by Katy Regnery
“It might . . .,” Julian pants, “hurt a little.”
“I know,” I say, gulping nervously as I look up at him. “It’s okay.”
He starts sliding into me, slowly, gently, and I try to stay relaxed, but the sensation is so new, so different. I feel vulnerable, but not in a bad way. Exposed, but not on display. I am sharing something with him that is only mine to share, and he is taking it as tenderly as he can. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing myself to relax.
Something eases where he is pushing inside me, but something else is blocking his way. I look up and see a bead of sweat break out on his brow. He winces, then drops his lips to mine in a passionate kiss while surging forward into my body, burying himself inside me to the hilt, until his pelvic bone is flush against mine.
I whimper, but his tongue is massaging mine, his hands cradling my face as he kisses me hungrily, desperately, and I realize that his kiss is distracting me from the waves of pain that I felt when he thrust through my virgin barrier.
The pain comes and goes. Comes and goes. Goes.
It’s over now. I’m a woman. I’m his woman.
“Are you okay?” he asks me, his eyes concerned and soft, dilated to huge black orbs that look heavy, but stay focused on mine.
“I’m okay.”
“If anything hurts, tell me to stop,” he says, moving his hips away from me and then plunging slowly back inside.
And then I feel something else entirely. That buzzing between my legs is back. But it’s so much louder than before. This is different from the way he pleasured me with his fingers and tongue. It’s so intimate, it makes me even more emotional, and tears spring to my eyes. I pull him down to me, lacing my fingers behind his neck and kissing him as he thrusts into my body again and again.
When he cries out my name, shuddering and gasping on top of me, I don’t orgasm with him. Not physically. But my heart, which he doesn’t know I’ve given to him, hammers to the beat of utter and complete devotion. He looks down at me like I breathe fire into the sun, like the stars are my children and every single one is a miracle.
“Elle est si belle qu’elle me brise le coeur,” he whispers reverently, rolling to my side and pulling me into the sanctuary of his arms.
As I am falling asleep, my mind repeats these words over and over, and at some point, I remember what he told me about his father’s favorite song—the song he listened to after Julian’s mother went away.
I remember what the words mean:
She is so beautiful, she breaks my heart.
Day #45 of THE NEW YOU!
Tonight is the two-year anniversary of the first time Anders came to me.
Two years of stolen moments, stolen glances, stolen love.
True love.
It’s a miracle that M has never found out.
But then again . . . there’s been a shift with him over the past year or so—like he’s growing tired of me. He doesn’t fuck me anymore. He never complimented me, but he doesn’t criticize anymore either. He barely speaks to me and looks at me even less. I can’t remember the last time I left this house with him. I’m positive he has a girlfriend in Newark because his appetites are strong and someone’s meeting them, but it’s not me.
If we weren’t married, I’d say we were in the wind-down phase of our relationship, and that any day now, he’d call me to his study, hand me a check for $100,000, tell me that all the clothes and jewelry are mine to keep, and tell me to get lost.
But we are married.
So I don’t really know what happens next. For M, that is.
But fuck him.
I know exactly what happens next for me . . .
Anders has purchased a remote island in the Hudson Bay, a thousand miles north of here. He bought it in cash, under a fake name, from the Cree Nation so there’s no paper trail. There is a small house on the island. A generator. A boat. And it’s ours.
He argued that we should leave as soon as possible, in April, after the thaw, but I won’t leave without my daughter, and Ashley deserves to finish school first. I never got my high school diploma. She has a right to get hers. And my love, my reason for living, he agreed.
He’ll be here soon . . . and I can’t wait to see him, to touch him, to hold him, to hear more about this beautiful plan he’s been putting together for us.
I can’t wait to be free to love him, without fear, without looking over my shoulder.
And the kid—Ashley—I’d like to get to know her. I’d like for her to know me now—the person I’ve become since Anders has been a part of my life. I’m the most stable I’ve ever been. I’m not on drugs. I’m not all over the place. Now that I am loved—truly loved, for the first time in my life—maybe I’m strong enough to be someone to her. Someone good. Someone who’s not a fucking mess.
I’d like for us to be friends. Maybe that’s possible now that she’s all grown up. Maybe she could find something about me that she could like. I hope so. I really do.
Anders is here.
Teagan
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ashley
I am lying naked against Julian in the white claw-foot tub in my bathroom, my bare back against his bare front, his arms on the sides of the tub and bubbles covering us like a blanket of clouds. While I slept, he ran the hot water and lit about a hundred votive candles, so the room is warm and soft, bathed in a magical glow that perfectly matches my mood.
The many times I heard Tig in her room having sex, with groans and grunts filtering through the walls, I never imagined that she was experiencing something as beautiful as Julian and I just shared. But then, I doubt she felt about many of those men, if any, the way I feel about Julian. And maybe, I think, that’s the difference between the emptiness I always sensed in our LA bungalow and the feeling of wholeness I’m experiencing now.
In one of her recent diary entries, Tig wrote that Anders touched her like she was loved. She said that his tenderness had the power to soothe the horrors of her life, and now—right now—I understand what she meant by that, because, hunted as I am by Mosier, I should be terrified, yet I’m not. I feel safe. And soothed. And loved.
