by Tara Thomas
She tried to speak, but found the words wouldn’t form.
On the other end of the phone came an evil laugh. “Oh, yes. I’ll love to watch you break. In fact, I think I’ve changed my mind. I no longer want you dead. Oh no. You’ll be so much more fun alive.”
Her mouth opened but no words came out.
Knox jerked the phone away from her. “Listen here, you asshole—”
Even with Knox holding the phone, she could still hear the man on the other end interrupt. “If it isn’t Saint Benedict himself,” he said, followed by a chuckle. “Do you hear the ticking in the background, Knox? Each person only has so many ticks to tick in their life. I wonder how many you have left?” He chuckled again and then disconnected.
Knox cursed and threw the phone on the table, but his demeanor changed when he looked over and saw Bea. Ignoring the worried expressions of his family, he pulled her to him as close as the dining chair would allow.
“He can’t get you, Bea,” he murmured to her. “I won’t let him.”
“Don’t you see?” she asked. “He already has.”
“I’m going to find him and then I’ll kill him.”
Kipling banged his fist on the table. “And I’ll help.”
“Count me in,” Keaton said, and Tilly nodded in agreement.
“We need to find out what information he wants to stay buried so badly.” Knox continued to stroke her back while he talked. “I still think it has something to do with Tilly’s dad.”
Later that night, she was acutely aware of the way Knox watched her as she prepared for bed. She slipped her nightgown over her head, and as always, she marveled at how her body responded to him even when he wasn’t touching her.
His current expression told her he knew exactly how he made her body feel. He moved closer and reached for the strap of her gown.
She swatted his hand away. “No, we are not going to do anything tonight.”
“You still aren’t caught up in that fact that my brothers are here, are you?” he asked. “Because I don’t think I need to remind you we did the same thing in DC with your brother and Janie right down the hall.”
“That’s different.”
“How?” he asked. “Because it was your brother and not mine?”
It sounded stupid, even to her own ears. “Yes.” She took a deep breath and tried to figure out how to explain her thought process without hurting his feelings. “I’m more comfortable with Brent, I don’t know your brothers all that well.”
He seemed to weigh her words and she swore she could picture his brain churning though various replies. Finally, he spoke. “Okay. We won’t do anything sexual while in Benedict House.”
He gave in way too easily, but she replied with a simple, “Thank you.”
His overly enthusiastic smile clued her in that she’d probably just been had.
“However,” he added, and she knew she was right. “That does not mean that I won’t get you to the point where you’ll be begging me to take you.”
“Is that right?” she asked, wondering how he could do something like that without touching her.
She didn’t have to wonder for long. Almost as soon as they made it to bed, he rolled her way.
“Do you know what I’m thinking about?” he asked.
She pulled the covers up to her chin. “If I had to guess, I’d say sex.”
“Yes, well, that’s a given,” he said. “But specifically what kind of sex and with whom am I having it?”
“Since you’re asking me these questions, I’ll have to say you’re having it with me. Because if you’re in bed with me and thinking about having sex with another woman, I’ll cut your dick off.”
“Remind me to keep you away from the knives in the kitchen.”
“Was I right?” she asked.
“Yes, of course you were. Do you honestly think I even remotely consider other women when I have you as my wife?”
She touched his cheek. “You better not.”
He turned his face and kissed the palm of her hand. Then he sighed and tugged her so she rested on his chest. She snuggled into his embrace. She always felt so protected in his arms. When she was in his arms, she couldn’t imagine anywhere else she’d rather be.
She ran a hand down one of his arms, her fingertips brushing over the muscles. And, because she couldn’t help it, she lowered her head and placed a soft kiss on his shoulder.
“You feel so good in my arms,” he whispered. “Just like you were made for them.”
“You know in Greek mythology, it was said that humans originally had four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces.”
“No way,” he said.
“You think I can make this up?” She lifted her upper body, just a bit, so she could see his face. She continued when he shook his head. “Anyway, Zeus feared they were too strong, so he split them. After that, humans had one pair of legs, one pair of arms, and one face. They would roam the earth, looking for their other half, their soul mate.”
“Where do you learn all this this stuff?”
“Brent’s dad was Greek, and Brent spent a lot of his summers in Greece with his grandparents. I went with him one summer.” She frowned, remembering when she’d come home. She’d gone on and on about Greece, the people she met there, how wonderful the food was. Later that night, she overhead her dad telling her mom that she wasn’t to go back to Greece.
She didn’t want to talk about Greece or her dad. What she wanted, she realized, in stark opposition to what she’d said previously, was Knox. She wanted to feel his passion when he took her in his arms. She wanted to feel his love in his lips as they traveled over her body. She wanted him to make everything disappear as he took her thoroughly and for those few precious moments all she had room in her head for was him.
She was fairly certain he wouldn’t have a problem with her changing her mind. Even so, she decided not to tell him, but to show him.
