Chapter 36
It felt like she’d shot me full of birdshot pellets and watched me bleed out.
I wasn’t going to kill her, but she didn’t need to know that.
I wanted to strangle her, yet I preferred her alive.
I craved her submission, but I had no desire to push her into a panic attack to get it. It was a mindfuck to sort through.
Call it a sick pleasure, but I relished watching the horror, pain, betrayal, and heartbreak cycle across her face as I tossed us out of the plane.
Everything she forced me through over the last twelve hours, she experienced in a few seconds.
Served her right. The threats hurt her, just like her duplicity did to me, and it soothed the ache in my head.
We fell. We soared. We fought to the tune of my final threat before the plunge, and I recorded her every reaction with the video recorder strapped to my hand.
My words were meant as a challenge to the woman who never gave up on one, and they had the desired effect. Her body didn’t lock up, and her mind didn’t spiral into a panic as we free-fell. Instead, she focused on controlling the situation. She focused on me.
When I curled my arm and touched the strap as a taunt, she batted at my hand.
Or tried to bat at it. With the gale, it was more like swatting her hand underwater.
Slow, without force, and futile. With gravity and her weight lugging the straps down, even if I wanted to, it was impossible to unclip the hooks.
There was nothing for her to fear, but her struggle against me hauled me away from the suffocating pit of darkness of my thoughts and up to the surface.
For the first time since last night’s revelations, I finally breathed fresh air.
She twisted her head left, then right. Her lips moved, wide and stretched over her teeth, but the roar of the wind vacuumed the sound of her voice.
I imagined the colorful curses she spat my way that were silenced under the blustering gusts, whether in French or in English, and I grinned.
That was my woman. She gave it as good as she got.
It was one of the many things I loved about her. Love…
Truth was, no matter what, she was mine. My woman. My girlfriend. My wife, and I loved her still, no matter how much her treachery stung. That was the real head melter.
With her body flush against mine, my anger dampened.
We floated on a moving pillow of air slapping at our jowls, while the ground below looked like nothing more than a map of crop fields cut into sections.
These jumps were addictive. From jump to landing, nothing else existed but the open air.
No drowning beneath expectations and disappointments.
No reaching for an evasive surface. It was world domination, with nothing to fight, nothing to survive, nothing to suppress.
It was a moment of clarity among the drudgery of the demands of my life that required my complete focus, leaving no time or space for my mind to wander.
With a glance at the altimeter on my wrist, I tapped Alice’s—Alizé’s—shoulder as a warning, then reached in and pulled the chute handle.
We whipped upward and upright. The wind softened to a gentle swish, the blaring white noise gone.
Our fall smoothed, and Alizé’s weight tugged on my shoulders and hips.
Her body clung to mine, her hips against my groin, my chest to her back, and it was bittersweet.
I had a whole plan before last night.
In this moment, flying over everything that held us down, I had planned to propose to her.
It should have been one of those memories that stuck with a couple for the rest of their lives.
Before her, no one would have ever mistaken me for a romantic.
I had aimed to make her my wife, not to cross another goal off that damn bucket list she made—not anymore—but to tie her to me for my own selfishness.
Well, the joke was on me because she already was. Or was now, because I hadn’t lied. Alizé De Villier had been nothing but a name on a business contract before. Now she was bloody well everything, and that was doing my head in.
The ring burned a hole in my pocket, a one-of-a-kind one-point-five-carat pear-shaped diamond with a majestic double halo.
It was as unique and peerless as she was to me.
I debated digging it out of my pocket and tossing it into the void, but my rare sentimental side won out.
I needed to see it on her finger, the same finger she’d wrapped me around, and for her to never take it off.
“Steer us to the airfield,” I said, handing over the steering toggles.
She expertly turned us into position with a smooth approach. “What? No critiques? No jumping down my throat? The big Cillian O’Leary too much in his own head to follow through on his threats?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
Alizé twisted her head over her shoulder.
“You didn’t detach me.”
“Guess I’m not done with you yet, wife.”
“You…you called me wife again,” she said, bafflement clear in her tone.
“What about it?”
“You said you didn’t have a wife.”
“Apparently, I fucking do.”
