by Ella Fields
“It’s fine.” I stood from my perch. “I told her I would earlier.”
Thomas’s brows furrowed. “You don’t need to cater to her every whim. I might be rich, but she’s accustomed to not getting her own way every now and then.”
His dry words made me want to laugh. I swallowed the urge, walking across the rug covered floor to take Lou Lou’s hand in mine. “I want to.” I met his eyes as he shifted for us to skirt by him in the doorway. “And I don’t break promises.”
Eyes thinning with consideration and something else I was too scared to name, Thomas nodded once. My arm brushed his as he refused to move out of the way completely, and I felt his gaze hot on my back until we’d entered Lou Lou’s room near the other end of the hall.
It was two doors down from the room I guessed belonged to Thomas and tastefully decorated in pinks and purples. The walls were white and pink candy striped, the rug a yellow sunflower, and artwork was taped over every surface as though no one had the heart to throw out anything Lou Lou had created over the years.
Her bed was a twin and surrounded in silken purple drapes that were tied back to white posts. I helped her shift unwanted pillows aside and collect toys she had to have with her while she slept as she listed her reasons why.
“Mister Hodge Podge gets lonely, and I like a good night’s sleep.” Her nose wrinkled with annoyance as she poked him and got comfortable beneath the feathered duvet. “I got sick of listening to his whining.”
I snorted out a laugh, unable to contain it, and she tilted her head up at me and stared for a long moment. “How long are you here for, Miss Clayton?”
The question both freed and trapped me. Because it reminded me I could leave. Apparently, I wasn’t some prisoner meant for torture or death. And it trapped me because looking at her—acknowledging the way my heart plummeted at the thought of returning to what was left of my life outside of the castle’s walls—I knew I wasn’t ready for reality.
Changing the subject, I smoothed my hands over the cover of the book she’d selected, Snow White, and said, “Do you know my first name?”
“No,” she said through a yawn.
I opened the book to the first page, noticing the inscription, and paused.
For my very own little dwarf. May you grow into the kind of princess who can always rescue herself.
My eyes tingled, and I ran my finger over the perfectly scrawled words.
Of course, he had beautiful handwriting, I thought before Lou Lou snapped me out of it. “What is your name?”
It was time to acknowledge just how much had changed. Including my job. There wasn’t much point in holding on to titles made to separate when I might not return to Lilyglade.
And when a part of my heart belonged in Lou Lou’s tiny hands.
“Jemima,” I said, then cleared my throat. “You can call me Jem. Or Jemma. Or just Jemima.”
Lou Lou smiled, displaying a missing front tooth that had been there when I’d last seen her. “I like Jemma.”
“Jemma it is.” I turned to the first page of the book. “When did you lose your tooth?”
She looked as though her eyes would close at any second. “Oh, after dinner when I ate an apple.”
I tried not to cringe. “Did it hurt?”
She shook her head. “Not one bit.” Rolling over a little, she lifted her pillow, displaying a tiny gold bag. “It’s in here,” she whispered. “Ready for the tooth fairy.”
The image of Murry playing tooth fairy made me smile until the smarter half of my brain smacked the image away because I knew who really did it.
Part monster. Part fairy.
My smile stayed in place as I read, and Lou Lou fell asleep before the climax even hit. I read on anyway, taking comfort in the familiar tale. Perhaps, if I wasn’t ready to leave, not tonight anyway, I’d search for a book of my own to get lost in.
Quietly, I shut the beautiful hardback and returned it to where it’d sat on her cubed white shelves. After turning off the lamp, I padded to the door but wasn’t sure whether to leave it open or close it. I opted to leave it ajar.
Lou Lou stirred at the small squeak the hinges made, her sleep-coated voice tumbling into my ears and infiltrating my chest as she mumbled, “You should call me Lou.” Her lips smacked together a few times as her eyes drifted closed. “Like Daddy and Murry.”
I whispered, trying to hide the emotion clogging my throat, “Okay. Good night, Lou.”
After watching her sleep a moment, I went in search of a man and a library.
Thomas
“Last location?”
“Along a string of apartment buildings down by the docks.”
Still in the city then, I took note. “There’s something there if this is the second time you’ve tracked him to the area.”
“There’s nothing here but run-down apartments and the rank stench of rotting fish in old warehouses.”
“It’s one of those two then.”
“Rotting fish?” Sage joked.
I didn’t bite, and instead, I penned the last word I’d been looking for. “They must be meeting there somewhere.”
“Tom, look, I can be out here every night for weeks, you know I’m good for it, but what if I don’t find anything?”
Light footfalls approached the library, but I didn’t remove my eyes from the page of my journal. “You will,” I said.
“If you say so.” Sage sighed, and I hung up.
Locking my phone without looking, I set it down on the side table next to the armchair I was sitting in. “Looking for something, Little Dove?”
“You, actually.” My head rose, eyes studying the way her hands folded over her midsection. With her pink lips parted, her gaze roamed the room. “And a book.”
“Luckily for you, you’ve stumbled across a two for one.”
She smiled, and my pen scratched a line of black ink across the sentence I’d just labored over.
