by Amelia Wilde
It’s the wrong thing to say. “No. That’s not—that’s not what I want—” The words are a confused mess in my brain. All I know is that it’s wrong. I don’t want to be coaxed. I don’t want to be convinced. I want to be—
Graham is all muscle, all movement. He turns me in his hands, turns us, and then I’m on my hands and knees on the sofa, ass in the air, gripping the armrest for dear life. Those same hands spread me open, spread me wide, and I tremble before the shame, before the hot embarrassment that makes me want him even more.
Two fingers against my slickness, pushing in. “This is mine now,” Graham says, as casually as he might say that he’d bought a new car.
“Yes—”
He replaces the fingers with his crown and claims me.
It’s a revelation.
He is so thick that he stretches me, every inch of him opens me underneath him, and his hands on my hips are non-negotiable. I cannot rock, I can only arch my back and accept him, and oh, it hurts, but it’s the best kind of pain as my body adjusts.
“I love it when you beg,” he says, and that’s how I discover that I am begging: Please, please, Graham please, I can’t do this, I can’t do this so slowly; I want more; oh, stop, it’s too big; oh, please, more—
I am split open, I am broken. It’s not the first time, but it feels like the first time; that stretching, tingling pain. It is a bright, raw hurt, and I am addicted to it all at once.
Graham’s heavy sack rocks against my pussy—he’s in. He’s all the way in. His hands are everywhere, dipping down to my clit, rubbing across my back, and his voice tells me everything I need to know. Such a good girl and so tight and stretched for me and mine.
In the stillness, I open around him, bit by bit, until there is no pain, only a pleasurable fullness, a fullness beyond my limits and yet firmly inside them. Firmly inside me.
Graham pulls out, slowly, until only his crown remains. “There’s no going back now.”
“I never want to go back.”
That’s the last thing I say for a long, long time.
25
Graham
Bellamy is sex-drunk and beautiful, and the sight of her keeps me wide awake.
Up until now, sex like that—possessive and raw and uninhibited—would have sent me into a deep sleep the moment my head hit the pillow. Next to Bellamy, I feel electric. She purrs underneath my touch, her hands wrapped around the pillow.
“Tell me a secret.”
She smiles. “I don’t have any secrets.”
“I thought you were a stickler for accuracy.”
Bellamy opens her eyes. “This is a really nice bed.”
I brought her here after the sofa and tucked her into the smooth, crisp sheets. They’ve never been slept in before, and now they’re against her skin for the first time. “Don’t change the subject.”
She traces my face with a fingertip and sighs. “It’s not fair that you ask me these questions when I can’t think.”
“Whose fault is that?” I kiss her jawline and settle back next to her, so I can watch every movement of her face.
“Don’t change the subject,” she says with a laugh. “I’m drawing a blank on secrets.”
“I want to know everything about you.”
“Any specifics? I’m a vast and untamed wilderness.”
I slide my hand to the curve of her waist, over her hip, and down the outside of her thigh. “Untamed, yes. But not vast enough that I won’t explore every inch of you.” I breathe her in. “Okay. What made you chase me out of that coffee shop? I was a complete prick. You could have kept the money.”
Bellamy closes her eyes, as if she can’t look at me while she says this. “When I was growing up, things were tense.”
“With money?”
“Not at first, but eventually, yeah.”
I wait.
“But my mom always insisted on doing the right thing. She insisted on telling the truth and being honest, even when it got her into trouble.”
This is more than Bellamy has ever said about her mother, and I don’t want to scare her off. “Oh?” Under my hand, I can feel the small tensions rocketing through her muscles. This isn’t a topic she’s interested in discussing.
“Anyway...” She shifts on the mattress, drawing herself a little closer. “I went to law school to do more good in the world. How was it going to look if I kept that money for myself?”
“Nobody would have known.”
“I would have known. And that kind of thing...it eats at you.” Bellamy opens her eyes, her gaze clear and direct. “Your turn. When was the last time you were in trouble?”
“That’s awfully specific.”
“It is not. Nobody makes a deal with a woman like me, unless they’re running from trouble. The press—that must have affected you too.”
I roll over onto my back. “It’s my brother who needs this more than I do. I thought—” I laugh. “I went to a party the night before I met you. It was an insane party, in more ways than one, and I didn’t expect it to go as far as it did.” Bellamy gapes at me. “I didn’t do anything illegal. But there are pictures that made it look like I did.”
“I didn’t see any pictures.” Her forehead wrinkles. “Those would have been in the papers, for sure. We got daily papers at Capitol Bean.”
“I don’t know what magic my brother worked—it was probably Brian—but he had it swept under the rug. But just in case, I had to do some...image repair.”
“At a coffee shop?” She snorts. “My coffee shop?”
“Little did they know...” I flip over and wrap one arm around her waist. “You’d come running out after me and ruin the entire plan.”
Bellamy runs her fingers down the length of my arm, toward my elbow. “All these plans...” She sighs. “In a way, I’m glad your overbearing brother is the president, because otherwise we might not have met.”
