“Do you think I care if I live or die now, Quinn? Really? I did what I came here to do. I shot her, I killed her. She’s dead, Quinn. Sarah’s dead.” He held up his blood-stained hands. “She bled for me. She bled for me. And God, it was beautiful...”
Isaac shot Daniel Bailey between the eyes. Dan dropped immediately, the grinning rictus still on his face. Isaac shot him another couple of times, dispassionately firing into the dead man’s head. You can’t be too sure, he told himself. Something inside him had died too; he was now a killer.
And Sarah was still dying…
Isaac felt his world shift, and he was aware that the crushing grief he was holding back was starting to encroach. He heard Molly scream.
Sarah.
And he was up, off into the trees, racing to get to her, to his love.
Please, please, don’t let me be too late…
He stumbled into the clearing. When he saw Sarah’s body, he faltered.
“Oh my God.”
Molly looked up and went into his arms. He tightened his arms around her, not taking his eyes from Steve, still trying desperately to save the woman he loved. Molly sobbed.
“She’s gone, Isaac. Sarah’s dead.”
Isaac growled. “She is not dead.” He pushed Steve away and took over, stopping compressions to blow a lungful of air into her. He could taste her blood in his mouth. Sarah didn’t respond, blood still spilling from her wounds onto the melting snow. Her eyes were closed, her lips pale.
“Please, please, please, sweetheart, breathe.” Isaac kept up compressions. Molly looked at Steve and nodded, tears still streaming down her face. Steve stepped forward and put his hand on Isaac’s shoulder.
“Isaac…she’s gone. We did everything. She didn’t stand a chance. I’m sorry.”
Isaac shook his hand off and continued his efforts. Molly put her arms around him, he struggled but she held him fast.
“Isaac.” She whispered, grief making her voice crack, “She’s gone. Sarah’s gone. I’m so sorry, you have to stop. She’s dead, Isaac.”
Isaac let her hold him then, his face disbelieving. He stared at his wife’s best friend, her sister. “No. This isn’t the way it ends. I don’t believe this. My darling girl…” His voice broke as he looked down at his love. So much blood. He gathered Sarah’s broken body into his arms, felt for a pulse at her throat. He bent his mouth to her ear and whispered, more in desperation than hope. “Please Sarah, please. Live. For me, please, please.”
From the very edge of life, she was sure she heard his voice, could feel his hands holding her face. He was begging her to live, sobbing now.
She felt his kiss and sighed. Oh, my love, she thought and drifted into night.
The helicopter landed on the football field and the medics stretchered Sarah onto it, Isaac and Molly scrambling aboard. Steve would follow them later, he said. Molly grabbed him just before they took off.
“Thank you.” She whispered, looking into his eyes. Steve got choked, nodded.
“Tell Sarah to keep fighting. Tell Isaac.”
She nodded and then they were in the air.
Now in the air ambulance, Isaac and Molly huddled together as the medics fought to keep Sarah alive. She was so still, so pale. The medic at her head suddenly bent his head, listening.
“No breath sounds. Sarah? Sarah, honey? Can you hear me?”
He pressed his fingers to her throat and shook his head. Isaac moaned.
“Crash.” The other medic swirled the paddles together while they were charging. “Clear.”
He placed the paddles on Sarah’s chest and clicked. One. Nothing. Again. Nothing. The medics looked at each other. The first medic looked at Isaac who shook his head.
“Please.” He whispered. The medic nodded.
“Try again.” They shocked her again and Sarah drew in an enormous breath, hyperventilating, suddenly conscious. She collapsed back onto the stretcher. Isaac leaned forward and kissed her.
“Hey, darling. Hold on, please, we’re nearly there. They’re gonna fix you right up…” His voice cracked. “God, Sarah, I love you, please don’t leave me.”
Sarah gazed at him then her eyes closed again. The medic checked her and grimaced.
“Charge up again. She’s not responding.” They shocked her again and again. Finally, he leaned over her, listening. Isaac and Molly couldn’t breathe.
The medic looked up at them and smiled. “She’s back. She’s a fighter, this one. A warrior.”
