Devil's Cut

by J. R. Ward

  Descending the short steps, he crossed over the lawn. "I'm so sorry about that."

  Lizzie didn't meet his eyes. "Oh, not to worry."

  Glancing at Sutton, he nodded at the other woman. "Listen, we're going to head down to the hospital--"

  "Actually, that stomach flu is really making me sick." Lizzie lifted her head. "Sutton, do you suppose your friend over there with the badge would be willing to drive me back to Easterly? If not, I can catch an Uber--"

  "I'll take you home." Lane kneeled down and took Lizzie's hand. "Dear Lord, you're freezing cold."

  "I'm just under the weather." Lizzie stared up at Sutton. "And if I can just get a ride home--"

  "We'll take you, of course."

  Lane frowned. "No, I'll--"

  Lizzie cut him off with a shake of her head. "It's fine. Honestly. You don't have to worry about me. But I don't want to give this to Miss Aurora, and I know you're going to see her."

  Well...shit. "I won't stay long."

  "Take as much time as you like. I just want to lie down."

  As Sutton went over to talk to the officer, Lane moved his face into Lizzie's stare. "Chantal's crazy--she's totally delusional, and the only reason I'm going is because of the estate situation now that my father's died--"

  "I know. It's fine."

  "Mr. Baldwine?" one of the medics said. "We're about ready to leave now if you want to follow in your car."

  Lizzie stood up and Lane had to move back to give her space. As she smiled at him, he told himself the expression reached her eyes. "I'm going straight home and taking a nap. By the time you get done, I'll be back on my feet and ready to go."

  "I love you."

  "I know. Me, too."

  She patted his arm and then turned away toward Sutton, and he hated her slow, careful steps--hated even more that it was clear she didn't want him to escort her to the police vehicle.

  This whole thing was his fucking fault.

  And the mere appearance that he might be picking Chantal's crisis over Lizzie needing him sucked.

  He waited as Lizzie slid into the front passenger seat of the marked car, and he waved until he couldn't see the brake lights through the gravestones anymore. Then, cursing to himself, he got in the Rolls-Royce and followed the ambulance out of the cemetery. He wasn't looking forward to tangling with all the reporters at the front gates again, but what else could he do? If he took a different route, he ran the risk of getting separated from Chantal as she was checked in.

  And he was right. There were still plenty of reporters on the outside of the gates, and another round of flashbulbs went off as he pulled through in the Phantom. But he was not going to cover his face or duck. Screw that.

  Once they were on the road proper, the ambulance hit its sirens and lights, and they sped along, taking a short route into downtown that avoided the highway.

  For the entire trip, the only thing he kept thinking...was that it was a damn shame he couldn't kill his father all over again.

  The University Hospital's complex took up multiple city blocks, the various steel and glass skyscrapers linked by pediwalks that extended over the network of streets and alleys around them. On the sides of the buildings, the titles of the services were preceded by the names of families who had given donations in support of their missions: the Bradford Stroke Center, the Smythe Cancer Center, the Boone Rehabilitation Center, the Sutton Emergency Department.

  The ambulance went around to a series of Authorized Vehicles Only bays, and Lane parked the Rolls in the lot off to the side while the medics backed into position. Getting out, he put his hands in his pockets and strode across the hot asphalt to a set of electronic doors. As soon as he walked into the waiting area, people stared at him because they recognized his face.

  This happened a lot. And not just in Charlemont.

  Thanks to his previous playboy lifestyle, he'd been in the press even before all the current bankruptcy problems had hit. Now? After his father's death and Edward's arrest and Chantal's bullshit domestic-violence accusations, he might as well have had a neon sign around his neck that read YES, I AM WHO YOU THINK I AM.

  "May I help you?" the receptionist asked as she fixated on him.

  "I'm here for Chantal Baldwine. She's being admitted right now--she came in by ambulance?"

  The woman nodded. "Someone will come to get you as soon as I can. They can, I mean--ah, may I get you anything?"

  Like she was the hostess at a cocktail party? "No. Thank you."

