Magnificent Bastard

by Lili Valente

  On the down low, of course.

  Bash: Nah, that’s okay.

  But thank you. And Aidan…

  Aidan: Yes?

  Bash: She was a lot more than my assistant.

  Aidan: I know.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  The sun is brighter than I remember. And it’s hot as fucking hell.

  As I emerge from the subway stop near Prospect Park, I wish very much that I’d worn shorts instead of jeans. But that’s one of the hazards of not leaving the house in several weeks except for butt crack of dawn morning runs and late night foraging for alcohol and ice cream—one forgets that summer in the city is all about misery and sweat pouring from your balls.

  I’m contemplating buying some shorts to spare myself a case of swamp crotch and hoping Aidan got a table inside this stupid trendy brunch place instead of out on the sidewalk facing the park when a voice straight out of my dreams calls my best friend’s name.

  I see Aidan first.

  He’s standing on the sidewalk, turned toward the park so he can’t see me coming. He smiles as he lifts a hand to the woman on horseback, guiding her mount along behind a row of other Sunday morning riders, down one of the many trails running through the park.

  He doesn’t look in the least bit surprised to see Penny.

  My Penny, looking even more fucking beautiful than I remember in a white tank top and a flirty little red skirt that’s completely inappropriate for horseback riding—I spent summers growing up riding at my grandmother’s farm upstate and know a thing or two about saddle chafing—and a big grin for my best friend.

  I’m already smelling a rat when she reaches down and pulls that inappropriate little skirt up on one side, sending a shock of awareness bolting through my body as she bares some brightly colored, sexy new ink on the thigh where Mr. Whiskers used to be.

  “Look,” she says, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of a taxi rushing down the otherwise quiet, Sunday morning street. “All the swelling has gone down! And you can’t see any of the old tattoo. I’m so in love with it!”

  “It looks great,” Aidan calls back, grinning like a fucking lying asshole who tattoos his best friend’s heartbreaker, ex-assistant behind his back. “I’ve got a table for us in the garden. Just come on through when you’re done.”

  “Will do,” she says. “I just need to…” She trails off, spine going stiff as she tilts her head, lifting her adorable nose into the air. Then, like she’s scented Magnificent Bastard on the wind, she turns, shifting in her saddle to gaze over her shoulder, looking straight at me.

  And for a second, the world stands still and there’s just her and me, two people who have a connection that sizzles across time and space and humidity-soaked summer air. Two people who share a secret no one else knows because no one else understands the way it is between us when our clothes are off and her breath is my breath and there are no more questions, just answers, and every single one is her name.

  Penny. My Penny, who ripped my heart out of my chest, hacked it into pieces with a machete, and threw it into the Dead Sea, which has nine times the salt concentration of a normal sea, which is of course why she chose it because she wanted me to hurt nine times more.

  And just like that, the spell is broken and time jerks back into motion as I remember that her secrets were all lies.

  The friendly light in her eyes goes out, her mouth tips down at the edges, and her lips part to say something I’m sure I’m not going to enjoy hearing. I’m working up an I-don’t-care-how-beautiful-you-are-or-how-much-I-miss-you-you-are-fucking-dead-to-me glare and a few choice words of my own when the cop across the street shouts—

  “Hey, you! Use the fucking crosswalk!”

  —to a jay-walking hipster stepping off the curb.

  But the hipster doesn’t reverse direction and the cop, out in the heat in head-to-toe polyester, assigned to police people too stupid to use a crosswalk, is clearly at the end of his rope.

  Face going beat red, the officer lifts the air horn in his hand overhead and blares it loud enough to wake the dead.

  A second later, the peaceful morning is shattered by the shrieks of frightened horses and the startled cries of the riders across the street trying to keep their seats as their mounts twitch, dance off the trail, and rear back on their hind legs. But Penny’s horse doesn’t do any of those things. Penny’s horse screams like it’s been thrown into a vat of boiling oil and bolts across the park like a bat out of hell.

