by Moriah Jovan
I want to fuck you, Giselle
Her hand flew to her mouth as she read the engraving. She swallowed, her soul overflowing again with the love she’d always had for him, even before she knew his name.
“I hated Michelle so much I was glad she died, that I didn’t have to have her hounding me every second of every day for the rest of my life. I feel like I met you years ago, lost you somewhere along the way, then found you again. You’re the only woman I have ever loved. In my mind and heart and soul, you’re my first wife, my only wife. The love of my life. Please forgive me. Please come back to me.”
Giselle looked up at him and bit her lip, unwilling to say it but knowing she must. “I’ll come home with you for now, but you have to get help if you want me to stay. If you don’t want to go to the foundation’s therapists, we’ll find someone else. I’ll even go with you if you want, but we—I—can’t live like this anymore, not with a baby coming. Something has to change.”
He stared at her, aghast.
“Don’t ask me to sacrifice our child on the altar of your guilt and fear. If you want to be with me, those are the terms.”
He said nothing for a long time as he looked off into the distance, his expression by turns angry, wary, and hurt. “I need to think about that for a while.”
She nodded. “That’s fair.” She leaned against him and wrapped her arms around him until he was ready to leave.
* * * * *
Bryce still slept when she got out of the shower and began to dress carefully in her navy-and-white polka dot linen dress. For jewelry, she wore only her wedding ring and the charm bracelet Bryce had given her. If anyone asked to look at it, they got what they deserved for being nosy.
“Where are you going?” he murmured from the bed.
She turned and looked at his naked body, the one she loved so much for what it had done to rescue three children, for the big, kind heart it held, for the brilliant mind that it sheltered, for that deep, dark, tortured soul that she adored which lived and breathed inside that broad chest.
She studied the man who had made tender love to her all weekend, giving her everything, taking nothing.
“It’s Sunday.” His eyebrow rose and she shrugged. “You know how much I miss going to church. Our baby needs to know his heritage. He needs to be around sweet, gentle people who aren’t savages. He needs to understand that the church is full of honorable people and that honor comes in a lot of flavors, that there’s honor in being a regular, everyday nice guy. He needs to know that the vast majority of the people at church are not us, not the pack, not the tribe; haven’t done what we’ve done, seen what we’ve seen, think how we think. ‘Justice at all costs’ is not most families’ motto.” She stopped. “You’re more than welcome to come with me.”
He stared at her for a long time, his face inscrutable. Then he sighed. “You go. I’m not ready yet.”
“Okay,” she said, and kissed him on the forehead, but when she turned to leave, he caught her wrist and tugged her gently down onto the bed so that she lay snuggled up against his chest, her head cradled in the crook of his arm.
“I love you, Giselle,” he murmured, and, his big hand cupping and caressing her cheek, he kissed her deeply, carefully. She found herself growing aroused all over again. He pulled away from her enough to speak. “I’m so sorry. I know you have no reason to trust me now, but that’s the truth. Please don’t leave me.”
She swallowed. “I can’t promise you that right now. I won’t be able to trust you until you go to therapy and work at it. I don’t want your guilt and shame—the Rule Book—to stand between us anymore.”
He stared down at her for a long time and she nearly lost herself in those beautiful green eyes. Then he spoke low:
“You were wearing faded black canvas pants and a white jacket that had patches all over it. Your tee shirt said, ‘Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.’ You had a brown belt hanging off your neck.” Giselle’s eyes widened and she felt the color drain from her face. “You had a man on his knees in front of you, learning from you. I took one look at you and all I could think about was backing you up against the wall and fucking you. Hard.” He paused to take a deep breath.
“You were so young, but you intimidated the hell out of me. I wanted some of that—whatever it was you had—for myself, to do what I needed to do to be the kind of man that that girl would want.”
She gulped. “You?” she breathed, her chest beginning to heave, her tears beginning to fall. “That was you? I— You— I knew what you wanted from me and I— I never had a chance to know you. You were so— Gorgeous, and I was so . . . not.”
