Salvaged by Love (Thalia Book 3) (The Thalia Series)

by Jennifer Bene

  “You have no idea how worried I’ve been.” He shook his head, “I mean, you’re so strong, and you’ve become this incredible woman. You rebuilt your life and I didn’t know if you’d want me to be a part of it. Not with me as a constant reminder of how you got here.”

  “James.” She reached up and held his face, his eyes looked pained as she listened to what were apparently his deepest fears. “You aren’t a bad memory for me, you’re my favorite memory. If you thought for even a minute I’d want to leave you, to leave us behind... you really can be an idiot sometimes.” She smiled and he smiled back.

  “Yes. Yes, I can.” His grin grew wider, “Can I give you my six month anniversary gift now?” He was suddenly all boyish excitement, and he grabbed her hand and pulled her to the island. “Here, sit.”

  “Okay... but, I don’t have anything for you?” Thalia sat down gingerly and James grabbed the chair next to her.

  “Baby, you already gave me the only gift I wanted today.” James reached across the island and pulled over the manila folders. “I wanted to be sure that whatever you chose you knew I supported it, so I planned ahead.”

  “Of course you did.” She smiled, taking a sip of her coffee as she looked at her organized, type-A, executive, Dominant, boyfriend. If there was a possibility, he had planned for it, and it sort of felt like Christmas morning as she stared at the folders.

  He took the one in the middle and flipped it open. “This isn’t just from me, it’s from Kalen and Maggie too. I know you’ve been official at the yoga studio for about a month, but I thought you might like to open your own.” He nudged the folder in front of her and she was staring down at a thick packet of legal looking papers.

  “What is this?” She started flipping through it and saw an address down the street, square footage, and her name all over it.

  “Your own studio. Analiese did some marketing research and said this is a great location, she is also volunteering her time to set up your brand, and Julie really wants to help you do the interior design.” James looked a little nervous in his excitement.

  “You bought me a yoga studio?” Thalia’s voice was disbelief.

  “Half of one, like I said, Kalen and Maggie wanted to help. And it’s not a yoga studio yet, it’s an empty space, but you will be able to build it out however you like.”

  “Did everyone know about this but me?” She laughed and looked up at him.

  “Sort of. I wanted to make sure you’d like it.” His fingers wrapped around her hand, “Do you?”

  “I don’t even know how to run a business! But, I mean, yes. Yes! I do like it, I love it, it’s just a lot?” Thalia’s head was spinning again. She was going to end up with vertigo at this rate.

  “I’m pretty good with business, I think I can help, and this way you’ll be able to do whatever you want, hire whomever you want. It will be completely yours.” His thumb traced over the back of her hand and she sat back in shock.

  “Wow. That’s a hell of a gift.” She jumped, “I can’t just leave Marie! She just hired me!”

  James chuckled, “It will take a few months to get it situated, and register the business. You won’t leave suddenly, but I know how much the yoga thing has made you happy - and I just want you happy, baby.”

  “You make me happy.” She leaned over and kissed him before glancing back at the other folders. “What are those?”

  James looked at them too and grabbed the top one, “This was if you had said you wanted to go. I rented you an apartment, set up a bank account in your name, and there’s still the copy of the property information for the studio. No matter what, I wanted to make sure you were well taken care of. Even if it wouldn’t be by me anymore.”

  “You were still going to give me the yoga studio?”

  “I have to admit all of that was a little selfish. I thought if you stayed in London, if you felt like you didn’t have to be with me, that maybe I could convince you to date me.” James blushed a little. Actually fucking blushed.

  That was a first.

  “So your plan was to still try and woo me? After giving me -” Her eyes bugged out of her head when she saw the figure in the bank account, “Holy shit, James!”

  “Language.” He chided with a smile. “And you can keep that separately if you want, or I can close it. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  “That’s so much money! What were you thinking?!”

  “That I promised you if you decided at the six months you wanted to leave that I’d help you rebuild your life after he took everything. I wasn’t going to go back on that.” He shrugged. “And it’s not that much money.”

  “To you!” She gasped and closed the folder on the obscene number.

  “Yes, pet, to me.” He grinned again, “but it doesn’t matter because you want to stay, and everything that’s mine is yours anyway.”

  “You’re insane.” She laughed but he gripped her hand, his eyes tracing her face, her mouth. Then he kissed her again, and he almost succeeded in distracting her from the third folder. The largest of the three. “Wait, what’s in the last folder?”

  James’ expression changed as he reached for it. Instantly solemn again, the giddy joy that had been theirs for a few moments dulled. “Ah. Well, this I was offering you regardless.” He pulled the folder in front of them, pushing the others back across the island. “Do you remember when I showed you the email from Marcus? Do you remember what you said?”

  Thalia nodded, her stomach tightening at the mention of his name.

