“Turn it off,” he ordered, reaching for her.
But she didn’t hear him. For her, nothing else existed in that moment other than what was unfolding on the screen.
“Give me the remote.” He tried to pry it from her hands without hurting her. “Come on, Rachel, we need to switch it off.”
“This is what you want?” One of the men on the screen said to the person off camera. “The necklace?” He shrugged before removing the heirloom locket Rachel always wore. And then he wrapped it around his dick before—
With an agonized wail, Rachel crumpled to the floor, the remote tumbling from her hands. Harvard lunged for it and switched off the damn TV. Rachel wasn’t looking at it anyway. She stared at nothing as she clawed at her throat, tears pouring down her cheeks.
“Get it off me.” She scratched at her throat, trying to dig the necklace out from where it had become tucked inside her dress. “Get it off me. Get it off me. Getitoffme!”
Blood trailed down her throat as she scratched at the chain. Harvard fell to his knees beside her and grabbed her wrists to stop her. One of her hands slipped free, catching the chain at last and ripping the necklace from her throat. Sending it hurtling across the room as a long, keening wail escaped her.
“Look at me, Rachel. Look at me.” He stroked her hair, trying to calm her. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“It won’t come off. I can’t get it off.” Her hands reached for her throat, her black eyes pleading. “Help me. Please help me.”
Harvard caught her wrists before she could hurt herself again. “Rachel, damn it, listen to me. The necklace is gone. It’s gone. You got it.”
“No, no, no, no.” She snatched her hands away, covering her mouth as her eyes went wide.
And then she doubled over, palms to the floor, sobbing and retching until her stomach was empty.
“Fuck, baby, please. You’re killing me. Let me help. I need to help.”
He rubbed her back and held her hair, feeling more helpless than he’d ever felt in his life.
At last, she stopped vomiting. As her head fell forward, Harvard gently tugged her away from the mess on the floor. “It was on me,” she said hoarsely. “This whole time. On my skin.” She gagged again. “They used it to—” She jerked away from him and fell to her hands and knees, retching. But there was nothing left to bring up.
Harvard pulled her back against him and held her carefully. Knowing she was precious. Hoping she’d feel that knowledge in his touch. “It’s gone, Rachel, I promise. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
“I can still feel it on my skin, where it always sat. It’s dirty. I’m dirty. Never, ever going to get clean. Never.”
Cradling her to him, he got to his feet. “We’ll make it clean. It’s going to be okay.” And then he strode down the stairs to the master bathroom.
“It’s still on my skin,” she whispered. “I wore it every day. Touched it all the time. And it was tainted.” Her gaze met his, her dark eyes pooled with tears. “Like me.”
“Never,” he said vehemently. If only one thing got through to her, he wanted it to be this. “You hear me. There’s nothing tainted about you. Nothing.”
“I can still feel the chain on my skin, the weight of the locket around my neck,” she whispered, her hand drifting to her already torn throat. “It’s like a noose.”
Harvard settled her on the low stool in front of the bathroom vanity and started the shower before quickly shedding his clothes. With care, he undressed Rachel too. All the while, she sobbed silently, rocking back and forth, lost in herself.
He lifted her against him and stepped into the shower with her in his arms. The hot water beating down on them, Rachel lay limply against his chest.
“Can you stand?” he asked softly.
There was no answer, just those agonizing sobs. After carefully placing Rachel on her feet, he held her up with one arm while reaching for the shower gel and washcloth with the other.
“I’m going to make it all go away, Rachel. You hear me? We’ll get rid of what’s left of that necklace. It won’t be there anymore. I promise I’ll take care of it. Just hold on to me, let me do this for you. I’ve got you.”
He lathered the cloth and tenderly wiped her throat, aware that the soap would make the raw scratches sting. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “We’ll get some cream on those soon.”
“I wore it with everything.” Her agony-filled eyes met his. “It touched all of my clothes.”
He carefully ran the cloth over her breasts and stomach. “We’ll get you new clothes.”
“It was a family tradition.” Her voice was an agonized breath. “I was supposed to put my future in that locket. When I met the man I planned to marry, when I had children, they were supposed to go inside.” Silent tears fell from eyes that held such depths of pain. “They took my future.”
He shook his head. “No, they didn’t. Your future’s standing right in front of you. They didn’t take anything from you. Nothing. Because you’re too strong. You hold it all tight inside of you, where they can’t get any of it.”
“I was part of a tradition…” Her eyes begged him to understand, to recognize all that had been stolen from her, and his heart broke all over again. “One that ended with me.”
“We’ll start a new tradition. One that we can pass down to our kids.”
Her hand fluttered to her throat. “I can still feel it there.”
“I swear, it’s gone. You got it off, and you’ll never see it again.”
“Feel so dirty,” she mumbled, mostly to herself.
“Don’t you feel me washing it all away, Rachel?” He ran the cloth down her back and over her hip. “Concentrate on how it feels. Can you smell the shower gel? It’s like flowers in the spring. Daffodils. Take a deep breath; let it fill you. It smells good, doesn’t it? Fresh. New. Do you feel my touch, Rachel? My touch. Not theirs. Not anyone else’s. It’s just you and me here. Concentrate on that. On me washing all the memories away for you.”
