“And you’re a man who would kill for the ones he loves most. Not just a man who will say the words, but a man who will go the distance if need be. There’s no one else I’d rather have my life in his care. There’s no one else I’d rather have my heart.”
I’d rushed through my declaration to be sure he wouldn’t interrupt, and now my heart beat so fast it felt like I’d been running. I took a breath, waiting for him to speak.
In a flash, I was pushed on my back on the ottoman for a second time. Edward hovered over me, his mouth inches from mine. “How is it you see so much good in a man who is clearly a devil?”
“Oh, I see the devil, too,” I assured him. “I like him just as much.”
“Are you sure I haven’t just groomed you to respond this way?”
“I might be who I am right now because of you, but it’s exactly who I want to be.”
He kissed me at that, a long, luxurious kind of kiss that ended with him sweeping me in his arms and carrying me to the bedroom where he peeled off my robe and kissed my entire body, taking his time to be sure there wasn’t an inch of me that hadn’t been covered with his lips.
Then, with his clothes deserted on the floor, he covered my naked body with his and made love to me with a sweet attentiveness that I’d never seen from him before. I loved this side of him, like I loved all his sides, like I loved the man who controlled and the man who would kill. I especially loved that, for the first time ever, I was pretty sure I was seeing all the sides of him there was. No holds barred. Bare and vulnerable and mine.
After, he held me tight around the waist as we lay facing each other, our eyes level. We didn’t talk for a long time. We’d said so much already, and there was a lot that could be said like this—silent, our gazes locked as we stroked each other’s skin.
But there was still something unresolved, and eventually he addressed it. “You have to let me do what I need to do with Pierce. It’s my war now. I can’t let it go unsettled.”
My muscles tensed automatically. Then I took a breath in, and relaxed as I blew it out. This was what all of this had been coming to. If I’d thought it was going anywhere else, I was fooling myself. I’d told him I trusted him, and now I had to prove it.
“Okay,” I said.
It was his chance, too, to prove what he would do when it wasn’t a gun in his hand in the middle of the night. When the threat wasn’t imminent. When there wasn’t so much to lose. When it was only his pride versus his foe.
“Let me just ask you one thing,” I added, careful not to undo all the progress we’d made. “With what happened with Frank, with what happened with Ron—which situation feels more resolved to you now that they’re both said and done?”
He didn’t get a chance to answer before the buzzer rang. It was late. I didn’t know what time exactly, but it had to be late.
“I put the do not disturb up when I came in,” Edward said, erasing any chance that it might be turndown service.
The buzzer rang again. I jumped out of bed and grabbed my robe, tying it as I rushed to the door in case it was Genevieve and the baby. The buzzer rang once again before I got there, followed by heavy pounding.
I didn’t even bother looking through the peephole before opening the door, and was thoroughly surprised to see it wasn’t my stepdaughter, but Hudson, alone, exasperation written all over his face.
Without an invitation, he pushed inside, clinging to me so desperately as he did, we almost both tipped over. “Find her,” he begged, his voice threadbare. “Find my wife.”
Seventeen
Edward
Celia greeted me at the door as soon as I came up from work the next day. “They found Alayna,” she said. “She’s fine. A bit bruised up, but overall fine.”
My wife was relieved, and so I was too. It had been Celia I’d been most concerned about when Hudson had shown up at our room the night before. His wife was missing. Presumably, she’d been taken by the person who’d been threatening them, and since all signs pointed to that person being someone from Hudson and Celia’s past, I was rightfully worried that Celia was next.
Not one of us had gotten any sleep. While the two of them had stayed up scouring the journals for clues, I’d been on the phone arranging bodyguards and extra security for Celia as well as her parents, my children, and Camilla. When the sun came up, I showered and dressed and left for my makeshift office on the conference level of the hotel, but I cancelled all my appointments for the day and spent it instead investigating Pierce. He’d been looking for the perpetrator from the inside out. I thought there was benefit from changing the angle and searching from the outside in. Even after Celia called to tell me it looked like the abductor hadn’t been someone they’d played at all, I kept on with my mission. Just in case.
“And the man who took her?” I barely dared to breathe.
“He’s in jail. And anyway, he wouldn’t have come after me, so don’t be worrying about him making bail.” It was like she could read my mind.
Still, I was wary. “You’re absolutely sure? He acted alone? There’s no one else in on the scheme?”
She wrapped her arms around my waist. “It was just him, and yes. I’m sure. Hudson and I never played him. His motives had nothing to do with me.”
“Good.” I kissed her before I released her. “I might just keep the bodyguards for a little while, though.”
“If it makes you feel better, I understand. Besides, if you’re going to tangle with Hudson, you’ll need them.”
“Celia,” I warned. I knew what she was doing—trying to bait me into discussing my plans with Pierce.
She put her hands up in the air in surrender position. “I’m not interfering. Doesn’t mean I can’t still have opinions.”
If I hadn’t been so tired, I’d likely have spanked her ass red for her opinion. It would have been for fun, though. Not punishment.
“Are you hungry?” she asked, changing gears as she helped me out of my suit jacket. “There’s a sandwich in the fridge, if you are. Otherwise, I’m ordering you to bed. I slept most of the day, so I can handle Cleo. You, on the other hand, haven’t slept since yesterday, so don’t try to tell me you aren’t exhausted.”
I peered at her over my shoulder. “Ordering me?”
She handed me my jacket with a sigh then dropped to her knees to bow dramatically at my feet. “Oh, master,” she teased, “I know I am not worthy to command you. I beg of you to please have favor on me and allow me to care for you for once by feeding you and sending you to bed.”
I laughed. “Get up, you temptress.”
She took my hand as I bent to help her up. “Am I turning you on?”
“Always.” I kissed her again, because she was there and because I wanted her. But she was right that I needed sleep, so I cut it off before it went anywhere interesting. “No food, thank you. And I’ll sleep. Shortly.” Now that I knew the Pierce threat wasn’t a danger to my own family, there were other things that needed to be sorted out.
Cleo’s cry came over the baby monitor, waking up from her late afternoon nap on schedule. “I’ll feed her in her room so she won’t be a distraction. Get to bed, soon.”