Unable to find words, I gestured for her to look around and watched as she ran her fingers over the spines of old history books. She walked the perimeter of the room then stopped at a shelf by the fireplace, her gentle fingers tugging and inspecting some of my mother’s favorite books. Bodice rippers, mainly. But I wasn’t one to judge.
Jemima’s shoulder leaned into the shelf as she read the blurbs for three books, her lashes fluttering, and I knew when she’d found one that piqued her interest due to the way her eyes flared the slightest bit.
I tamped down the urge to ask a million questions, settling with the knowledge that if she was looking for something to read and putting Lou to bed, she was growing more comfortable here.
My hand had rubbed at my chest after overhearing my Dove tell Lou to call her by her first name, but I didn’t dare to hope that meant what I wished it did.
That she’d stay. That she’d look beyond the blood and the scars to see what lies beneath.
It was a part of me, yes. In fact, it worried me to think what I’d do without the particular outlet that I’d come to depend on. But it did not define me. We all had our passions when it came to careers. Mine was merely a little more … unique than some others.
“She fell asleep before I could finish the story.” Her sweet voice, combined with her attention falling on me, made the pen slip from my fingertips. Inwardly, I scowled at myself for acting like such a buffoon.
Such things just couldn’t seem to be helped around her.
“Yes, she never lasts long after eight,” I informed.
Jemima crossed the rug and came to sit in the twin wingback chair across from mine. As she eyed my phone for a second, her bottom lip vanished between her teeth. “How did you come up with the name Lou Lou?”
“It was my aunt’s. When I was young, she lived with us when she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer.”
Little Dove’s lashes lowered, her palm skimming the cover of the paperback on her lap. “I take it she didn’t survive.”
“No,” I confirmed. “But she
was … different.”
Dark lashes rose as her eyes lifted. “What was she like?”
Her interest snaked thorny branches into my gut, hooking and trying to drag me closer. “She was vibrant and bold yet soft. She was older than my mother by seven years, but they were best friends, no matter how different their lives had turned out. My mother married an Italian mobster, a hard businessman, while my aunt remained single and alone most of her life, backpacking and adventuring any chance she could.”
At my pause, Jemima asked, “So she came here for help?”
I nodded. “Even my father, despite being cold-blooded most days, wasn’t immune to the Lou Lou effect.”
A sad smile tugged at Jemima’s lips, weighing down her brows. “I see.”
I tilted my head back against the plush leather, waiting.
She did the same as she continued, “Your aunt brought life and love into this house.”
“She did.”
“And your Lou does the same.”
Feeling as if I’d been drugged, I stared at every perfect curve of her face. From her forehead to her cheekbones, to her chin, she had the face of an angel and the heart of a queen.
Depriving me of her eyes, she scratched at a scuff mark on the leather chair. “How did you get her enrolled in school? Being that she’s not really yours.”
So very inquisitive. “Fabricated birth records. Her father’s name was wiped from her and her mother’s lives, which wasn’t hard being that he wasn’t around long, and mine added.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How?”
A scratchy laugh preceded my words. “How, she asks. Little Dove, this world rotates via currency. And the right price will get you just about anything you need if you know where to look.”
She twisted her lips, and I wanted to smooth them back out. With my own. “And you know where to look, how?”
“My father was an influential man who had ties to the mafia, slave rings, and many other unsavory types.”
“Unsavory,” she said in a mocking tone. “Because what you do is absolutely respectable.”
“Careful, Little Dove,” I whispered, my dick rising as her tongue snuck out to lick her upper lip.
“Or what?” she whispered back. But despite the overconfident words, apprehension still lingered.
I merely smiled, and she looked more perturbed by that than anything I could’ve said.
“So”—she cleared her throat and straightened in the chair—“you said to come find you before I could leave.”
I purposely dropped my gaze to the book in her lap. “You’re leaving tonight?”
“No, but that’s what you said I needed to do.”
Contemplating my next move, I grabbed my journal and pen, setting them down on the side table before standing.
Her innocent eyes followed every move, and although I’d told her I’d let her go, I tamped down the guilt by reminding myself that I never agreed to how or when.
“Are you ready to strike a bargain, Little Dove?” I held my hand out to her.
She studied it, then looked up at me. “A bargain?”
“That’s what I said. You can leave, but first, I must ask for something in return for my … hospitality.”
An angelic laugh flowed past her lips and transformed her beauty into something ethereal. She wagged a finger at me. “I should’ve known there’d be a cost.”
“I never said there wouldn’t be.”
Her smile slipping, she set her book down, then finally, placed her soft hand in mine. “Fine.” I reveled in the touch, clasping her warm flesh within mine, and wondered what it might feel like to slide my tongue over every inch of her creamy skin. “What is it you want in return?”
I knew she was humoring me, and she knew it too. Though if she pretended this was what she had to do in order to walk away, then she’d be able to do it without any guilt.
Noticing the heat in my eyes, in my touch, and the way it pulled our bodies flush against each other, she croaked out, “No sex and no blood.”
Her head fell back at the affronted look on my face, another laugh delighting my ears and sending mixed signals to the organ in my chest.
