And then, I died

by Sage, May

  God.

  He was sitting on the white chair next to her vanity, still completely dressed, but had removed his belt, now hanging at the back of his chair, and opened his trousers. His dick was in his hand, standing in full attention. It was thinner, but longer than Liam's, and just as glorious.

  It was at that moment that she realised he had been right.

  Loving him didn't stop her from wanting another man. Society, conventions, habits, her own mind told her she shouldn't, but on a primal level, it didn't matter: her inside clenched in anticipation and it wasn't Liam's touch which caused it.

  “Get on the bed, dearest. I want you to touch yourself for us.”

  So she did, though her panties at first, but she slowly peeled them from her legs and turned around, rising on her hands and knees, before reached down to carry on rubbing herself in front of them both.

  Liam's taste made perfect sense all of the sudden: being watched was exhilarating.

  Suddenly, there were hands on either side of her ass, and a shaft at her entrance. It pushed forward, before retracting and pushing back in in a powerful thrust. The ferocity was unlike Liam; for one wild moment, she wasn't sure which one of the two men was inside her and a rush of heat pooled through her at that notion.

  Then, she remembered. Jace wasn't joining in, not unless she asked. But how was she supposed to ask?

  She looked back behind and saw him panting, fervently pumping his cock.

  Hot. Incredibly hot.

  “I'm going to come around and fuck that pretty mouth of yours,” Liam said without interrupting his relentless rhythm. “And Jace is going to pound that tight pussy. Nod if you'd like that, Beth.”

  Oh, yes please. She did as she was told and the next instant, Liam withdrew from her and removed his condom. He came around and sat in front of her, smiling.

  “Hi, beautiful.”

  Now that thick dick was staring at her, she felt quite shy. She hadn’t had him in her mouth yet and, to say the least, it had been a while since she’d practiced her oral skills.

  Tentatively, she darted out her tongue and licked the top, just as she felt something hot and hard between her legs, slowly pushing forward.

  God, Jace was big.

  Liam wasn't on the small side of the scale, but that dick was touching a very different angle and filled her completely.

  “Shit, Elizabeth. You feel so good, doll.”

  So did he, but she didn't get the chance to tell him as her mouth was otherwise engaged, wrapped around her boyfriend.

  It wasn't her first go at fellatio; to be entirely honest, she used to be quite good at it – one of the achievements a cheerleading captain was bound to pick up – but it had been over ten years since she'd last tried.

  After a few blips, she got the gist, swallowing when her gag reflex kicked in to take him as deeply as she could, alternatively massaging his sacks and pumping the base. Soon though, Jace was hammering her so hard she needed her hands to stay in place.

  Her blowjob got messy, but what was happening behind her legs was anything but. God, that man could fuck. The curve of his dick was so perfect he hit her G-spot at each and every one of his harsh thrust.

  Oh god.

  “Is she seriously already coming?”

  By the end of that question, she'd tipped over the edge, clenching around his shaft.

  “Fuck. That was hot. Wanna swap? I need to feel that mouth.”

  Chapter 14:

  Blank

  Exactly one week after the function where, by displaying the rock on her hand, they'd announced to the world that they were getting married, Mike invited himself into his office.

  By the time he entered the building, Jack, in the next room, had been joined by Chris and a man in a dark suit he'd never seen before, so Liam wasn’t exactly worried.

  They talked production at first, but soon, his poor excuse for a brother went down to what had brought him here:

  “By the way, I heard that you're getting hitched?”

  “Happens to the best of us,” he shrugged.

  “Congratulation. She's hot. I hope you're getting a prenup though? We know what her types are like.”

  It was a credit to his control that he didn't reach around the desk and beat him to a fucking pulp.

  “Mike, at the minute, Beth has got more money than I do.”

  Liam had invested everything he had into his latest production; altogether, he was worth billions, but he didn't have more than fifty thousand dollars to his name in hard cash.

  “In that case, a prenup would protect you both, in case of divorce.”

  “I'm not getting a prenup. If she divorces me, she may as well take it all.”

  Playing the fool in love was easier than he would have guessed.

  “As long as I get to say I told you so when she bleeds you dry.”

  They both knew Beth wasn't the one who daydreamt about bleeding him.

  Liam looked at the man in front of him and wondered when it got to this point.

  While he hadn't wanted anything to do with the father he'd been presented with, he had looked to the older brother with a lot of admiration, and some hope at first.

  A few of his friends had had brothers and they had taught them how to throw, had played basketball with him, watched porn when the parents weren't around.

  He'd wondered what was wrong with him for his own brother to look at him with indifference, with disgust sometime.

  But there hadn't been anything wrong with him. If a woman such as Beth saw something worth staying – worth fighting – for, there was something very right with him.

  The problem was Mike. It always had been, always would be.

  “By the way, I'm holding the annual Dawson party next week. I haven't received your confirmation. Can you make it?”

