by K L Clare
I wanted more. More of him would make everything right again. I opened my eyes and met his stare, prepared to accept responsibility for my behavior. I searched for his pain but couldn’t find it. I searched for anger but didn’t find that, either. His eyes were flawless, invincible.
“You should go in and enjoy your family,” I whispered like a damned coward.
He shook his head, frowning as though I’d said something absurd. “I’ll see you upstairs later. Carry only what you need for the night from your old room. I’ll have the rest moved to our suite tomorrow.” He let go of my chin and headed for his war room.
* * *
I twisted my hair into a messy bun and stepped into the shower after moving some of my things. The rich fragrance of the soap reminded me of the dozens of English roses Will had placed in our new bedroom.
Steaming water sluiced down my front when he slipped in behind me and pressed his hard body against mine. Breath rushed from my lungs, and my head dropped to his shoulder. We’d make love, and everything else would fade away.
My skin tingled in the wake of the delicate, stirring kisses he placed behind my ear, on my neck, and over my shoulder. His hands caressed every other part of me. My blood heated as he pressed his rigid length along my spine. “Need you,” he breathed against the back of my neck before pulling my mouth around to his. Every touch, every kiss was deliberate and gentle.
I turned in his arms and met his eyes. As warm water rained over our bodies, a small voice whispered inside my head, encouraging me to give him what he needed, to marry him.
“Time is yours. I won’t push. Whatever you want, Elle.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you—I’ll deny you nothing.” He paused for a moment, and his eyes dropped. “I’ll wait as long as you need. Just tell me your hesitation isn’t because you doubt me.”
My heart punished me once more for the pain and confusion he suffered. It thrashed inside my chest, forcing me to face the truth. It took a moment for me to overcome the thickness of my throat. Then I pulled his eyes back to mine. “Will, I love you. There’s no one I trust more. No one I believe in more. You’re it for me. Always.”
He stared deep into my eyes and explored my truth, and when he was satisfied, he leaned in and smiled against my lips. “I know you’re scared. And I know you enjoy giving me shit, too. You drive me mad, woman.” He pounded off the water with the side of his fist.
I pulled the pins from my hair and released my long layers—something he always anticipated—then wound my arms around his neck. “You’d never be happy with a woman who didn’t.”
“You’re it for me,” Will tossed back, sweeping me into his arms. I kissed the bandage on his injured shoulder, and he carried me from the shower to our bed, where our wet bodies fell into the sheets as one. His kiss was fierce but delicate, his passion bursting yet reserved.
When I reached between our bodies for him, he captured my wrists. “Don’t push me tonight, witch.” Then he buried his face in my neck and kissed my butterfly. “Not tonight.”
From that moment, his movements were slow and full of emotion. He spoke softer. His white-hot eyes were tempered by devotion as they lingered in mine and on my body. It seemed as if he were trying to capture and immortalize our time, like he was creating a photograph in his mind.
As he filled me, everything from that day burned to ashes, and we became whole once more. The love we shared was an obsession for each of us; it had no equal, and it was greater than my fear. I would wear his ring. And I would marry him. I would tell him before we left our bed.
My tender warrior wrapped me in his strength and made love to me again before we drifted to sleep. Our limbs were tangled and my hair was fanned over his chest when we were dragged from a blissful slumber a few hours later.
Thomas beat at the door and shouted with urgency for his brother.
44
“Will, goddammit, get up now! Armed men are on our property,” Thomas shouted through the outer door of our suite as he pounded on it with his fists.
Before I could sort out in my sleepy brain what was happening, Will had already shoved into jeans and sprinted to meet Thomas at the door.
“How many?”
Thomas followed him into the closet. “At least eight, all armed. Sitting low at the north border. Don’t know we’ve spotted them. Protocol’s been implemented. Ben and the men who are here headed for the weapons room. The others will roll in within minutes. Hoping they won’t be engaged as they come up the ridge—they’re unarmed.”
