“No! No!” She pulled away, twisted and turned, but nothing seemed to break the grip her attacker had on her. “King!”
A vague sense of fighting, of rough curses and the impact of flesh on flesh, registered, but it was all a jumble of the chaos that had become her world. She tried to remember the plan—we planned for this, for something to happen in the garden—but everything she was supposed to do became lost in the flood of adrenaline set off by those hands.
“Get. Off. Me!”
A muffled sound came from her attacker when the spike of her heel broke on him—his foot, his leg, his something. The loss of both feet on the ground cost her balance. Despite any pain he might feel, her attacker continued to drag her away from King and whatever was happening to him. And then Saint’s voice called out in the darkness, “Charlotte, drop!”
If she’d have had a hand free, she’d have smacked her own forehead. Of course. That’s what she was supposed to do if anyone tried to drag her away, drop. Deadweight was harder to carry than a person on their feet.
Charlotte dropped.
The man lurched forward, then seemed to realize she wasn’t following, because a growl rumbled from his throat. He reached back for her. “Come on, bitch.”
She kicked out at the legs somewhere in front of her. “Make me, asshole.”
The hands that had been on her arms grabbed the hair on her head, gripped tight, and pulled her to her feet. Hot breath poured over her face. “If we don’t get that brat, my boss will do a lot more than make you walk, trust me.”
Some semblance of sanity told her to pull away, but the threat to Becky and her baby proved stronger. Charlotte leaned closer. “You might as well kiss the money you’re hoping for goodbye, because you’re never getting that baby. Never.”
The slap came out of nowhere, lighting her face on fire and scattering what little thought she was able to grasp. A cry escaped, high and pain-filled, and it took a moment for her to realize that sound was hers.
Oh God, what’s happening here?
Glancing around frantically, she realized the lights in the mansion had come back on, but now she and her attacker were beyond the wall and into the woods, casting shadows everywhere. Shouts and scuffling came from the other side, and then she saw a dark-haired man leap through one of the arches. “Charlotte!”
Saint. The next moment she caught a glimpse of a mismatched couple, one tall and broad and the other small and blonde, arriving on the scene. No more than a snatched look and then the cruel grip in her hair was forcing her forward into the woods.
“Saint!”
This time there was no look. In the dark she felt the heat of movement, and then the fingers were torn from her hair along with what felt like half her scalp. She more sensed Saint’s presence than saw it, but the sounds coming from him and her attacker told her she didn’t want to see their fighting. Punching and kicking and grunting and roaring filled the night until a sharp whistle broke them apart. Crashing through the woods told her someone was running, maybe more than one someone’s.
Her attacker? Had Saint followed them?
When warm fingers wrapped around her arms, she instinctively fought.
“Shh. It’s me, Charlotte.”
Relief swallowed every ounce of her strength. “King?”
He was breathing heavily, the sound filling her ears. She glanced around frantically.
“It’s all right. Saint and Deacon have a bead on them.”
A bead on them? What did that mean? Were they still in danger? “Elliot?”
“Right here.” The woman barely made a sound in her elegant dress and heels in the freaking woods as she popped up beside them. “Let’s get you back inside.”
Inside. Of course. Made perfect sense. So why wasn’t she moving?
She forced herself to nod. “Inside.”
This time when King pulled her to her feet, she didn’t resist. He went first, leading her through the brush as if he had a spotlight showing him the way, while she stumbled and staggered behind him in her uneven heels through the tangled undergrowth. Nothing had ever filled her with as much relief as reaching the ragged walls of the garden and seeing the spill of light clearly illuminating the path back to the mansion.
And two tall, blond figures headed their way.
“Charlotte!”
Wes’s voice filled her with dread. She grasped King’s fingers, ostensibly to help her down from the wall, but when her feet were back on solid ground, she didn’t let go. How had Wes known where they were? Had they been that loud? Had people heard the fight inside? Why hadn’t more people come out, then? But it was only Wes and Hugh racing toward them. Only Wes, the closest thing they had to a suspect, and his playboy brother. Only Wes…
“Charlotte,” Wes panted as the two men reached them. “What happened? Are you all right? I heard you yell.”
She glanced to King, unsure of what she should reveal. Shadows hid his eyes, his thoughts from her.
“Everything’s fine,” he said firmly. His arm came around her waist, holding her secure as he moved them toward the house. So strong. So easy to lean into.
But she shouldn’t. She wanted to—God, how she wanted to—but that arm wouldn’t be there forever.
“I had a miscarriage. I didn’t know until after you left. Not until—”
Don’t get used to him being here, Charlotte. You know better. You know what will happen when you tell him.
The thing she feared the most. The reason she’d held herself away from every man who’d seemed interested in her since King left. The man who’d said he loved her more than his own life had walked away to pursue his dream. Why would he or anyone else stay when he found out she couldn’t give him the one thing he would certainly want from her.
A child. A family.
“Charlotte? Are you hurt?”