Isaac nodded, tears falling down his face. “Yes, she is.”
She understood now that pain wasn’t a symptom but a way of being. Every nerve in her body screeched with the agony and Sarah Quinn begged whatever higher power there was to release her from it. Only the thought of him was keeping her from letting go. The bullets ripping through her; the bloodlust in Dan’s eyes as he shot her; they were nothing to the brief glimpse she got of the unimaginable grief on Isaac’s face before she passed out. She drifted between conscious states, little snapshots coming back to her. Hands pushing on her body, trying to stem the blood. Molly’s sobs. Then his voice, broken but devastatingly beautiful, saying her name over and over. Isaac, I love you, she thought, I love you. She had let the darkness take her.
Isaac sat by her bed, his fingers laced with hers as he watched her breathing in and out, the tube down her throat helping her to live.
“Please don’t go. I know that’s monumentally selfish of me, I can’t imagine the pain you must be in. But, Sarah….please. You are my love. For all time. All time. You are in every beat of my heart, every moment with you I realize why I’m here on Earth. Don’t go. Stay with me and I promise I’ll never let anyone hurt you ever again. Please don’t leave me.” His voice, so steady and sure, cracked at the last and he choked back his emotion, tears dropping down his pale face. Her hand in his felt tiny, so still, too still. He squeezed her fingers gently, willing her to return the gesture, his senses heightened, waiting and waiting. Nothing.
Isaac let out a long, shaky breath and laid his head down on the bed. Silence broken just by the beep of the machinery. Eventually, the steady rhythm invaded his exhausted mind and he slept and when he slept he dreamed of Dan pumping bullets into Sarah over and over and over, vicious, merciless and Sarah falling, bloodied and broken, drifting further away from him. He reached for her but she slipped further and further away…
There was a strange feeling on his head, a pressure. Fingers stroking his hair tenderly. He knew that touch, would know it anywhere. He opened his eyes and raised his head.
Sarah smiled down at him, her face pale, dark shadows under her eyes but still…alive and smiling and so, so, so fucking beautiful…
“Oh god, thank you, thank you…” he choked out as he took her face in his hands and kissed her.
A year later…
Sarah Quinn swept her hair up into a loose ponytail and went out of the back door to find her husband. She soon found him in the large garden of their new home, running around and playing like a teenager with Scooter and Biggs – their two large and very silly rescue dogs. Sarah joined in with their game, passing a drool-soaked tennis ball back and forth to Isaac as the dogs barked and snapped at it. She started giggling as the dogs tackled Isaac to the ground and went crazy both trying to get the ball and licking their new master.
“Yeah,” she said, “you look like…what was it… America’s Hottest Billionaire…right now.”
Isaac grinned up at her and she pulled him up. He locked his arms around her and kissed her, nibbled on her ear to make her squirm. “Tickles,” she protested, chuckling. “Anyway, I came out to find you. Molly and the kids will be here soon.”
Molly, who had always been a Seattle girl, had politely turned down Isaac’s offer to buy her and Mike a new home in Portland. Now that Isaac and Sarah had moved down there permanently, they didn’t see her as much and Sarah missed her.
“You’ve already been so generous,” Molly had said, the night Isaac had asked her
and Mike the question. Sarah had still been in hospital but well on the way to recovery and she and Isaac had decided very quickly to leave the city, leave the state.
“I love this city,” Sarah had told him, “but too much has happened here. I need to move on.”
Within the week, QuinnCorp’s had opened a new office in Portland and Sarah was looking at properties. Isaac had told her to choose whatever she wanted and now they had this beautiful European-style home, all exposed brickwork, and massive fireplaces. So different from her old home. That had been her only other condition. She wanted to start again – completely. She even let Isaac have free-reign about how much money he spent on her. Everything was different. New.
Sarah had enrolled at the University of Oregon to finish her architectural degree, much to Isaac’s delight. “When you graduate,” he said, “I have the perfect project for you.”
She had looked at him curiously but he wouldn’t tell her what it was.
Now, she tugged him into the house. “Come on, wash up. You’re a bad influence on those kids.”