“Fuck. Prepare one of your drones so we can see from above. Send it up when we’re ready to go out. Arm John and put him on the monitors with comms. Lock him in. Move it,” Will commanded as he strapped a double chest holster across the width of his broad back and inserted two daggers. Before he turned to me, he fastened the holster strap across the butt of the Glock at his hip.
I stood behind him, trembling. I wore nothing more than the sheet from our bed.
“Elle, you must be quick. Get dressed and get your phone. I’ll take you downstairs.” He pocketed his own phone and grabbed another gun, tucking it into his waistband.
I wasn’t moving, couldn’t. . . . My body was cold with fear.
“You must move, Elle.”
The time had arrived—our enemy had come. We were under siege.
My mind was stuck, though my feet carried my frigid body to that posh dressing room, where I pulled on jeans and a bra. Will was beside me within seconds.
“If the power is cut, a secured generator will support the important functions of the house. You will be safe.” He pulled a sweater over my head and helped me slip into shoes.
There was no time for questions, no time to make sense of what was happening. I recognized the life-and-death urgency in his tone, and I knew it was assassins of the Order he was going out to fight. That had to be enough until he came back.
All that mattered was that he came back.
After I retrieved my phone, Will pulled me down the corridor and guided me to the basement training center. We entered the weapons room, where the men were gathered, and then he pushed through a wall panel that led into an alcove housing a steel door. He pressed his palm to the electronic pad. A mechanical gear turned and clicked as though he’d unlocked a bank vault. The door hummed and opened. One of his arms was locked around my waist, and the other held the door as he peered inside to take a head count.
Mrs. Bates held Chelsea. The little one slept soundly inside a bundle of blankets, wrapped in Mrs. Bates’s arms. Mary sat engulfing a quiet but alert Lissie. She looked up from Lissie and pleaded with Will, using nothing more than her youngest son’s name. Her eyes filled with tears.
“I need John’s help with communications. He’ll be in a secure room where no harm will come to him. I’ll send him to you as soon as I can,” Will told her before pulling the door shut. Then he pressed my back to the wall and kissed me.
Ben extended his arm into the alcove and handed Will my pistol.
“You won’t need it. Still, I won’t leave you unarmed.” He kept me pinned against the wall with his body as he ejected and inspected the magazine and reinserted it. “It’s loaded—ten rounds. Do you remember what I taught you? Do you remember how to chamber the first round by racking the slide? No chambering unless you feel threatened.”
I nodded.
My heart thumped so hard I thought it might explode from my chest. Anxiety wrecked my stomach. Silent screams filled with terror banged around in my head.
“No one leaves this room. Allow no one other than a Hastings to enter. You’ll see on the monitor next to the door who’s on this side. If you can’t see, do not open the door.”
Outside the alcove, magazines clicked into place. Slides screeched over metal. Red laser beams bounced off walls. The voices of soldiers preparing for battle rumbled.
“Will?” I whispered.
“Do you understand what I’ve said?”
&n
bsp; “Yes, but—”
He became an intense storm. “You must do exactly as I say, goddammit!”
“Okay,” I snapped.
“Nothing else matters right now, Elle.” He placed the gun in my hand.
He was wrong. One thing mattered. And in that moment, to me, because he was heading out into what I could only imagine was like a war zone, it mattered more than anything. There was no way I’d allow him to fight before I could tell him what he needed to know—I wanted to marry him. I pulled the ruby ring from my pocket and placed it in the palm of his hand.
“Put it on my finger,” I demanded.
“You’re sure?” His eyes locked into mine, and everything else fell away.
“My answer is yes. I’ll marry you. I want to wear your ring.”
“When did you—”
“When you were inside me. I needed us to burn away my fear together, and we did.”
