until he had me pinned in his arms, he wrapped his body around mine until I had nowhere left to go. He held me and I felt my hot tears streak down my cheeks.

“Don’t make me, Aidan, please?”

“Bella, I love you. I love every part of you. I don’t care about what happened, the only thing I care about is having you here with me. That’s all that matters.”

“It does, it matters! You don’t know what he did to me. You don’t know the truth.”

Aidan sighed and pressed his lips against my hair, his voice lowering to a whisper.

“I know everything, Bella. I know what he did to you. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I know he tortured you every opportunity he got. I know he marked you, scarred you, branded you with his mark and still none of that matters to me. 

“I would love you no matter what. Bella Brooks, I fell in love with you two years ago. I searched for you every single day, never once giving up hope that I would find you, even when it felt impossible. If I could change it for you then I would. If I could take away the pain and the nightmares, if I could carry that for you then I would do it in a heartbeat. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you, and nothing about you that I don’t find amazing and beautiful.”

“You can’t know it, you can’t know what he did to me?”

My voice was small and childlike. My heart had broken completely and Aidan was slowly putting it back together. How could he know? I’d kept it hidden, careful to never expose anything that might make him question me over what had happened.

“When I found you, when I found you strapped to the horse, Bella, you were naked. I saw what he had done to you. I’ve known all along.”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“I wanted you to come to me in your own time. I didn’t think you’d try and keep it hidden from me. I didn’t think you’d use it to push me away.”

What could I say? I had used it to push him away. I’d been so convinced that he wouldn’t be able to accept me the way I was now. But maybe it wasn’t Aidan I was really worried about, perhaps deep down I couldn’t accept who I was now. I had changed. I’d allowed Christopher to get inside my head. I’d allowed him to bury his doubts within me and it had almost cost me the man I loved.

Even though Christopher was dead he was still haunting me, he still had a hold on me. A grip on me that I was allowing him to have. I would never beat him if I let him take the man I loved away. I wouldn’t win if he took the one thing I had fought to live for, from me. I needed to stop being a coward and face up to who I was.

“Bella, can you ever forgive me?”

Aidan’s words took me by surprise. I squirmed in his arms until I could tilt my face up to look into his.

“Forgive you? What for?”

“I let him take you. It was my fault he went after you, my fault that he got his hands on you. My fault that you had to suffer through so much. If I had been stronger then maybe it would have been different…”

Aidan’s voice was filled with so much pain, so much anguish. It hurt to hear him blame himself so much for what had happened. It wasn’t his fault, I would never blame him for what had happened.

“There was nothing you could do, Aidan. Christopher was twisted, he was sick, it wouldn’t have mattered what you did. He had a plan and he was going to stick to it no matter what anyone else did.”

Aidan shook his head and buried his face in my hair.

“No, Bella… There’s something I need to tell you. The day you disappeared I met Christopher, we had a bit of a stand off but his men were there and I didn’t stand a chance… Not really anyway.”

Aidan sucked in a deep breath before continuing. I could see from the expression he wore that it was a real struggle for him. He had blamed himself non-stop for my disappearance. For something that wasn’t his fault.

“He gave me a choice. If I buried his file then he would leave us alone. I couldn’t do that… I couldn’t just let him go. Not after he had killed Hunter. I imagined him being the man who had taken my sister, how was I supposed to look the victim’s families in the eye if I let him get away with it all. So I shot him, I aimed for his head but I was too badly beaten, I couldn’t even see straight, I winged him, caught him in the shoulder…

“And then when I came round, when I dragged myself back here to the apartment, you were gone and all he’d left was this.”

Aidan released me and crawled to the edge of the bed. He pulled the drawer on his nightstand open and pulled out something small, a pink ribbon held the lock of my hair together.

“He took you because I couldn’t let him go, I had to be a good cop and I lost you because of it.”

I crawled towards him and took his face in my hands, I pressed my forehead to his and stared into his eyes.

“Aidan, you did nothing wrong. You did the right thing. Christopher would never have left us alone. If he didn’t take me then he would have chosen some other time. But he would have taken me regardless. You cannot blame yourself for this. I don’t blame you.”

He wrapped his arms around me, his grip tightening on me as he broke down. His shoulders shook as I held him. He drew me down onto the bed and we lay in each others arms. I had almost given everything up. I had almost thrown him away for something I couldn’t cope with.

When he finally grew silent, I pressed my body in closer to him. The scent of his skin filled my head and I closed my eyes, revelling in the nearness of him. I finally had the thing I had spent the last two years dreaming about. I was back in the arms of the man I loved.

“There was something I didn’t understand about Christopher…”

I pressed my lips to Aidan’s throat as I spoke, muffling my voice. Hell I didn’t even know if I wanted to bring it up. After everything else it seemed so inconsequential.

“What was that?”

“I reminded him of someone, a woman he knew… He talked about her as though he loved her. I don’t think Christopher could ever truly love anyone but himself. But it was the way he spoke about her.”

“Who was she?”

“Rebecca… He never gave me her last name, he just always referred to her as Rebecca… When he would beat me, that was what he called me. It was almost as though he was using me as a way to exact his punishment on her.”

Aidan had frozen beside me.

“Are you sure he never mentioned her surname?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, it was always just Rebecca. Why?”

“What did he do to her? Did he tell you?”

“Well the way he told it, he made it seem as though they slept together and then she took one of the cars and drove herself off the cliffs on Freedom Island. He seemed really confused about the entire situation.”