  As her eyes followed every move he made, Lane went across the waiting area and took a load off in a plastic chair in the far corner, away from the TV and the vending machines. God, he hoped this didn't take forever--

  "Mr. Baldwine?" somebody said from a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. "Your wife is--"

  "Thank you." Lane got to his feet and strode over. Dropping his voice, he muttered, "And she's not my wife."

  The nurse blinked. "My apologies. I thought she said--"

  "Where is she? And forgive me for being rude."

  "Oh, I understand, sir." The nurse stepped back so he could pass by--while sparing him a glance that suggested she didn't understand at all. "This is a difficult time."

  You have no idea, he thought.

  Lane was led past a nursing station and various glass-enclosed treatment areas. Chantal was down on the left, and as he walked in, she threw out her hand and looked at him with wild, scared eyes.

  "Darling, the baby..."

  The two nurses who were hooking up IVs and monitoring equipment to her froze and glanced over at him. And as they struggled to refocus on their job, he wanted to scream at Chantal to cut the shit--but he wasn't going any more public than they already were with this.

  Sitting down in a vacant chair, he stared into Chantal's carefully made-up eyes. Her mascara wasn't smudging in spite of the tears, and he wondered if she'd planned that for the confrontation--or whether she kept things waterproof just in case she had to bust out the crying.

  Still, she really didn't look well. Gone were her fancy casual clothes, the pale blue hospital johnny she'd changed into too loose for her small frame, the swell of her belly more obvious now, even through the thin blankets that covered her.

  And she was very pale; underneath her spray tan, her skin was the color of a tissue.

  "The attending will be in here directly, Mr. and--ah, Mrs. Baldwine." The nurse who'd brought him in focused on Chantal. "Is there anything we can do to make you more comfortable?"

  "What's going to happen next?" Chantal stammered. "What about my baby..."

  "The blood tests will take about a half hour, and I'll let the attending talk to you about next steps--but I imagine we'll do an ultrasound."

  "Am I losing the baby?"

  "We're going to do everything we can to help you, Mrs. Baldwine."

  And then they were alone, the glass door shut, the drapes drawn.

  "You are so cruel," Chantal sniffled. "You are so mean to me."

  Lane sat forward and scrubbed his face. The urge to remind her of every awful thing she had ever done, not just to him but to Easterly's staff and every waiter and waitress that had ever been within a Cosmopolitan's order range of her, was nearly irresistible. But if she kicked him out, he was never going to know what was really going on.

  She had lied before about pregnancies.

  "Let's just get through this," he said through gritted teeth.

  "And afterward..." She swallowed hard. "Perhaps we can have a future together...a true future, without interference from third parties."

  Is that what you call fucking my father, he thought. Interference?

  And as far as he was concerned, the only future they had was signing the divorce papers that were going to terminate the mistake he'd made when he'd married her.

  "Lane, we don't have to end our marriage."

  Keep your mouth shut, old boy, he told himself. Just shut the hell up.

  Chantal started to say something else, but then
her voice was strangled by a moan. And suddenly, she jerked one of her legs up. "Get the doctor! Get the doctor!"

  --

  As Samuel T. followed Gin into the elevator of his penthouse's high-rise, he was consciously aware of everything about the woman: The way her hair gleamed in the illumination falling from the inset lights above them. The smell of her perfume and that hand lotion she always used whenever she washed up. The perfect fall of her peach silk dress and the glimmer of gold at her ears and across her throat.

  She wasn't wearing a scarf today and he stared at her neck.

  The bruises had faded already--or at least they appeared to have faded. There were fresh ones on that wrist of hers, however.

  The subtle bing! that announced they had reached the top floor brought his attention to the button panel; as the doors opened, he retracted his key out of the slot that allowed you to get all the way up.

  "I don't know how you do it," Gin said as she walked forward onto his thick carpeting.

  "Do what?"