Will shook his head and smiled. “Christ, you’re a handful sometimes.” Then he slipped the sparkling ruby onto my finger and kissed it. “I love you. No matter the circumstances, never forget that. You’re the center of my world. You’re everything,” he breathed against my lips. He held his mouth there against mine as his hand moved to the electronic pad.
Before I could respond, tell him I loved him, he launched me into the safe room and pulled the door shut. I stumbled from the force and caught myself on a chair.
Lissie raced to me. She threw herself against my body with enough energy to knock me off balance again. We fell back against the door. I wrapped one arm around her and extended the other out to the side so Mary could take the gun from my hand.
Lissie had been quiet until the moment she’d collided with me. While I held her, I wondered if she remembered her time in the secret room in Stonington, when we lost Isobel and Gran. I wondered if she thought about our former life in Connecticut.
She’d fallen fast and hard for our new life and new family. She loved Will and his brothers, and they loved her. He was the closest thing to a father she’d ever had. Mary was already her grannie, and the connection they shared was remarkable. Though we had no legal proof she was Ethan’s, it was hard to believe otherwise. Her turbulent Hastings eyes were undeniable, and she’d inherited not only his eyes but also Ethan’s warmth and sense of adventure. To have this family ripped away from her would devastate her still-healing soul.
I kissed the top of Lissie’s head and held her tightly while she hid her crying face in my sweater. “Your uncles will be back. I promise.”
We finally moved from the door after she pulled my hands to her chest and found the ostentatious ring on my finger. She lifted her face and hit me with those eyes. “You’re gonna get married . . . to Uncle Will?”
“Yes.” I tucked a finger under her chin and caressed that tiny dimple beneath my thumb.
Her eyes sparkled.
“See? He must come back soon.”
* * *
Anxiety won. Once Lissie settled on the sofa with Mary again, I locked myself in the bathroom and vomited. I went into that tiny bathroom and retched three times.
We saw nothing. We heard nothing. We knew nothing until John came to the safe room more than two hours later. I ran to the door and crashed into him as he came through.
“It’s okay—everyone is safe. The estate is secure.” He held my arm even after he’d steadied me. He looked at Mary. “Thomas is inside, Mum, and he’s fine. Everyone is fine.”
“Where’s Will?”
John gave his mother a slight nod and avoided my question.
“John?” I snapped.
“He’s not hurt, Ellie. He was amazing. I could see him on camera, and Thomas is right. Our brother is a beast. Thom is awesome too. There were nine. Two got away.”
Seven more dead—a fast-growing burden for Will to carry. But there was something more. I clung harder to John’s arm. “What are you not saying? Has he gone after them?”
John lowered his eyes and nodded.
I tore out of the room and darted up the stairs, taking two at a time until I reached ground level. I burst into the hall shouting for Will. Eight men were there removing weapons from their bodies and toweling sweat and weather from their faces.
Will was not one of them.
I clutched the front of Thomas’s rain- and blood-soaked shirt. “Thomas, go after him. Please!”
Thomas handed his gun to Ben and pushed me backward. “Someone give me a clean shirt.” He was tugging the one he wore over his head while grappling with my mauling hands.
“Find him. . . . Go with him,” I pleaded, my fingers digging into his bared flesh.
“Stop it, Ellie,” he commanded low in my ear. Then Thomas wrapped his arms around me and hauled me into the war room, turning me loose once the door closed behind us. He pulled on a T-shirt that was too small for him, his massive size second only to Will’s.
“Where is he?” As Thomas retreated, I stalked him step for step around the conference table. “Tell me!”
He placed his hands against my shoulders to keep me at arm’s length, but that wasn’t what caused me to stop dead in my tracks. It was how he stared at me with Will’s eyes. John and Lissie had those eyes too, as had Ethan. But there was something about Thomas that made his even more like Will’s, and it frightened me on a level I didn’t understand.
I crumbled onto the conference table and sobbed. He gave me a moment before gathering my boneless body from the tabletop and locking me in his arms.
“Is he hurt?”