It would be absurd for Julian to tell me that he loves me, or for me to answer, “I love you, too . . . so much that it’s bursting inside me every moment I’m with you!” but it’s possible to feel loved, even if you’re not certain you’re actually in love. And for me, for now, it’s enough.
I also feel a rare sense of fellowship with my mother, over the ages, through time, despite her passing. I imagine her lying against Anders in her bathtub, as I am lying against Julian now, and I am strangely happy that she knew what it was to be loved by someone. At her funeral, I wondered if anyone had truly loved her. Now I have my answer. Anders did. And I am grateful to him for giving her that gift before she died.
“My mother planned to take me away,” I say, resting my hands under the water on Julian’s thighs as he wraps his arms around me.
“How do you know? She told you?”
I shake my head. “I read it in her diary.”
“Where was she going to take you?”
“To a cabin in Canada,” I say. “With Mosier’s son Anders.”
“What?”
His voice is incredulous, and I twist my neck to catch his eyes. “My mother was in love with him. I think he loved her too.”
“They had an affair?”
“Yes . . . No . . . It was more than that.”
Affair sounds as tawdry and cheap as hookup and has no place between my mother and Anders, or me and Julian, for that matter.
“But she was his—”
“Stepmother,” I say. “Yes. But she was closer in age to Anders than she was to his father.”
“How in the world did they keep it a secret?”
I lean the back of my head against his shoulder and sigh. “I don’t know if they did.”
“Do you think Răumann found out?” asks Julian.
“I don’t know,
” I say. “It would be a motive for him killing her, and I’m more and more certain he did. Kill her. The same way he induced a heart attack in Father Joseph, I’m positive he injected my mother with enough heroin to kill a horse. Because she was clean, Julian. I swear.”
“It would be a motive,” said Julian.
I think of Anders at the funeral. He didn’t have a mark on him.
“No,” I murmur, deep in thought.
“No?”
“No. I don’t think Mosier found out,” I say. “He would’ve beaten Anders to within an inch of his life if he’d known. Once, a long time ago, he found me swimming with his sons and broke Damon’s nose and gave Anders a black eye. If he found out one of them was sleeping with my mother—his wife?—Anders would have spent weeks in the intensive care unit. But he was fine. At the funeral, physically he was fine.”
“Then why did Răumann kill her?”
At some point the terrible truth must have occurred to me, and I chose not to look at it, not to examine it, not to accept it. But now? Safe as I feel in Julian’s arms? I have the strength to admit its truth.
“For me,” I whisper, the awfulness of the words making my eyes brim with tears. I am the reason for my mother’s death. “He killed her a few weeks after my birthday. Mosier killed Tig to pave the way to me.”
“Oh, baby,” he whispers, horror thick in his voice. “You don’t know that.”
“I do,” I say, thinking back to the reading of my mother’s will. My grandparents weren’t surprised about the arrangements and conditions for a life of comfort. Mosier had already spoken to them. He’d planned it all, right down to his visit to my bedroom. In fact, I’d probably already be married to him now if Tig hadn’t insisted that my education be completed. “I know. And I also know that I’d be in his clutches now if it wasn’t for Tig . . . for my mom.”
“How so?”
“She only had one chance to speak publicly from the grave—via her lawyer at the reading of her will. He insisted that it was her final wish for me to finish school. That’s the only reason I was allowed to go back to Blessed Virgin. Don’t you see? If I hadn’t gone back, Father Joseph wouldn’t have been able to help me.”
Tears slide down my cheeks, and I let them because I am learning that sometimes love isn’t in the words we say, but in how we give and what we sacrifice, and in the hundreds of quiet, unsung actions we make on behalf of someone else, someone we care about more than ourselves.
“He was right,” I say, closing my eyes. “Anders said that she loved me, and I didn’t believe him at the time. But now I’m starting to think, well . . . that she did.”
“Of course she did,” says Julian, dropping his lips to my shoulder. He rests there for a moment, and I close my eyes, taking the comfort he offers me so selflessly, letting it wash over me like a warm breeze.
There is no part of me that expects to hear what he says next.
“It was a woman,” he whispers, the words so soft, I almost miss them.
“What?” I murmur, opening my eyes.
“I lost my job over a woman.”
The water swishes around us as I face him. “What do you mean?”
His eyes are haunted, and he stares through me, but then he blinks, shaking his head like he needs to clear it.
His voice is normal when he says, “I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from. You were talking about your mom.”
“I was finished.” I’m anxious that he not shy away from this topic now that he’s actually broached it. “You said it was a woman—that you lost your job over a woman?”
He sighs. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“But you did,” I press. I turn my body around so I’m facing him, kneeling in front of him, so I can look squarely into his eyes. “You can trust me, Julian. Tell me what happened. What woman? When?”
He takes a deep breath and holds it, reaching for my shoulders as he exhales. For a moment I think he’s going to pull me forward for a kiss, but then I realize that he’s moving me back to where I was. He turns me around so that I’m sitting in the V of his spread legs with my back against his front.
