The Beginning of Connie and Isaac (The Blue Butterfly #3)

by D H Sidebottom

  She shifted away from me and I sat up, opening the drawer beside my bed to pull out the bottle of vodka. Bullet grabbed the two glasses I kept on the dresser for our nightly moans and encouraged me to fill them to the brim before we both rested back against the wall. “Annie has been marked.”

  “What the fuck?” Bullet gasped, choking down a mouthful of Grey Goose.

  “Her and… daddy.” The way I spat ‘daddy’ made Bullet smirk.

  “I take it you and the notorious Mr Shepherd are going to have some fun.”

  The chuckle that broke from me was as cold as my feelings towards Mae’s torturer. “Oh, I plan on having lots of fun with him. But first I have to get Annie to feel safe with me. Isaac has already prepared her a family for when it’s over.”

  Bullet sighed and looked at me curiously. “And Isaac’s okay with this?”

  “With what?”

  “With you being so close to the target. I’m surprised he’s sanctioned your involvement to be honest.”

  When she noticed me tense, she narrowed her eyes and tipped her head. “He has sanctioned your involvement?”

  “Of course he has,” I said carefully.

  But my best friend knew me better than anyone and she growled. “For fuck’s sake, Shadow. What the hell are you doing?”

  “He has!” I defended but then sighed. “He’s planning on moving my niece abroad, Bullet. She’s my niece. The only family we have is each other. I can’t allow that. She’s my sister’s baby, my flesh and blood.”

  “Shadow…”

  “No! I’m going in there and I’m going to end that bastard, and if needs be I will go into hiding with Annie. She’s mine, Bullet and even Isaac won’t take her from me.”

  “Oh, my friend.” Bullet sighed as she gripped my hand tightly. “She’s not Isabella…”

  “Fuck you!” I spat out, glaring at her as I scurried off the bed. “Fuck you! Don’t you think I don’t know that? I do! I know that, but she is Mae’s and I will sign myself over to the devil to love that little girl!”

  She stared after me, shouting my name as I slammed my own room door behind me and tore through the Phantom mansion. I knew she wasn’t Isabella. Annie was Mae’s daughter, I wasn’t deluded. Yet, I was her auntie and that bastard who she lived with didn’t deserve her. He deserved to feel the edge of my blade across his throat, and by fucking God was he going to feel it.

  The hatred of what he did to Mae consumed me yet again, and I palmed the wall in attempt to control my raging breaths. My belly curdled with fury, my mouth watering as I pictured what I was going to do to Daniel Shepherd. Rage engulfed me, my heart beating furiously as I struggled to contain my emotions.

  I needed Isaac, he was the only person who could ground me, who could snap me out of my shit and make me understand what was real and what hope could bring me.

  His quarters, or rather our marital suite, was quiet when I quietly slipped inside. Curling my lip at the thought of him entertaining, or in simple terms ‘fucking’ someone, I blew out a breath and hesitantly popped my head around his bedroom door. Frowning to myself when I found it empty, I pouted. I needed his arms around me. I needed his soft words in my ear to stop the ache that was constant inside me, to put it to rest just for ten minutes.

  A noise in the bathroom halted me just as I was about to leave. Cautiously opening the door and hoping he wasn’t having a number two, I stepped inside.

  Now, before I go on, I need you to understand mine and Isaac’s relationship. We loved each other, there was no doubt about that. Yet we were both very sexual creatures. Sex, to both of us, wasn’t sentimental or intimate, it was a way of releasing stress and receiving pleasure. As much as a massage, an expensive bottle of wine or a luxurious hot bath can to you be pleasurable, fucking to us was very much on the same level. Our bodies weren’t our souls and our hearts weren’t connected to our genitals. Love was very much emotions and feelings, whereas sex was purely physical, it was quite simple to us. We were created to procreate, it was only religion that brought marriage into the equation and as such, to Isaac and me anyway, sex and love were on completely different parallels. We weren’t jealous, in fact we often told each other about other partners as we lay wrapped in each other’s arms at night. It not only widened our own minds but it gave us new things to explore. However, what we never shared with others was our mouths or our hearts. My lips and my heart belonged to Isaac and vice versa. Those things were personal, something that connected us to our innermost feelings. A kiss, for example, wasn’t pleasurable in the way fucking can be. We didn’t kiss to orgasm, we kissed because we needed that closeness to the other person. To share breaths is to share hearts and if my heart only beat for Isaac, then my breath should only be shared with him. I hope all that makes sense and you can gain a little more understanding to how we both were before I tell you the next part of our tale.

