This is an intense kind of book, so I searched for a scene to reflect that without giving away too many spoilers, yet still make sense without a ton of context. Alas, that meant the sex scene was right out. 🙂
But this is just as charged a scene, if in an different way. Philip is so very messed up. Maybe that’s why I adore him so much. 🙂 This is about halfway through the book, where Philip and Del, the heroine, finally confront their shared past.
Obligatory BSP sales link:Â http://store.samhainpublishing.com/corrina-lawson-pa-1341.html
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He closed the door behind him carefully. She stood and stared at him. He stared back. His face had no expression. But she could tell.
He knew.
She drew out the gun and pointed it at him. “Over here. Kneel next to the chair.” Her hand was shaking but her voice was steady.
He did as she asked. She stood behind him, gun at his temple. “You know why I’m doing this.”
“I know, Lily,” he said.
She walked around to face him. “Don’t you dare call me that.”
“Lily.” He stared at her. “You grew up to be so beautiful.”
Philip saw the blow coming. He made no move to avoid it. He’d goaded her into it. He wanted her to hit him. He deserved it.
The gun barrel smashed into his cheek. He fell forward to his knees and felt the blood trickle down his face. Pain exploded across that whole side of his head. She hadn’t held back. It was possible she’d even cracked his cheekbone.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” he whispered. “You should.”
She grabbed his collar to make certain they were face to face. Tears were running down her cheeks. She’d bitten through her lower lip. Blood dripped from her chin.
“You should kill me, Lily. I murdered them.”
She hit him again, lower this time. He felt his jawbone crack. He toppled sideways and his shoulder hit the floor with a thud.
“Why? That’s what I’ve wanted to know all these years. Why did you kill them? Why, Hawk?”
Philip blinked, trying to clear his vision, trying to focus past the pain to call on the healing power. Oh, God, this was good, the best pain yet. Agony and ecstasy flowed together, became one, became perfect. He curled into himself, every nerve singing, hiding his erection from her.
Half of him wanted her to hit him again, to keep the glorious agony coming. The other half wished she would finish it, end his existence once and for all.
His vision cleared. He felt the tingling of inner warmth as his power kicked in. She stood over him, the gun pointed directly at his forehead. She wanted to lance her anger, lance the pain of the loss of her parents and put it behind her once and for all.
He’d give that to her. It was all he had left to give.
“Lily—”
He couldn’t speak further. His jaw seemed locked shut. She put the gun under his chin. He offered no resistance.
“Don’t call me that. You have no right to call me that,” she said again.
“I know.”
He closed his eyes, concentrating. He knew a few moves that might disarm her. He had the gun in an ankle holster. A head butt would work and hurt her more than him. He could do a body slam that would knock them both into the wall and loosen her hold on her gun. But she might get hurt with either of those moves. He might hurt the child growing inside her. Her son. His son.
He couldn’t risk hurting her, not when he’d hurt her so much already.
“Delilah,” he whispered. “End it.”
She backed up a step, staring at the blood on the floor. She blinked away the tears in her eyes. In the last few months, she’d been medically raped, been the victim of an attempted kidnapping, been involved in a car chase and torn away from her home. And now a nightmare from her past had re-entered her life. People had killed under less stress and for far less reason. At least all this would be over now. He closed his eyes, ready for the bullet.
“Talk. Open your damned eyes. I need to know why you killed them,” she said.
”It doesn’t matter. You should kill me.”
“I can’t kill you until I have answers.”
Hell. He didn’t want to look at her. The way she stared at him, with those dark eyes, she seemed the same little girl who’d trusted him. Better, he thought, for her to be angry with him than to believe the people she had loved most in the world had planned to murder her.
“I went crazy. They were in between me and my stepfather.”
“No.” She knelt next to him, the gun carelessly held in her limp hand. “If you had gone crazy, you’d have killed him first.”
Him. His stepfather. The leader of their little clan. He’d terrorized them all, but Del’s parents had at least protected their little girl from his physical wrath.
“Why, Hawk? I have to know. I have to know.”
“No, you don’t.”