27. Ivy
Ivy
His words are like the softest velvet, caressing my body, but I’m not prepared for the deep wounds they leave.
Before I can respond, he starts really fucking me, his dick that I can barely take thrusting deep in me over and over without giving me room to adjust or breathe or think.
Before I know it, I’m on the edge of a very dangerous cliff and I’m hanging on to the only life I’ve ever wanted to hang on to.
“Emmett, please,” I cry, but he only presses his forehead to mine, his huge, hard body holding me so close, I want to sink into his skin.
“I will die, but you, Angel, you will grieve the hardest for me.”
I almost pass out at the severity of his words.
“I’ll die, but it’ll feel like you’ve been left alone in the city of misery for a millennium without me!”
He fucks me even harder than before, fucking me with an expertise that’s both punishing and worshipping, gentle yet branding, tattooing his name in me.
I try to meet him trust for thrust, but he holds my hips in his hands, I hold on to him like never before and he screws me until I feel my own cum dripping down my thighs.
“You’re fucking poison, Ivy,” he grits out. “But do you feel this? I’m just as much in your fucking heart as you’re in mine! You love me and you’re mine!”
Oh God.
My vision blurs. My entire body is thrown into a state of levitation and numbness that I don’t even know what happens next.
“You will never be able to forget me,” he states. “You won’t ever move on from me!”
At this point, I’m screaming, tears running down my face because it’s soo good.
It’s soo good with this man, I feel like electricity is moving between us, frying me so good, I want more.
I cling to my tormentor, my monster, my husband, hating him, wanting him, knowing damn well that if he doesn’t say so, I won’t be able to come.
I really am a masochist.
“It’s my name you’ll scream, Ivy, even after I’m gone. Do you know that?”
I hate that I do know.
I hate that he might be right.
I hate him!
As if to prove a point, he deftly rolls his hips while balls deep in me, screwing me into the tree, destroying any hope of moving on from him.
Unlike our wedding night, this time he doesn’t bother being a gentleman. He’s never been one.
He comes with a roar that sinks into my subconscious, I swear I’ll come just by listening and feeling its guttural intensity, and I actually do.
As his seed spurts in me, the snow falling heavier than before, I come hard.
And just when I think he’s done, he starts all over again, thrusting in me with renewed vigor until my left leg starts shaking.
He grabs my thigh in his large, warm hand, squeezes there, and grinds against my pelvis so deliciously, I throw my head and scream, overwhelmed by the rushing tide that sweeps through me.
I come so hard and so long, that I lose all concept of time.
When I come to, Emmett is whispering praises in my ear, kissing me, holding me to him and telling me to keep squirting for him.
I come again from just listening to the huskiness of his voice. I come harder than before so much so that I feel myself about to pass out.
I feel his teeth at the crook of my neck, nibbling, biting, punishing as he starts thrusting in me once more.
As if I’m no longer in control of my own body, I start jerking against him, my nails sinking into his arms and back, my mouth latching on his shoulder.
“That’s it, baby. Give me everything.”
This is insane.
Wild.
Unhinged.
This is the kind of fucking I never thought possible, but he undoes me, and just when I think we’re done, there can’t possibly be more, he starts all over again, this time, laying me down on top of his stone table with only his suit jacket between me and the snow, making love to me round after round.
“Mine, Mrs. Easton,” he savagely states without any gentleness. “You’re mine beyond death! We’ll never part! We both waited forever for this.”
His command is not rosy or fancy. It’s like he’s stating facts.
He’s not charming. He’s not a hero in shining armor. He’s not even the polite, sensitive boy I had a crush on as a little girl.
This man is a possessive, shrewd, dangerous monster that’s trapping me both in life and death.
And he knows it.
The next morning, I feel sore all over.
When I roll over, I discover I’ve been ditched by my husband yet again…
Just when I thought we had connected in a way we never had before, he goes and does this.
Why can’t he just surrender? Why does he keep escaping it?
Its wounding my pride at this point.