Molly arrived and they were soon surrounded by hugs and love and kisses and the kids, hopped up on sugary drinks from their journey. Mike had come too, deciding at the last minute to join the gathering.
When they were settled in the garden, Isaac fired up the barbecue and began cooking while Sarah excused herself.
Molly watched Mike and the kids playing with the dogs for a moment then went to see if Isaac needed any help.
“How’s she settling in?” She asked after some easy chatter. Isaac grinned widely.
“Wonderfully. She’s doing so good, Molly, you should see her.”
Molly smiled and hugged him. “I’m so glad.”
Isaac looked up to see Sarah coming out of the house, a loving smile on her beautiful face – and a small child in her arms. Her dark skin looked like her mother’s – despite the fact they shared not one drop of DNA. Sarah brought her and Isaac’s newly adopted daughter over to see her aunt and uncle, handing her to Molly, who cooed and trilled at the little girl, Sophie.
Isaac wrapped his arms around his wife then, as they watched their daughter being fussed over, and kissed her temple. “Mrs. Quinn,” he murmured, “God damn but I think we made it.”
Sarah turned in his arms and kissed him. “We sure did. We made it through hell. Now we get the good stuff.”
Isaac smiled down at his beautiful wife, who had survived the darkest hell of what humans could do to each other and still had a heart full of love to give and knew, without a doubt, that they would only see the sunshine from now on
The End.
Shiver
A BAD BOY BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE
By Michelle Love
When billionaire art dealer, Sam Levy, meets gorgeous young artist Isabel Flynn, his life is turned upside down. The incredible sexual attraction between them is only matched by their emotional connection – they both fall hard and fast for the other. But outside their little bubble of happiness, they both have people in their lives who wish them harm, and when Isa’s first exhibition is vandalized and the gallery burned to the ground, they must face up to the fact that dark forces are at work which could destroy their love forever…
Love Me Part #1
Afterwards, Sam would think back about how it all started and how he had found her. After all of the love, the laughter, the tears, the terror, the blood. The loss. After all of that, how it began came down to a simple matter of whether to turn left… or right.
It was that rare thing – a cloudless Fall day. Above Seattle, Mt Rainier painted itself onto the skyline; the calm waters of the Bay swishing gently on the wooden piers and pillars. Tourists and locals intermingling; panhandlers ducking the sharp eyes of local cops.
Samuel Levy sat on one of the benches on Pier 39, people-watching, breathing in the smell of the water and of the restaurants along the waterfront. He watched the ferryboats leaving their moorings and drifting lazily, churning up the water of Elliot Bay in their wake.
He envied their sedate passage, the excitement of travel, delivering people and tourists to the many islands of Puget Sound.
He, however, had back-to-back meetings, most of them nothing to do with his actual job, his passion: art. Accountants, business managers… Sam sighed. The minutiae of running his own business. The dull stuff, the thing he had been trying to avoid all week.
He glanced up at the mountain again. It always seemed to him that it wasn’t real, that it had been painted onto the Seattle Skyline as an afterthought. Beautiful.
Sam took a swig of bottled water. Nah. Nope. No. He’d blow off the meetings; it was too gorgeous a day to waste in airless meeting rooms, losing the will to live. He could go do tourist stuff – although since falling in love with the place a few years back, he’d already done most of it. He could catch a ferryboat out to one of the islands to go and see old friends or to check out new local artists.
He stood up, still trying to decide. Left to the city, right along the waterfront to the ferry terminal.
Left or right?
Ten minutes later, he was on one of the ferryboats on his way to Bainbridge Island. He pulled his cell-phone from his pocket and scrolled through his contacts and dialed.
‘Eagle Harbor Gallery.’
Sam recognized her voice immediately. Zoe Marshall, retired art professor, gallery owner.
‘Zoe, it’s Sam.’
There was a long pause. ‘Samuel Alexander Levy, where the hell have you been? It’s about damn time you called me!’
Sam laughed; Zoe was only a few years older than his thirty-eight, but she always made him feel like an errant schoolboy, in the best way.