  “You told me you hoped their world crashed down around them. That they never hurt another girl. That you hoped they burned for what they’d done.” His eyes were on the folder, his fingers gripping the edge of it just a little too tightly.

  “I remember.”

  “I couldn’t think of a better anniversary gift, a better way to end our six month agreement, than to give you a way to do exactly that.” He laid his hand flat on the top of it. “I’ve had a team of people digging up every scrap of evidence on the Williams brothers. Hacking their servers, their accounts, their website. There’s enough information in here, and on a set of digital drives, to completely destroy them - but it’s up to you, baby.”

  Her head was spinning again, only now it was making her nauseous. “What’s up to me?”

  “There’s a few options here. We don’t have to do anything with this. We can leave all of it alone, never think about either of them again. We can just live our lives.”

  “Okay.”

  “We can ask the people who have been working on all of this to just bring it all down. Delete everything, destroy their finances, scatter all their ill-begotten money across the world. Maybe funneling it into some needy organizations. Make it so it will be very difficult for them to rebuild anything.” James was staring at the folder, and so was she.

  “And the last option?”

  “The last option is we destroy them. Turn it all over to INTERPOL and let the police drag them out into the open. Take them down. Make them pay for everything they’ve done.” James’ voice had an edge to it as he spoke, and she felt her own pulse increase. “Now no matter what, every trace of you and I are gone. Every mention of my name, of your time there, all of it. Gone. We won’t be involved in any of it. So, baby, what -”

  “Destroy them.” Her eyes came up to his, ignoring the thick folder of their crimes that she didn’t want to even look at. “Turn them over to the police. They deserve to pay. To rot in jail forever for what they’ve done.”

  “Done.” James pushed the folder away and grabbed her face in his hands. “Done. I swear it. They’ll burn for what they have done… and I have to say that was the one I had hoped you would choose.”

  He was kissing her again, pulling her away from the island. Away from all of the wonderful things signaling that they were staying together, and the darkness in the last folder. His arms were around her, and then his hands were behind her thighs and he was lifting her so she wrapped her legs around him. He w
as hard and she rubbed herself against him, his groan buzzing in their mouths. She felt them moving, but she didn’t care. Her hands were in his hair, holding his mouth to hers. James was kissing her. James wanted her to stay. James loved her.

  The world was radiant, and glowing, and - he dropped her on the bed. His mouth was on hers again as he pulled at her top. “Remind me to call Kalen after this, they wanted to know when you said yes.”

  Thalia laughed as he ripped the green top over her head and she pulled at his shirt. “When I said yes?”

  “They had no doubts. Kalen was the one who told me he knew you loved me,” James’ lips pressed against hers again before he leaned up to pull off his shirt. “I thought it was too good to be true.”

  Thalia unhooked her bra and threw it off the bed, reaching for the button of his jeans as soon as her hands were free. He grabbed her wrists and pinned them to her sides, making her moan as he pressed himself between her thighs.

  “And Alice and her husband want to go to dinner with us.” His lips were trailing kisses over her ribs, his teeth nipping at her until she was groaning. His voice hummed against her skin, “I didn’t want to give them an answer before today.”

  “Ah!” She cried out as his warm mouth found her nipple and drew it in, her back arching. “Julie is planning a girls’ weekend in two weeks! AH! Same thing, didn’t want to say yes -” he kissed her again, his erection rubbing against her through their clothes, his warm chest against hers. She was moaning against his lips.

  “You should have just said yes, pet. You could have gone either way.” His hands released her wrists and then he was pulling her pants off. Once freed her fingers returned to his button, popping it and sliding his zipper down until she could reach inside and grab his cock. His body stilled and his hips jerked against her, a growl rumbling in his chest. He slid off her to kick his clothes away, and she did the same. Then he was on top of her again, his hips between hers, his fingers seeking and finding her soaking. She was slippery as he thrust two fingers inside her.

  “Oh God!” She groaned and arched her back, “Please?” She was begging and she didn’t care. This was her boyfriend, her Dom, and they had a lot of time, but she wanted him now.

  “Tell me you love me again?” His hand slid from between her thighs, his touch trailing up her waist until he interlaced their fingers and he was pinning her again.

  “James, I love you. Now please, pretty please, fuck me.” Her voice was breathy with need, and his answering grin made that fizzy joy return to join the need coiling inside her.

  “I love you too, Thalia. More than I can even say.” His voice dropped to a growl as he thrust inside her and their cries came out as one. He filled her, and when he started to move her body lifted against his again and again. This was what she wanted, what she needed, and she had it.

  She had James. She had everything.