“Jesus, you have a fucking temper.”
“Thomas,” I warned, my wet face buried in his shoulder.
“Not a scratch. He went after the two we lost. He’ll track them and kill them, and he’ll not come back until it’s done. I need you to stop crying.”
“Why is he alone?”
“He ordered everyone to stay with you.”
It was my fault Will was out there alone. I broke again, clutching Thomas harder. Sobs overwhelmed me and caused my body and breath to shudder. Each skipped with unpredictability and without control over their respective natural rhythms. I was a mess.
Cursing beneath his breath, Thomas pressed me harder against his chest and waited for me to finish my ugly cry. He stroked my hair and pressed his cheek to my head.
“T-Thomas . . . find him . . . he’s . . . he’s . . . all alone. P-please,” I sobbed.
There was no way to stop Will once he’d made a decision. The only thing I could do was get someone out there with him.
“I can’t leave you,” he whispered. “If he’s not here, I must be. You know that. You’ll never be without one of us again. You’ll never be alone again, Ellie.”
Those words—words I’d craved but had never before heard until Will, and now Thomas—broke me further.
I nodded against his chest, summoning strength, fighting the fear, putting myself back together. I lifted my head, though I wasn’t yet ready to meet his eyes.
“Tell me what’s going on. I need to know.”
He pulled back, and after pausing as if to gather his thoughts, he handed me a towel. “The Greens fell in with Jack Lewis. They were the informants Uncle Robert was tracking. We found only two of the three the night we went after them—Charles ran, leaving his brothers to die. Yesterday we received intel indicating that he and Lewis were planning to draw you out. Will believes what he’s doing is the best way to keep you safe.”
I wiped my nose on the towel. “He’d planned to leave?”
“He’s been torn up over this, Ellie. He allowed them into our home, gave them money.”
Hot tears pooled in my eyes again.
“Don’t. He hasn’t left you. He’s on a mission—you must think of it that way.” Thomas grabbed my hand and stared at the ring. The ruby and its diamonds twinkled beneath the florescent lighting. “You know who he is and what he must do.”
Thomas was right. No one was stronger or more intelligent and determined than Will.
&n
bsp; “I’m sorry. I had no right to—”
“No apologies. We take care of what’s ours.”
I sniffled and wiped away the last tears. “You sound like your brother.”
“Yeah.” He opened the door and waited for me to pass through, but before I did, he gripped my shoulder and stopped me. “Hey, there’s something else I’ve been meaning to say. . . . He’s never apologized to anyone before you. That’s a big fucking deal for my brother, you know.”
45
Will didn’t answer his phone again when I called for the tenth time, and I didn’t leave a message again. Voicemail messages were useless. Will never listened to them. I had gone up to our suite to rest, but without Will, and not knowing where he was or when he was coming home, there was no way I could sleep. His scent still clung to the sheets, so I’d lie there if for no other reason.
I dropped my phone onto his pillow and stared at it, pushing the home button compulsively. The dazzling ruby and its bright halo caught my attention and sent me back to the moment I’d decided to wear the ring. I had been cocooned in Will’s arms, protected from the world by his power. He was moving inside me, filling me with his body while his possessive whispers filled my soul. “You’re mine, my angel, and I’ll love you until my last breath,” he’d said.
I flopped onto my back and held up my hand in a ray of golden sunlight, admiring my heavy engagement ring. I twisted it from side to side and watched the brilliant crown sparkle. The band was loose, so I slipped it from my finger and looked inside to see where the jeweler might cut for sizing.
My heart stopped. There was an inscription.
Until my last breath. W
The script was elegant and poetic, flowing with grace, its romance transforming the W into butterfly wings. My fingers fell to my neck. I remembered what he had said about my birthmark just before he’d placed his first sweet kiss on my lips. His eyes had shown him a W, not a butterfly. I slipped the ring back on and covered my heart with both hands, locking the memory safely inside.