Using her distracted state, I wrapped my arm around her, my hand coasting over and up to gently grip the back of her neck, while my other hand waited for her chin to drop, then grasped her face.
“We’ve done this before,” I said, feeling her heart pound against my chest and the beautiful, frantic beat of her pulse below my fingers.
“Not like this,” she rasped, her eyes moving to my mouth as she lifted to her toes. “And afterward, I can leave… anytime I want?” Her words floated over my lips, the sweet warmth of her breath searing.
“I’d rather you stayed, but I’m a man of my word.”
Hesitant hands landed on my waist, the touch snapping the last frayed thread of my control.
And so I kissed her.
I kissed her with purposeful gentleness until her breathing became heavy and her lips parted mine. Velvet stroked at my tongue, and I groaned, sucking hers into my mouth and walking us backward.
Her hands tugged at my shirt, and mine at her hair, wanting more, needing more.
The wood of a bookshelf bit into my back as she wrapped her hands around my neck, and I lifted her from the ground. Legs became a noose around my waist, and the push of her breasts against my thundering heart rendered me blind, incapable of doing anything other than feeling.
Her little moans as I nipped gently at her lips had me straining against my slacks. The guttural sound I made as she rocked over me had her hands gripping my face, tilting it for more access, then sliding into my hair.
Then my phone chirped with an email notification, and the spell was broken.
Jemima nearly fell to the floor with how fast she broke away from my mouth.
“Shit,” she breathed as I held her steady. She looked up at me, her skin delectably pink, lips mouthwateringly red, and her hair in tantalizing tangles, then swallowed and backed up toward the door.
Think, think, think, you insufferable moron.
But the swollen head inside my pants was overriding any function I had left of the one on my shoulders. I ran a shaky palm through my mussed hair as she mumbled a rushed good night in the doorway.
She was long gone by the time I muttered, “Until next time, Little Dove.”
Childlike wonder for the looming structure returned as I dragged my fingers over the rails and walls, drowning out any remnants of trepidation.
Thoughts of my mother, of Thomas’s mother, haunted me as I wandered deeper into the gigantic house the next day. Not to escape, but to explore.
No matter how hard I tried, my thoughts would always shift back. My fingers would always try to climb to my lips. And my heart would always try to block out rational thinking.
Inside a parlor, I trailed my fingers over the glass, staring at the couple behind it. It had to be one of the only photos of them in this home as I hadn’t come across any others.
He was every inch his father, and for that, I couldn’t entirely blame my mother for being tempted to risk it all.
Except for his eyes.
The rare shade of blue belonged to the blond-haired woman with a tight, red-lipped smile. She was beautiful in a classic way. The kind who won pageants and had men looking more than once.
My finger drifted, tracing the place where her husband’s hand held her waist, and although I tried, I couldn’t find the room to hate her for what she’d done. For her hand in stealing something irreplaceable from me and my family. There was only a resounding pang of sorrow for what could have been.
It was a tragedy caused by love.
And I was no stranger to the risks and perils that accompanied losing your heart.
“Beatrice and Antonio Verrone.” Murry’s voice startled me, and my hand fell away as I turned to find him in the doorway.
“They were beautiful.”
A hint of a smile nudged his lips, his ar
ms crossed over his chest as he looked from me to the floor-to-ceiling window behind me.
Behind the window sat a courtyard of sorts, and in the center of it, surrounded by rose bushes and sandstone benches, was a pool.
Entranced, I stepped closer, then stopped, standing breathlessly still at the sight of Thomas doing a flip turn before swimming half the length of the pool underwater. Even as my cheeks started to flush, heat spreading through my body, I couldn’t drag my gaze away. I now knew how he maintained that lean swimmer’s physique as I watched him swim lap after lap, his movements fluid, arms slicing through the water.
Murry cleared his throat, and I stepped back, ducking my head and tucking some hair behind my ear. “You know, for someone who was hell-bent on getting out of here a few days ago, you’re looking pretty comfortable now.”
I was, and that was a problem. One I was trying to solve. That was hard to do when Thomas seemed to hold me prisoner through his presence alone.
“And what about you?” I asked, strolling out the door. “Why are you still here after what he did to you?”
Earlier, I’d discovered the third floor contained an attic, or storage room, and a cracked open door revealed what I guessed to be Murry’s room. I’d peeked inside to find a room that was the size of three bedrooms, handsomely decorated in reds and grays with the turret providing a circular living area.
Murry decided to follow. “I don’t know if you’re ready to hear that particular story.”
Tossing a smirk over my shoulder as we neared the stairs, I said, “It would take a lot to shock me at this point.”
Murry considered that, then joined me as I continued down the hall. “I wasn’t a good man before I came here,” he said, then scoffed. “In fact, I’m not completely sure I’ll ever be.”
“Oh?” I didn’t believe that. Not wholly. “What about the way you run this place, and the way you take care of him and Lou?”
“I get paid very handsomely for all I do, trust me.”
I knew that wasn’t why he treated Lou like a loving uncle would, and by my silence, he knew I saw through his words.
“I used to smuggle women across the border.”