This time it was King who said her name, but she couldn’t make herself look at him again. “I don’t think so.” She was limping, but that was her shoe’s fault. She made a show of checking her limbs, making sure everything was in working order. The wince when she turned her wrist was unavoidable, as was the grimace when she ran her fingertips along her scalp. Prior injuries didn’t make for good conditions in a fight. But there didn’t appear to be any new injuries other than where her attacker had pulled her by her hair. “I’m fine.”
“We should get you home,” Elliot murmured, eyeing their company.
“She shouldn’t have been here in the first place,” Wes barked. “She should be at home, safe. I expected more from you, cousin.”
King didn’t wince, just gave Wes a slight nod before turning to her, leaning down, and picking her up in his arms. “Let’s go.”
Her parents met them at the door when they arrived back at the house. Charlotte walked up the steps barefoot, her ruined shoes dangling from one hand, dreading their reaction, but her mom tucked her against her side and escorted her to the elevator without comment. When they reached her bedroom, Charlotte put her hand up, stopping her mom before she could come inside.
“I’m okay,” she said, unsure if that was a lie or not. “I’m going to soak in a hot tub and crawl into bed.” She gave her mom a good-night kiss on the cheek. “Go back to Dad and I’ll see you in the morning.”
Her mom glanced down the hall where Mark and TC, two of the men who’d come from JCL to support Dain’s team, were topping the stairs. Their presence seemed to reassure her, because her face had softened when she looked back to Charlotte. “Are you sure?”
About the tub and bed? “Absolutely.”
By the time she crawled between the sheets, the effects of the day were hitting her like a two-ton elephant—every muscle ached, and any energy she’d thought she had was sinking into the mattress along with her body.
So of course that’s when the knock came.
Several words she rarely spoke escaped as she struggled up from the bed. “Coming!”
She assumed Mark or TC had something to tell her, maybe
Elliot—although Elliot should be with Becky by now—but it wasn’t any of them waiting on the other side of the door. It was King.
Charlotte closed her eyes. King being here meant one thing: he wanted answers, and he wasn’t waiting until morning to get them. The time for hints and secrets was gone. Stepping back, she opened the door wider. “Come in.”
He didn’t hesitate.
She walked toward the bed, but at the last minute her body refused to settle. This was it, the moment of truth. The moment when he walked away and didn’t look back.
“What is it, King?”
His warmth reached her before he did, heating her back, then her arms when he gripped them. Charlotte winced, the muscles tender from bruises left by the earlier attack, and he gentled his touch immediately. “Sorry.” Long, powerful fingers trailed down her biceps, over her elbows, down to her wrists, where he took her captive. “Tell me, Charlotte.”
No need to ask what; she already knew. Still it took a moment to find words.
“About a week after you…left,” she finally began, “I started spotting. Nothing, really. My period was due. I had…other things on my mind.”
The grip on her wrists tightened before releasing completely. King stood at her back, the hard muscles of his pecs pressed into her shoulder blades, his breath warming her hair, but nothing else.
“I wasn’t paying enough attention, I guess. I started having pain, but”—she shrugged—“still, it was probably my period, right? Nothing I hadn’t dealt with before.”
King made a soft sound in his throat. Sympathy. They’d been sleeping together; he knew how hard her periods had been on her.
“And then I woke up one night with blood everywhere. The pain was worse.” She shuddered, her belly tensing as she remembered just how excruciating those long minutes had been before her parents had gotten her to the hospital. She hadn’t realized her body was capable of that kind of agony. “So much pain. It was an ectopic pregnancy. My fallopian tube had ruptured.”
“How close?”
She struggled to shake away the memories. “What?”
“How close did you come to dying?”
King’s voice was hoarse, hurting. She leaned back instinctively, holding him up the same way he’d been holding her, and gave him the only piece of information that mattered: “I recovered.” Her belly tensed with remembered pain. “The tube didn’t. My doctor diagnosed me with endometriosis. The abnormal growth in my tubes had blocked the embryo from traveling all the way to my uterus. The pregnancy destroyed that tube, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The endometriosis…it had spread. Everywhere.” She paused, feeling the words stick in her throat. “I had to have a hysterectomy. I could no longer have children. Ever.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
She was only twenty years old.
King’s body and mind reeled from the force of too many blows, too much emotion, devastation. Twenty.
Charlotte had just lost her fiancé, and then her child, and had been forced to grapple alone with the knowledge that she would never have another chance to carry her own baby in her body.
And that after dealing with the loss of a child.
We had a child.
She’d told him earlier, but he hadn’t been able to truly comprehend the words. Now he moved his hands from her wrists to her hips, slid them slowly across until the soft curve of her lower belly was against his palms. Their child had been here, waiting to grow. Waiting to live.
Gone.
The press of his hands forced Charlotte back against him. As naturally as breathing, her head tilted to one side, giving him access to her throat, her shoulder. He dropped his chin, buried his face against her sweet-smelling skin, and just breathed her in. Held her as the agony of what she’d told him tore him apart.
Charlotte startled against him. She reached up, and he realized her shoulder was wet where tears he hadn’t known he’d shed glistened against her skin. The room blurred. “Charlotte.”
She turned in his arms.
