Chapter 43
My phone chimed with a new text message, but not from Will. I ignored the message and checked the time. It was past nine a.m. Will and Thomas hadn’t made it home yet.
All the what ifs consumed me, one after the other, as I left my room and headed down the stairs. Shaking my head, pushing them away, I tapped on Will’s name and called him again, hoping he would answer this time.
I froze, hearing my own ringtone back upstairs.
He was home, but why hadn’t he let me know?
Darting back up to the first floor, following the ringtone, I found Thomas and Ben standing near one of the guest rooms. The bedroom door was shut, and Thomas held Will’s phone in his hand.
“What the hell?” I blurted.
Thomas stared at me but didn’t say anything.
“Why do you have Will’s phone?”
“Because he asked me to bring it to him,” he said.
“What do you mean, bring it to him? He never goes anywhere without it. Where is he?”
Thomas shifted his weight and avoided making eye contact, keeping his eyes on Will’s screen.
“Look, Ellie. I’m doing what he asked me to do.”
My heart dropped into my stomach—something wasn’t right.
“But where is he, Thomas?” I half whispered.
He gently gripped my arm.
“Ellie—”
But I couldn’t hear his words. My head shut him out, and torment twisted in my gut. An image of Will lying somewhere lifeless assaulted my mind, sending a shock wave of pain through me. I hugged my abdomen to hold myself together.
“What happened?” I finally asked.
Thomas moved his hand to my back to comfort me.
“It’s not as bad as it might look…he’s fine, I promise. His shoulder will heal quickly.”
Someone had hurt him. Those fuckers hurt him.
“Oh my god, you mean they shot him?”
“No…like I said, it’s a stab wound, and his physician patched him up earlier.”
I nodded and wiped at a single tear.
“I want to see him.”
Ben’s eyes jumped to the guest room door, and then he locked his gaze on me.
“I think you should give him some time, Ellie…he asked to be left alone.”
“What?”
No matter how many reasons my thoughts threw at me, I couldn’t wrap my head around why Will didn’t want to see me. Our bond was strong. We’d made commitments to put each other first.
Thomas interjected, his hand still on my back.
“Fuck this. We can’t stop her if she wants to see him.”
Ben’s words from his warning in the gym came back to me. Make sure you take him on from a position of strength, he’d said.
I took a deep breath, lifted my chin, straightened my back.
“Exactly. You can’t stop me. I’m going in to see him.”
Thomas dropped his hand from my back and nodded.
“You should know his mood is quite bad. I’ll go in with you.”
Shaking my head, I put my hand out against Thomas’s chest to stop him.
“No, we’ll be all right. You know he would never hurt me.”
Thomas held my gaze for a minute, then he walked away, signaling with a whistle for Ben to follow him.
I stepped into the guest room with Will.
He rested against a stack of pillows, wearing only a pair of sweatpants, drinking whisky from a lowball tumbler. One shoulder was bandaged, but the rest of him seemed okay.
He turned his face away and looked out the window.
A broken sob stuck in my chest, where I forced it to stay. No crying. I couldn’t let my emotions get the best of me. We had something to settle between us. I drew a long breath through my nose and straightened my shoulders.
Will had underestimated me.
I wouldn’t allow him to shut me out. I snatched the glass out of his hand.
“I won’t be replaced by your damn whisky.”
He kept his eyes on the window, speaking in a low, icy tone.
“You shouldn’t have come in here,” he said.
“You don’t belong in this room, Will.”
“Leave, Elle.”
“Seriously? You know me better than that. Tell me what happened last night.”
I touched his bandaged shoulder, unintentionally making him to wince.
“Leave me, Elle. Move on with your life. I’ll make sure it’s safe for you.”
Anger quickly overwhelmed me, rushing heat onto my neck and across my cheeks. I threw his glass at the fireplace, shattering it and splashing whisky on the marble.
“I will never fucking ever leave you,” I shouted.
He looked at the fireplace but held back expressing what he wanted to say.
“What…so my word isn’t good enough for you, Will, even though I’m supposed to take yours at face value and never doubt you?”
His eyes finally met mine, and we stared at each other for a minute. We just stared until he jerked me down on top of him, the muscles in his shoulders and his arms quivering, my wrists stinging from his tight grip.
I searched his eyes again. Anger, but no rage. There was a big difference. I could handle his anger. Determined not to back down, I confidently straddled his hips, then turned my wrists to relieve the stinging.
He opened his fingers, releasing me.
“You know better than to push me this way, Elle.”
Dark eyes.
Remorse.
Broken pieces of a man.
I cradled his face in my hands and kissed his lips, but he didn’t kiss me back.
“Why are you shutting me out? I would never take any injury lightly, but I know you’ve had worse. And this whole thing with those stupid ass Green brothers doesn’t change anything between us. We can handle it. It’s nothing.”
He pointed to his shoulder, scowling, so angry.
“You’re right…this is nothing.”
Then he grabbed my wrists again, his voice dropping, his eyes still dark.
“But what I’ve done…that is something. You should be worried about living with that fucking nightmare.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. You tell me what could be worse, what could scare me more than the terrible things I already see every night in my sleep?”
