The Ties That Bind

by Norinne, Rebecca

  Eventually, I spoke, admitting I was worried we had been too late. “When we walked inside and it was silent, I feared the worst. Can you tell me what happened?”

  She adjusted herself in my arms, leaning back to look me in the eyes. “I showed up for a meeting with my uncle Rocco to discuss using his guys for a security detail to transfer some goods across state line. When I showed up, they drugged me and then I woke up in that house, hanging from a hook.”

  She swallowed around another sob and her body trembled.

  “It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me.”

  “No, I need to,” she replied emphatically. “If I keep this locked up inside, it’ll eat away at me until I’m so afraid of my own shadow that I can’t even function.”

  I traced my fingers over her arm, avoiding the deep lacerations that lined it. “Did they …” I couldn’t bring myself to ask the question.

  She shook her head violently. “No.” Then, quietly added, “They didn’t. But I knew it was coming. Your brother …”

  It was Arabella’s turn to leave words unspoken. She didn’t have to tell me though; I already knew the type of man Jayce was, what he would have done to her had his hired thugs not turned on him before we arrived.

  “Shh, I know.”

  He would have enjoyed degrading her and then he would have raped her because he knew how important she was to me and how the knowledge of her violation would have destroyed me. He’d wanted Arabella dead, yes, but he’d also wanted me broken before he eventually killed me too.

  I wrapped my arms around Arabella tight, saying a prayer of thanks to a God I’d never believed in. When you were in my line of work, you didn’t have the luxury of thinking of things like heaven or hell, god or the devil, because oftentimes you delivered people to their own private hells, played god with their lives, or were the devil they cursed in their sleep.

  Arabella’s breathing became heavy as her body was overcome with the fatigue or her ordeal. Soon, she was asleep, quiet gusts of oxygen leaving her body in slow and steady pants against my chest. I raised my eyes to take in the small digital clock across from me. We had another two hours until we reached our destination. We could both use some sleep.

  But first I dropped a kiss to her forehead and made her a promise. “No one is ever going to hurt you again,” I whispered. “No one will dare lay a hand on you once you’re my wife.”

  9

  My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

  My love as deep; the more I give to thee,

  The more I have, for both are infinite.

  ROMEO & JULIET

  If you’d have told me six months ago that I’d be standing under a wrought iron arch draped with tropical flowers on a beach in the Caribbean waiting for Arabella to walk down the aisle to become my wife, I would have said you needed to lay off the crack pipe because you’d clearly lost your goddamned mind. And yet, here I was, doing exactly that.

  Our path hadn’t been an easy one—in fact, it’d been the most difficult thing I’d ever gone through—but here we were, coming out on the other end, each of us stronger for having endured what we did.

  In looking back on their life-altering moments, people often claimed they wouldn’t change their experience for anything in the world. Me? You bet your fucking life I would have. I’d give just about anything I owned to have spent my life with Arabella, for our baby to have grown up being spoiled rotten by both her parents.

  But that wasn’t the hand we’d been dealt so we were doing our best to embrace the one we had instead.

  “What are the chances all this wedding hoopla finally convinces CeeCee to accept Aleksei’s proposal?” Ben asked, his eyes landing on the crazy Russian who stood off to the side, his eyes scanning the shore for uninvited guests.

  I chuckled because I actually knew the answer to his question. “Arabella said she’s going to make him sweat a little bit more before she says yes.”

  “Damn, that’s cruel,” he replied, shaking his head. “Poor sap.”

  The other inexplicable thing about my life? I now counted Aleksei Vasilyev among my closest friends. In fact, as the head of my personal security detail, I trusted the man with my life. I still thought he was the craziest motherfucker I’d ever known, but it appeared his devotion to Arabella’s cousin was smoothing out some of his rougher edges. Not so much, of course, that people didn’t shit their pants when he showed up on their doorstep asking for a word, but enough that I no longer worried about him going berserker in the line of duty.