The world below us quickly approached. The acres of patchwork fields spread out, and roadways expanded in size.
My hands wrapped around the steering toggles above hers.
“You didn’t kill me.”
“Your observational skills amaze,” I deadpanned as I searched for the landmarks of our landing zone and pointed them out to her.
“You still love me.”
With a small tug on the right toggle, she steered us parallel to the landing area before the next leg of the descent.
“What love?” I leaned into her ear, enjoying how she wriggled against me. “You thought I’d let myself fall for you?”
It was impossible to resist touching her, and my gloved hands roamed down her sides to her waist. The quivers racking her back skittered through our jumpsuits.
“How does it feel to believe you were nothing more than a means to an end for me?”
“Was I not always?” she snarked.
“You were nothing before. Now, though, fill in the rest of the blanks, sweetheart.”
Her entire body clenched against mine.
She’d understand soon enough. I didn’t strive this hard to keep just any woman away from the Love Knot Killer’s dagger and brand.
I wrapped my arm around her chest. “Ready to land and finish what we started?”
She flared the parachute without my prompting, proving she’d jumped before, and lifted her legs for a slow, smooth touchdown. We landed in the grass, comforted against one another beneath blue skies and the sun’s warm congratulations against the day’s chill. Together, as we were meant to be.
The parachute canopy collapsed behind us, and I tugged her between my spread legs, exactly where she belonged. Alizé squirmed and jerked, tapping along the four attachment points on the harness.
“Get this off me. Now.”
“We’re attached at the hip. A blissfully married couple. Wasn’t this exactly what you wanted?”
“Stop fucking around. You don’t want me.”
“Are you certain of that? I quite like you like this. Actually, I think we can do even better.”
Her mouth gaped open in silent confusion.
I let her stew on my words. Part of me believed it was all nothing but a game to her.
The rest of me rejected that. It had been too real.
She’d made me feel too much for it to be faked.
She’d shoved me down the rabbit hole, and I’d be damned if I didn’t drag her down with me.
I’d play the game and twist it in my favor until she fell for me as much as I’d fallen for her.
No matter what it took, there was no escaping us, not anymore.
No more of her plans. No more lies. No more divorce papers.
“What does that mean?”
“You’re coming with me.”
Before she could protest, I tossed aside my helmet and folded her legs into a fetal position with her back against my chest. With the skydiving center off to our far right, past the airstrips, I carried her off the field and toward the tree line to our left.
The parachute dragged behind us over the cleanly cut lawn.
She twisted and turned in my grip, screeching and cursing in French.
“There’s no one to hear you. But if by chance there is, they won’t listen.”
She kicked her legs out and flailed against my hold. Her fists lashed against my arms, but I held her tight, lest she escape. She and I had some business to tend to.
“Let me go.” She was starting to sound desperate, but it was better than panicked and catatonic. “Let me go, and you’ll never have to see me again. I promise.”
“Who said that’s what I want?”
“Now who is toying with who?” she spat.
“Oh, I haven’t even begun to toy with you, síbhean. You’ll know the moment I do.” I squeezed the top of her inner thigh. Her squeal was the icing on the cake. “I’ll make sure of it.”
We crossed the first trees. Underbrush crackled underfoot amid loose rocks and unearthed roots. Sparse, colored leafage remained on the deciduous trees among scattered evergreens.
“What are you going to do to me?”
“No more than you deserve.”
I trudged through the woodlands, her weight and thrashing lugging my steps through dense soil and leaf litter.
“I don’t deserve any of this. It was a name.”
“No, it wasn’t.” The parachute caught on a loose twig and tugged at the suspension lines on my harness. I gathered the backs of her knees under one arm and bundled up the parachute with the other. “You made me fucking love you. Do you know how vicious that is?”
“Vicious? Why? Because you don’t find love easy? Newsflash, it never is. Otherwise, I would have found it after you left me at the altar and never would have come back into your life,” she snarled.
I tugged her head back and glared straight down into her eyes.
“Let me make this clear. You will never find love elsewhere. I forbid it.”
She scoffed. “That’s not how love works. Did you not hear? It’s vicious, just like me.”
With my thumb, I smudged her lipstick over the edges of her mouth as she struggled to free her chin from my hold.