But he didn’t answer me and he didn’t need to, because I got it. I understood he blamed himself for the rebellion against us, and he worried others might follow suit.
“Nothing could be worse, Will. So you listen to me...you’re very persuasive, successful, a powerful man. But the decision those men made to come after us? You don’t get to take credit for that.”
The anger in his eyes started to fade. Still, he snapped at me.
“I’ll fucking fix it.”
“Good. Fix it. But remember, whatever happens, whatever you need to fix, neither one of us is whole without the other.”
I hastily tugged on his sweatpants.
“Shall I remind you about that?”
He grabbed my hair and drew me to his mouth, kissing me hard, holding me there, growling against my lips.
“I need you.”
Will needed his pieces cemented back together, and that was something I could fix.
I pressed on his hurt shoulder. He jerked, losing his grip on me, and I pulled away from his mouth. I kissed my way down his neck, his chest, dragging my lips and my teeth over his skin, pushing down his sweatpants.
“Never shut me out again, Will.”
The rhythm of his rising and falling chest intensified as he quietly stared at me.
“Well good, I’m glad we cleared that u?—”
He interrupted me by pushing me onto my back. I pressed on his shoulder again, making him fall back on his once more. His voice crashed against the floral-papered walls as he cursed.
“God-fucking-damn it, Elle!”
As he lay there grumbling, I stared at his handsome face, his beautifully sculpted body, his unbelievable erection.
“Fucking magnificent,” I whispered.
Will’s mood shifted, his ego coming front and center, and he smirked.
“That’s the second time you’ve said fu?—”
I locked my mouth around the wide crown of his erection.
His chest rumbled, and a primal grunt came from his throat. He threaded his fingers in my hair to leverage his hold on me, to control his thrusts into my mouth.
When his wild, fiery blue eyes met mine, the muscles in his chest tensed, and then he flung me across the bed onto my back. He panted against my lips.
“Be careful with that, woman. Push it too far, and you might not like what you get.”
“Try me,” I said.
He kissed me brutally to punish me for challenging him, and then he dragged his mouth down my quivering body, unzipping and pulling off my jeans. He bit my thighs and then he kissed them, slowly teasing me over and over. And when he finally gave me what I wanted, when he put his tongue where I wanted it, I pulled his hair and arched against his mouth.
A growl vibrated in his throat.
From the very first time he’d touched me, he mastered the rhythm and intensity it took to send me over the edge. He could take me there in seconds or draw it out as long as he liked. He knew the exact moment my orgasms began, and he did with them as he pleased…sometimes ruthlessly pushing me to another and other times thrusting into me to feel it himself.
He’d mastered all of me, even my soul.
With his tongue flat, pressing and sliding, I shattered, screaming out his name.
He shot up and pushed inside me with one sharp thrust, swallowing the sounds from my throat. To regain his control, he waited a minute, resting his face against my neck.
“I don’t want distance between us, baby. I wanted to spare you my dark mood. It was the wrong way for me to go about it…and I’m sorry.”
But his words caused my anger to return. I didn’t even know why.
Using his shoulder again, I forced him on his back while making sure he stayed inside me, and I reclaimed my position on top of him.
“Goddamn it. I said I was sorry.”
I dropped my head. I didn’t want to see his eyes. That would stop me.
He gripped my hips, keeping them still, and pressed his fingers into my flesh.
“Don’t be angry with me, Elle. Look at me,” he commanded.
I lifted my chin and caught his eyes…the authority, the love, the strength.
“Give me all of you, Will. I want everything.”
And then a sudden wave of anxiety fired through me, and I collapsed onto his chest. He reversed our positions to hover above me, then pressed his lips to mine with tenderness.
“I’ll give you everything, my angel…always.”
Another gentle kiss on my lips.
“But this, we’ll do my way, when you’re not angry with me…and you’re willing to give over to me.”
We stared into each other’s eyes.
They had stabbed him. I could have lost him.
Tears tracked down the sides of my face, wetting my temples, sliding into my hair.
“You scared me, Will.”
“I’m an arsehole.”
I agreed, nodding with enthusiasm, and he grinned. So much better than an apology.
“You’re schooling me, baby. I used to be quite a lot worse, you know.”
My heart smiled first before it reached my face.
“I do know.”
We shared chuckles against each other’s mouths until our laughter became insane kissing. He started moving inside me, and as I gave in to him, he filled me again and again, harder, deeper, longer, until we both climaxed and collapsed.
Will was back in control the way he needed to be, the way I needed him to be.
Giving him everything, yielding to his dominance when he was inside me, soothed my soul. It took me home.
Maybe he controlled what went on in our bed, but he gave me something in return that was more valuable to me—his key.
It unlocked a power that was all mine. It gave me the power to push him until he was no longer an arrogant business executive or his father’s soldier or my protector.
I could turn that key and strip him down to the man behind it all. The man with a tender heart who loved me hard, no matter what it cost him.
How I wished there were no costs…no fear…no pain.
I wished we could just be free.
But we knew the freedom we found in bed wasn’t enough to save us.