  There wasn't any indifference in his eyes now; what he read was pure hatred.

  He wanted to say that he couldn't, hold on to the world as he knew it for a little while longer.

  “Of course.”

  “Try and make it early, if you can; there is something I'd like to discuss.”

  There was no point delaying the inevitable.

  His brother was going to try to kill him and he was going to make sure he spent the rest of his days in jail for it.

  •

  Beth had often wondered if she regretted her time with the agency. It hadn't been pretty and, now, it was little more than a little mistake in the grand scheme of her life.

  But all of a sudden everything made sense. The training she'd gone through, the people she'd killed, those she'd spied on. They'd been preparing her for that moment.

  The party was a large affair – every acquaintance, employee, or partner of the Dawsons had been invited – which meant that no one saw the hosts for a long stretch of time; Michael senior was around the open bar one minute and next to the pool when they turned around. While his elder son wasn't nearly as proactive in his socialisation, there would be hundreds of eyes to swear on having seen him here or there, in case he was asked for an alibi.

  The man had obviously thought his set through.

  He hadn't, however, suspected that in addition to businessmen and socialites, he'd welcomed half a dozen CIA agents into his home.

  “You don't seem nervous,” she told Liam when he took her hand and led her towards the dancefloor.

  His natural demeanour was an unforeseen blessing.

  “I'm not. I have a solid back up, and I've taken precautions... in case it doesn't end well.”

  She turned to face him, taken aback.

  There was always a possibility that any operation might not turn out as they'd expected, but she hadn't even considered that alternative.

  It was… no. Just no.

  For one, an undesirable outcome wasn't likely. The setup was ludicrously elementary – catch the culprit red handed, get out – and they had a team composed of very well-trained professionals to direct it. The only complication she could imagin
e was Iris, and she had made her safety a priority by setting two agents as well as Vick and Charles on her.

  But there was more: in any other instance, she would have analysed an action plan in case of failure. She hadn't. Her brain had simply not computed the fact that she might lose Liam by the end of the night.

  “Precautions?” her throat was so dry her voice broke at each syllable.

  “I've had a will written. It was long overdue. And the guy who kills me is not getting his hand on Ace.”

  His pathetic attempt at making light of the situation wasn't working.

  “Everything I have is going to you, Elizabeth,” he said, when she failed to ask.

  Within the last few weeks, she had suspected it, now she knew: some aliens were planning to invade the planet and had started their master plan by implanting a different personality into every genius they could get their hands on. It was the most logical conclusion her mind could conjure.

  “Don't look at me like that. I've proposed – twice. Giving you my money in case I die is a step down from that.”

  “You've proposed to throw your brother off.”

  “I've proposed because I'd like to know you are open to the idea of spending the rest of your life with me.”

  Up until that point, she had numbly danced her way through their unsettling conversation, but that made her stop and stare.

  “We work, Beth. We may have had two of the worst examples of what a childhood should be like, and as a result, we’re a little bit screwed up in our own way, but somehow, we work. You’ve made me care, I’ve made you relax. I try to get home at a decent time because I want to spend my evenings with you, and you make sure you finish your shit by seven, just so you can give me your undivided attention when I’m in. You know what that makes us? A family. It may be just the two of us, for now,” he said, before reaching down, one hand on her stomach. “But there will be a little piece of you and I in here, someday. Don’t you see it?”

  He'd touched every single part of her body but that hand, over two layers of fabric, touched further than anything else had, reaching straight to her heart.

  He may not have ever told her he loved her, but that hand did say that there was a very good chance he could.

  “What do you say?”

  And because there was no other answer to the man she loved asking her for her, she nodded.

  And then, she actually died.

  They hadn't expected it.

  They'd banked on an underhanded attack in the billiard room, a confrontation in the dark library, something… personal. The red dot hovering against Liam's chest hadn't been part of the plan, but hey, she'd always been great at improvisation.

  Her performance earned her a bullet through the ribcage, but there were worst ways to go: she'd managed to kick Liam down and throw her favourite shuriken, tucked into her bra, towards the shooter.

  If Chris and his team missed him, she was going to haunt the hell out of them as soon as her spirit left the completely barren white box it was locked into.

  Seriously. White. Charles would have approved of the décor.

  After too many moments passed, without resulting to any kind of change in her depressing surroundings, she got worried.

  She wasn't the worst person in the world, but obviously, if she was doomed to spend the rest of eternity in a boring white box, she had been sent hell.

  Beth hadn't given much thought to the whole heaven and hell thing but each long second passing made her wish she'd actually walked into a church every now and then. Hindsight really was a bitch.

  The notion of churches made her think of William, who was alive. Probably. She wondered if he would have wanted to get married in a church, and if he'd ever wait for anyone at the altar now that she was gone.

  This particular thought pissed her off.