  The bathroom was relatively light, the main lamp lit. No music played or candles burned; there was nothing remotely romantic in the situation but my heart clenched when I found my husband bathing my fucking nemesis.

  Both Isaac and Becca looked up at me as Isaac sponged the bitch down. I blinked at them both, desperately trying to hang on to my sanity.

  “Hey, love.” Isaac smiled up at me as though nothing unusual was happening. Becca grinned at me with a frosty smirk on her cruel lips and I stood there, completely still as my eyes raked over their naked bodies.

  My teeth snapped together. Isaac saw it before she did and just as he moved quickly, I was faster. Whipping the bitch up by her hair, I dragged her out of the bath and hauled her perfect tight arse out of my home, her gasp loud when I threw her out of the door.

  Spinning around when I slammed shut the front door, I saw Isaac standing with narrow eyes, ready for me. He ducked – unfortunately – when I picked up a solid brass ugly fucking ornament and launched it at his head. “You bastard!” I screamed at him. “You fucking bastard!”

  “What the fuck, Con? What have I…?”

  “I’ve had the shittiest day!” I bellowed at him. “All I wanted was my husband’s arms and I find you intimate with that… that fucking skank!”

  “Intimate? We were having a fucking bath!”

  “Exactly!” I cried as I propelled the fruit bowl at him, the bananas bouncing off the wall and hitting him, quite brilliantly, in the face. “A bath is not what we would term pleasurable. It’s intimate!”

  He screwed up his face and swatted away a couple of apples as he stared at me with confusion. “Is it? It’s a bath. I was mucky, and she wanted to give me a blowjob.” He shrugged as though that explained everything, which in effect it did, but it still didn’t satisfy my rage.

  “Well why didn’t you bathe alone? Why did she have to join you?”

  Sometimes I swear men are created with completely different brains than females. He peered at me like I was crazy, “She joined me so she could suck my cock while I was washing. It saved on time… and effort. What’s the big deal?” He was growing angry with me but that didn’t dampen my own temper.

  “You bloody twat,” I spat as I hit out at him with my hands, saving the furnishings. “Why her! Why that fucking slag?”

  His rage snapping, he grabbed my wrists to stop my assault and pushed me until my back hit the long table that sat along one wall of the hallway. “Will you stop!” he growled. “You fuck Devlin! What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is he doesn’t fucking bathe with me, you arsehole!”

  His lip curled and he snarled before he spun me around and pressed my face down on the table, his firm grip on the back of my neck unforgiving and painful. I yelped when he yanked down my jeans and struck my backside harshly. “You need to remember who the fuck you’re talking to. Show some fucking respect!”

  “Respect!” I scoffed as I fought back, but he was stronger than me and as fast as I managed to get up, he had me back down, my body bent over the table as he tore at my jeans. “Respect is earned!” />
  “Oh, fuck off, you sulky bitch!” he shouted as he thrust his cock deep inside me.

  “Get the fuck off me!” I cried out, bucking back on him as pleasure curled through my angry bones.

  “Yeah?” he spat out as he grabbed a fistful of my hair. “Tell me you don’t want my big cock inside that tight fucking cunt of yours? Tell me!” he shouted as he pounded into me so hard the edge of the table cut into my belly.

  Bouncing back on every one of his drives inside me, I couldn’t tell him. “Fuck you, you bastard.”

  He laughed coldly as he sank his thumb inside my anus and pushed hard. “Look at you, you fucking love it, don’t you? Such a greedy wife,” he grated through his tight jaw. “Your little pussy drips for me and my cock. You hunger for it!”

