Maybe James finally suffocated her and all of this was her brain struggling against a lack of oxygen.
It was the only explanation she could think of that justified him just leaving her.
It’s because I told him I loved him, she realized with sickening horror.
He left because she’d broken her promise.
He’d given her a chance the night before to recant, to take it back, but she hadn’t.
So, he’d left.
“He left because I love him,” she breathed out loud, the words coming out without any consent from her, each one torn and bloody spilling from her lips. “The thought was so horrible that he couldn’t stand to be with me anymore.”
“What? No!” Elise hurried towards her. “No, that isn’t it at all. I’m sure of it.”
“That’s it,” Cora croaked. “The idea of loving me back ... the thought of being loved by someone like me, someone he couldn’t even stand the idea of having children with ... of course he left.”
“You stop that this minute!” Elise grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “You listen to me, Cora Elizabeth Harris, you get that nonsense out of your head.”
She tried to fight the hold off, but her mother’s grip only tightened.
“Why?” she snapped. “It’s true. I repulsed him.”
“He loves you!” Elise shouted back at her. “I heard him say so with my own ears. Gio,” she turned her head to where her husband sat. “Tell her.”
Drink halfway to his mouth, Gio paused. His brown eyes met Cora’s over the rim. The harsh lines around his mouth softened even as he sighed.
“He left because he didn’t want to hurt you anymore,” he grumbled. “He’s gone back to his ship.”
“And?” Elise prompted.
Gio rolled his eyes heavenward. “He may have mentioned something about loving you.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks, an overpowering rush of relief and desperation.
“I have to see him,” she blurted. “I need to hear him say he doesn’t want me to my face.”
“But, Cora—”
Unwilling to waste another second, Cora sprinted back down the hall. She grabbed the first set of keys off the hook inside the closet, and a pair of rubber boots, and threw herself out into the early morning frost.
There was no stopping her.
She broken every law in the book as she pushed the gas pedal down to the carpet. Her knuckles blazed white around the wheel, a death grip that matched the chaotic beat in her chest.
Please be there.
Please be there.
In the rearview mirror, lights flashed, the familiar blue and red of a patrol car. Cora barely shot it a second glance as she swerved around a bend, passing the sign marking the loading docks up ahead.
Sirens wailed behind her.
A gruff, male voice through the police cruiser speakers ordered her to pull over.
But she could see where she needed to go, the exit leading to James’s ship. Once she saw it, everything would be okay.
Tires skidded on gravel as she came to a fishtailing stop. She kicked open her door and ran the last twenty feet to where the parking lot ended at the ramps.
There was no ship.
The entire bay sat empty and too wide overlooking miles of ocean.
But no ship.
No James.
He was gone.
He’d left.
A sob escaped her that was swallowed hungrily by the wind and the thump of running feet behind her. Hands grabbed her. A voice shouted in her ear, but it all bled into the white noise of realization that he’d left without her and he wasn’t coming back.
Someone at the police station had called her father.
Maybe they’d run the name on the plate.
Maybe someone there knew her.
She didn’t care.
But he appeared in the doorway of the room someone had stuffed her into, beautifully groomed in a dark suit, his face shaven, his hair glossed back. He limped slightly as he crossed to take the seat next to her.
“He’s gone,” she whispered, her lips feeling oddly numb around the words. “His ship’s gone.”
Giovanni’s answer was his arm slipping around her. He pulled her into his chest.
Cora dissolved into tears, deep, gut wrenching sobs that wracked through her entire body.
Her father held her until there was nothing left and she was too exhausted for anymore. He kissed the top of her head.
“Tell me,” he murmured.
She sniffled. “I love him.”
Giovanni inhaled deep enough that her head lifted with his chest. “Okay.”
She didn’t ask what that meant.
“What happened to your leg?” she asked at long last.
Giovanni grunted. “Ask your husband when we find him.”
Cora lifted her head off his shoulder and peered at him. “I know you didn’t do it, the things he says you did to his sister. I don’t know who did, but—”
“Sal.”
Cora blinked. “What?”
Her father hesitated, as if regretting his decision to speak. But she was watching him, not giving him the chance to recant.
“Sal did those things to Crow’s sister,” he repeated with a grudging huff. “He and his men.”
“No...” Her hands went to her mouth, horror lancing through her. “No,” she repeated. “He wouldn’t. He taught me to defend myself. He taught me how never to get taken advantage of.”
“Probably because he’d done it to so many other girls,” he mused. “But it’s done. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
But it did matter.
It mattered a lot.
Sylvester had always been like a second father to her.
He’d raised her.
He’d protected her.
“Does James know?”
Giovanni nodded. “It’s been dealt with.”
“Dealt with ... oh! Oh!” she gasped, realization smacking her upside the head. “No, you didn’t...”
“I had no choice, Cora. He’s the one who helped you get kidnapped. He’s been working with Lionel for years trying to destroy me. He was the mole. He set your apartment on fire.”