  I watch, my heart lurching into my throat, as she’s almost thrown. She slides off the saddle to the right, but at the last minute, she grabs onto the saddle horn and locks her legs tight around the horse’s middle, hanging on for dear life as the terrified animal streaks away through the trees.

  Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m sprinting into the street, earning another shout from the officer policing the crosswalk.

  But I don’t stop to tell him he’s a fucking idiot or that I’m coming back to beat the shit out of him if anything happens to Penny because of his stupid air horn. I’m too busy jumping the fence near the trail, running across the grass, and snatching the reins from an older man who has just slid to the ground beside his horse, looking grateful to be alive.

  “I’ll bring him back,” I assure the man before swinging up into the saddle and digging my heels into the horse’s sides, spurring the well-fed beast after Penny.

  Leaning into the wind, I urge the animal on with my legs, applying pressure behind his barrel until we’re flying along beneath the trees, following the divots Penny’s horse left behind in the grass. It only takes a few seconds for Penny’s horse, and Penny, who is still clinging to the horse’s side, to come into view.

  But those few seconds are enough to make me feel like I’m having a heart attack. My chest is tight, my ribs squeeze, and I break out in an all over cold sweat as the reality that Penny could be stomped to pieces by a spooked horse at any moment penetrates with enough force to chill me to the bone.

  She could die and I will never get to see her smile again, never get to look into her eyes and feel that connection I’ve never felt with anyone else, never get to tell her how much it hurt to see her with Phillip, but that I love her anyway. That I’m always going to love her, from now until the day they put me in the ground because she’s it for me. My one, the one who has ruined me for all other women.

  “Please,” I beg, breath coming faster as my horse gains ground.

  Please let me get to her in time.

  Please let me get her off that horse.

  Please let me get her safe in my arms and figure out a way to hold her there because I know that once I touch her, I’m never going to want to let her go.

  My thoughts become a constant prayer, a fevered, incessant mantra begging the horse and the universe and any gods out there who have pity on poor lovesick bastards to let this be okay. Let me make it okay. Somehow. Because with Penny’s head inches from flashing hooves and her life on the line, my rules don’t seem so fucking important anymore.

  Fuck the rules. Fuck no more second chances. Fuck one and done.

  I just want Penny. I want to find a way to forgive her and be forgiven and make this work because nothing works without her.

  “Please, please, please,” I mutter as I pull up alongside her horse and lean over in the saddle, reaching for her lost reins while fighting to keep my own seat.

  I am not a cowboy or a stunt rider or a member of the Cirque de Soleil’s equestrian troupe. I am not a knight in shining armor or a prince who lives to save maidens whose horses have gone wild and run into the forest. But at that moment, I channel them all. I become something braver and better because I need Penny to be safe more than I need anything else.

  And as I grab hold of the reins and pull our horses to a swift stop at the edge of Prospect Park Lake, I realize that this is what it means to be someone’s Prince Charming. It means putting another person ahead of yourself and your ego and all the other bullshit.
It means giving everything you have to protect the one you love.

  But unfortunately, not even Prince Charming can protect against the laws of physics. An object in motion is inclined to stay in motion and apparently Penny’s arms must have run out of clinging power.

  As the horse grinds to a halt, Penny keeps moving, losing her grip on the saddle and flying out across the lake to land with a splash.

  One second I have a scandalous view up her skirt as she soars through the air; the next she’s under the water, sinking out of sight.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Vaulting out of the saddle, I run into the lake without bothering to chuck my shoes, scared to death that Penny’s hit her head on something beneath the surface and is going to drown.

  But by the time I near the place where she went under—charging into water that reaches the bottom of my ribs—she’s breaking the surface, sputtering and coughing and wonderfully, perfectly alive.

  “What the hell are you doing here,” she spits, coughing as she swipes water from her face and struggles to find her feet.

