“I know, and that’s why it’s all the more incredible because you did it anyway.”
I grinned at her, knowing that she’d never anticipate the final gift. Especially not when my mother was shuffling to our side, silently informing me of her displeasure at our inattention to the travesty going on downstage.
With the box in my grasp, I recognized that my palms weren’t even sweating as I handed that to her too. I wasn’t nervous. I was beyond ready for this moment. It felt like my entire life had been leading toward tonight—to here, to now. Even if it was with Wagner serenading us in the background.
And when she opened it, her fingers feeling for the contents, with every part of her tense as though my mother, the Queen of the Damned herself, had frozen her solid.
She hadn’t, of course. Mother was closer to me than to Phoebe, by my design. The last thing I wanted when I’d seen the initial reception of my fiancée to be, was for the two of them to be seated beside one another.
Phoebe’s mouth trembled as she mumbled, “Nicholas… it’s too soon.”
My brow furrowed. “Not soon enough,” I complained, and was stunned when she laughed.
Laughed.
That wasn’t in my plan.
“Well, then?” she prompted, and I blinked and frowned at her. “Don’t you have something to ask me?”
Ah.
My grin made a swift reappearance.
“Don’t you already know the question?”
“I’m sure I do,” she half-purred, in a tone that had my cock leaping to attention. “But a girl likes to be asked.”
And so, I did as my girl wanted.
I asked.
And she answered.
Phoebe
Five years later
The hot summer sun burnished my skin with a delicious golden color that made everything pop. I’d never had the time to sunbathe. Hell, I’d never had the inclination either.
New York City was many things, but a hub for sunbathing?
Nope.
Here, everything was different though.
We had space to roam, space to grow. It felt endless, and when, on an evening, I stared over the vines that belonged to us, it felt like a dream.
I was in France.
More than that, I lived here now.
It was our home.
Our haven.
As I shifted against the railing, I felt the vibrator that Nicholas had insisted I insert before he left. He liked to keep tabs on me, even from afar, but it had been suspiciously still this afternoon.
Which meant he’d either been preoccupied or he was planning something.
I hoped that something involved at least three orgasms—what could I say? He’d made me greedy.
Raising my arm, I checked Mrs. Linden’s Rolex, and was surprised to see that it had been quite a while since both my guys had gone out. Of course, the second that thought crossed my mind, I heard him.
“Mommy!” Scottie squealed from somewhere in the house.
My lips curved as Scottie came hurtling toward me. He barreled into my legs, cupping them tightly through one of Mrs. Linden’s dresses as he hugged me like he hadn’t seen me in days.
His puppy, Barbie the Barbet, a French water dog, came barreling in too, knocking into him, who then knocked into me, as I used the stone balustrades to keep myself up.
“Be careful, Scottie,” Nicholas growled, as there as ever to catch me if I was in danger.
Though it was stupid to think I was in danger on our vineyard, he wasn’t altogether wrong.
I had twins inside me now, and they messed with my equilibrium in a way that wasn’t even funny. He spent most of his time propping me up or keeping my clumsy ass vertical.
I wasn’t even sure how he did it, and often teased him that his stalking days had been a warm-up for the torment of married life with me.
“Don’t even joke about it,” he’d grumbled, but though his mouth had been downturned at the corners, his eyes had sparkled.
I loved that.
Loved making him smile, even when he didn’t want to.
My husband was a complicated man.
Some might say he was twisted, and the truth was, I’d agree with them. He was scarred mentally and physically from his first marriage, and losing his daughter had shaped him in ways that I knew made the fact I was pregnant petrifying.
For all that, I’d caught the glint of satisfaction on his face when I’d told him I was pregnant. I knew this was the final tie he needed to know I wasn’t going anywhere, and I was fine with that.
Fine with him, because I loved him.
Warts and all.
Some might think me stupid, might believe I was as crazy as he was. But those ‘some’ had never been raised by an alcoholic mother. Had never been dragged through Child Welfare as a small child. Had never had to fend for themselves with an infant baby who wasn’t even theirs…
My circumstances had forged me just as they’d forged my Nicholas, and that made me appreciate what he’d done.
Yes, he’d stalked me. Hunted me from the shadows, keeping me safe, protecting me from the harsh realities of life as much as he could from his position. Hadn’t he been there to find me the job I’d desperately needed when I hadn’t had a clue how I was going to pay my bills? Hadn’t he been there to give me shelter when the time had come for me to break free from my mother’s home?
Yes, to many, he was sick and twisted, but to me, he was all the more perfect for it.
He was my knight. Not white, but tarnished, and I wanted him no other way.
Scottie peered up at him from beneath a mop of curls that matched my own. “Sorry, Papa.”
We weren’t sure why I was ‘Mommy’ and Nicholas was ‘Papa,’ but the bicultural life suited our son and we weren’t about to change that, not when we wanted him to be as much American as he was French.
