Bound by Rapture

by D. Martin, Megan

  He thought my panic would buy Chris, his lover, enough time to finish the deal. To murder Julia. But it didn’t, because my mom was one tough broad who picked the lock and got out of the basement over an hour after I had arrived. I had been interrogating Leon, getting his story. I’d called in men from all over. My mother’s men, my own men. They were all on their way, while I paced and frantically tried to rip Leon’s story apart for clues as to where she was. But then she came out of the basement, sweaty and dirty. Screaming that Leon had done it.

  And then Leon had revealed the truth about everything, about all the things Chris had done, about how he, Leon, had texted Chris and told him about what we did in the swamp.

  My old friend had begged for his life. He’d pleaded with me for forgiveness, saying he did it all out of love, that he knew I would have done the same for Julia. But I hadn’t hesitated in blowing his head off with the gun I brought in from the limo. I hadn’t bothered to think it over or even consider his words. He’d helped someone hurt Julia. Someone who was probably hurting her right at that moment. And for that, the penalty was death.

  It was his blood that was splattered on my hands and face. His blood that drew everyone’s attention now. My lungs burned, but I still pushed harder. I could see her building less than a block away. I was almost there.

  John had called me, letting me know just how bad things were. That Chris had a gun to Julia’s head. The very thought of that made me want to burst out of my skin and rip something apart. The gun was tucked in my waistband.

  I will get there in time. I had to. There was no other option. I couldn’t even begin to let myself consider the possibility of not getting there. Of what I would do if she was dead. It was unfathomable.

  I stabbed the button on the elevator repeatedly, deciding it would take too long to sprint up the many flights of stairs. Blood smeared on the previously pristine up-arrow. And then I was heading upstairs in the calm of the shiny elevator. Mirrors surrounded me, creating hundreds of bloody, shirtless images of me. I didn’t want to look at myself. But I was everywhere and there was no avoiding it. It took me back to that time. To after I had seen Sandy hanging lifeless from the extension cord. I’d blacked out, but there were little snippets after that blackout that came back to me later.

  I was standing in front of the mirror with blood on my face. My blood and his blood. They mingled together until I didn’t know who I was anymore. The person staring back at me was some sort of monster. And that’s who I saw now. A blood-covered monster. A monster who was angry, fucking devastated by the things he had done and the things he was about to do. The ding signaling the opening of the elevator doors seemed to last forever, and the doors opening even longer.

  I pressed through them and ran down the hall. Randy and John were both in the half-open doorway with their guns in front of them, pointed into the living room. I had called them as soon as I found out what was going on.

  I got to the door and shoved them out of the way, and then I saw Chris, his stringy blond hair stuck to his face, pressing a gun against Julia’s head. Tears were tracked down her cheeks. Her skin was so pale she was practically a ghost.

  “Don’t come any closer!” Chris yelled. But he didn’t know me. He didn’t know that I didn’t give a shit about his bullshit threats. If he was serious about killing her, he would have already done it, and I wasn’t about to wait around for him to do it now.

  The next few seconds dragged on in utter slowness as my legs carried me across the room. Julia moved, twisting in Chris’s grip, until the gun wasn’t at her head anymore. Vic was up and running toward them, and Chris fought to keep control of Julia. I saw it the moment he realized he couldn’t, that he had lost his chance. He let her go. Resignation painted on his features.

  “I love you.” He aimed the gun at Vic and pulled the trigger. Someone screamed. I heard it louder than the gunshot. It was ear piercing, ripping through the air as Vic collapsed.

  My gun was already in my hand, the metal warm from being pressed against the skin of my waist. Before Chris could even think about turning the gun to me or Julia, I had mine aimed at his head. And for the second time that day, I didn’t hesitate in pulling the trigger.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Julia.

  One week later

  “You must hate me,” he said.

  I gave Vic a small smile and shook my head, rubbing my hand over his. “I could never hate you.”

  He laid propped up on a hospital bed, on the road to healing after the bullet had pierced his shoulder. The doctors said he would be free to go home in the next day or two if he stayed on track.

  “You should hate me,” he said quietly.

  “But I don’t. It’s not your fault.”

  “I should have known what he was capable of.” Vic had said the same thing over and over since I first came to visit him the day after the shooting.

  “How were you supposed to know? No one knew. I spent as much time with him as you did, before y’all moved.” And it was the truth. I’d had no idea. In fact, I was still in shock, perplexed over the whole thing.

  “I should have known,” he repeated, appearing lost. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded slowly, though I didn’t know if okay was the right word. “I’m still here.” Nightmares had awoken me every night this week. Visions of Mandi’s body, of my bleeding neck, the sensation of a gun pressed against my temple and Chris’s body behind me. I’d awoken terrified, sweaty, clinging to Cole desperately.

  Chris was gone. The bullet Cole had put in his head had ended his life instantly, but it didn’t change the images of him in my mind. He was very much alive there.

  “Thank God. I don’t know what I would have done…” A tear slid down his cheek.