“Stop it. I wanted you, Giselle. Not my wife.”
She was a model. Blonde. Tall and thin, fragile.
Giselle thought she would never be able to breathe again.
“Okay, so it took you a few years to grow into your beauty. It only took me an hour to become a beast.” She opened her mouth in protest, but he forged on. “When I went to Knox’s house to study that night, I’d been married for two months and I already knew I’d made a huge mistake. What I wanted, that I wanted it with you—a woman who wasn’t my wife— It terrified me. I wanted you so badly I couldn’t think of anything but you for weeks, months. Years. I thought maybe, if we— I don’t know. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought if I could make love with that girl, just once, she would give me some of whatever she had that I needed.”
He released a breath with a long whoosh. “I held onto that girl all the way through my divorce, wondering what had happened to her, trying to figure out how to find out who she was, where she went. You don’t know how many times I wanted to pick up the phone to call Knox to find out if he remembered that, if he could tell me her name—and I planned to the second my divorce was final.” He paused. “Giselle, I fell in love with you when I was twenty-four years old and I’ve carried you in my heart for the last eighteen years. You gave me strength. You gave me hope.”
She choked and put a trembling hand to her mouth.
“I remembered last night after you went to sleep,” he murmured, his thumb caressing her bottom lip lightly. “Even if I’d had the courage to divorce Michelle then, I couldn’t have had you. In that area of my life, between sex, marriage, church, my parents, I was weak, unsure, easily led. You would’ve chewed me up and spit me out—and I knew that.”
Tears spilled over and ran down her face, dropping into the pillow, disappearing as if they had never existed. She began to hiccup. “Knox said— After I left you in the park— He said you had been in love with me for a long time. I thought he just meant— He knew?”
Bryce nodded. “He saw my reaction, knew what it meant, knew me well enough to let it lie. I don’t think Knox knows you saw me. I know I didn’t—it would’ve been worse if I’d known, if I’d known you felt the same way I did.”
“I waited for you,” she whispered, weeping, her voice broken.
“You’re the woman of my soul, Giselle, and I knew it the first time I saw you. And the second. And every time I’ve ever looked at you. I will do whatever I have to do to keep you.” He swallowed. “I’m here. On your terms.”
* * * * *
106: POTSDAM DECLARATION
NOVEMBER 2008
The bed depressed underneath Justice and she groaned. Knox scootched toward her, his back against the headboard, until his hip brushed her back.
“Lunch time?” she croaked.
“Happily sucking away.”
She sighed in relief. A chance at a couple more hours of sleep. Thank heavens for the breast pump.
“I have a surprise for you today. Well, a couple of them, really.”
Yay. She’d rather sleep. “What?”
“I’m not telling you. That’s why they’re called surprises.”
“So . . . all you really wanted was to tell me to get my ass out of bed and get dressed?”
Silence. Then, “Well. Yeah. That. What you said.”
“Wh
en did you turn into such a little boy?”
He chuckled. “When I fell in love with the little girl on the front row.”
Justice snorted, answered by a little baby snort, and she laughed. She opened her eyes and turned over to see Knox sitting as she had felt him, cradling their bald newborn, one end of a bottle in his hand and the other plugged into Mercy Hilliard’s mouth.
“Big badass Chouteau County prosecutor Knox Hilliard: A born dad,” she murmured wryly. “Who’d’a thunk it?”
“Vanessa thinks so.”
“Vanessa was twelve. She didn’t need to be bottle-fed and have her diapers changed. She could speak in complete sentences.”
“Complete sentences help. You should be glad I already know how to raise a teenage girl.”
“Please. You probably terrified the girl.”
“The point was to terrify her mother and her mother’s cronies. Which I did. And her boyfriends.”
“Except Sebastian.”
“Ah, but there’s a reason I don’t know about that little fling, isn’t there?”