We were laying down roots in the Bordeaux region, and we intended for those roots to last for him and the babies who’d yet to be born.
“Just be careful,” Nicholas grumbled, even as he tucked some curls out of Scottie’s face. “You need a haircut.”
Scottie’s face crunched into one big pucker. “No! I had one three weeks ago.”
“Well, you need another one. Maybe that’s why you’re as clumsy as your mother, because you never know which way you’re going.” He huffed, then eyed Barbie who had almost as many curls as Scottie and me. “I swear, these babies had better come out blond and straight-haired, or they’ll be the death of me.”
I laughed up at him, eyes twinkling with love. “Or they’ll scare you straight?”
“Oh, I’m as straight as a ruler.” So subtly that Scottie wouldn’t notice, he rocked his hips into me. I felt his hardness and inwardly shivered as he moved his mouth to my ear and whispered, “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Mrs. Maclean.”
My throat felt thick. “You’ve only been gone for the afternoon.”
“Too long,” he groused. “I don’t like leaving you.
“You were gone for three hours, Nick. Hardly a lifetime.” When he grumbled some more, I murmured, “I spent most of it lying down anyway—I was finishing up my chapter.”
“You didn’t rush it, did you? I told you to rest.”
He’d been telling me that since I’d reached the final trimester, but dammit, I was invested in the story we were crafting and, babies or no, we had a deadline.
Our publishers were eager for the next chapter in our award-winning series, and hell, I was too. I loved the way we created stories together, and it was a dream come true that someone actually wanted to read what I wrote.
Never in a million years had I thought we’d be doing this, especially not together, but co-authoring we were, and I was thankful every day for that.
Scottie, not happy about being cut out of the conversation, and well aware that we got lost to our plotting without prompt, tugged on my hand. “Papa, can we show her?”
They’d gone to buy clothes for
Scottie who was running through them at a rate that made me grateful Nicholas was rich.
Very rich.
More than any of his students would have ever anticipated.
“Show me what?” I asked warily, thoughts of our main characters abandoned.
Nicholas tensed. “Later, Scottie.”
Inwardly, I groaned. “What have you done now?”
“She’s so beautiful, Mommy.”
My eyes widened. “Who is?”
“Her name is Brownie.”
“Brownie?” I tugged out of Nicholas’s arms. “Show me, Scottie.” I glowered at Nick over my shoulder, well aware my husband had bought something else.
We already had two roosters that woke me up in the morning, a coop’s full of chickens that he had to collect the eggs from because they hated me, and a pissed off goat that bleated at us all the damn time.
We were turning into an animal farm, and we weren’t even supposed to be farming!
Scottie’s giggles were infectious though, and as he dragged me from the tiled terrace that overlooked the neat rows of bright green vines and, in the distance, a church steeple that also acted as an irritating alarm clock, I let myself be dragged into his excitement.
He hauled me through the patio doors and into the library. It was, technically, Nicholas’s study, but I found myself in there frequently—old habits died hard—and I had a sofa in there, as well as a small writing desk of my own since it was where we’d begun working together.
In the recessed bookshelves, there were the jade figurines that had been one of my initial prompts at realizing Nicholas was the one behind the journals. My lips curved at the sight of the antiquities that he had lovingly wrapped as he brought them here, to the home we made together, away from all the misery we left behind in the city.
The mother who had never gone through with my ultimatum and who I’d never heard from to this day.
The parents who preferred to believe the miserable ex over their son, and who couldn’t see anything good in me after their private investigator revealed I was from Brownsville and not some swank part of Manhattan.
After I’d graduated, when I’d looked into starting on my teaching degree and had conceded defeat by looking into hiring a nanny, Nicholas had found me sobbing in our bedroom.
I didn’t want someone else to raise Scottie.
Didn’t want someone else to be the one who kissed his boo-boos, and I didn’t want to go out into a workplace that truly wasn’t where my heart was anyway.
My job would only have covered the nanny’s pay and a little more, so what was the point?
When I’d told him that, he’d merely said, “I wondered when you’d come to that realization.”
My robot was also my hero but he was slowly getting better, and he had a lifetime to soften up.
But, without any ties to work, after he’d proposed with his mother grumbling in the background and a fat lady hollering at us in German, we’d come over here to get married, and we’d stayed. We hadn’t gone back to the States since. And I had zero regrets about that.
Zero.
From the library-cum-study, Scottie dragged me through the foyer of the house that was way too big for just the three of us—even twins wouldn’t fill up all these rooms—and took me out the front door and into what I called the backyard but what was, essentially, farmland.
When we passed the huge oak tree where I’d spread Mrs. Linden’s ashes, I smiled inwardly as I always did—she’d never have imagined me in France, married and pregnant at this age, but I knew she’d be happy for me. Knew it like I could hear her whisper those words to me in the flesh.