Aidan sucked in a deep breath and held me a little tighter.

“Bella, I have to ask you something and you might not want to answer and that’s ok too.”

I nodded, my body ran cold and I couldn’t stop the shiver that passed over me as he spoke.

“You reminded him of this Rebecca… Did he rape you?”

“No.”

The word fell between us into the silence of the room. I expected Aidan to doubt me, I knew what everyone thought. But Christopher had never seemed interested in me sexually. I was a toy, a way for him to release his violent frustrations. Each time he strapped me to the horse I was no longer Bella, I was Rebecca.

“When he took me to his room it was always for punishment, pain and torture. I was Rebecca for him. He’d scream at me, demanding to know why I would leave him, why I preferred death over him. Torture and pain was his way of getting off…”

Aidan didn’t move, didn’t speak as I explained what Christopher had done. It wasn’t until I fell silent that he finally moved. He drew my body to his and tilted my face up to look into his eyes.

I could see the pain reflected there, the guilt he carried over my ordeal.

“I love you.”

He whispered the words to me. I was right where I belonged and as I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep I knew in Aidan’s arms was where I needed to stay.

Sunlight filtered across my face as I woke. I lifted my hand to cover my eyes but Aidan caught my wrist and pressed his lips to my palm. Laughing I wriggled in his grip but the laughter quickly died as I felt him press against me.

It had been so long since I’d felt him that it stole my breath. I closed my eyes as he moved over me, his mouth coming down on mine in an all consuming kiss. He pushed his body up and over mine and I quickly ripped his t-shirt off. I was immediately confronted with his solidly muscled chest. The faint purple tinge of bruising covered his ribs, marks the creep had left on him. But that wasn’t the only thing that was new. Aidan had scars. Marks that hadn’t existed the last time I looked at his naked chest.

I traced my fingers along one particularly long gash. It was jagged and instantly reminded me of one Christopher had left on my hip. Tears filled my eyes as I touched him, my fingers exploring the new landscape of his body. I wasn’t the only one who was physically changed. Aidan had gone through so much, his journey back to me was mapped out on his skin and it hurt my heart to know he had suffered so much.

He leaned over me, pressing his lips to my cheeks, he licked at my tears, tasting them on his tongue as I continued to explore him. When my hands reached the top of his jeans I paused. Was I really going to do this? And I knew the answer. I wanted this, I wanted him. I had to know that he still wanted me, desired me.

My fingers fumbled with his belt and then with the button on the front of his jeans. Aidan sat up without saying a word and I followed him. He knelt over me and undid his jeans, they hung open, gaping enough to give me a glimpse of what lay beneath.

Things tightened low in my body. He gripped my silk shirt and with one quick tug he pulled it up and over my head, exposing me to his sight. Panic swelled within me, dampening my desire. I watched as his gaze raked over me, taking in ever little mark, every little scar that dotted my body.

I expected to see revulsion light up his eyes but there wasn’t any. He didn’t look at me with pity, or loathing. He simply looked at me, as a man looked at a woman he desired.

He lowered his face to my body, pushing me back onto the bed beneath him. He moved down over, his tongue tracing each mark I wore. At first it felt odd but as his hands slid up over my ribcage to where the clip on my bra sat I felt myself relaxing into his touch.

He freed my breasts and when his mouth closed around my nipples I cried out, my back arching up off the bed. His teeth grazed against the sensitive bud, drawing whimper after whimper from me. I writhed beneath his touch, struggling for breath.

He unfastened my trousers and slid them down over my hips before pulling them off completely and dumping them on the floor. Within seconds my knickers followed and I was suddenly acutely aware of how naked I was.

“You’re beautiful, Bella.”

He stared down at me, his eyes filled with love and lust.

I shook my head, not wanting to truly believe him. How could I? I knew what my body looked like, I was as far from beautiful as I could be.

“No, I’m not.”

Tears stung my eyes, choking the words from me.

Aidan frowned at me, his fingers finding my chin and tilting my head upwards until I was forced to look into his eyes.

“You’re beautiful.”

He said it with force. I closed my eyes and tried to calm my nerves. I wanted this, I wanted him.

“Bella, look at me.”

I opened my eyes slowly and stared up at him, swallowing hard. He growled as he dipped his mouth down to my body, his tongue tracing across my skin. I watched him move lower over me and shivered. There was something so animalistic about him, something so very wild and untamed that had never been there before. He would take me, he would use my body for his pleasure and he would bring me with him, screaming his name.

He reached the edge of my hip and ran his tongue along the ruined brand Christopher had given me. I trembled as he circled over it, when he bit down on me softly I cried out, my body jerking beneath him.

His hands slipped lower until he found the juncture between my legs. He pressed his palm against me, his fingers circling slowly, pushing against me, seeking entry to my body. I gave myself over to him, arching my back, a long satisfied sigh escaping my lips as he slipped one finger inside my body. But it wasn’t enough, I wanted more, craved more of him.

“Aidan, please, don’t wait. I need this, I need you.”

I gasped as he moved his fingers within me, driving my body to the brink of pleasure before slowly pulling back. He climbed off me, moving quickly to discard his jeans before he was back. He settled his weight over me as he pressed his body between my legs.

He pushed the tip of himself against me, sliding into me, inch by teasing inch. I struggled to draw him deeper into my body but he held himself back. I could see the concentration in his face as he struggled to restrain himself. I finally managed to jerk my hips upwards, forcing him to thrust into me.