  “I’m just glad you’re okay.” I squeezed his hand, feeling an ache I was certain he was feeling, at the thought of him dying. Tears pressed at the back of my eyes, a feeling that had become all too familiar. “I almost wore my old Stars sweatshirt up here, but I thought that would give you heart failure,” I said teasingly, trying to keep from crying.

  “Thank God. I would have gone into cardiac arrest for sure.” He chuckled, his green eyes sparkling. “This isn’t a good time…I know that…but I meant those things I said, that night.”

  I blinked and glanced away from him. “Vic…”

  “I know, Jewel. I know. You don’t love me like that. Fuck…” He squeezed my hand. “Maybe I don’t love you like I think I do. I just know I want you in my life. I don’t want to lose what we have. I want our friendship. I want that back, please. I’m sorry. I’m so…so sorry this happened…so sorry…” His chest started to shake as he sobbed. He clutched my hand, but with the other he held his injured shoulder.

  “No, Vic, don’t cry. Please.” I stood up and patted the hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t your fault.”

  “Excuse me.” The door of his hospital room opened, revealing a nurse. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Victor’s heart rate has sky-rocketed in the last minute and he needs to calm down.”

  I swallowed, biting my tongue to keep from crying. “I’ll be back to visit you. I’ll always be in your life, okay?” I let go of his hand. “I don’t want to live without you either, best friend.”

  Vic nodded, taking a deep breath, but the tears continued to roll down his face. I turned on my heel and hightailed it out of there before I started blubbering myself and made everything worse.

  Cole stood as soon as I walked out and wrapped his arms around me. He didn’t ask what happened. He didn’t need to. It was how I acted every time I came to visit Vic. I was just a ball of emotion, frazzled nerves and an aching heart. I still had trouble accepting it was over, that all of it had even happened to begin with.

  My biggest fear in the last week was that Cole would go to jail. He had killed Chris and Leon both. Things were still under investigation, but his lawyer promised there wasn’t any jail time in his future.

  Outside, we clim
bed into his truck, the same truck he had picked me up in on our first date. The limo formality had been cut this last week and I was glad. There was something nice about riding in the car one-on-one that calmed me and made me think of simpler times.

  “What do you want to do tonight?” he asked as he pulled onto the service road.

  “I don’t know.” I stared out at the night sky, taking in the sparkling lights of Reunion Tower, a sphere shaped restaurant that characterized the Dallas skyline. I’d looked at the building hundreds of times. I could see it from my bedroom window, but as I looked at it now, I was reminded of that night when Cole took me on our first date. I’d stared at it, feeling nervous and a little lost at the time, with excitement pulsing under my skin just from being in the car with Cole.

  That excitement was still there, though I didn’t feel lost, as crazy as that sounded. I didn’t really know where I was supposed to go after this tragedy, but I knew I wanted Cole to be there, wherever life took me.

  I glanced at the clock, which gleamed eight-thirty. “I want to see Gran and Dad, but it’s too late.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said, putting on his blinker to switch lanes. “We’ll go in the morning. Does that sound okay?”

  I let a smile twist my lips. “Yeah, that’s perfect.”

  He glanced over at me. “You all right?”

  I nodded slowly. “I think so. I just can’t believe it’s really over.”

  “I know.” He stared out at the road. He had his hair pulled back in a loose ponytail at the nape of his neck and wore a white v-neck with blue jeans. “But it is over. Every day will get easier.”

  “Will you be there?” I don’t know why I asked; my heart believed he would be there, that it wasn’t just this tragedy that held us together.

  “What?” He jerked the truck over to the shoulder and threw it into park. Cars zoomed past us.

  “What are you doing?”

  He turned to me and grasped my hands in his. The streetlights lit up the left side of his face, making his eyes look like dark, never-ending pools. “I’m yours, Julia. And I’m not going anywhere, not unless you’re there by my side.”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  “But Elaine and your mom…they said you do this. You go from woman to—”

  “I did. Before I saw you. But not now. Not since I saw you at the first Rapture X party.”

  “You promise?” I whispered.

  “With everything I have. I promise.”

  “I’m yours, too.”

  “As if you have a choice.” He winked.

  I giggled and smacked his hand, just as he pulled me in for a kiss. An utterly life-altering kiss, making my toes curl and my cunt drip. I was breathless when he pulled back.

  “You never asked me what I wanted to do tonight.” He turned and put the car into drive, leaving me feeling desperate for him.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked breathlessly.

  “You.”

  I squirmed in my seat, rubbing my thighs together.

  “On my desk.”

  “At Rapture?” I bit my lip.

  “No. At my corporate office.”

  “But that’s in New York.”

  His lips twitched into a smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I know.”

  “But we’re going to see Gran—”

  “Yes, we are. Tomorrow. But tonight,” he glanced at me, a wicked gleam in his eyes, “I want you on my desk.”

  And I wanted that, too, more than anything else.

  EPILOGUE

  Julia.