Ten feet on, and I came face to face with a paddock that, until now, had been empty.
The horse was huge. Stocky. And old. Its brown hair was twisted with gray, and its muzzle was as well.
One thing I hated about France? Something Nicholas did too? That they ate horsemeat.
On the regular.
I cut Nicholas a look, well aware that he was right behind me, and he shrugged. Knowing that I was correct, that he’d spared this horse from the butcher, I sighed.
How could I be mad at that?
This crazy, impossible man who stalked me to keep me safe, saved horses from the butcher, with whom I co-wrote bestselling psychological thrillers, and who was the father to my three children.
When I blew out a breath, I turned back and saw that Scottie had taken off without me, and was running around the paddock, with Barbie barking at his side as they followed the poor horse as it trundled around its new home.
I didn’t have to turn around to know the exact moment he moved behind me. I felt his warmth, felt it in my bones.
“We’re going to turn into a horse sanctuary, aren’t we?” I predicted glumly. It wasn’t that I was averse to the idea, but I didn’t even like horses. They scared me, and I sure as hell didn’t want Scottie riding them. Or Nicholas.
I’d seen him on the back of one of them when, at his mother’s request, he’d played a game of polo on a trip to the Hamptons one time.
It had scared the hell out of me.
Horses were so volatile. What if he fell? What if he got hurt? Injured, or worse?
Nicholas was my rock. My everything. I couldn’t deal with him getting hurt, not without it spearing me in turn.
“Maybe,” he admitted, mumbling the words sheepishly. “It depends. If I turn hermit, then I’ll—”
I snorted. “You’d find a way.”
“True, but I couldn’t just let—”
I knew that, and I loved him for it. “Of course.” I patted the hand that slipped around my belly. As I leaned into him, rested against my professor, I released a sigh when, deep inside, the buzz of the vibrator he’d triggered burst to life.
Even as good as it felt, I had to smile.
He always synced it to the same two songs.
Songs that fit us perfectly.
‘Tainted Love.’
We’d started that way.
Tainted. Dark. Stained.
But now?
The song merged into a new one.
One that he’d added to the toy’s playlist.
‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.’
As my body enjoyed the low throb that rumbled along my nerve endings, more than anything, I felt the meaning of those songs deep in my core.
“I love you,” he breathed into my ear.
And my smile was big and beatific as I watched my son and his dog play with a horse who really didn’t feel like playing, as one of his babies slept in my belly while the other danced on my bladder, as his arms wrapped around me as though I was the center of the world.
Because I knew he loved me.
Heart and soul.
Tainted, but pure for us because to him, I was the universe.
There was no other in his line of sight. No one else in his worldview.
With that in mind, I snuggled deeper into him, and whispered back, “I love you too.”
And those words barely scratched the surface of what we felt for one another, but they’d do.
Until I could show him properly later on tonight.
A few things…
Okay, guys, how are we feeling?
I know, intense, right?
But I have a few things to explain.
Firstly, the Yayoi Kasuma print that reminded Nicholas of his relationship with Phoebe can be found here: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/yayoi-kusama-endless-life-of-people
Secondly, did you know there are four major categories of OCD out there? It falls between contamination and washing, symmetry with arranging and counting, taboo thoughts and mental rituals, and finally, the one that Nicholas suffers with: doubts about accidental harm and checking.
In this instance, his doubts and constant fears for Phoebe’s safety. And, subsequently, Scottie, and, yes, his unborn twins when they eventually show up.
Yes, Nicholas was a stalker, and yes, he was messed up. But I wanted to c
larify something: Nicholas is both of those things, and being married to Phoebe doesn’t/didn’t cure him. OCD isn’t like that. It’s pervasive and involves intense rituals that are the only things that will take the anxiety away. Phoebe is many things for Nicholas, but Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Exposure and Response Prevention Treatment she is not.
Nicholas is who he is, and she loves him for it. His drive to keep her safe shielded her from more than she ever knew, so, when you’re thinking about whether or not he’s a bad man, just keep those thoughts in mind. ;)
SONGS THAT WERE IMPORTANT IN THE MAKING OF THIS BOOK
Without Me - Halsey
Pray - Sam Smith
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough - Tammy Terrell and Marvin Gaye
Tainted Love - Marilyn Manson
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Also by Serena Akeroyd
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Until I see you there or you write me an email or PM, here are more of my books for you to read…
The Caelum Academy
Seven Wishes
Eight Souls
Nine Lives
HawkRidge High
Dare You To Love Me
Naughty Nookie
Sinfully Theirs
Sinfully Mastered
The Gods Are Back In Town
Hotter than Hades
The Sun Revolves Around Apollo
Five Points, Hell’s Kitchen
A Screwed Duet
Screw You
Screw Me
Filthy Feckers
The Professor: A Standalone Novel Page 21