A frisson of hunger shot through him at the feel of her silk nightgown against his skin, and then her palms were cupping his cheeks and her concern was staring back at him through the tears in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the words rough with her own tears. “I’d have done anything to stop it. But…”
He snatched her hard against him, burying his face in the silky length of her hair. “Don’t you ever apologize to me again,” he growled. “This was not your fault. Never.”
“It wasn’t yours either.” Her fingers dug into his hair, gripping his scalp as if she could hold him and herself together if she tried hard enough. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It just was.”
“I wasn’t here.” That was the largest knife ripping through his soul—he hadn’t been here when she’d needed him, when she could’ve died without him beside her.
“You couldn’t have known, King.” Easing back, she stared deep into his eyes. “We both made mistakes. We were young. We—”
King kissed her. He had to—because he needed to show her how he felt, and because he needed to hold back the words. If he didn’t kiss her, he’d tell her he loved her, and he wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t ready. It didn’t matter that he’d never stopped loving her; it only mattered that the love that had been sleeping deep inside him was roaring back to life with a strength that scared the shit out of him.
So he drowned himself in her taste instead.
Charlotte gasped into his mouth. Her slim body arched into him, the feel of her bringing his cock to life. His T-shirt and the thin gown she wore barely provided a barrier between them, hiding nothing as they moved restlessly against each other and their mouths devoured every bit of need the other had. Duty tried to rear its head, but he stamped it down hard. He’d stopped when they’d kissed the other day, but not tonight. He wasn’t letting her go, not until this hunger tearing at his gut could find some relief. Not until the pain in his heart could find some solace.
Gripping the back of her head, he tilted until their lips fit together like two pieces of a whole. Charlotte’s mouth opened, let him in. He’d kissed her a thousand times before, and this kiss was just like all the others, and yet not. He knew her mouth intimately. Knew what she liked, what she craved. But after ten years he also didn’t know her at all. The taste of mint and woman lit up his senses. The feel of his tongue sliding along hers, filling her, taking her, lit up his cock.
King groaned against her lips.
The sound must have brought Charlotte back to reality, because she turned her head away. “King—”
Grasping her chin, he turned her back to him, struggling hard to control the rapid beat of his pulse and the demands of his flesh. “Tell me,” he said, refusing to let her escape. “You know you can tell me, no matter what. I’ll listen.”
“We shouldn’t be doing this.”
As if he wasn’t telling himself the same damn thing. A different kind of tension crept through him, and he forced himself to let go, step back. “I won’t—”
Charlotte stepped forward, hesitated.
He sucked in a deep breath. “I won’t tell you I don’t want this, Charlotte. I do. I want it more than I ever realized I could want something. Someone. But the choice is yours. I won’t take that away from you.”
She closed her eyes, and his heart sank, knowing what her answer would be.
“I want this too.” She opened her eyes, and tears glistened in the low light of the bedside table across the room. “More than I’ve wanted just about anything, I want you. And I’m tired of denying it.”
King took a step forward, another, another. Until their bodies brushed each other and he tasted her breath in his mouth. Reaching around, he cupped the globes of her ass, lifted her tight against him, and moved toward the bed.
He’d dreamed so many times of holding her in his arms like this, her skin barely covered, her warm breasts soft, her firm ass in his hands. This was the moment that shook
him, the moment he craved even more than being inside her—this first moment when he uncovered her skin, felt her bare against him, took one firm nipple into his mouth and sucked. It was the moment of surrender, of coming home. Like nothing he’d ever felt before or since.
The moment that made them one, heart and soul. The body would follow.
He stopped beside the bed, and Charlotte slid down his body until her feet reached the carpet. Staring deep into his eyes, she reached for the hem of his T-shirt and drew it up his body. When it gathered beneath his arms, he lifted them. Tugged the material over his head. Charlotte didn’t wait—her hands covered his chest, slid along his skin, lingered over his nipples as they hardened for her touch. He swore his entire body expanded in response, preening for its mate, showing her exactly how much he hungered for her attention. Her love.
That’s what he wanted, what he needed. Sex was no more than an outward expression of the craving that burned deep inside him, for her.
“Charlotte,” he groaned.
Those delicate hands slid over the ridges of his stomach, the hollow of his navel, to the line of blond hair that cut a trail to the hungriest part of him. His heart stuttered as she cupped him. The squeeze of her fingers around his cock had his balls drawing up tight—and he wasn’t even naked.
A mental litany of all the reasons he didn’t want to blow his load too soon, heavily peppered with No way in hell, ran through his mind as he made quick work of his fatigues and underwear. Charlotte stepped back, allowing him to bend over, tug off his boots, and kick his legs clear. When he straightened, it was to the sight of her seated in the middle of the bed, legs curled to one side, the silk of her gown caressing her body. The sight of her froze him in place.
Charlotte tilted her chin to the side. “What is it?”
He couldn’t explain it. Deep inside, where vulnerability was allowed and he could acknowledge his emotions, he was shaking. It took long moments before he could bring the words to the surface. “You’re so beautiful. More beautiful than I could ever remember. And I’ve tried.”
Deny Me (Southern Nights Enigma Book 4) Page 14