Yes, last night was beyond spectacular. I lost count of the number of orgasms he gave me… and the things he taught me.
After screwing me in the falling snow, he took us to our room to continue.
When I passed out, spent and exhausted, it was in his arms, listening to the slow beat of his heart. I could feel him pressing kisses all over my body, coddling me, and yet still, he’s nowhere to be found when I want to talk to him about what I want.
Deciding to not think about him anymore, I have breakfast in the sunroom with Grandpa Armando who tells me about his upcoming birthday.
I have no idea why he’s been treating me with so much warmth lately, like gifting me boxes of diamonds and rare jewels that any red-blooded woman would preen over.
“Uh, these are for me?”
“Of course they are,” he says with a smile. “Your mother-in-law would want you to have them, I’m sure.”
In my shock, I learn about Daphne’s outcome after the night we parted.
It turns out this old man that I’ve been scared of my whole life had been protecting his daughter and grandson as best he could without letting others know.
I don’t ask about Vaughn or the mess beneath that, but I do get the sense the final bomb is about to drop soon. Who knows who’ll be caught in the wreckage?
“I told you this because you’re now the queen of the Family. You’re in the know together with your husband, but don’t tell him that you know,” he tells me. “I imagine he’s been trying to wrap his mind around this since he came back, so give him a little grace, sweetheart.”
Having suffered from retrograde amnesia for a few years of my life, I’ve seen firsthand the pain this causes to your loved ones. Now imagine looking for someone for almost two decades, half-believing they are dead, only to find that they are alive. They just don’t know who you are?
He’s going through so much right now… but is that why he’s been so sullen and brooding?
“I believe only you can keep him grounded,” Grandpa Armando continues. “I’ve seen it for myself, and so now I can confidently leave him to you.”
I don’t have the heart to tell him that my relationship with his grandson is complicated at best. Not only that, why am I hearing all this from his grandfather and not from him?
Why does he always keep things from me? Does he see me as too stupid to understand?
But more than that, I don’t know if I can risk my already shattered heart again…
I don’t reveal my inner thoughts, though. I just make a silly joke instead.
“Ah, so the blinding stones worth more than some countries’ entire GDP are a bribe, huh?”
He laughs and then winks. “Just be ready to fight off Scar.”
“By the way,” I start, my heart racing. “Do you still have that letter? From my grandfather?”
Grandpa Armando stares at me with a gentle smile. “I was wondering when you were going to find the courage. I’ve been keeping it with me, just in case.”
He produces the letter he brought out the night he revealed all the truths that everyone in my life has been hiding.
“Samuel and I met when we were just boys. We clicked instantly,” Grandpa Armando starts in a fond tone. “It was the summer before he started med school, and I had visited California to escape my father. We got into some trouble that day that had us both in jail at the end of the day.”
He throws his head back and chuckles.
“Now, I can’t tell you what happened. It’s not worth remembering but just know that bastard had a mean right hook! I told him right then and there that I want him to come work for me and guess what? I knocked me out too!”
Grandpa Armando laughs again; a belly laugh that brings tears to his eyes.
“He must’ve been offended by that, but I just wanted someone with his expertise in fighting.
When I explained that to Samuel he then laughed and said that’s not the kind of fighting he wants to do.
So, naturally, I asked what he wanted to fight for, he looked me square in the eye and he said, and I quote: ‘Lives. I want to fight to save lives .’”
Before I realize it, tears well up in my eyes.
“We became friends. Exchanged letters here and there, updating each other about our lives. I told him about my upcoming responsibilities as heir. He told me about the mean nurse who looked down her nose at him at his hospital and how he’s annoyed by her.
I wasn’t surprised when I received another letter telling me that he finally couldn’t take it anymore, so he married the mean but actually soft-hearted nurse who had the same passion as him. ”
Grammy!
“I told him about Narcissa, my beloved wife and how she was pregnant with my daughter after trying for years. You see, he had been telling me that it would happen for us so I told him if it did, I’d build a hospital for him and make him the chief and chairman of the board.
