“Easy,” I tell her. “I’m right here. I’ve got you.” Her frightened eyes meet mine, and my heart wrenches. What the hell am I doing to her? How will I survive her?
“Elijah,” she whispers before closing her eyes again.
So much trust.
I use a lavender-scented soap to wash the dirt and blood from her body. The water becomes a pale brown. I wash her feet tenderly, wincing at the cuts across the bottom. Then I go to work on her hair. The shampoo becomes a dull gray lather in her honey-toned hair. She probably needs an hour-long soak in a fresh tub of water to be fully clean, but her eyes flutter and her breath rises and falls—and it’s enough for her to be alive right now.
My thumb brushes over her bottom lip, and her eyes open.
“Your brother?” she asks.
“He’s on his way.” At least I hope so.
It’s possible he hung up the phone and then went back to work. We didn’t have family reunions. We don’t exchange Christmas cards. I have no idea what a real family would be like.
A few years ago when Liam left the military, he started his own private security firm. The only reason I know that is because I got a letter from a lawyer in the mail giving me a one-third share in the business.
Pretty fucking trusting considering I could be a psycho like our father.
I accepted the shares, technically, signing the paperwork and sending it back via the lawyers, but I’ve never participated in any other way. A ridiculous amount of money gets deposited into a bank account in my name every quarter.
This is the first time I’ve called the number on the paperwork.
“You trust him more than the police?” she asks.
The last time we spoke, I was an angry fourteen-year-old with a bad attitude. Liam had enlisted with a gruff goodbye and left without looking back. Was I pissed at him? No. I was jealous. Then a couple years later Josh left, too.
That’s when shit really got bad at home.
And now here we are, years later. It’s Elijah, I said to him. Yeah, we ran into some trouble on our honeymoon. Holly’s a little banged up. We both need some new identification.
He might have said, who the hell is this?
He might have said, fuck no.
Instead he said, “On it.” It was like we’d been working together for years. I knew in those two words that he’d move heaven and earth to accomplish the mission.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice rough.
“The couple? What was it you said to them about the night and the dawn?”
Of course she noticed that. “It’s a code.”
“What does it mean?”
“That we’re in trouble. That we need help. That we mean no harm.”
Actually it means that we’re part of the resistance fighting the French government. I took a chance that the farmers would know such a code and respect it, the same way they respect the seasons and the storms and the old ways of life.
She’s like deadweight in the bath, her head leaning back on the curved lip. She’s like a doll I can move however I want, and fuck, I’m done restraining myself. Holly may not fully understand what she’s gotten into with me, but before this night is over, she will.
I pick up one beautiful pale leg and drape it over the side of the tub. Then I lift the other and do the same. She’s completely open to me, a pink flower.
“Here?” she asks, her voice lazy.
I slide my hand down her stomach and cup her pussy. “Everywhere.”
Her sex accepts my fingers like they were made to hold me. I slide in and out, learning every square inch of her, pressing on that place that makes her breath catch.
She tenses, and I flick her clit with my thumb—a little too hard.
It’s punishment. “Relax, sweetheart. Give in.”
Her hips lift, and I think she’s going to fight me.
I would enjoy subduing her but not right now, not when she’s so weak. Her lids rise, revealing those dark pools of lust. It releases electricity through my body, and my cock flexes against the outside of the tub. I want to fuck her, fuck her, fuck her, but this isn’t about me.
It’s about her and the way she melts into the white ceramic. The way she becomes soft and malleable in my hands. The way it gets her wetter to give in.
I circle her clit with slow deliberation, making her wait and yearn. Enjoying the way she moans in the small space. “We’re married now,” I say, my voice low. “I can do anything I want with this sweet body. I can fuck you in the bathroom, in the kitchen. Wherever you are, I can press you against the wall and get inside my favorite place.”
She moans again, and I know the words make her hot. She likes the idea of being taken by force, my little mermaid, my own personal siren. I crash against the rocks, not because she sings. I crash because she exists. Because I’m weak, and she’s strong.
So I give her more words, more fantasies. If she were my wife, I would only let her out of bed for the pleasure of dragging her back. I would wrap my belt around her throat and make her beg to suck my cock. “I’m going to lie next to you on that bed, and whenever my dick wants a nice warm place to rest, I’m going to spread your legs. There’ll be nothing you can do, no way to say no because you’re already mine.”
On the last word, the word mine, I flick her clit, and she comes with a high, keening cry, one that surely the couple downstairs will hear and recognize. It’s the sound of ownership.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Holly
I’m learning how to knead dough with Marisol when Elijah comes downstairs. He looks fresh in a worn button-down shirt and jeans. The farmer’s clothes. I’m wearing a peasant blouse and a long skirt that make me look like I belong among the wheat stalks.
And my hands are covered in flour.
Elijah comes up to me from behind and grasps my waist, planting a kiss on my cheek. The move makes me blush, but I can’t say anything because we’re supposed to be married. Marisol gives me a secret smile, and I know she thinks it’s because this is new. New as in we’re having our honeymoon. Not new as in we’ve been pretending for the past twenty-four hours.
“Like this,” Marisol says, doing something smooth and knowledgeable with her hands.
My copy looks much more clumsy.
Even though I’ve been copying her from the beginning, my dough looks more lumpy and harder than hers. It’s clear that I didn’t miss my calling by becoming a fiction writer instead of a baker, but there’s something soothing about working with the food in my hands. Elijah snakes his hands under my skirt, and I squirm away, spraying him with a little bit of excess flour.
“Don’t,” I say, laughing. “I’ll be lucky if my dough rises.”
“You’re making something rise,” he says.
It’s easy to imagine this is how it would be if we were actually a newly married couple, if I were sore from having sex with my husband, if we were recovering from a dishonest Uber driver. The truth is much less optimistic. He’s an undercover operative in some shadow military department, and I’m… me. Holly Frank. Best-selling author of children’s novels. The scariest thing in my life is a speaking gig in front of sixth graders.
We were thrown together, literally, but we don’t belong together.