He added more soap to the cloth before making sure he wiped it over every inch of her. Head to toe. “When we get out of here, all the bad memories will be gone. Everything will be clean and fresh and new. But underneath it all, there will still be you. The you nobody can change or damage because you’re strong and smart, and so courageous that you scare me half to death. All the rest of it, what they did, that’s just on the surface, and we’re washing it away. All that will be left is Rachel. The amazing, difficult, gorgeous woman I love so damn much.”
She pressed her forehead to his chest, her fingers curling into his hips as she cried herself raw. “Michael,” was all she said.
“Yeah, I’m your Michael.” He kissed her head before rinsing away the soapsuds and wrapping her in a thick white towel.
Once he’d dried her off, he carried her to the bed, where he climbed in and sat with his back against the headboard, Rachel cradled in his lap. He shut off the lights with the remote and held her close, protecting her in his arms as she cried herself to sleep.
A creak from the hallway had Harvard’s head snapping to the open door. Elle appeared, giving him a sad little smile. It was clear she’d been crying, which meant Harry must have let the team into the apartment. They would have found the evidence and realized what had taken place.
Harvard held up a hand and signaled that Rachel was asleep.
“We’ve cleaned up,” Elle whispered. “The rug’s ruined, so we’ve taken it out of the apartment. Harry and I have the thumb drive, and we’ll go through the video in detail. Hopefully, it will give us more to go on than the photos did.” She looked on Rachel with love and pity, and Harvard was glad she wasn’t awake to see it. “What do you want us to do with the necklace?”
He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know.”
“I’ll bag it up and put it in the safe at Benson Security; that way, Rachel can deal with it when she’s ready.” She grimaced. “If ever.”
Harvard nodded as he
stroked the hair of the woman who’d become his life.
Elle watched him, her lips trembling. “We’ll lock up. You’ll call if you need us?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Go find something for me, Elle. Some direction to point me in, so I can take these bastards out.”
“You’ve got it,” she promised before disappearing.
“It’s going to be okay,” Harvard whispered to a sleeping Rachel. “We’ll get them.”
If it was the last thing he did, he’d hunt down the people tormenting Rachel and wipe them off the face of the earth.
For her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
When Rachel opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Harvard sitting in the armchair facing her bed. He was decadence personified, wearing nothing but a pair of faded blue jeans that rode his hips, the top button undone. His knees spread, and his hands resting on the arms of the chair, he stared straight at her.
For a few minutes, they stayed like that, quietly watching one another. Her gaze caressed the planes and curves of his body, taking in the strength in his shoulders and the definition in his abs. The soft light from the pool made him seem as though he’d been staged for a fashion photoshoot. The kind where they bring in rugby players to give the clothes an edge.
“Is your father still handsome?” Rachel asked hesitantly, reluctant to break the peace of their silence.
His full lips quirked. “Don’t think I’m the best judge of that.”
“I bet he is. Genetics like yours don’t just pop up out of nowhere, and you’re definitely the type of man whose good looks will only get better with age.”
“Guess you’ll have to stick around to see if your theory proves true.”
She licked her lips, detecting the faint aftertaste of mint but unable to recall when she’d brushed her teeth. “I’m considering it.”
“Anything I can do to help sway the decision in my favor?”
“That depends; is it in your favor to spend the rest of your life with or without me?”
His eyes darkened. “Definitely in my favor to have forever with you. Is that what we’re talking about, Rachel? Forever?”
While she’d never found the American accent particularly attractive, she couldn’t imagine Harvard sounding any other way. That rumbling depth, rolling over those soft vowels, was something she’d never grow tired of listening to.
“Why don’t you have a pet name for me?” she asked. “Callum calls Isobel his wee darling. Dimitri calls Megan Buffy. And Joe calls Julia baby.”
His smile was so potently sexy that she was sure she could become pregnant just by looking at it. “You want me to call you baby?”
“Do I look like a child?”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He turned serious. “You don’t have a pet name because, as far as I’m concerned, your given name is a term of endearment. Can’t you hear what I feel for you every time I say it? I’m telling you how much you mean to me every time your name passes my lips.”
Her heart swelled at the words, and she stilled. For the first time in as long as she could remember, her heart didn’t feel constrained. The chains had been removed by the man watching her so intently. He’d broken each and every link with his slow, systematic persistence.
Rachel no longer wanted the distance between them, but when she threw back the covers, she was mildly surprised. “I’m naked,” she said as the air hit her skin.
“Mmm, so you are.”
His eyes caressed her as she walked the short distance between them. Once there, she climbed onto his lap and straddled him, flattening her hands on his chest. His skin was soft and smooth, his muscle firm and warm, his scent familiar—the ocean on a summer’s day.
“I don’t want to talk about what happened earlier,” she said.
“I figured.” His right hand rested on the curve of her hip, his thumb caressing.