  Three years later

  I stood at the end of the end of an aisle. The aisle I was about to walk down with my father. The aisle that would take me to the man I loved. The man who had stalked me, taken control of my body, and murdered his brother.

  He’d saved me.

  Not just from Chris. His love gave me new light. Those days, months after it had ended, when the nightmares controlled my nights and fear ruled my day, Cole had saved me then, too.

  His love surrounded me and protected me from all the things I feared. He had stood by me, helped me find my path. I was a college student now with more than two years down toward my degree. I would be that English teacher I had always wanted to be. And in my moments of doubt, before and during school, Cole had been right there, cheering me on.

  “Are you ready?”

  I glanced up at my dad and had to quickly glance away, afraid I would start crying. We had mended our relationship and I saw him on a regular basis, two to three times a week, which wasn’t hard, considering Cole and I had built a house on a portion of his ranch.

  I had never planned to go back home. I always thought my life was meant to be in the big city, but then I realized home was the only place I wanted to be. Cole was even happier than I was about it, which shocked me, but he was happy most of the time now. It had been a long time since I’d seen him get angry or upset about anything. We’d moved Gran in with us, into her own personal wing, so I could be with her all the time.

  “I…am,” I said hesitantly, smoothing the lace on my simple white dress.

  “Well, hell, you should be, Julia. You made the man wait long enough. He only asked you a hundred times.”

  I smiled. Cole had started asking just a month after everything that happened with Chris, but I’d told him no. We’d sat on a balcony overlooking the Nile River when he’d first asked. But it made me think of Elaine, every time I thought of marriage. It made me think of that day she’d pranced into the gas station with that rock on her finger. Even if she was married to someone else, and living in Russia now with a baby on the way, I still couldn’t shake the feeling.

  So, I had turned him down. And every month, week, day since then, he had asked me. Every time it was different. Sometimes it was in an exotic place where he was doing business. Other times it was in bed after we’d just made love. One time he’d attached the ring to Weasley’s collar with a little note. But it wasn’t until last month that I’d given in, when he’d gotten on his knee in the middle of the grocery store and swore he wouldn’t leave that spot until I agreed to be his wife. After two hours of shopping in the busy supermarket, and two hours of him blocking the canned corn from every angry mother of four in the place, I had agreed. Not because he was sitting on his knee like an idiot, but because I loved him more than anything.

  I’d wanted to marry him all along, but I was scared. Scared of our past and scared of our future. Scared of how things had ended with my mom and dad. I didn’t want us to end up that way.

  “You’re not gonna end up like me and your momma did.” His words shocked me; even to this day I never told him I saw her, nor had I spoken of her again to anyone, not even Cole. “We weren’t meant to be together. But y’all are. That man loves you and nothing’s gonna change that, baby jewel.” He smiled down at me. His bright blue eyes just like mine. “Now let’s go out there and make him an honest man.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and patted my hair. The aqua-colored strands hung in long, curly waves. I’d considered not dying it anymore and just being a blonde, but I had never seemed able to bring myself to do it. Plus, Cole seemed to really like the blue.

  The piano started to play and Dad held out his arm. I let him lead me into the small chapel. We hadn’t invited many guests. Just a few people filled the rows, from Gran, to my bridesman, Victor, to my soon to be mother-in-law, who had personally called me and visited on multiple occasions to try to convince me to marry her son—such a strange twist, right? Randy was there, too, and some of the others who worked round the clock for Cole.

  But none of them held my attention. Not like the man who waited for me at the altar. The man with dark hair loose around his face and a clean-shaven, angular jaw. He wore a black suit. And when I met his gaze I was engulfed in those dark blue pools. In passion, in love. It was how I felt every morning when I gazed into his eyes and every night when I went to sleep. He was my forever.

  Our past wasn’t per
fect. Our future wouldn’t be, either. But we would be together, bound by the rapture of our flawed love.

  And that was all I wanted.

  Thank you for taking the time to read the Rapture Trilogy. I hope you enjoyed it! This installment concludes Cole and Julia’s story.

  For more information on my other books, please visit my website.

  www.MeganDMartin.blogspot.com

  To stay up to date on new releases, join my MAILING LIST!

  This book would not have been possible without the following amazing people:

  Rosa Sophia: My amazing editor who forces me to get my shit together.

  Jade Eby: My fucking awesome beta reader and life coach. She seriously listens to me whine ALL the time and I love love love her for it!

  Paula & Drew Martin: My parents, who are so awesome and supportive all the time. I wouldn’t have been able to finish this book without your love and support.

  Bobby Martin: My Granny, who believes in me always.

  Maranda Jeter: Who sits and listens to me about my stories, even when she doesn’t have to. She deserves so much credit for helping me with picking the attacker in this trilogy. I love you!

  Melissa Martin: Because her birthday is the day after this releases and she is amazingly awesome and beautiful! Happy Birthday pretty lady! Thank you for loving Cole just as much as I do! <3

  And last, but certainly not least…YOU: This book would not have possible without my amazing readers and y’all’s endless support. You guys seriously helped kick my butt into gear and for that I am eternally grateful!