  While the elevator closed itself back up and disappeared, he watched her body move across the wide-open living space to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the Ohio River toward Indiana's farmland. She was such a stunner, those legs so long and smooth, her ankles tiny, her high-heeled shoes dainty. Her hips were likewise an erotic swell, her waist the kind of thing he knew damn well he could span with his hands, her shoulders the perfect break for that hair of hers.

  Amidst the modernist, monochromatic decor, she was everything vibrant and sensual.

  She glanced back at him. "Have that thing open right up into your space."

  What the...? Oh, the elevator.

  Samuel T. shrugged and went across to the bar. "I think of this as a hotel room that I happen to own. It's not my space."

  "Someone could come up here."

  "Not without this, they couldn't." He flashed her the key and then disappeared the thing into an inner jacket pocket. "What's your noon tipple?"

  "You've forgotten?" She sauntered over and sat down on one of the pale gray leather sofas. "I'm hurt."

  "Wasn't sure if you'd taken a new preference."

  "I haven't."

  Unlike the farm, which was filled with personal effects, family antiques, and things that mattered to him, this two-thousand-square-foot anonymous enclave was nothing but a party venue, an existentially vacant place to crash after he'd been out all night downtown. What it did possess, in spades, however, was every top-shelf liquor there was on the market.

  Opening up a wine cooler the size of a Sub-Zero refrigerator, he took out a bottle of Krug Private Cuvee and then he snagged the LB Creme de Cassis from the room-temperature lineup on the shelves. The cassis went into the flute first, after which he peeled off the foil from the Krug, twisted the cork until a controlled pop! was released, and filled the rest of the way to the lip with the bubbly.

  He chose some Bradford Family Reserve for himself.

  He and his people didn't drink anything but Bradford.

  Crossing the distance between them, he handed her glass to her and waited as she held it up to the light, inspecting the color.

  "Perfect."

  "You are a spoiled brat, you know that."

  "Tell me more. I'm in the mood for revelations, and I know that you lawyers love hearing yourselves talk."

  Samuel T. sat on the other end of the sofa and crossed his legs at the knee. He couldn't take his eyes off of her and knew...knew...that he was the addict who had once again resolved to quit--yet was weakening by the second. Her with her haute couture clothes on and her taunting airs was his crack pipe and his needle, his rolling papers and his rolled-up hundred-dollar bill.

  Her naked and on top of him?

  That was his undiluted narcotic.

  God, when he'd found out she was marrying Richard Pford--and then when she'd actually gone and done it? He'd been so angry, he'd vowed to fuck a woman in every place he and Gin had ever been together.

  It had been, and was going to continue to be, a veritable travelogue of orgasms, the kind of thing that would keep him busy for six months or a year.

  And he still intended to complete that itinerary with plenty of volunteers. But somehow, seeing her in that cemetery had chipped a hole in his facade of strength and intention to remain at a distance.

  Yes, because grave markers and statues of saints and crosses were just so sexy.

  Then again, Gin could have been anywhere, wearing anything, and she would have rocked his world. And the trouble with his plan for revenge? For his idea of working out his aggression with other women? No female had ever come close to Gin for him.

  It was like treating a filet mignon withdrawal with Burger King.

  "Where's your husband?" he heard himself demand.

  "You already asked me that." She took another sip, her lips lingering on the knife edge of the flute. "And I told you, he's working. Are you going to offer to be my protector against him again? Volunteer to put yourself in harm's way to keep me safe?"

  Tough, taunting words. But there was pain in her eyes, even as she tried to hide it.

  God, he wanted to kill that sonofabitch.

  "Well?" she prompted.

  As Gin cocked an eyebrow the way she used to, and spoke the kind of words in the sort of tone she always had, he knew damn well they were both reminiscing on how they had been with each other. All that was gone now, though: She lacked the energy and he no longer had the inclination to get into one of their old dogfights.

  "I will always come if you call." He threw back his bourbon and surged to his feet. Back at the bar, he poured himself a second. That was more like a second and a third together. "You know that."

  "You could just bring the bottle with you," she drawled. "More efficient."