He replied with the location, size of the hospital, plans for the building and the amount he needed. ”
“Wait, what?” I ask, surprised by this.
“Yes! That hospital your grandmother still works at now, it was built by your grandfather from the bet we made over my daughter’s life.”
Whoa! “This is crazy!”
“Is it? Westbrook Blues has already been prime location for a few select families already. The Beaumont’s family had owned the whole lot, from the valley to the mountains.
I wanted in, so we made a deal, but it was my daughter who saw it through and built her home there.
Of course, Samuel had since completed the hospital and had been living there for years.
” Grandpa Armando divulges all this history with a faraway look in his eyes.
“I sent my daughter and her husband to live in Westbrook Blues the moment she told me she was pregnant.” His voice takes a mellow tone, depressed and low.
“I thought she’d be safe that way. Besides, I trusted my friend to keep an eye on her health and everything.
It was going well. When he told me his once promising daughter had moved back home, I was happy because the girls grew up together.
All this was good and well until my daughter was taken years later.
Two days later, Samuel called me and told me how he’d been working with trafficking victims that had been rescued and how he’d seen my daughter at one of the warehouses, but he wasn’t sure. ”
“Jesus,” I gasp, hearing the story for the first time. I remember Gramps did a lot of charity work and outreaches.
“I told him that my daughter had been taken. Alessio was in the hospital. I had no idea what to do and he told me that he’d look into it.
Now, I was already on my way to Westbrook Blues when Samuel called back.
He told me that he had my Daphne. I was beside myself with relief and so much anger when Samuel described the state my daughter was in.
He urgently told me to hurry up and meet him because something was wrong… and well, you know the rest.”
That’s when the accident happened.
“Your grandfather sacrificed himself to rescue my daughter. I didn’t even know his own little princess was in the car too,” Grandpa Armando glances at me with an apology in his eyes.
“Even though we talked to each other on the phone, we still wrote to each other. This is one of the last letters he sent me. The rest are none of your business.”
He laughs and then pushes the letter into my hand.
“Go on,” he encourages. “Read it.”
With my heart in my throat, I carefully pull out the letter from the weathered envelope, then unfold it with trembling fingers. When I read the first line, tears spill over like a flood.
October 15th 1998
Old friend! Today is a great day!
I have a granddaughter now and she’s the love of my life!
Ivy Marie Irving.
She’s so tiny, cries a lot, but old friend, one look at her is enough to be won over!
As a parent, you think of all the failures and mistakes you made with your child.
But as a grandfather, you dwell on what you hope for them.
Old friend, I want my granddaughter to know how loved she is.
She is special. Her light is unmatched.
If anything happens, protect my granddaughter!
You owe me for saving your life!
I stare at the letter, but my vision is now obscured by tears.
All my life, the guilt I’ve carried over my grandfather’s death and the agony of feeling unloved and yet, here’s the evidence that I was loved right from the beginning.
“You see now why it had to be you?” Grandpa Armando’s voice speaks from far away but still close. “My friend is gone, but protecting you was still my duty. But who knew Alessio would completely assume that role on behalf?”
I don’t even know what to say.
“Now, I never thought you and Alessio would have a destiny of your own, but I wasn’t surprised when I realized. The danger to your life was only increasing, while Alessio’s health was deteriorating fast so I had no choice but to act.”
“What do you mean?”
“The four years you had to leave Westbrook Blues was because you and Alessio were both in danger. You were both just kids, us adults had to intervene. Don’t be agree with your brother and grandmother. They agreed with me after you almost died in that fire that was set to your library years ago.”
“Oh God!” I remember that fire! Emmett saved me and now I’m learning it was deliberate.
“I had to keep Alessio’s health a secret, while trying to save his life and also honor my promise to your grandfather. I had to do what I thought was best. One day, you’ll understand this.”
And with that, he rolls away in his wheelchair, leaving me to stew in the memories of the past.