Cora shook her head. “No, not Uncle Sal. I don’t believe ... he wouldn’t.”
His answer was to press a kiss to her forehead.
“Don’t think about that, okay? His plan was to kill me and Crow last night. He wanted to do it himself, so it was either us or him.”
“I just ... God, I can’t believe ... I’ve known him my whole life. He took care of me. I thought he loved me.”
“Me too, sweetie. But it just shows you never know a guy. Even family.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Three Weeks Later...
“Feels good to finally get on track.” Nicholas found the spot next to James at the railing. His folded arms braced on the damp bar and he leaned in. “Between what we made with that cocaine shipment we sold to the Russians and the delivery to Corbett, we can retire and buy the Mediterranean.”
James didn’t want the Mediterranean.
He didn’t even want to be on that ship, a sobering fact that scared even him. But smuggling had lost something. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but the passion and excitement of it had become a nagging housewife demanding he take the trash out when all he wanted to do was sneak over to his mistress’s place and bury himself deep inside her willing heat.
The analogy almost made him smirk.
It also brought forth images of Cora in black heels and nothing else. That one led to the sobering one of her the next morning when she found his note. He hadn’t seen it, but he’d felt her heartbreak clear across the Atlantic. The pain had nearly sent him to his knees.
“Hey.” Nicholas nudged him. “What’s going on?”
James blinked out of his inner turmoil and shook his head. “Nothing. Where are we going next?”
Nicholas ran a tongue over his bottom lip. His brown e
yes squinted at James through the light mist coming down around them.
“We could head back. Make port.”
“No.” James straightened. “We’re not going back there.”
“James—”
“I said no!” He glowered at his best friend. “We’re done with that place forever. I don’t care what the fuck happens. We’re not going back.”
Nicholas sighed and turned to stare out at the open waters. “Aye, Aye, Captain.”
Leaving him standing there, James started towards the wheelhouse.
“You should at least get some rest,” Nicholas called after him.
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve barely been to your cabin. You sleep in your chair. You need a bed!”
James ignored him.
He couldn’t explain that his cabin was haunted. The men would think him crazy. Hell, he was fairly certain he was. But how else was he supposed to explain the sensation that rushed over him every time he opened the door and saw her.
It was always a flash, a flicker of light, and gone when he blinked, but in that second, his heart always leapt like an excited puppy seeing its master for the first time in days.
His gut would wrench.
His knees would weaken.
For that split second, all he wanted to do was rush to her and pull her into his arms, but he knew that would never happen.
So, no, sleep wasn’t an option.
He’d tried to once.
He walked into his cabin, the one that, even after a month, still smelled of her, and climbed under sheets that had touched her, and it was all he could do to keep from losing his mind. He’d jolted awake every hour reaching for her. He’d punched the wall so many times mid reach that his knuckles were bruised.
Still, no Cora.
He ambled into the wheelhouse.
Laimure barely spared him a glance.
James dropped into his chair and grounded balled fists into the backs of his eyelids.
“Captain, if you want a break—”
“I’m fine!” he barked, letting his hands drop. “Just had something in my eyes.”
Laimure said nothing else.
His chair rolled out from under him. The unexpected jerk and shift of gravity sent James upright in a panic. His heart thundered in his chest at the unwarranted assault. It took him a moment to realize he’d dozed off.
Laimure wisely said nothing, but James got the hint.
“I’m going below for an hour.”
The man inclined his head. “Yes sir.”
Maybe he would be too tired to wake up this time, he prayed.
Maybe he’ll sleep all the way until morning.
It was the same false hopes he made every time he tried. But he trudged his way to his cabin and took a deep breath before pushing inside.
It was the same four walls, the same bed, the same desk that had been there since the day he first walked aboard. Nothing had changed, except now, all he saw was Cora tied to his bed, her eyes hot with lust. Cora on her knees in front of him, her lips swollen around his cock. Cora tied to the chair, spitting mad because he’d cut her hair. She wasn’t even there anymore, yet her presence was as strong as the scent of sea mist lingering over everything.
Stop tormenting me! He wanted to scream at the empty room.
He’d done the right thing.
He’d let her go.
Why was he being punished?
More importantly, when would it stop?
He discarded his clothes and threw himself down on the bed.
He just needed an hour.
Just one.
James woke to the velvety caress of hot lips moving languidly over his cock. He woke to the fine tickle of hair across his abdomen and the low moans of a woman enjoying herself.
He pried one eye open and peered down his naked torso to the dark head bobbing over his erection. As if sensing him, hazel eyes lifted to meet his, the fat head of his dick between her lips.
“Would you like me to stop?”
She followed the tease with a maddeningly slow run of her tongue up his shaft to circle the slit at the top.
“I can stop,” she coaxed, returning to suck at his head. “I can leave you like this.”
He was so fucking hard it didn’t even dawn on him that that was exactly what he’d told her the first time he’d eaten her pussy.
