24. Unwanted Guests
Chapter twenty-four
Unwanted Guests
Eoghan
M y question was cut off, when an incessant knocking pounded the front door, so loud that it echoed up the halls to our room.
“Bloody hell,” I said, letting go of my Muse to fumble for my phone that had been discarded in the flannel. I brought the phone to my ear to call the security detail and they answered. “Who the hell is it?” I whisper-shouted, as I stared at my son in the next room, still napping on the bed.
“Sir, it’s Mr. and Mrs. Vasiliev,” he said.
“Jesus, did they fucking fly here?”
They had gotten here from their mansion in record time.
Another hard knock echoed through the house.
“Jesus!” I whisper-shouted even louder, “Tell him to quit that racket before they wake the fucking baby!”
I looked at my naked wife - my glorious, lovely, naked wife - and broke my own heart as I found the loosest green dress from the hanger, and began the task of dressing her.
Could she have done this herself? Sure, of course. She had dressed herself her entire life. But there was something about the intimacy of dressing my wife. It wasn’t about sex or about lust. It wasn’t about power, either. It was about watching the glide of soft fabric against her skin, and the thought it took to find things that she would like. To find things that made her feel beautiful.
The green dress had the pattern of holly on a darker backdrop. The waistline was high, an empire cut, with a modest bosom. The sleeves had a gentle taper, and gave her an almost Grecian silhouette, as it cascaded down to her rounded calves. Then I knelt down, to place little black flats on her feet because I had not seen her wear heels the entire time she was Anna Jones. I wasn't sure if that was by choice or if something in bearing our son had changed her, but until I knew I would try to respect her.
She watched me all the while, her eyes dazed and overwhelmed.
“I’ll help you through this, sweet Muse,” I said, kissing her lips. “I’ll do better this time, than I did in the past. I’ll walk through this with you.”
I placed one thigh-high stocking bunched at her toe, and she stepped in, placing a sweet hand on my shoulder for balance. The satisfaction I felt in her using me was… overwhelming. Satisfying. Sweeter than the intimacy we had just shared.
Marital bliss, if it was possible for me to find, existed in these spaces. In gentle touches, and thoughtless gestures.
“It’s the Bratva,” she said, her lips parted. “Are they your allies now? Or are they still a danger to us?”
My clever wife. She said “us”. We were a unit.
Maybe my raven-haired love was using this to placate me. Maybe she was assuaging my heart, like placing a warm salve on my wounds. But I would not look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Jericho Vasiliev? Yes, he’s as slippery as they come, but Aoibheann is the same as she always was,” I said. “She has power over him that none of us understand.”
“Maybe she cast a spell on him,” she said with a lovely smirk.
“I forgot about that,” I said, coming to my feet and planting a kiss on her lips. “I had forgotten how funny you could be.”
She blushed as I placed my lips softly against her cheek.
“I missed you, sweet Kira,” I said, grazing my lips over hers. “My Muse.”
As I lifted the second stocking up her elegant, full thighs, I placed a gentle kiss there, before taking the blade from the nearby drawer, still in its flat sheath, and tucking it into the elastic lace.
“Keep a blade on you at all times,” I said, relishing my place on my knees before her. “For your safety and for the sake of your status in the house. Until we can put a mark on your palm, let my blade be a symbol of my dedication for you.”
I kissed the blade tucked into her stocking, and she sweetly shuddered.
“You watched me draw you, didn’t you?” she said, lips parting, as she took in a labored breath. “You talked to me as if… you made me talk about you when…”
I hadn’t wanted to pry, but I couldn’t help myself. As Aaron Jackson I had asked her about her ‘husband’, and she had said she loved me. She had said it in words and in her paintings. That was why I would dispatch my men to bring back every bit of art in her kiosk. Each canvas was a confession that she loved me as I did her.
“Would you have told me otherwise?” I asked, curiously. “Would you have admitted your feelings to me, if I had asked myself? As I am. Not as… Aaron.”
She didn’t answer.
“Aaron,” she said with a chuckle. “How did I not see it? Erin means Ireland, doesn't it? Aaron is the masculine form, of sorts.”
“Aye, you caught me,” I said with a light chuckle. “I will make amends and beg for your forgiveness. But first, we must greet our guests.”
I grabbed her hand and began to pull her to the door.
She resisted, planting her feet and leaning away.
“My love,” I said, as soothingly as I could, “you are the lady of the house now. This is how it must be.”
I held her hand too tight. I kept her too close. I touched her as much as I could as we descended the stairs together, down to the main foyer, where Ginny and Malinda were already offering the guests some tea.
Aoibheann’s green eyes ascended the stairs to Kira, and she reached out one arm to my wife, as if to yank her from my hold. The other hand was on her rounded belly, where her own family had begun. Jericho saw her, then reached out an arm, barring her from coming closer, putting himself between me and his wife.
He didn’t trust me. We might have a truce, but he did not trust me one bit.
I didn’t trust him either. The man was too suave to be anything but a fucking weasel.
“To what do we owe the pleasure, Mr. Vasiliev?” I asked from the top of the stairs, holding Kira’s hand in mine.
“I am here to meet the elusive Mrs. Green,” he said, his eyes on my wife - and that made me want to punch his throat. What right did he have to look at my darling?
“Kira,” Aoibheann’s soft voice called.
In an instant, Kira was running down the stairs, with me in tow, as she threw her free arm around Aoibheann, while I held on to the other.
“Are you okay?” Kira quietly whispered to her.
“I’m fine, love,” Aoibheann said, as the two pulled away. My stepmother put her hands on her growing belly, and smiled. “As you can see, I’m doing well.”
Kira searched her face, a habit I had observed when she was Anna Jones - a curious tendency of inventorying every bit of someone’s features as they said something, as if she was looking for words where there were none.
Was she trying to read them? Was that something she had learned? Had she been abused growing up, as I had, she would do so naturally, without such a studied approach. Who had taught her to read expressions?
Was it the same person who taught her to shoot?
Why had I never noticed this before?
“You and I should have tea,” Aoibheann whispered, her eyes darting to me. “A moment alone, Eoghan?”
Her question hung in the air, before I parted my lips in a firm, and certain, “No.”
“Eoghan!” Aoibheann looked at me with hurt in her eyes, as though I’d given her an insult.
“As you can imagine, dear stepmother,” I said, pulling Kira to my side, “The last time she was left alone with you, I did not see her for three years. I won’t be making such a mistake again.”
A low, almost menacing chuckle came from Aoibheann’s husband, as his closed-lipped smile rumbled through the foyer.
“Oh, that is rich,” he said, his eyes on me, making my skin crawl. “Well, we must respect the head of household here.”
One side of his lips tilted up in a strange expression of smugness and condescension. Scorn. He looked at me with absolute scorn. One that I did not think I had ever earned.
“Aoibheann wished to speak with you, anyways, Eoghan.” His eyes turned to his wife, as he placed a kiss on her temple. “Privately. Why don’t you two have tea here in your receiving room? Kira and I can have tea in your office, so that you two might have a word.”
I was dumbstruck. He had sworn to never allow my stepmother to be in my presence without his overbearing presence. Now, he was thrusting her at me on purpose?
What did they have planned?
It was the treachery again that I had feared, the conspiracy to part my Muse from me.
“I’ll be okay,” Kira’s voice whispered against my cheek. She left a small kiss on my jaw, and I stood stunned. “My love, please. Trust me?”
Her finger traced my jawline, where I had rid myself of that infernal beard, and then she placed a kiss on my Adam’s apple.
“You have forgiven me.” Her whisper was a statement of fact. “Now you must trust me.”
How could a man ever deny his love when she said something so divine?