  My body hovered on the edge of heaven as he fucked me like an animal, each of his cruel pushes inside me lifting me higher and higher. His teeth sank into my neck as he bent over me, his cock screwing harder and deeper. I shivered when I felt my skin burst in his mouth and my blood coated his lips. “Kiss me, bitch,” he demanded as he snatched my chin and turned my face to his then slammed his lips on mine and pushed his tongue into my mouth. I could taste my own blood but it only fired the heat in my gut.

  He groaned into me as he bucked and jerked, his cum spilling inside me and detonating my own fierce orgasm as I screamed at the constriction of every muscle in my taut body. All the tension left me almost instantly and I sagged into his arms when he pulled me up and took me into his arms, carrying us both through to the bedroom where he lay me on the bed and settled beside me.

  “Better?” he asked as he placed a gentle kiss in my hair.

  Nodding, I sighed and snuggled against him. “Don’t do that again.”

  “You know Becca is nothing more to me than a cunt, my love. Why do you do this?”

  I shrugged, hating all the emotional shit that was burying my heartbeat. “Just not Becca. I know how she feels about you, and she loves it when she brags in South about bedding you. You should hear the skank, she fucking preens…”

  “Well, can’t you blame her, she has had the master of cocks, Connie. Who wouldn’t brag?”

  I slapped at him playfully but when I sighed, he tilted my chin back and gazed at me. “Okay, if it means that much to you, no more Becca.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered, giving him a wide smile. “And no more baths.”

  He pursed his lips considering my request. “Well I might start to smell…”

  “You know what I mean,” I grumbled. “Just have them on your own, or with me. It’s intimate, Isaac. Whatever you say to argue that fact, it’s important to me.”

  His expression changed to one of seriousness and adoration and he nodded. “Okay, I promise. Baths are intimate and not cool.”

  Little did I know, not a year later I would share a bath with another man. A man I had sworn to kill. A man that I had set out to hate, and ended up loving. And it was that very bath that made me re-evaluate everything in my life.

  The next day, I started my very last assignment. It would see many finalities in my life and the beginning of many others, and the start of mine and Isaac’s marriage in a way. Daniel Shepherd taught me many things but most of all he taught me about myself.

  And for that I would forever be in his debt.

  August 2014. Aged 23.

  HELEN ACTUALLY OPENED the front door to us when Isaac and I pulled into the thin gravel driveway. Isaac quirked an eyebrow at me before pulling the car up to a stop in front of the door.

  “Well, she looks full of the joys of spring,” he mocked when Helen stared at us with a bored expression.

  “Mmm,” I agreed, sighing heavily.

  “She looks delightful.” His lip curled when his gaze roved down her body then back up to her stern face. “How would you like to do this, my love? Quick or slow?”

  Stifling a yawn, I rolled my head round my shoulders. “Fast and easy. I just want a hot bubble bath, a foot rub and your tongue in my pussy.” It had been a long eighteen months and I was tired. I’d missed my husband with my very soul and after everything that had happened with Daniel and me, it made me realise just how much I loved Isaac.

  Isaac snatched up his gun and grabbed the door handle. I laughed, holding his arm and pushing the gun back onto his lap. “Whoa, stud. Slow down. We have to think of Annie.”

  “Well hurry. I need you. I’ve been on rations.”

  I gawped at him, my mouth wide with shock. “What?”

  He shrugged, almost embarrassed as his eyes lowered to his lap. “They’re not you, Connie. They never have been. And to be honest, they bore me. My wife, well, she excites me. She makes me laugh in the bedroom. She even breaks wind when I tickle her.” He nodded slowly as though proud of my ability to fart. “She makes my cock feel absolutely fucking fantastic but more than that, she loves me, she adores me. And I’ve realised after all this time, that’s what makes it what it is with you. Your love, and my love for you. And there is no greater climax than coming deep inside of you as your eyes give me all your thoughts, your soul and your heart. That’s what makes me yours, and that’s what makes us fucking awesome in bed.” He ran his fingertip across my cheekbone, collecting the tears that fell. “Are you ready?”

  “I need to do this on my own.”

