Red Lily

not. She doesn’t look for the easy way. She’s warm and strong and honest.”
    “I could have been.” Something else came into her eyes then. Regret, grief, need. “I can be. And I know better than she does what can be done with this body.” She pressed it to his, began to whisper erotic suggestions in his ear.
    With sick panic burning in his belly, he shook her. “Hayley. Damn it, Hayley. You’re stronger than her. Don’t let her do this.” And though it was still something else that looked at him, though her lips were cold, so cold, he kissed her. Gently. “I love you. Hayley, I love you. Come back to me.”
    He knew when she did, the instant. And gathered her hard and close while she shivered. “Harper.”
    “Ssh. It’s okay.”

    “She was—Oh God. It wasn’t me. I didn’t mean those things. Harper—”
    Comfort, he thought, wasn’t the answer, not here, not now. “It’s you I want.” His lips skimmed over her face, and his hands began to stroke her warm once more. “Just you, just me. We won’t let her touch this. Look at me.”
    He gripped her hands in his, and plunged into her. “Look at me,” he repeated. “Stay with me.”
    The cold became heat, the horror became joy. She stayed with him. Linked.
    S HE COULDN ’ T SPEAK , even when his head was pillowed on her belly and the whippoorwill had given way to the cicadas. So much churned inside her she couldn’t separate the shock from the fear, the fear from the shame.
    He brushed a kiss over her flesh, then rose.
    “I’m going to get us some water, and I’ll look in on Lily.”
    She had to choke back words now. Pleas that he not leave her alone, even for a moment. But that was foolish, and impossible. She couldn’t be watched every minute. More, she couldn’t bear the idea that he might feel he had to watch her, waiting for Amelia to use her again.
    She sat up, drawing her knees up to rest her brow on them.
    She stayed that way when he came back, sat on the bed beside her.
    “Harper. I don’t know what to say.”
    “It wasn’t your fault, let’s just get that out of the way. And you pushed her out, or pushed through her, whatever the hell.”
    “I don’t know how you could stand to touch me after.”
    “You think I’d let her win? You think I’d let her beat us?”
    The barely restrained fury in his voice had her liftingher head. “You . . . you were inside me when she—It’s so creepy.”
    “Here.” He nudged the water on her. “Creepy for both of us,” he agreed. “And a little incestuous for me. Jesus. Nothing like getting really close to your great-great-grandmother.”
    “She wasn’t thinking of you that way. I don’t know if that helps.” Fighting off a shudder, she handed the water back to him. “She was . . . I felt like she was seeing him. Reginald. She was—I was—all turned on, you know, then it was like this spit of rage spewing up through that. But the kind that makes it more, sort of more exciting. Darker. Then it was all blurred together. Her and me, him and you. And I was so wound up I couldn’t get a grip on anything. Then you said you loved me, you kissed me and I could hold on to that.”
    “She tried to use us. We didn’t let her.” He set the water aside before easing her back so he could lie beside her and draw her close. “It’s going to be okay.”
    But even lying beside him, held firm and safe in his arms, she couldn’t quite believe it.
    I T WAS AWKWARD , but Harper felt Mitch should know about any incident involving Amelia. Even if that incident had happened in bed with Hayley.
    At least it was a man-to-man sort of thing. If his mother had to have the information, Harper would just as soon have it filtered through his stepfather.
    “How long did it last?” Mitch asked.
    “Maybe a couple of minutes. Seemed longer, considering the situation, but probably around that.”
    “She wasn’t violent.”
    “No. But you know . . .” He had to pause a moment andgive his attention fully to the work board in the library. “Rape’s not always violent, but it’s still . . . Anyway, that’s what it felt like, to me. Like a kind of rape. Like a power thing. Got you by the dick, so I’m in charge.”
    “It fits the kind of personality profile we’ve been building. She wouldn’t get that while what’s between you and Hayley is sexual, sex for the sake of sex isn’t the driving force. Must’ve shaken you up.”
    Harper only nodded. There was still a coating of