“Are you sure about that?” I say the words against her neck and wait for the goose bumps to rise on her skin. “You could have been with some nice boy from law school, or even undergrad...”
She makes a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. “No. None of them interested me.”
“None?”
Bellamy shrugs. “Some of them interested me, but not the way you do. You’re so...” Her fingers move again, retracing their steps. “Arrogant.”
“Thank you.” I press a kiss to her neck. “I’ve been waiting all my life to hear that.”
She laughs. “I mean, you’re comfortable in the world. You’re powerful. And yet...”
“Yet?”
“You give as much as you take,” she finishes finally.
“I can accept that.”
“I wish there weren’t so many plans, though. So many webs. We’re always caught in someone else’s web. How are we supposed to build something real if it’s all”—Bellamy waves a hand in the air—“like this?”
I sit upright, and her eyebrows rise. “We leave.”
“What?”
“We leave the web.” I pull her hand to my mouth and kiss her knuckles. “Where have you always wanted to go?”
“Graham, it’s the middle of the night.”
“So?” I hop out of bed and move to the dresser. There are traveling clothes in the second drawer. “The jet can be ready in an hour. We can be gone before the sun comes up.”
“Gone to where?”
I pounce back on the bed and kneel in front of Bellamy, who’s propped up on one elbow. “Anywhere.”
She thinks about this. “Somewhere warm?”
“That’s not very specific.” I kiss her. She is warm, like the tropics, like the sun. “But I’m sure I can think of a place or two that’s warm. Come on. Get up. Let’s go. Let’s go.”
Bellamy throws herself out of bed with a gleeful giggle and rushes for the bathroom. The shower runs, and two minutes later, she’s out again, hunting for a bag. She comes up with a Gucci duffel and laughs at it, even while she throws items of clothing from the
dresser inside. I’m buzzing with delight, watching her. If this is what it takes to get her away from her cold focus on accuracy, on success, then I’ll do this every day for the rest of my life.
Twenty minutes, and we’re ready to go.
Twenty-three minutes, and we’re in the lobby, heading for the car that’s pulling around front.
Twenty-four minutes, and I hear him say my name.
“Mr. Blackpool.”
It’s a rumpled and sleep-deprived Brian, unfolding himself from a low chair in the lobby. I don’t recognize him at first, here in New York City, but then I do. He looks like he walked off a commercial plane, walked to my building, and sat down in the chair.
“Brian. What are you doing in my lobby?”
I meet him over by the chair, Bellamy following afterward. “Ms. Leighton,” he says, then looks back to me. “We have a situation.”
“What kind of situation?” The car is waiting outside. If this is about some stupid interview, I’ll walk away and never come back.
“We need to accelerate the wedding timeframe.”
I don’t roll my eyes, but it’s a near thing. “Tell my brother I’ll discuss this with him when I’m back.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jameson at the front door of the building. He’s probably getting impatient too. It’s cold as fuck out there.
Brian looks slightly ill. “In that case, President Blackpool has asked that you be brought to the White House for a personal conversation.”
I laugh out loud. “He wants to have me kidnapped?”
“He wants to have a conversation.”
“Brian, this is above your paygrade.”
He looks me in the eye. “I know.”
Bellamy stands close to me, and I can feel her disappointment in the air with every breath she takes. I don’t know how, as a man with means and power, I can be driven into a corner like this. No, wait—I do. Because Andrew Blackpool is my brother, and I’ll never escape his shadow.
But Bellamy is the light, and the pull to her is inescapable. “Give me the weekend.”
I’d call Andrew myself, but if he’s sent Brian to personally deliver this message, he’s likely planning on being unreachable.
That bastard.
I know I’m putting Brian in the lion’s mouth, but in this moment, I don’t care.
I wait.
Brian sighs. “You’ll meet him on Monday?”
I turn and head for the door. “I never let him down.”
26
Bellamy
Accelerate the wedding timeframe.
That means I don’t have any time to lose.
That means I have to confront the thing I’ve been avoiding all this time. I got so close to telling Graham about my mother, and then those hands—
It was no contest.
And yet...
It would be irresponsible to jet off to somewhere warm and lovely with Graham when there is a responsibility hanging around my neck like a lead weight. God, I wanted to keep them separate. I wanted to keep the fact of her hidden away.
No—not hidden. I’m not ashamed of my mother. I’m ashamed of what the system did to her. I’m ashamed of how it chewed her up and spat her out again, leaving her imprisoned in her own home.
This is the one secret I planned to keep to myself.
Graham takes out his phone as the car pulls away from the curb. “The Bahamas. We could go there—I have a property there. I also have one in Florida, if that seems like a better option—” His voice is tight, jaw set. We haven’t talked about the accelerated wedding timeline. He’s focused on this.
“There’s—” My heart beats so hard, I can’t get control of it. “There’s somewhere else I think we should go.”
“Where? Name the place, sweetness.” It’s funny—the first time he called me that, I wanted nothing to do with that nickname. Now, the sound of the word on his lips relaxes me, starts a warmth growing in the center of my core.
“Lakewood.”