She peppered kisses across his shoulder, first one and then the other. She let her hands drift downward and brushed the expanse of his chest. He groaned and pulled back.
“You need to stop,” he said.
She placed a kiss on his chest. “Do you want me to stop?”
“Hell, no,” he said through clenched teeth as she kissed his chest again. “But you said you didn’t want to do anything.”
“I changed my mind.” She spoke without moving out of place. “I’ve decided I don’t care if your brothers are in the house.” She hooked her fingers around the waistline of the shorts he’d worn to bed. “Hey, what’s this? I thought you slept naked?”
“I do. It’s just since you said nothing was going to happen tonight, I thought it would be for the best if I slipped some shorts on.”
“You’re not opposed to me taking them off?”
“Are you serious with that question?” He cocked an eyebrow at her and she had to laugh.
“You may have changed your mind, or decided you weren’t in the mood,” she said, working on tugging his shorts down.
“Put it this way,” he said. “The day I’m not in the mood to have sex with you is the day I’m dead.”
“In that case.” She didn’t want to talk about him being dead, she’d much rather attend to the business at hand. With one move, she had his shorts down his legs and with a quick shake, they were off.
“Jesus, Bea.”
She grinned because she knew she’d caught him off guard. She kept her eyes on his while she teased his inner thighs with her hands. “Remember that night I gave you one kiss?”
“Yes,” he ground out in half a moan.
“Tonight, I’m not stopping with one.” And without giving him time to think or react, she leaned over and took his entire length in her mouth.
His hips bucked off the bed and he muttered something she couldn’t quite make out.
She lifted her head. “Was that a ‘please stop’?”
“That was a ‘please for the love of all things holy and a fe
w that aren’t, don’t stop’.”
“Since you put it that way,” she said, and took him in her mouth again.
He placed his hand on her head, not to guide or to force, but to gently rub her scalp the way he knew she liked. She hummed, to show much she liked what he was doing, and his hand tightened in her hair in response to how it made her mouth move around him. He cursed under his breath.
She kept on licking and tasting, wanting to give him as much pleasure as she could. He let her continue for a few minutes, but eventually tugged her hair.
“Stop, Bea.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to come in your mouth.” He was almost panting and the muscles of his thighs tightened beneath her fingers.
She thought about keeping her mouth on him and letting him finish, but decided she wouldn’t. She gave his length one last kiss and then climbed his body. “One day soon, I’m going to take you all the way back in my mouth and swallow every drop you’re able to give me.”
“Deal,” he said. “But right now, I want to bury myself in you as deep as possible. So deep. And I want to stay there and bring you more pleasure than you’ve ever known. So deep and for so long, when I’m not in you, you feel like part of you is missing.” While he’d been talking, his hands had been busy, stroking her breasts, a fingertip circling her nipple. He slipped a hand between her legs. “You want me.”
“Always,” she whispered with a shiver.
He rolled over so that they were on their sides, facing each other. He wrapped the fingers of one hand around the top of her upper thigh and hitched it up so her leg wrapped around his waist.
She felt so open and exposed and she kept waiting for him to move, anticipating that delicious feel when he first entered her. But he kept still.
She gyrated her hips, desperate and needy for some friction and still he wouldn’t move.
“Knox,” she whined.
He closed his eyes and smiled. “Can you feel it? The anticipation? It’s so sweet, isn’t it? At times, it’s almost as if you can feel it before it happens, can’t you?”
Yes, she could feel it now, but she knew it was just a shadow of what the real thing would feel like. An echo of it. “Please.”
He moved closer and she could feel the heat of his body at her entrance, but he stopped seconds away from touching her. “So, so sweet,” he repeated.
“Knox,” she begged again. “Please.”
“And she was so needy,” he said. “Tell me what you need.”
She rocked her hips in frustration. “You.”
“Ah, yes,” he said and ever so slowly, pushed his way into her.
She sucked her breath in through clenched teeth. Always the feel of him the first time he entered her was so sweet in its fullness and the way he stretched her.
“Somehow,” he said, “as good as I think it’s going to be, and as wonderful as I remember it being, it never comes close to the real thing.”
He was fully inside her now and though she yearned for him to move, he suppressed her once again by remaining still.
“You’re driving me mad,” she said.
“Consider it payback,” he said. “For every day, all day. The way you look, the way you walk, everything about you. It leaves me burning with desire. So yes, this is payback.”
She grabbed onto his biceps. He was straining with the will not to move and she was glad he was experiencing the same consuming desire she was. She knew all she had to do was move her hips, but she knew that wasn’t what he wanted, so she remained still. Content for the moment to let him have his way.
When he started to move, his thrusts were slow and easy, and the entire time, he whispered. He whispered about how much he loved her, how beautiful she was, and how good she felt. And though she often didn’t feel it, in his arms she felt beautiful.
He loved her with his body, taking time to ensure she felt everything he did. The feel of him within her, paired with the words he whispered, made her feel weightless and warm. But most of all, she felt loved and adored.