  "I'm still drunk from last night."

  "Who were you with."

  "Nobody." Which was not exactly a lie. Prentiss/Peabody/Whomever hadn't mattered to him. "And you?"

  "Richard was traveling. He came back this morning."

  As Samuel T. walked back across to the sofa, he didn't return to where he had been. Instead, he went over to stand in front of her...and then slowly knelt down.

  Gin tilted her head and regarded him with a heavy-lidded stare. "You look good like this, Samuel T. On your knees in front of me."

  He swallowed nearly half the bourbon in his rocks glass before putting what was left aside. Then he slipped his hands around the backs of her calves and stroked his way up under the hem of her dress.

  "I thought we weren't going to do this anymore," she said in a husky voice.

  "Me, too."

  "I told my husband I was going to remain faithful."

  "Then you lied to him."

  "Yes, I believe I did."

  With a graceful arch, she loosened her body for him, her legs parting so that he could move his hips in between them. Her eyes were to die for, that blue stare so deep, he was instantly lost. And as her lips parted, he knew what was going to happen next:

  He was going to kiss her, and he wasn't going to come up for air until he finished inside of her.

  "I'm giving you a chance to stop this," he said in a guttural voice.

  "When?"

  "Right now. Tell me to get off you."

  "Is that what you want me to say?"

  "No."

  "Good." She held her Kir Royale off to the side. "Because I don't want you to stop."

  She made no move to meet him halfway, so he had to bend down to her mouth...and that subtle defiance made him nuts--and drove him wild. She was so contrary and always out of reach, the hunter in him ever in pursuit of her, even as he held her in his arms. And that was the difference. All other women begged him to stay. Gin? Challenged him to keep up.

  And oh, God, her lips were just as he remembered, and exactly how he never forgot, soft and yet unyielding. He kissed her so deep and so long that he had to break things off to get in a draw of air.

  "Why do
you always taste like my bourbon when you kiss me?" she whispered.

  "Because we're usually drunk and I have impeccable taste."

  "Ah. That explains everything." When he went to kiss her again, she held him off by touching his chest. "Why did you bring me here?"

  He curled his hips into her so she could feel his erection. "I would think that is self-evident."

  "We could have gone to the farm."

  "It was farther away."

  "We could have gone to Easterly."

  "Not private enough."

  "My family's estate has more doors than most hotels." She smiled. "Why not your office? We've had a lot of fun there and I know you always keep alcohol in the lower drawer of your desk."

  "Not the Krug, I don't, and you can't stomach cheap champagne. Besides, my secretary is getting a little tired of having to turn her radio up so she drowns out your moans."

  Gin laughed. "She is so prudish."

  "Something you've never had to worry about."

  "So why this place, Samuel T., hmm?"

  In lieu of answering, he dipped down and brushed the side of her throat with his lips. Moving his hands farther up under her skirt, he brushed the tops of her thigh highs--and then kept going until--

  "You're not wearing panties," he growled.

  "Of course not. It's eighty-five degrees out there and humid as the inside of a shower."

  Samuel T. became unhinged then, his control snapping, his greed for her overtaking everything. With sure fingers, he unbuckled his monogrammed belt and unzipped his slacks--and Gin was clearly as impatient as he was. Moving herself down on the sofa, she brought them together at the very moment he angled his erection forward.

  They both shuddered, and then he started moving.

  As Gin lowered her lids, and somehow managed to hold the flute steady over his pale rug, she said, "I think I know why it's here"--she gasped--"and in this room."

  Through gritted teeth, he asked why. Or maybe what his own name was. Who knew? She was always the best, always the tightest around him, always the sweetest and the slickest.

  "My husband's office building...is right over there." She looked out to the view and indicated with the glass--while he was pumping into her sex. "In fact...his office...faces this building...."

  She began panting, just as he was, and she was so right.

  He had brought her here so he could fuck her on this sofa...and look over her bobbing head while doing so at that sonofabitch Pford's office windows that were but one block down and over, at the top of the Pford Building.