Chapter 22
A police car’s flashing blue emergency lights approached from the opposite direction.
Pain and nausea struck my stomach. I put my head between my knees.
Five. Four. Three. Two?—
Ben jumped into the car, handed the guns to John, and put the windows down.
“Pull the mags and get them in the floor. Ellie, you sit up straight. Will has this in hand…it’s an unfortunate car accident and nothing more.”
I sat upright, and a blast of crisp air came through, slapping me in the face.
The rumbling of Will’s voice resonated, though I couldn’t make out what he said to the police officer. His serious expression suggested he was negotiating a deal. His tensed arms and shoulders said don’t fuck with me.
Once he and Thomas got back in the car, and Ben pulled away, I didn’t even ask. I held on to his arm and rode back to Eastridge quietly in shock.
My strength or the shock or whatever had gripped me crumbled as we entered my bedroom. I cried, and Will held me, smoothing my hair and soothing me with his soft words.
He placed a tender kiss on my palm.
“No more worrying, Elle. Everything’s okay. Have a soak in the tub while I touch base with my office and with Ethan.”
I nodded.
“A hot bath sounds nice.”
The essential oils Mary had given me would help ease my tension.
About forty minutes later, Will was back, sitting on the sofa, talking on his phone.
“As I said, Ethan, unarmed…sent to watch and report back. Their information is on the police report now. In any case, I was quite clear. Any further involvement will cost them their lives.”
He paused, listening to his brother.
“It’s not totaled but needs quite a lot of repairs. I’ll have Thomas get another one. Ben asked for an additional car for the groundskeeper anyway.”
I hadn’t taken anything into the bathroom with me other than my clean bra and panties. Shrugging to myself, I went to the closet. But I didn’t make it that far.
Will said my name and summoned me with his long finger.
“Turn round,” he commanded.
I obliged, giving him what he wanted.
He continued his conversation with Ethan as he stared at my ass. He jerked me down on his lap, making sure my backside fit snugly against his erection.
“I’ll ring you back later. Something just came up.”
He disconnected and tossed his phone on the table.
“Really? Something just came up?” I teased.
“You’ve been tormenting me with this pretty arse all day.”
He gripped my hips and rubbed himself against my lace-covered cheeks.
“Give me what’s mine.”
I smiled even if he couldn’t see my face.
“Take it, savage.”
A primitive grunt came from him as he moved us across the room. He spun me, the back of my legs hit the mattress, and I fell back onto the bed.
He pulled himself into check as he stripped and stared.
“You’re good, baby?”
His eyes burned with so much intensity, though a little softer than the night before.
“Last night, I mean. You’ll tell me if I hurt you, Elle.”
“Yes,” I lied.
Will climbed on the bed and supported his weight above me, inhaling against and then kissing my neck.
He had hurt me with his first thrusts the night before, but I wouldn’t concede to it. He was significantly bigger than I was, yes, but once he stretched me, it felt amazing.
More than that, it had connected us on an emotional level never equaled for me. And I needed that from him again.
“Do it again, Will…make me feel.”
He kissed me hard then, and we didn’t bother with a slow burn. We shared the same urgent sense of desperation. I needed him inside me, and he needed to be there.
He gathered my wrists above my head in one hand and brushed his lips over mine. He licked my lips, dipped his tongue into my mouth, and then brushed over my lips again.
“When I’m inside you, you’ll surrender to me completely. Every time, Elle.”
Then he eased into me one rock-hard inch at a time.
I panted and moaned, insane from the intense desire he stirred in me.
His possessive whispers brought me to tears.
“You’re my angel…my beautiful angel. I’m never letting you go.”
When he finally pushed in deep, he swallowed his name as I sobbed it, and then he kissed the tears sliding down my temples that had slipped away from me.
“Give yourself to me,” he commanded.
And as I gave up everything he claimed, we burned to ashes and became one breathless, sated existence. He maintained mind-blowing control, covering my mouth with his to absorb my cries into himself and quelling his own when he came.
I fell asleep on his chest, but when I woke, he was on the sofa again, this time with his laptop, cramming half a sandwich into his mouth.
He’d spread out documents and newspapers over the table and on the floor.
I sat up.
“I kept you from your work.”
He looked over the computer screen and winked.
“Stay beneath the blanket until I’m finished here.”
“I can’t. I have to get up.”
On my way into the bathroom, I wrapped the sheet around my body.
My stomach rumbled before I could get the damn door shut.
“You’ll eat something, woman,” he said.
And I did. I devoured the avocado salad and bread he’d brought up for me while watching him as he harnessed his intense physical energy and applied it to his intellect.
He was as intelligent as he was strong, and it blew me away to see it.
After ending a client call, during which he’d spoken only French, he grabbed some books from the floor and put them on the bed next to me.
“What’s this, Will?”
“Have a look while I go for a run.”
I scooted them away, thinking I might get dressed and go downstairs.
“I can look through them tomorrow.”
“You’ll do it now.”
He countered his firm words with a soft kiss and then went out the door.
“But what’s in them?” I called out.
The two old books were quite heavy.
One a large tome covered in distressed brown leather, and the other smaller, much like a personal journal with a tattered black cover and a loose spine.
I opened the journal and leafed through, stopping at a dog-eared page to read a handwritten entry recorded by Emma James.
My great-grandmother.
She had written about her 1899 journey to America.
Emma had traveled alone as a pregnant woman, sailing from Southampton, England, to New York aboard the SS New York. Her husband John, my great-grandfather, had arrived six months ahead of her to search for the place they would call home.
Stonington, Connecticut
The journal entry went on as she had expressed her sadness, revealed her fears for their future, and confessed to loathing their new American surname.
I ran my finger over her signature at the bottom of the page.
Mrs. Emma Pl James
“I wish I’d known this about you sooner,” I whispered.
Will had explained everything to me back at the beach house. Still, there it was before me in black and white, chronicled by my own family.
I picked up the brown tome and passed over pages and pages of genealogical charts until landing on my father’s chart. I touched the brittle paper, using my fingertip to follow the names to the bottom of the page, where the last few generations were more legible.
The text showed my great-grandfather’s name at birth.
John James Plantagenet
He had created a new family surname using his middle name, because he directly descended from an English king, and he didn’t want any part of that. I couldn’t say I blamed him.
Two more names jumped out and overwhelmed me.
Edward and Elisabeth James
My dead parents.
The record ended there with no mention of Isabel or me.
My throat tightened. My chest ached with the grief ripping through me. But before the pain and my anxiety could take me down, I found the strength to drown them in anger.
Blood heated my face, my cheeks.
I scratched a line down the frail paper with my fingernail, stopping at my father’s name.
“Fuck you,” I blurted.
And then I tossed the book away from me like it had burned my fingers.