by Elise Noble
Alaric didn’t mind. It was easier to fly the horse to Virginia than deal with his soon-to-be in-laws.
The downside was that Bradley took over, but at least he didn’t try to invite five hundred people and draw up a contract to have the photos featured in a national magazine the way Beth’s mother had. And Emmy did her best to keep Bradley under control. She also agreed to let them hold the ceremony at Riverley, which wasn’t Alaric’s first choice of venue, but Beth loved the little sun temple thing in the corner of the west lawn, and who was he to disagree?
Originally, Beth’s parents had planned to make the trip to Virginia, but last week her sister, Priscilla, had announced she was divorcing her new husband to marry Beth’s ex, and Mr. and Mrs. Stafford-Lyons cancelled to deal with the fallout. Was Beth upset by the news? No, she’d laughed her pretty head off.
The wedding had grown a little—thirty or so people and their plus-ones, or in Judd’s case plus-two because he’d decided he was bringing not only Gemma but Nada or whatever her name was as well. Both women were still living in his house, along with Nada’s baby daughter. Nada had also borrowed his surname four months ago, and so far, she didn’t appear to have given it back. Even the baby had a passport naming her as Indamira Millais-Scott. Alaric wasn’t quite sure what was going on there, but he did know that he was in no position to judge, especially in light of his plans for tonight.
“Everybody, take your places,” Bradley instructed. “We need to get this show on the road.” He closed his eyes, crossed his fingers, and tilted his head heavenwards. “Please don’t let the horse poop in the aisle.”
Alaric and Ravi walked slowly towards the sun temple. The little domed building looked centuries old, a relic from another civilisation, but it hadn’t been there eight years ago. Bradley had planted a grand piano beside it, and Asher was tinkling away on the keys.
“Thanks for doing this,” Alaric said to Ravi. “It means a lot.”
“Beth’s your unicorn.” Ravi smiled the smile that had drawn Alaric in on the night they first met. “Maybe one day, you’ll return the favour.”
“I’d like to think so.”
The officiant took his position under the rose arch, and the guests took their seats. Emmy stood to the side, waiting to hold Chaucer once Beth had ridden down the aisle.
And there they were. His two girls. Beth in a cream satin dress astride her gleaming bay horse with Rune walking alongside. The younger McLain had skipped school to play bridesmaid, but her headmistress didn’t mind because Rune had studied half the syllabus by herself during summer break anyway.
At the sun temple, Beth slid off Chaucer into Alaric’s arms, and it was all he could do to make himself let go while Rune rearranged the bottom of the dress. He folded back Beth’s veil and looked into those beautiful blue eyes. Was he nervous? No, just happy.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of—”
Frantic neighing interrupted the officiant, and it wasn’t coming from Chaucer. Emmy’s horse wasn’t the culprit either—for once, Stan-slash-Satan was grazing peacefully in the distance. Suddenly, a white streak rounded the corner of the house, followed by a sprinting cowgirl waving her arms. Oh, fuck. Alaric stared in horror as the runaway horse bore down on them. Guests were already scattering, and half of them had guns in their hands.
“Don’t shoot!” he yelled. “Don’t anybody shoot!”
Beth’s mouth dropped open as the grey horse skidded to a halt in front of her, ribbons of pristine turf curling from under his hooves.
“Polo?”
The one and only. Beth had his name tattooed over her heart, right above Alaric’s. The ink was still fresh on the latter—she’d revealed that surprise two weeks ago when he got home after signing yet another new contract on behalf of Sirius, the sly little minx.
Now Polo nuzzled her, leaving a streak of yellow goop up the front of her dress.
“Oh my gosh, it’s him. It’s really him.”
Alaric, the vows, the entire wedding was forgotten as Beth hugged her old horse. It had taken Sirius months to find that nag. None of the transfer-of-ownership records for that breed registry were computerised, and Ravi had spent three nights going through filing cabinets in the dark while Judd kept watch outside the building. Hartsfield Napoleon II, also known as Polo, had been renamed Ghost of the Ages and sold as an eventer to a teenager in Belgium. After she’d fallen off a number of times, he’d bounced around the world and, as far as Naz could ascertain, eventually ended up in Ohio. Frickin’ Ohio. Emmy had gone to Columbus with Alaric because he didn’t know one end of an equine from the other, and she’d concluded it was the right horse. By then, Polo was festering in a field, having refused to go over a single fence with his latest owner, and Alaric bought him for a song. The horse just gnashed his teeth as the deal was concluded. Harriet, a new friend who happened to own a horse farm, had picked him up and hidden him until today. She’d been only too happy to help after Alaric promised her the fifty-thousand-dollar reward that came from returning Emerald to the Becker Museum.
“It was meant to be a surprise,” Alaric muttered.