He started to move faster and she responded in kind, hitting his backside with the heel of the foot around his waist. He gave a grunt each time she did so and she did her best to draw him closer.
“Yes,” he said, thrusting deeper.
She kicked harder and in response he moved faster. She wished they could hold on to this moment forever. That they could somehow live in this timeless moment, where nothing could get to them, or separate them, or drive them apart. Where it was just him and her, and the universe was content with leaving them alone.
But as perfect as the moment was, it couldn’t last forever. Her hips moved in time with his, and before too long, her climax was upon her. She shook with the aftershocks as Knox roared through his own release.
As they laid in the darkness, the only sound being the catching of their breaths, she thought this moment was pretty perfect, too.
“I love you, Bea,” Knox said.
She kissed him briefly. “I love you, too.”
If only this moment could last forever. This quiet stillness. This peace. She wasn’t ready to return to reality, so she decided to close her eyes and pretend just a little bit longer.
* * *
Jade approached the house from the beach. Looking over her shoulder the entire time, to make sure she hadn’t been followed. It had been a stroke of luck that as she went through the office in Benedict House, looking for a stamp, that she found the information about this house.
Apparently, Knox planned to surprise his bride one day. Until he did, Jade was going to use it. She had purposely waited almost a week before traveling to it, on the off chance she was being followed. Now that she felt as if she was in the clear, it was time to make herself at home.
She frowned when she saw the house. It was more rundown than she had anticipated. Still, however, it looked to be structurally sound. And it was a much bigger space than one person needed.
She’d been afraid to take a key for fear one of the Benedicts would find it missing, put two and two together, and figure out she was the one who took it. She didn’t need a key, though, and as long as there wasn’t an alarm, she was golden.
She moved swiftly from the beach to the back deck and peered into a window with a broken shutter. There didn’t appear to be any electricity going to the house as far as she could tell. That was good. No electricity meant no alarm. Not that she would have used electricity even if the house had it. No use tipping off anyone to the fact that someone was in the house when it should be empty.
Fortunately for her, the days were still long enough that she’d have daylight well into the evening. For once, it appeared fate was smiling upon her.
She looked over her shoulder again, just to make sure the beach was still empty. Knox had done an excellent job in ensuring the location of his house was private. There were only a few houses nearby and they were far enough away that they couldn’t see her at the moment.
When she had scoped the place out earlier, she had noted some kids playing in the streets. That could be a problem because kids remembered everything, especially somebody like her, pulling out of place in such high-class neighborhood.
She didn’t see the kids now, and in fact there was nobody on the beach. She shrugged her backpack off her shoulder, and pulled out her lock-picking kit. In less than two minutes, she was through the door.
Once inside, it was obvious the house needed more work than what was apparent from the outside. Which was perfect for her, because that meant it was less likely for somebody to come by and find her hiding place. She wasn’t sure how long it would be until Knox and Bea moved into this place or until they started doing renovations. Either way she figured she had enough time to concoct a good plan.
Maybe now she would be able to sleep some and she could always fish in the ocean. So if you combined the food with the sleep, she might actually be able to come up with something to do to get away from The Gentleman for good.
She went through each room of the house, and finally decided to make her spot upstairs. From the upstairs windows she could see a large span of beach, which would tip her off if someone was coming.
She found a few blankets stuffed away in a closet. After pulling them out and shaking the dust off, she decided they would do good enough. The sun was going down and she pulled out her last peanut butter sandwich, telling herself she would fish tomorrow. Her stomach rumbled its approval.
From the outside came the sound of kids playing in the ocean. She peeked from behind the window and saw they were far enough away that they probably couldn’t see her. She wished she had a pair of binoculars; maybe she should try to find some tomorrow. Surely she could lift a pair from somewhere.
But now, for the first time in a week, she laid her head down and fell asleep, telling herself she could sleep all night.
* * *
The next morning, Knox worked from home downstairs. Bea had wanted to go into her office, but he had told her that was not a good idea. His reply couldn’t have come as a surprise. She simply agreed and was currently in their bedroom on a conference call.
“Knock, knock,” Keaton said from the doorway.
“Good morning.”
Keaton stood, leaning against the doorframe with a knowing look on his face. “Missed you and Bea at breakfast this morning.”
“We had a late night and decided to sleep in.”
“Ah, yes, sleeping in.” He gave his brother an exaggerated wink. “If that’s what you want to call it.”
“We were sleeping in.”
“Only because certain activities kept you up all night.”
“True, but listen,” Knox said. “Don’t tease about that around Bea. She was a bit shy and worried, especially with so many people in the house.”
“I would never tease Bea. There’s no fun teasing her, all my joy is derived from teasing you.”
“Thanks,” Knox said. “I think. Did you need anything or did you come by simply to annoy me?”
Keaton reached to his rear pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Out of all the things Elise had, this was the only one of them that appeared to be real.”