Chapter 44
Arthur
“This is perfect.” Gwen covered her mouth while she chewed a morsel of toast. She’d done the same with the eggs.
Small bites, on the left, away from the split in her cheek.
She almost managed to hide the wince. The bruise along her jaw had gone purple-black on the drive home, and the kitchen lights didn’t do it any favors.
“More jam?” Lance slid the jar across the breakfast table before she’d answered, his own plate practically licked clean.
“I’m fine.” She lowered the hand to smile at him. “Thank you.”
I’d kept it simple. Eggs, toast, butter, jam, and chamomile tea.
She’d told me I showed my emotions through food, so what did this meal say about me?
It said this was all I had to give. I couldn’t close the cut on her cheek or pull the ache out of her face.
But I could keep her plate warm while she worked through one tiny bite at a time.
She squeezed her eyes shut through the last of the toast, and my chest tightened again.
Getting her free was supposed to resolve that.
An hour and a half ago, I’d stood in a basement and offered a room full of strangers five million dollars without blinking.
And I was feeding the three of us with five dollars’ worth of food.
“Keep eating,” Lance said, “or he’ll start baking. He gets worse when he’s worried.”
She laughed, caught her cheek in her palm, and kept laughing anyway.
“Do you want more?” I asked him.
He shook his head, and I carried my plate and his to the sink to rinse them off.
When I looked back, Lance widened his eyes at me and tipped his chin at her plate. ‘She’s eating,’ that look said. ‘Breathe.’
So I put the kettle on for more tea.
While I waited for the kettle, the list I couldn’t shut up ran through my head.
The after-action review Lance and I had to finish before the details went soft.
The update for our team, so everyone knew we’d gotten out safely.
A call to Merlin, who was probably pacing and staring daggers at his phone—but would claim he was sleeping.
The sword case locked in the safe room under our feet, FBI property with a forged pedigree waiting to bury it. Tomorrow’s flight home.
And under all of it, the item I couldn’t handle.
‘Leave Ethan to me,’ my father had said on the phone. I’d been too panicked over Gwen to wonder what he meant. He’d be fired, of course. Maybe sued for breach of contract, or he’d get a stern talking-to.
But when One said they had a second job to do once we were safe, I knew what he meant.
Twenty years inside Gerald Penn’s operation, reporting to the Custodians the whole time—Ethan Fowley wasn’t getting away with what he’d done.
He wouldn’t use his knowledge of my father or anyone under his control as leverage.
It was either a kill order or a dark room off every map, for the rest of whatever life Ethan had left. My father would call the second one mercy, but he’d sleep fine either way.
What would I have chosen if I were in his shoes? A third option had to exist, but every one I came up with left the Custodians with too many secrets about my family. About my father. About his company.
“If I don’t lie down soon, I’m going to fall over.” Gwen pushed her plate aside, leaving far too much uneaten. “I need some sleep.”
I wanted anything but sleep. I wanted her wrapped around me, breathing against my neck, proof I could hold on to. But she needed her rest, so I made myself nod and return to the table for her plate. “Sweet dreams.”
She stood, accepted the gentle hug Lance gave her, and stared at me for a beat before leaving.
I braced my hands on the edge of the sink. We’d gotten her back, and the world was as it should be. I blew out a long breath and turned the tap back on. “We should do our AAR.”
“The fuck?” Lance joined me at the sink and turned off the tap. “Why are you still here?”
“She needs sleep.”
“You’re hopeless.” He pinched the bridge of his nose theatrically and sighed. “That line was for my benefit, because she thinks I’m clueless about what’s going on here. She meant she wants time with you. Go. I’ll call Merlin, and I’ve got the kitchen.”
I was on the stairs before I’d finished deciding to move. My injuries—the ribs, the cut across my arm, the bruises on my face, the bad knee—realized it was best not to remind me they existed.
Upstairs, I knocked on the guest room door at the end of the hall. No answer. The door was open a crack, so I nudged it open. A light thud came from behind the en suite door. The shower enclosure’s door.
I closed her room’s door behind me and crossed the room to the sound of running water. I knocked. “Gwen? Do you need anything?”
She eased the door open, a tired smile on her face. She was in a T-shirt and her panties, her dirty, rumpled pants and sweater on the floor. “I was hoping you’d come up.”
“Taking a shower?”
“I need to wash the day off.” She came closer and ran her fingers down the front of my T-shirt. “And I think you do, too.”
If only hot water and soap were enough to wash this day away. But if a shower was what my woman needed, a shower was what she’d have. “I do.”
We helped each other undress, slow and tender around our injuries.
We were both an absolute mess. When her shirt came off, the full extent of the bruising sent me back to our standoff at the safe room.
I imagined a different ending, with a shot much higher than the one I’d made.
Part of me understood which option my father had chosen with Ethan.
In the moment, I’d seen Rick grab Gwen and reach for his hip. I knew he had a gun. Was that the hip it was on? Was he going for a knife instead? Did it matter?
In Prague a couple of months ago, we’d underestimated who we were up against, and one of my men nearly died. The second Rick had moved, my muscle memory took over, and I’d mitigated the risk. If he’d produced a weapon—or if I’d known how many times he’d hurt Gwen—I would have eliminated it.
“I’m safe, Arthur.” Her hand found my cheek. “You saw to that.”
“Gwen.” What else could I do? Get angry? Apologize? Threaten to go back and finish the job?