‘I can do you one better than that; I’m on my way to you now.’
Zoe squealed excitedly. ‘Your timing is perfect. Seb’s home from college, he’ll be so delighted to see you. Isa will be here later too, it is about time you two met.’
There was a distinct tone to her voice when she said the young woman’s name and Sam grinned.
‘Zo’, what are you up to?’
‘Nothing.’ She was all innocence. ‘Anyways, you’ll stay for dinner, yes?’
He agreed and saying goodbye to his friend, ended the call. He laughed to himself. Zoe never changed; she was always trying to fix him up.
Sam had known Seb, Zoe’s teenage son, from when he’d been a child (his father hadn’t stuck around long after Zoe fell pregnant) but he’d never met Isa – Isabel – Zoe’s de facto daughter. He knew she was an Art major, that Zoe had taken her in. Sam shook his head; he couldn’t remember the rest of her story now. He knew she was an artist, that Zoe and Seb adored her and that she was kind of reclusive. After Casey, his now thankfully ex-wife, Sam knew he wasn’t about get involved with another artist, but it would be good to meet someone so special to his old friends.
Zoe screeched across the gallery floor, a whirlwind of multi-colored scarves and enveloped him in a perfumed hug. His six-five dwarfed the African-American woman, despite her breakneck designer heels. Her round face, with its soft lines and sparkling brown eyes, beamed up at him. Sam laughed at her exuberance and hugged her tightly.
‘Hey shorty, it’s been too long.’
Zoe drew back from the hug and tried to look disapproving. ‘And whose fault is that, you big lug?’ She squinted at him and touched the salt-and-pepper hair at his temples. ‘That wasn’t there the last time we saw you – in fact; I seem to remember you were fresh out of diapers…’
‘Yeah, yeah, keep on exaggerating. Some of us have work to do. We can’t go gallivanting around pretending to be professors.’
Sam ducked to avoid the swipe she aimed at him, then covered his ears mockingly as she screeched ‘Seb!’ towards the back of the gallery.
Sam briefly wondered where the mysterious Isabel was but then was assailed again by the young man who came bounding through the door, his wide smile already ear-splitting.
‘Dude!’
Sam hugge
d him. Seb was nearly as tall as he was now, but gangly. All loose limbs and energy. His long dark dreads were tied back neatly, his t-shirt artfully torn to reveal a hard athlete’s body. Sam suddenly felt old and told him so. Zoe rolled her eyes.
‘Imagine how I feel,’ she muttered, then turned to Seb, ‘Where’s your sister?’
‘Still at work.’
Zoe sighed. ‘Of course, she is.’
Sam smiled at her exasperation expression. ‘What does she do?’
‘She’s a research fellow at UW,’ Seb interrupted his mother. ‘A good one. They all wanted her when she applied.’
‘Of course, they did,’ Zoe was preening, and Sam grinned. ‘Seb, go and call the university, ask her where she is.’
‘Or I could just call her cell phone, Grandma,’ Seb muttered, wandering off. Zoe scowled at his retreating back and bore Sam into another room off the main gallery.
‘Come here; I want to show you some of Isa’s work.’
Isa’ slid around the corner of the gallery unseen and quickly darted up the stairs to the apartment above the garage. Inside, she didn’t turn the lights on, wanting to be alone before she was inevitably summoned for the ‘family’ meal up in the main house. She just needed an hour, two maybe, on her own to unwind, chill out, eat junk food. There was a bag of hand-cooked potato chips with her name on it that she’d been thinking about all day.
She headed straight for her secret stash – and found it empty.
‘Fucking, fucking Seb…’ she muttered, disappointed. She sighed and went towards the bathroom, shedding clothes as she went. The apartment was little more than three rooms divided by screens. A small bedroom with her queen-sized bed, books piled up on her nightstand. The bathroom with its claw-footed bath and ancient shower head; and the open plan kitchen/living room, where all manner of art supplies, records, more books and half- finished soda cans made it her space, the place she loved the most.
Dirty Little Virgin: A Submissives’ Secrets Novel Page 141