She took a deep breath and dismissed the ugliness of the memories. She was clean. Inside and out. And she only wanted to focus on the good—for now.
“Well, that’s not entirely true. There’s one thing I wouldn’t mind discussing.” She leaned into him, her nipples brushing over his chest as she whispered against his ear, “You told me you love me.”
“Yeah, I did.”
A warmth raced through her and settled in her newly freed heart. “Did you mean it?”
“Never been more serious about anything in my life.”
Her throat tightened, and she knew she had to give him something back. Say something. But the words were stuck inside. As though what she felt was too big, too overwhelming to express. Or, she had just as much trouble admitting her feelings as she had apologizing.
Nuzzling the curve of his throat, she gave him what she could. “Make love to me.”
“I think you should make love to me.”
“Yes. That’s a much better plan.” She kissed along his jawline to his lips, teasing the fullness of them.
“Rachel,” he whispered against her mouth.
And she heard it. The love overflowing from her name. Harvard’s love for her.
“I’m not an easy person,” she told him, leaning back to search his gaze for the honesty of his reaction. “I won’t ever be any other way.”
His hand cupped her nape, his fingers threading through her hair. “I like you fine exactly as you are.”
“That’s now.” She felt she had to give him the brutal truth. “But after a while, people tend to find their patience wears thin with me.” She wasn’t apologizing for it. She was how she was meant to be, and she liked herself just fine too. But he deserved a warning. Just the one.
His smile was wicked. “Lucky for you, I’m famous for my patience.”
“Mmm,” she said, closing the distance to his lips. “Lucky for me indeed.”
Their kiss, slow and sensual, was full of things Rachel might never be able to voice. But she could tell him with her lips, her body, her desire.
Slowly, thoroughly, she kissed her way from his lips, down his throat, and across his chest. She slid out of his lap and knelt on the floor between his knees. Keeping her eyes fixed on his, she took her time unbuttoning his jeans.
“You’re beautiful,” he told her, sounding awed.
He was the beautiful one. Inside and out. “Lift your hips.”
It took seconds to remove his jeans and find he wore nothing underneath. She ran her hands up his solid thighs to the proud erection waiting for her. Tracing the thick vein that ran from the base to the head, she looked up at him.
“I was sure I didn’t want this relationship,” she confessed.
He sifted her hair through his fingers. “And now?”
“I never want it to end.” She leaned forward and took him in her mouth, reveling in the gasp her touch elicited. Feeling deep satisfaction in the way his hand tightened in her hair and his thighs clenched around her shoulders.
As she loved him with her mouth, enjoying his musky taste and scent, her eyes drifted up to his face, only to find him watching her intently.
“Come back up here, Rachel,” he purred her name. “If you keep doing that, I won’t last. And I want to be inside you. I want us to be connected.”
She moaned around his thick width. Yes, she wanted to feel connected too. But she also wanted to keep him where he was—at her mercy.
“Rachel,” he rumbled as he gently tugged at her hair. “I want to touch you. Come up here so I can make you feel good.”
Shivering at the promise in his voice, she reluctantly released him. As soon as she freed him from her mouth, strong hands slid under her arms, and he lifted her back onto his lap. Her knees slipped into the space either side of him, between his hips and the chair, and she felt his hard length slide through her eager wetness.
With a gasp, she tried to get her hand between them, to guide him into her, but Harvard had other ideas. Using his strength, he kept her on her knees while lavishing attention on her breasts.
“Oh, yes,” s
he moaned, clasping his head to her.
The room spun around her as his lips teased, nibbled, and sucked. Each delicious sensation shot through her body like a pinball in a machine, hitting all the best spots and ringing bells.
Panting, she tried to lower her hips and slide onto him, but he held her tight. A firm, steady hand moved down the length of her back and over her behind before cupping and kneading. She arched her body, pressing her rear into his hold.
“Yeah, push out some more, just like that,” he said before engulfing a nipple in the heat of his mouth.
Rachel did as she was told and felt his hand slide down between her cheeks and lower to her aching wet core. Wicked fingers petted and teased, making her moan and beg and gasp in desperation. “Please, please, please…” she wailed, clutching him to her, straining against his tight grip as he kept her hovering above him. She’d never begged a man in her life. Not for something she wanted so desperately. She’d always seen it as weakness.
But Harvard was different. It wasn’t a game he played with her. This was no battle of egos. He wasn’t trying to prove anything by holding her on the edge of release. This was all about pleasure and trust and…love.
His merciless fingers teased her clit, dancing around it in ever-decreasing circles until he reached the very center and pressed. Her back bowed. Her muscles clenched. A long wail resounded through the room. Inside her head, lights flashed and danced in rhythmic explosions. And just as it began to ease, she felt him grip her hips and lower her onto his waiting length.
“So good,” she cried out as he slowly filled her. He lowered her until she was sitting flush with him and they were completely joined.
“Connected,” he said as he brushed kisses across her cheeks.
Rachel soared, flying high above them. Tethered only by the sensations rippling through her body. All she could feel, see, taste was him. His scent engulfed her, drugging her senses, leaving her desperate for more.
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