She stepped in close and laid her palm over my bruised ribs, feather-light. “Look at the pair of us.”
“You should see the other guys.”
“I did. Eleven of them, cuffed in a parlor.” The half of her mouth that could smile did. “My guys were better.”
I kissed her unbruised cheek and helped her into the shower.
I washed her hair. She hadn’t asked, but her head tipped back into my hands the second the shampoo touched her, and her whole weight came with it.
I worked the lather from her scalp to the ends, shielding her split cheek from the spray and tilting her head so the water ran away from the cuts.
She hummed, long and low. “You’ve done this before.”
“I haven’t.”
“Liar. You’re a natural.” She said it absently, no teasing anywhere in her voice. She turned, hair rinsed clean and slicked back, and kissed me.
I kept my hands at her waist and let her set the pace.
“I keep replaying tonight.” Her palms flattened on my chest. “The men. The gear. The explosion.”
“That was just a threat. You know that, right? I wouldn’t have put you in danger.”
“Of course I do.” Water beaded on her lashes. “Because you’re a man of honor. No matter what you think of yourself, don’t forget that. You’re not just a Penn. You’re not just your father’s son. You’d do anything for the people you care about, and that’s the honest read of who you are.”
From the day I was born, I’d been evaluated by my name. Whatever I accomplished, I was always Gerald Penn’s son. Except that wasn’t true. It had never been true, had it?
“I want you in my life, Gwen.” I smoothed her wet hair back. “It’s a lot, and it’s very sudden, but… You said I had a reserve of love built up inside me. I want to share all of it with you. Every bit.”
She gave a fraction of a smile, hooked her leg around mine, and drew me in until no water fit between us. “I’d like that.”
Her hands looped around my neck and pulled me down to her, and for a while we kissed, barely touching—all we could do with the damage—as warm water pooled where our bodies touched.
Her hand left my neck, slid down my stomach, and closed around my cock.
Everything I’d been telling myself about letting her rest went down the drain with the soap.
“Gwen,” I hissed. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I’m fine.” She stroked me slowly, her thumb dragging over the head, and my hips pushed into her hand. “They’re bruises. Nothing significant.”
I navigated a hand between her legs. She was slick in a way the water couldn’t fake, and when I found her clit, she dropped her forehead to my shoulder—keeping her bruised cheek off me.
I worked her, unhurried, pulling the breath out of her.
I curled one and then two fingers inside her while my thumb kept its slow rhythm, until her thighs started to shake and her hand went still.
“Arthur,” she moaned. “The condoms are in—”
“I know where they are.” With another quick kiss to her temple, I stepped out of the shower, retrieved a condom from her toiletry bag, and rolled it on.
She hauled me back into the shower.
“I’ve got you.” I inched her back until her shoulders met the tile, out of the spray, and lifted her with my good arm. “Stop me if anything hurts. Anything at all.”
She smiled. “I will.”
I pushed inside her, watching her face the whole way for the tiniest flinch—and got nothing but her lips parting and her nails digging into my shoulder. The cut in my arm protested, so I shifted more of her weight against the wall and let my hips do the work.
She clung to me and breathed my name like it was all she had left. “Oh, Arthur.”
“You feel like heaven.” I went slow, because nothing outside the shower needed either of us before morning. “So tight around me I can’t think straight.”
Her breath hitched, and her pussy began fluttering around my dick.
“That’s it.” I pressed a kiss to the side of her head, holding her body up as much with my chest against hers as with my arms. “You see what you do to me?”
“Oh, Arthur,” she moaned. “It’s so right.”
“I know, sweetheart. I know.” I rolled into her, slow and deep, and she clenched around me hard enough I had to breathe through it. “All for you. Only ever you.”
She turned her face into my neck, panting, and I kept talking into her wet hair—filthy and reverent in the same breath, as I moved inside her—until her breath went ragged and thin. I slowed, about to check if she was all right.
“Don’t you dare stop.” She rocked against me, forehead pressed under my jaw.
“Never, sweetheart. I’ll never stop.” I drove in harder, giving her what she wanted. What she needed. And I’d give her everything. The orgasm. The moon. The fucking stars above. “Fuck, I love you.”
I lost my rhythm and kept going more on momentum than anything else. Every op I’d run had an exit built into it. There was no exit on the far side of a sentence like that. I’d never said it to a woman before. Not like this. It was too soon, too much, too—
“I love you too.” The words were desperate, without any pause or flinch. She gripped the back of my neck and adjusted her legs. “And I’m almost there.”
I hadn’t expected the words back, and I definitely didn’t expect them so easily. I found my rhythm again. A better rhythm. A faster one, that had my whole heart inside of it.
She tightened around me, and her body drew taut. She cried my name into my neck, and I let her take me with her, hips flush to hers, my groan muffled in her wet hair, careful even then, careful all the way through.
We finished wrapped around each other, and I eventually lowered her to her feet.
After, I dried her with the softest towel in the cupboard, letting my lips touch each injury. I gave her one of my shirts, and she slid into the big bed. By the time I pulled the covers over us, she was mostly gone, and she fit herself against my chest like she’d been sleeping there for years.
Her breathing went long and slow inside a minute. The house settled. Lance’s door closed down the hall. The persistent light rain ticked at the window, and for the first time since we’d eaten at The Train Station in Brenton, nothing anywhere was hunting us.