“Point taken.”
“So c’mon, get ready to go.”
Justice didn’t answer, but looked up at him, that beautiful man who’d lost ten years off his face, who no longer looked so haunted and cold, so troubled and hopeless—and hadn’t for months. Professor Hilliard sat here in their bed with her, wearing a ring that proclaimed him hers, holding the child they’d made together.
He hadn’t bothered to shave this morning and his scruffy face always made her heart pound a little faster, her breath come a little shorter, her juices flow a little faster. She wrapped her hand over the top of Knox’s denim-clad thigh and stroked upward, slow, measured.
“What if I had plans for today?”
Too distracted by the baby, by his delight in his new daughter, he didn’t notice when her hand slid around to the inside of his thigh. “Did you?”
“I do now,” she murmured and cradled Knox’s cock in her hand. His nostrils flared as he looked down at her, stunned. He hardened immediately.
“Iustitia,” he breathed. “Are you sure?”
“I’m so wet for you right now I can’t think straight.”
He looked down at the baby, who, wide awake, stared adoringly up at her daddy, intermittently sucking, taking her time. Mercy savored her meals like a sommelier savored each small sip of wine. “Shit. She’s not going to be done anytime soon.”
Justice sighed. “Eilis warned me it’d be like that.”
“I don’t believe that. Nothing gets between Sebastian and his bed, especially if Eilis is in it.”
“You’re misinformed, trust me. Girls talk.”
His eyebrow rose. “Oh? Have you learned anything?”
“Boy, you really don’t pay attention to much, do you? The blindfold should’ve been your first clue.”
“I’m not going to let you hang out with those two anymore, especially that freak Giselle.”
She laughed and his broad smile deepened his crow’s feet.
“Go find your first surprise. It’s on the kitchen table.”
Justice, still chuckling, sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She glanced over her shoulder at him to see him staring at her hotly, her back bare for his inspection—and he took his time about it. “So can your other surprise wait?”
“It can now,” he replied gruffly. Poor man; he’d been so patient with her the last few months and without a word of complaint.
She smiled and went to the kitchen to find yesterday’s Wall Street Journal on the table. Her brow wrinkled. She’d looked all over for that yesterday, hadn’t found it, and assumed Knox had left it somewhere. She picked it up and gasped.
On the back page of section A was a full-page ad:
*
Loving parents
Sebastian Taight and Blackwood Securities
are proud to announce the marriage of
Iustitia “Justice” Jane McKinley, Esq.
to
Dr. Fort Knox Oliver Hilliard
July 23, 2007
and the birth of
Miss Clementia “Mercy” Lilly Dianne Hilliard
September 24, 2008.
The terms of the OKH Enterprises Proviso have been met.
Knox Hilliard will inherit the majority shares
on December 27, 2008.
Cut it a little close, didn’t you, Knox?
*
Justice didn’t hear Knox behind her until he said, “That was Sebastian’s idea.”
“But, Fen—”
“Look on the editorial page.”
And there! Her jaw dropped. She covered her mouth with a trembling hand at what stared back at her from the page: A complete rundown of Fen’s evil from start to finish—in her words. It had been signed by Sebastian Taight and Justice McKinley.
“But I— But he— I didn’t give him permission to use that.”
“Yeah, don’t give him stuff he asks for without finding out why he wants it. He’s evil like that.”
Dazed, she couldn’t utter a word.
“Look on the front page.”
And there, featured prominently, an article detailing the investigations now swirling around Fen.
“That’ll give the FBI enough information to work with, and Fen’ll be arrested and indicted soon enough. I’ve given them the go-ahead to dig up my dad. I don’t think they’ll find anything, but they have a couple of brand-new tests they want to try out on him.” Knox wrapped a free arm around Justice’s waist and pulled her back against his chest. The baby lay in the crook of his other arm. “Wall Street exploded in ticker tape yesterday, Jack won half of Vegas even though the bookies are screaming foul, Congress had a collective heart attack, and you were the topic of conversation all over talk radio. What did she know and when did she know it?”