  He smiled, nodding. “I’ll come in and get the munchkin, then she’s all yours.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked as I looked in his eyes. He shook his head in confusion. “Annie. Bringing Annie into our family.”

  “My love, Annie is already in our family. She has been ever since she was born. She’s part of you, and that makes her part of us. I want her to have that puppy, and days on the beach, and water fights. I want to make her laugh, I want to tickle her until she can’t breathe. And I want to watch her pick up her first ever baby and sing to her. I want to be the one who walks her down the aisle when she falls in love, I want to shoot at the prick that breaks her heart and I want her to grant me a grandbaby. Because she’s part of you, Connie.”

  “You know,” I whispered, unable to lift my voice higher with the emotion coursing through me. “An hour ago, I was regretting what life had given me. But I’d do it all again, three thousand times over, because it gave me you. I look at Mae’s life, and yes, although it was my choices that gave her hers, she had to wait until death to find what I’ve had since I was thirteen. And that gives me cause to be grateful. I have never known a man love a woman as much as you love me. You went against the rules and took the most severe punishment for me. You killed your father for me. But above all that, you love me. Me, the ordinary girl who had to make a choice on a dark winter’s night. A choice that changed everything. But take me back there right now and I would make that same choice.”

  “Will you stop,” he whined. “I’m seriously thinking about making love to you now.” His brows furrowed. “You know, like… slowly and softly.” He stared at me in shock with himself.

  “We could try,” I whispered.

  His pursed his lips in thought. “You mean, no spanking, no belt, no yanking your hair? Just….”

  “Just us.”

  He leaned into me, his warm breath whispering over me as he slid his fingers around the side of my neck. “I’d love to.”

  I beamed at him before flicking my eyes to an even more bored Helen. Her arms were crossed across her chest while she waited for us. I blew out a breath and opened the door.

  “Let’s do this. Let’s go fetch our little person and finish it.”

  “I’m right behind you, my love. For the very last time, Shadow.” He nodded seriously, giving me the courage I needed to do this.

  Closing my eyes briefly, I pulled in a fortifying breath. “Time to reach the end square.”

  Everyone cooed over Annie when Isaac and I walked into the Phantom house with her. Her own beautiful blue eyes were wide and soaking everything up. Bullet grinned at me, her eyes full of tears as she bobbed dow
n in front of Annie, who was currently holding Isaac’s hand so hard I thought she would crush his fingers. “Hello, Annie,” she said gently. “My name is Bullet, but you would make me really happy if you called me Elle.”

  “Elle,” Annie whispered as if trying out the sound of Bullet’s real name.

  “I’m your Auntie Shad…Connie’s best friend.” I couldn’t help but smile when I spotted Panther’s hand in my friend’s, even as she bent down to talk to Annie. “And I hope me and you are going to be the best of friends too.”

  Annie nodded and smiled as she timidly looked at all the Phantoms who came to say hello one by one. She was overwhelmed and maybe a little confused by such a large family. But as I looked at my friends, and the love and support they were already giving my niece, I knew deep in my heart that she would never be short of an auntie or uncle, and that they would protect her with their lives. What four-year-old could say that?

  Once, a long time ago, I’d hated this life. I’d wanted to end it, I’d wanted to join Mae and leave this shit behind. But now I couldn’t ever imagine life without my family.

  Surprisingly, Becca sidled up to me and smiled bashfully. “Good to have you back, Shadow.”

  I frowned at her, trying to peer into her soul to find what cruel joke she had up her sleeve but she blushed and lowered her eyes to the floor like a chastised six-year-old. “I know me and you haven’t exactly ever hit it off,” she admitted quietly. “But,” she licked her lips nervously and smiled with so much tenderness at Annie that I had to blink to stop my eyes from widening in shock. “But I would really like to be a part of your niece’s life. We all know this life takes away our chances of having children, and that’s a shame. But Annie here, maybe she can be the little person we all want, and need, in our lives.”

  Weighing up her words, I looked around the room, and my heart clenched in pain when I took in all the smiling and clucking women. They all regarded Annie as some sort of God, their praises and attention to her making me sigh with sadness.