  It was unkind, she should wish him to find happiness, but stuff that: it was entirely too soon to contemplate. In a millennia or so, she'd think about it.

  Just as his beautiful grey eyes – and that delectable butt – came to her mind, she caught his voice, quite clearly.

  Love, she heard, and soon.

  More incredibly dull moments passed, stretching in what could be hours, days, or centuries.

  Not a millennia, though; she didn't like the idea of Liam with anyone else yet.

  The voice came back every now and then, babbling about pure nonsense.

  Liam was talking about diapers, weaning, and a baby who rolled under his bed.

  It was only then that it all made sense somehow; he had met Iris. He was now a father, and a very doting one at that.

  •

  “She smiled, Elaine, I'm sure of it.”

  Beth's cousin – a brilliant lawyer who had been a tremendous help since she'd shown up – attempted to smile, but failed.

  She was letting what the doctors were saying affect her too much. She didn't know. She didn't feel that Beth was there, around the room, still present, as she'd been for the last seventeen days.

  The coma had been induced; she had been shot through the one kidney she hadn't donated and it was the machines plugged into various parts of her bodies that had kept her alive through it all.

  But they had kept her alive.

  “You heard what they told us. Two weeks is a long time, William. There is a chance...”

  There wasn't.

  He wasn't wilfully obtuse, or digging his head in the ground, as they all believed.

  The likes of Lucia Fox just did not kill women like Elizabeth Carver.

  It turned out, his brother had been completely innocent in the whole charade – actually, Mike had been quite put out about finding out he’d been a suspect.

  It had been Lucia all along.

  Pressed under Chris' particular method of interrogation before she was handed over to the police, she confessed to it all.

  In 2009, she'd met William and fell hopelessly in what she called love. As had been his practice around that time, he screwed and promptly dumped her.

  He wasn't proud of it, but Liam didn't even remember it.

  When he'd come on to her four years later, she had thought she’d finally got through to him, but while they lasted a bit longer than one night, it had been obvious that he hadn't been that into her.

  So she'd stolen all of his fucking condoms and pierced them one by one with a needle. To his surprise, Liam couldn't sue her for it.

  She'd broken up as soon as a blue strip on a stick ensured that a child had been conceived, and proceed to try to take him for everything he was worth in a very dramatic round of “if I can't have you, no one will.”

  Screwed up as Lucia was, he couldn't hate her – not when she'd given him Iris.

  Iris who, the first day she'd accompanied him to the hospital, had reached towards Beth like she was the only thing she'd ever wanted to hold.

  Get in line, kiddo.

  Beth, as a woman five weeks pregnant, was on the very top of the waiting line, but there was just no compatible donor to be found.

  He'd been tested, and so had Vick, Charles, Chris, any agent he could find, any school friend they could contact, Elaine, her father Pierce. Even Michael and Mike junior had volunteered.

  The Holy Grail had come from a woman who died in a car crash last week. She'd ticked the box to opt into giving any of her functioning organs in the event of her death and that one moment of kindness was saving his future wife and his second child.

  These sort of donations were usually anonymous, but he'd put Ace to good use and tracked down her family. They may have lost a wonderful woman, but they wouldn't ever want for anything material for the rest of their lives.

  The transplant had been successful and now, they waited for her to come back to them.

  She would come back.

  She had to.

  A little message from May Sage

  I sincerely hope you have enjoyed reading And then, I died as much as I have loved writing it!

  There is loads m
ore where that came from and some of it is already written, so lookout for the next instalment soon!

  Here's a little preview of And then, I ran.

  For news, cool giveaways, and signed advance copies – or just to say hi – join me on my website or Facebook!

  When you ask about him, I'll say he died; that he didn't want a child or that we weren't meant to be together.

  When you ask about him, I will lie.

  Chapter 1:

  2005

  It shouldn't have surprised her.

  It did.

  "These weren't from me," she told him.

  While she wasn't what one would call a passive lover, it wasn't like her, and regardless, she would have remembered running her nails across his skin.

  Had she been as smart as they all said she was, it wouldn’t even have hurt like a motherfucker.

  It did.

  "I didn't understand this was to be an open relationship," she heard herself say, calmly, composedly.

  She'd learnt to hide her emotions, her weaknesses from him. He'd taken everything else, but her pride was still just that: hers.

  "It isn't. You're mine."

  She just snorted in disbelief.

  "And so is the girl who gave you these, I suppose."

  "It's none of your damn business, Lexi."

  Of course it wasn't.

  "Right. In that case, me fucking my way through Harvard isn't going to be any of yours."

  And that's when his hand flew and hit her jaw.

  •

  2015

  "They're letting him out on bail," Dan announced.

  Chase wasn't surprised; as a corporate lawyer, he had seen enough fraud cases to know that they weren't going to keep his father locked up as long as he was willing to pay his way out.