  “What about you?” I asked, notching my chin toward the leggy brunette Ben had brought as his date for the week. “Maria seems nice.”

  His eyes sought her out and unless I was mistaken, the hungry look in them said Ben thought she was way more than nice. And yet he tried to play down his interest.

  Shrugging he said, “She’s fun. We laugh.”

  “You do more than laugh,” I teased. “I’m pretty sure there’s some screaming and moaning happening as well.”

  The compound we’d rented for the wedding comprised a large main house flanked by two smaller guest cottages at the edge of the 10-acre private island. No amount of foliage between Ben’s cottage and our place had been able to dampen the sounds coming from them the night before.

  Ben’s lips stretched into a wide smile. “She’s a fucking animal, man,” he admitted. “Completely insatiable.”

  “We noticed,” I smirked.

  “Fuck you,” he gloated, a note of pride in his voice. “It’s not like no one’s heard you and Arabella going at it in the middle of the afternoon.”

  I chuckled. “Yeah, we’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, nodding his head. “I’m happy for you guys. I mean it. You deserve to be happy.”

  “Thanks,” I answered noncommittally.

  The reality was I’d done a lot of really heinous things in my life—things that if there were a god, I was certainly going to hell for—so I wasn’t sure I necessarily deserved to be happy, but I wasn’t about to question my good fortune. After all, I knew how fleeting it could be.

  One minute you were holding the love of your life in your arms and the next she could be gone. One minute you thought you were going to be a father, and the next you were learning you’d never have a child to call your own. One minute you could be aiming a gun at the woman who broke your heart, and the next you could be waiting to give her your last name.

  One minute you could be thinking your brother was the world’s biggest asshole—but he was still your goddamn brother—and the next you could be burying him in the family plot. In the end, I hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger, but if things had gone differently I would have been. That Jayce had been the victim of his own fucked up maneuvering gave me some measure of peace since it proved my plan to take him down had been the right one, but it didn’t mean I didn’t feel the loss of him all the same. The last few years had been hard—he’d been my nemesis more often than not—but that didn’t negate the fact that he’d been my brother. My goddamn twin. Some days I felt like I was missing a limb, the phantom pains of his loss.

  As a trickle of sweat slid down my spine from the jungle humidity, I glanced down at my watch. We weren’t on a schedule or anything, but whenever Arabella was out of my sight for too long, I became worried. I knew I had to let go of that fear—Arabella was a strong, capable woman who didn’t need me to hover over her every second of every day—but until I could close my eyes and not picture her hanging from that hook in the ceiling with blood snaking down her arms, I’d always go a little nuts when it came to her safety.

  Ben chuckled next to me. “Relax dude. Ain’t no one on this island, save the six of us.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I muttered. “But what the fuck is taking her so long?”

  A minute later, I didn’t care that she’d kept me waiting practically all morning because when Arabella stepped onto the beach my jaw hit the sand. Arabella walked toward me wearin
g a garment that had no right to describe itself as a dress. It was really just two pieces of creamy white silk held together by a few thin straps that crisscrossed her body. Her hips swaying seductively with each step, the thin material skated over her skin, accentuating all her luscious curves. My heartbeat sounded loudly in my ears and I had to swallow down the lump in my throat.

  “Holy fuck,” I whispered just as Arabella stepped in front of me and smiled.

  “Let’s get this show on the road already,” she teased, the honeyed timbre of her voice sending tingles down my spine.

  “You are the most gorgeous fucking woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, and thank Christ you’re all mine,” I growled, pulling her up against me as my lips crashed down on hers.

  After a minute, an hour, or an eternity of kissing the woman I’d loved since I was still just a boy pretending to be a man, CeeCee loudly cleared her throat, drawing us back to the here and now.

  “Um, what was I saying?” Arabella asked, her tinkling laugh music to my ears.

  “I think you were saying it’s time I pronounce you husband and wife,” Ben interjected.

  “Yeah, that,” I agreed, never taking my eyes off my bride as I held her small hands in mine.