  Chapter Eight

  Ten and a Half Months after the Auction

  If Thalia had thought her first trans-Atlantic flight had been interesting, flying back to the states to meet James sister was a new level of everything. She had no idea if James had upgraded to the ridiculously luxurious first class cabin of the Boeing 777 as a kind of atonement for taking her to meet Katherine, or if this was just how he normally made the trip. While it was nice to be in her own little bubble, with a seat that had become a bed once they were out over the ocean, she still wished he was right next to her instead of across the aisle.

  During their first flight across the Atlantic she’d probably been in shock, at least that’s what Ailsa would call it. The auction, James, the whirlwind of leaving Marcus on the front steps of his house, the hotel, the never-ending panic that had hummed just under her skin. The flight had been difficult, she’d been exhausted, but every time she had fallen asleep there had been nightmares. It had only been because James was right next to her that she hadn’t had a total freak out and been taken down by some transatlantic air marshal.

  Thalia huffed out a breath and tried again to get comfortable, to sleep, because she needed it. There was no reason this flight was any different than the many she had been on since that first flight with James. They’d flown all over Europe. He’d taken her to Venice one weekend just because he’d mentioned the city and she’d commented that she’d never been to Italy.

  Oh, you’ve never been to Italy? We’ll just go.

  Those were the kinds of ridiculous things your boyfriend did for you when money had no meaning to him. Thalia didn’t even care about the money, or the trips, or the fact that he’d bought her a yoga studio just because.

  Well, that last part was a lie.

  She didn’t care about the other stuff, but she really liked the yoga studio. The studio was gorgeous. Julie had made sure of that. On the second floor, on a very nice street lined with upscale shops. Three rooms for classes, a front desk space that made it look like a warm and inviting spa. It had taken her weeks of interviews but she had found great people to run Nirvana with her. Becca had been her first hire, and she was hilarious and vibrant and had one of the dirtiest mouths Thalia had encountered in London. On top of that she was a very talented yoga instructor and had been doing it for years. It made her fantastic to work with. Their grand opening had been a few weeks before. All the girls from Purgatory had shown up, along with a lot of James’ work friends, and that had not been the easiest party to referee. But it had gone off without a hitch, clients had poured in after the over-the-top advertising campaign James had constructed with Analiese, and they were already slated to more than cover their own expenses the first month.

  For the hundredth time guilt gnawed at Thalia that she had left the studio in Becca’s hands to fly to America and meet James’ sister, but according to James it was either meet her now or she was coming to London to cause a scene and rope in James’ parents on top of everything.

  They had originally planned to meet James’ parents at their huge Christmas party, before his parents cancelled the party and went to Morocco, – that would have been easier. Tons of people. Not much pressure to be perfect, or much time to be grilled on her life story. James’ plan had been to introduce her as the girl he was dating, wish them a happy Christmas, and then disappear back home to drink until her nerves wound down.

  Ah, and that was just one more thing weighing on her mind.

  James really wanted his family to know her, she knew he did. She could see how much he wanted it, but every time he talked about it this cloud of concern fogged his features. He tiptoed around the subject as if she might bolt from the room – which wasn’t actually that far from how she felt about it. In the first couple of months they had been together James had taken her shopping and she had made a joke about the movie Pretty Woman that he had not found very funny. But the comparison had never faded from her mind, and just imagine how awkward it would have been had they added in to the movie Richard Gere’s character introducing Julia Roberts to his parents? The poor, classless American girl being introduced to the upper crust of society? Cue judgment, polite smiles, uncomfortable silence, and disappointment.

  Would Edward really have given up his family to stay with Vivian? Not fucking likely.

  Maggie had said his parents were nice. That Katherine was flighty and spoiled and ridiculous, but nice. James had echoed Maggie’s opinion, mentioning Katherine’s disconnect with normal people, citing that she’d never had a real job. That she’d finished a degree in business only to appease their parents, and spent most of her time in luxurious communities in the northeast of the United States just to keep an ocean between her and their parents’ wishes that she’d do something with her life. At least that was a parental line that bridged most of the tax brackets.

  So, what if Katherine hated her? Would that be a nail in the coffin of their relationship? When she finally did meet his parents, which likely wouldn’t be far behind this trip, what if they hated her? What if they thought James was too good for her? Because, in reality, James was too good for
her. They never would have crossed paths without her being kidnapped and James’ dark side rearing its head. Which they definitely could not explain to either Katherine or his parents. What happened then? What happened if after all of their incredible luck over the last six months, since Purgatory, everything fell apart? Did he, could he, love her as much as she loved him? Enough to survive the condemnation of the most important people in his life?

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  Way too much on her mind. A new business which she had effectively ditched for a week just as it was getting its footing. Genius move. Flying through the air at a million miles an hour towards her boyfriend’s sister so she could judge her worthy or not. Terrifying. The pending meeting of his parents on the horizon. There had to be a stronger word than terrifying for that, petrifying? Mind obliterating?