He grins and puts down his phone, closing the space between us. “Tell me that’s a resort somewhere tropical.”
“It’s...my hometown. In upstate New York.”
Graham starts to laugh and checks himself. “You’re serious about this? That’s where you want to go for our weekend vacation?”
“That’s where my mother is, under house arrest.”
Graham tells the driver that we have a change of plans, and then he’s silent while the car turns around. It’s not snowing very hard, so it should only be a couple of hours to Lakewood.
“I want to know more.” He takes my hand in his. “But if it’s too much—”
“You wanted to know why I became a lawyer. It’s because—” All the memories come rushing up into the forefront of my mind. “It’s because my mother was convicted of a crime I’m sure she didn’t commit.”
I hate to think of it. I was a minor, so my grandmother wouldn’t allow me to be in the courtroom with her, but I heard their whispers during the visit to the county jail and later, the state prison.
“What kind of crime?”
“She and my father had a nasty divorce.”
Graham narrows his eyes. “That’s not a crime.”
“No, but afterward, one of his properties was burned down in a fire determined to be arson. One of his staff—a caretaker—was inside when it happened.”
“Oh, shit. Did he die?”
“Yes. And my mother—” God, she’d been so scared, but she hadn’t wanted me to know. I found her sitting up one night, her face glacially pale in the moonlight, her expression stretched into utter fear. “There wasn’t alimony. She hadn’t worked. There wasn’t money for a lawyer, so she had a public defender.”
“I take it that didn’t go well.”
My throat tightens. “It was a disaster. She was sentenced to ten years in prison, and five under house arrest.”
“What the fuck,” Graham says wonderingly. “An innocent woman?”
“The prosecution was more convincing. Her lawyer showed up hungover, with the wrong case files.”
He pulls me closer. The sheer contact, the sheer pressure of him, loosens a knot at the center of my shoulders. “There has to be some kind of recourse.”
“There is. Appeal. But it’s taken this long, and—” I shrug, and Graham presses in again. “And it’s complicated.” Maybe this is what draws me to him. Graham understands complicated parental relationships. He’s lived that all his life.
“More complicated than that? How?”
I can’t find the words. There are too many, and not enough. I shake my head. “You’ll have to meet my mother.”
27
Graham
Lakewood is a small town that looks like a carbon copy of every small town I’ve ever been driven through. It has everything—the mishmash of old buildings downtown, dotted with the few that people have bothered to raze and refurbish; the thin layer of slush covering everything in early March; and space. There are few bright spots—one of them is the coffee shop where Bellamy learned to make drinks. She points it out on the way through, but then the town fades into residential buildings.
There’s so much space between the buildings, and very little of it is in use. I don’t mind a wide-open lawn, but the snowdrifts make me want to hire a plow service for the entire town.
I feel out of place here.
I feel most out of place in Wendy Leighton’s front room. I feel outsized, like I’m too large for the furniture, which makes sense. All of it seems to have been chosen specifically for her. I don’t know how else you’d live under house arrest. Less meticulously than this, would be my guess. It’s all perfectly maintained.
Too perfectly.
Wendy is an older version of her daughter, her blonde hair streaked with gray, but she has blue eyes that must have been vivid at one point. When she looks at me, they’re hard and cold.
“I appreciate that you came, honey. I’m just not sure why. I’ve seen the newspapers.”
Bellamy sits ramrod straight on a loveseat across from her mother’s chair. “Mom, I know that must have been...painful, and I’m sorry I didn’t call.”
The awkwardness in the room is palpable. “It’s all right.” Wendy’s apology is flat, insincere.
“It’s not all right, and I take responsibility.” Bellamy folds her hands in her lap. “I wanted to tell you in person and I-I put it off. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“What’s done is done.” Wendy glances at an antique clock on the mantel. “There’s no point in rehashing this over and over. It’s difficult when one party in a relationship can’t leave the house.”
“Okay.” Bellamy glances down at her lap. “The wedding is planned for October, but we might move it up.”
“Oh?” Wendy shifts her gaze to me. “Are you all right with that, Mr. Blackpool?” There are layers to her question, dancing in the air, shifting around one another, but I don’t know which to answer. So, I choose the most obvious one.
“Of course.”
She purses her lips and swings those blue eyes back over to her daughter. It’s an assessing look. I wish I knew what was happening in her mind—and Bellamy’s. I don’t know this apologetic version of her, this version with a tilt to her shoulders, that reminds me of shame. “Would you mind giving us a moment, Mr. Blackpool?”
“I’m happy to step out.” I have the sense that we’re not going to be speaking again after this, so I approach her chair and extend my hand. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Leighton.”
She shakes my hand, her mouth in a set line. “I wish the two of you a very happy marriage.”
Fucking chilling.
I go out the front door of the house and pace down the block. Bellamy grew up on a street with wide yards and small houses. Her mother’s is a tidy two-story bungalow with painted siding that’s chipping at the corners. The slow deterioration scratches at the back of my mind.
It’s surprisingly warm outside, a hint of spring in the breeze. Or perhaps it’s only in comparison to the inside of the house.