  “Saving your life. What does it look like?” I grab her around the waist and drag her into the shallows until the water laps around our knees and something deep in my bones melts with relief that she’s all right.

  Still whole, still breathing, still Penny.

  And still angry with me for some reason, judging by the glare she shoots my way and the hands that grab my wrists with enough force to snap the tendons of a lesser man. “Let me go, Bash. I don’t need your help.”

  “Oh, really?” I hold tight, something primal inside of me refusing to let go. “Because it looked like you were on a runaway horse.”

  “And now I’m in a lake,” she shouts, “with the world’s biggest asshole. I’d rather be on the horse!”

  “I’m the world’s biggest asshole? Me?” My brows furrow into the world’s deepest frown. “You’re the world’s biggest asshole. I saw you kissing Phillip. I saw your fucking tongue in his mouth and it was so disgusting I still have fucking nightmares about it. But I still tried to save your life because I can’t—”

  “And I saw your tongue in my mother’s mouth,” she shoots back, sending an unexpected ripple of shock through my well-earned rage. “I saw you holding her while she was wearing your shirt and nothing else! I saw you kiss her just like Phillip kissed her and even though she swore she kissed you and you wanted nothing to do with it, I don’t believe her!”

  She pulls in a rough breath as her eyes begin to shine. “Because I saw it, Bash. I saw it and it sure as hell didn’t look like you were putting up much of a fight.”

  “I was in shock!” My thoughts click madly as my brain begins to put together a hypothesis, a wonderful hypothesis that might mean all isn’t lost, after all.

  “In shock for five minutes?” she counters, scowling at me with a ferocity that would be cute if she wasn’t clearly so upset.

  “It wasn’t five minutes! It was ten seconds. Fifteen tops.”

  “Liar,” she sobs, shoving at my chest. “You’re such a liar.”

  “I’m not a liar. Maybe it seemed like five minutes, but it wasn’t, Penny. Penny, listen to me,” I beg, holding tight to her waist as she struggles to get free and I fight to get through to her. “I swear, it was less than thirty seconds and your mom is telling the truth. I yelled at her after. I was totally repulsed and traumatized and if I could wipe the memory from my mind, I would do it in a heartbeat. I wanted no part of that.”

  A tremor of doubt flashes across her angry face. “That’s not true.”

  “It is true,” I assure her, before adding in a softer voice, “But clearly you thought otherwise. Is that why you did…the thing with Phillip?”

  “It wasn’t a thing,” she said, swiping away the water seeping from her soaked hair. “It was a kiss. One kiss, to show you what it feels like to have your heart go rotten inside your chest and the person you trust, the person you care about, your very best friend, turn on you in the worst way imaginable.”

  “But, I—”

  “Seriously,” she snaps, her cheeks flushing red. “The worst way imaginable, Bash! I can’t imagine anything more horrible than running down to the beach to save my mother before she drowns herself only to find you kissing her. You! The only one I ever—The only one—” She cuts off with a huff and a sniff before pressing her lips into a thin, troubled line. “You know. You know what you were.”

  “No, I don’t,” I say, my grip gentling on her waist. “Because I got scared and ran like a coward and then you pushed me away and then…”

  I shake my head. “Then this insanity happened and I never got to find out what I was.” I draw her closer, heart skipping a beat when she lets me. “I never got to tell you what you were, either. What you are because there’s nothing past tense about what I feel for you.”

  Her throat works as she lifts doubt-filled eyes to mine. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I haven’t said anything yet,” I argue, pressing on before she can reply. “And you don’t have to believe me. You can believe Bash from the night of the bachelor party, the one who went back to the cottage and spent hours writing you a letter telling you how sorry he was for running, how much he wants to be worthy of you, and how he loves you and wants you and needs you like nothing else.”

  Penny blinks faster, her beautiful mouth trembling. “No, he didn’t.”