“I’ll tell you,” he says, resting his arms on the sides of the tub. “But it’ll be easier like this.”
I lean back against him, my head on his shoulder. He turns his head just slightly so that his lips are near my ear.
“I wanted to be in the Secret Service all my life,” he begins. “At Halloween the other boys would dress up like zombies and superheroes. I’d put on a black suit, black tie, white shirt, and sunglasses, and place a fake com in my ear.” He chuckles softly. “My dad used to have this picture on his desk. It was Noelle on a tricycle and me running behind her in full gear, pretending she was the president and I was part of the motorcade security. I even taped an American flag to her handlebars. She was called Madam President quite a lot in those days.”
I smile at his memory, reaching for his hands and putting them on my stomach under my breasts. I keep mine on top of his so we’re holding each other.
“I studied criminal justice at Granite State College. I was accepted into the Secret Service program and went down to Georgia for training the August after I graduated. Ten weeks of basic criminal investigation down there and eighteen weeks of special agent training outside DC. By March, I was sworn in as an active agent and assigned to the L Street office in DC. All my instructors called me promising. I was on my way.”
“Go on,” I say, caressing his hands under the water.
“You have to understand. For most agents, working in the field for a few years is standard. It’s investigative work, working with more seasoned agents. Actually it’s pretty humdrum stuff, but it’s almost like on-the-job training. You learn the culture of the agency, the way things work. You might not get your first protective assignment for years. You shouldn’t get your first protective assignment for years. I learned that the hard way.” He takes a deep breath and pulls his hands away. “Are you getting cold? The water’s cooling off.”
“I can add some hot,” I say.
“Nah,” he answers. “Let’s go back to bed, huh?”
As he pushes me away gently, I feel him stand up behind me and hear him step out of the tub. His hand appears before my face, and I take it, letting him help me out of the deep tub. He smiles down at me in the candlelight, his eyes tender but sad. “You’re so beautiful, Ash.”
I let my eyes trail down his glistening body—the muscles of his chest, the deep V of muscle that leads to his penis, and his long, strong legs. When I look back up at him, I smile back. “You are too.”
“Make love to me,” he says, his hands landing on my hips. He pulls me closer so that my breasts press against his chest and his growing erection pulses against the triangle of soft, blonde curly hair between my legs.
I lean back. “Tell me the rest first.”
He groans, letting me go. Reaching over my head for two fluffy white towels, he hands me one, then wraps the other around his waist, tucking the loose end in.
“Come on, then,” he says, taking my hand as I secure my own towel under my arms. “You sit. I’ll light the fire, okay?”
I sit down on the couch, curling up in a corner and watching the muscles in his back ripple as he leans down, removes the screen, and strikes a match to the newspaper under the grate. It catches quickly as he starts talking again.
“Typhoid is spread through contaminated food so agents on assignment in South America are not supposed to eat the same things at the same place, but in May, two months after I finished training, typhoid ran through a detail of agents in Cartagena, just before the VP was supposed to arrive on a diplomatic visit. Eight agents down at once. They called the DC field office in a panic, and eight guys were sent down. Among them? Me. How? Because the guy I was assigned to work with—Javier Fuentes—was fluent in Spanish. He was chosen to go down there right away and decided I should go too. He said it would be a great experience for me. He essentially got me
on the transport at the last minute.
“I had stars in my eyes. I mean, I was probably two years out from an international posting and four more from a protective detail. And there I was, going down to Colombia with guys way more experienced than me. I was hot shit that day. I was on top of the world.”
He stops poking at the fire and turns to look at me. “Move over.”
I do, and he takes my place in the corner of the couch, resting his legs on the coffee table and pulling me back against his chest. He kisses the top of my head. “I had no business being down there.”
“For the record?” I say, snuggling against him as he takes a blanket off the back of the couch and pulls it over us. “I think you’re still pretty hot shit.”
“Is that right?”
“Absolutely.”
“I want to fuck you, Ash,” he murmurs, biting on my earlobe.
“Then finish your story,” I say, a thrill shooting through me from the combination of his dirty mouth and sharp teeth.
“Okay. So there I am in Cartagena, the youngest agent by far. I’ve never been out of the country. Hell, I’ve only been an agent for two months. Honestly I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.” He huffs out a breath. “There’s no field office in Cartagena—the only one in Colombia is in Bogotá—so we check into the hotel and meet the security detail, mostly made up of Marines assigned to the veep’s visit. We go over the agenda in the hotel conference room, but the meeting breaks up by eight. I assume we’re all going to get a good night’s sleep, but one of the Marines is old friends with Javi, and they start talking about this club we need to go to.
“And I realize that we’re all going. And hell, I’m twenty-one, and the women there were crazy beautiful, and sure, yeah, I was up for some liquor and dancing. Why not?
“We get to the club, and it’s dark and loud, and the whiskey starts flowing. I’m hammered two hours later, and I see Javi and this other agent, Mark, talking to these two girls at a table. Then I notice there’s one more woman at the table, but her eyes are down. She’s dressed like the other two, but she’s not talking, not touching her drink. And you know—God, I was so stupid—I thought she looked young. I thought she looked . . . lost.