  “Okay then,” my best friend began. “Do you, Xander St. John, take Arabella Wilson to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you promise to love, honor, and cherish her for all the days of your life?”

  “I do,” I answered, my voice cracking.

  “And do you, Arabella Wilson, take Xander St. John to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

  “I do,” she answered, her eyes alight with joy.

  “Do you promise to love, honor, and cherish him for all the days of your life?”

  “I do,” she said.

  “By the power vested in me by some cockamamie church on the Internet, I now pronounce you husband and wi—”

  Crouching, I wrapped one arm around Arabella’s shoulder while the other went behind her knees and then I hoisted her into my arms and marched us toward the house where I was going to make love to my wife. Finally.

  “Husband and wife!” Ben yelled as Arabella and I disappeared into the jungle.

  Thank You

  Thank you for taking the time to read The Ties that Bind. An author’s success depends on readers like you! If you liked Xander and Arabella’s story, please consider leaving a review on whichever platform you purchased it and Goodreads.

  For the latest news, release dates, contests, and other exclusive content, sign up for my newsletter at http://www.rebeccanorinne.com/newsletter.

  And if you would like to join my street team, Rebecca’s Romantics, to help spread the word about my books and have a chance to win fun prizes and advanced reader copies, go to: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Rebecca.Romantics/.

  Acknowledgments

  I have a ton of love for everyone involved with this novella, from conception to delivery.

  First, thanks to my husband who puts up with me talking about my characters at the dinner table like they’re my best friends. He knows more about the fictitious relationships of my heroines and heroes than he does our actual friends.

  Additional appreciation goes out to:

  Jamaila Brinkley and Amy Stearman, who didn’t tell me I was crazy when I said I wanted to write The Ties That Bind. It’s a bit different from my usual stories, but that’s what made it so much fun.

  My beta readers for giving feedback and guidance along the way. This book is better because of you.

  Jenny Taylor for your eagle eyes that never miss a thing. It must be genetic.

  Ei-Nyung Choi for always giving me insightful commentary on character development, ambiance, and tone. I love that you get me.

  All the bloggers who love what I write and tell their readers about my books. I especially want to thank Nicole McCurdy and Tina Jaworski for putting [my previous books] Trying Sophie and Lucky Star on their Best of 2016 lists. Your support means the world to me and I so appreciate it.

  And finally …

  Thank you to all my readers. I couldn’t do this without you.

  About the Author

  Rebecca writes steamy contemporary romance. She is originally from the U.S., but lives in Dublin, Ireland, with her husband. When not writing, she is likely watching rugby, drinking craft beer or whiskey, or traveling around Europe looking for inspiration for her next book.

  Rebecca loves interacting with her fans. She can be found online at:

  Twitter: @rebecca_norinne

  Facebook: /AuthorRebeccaNorinne

  Web: www.rebeccanorinne.com

  Instagram: @author_rebecca_norinne

  Email: email@rebeccanorinne.com

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  CHAPTER ONE—Eoin

  Over the years I’d called Aoife O’Shaughnessy a number of things, but dumb was never o
ne of them. When she’d jumped into the freezing ocean in her deb dress instead of changing into a bathing suit like every other girl had, I’d called her mad. When last year she shaved off the left side of her hair two weeks after the term ended, I’d thought she’d lost her mind. When three months later, she cut the rest of it off and dyed the little that remained a bright, bubblegum pink, I’d told her she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life. Of course Aoife being Aoife, she’d laughed and said I didn’t understand the first thing about women or fashion and that she felt sorry for me. We’d been trading insults ever since.

  And yet through all of the insane things Aoife has done over the years—all the trouble she’s gotten herself into—I’d never once thought she was actually stupid. That was, until now. Because I’d just overheard that fucking eejit tell Tanya O’Reilly she was going to ask the vilest human being I knew to punch her v-card.

  My first thought? How in the fuck was Aoife still a virgin? The second? Over my dead body.

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