“Oh, it is. It definitely is. My goodness, he’s got so fat. And his coat’s much lighter.”
By then, Beth had mascara streaked all down her face, and Alaric’s black suit was covered in white horse hair.
“Happy wedding day, my sweet.”
Beth clapped her hands to her cheeks. “The wedding! I’m so sorry.”
At least Alaric knew where he stood in terms of his soon-to-be wife’s affections. Luckily, she had enough love to go around. A red-faced Harriet moved Polo to the side to stand with Chaucer, and Alaric finally had his Mrs. McLain.
And an hour later, he had her again, this time bent over the saddle rack in the Riverley tack room, still in her wedding dress. Alaric had learned his lesson from Beth’s sister and locked the door while he fucked his new wife harder, harder, until she screamed not only his name but several obscenities she’d never utter in public.
Four months ago, on the day they got together, they’d confessed their darkest fantasies to each other. Three each. A wish list of filth to work their way through. Alaric’s items were all checked off, but he still owed one to Beth. Tonight he’d pay up. She just didn’t know it yet. No, she sat patiently with her legs spread while Alaric cleaned up the mess he’d made, and then they staggered outside so she could feed carrots to her horses.
“This is the best gift ever.”
“Let’s see if you still say that tomorrow,” Alaric murmured.
“Sorry?”
“Never mind.”
The reception—or the after-party, as Bradley insisted on calling it—would have been fun on any other day. Good wine, good food, good friends. But tonight, Alaric couldn’t wait to escape. He finally got his wish as darkness fell and the limo he’d hired pulled up near the rear terrace. Tonight, they’d be staying at Hillside House. Emmy and Black had offered their private island for a honeymoon, but Alaric had arranged the flights for the following week, first to Lorelei Cay and then on to Italy to visit the vineyard he part-owned. Having just got Polo back, Alaric didn’t think Beth would thank him if he tore her away for a vacation right afterwards. Next summer, they planned to take a month off and drive Route 66 with Rune—their first proper trip as a family. Alaric looked forward to the future now. The past was the past, and there the bad memories would stay.
Tonight, Rune was staying at Riverley, and she rushed over to give them both a hug. She wasn’t quite back to her old self after Emerald did her worst, but she was heading in the right direction thanks to a good therapist and the school she loved. Plus she seemed to be getting along well with Sky, despite their vastly different personalities. Alaric wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“See you tomorrow,” she said. “Love you both.”
“Love you too, sweetheart.”
Beth ran off to the stables to say a last goodbye to the ho
rses, and Emmy sidled up to Alaric and straightened his jacket.
“I’m glad you got your girl.”
“So am I.” He removed the envelope she’d surreptitiously slipped into his inside pocket. “What’s this?”
“The deed to your house.”
“What? You can’t…”
“Just did. Now sod off and make your wife happy.”
She didn’t look back as she took Black’s arm and walked past Rafael into Riverley Hall. Typical Emmy. Kind yet bitchy at the same time. Alaric was still chuckling softly when Beth’s arm wrapped around his waist.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. Let’s go home.”
They climbed into the back seat of the limo, but rather than gliding straight down the driveway, it made a pit stop at the front of the house. Ravi slipped out of the shadows and climbed into the car with them.
Beth’s face was an adorable mask of confusion.
“What’s going on?”
“You had three wishes, sweetheart.”
It took her a few moments, but she finally understood.
“Oh!”
If she balked, Ravi would leave. He and Alaric had discussed this at length, and Ravi was up for a little experimentation if Beth was.
But Beth didn’t balk. The look of shock faded, and her eyes gleamed.
“Oh…”
Alaric leaned forward and tapped on the privacy screen. The limo moved off. He lifted Beth’s dress, pushing the layers of silk and lace up to her waist, and ran his hand along her thigh. Ravi mirrored him on the other side.
“Ohhhhh…”
CHAPTER 47 - EMMY
I HUGGED THE darkness at the edge of the window, watching the scene on the driveway below.
“Why did Ravi just get into the limo with Alaric and Beth?”
Black flicked one spaghetti strap off my shoulder.
“I’ll give you three guesses,” he said. “‘Three’ being the operative word.”
Oh my freaking fuck. Those dirty fuckers! Alaric, yeah, it didn’t surprise me, or Ravi either, but Beth? She’d always seemed so prim.
“That’s an, uh, interesting development.”
Black’s filthy laugh vibrated against my ear as one hand crept up my thigh.
“That’s one way of putting it. And speaking of interesting developments, did you see the look on Rafael’s face as we walked inside?”
Yeah, I had, and it’d been weird. A cross between anger and sorrow.
“It was kind of…intense. I’ve never seen it before.”
“I have.”
“Really?”
“In the mirror, every time you got a new boyfriend and I kicked myself for not having the guts to tell you how I felt.”