“What...?”
It was the most realistic dream he’d ever had in his fucking life. The heat of her breath, the softness of her hand, the smell of her fucking shampoo.
“Cora?”
Her heavy lashes lifted and she locked her gaze with his.
“Yes Captain?”
He was almost too afraid to move. All the other times, she’d vanished the moment his fingertips got close. He’d lose his fucking mind if she vanished again. But he could see the shards of gold in her eyes. He could count the freckles on her nose. Had the dreams always been so vivid?
“Cora.”
She raised her head completely, dislodging his cock from her mouth. She straightened, revealing every beautiful, naked inch of her straddling his thighs.
“Sweetheart...” his breath caught in his chest like a prayer.
“Did you miss me?”
Fuck, he needed to touch her, needed to thread his fingers through her hair, pull her in and kiss her until all that heartbreak washed from her eyes.
“I miss you,” he whispered. “Christ, I fucking miss you.”
A tear slipped down her cheek and the sight of it pummeled him in the chest. He reached without thinking, part of him hoping to wake up where her tears didn’t exist.
“No, baby,” he pleaded. “Don’t cry...”
His hand didn’t slip through her. His palm curved perfect with the side of her warm cheek. The moisture burned his skin.
“Cora?” His heart lodged in his throat, a razor infested wedge cutting its way up into his mouth.
No.
It wasn’t real.
She wasn’t real.
It was just a really twisted, fucked up dream.
There was absolutely no way she could be on the ship.
She sniffled, ripping the last shred of his control.
He pulled her to him, folded her into his chest, crushing her, desperate to hang on for as long as the dream continued before he was brutally cast back into the cold world of reality.
He closed his fingers into her hair, pressing her face into the side of his neck.
Her tears rained down his chest. They skated over and down his throat. Each one sizzled like lit matches touching his skin until he couldn’t stand it.
He pulled her face back and caught her lips with his. He kissed her with a vehemence of a man who knew he was living on borrowed time.
He devoured her cries.
He stole her gasps.
He swallowed her moans.
But it wasn’t enough. Not when he could lose her at any moment.
He pulled her under him and sank inside her with one thrust of his hips. Her body bowed beneath him in welcome. Her channel tightened greedily, as warm and slippery as he remembered.
He fucked her, driving deeper and harder with every plunge.
“I love you,” he blurted into the hard patter of her pulse. “I fucking love you, Cora.”
A thunderous boom jerked James upright. The bedsprings rattled beneath the violent jolt. His hands reached for the gun beneath his pillow, but the door had already flown open.
“Jesus!” James swore, bunching up sheets and dragging them over...
Cora was gone.
Of course she was.
She’d never been there.
But the hallucinations were getting stronger, realer. Tempting him a little more each time to remain their prisoner. He didn’t know how much longer before he simply submitted to the madness and threw himself over the ship rails to end the pain.
“Captain!” Presley stumbled over the threshold, gasping in wild panic. “Sir, you ne
ed to come straight away.”
Throwing back the sheets, James shoved to his feet and snatched his top off the floor. He swung it on as he stalked across the room.
“What happened?”
“It’s the ship, Captain,” the man panted. “She’s under siege.”
Stuffing his foot into his boots, James froze. His head came up.
“What?”
Rather than answer the simple question, Presley spun on his heels and bolted down the corridor. His boots pounded on the carpet, fading just as another bang erupted top level.
“What the fuck...”
James sprinted from his cabin and thundered up the stairs. He hit the top deck and skidded to a halt.
His men, every single last one of them was lined up along the wall leading to the wheelhouse. None would meet his eye, but he wasn’t paying them any real attention.
His focus was on the other group of men.
The armed ones.
The ones in full tactical body armor and AK47s strapped to their chests.
“Who’s in charge?” he demanded, storming his way forward through the narrow opening.
“That would be me, sweetheart.”
Every muscle in his entire body seized as if someone had reached into his nerve system and torn out his ability to move. His heart tripped in his chest, a plummeting tumble that pitched into his gut. He almost groaned as the pain of it rippled through the rest of him.
He followed the soft, female voice past the row of men, up the metal steps to the doorway into the bridge. His gaze paused at a pair of insanely hot pair of legs encased in tight, mile high heels and leather pants before roaming upward to the V of her thighs. The form fitting fabric followed the curve of her round hips to where a thick, black belt cinched a tapered waist, restraining the loose material of a baggy, off the shoulder top with billowing sleeves. Thick, dark ringlets cascaded over her shoulders and down her back in glossy waves, framing a face he would have killed a hundred men to see again.
“Cora?” Her name hung on his lips, an unfinished prayer.
Devil red lips grinned. “Hello Captain.”
For several long, uncomfortable minutes he couldn’t find words to speak. His entire head had gone numb with her name the only resonating echo bouncing off the walls of his skull. Her scent poured through the narrow gap of space, a cruel whisper of peace if he only submitted his soul.
Blood Script Page 42