She sighed, seeing her career as a commentator crashing into a big brick wall, and she said as much.
“Oh, I doubt that, considering Sebastian, Jack, and I have been fielding phone calls and emails for the last twenty-four hours asking about radio and television appearances—not from us, mind you, but from you. Now, Mercy’s asleep,” he whispered as he nuzzled Justice behind the ear, “and I need to reward you for extraordinarily good work this semester, Miss McKinley.”
* * * * *
“You keep going like that, I’m gonna have to get Viagra sooner than I thought,” Knox muttered, disgruntled, as they pulled out of the driveway some time later. “This is why I didn’t want to marry a younger woman.”
Justice laughed. “How’s that working out for you so far?”
He flashed her a wicked grin. “I think I’ll keep her around for a while.”
“Oh, hey!” Justice said, distracted when she looked into the diaper bag. “Stop by Hy-Vee. We’re almost out of diapers.”
Justice liked walking around the grocery store with her baby on her shoulder; people stopped to talk to her, to coo over Mercy and ask about the baby’s particulars. Justice felt . . . normal. Not a prosecutor, not a pundit, not the OKH Bride or mother of the OKH Baby. She was just a woman taking care of her family, and the grocery store was the great equalizer.
She grabbed a package of diapers and threw it in the cart, then headed to the orange juice section to find Knox. She saw him at the other end of the aisle with a bottle in each hand, his head bowed as he compared labels. He started when a woman with a sleek black ponytail and a seductive smile touched his arm.
Justice sucked in a breath and began to smile as she drew closer.
“ . . . to see you again, Miss Quails,” Knox said politely as if he didn’t remember exactly what he’d said to her the last time he’d seen her. Sherry opened her mouth, but Knox continued, “My wife and daughter are around here somewhere, if you want to meet them.”
Sherry stiffened and looked as if she would decline, but Justice said, “Right here,” and handed Mercy to Knox. Justice’s gaze bored into Sherry’s, but Justice knew s
he had changed too much for Sherry to recognize her.
“Miss Quails,” Knox said. “This is my wife, Justice McKinley Hilliard. Perhaps you remember her?”
Sherry’s eyes widened and she sucked in a sharp breath, blood rushing to her cheeks.
“Just so you know,” Justice said matter-of-factly, “he fucks much better than he looks.”
* * * * *
They laughed the entire fifteen minutes it took to get out of the grocery store and to Eilis’s house. To Justice’s surprise, the massive gates were open. Not only that, but at least fifty or sixty cars littered her driveway, roundabout, courtyard, and lawn.
“Oh,” Justice whispered when she saw two huge banners draped from one barren tree to the rooftop festooned with colorful balloons.
CONGRATULATIONS, KNOX AND JUSTICE
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MERCY
“The Dunham tribe,” he said when he turned the car off, then caught her complete incredulity.
“Wha— But your birthday—”
“Doesn’t matter. It was a done deal when Sebastian and Jack placed that ad. This is for me, us, you, and it’s way overdue. A welcome-home party, basically. I haven’t been to one of these things since I killed Parley. I wasn’t welcome, plus I don’t want to be within shouting distance of my mother. So today,” he said, taking a deep breath, “is the first tribe party I’ve been to in fifteen years and . . . ”
“And you’re nervous.”
He released the breath he’d taken on a long whoosh. “Yeah.”
“So this is surprise number two?”
“Sort of. There’s one person in particular I want to introduce you to.”
She looked at him, expecting him to tell her, but her attention caught on the dozen or more people who spilled out of the front door and headed for their car, the most recognizable being her two very pregnant sisters-in-war. Then she gasped and pointed at the man leading the way. She stuttered, then squealed. “That— That’s Morgan Ashworth! Knox! He’s here!”