I closed my eyes and replayed the scene on the terrace. I’d gotten good at that over the years. Each party I went to, I took mental snapshots and stitched them all together in my head. Who had been in Rafael’s field of vision? Dan and Ethan, Harriet and Stéphane, Bradley, two waiters, Asher and… Oh, fuck.
“Sky?”
“It’s going to be a fun few years.”
“Bloody hell.”
“How do you feel about a pool?”
“No. No way. You’re not running a pool on Sky and Rafael.”
“So we’ll just keep this to ourselves?”
Too damn right. “Yes, we’ll keep this to ourselves.”
BONUS CHAPTER
From time to time, I like to write extra bits that go with my novels. These are FREE to members of my reader group.
If you’d like to find out what happened when Rafael met Brock Keaton, you can get a bonus chapter by following this link:
www.elise-noble.com/sh4dows
WHAT'S COMING NEXT?
My next book will be A Vampire in Vegas, the first book in the Planes series…
When nightclub hostess Genevieve Pelletier finds singer Serenity Strange’s body in a storeroom at Club Dead, the search begins to find her killer…but it won’t be easy. The list of suspects is longer than the line of beautiful people waiting to get in.
Detective Jack Callaghan has earned a reputation for solving the unsolvable, but this case may be beyond even his formidable skills. The deeper he digs, the darker the trail gets. Serenity’s death is just the tip of the blood-soaked iceberg.
Can Jack and Vee solve the murder? Or will they end up on the killer’s hitlist?
For more details: www.elise-noble.com/vampire
The next Blackwood Security novel will be Hallie’s story, Pretties in Pink…
Five years ago, Mila Carmody disappeared from her bed, and that was just the beginning. Six little girls, swallowed by darkness, never to be seen alive again. For Micah Ganaway, it might be the end. Arrested for child abduction, he’s already been tried in the court of public opinion and found guilty. The lead detective assures him the trial is just a formality.
But private investigator Hallie Chastain isn’t so sure. On paper, Ganaway makes a good suspect, but in person… Well, that’s a different matter.
For more details: www.elise-noble.com/pink
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END OF BOOK STUFF
All good things come to an end, and this is the end of Alaric’s trilogy, although he’ll still pop up from time to time in other books. But it’s just the beginning of Sky’s story. She’ll be around for a while :) Asher and Rafael? They’ll be back too, and we’ll see how things go…
When I wrote Shadows, there was a bit of an academy trend happening in the book world, mainly bully romances, but I find those a bit of an oxymoron so I thought it would be fun to write my own book set in a school but with a dude who isn’t an asshole. Shadows was the result.
Over 650,000 works of art were looted by the Nazis, and many of them are still missing. In 2013, a billion dollars worth of art was discovered in the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a WWII art dealer who bought some paintings at knock-down prices from Jews fleeing the Nazi regime and just plain stole others. Picasso, Matisse, Renoir… He had pieces by them all. Hildebrand Gurlitt double-crossed everyone—both the Nazis and his fellow Jews. Yes, he saved valuable paintings from being destroyed, even while acting as an official art buyer for Hitler, but in the end, he was corrupted by money and kept many of the treasures for himself.
Cornelius, by his own account, felt it was his duty to protect the paintings as his father had done, from thieves, from the authorities, and from their original owners. German restitution laws relating to looted art are complex, and few pieces get returned, even though many are believed to be sitting in the dusty backrooms of the country’s museums. All things considered, it doesn’t seem outrageous that a civic-minded soul might take matters into their own hands and start righting old wrongs, but like Hildebrand, Saul Rosenberg got suckered in by greed and started down a dark path…
Next up in the Blackwood Securit
y series will be Hallie’s story. Remember Mila Carmody, the kidnapped girl mentioned in Black is My Heart? Well, it’s time to find out what happened to her…
But in the meantime, we’re stepping over to the supernatural side with the fifth instalment of the Electi series—Judged—plus two linked books set in the same world. Time for me to carry on writing…
Elise :)
OTHER BOOKS BY ELISE NOBLE
The Blackwood Security Series
For the Love of Animals (Nate & Carmen - prequel)
Black is My Heart (Diamond & Snow - prequel)
Pitch Black
Into the Black
Forever Black
Gold Rush
Gray is My Heart
Neon (novella)
Out of the Blue
Ultraviolet
Glitter (novella)
Red Alert
White Hot
Sphere (novella)
The Scarlet Affair
Spirit (novella)
Quicksilver
The Girl with the Emerald Ring
Red After Dark
When the Shadows Fall
Pretties in Pink (TBA)
The Blackwood Elements Series
Oxygen
Lithium
Carbon
Rhodium
Platinum
Lead
Copper
Bronze
Nickel
Hydrogen (TBA)