  “Yes he did,” I say, throat tight. “I still have that letter in my desk. We can go back to my place right now and I’ll put it straight into your hands and you’ll see that I’m telling the truth.”

  “You…” Her chin dimples and her blinking grows even faster. “You love me? Really?”

  “I do.” I cup her face in my hands, knowing that there is nothing more precious or irreplaceable than this soggy woman standing in front of me. “I love you. I love you so much I’ve been a fucking miserable wreck without you.”

  “Me too,” she says, tears sliding down her cheeks. “I’ve been trying so hard to be fine and to live my life and not be hurt and learn to ride horses and fly kites and be with other people, but I couldn’t. It just hurt so much.”

  “I know.” I lean my head closer to hers. “But it doesn’t have to. Not anymore.”

  She shakes her head, pulling back before I can kiss her. “Maybe not today. But what about tomorrow, Bash?” Her brow furrows. “What about when you decide you don’t like the burden of knowing that another person’s happiness is all wrapped up in you? What happens then? When the stress of knowing that I’m miserable without you starts to itch and chafe and you want to run?”

  “The only thing that chafes me is not having you in my life,” I insist, holding her troubled gaze, willing her to believe me. “Seriously, Penny. I’m never going to forget these past two months without you. It’s like all the air went out of the room, the sun out of the world. There was no reason to get out of bed in the morning, nothing to look forward to. My life was a fart without a cute animal attached.”

  “But that’s when you thought I didn’t want you,” she says, not the slightest bit derailed by my attempt at a joke. “What about when I’m just boring old Penny who you’re used to seeing every day?”

  “You’re never boring.”

  “Yes, I am,” she insists. “I’m pro level at being boring.”

  “Do you know why I ran that day in the cottage,” I say, knowing now is the time to confess everything and pray it’s enough to get her back.

  I wait until she shakes her head, before I continue in a husky voice, “I ran because I kept thinking about how hot it would be to get you pregnant. To see you big with my baby, your belly a sign to the whole world that you belong to me. For keeps.”

  Her eyes go wide. “No way.”

  “Yes way.” I slide my arms around her waist, drawing her back against me. “I was possessed by this overpowering lust to get you knocked up and it scared the shit out of me.”

  “That is pretty scary,” she say
s, breath rushing out as I cup her ass in my hands. But this time, she doesn’t pull away. “Why do you think that happened?”

  “At the time, I had no idea.” My cock thickens in my soaked jeans as her hips brush against mine. “But after having some time to dwell on it, I think my body was just a few steps ahead of my brain. My cock realized that you’re it, the only woman I’m ever going to want to make a baby with, and well…he’s never been known for his caution or forethought. He’s more action oriented.”

  She bites her bottom lip. “That’s why he’s called the Incredible Bulk.”

  My lips curve. “Not anymore. I decided only assholes name their dicks.”

  “I like it,” she says, arms coming around my neck. “It’s ridiculous, but I like it.”

  “Yeah?” I dig my fingers into her ass, fighting a groan as she rocks her hips forward, nudging against where I’m hard and aching, the Incredible Bulk desperate to be back between her legs, where he belongs.

  “Yeah.” Her eyes darken as she runs a tender hand down my cheek. “I like just about everything about you. More than like really.”

  “Is this where you tell me that you love me, too?”

  “Yes, Sebastian Prince,” she whispers, pressing up on her toes, bringing her face closer to mine. “This is where I tell you that I love you, too.”

  And then I kiss her. My lips cover hers and my tongue slips into the sweetness of her mouth and I hold her tight against me and just like that everything is right with the world.

  It’s so fucking right. The only way it could be better is if she were naked and underneath me, her body gripping my cock while I show her how much I’ve missed her. How much I need her.

  “I want you so much.” I cup her breast through her wet clothes, groaning as her nipple pulls tight beneath my touch and her breath rushes out in this sexy little gasp.

  “Then take me,” she says, fingers working at the close of my jeans. “There’s no one but the horses here to see.”