by Stella Hart
Nate stared at me, head slightly tipped to one side like he couldn’t believe what I was saying. “You know you don’t have a choice, right? You’re here because I want you here.”
“I know. But I’m just saying—you don’t need to worry about me trying to leave again. I want to be here now.”
With that, I turned and headed over to the shower. As I switched on the water and waited for it to get hot, I looked over my shoulder at Nate. He was still standing in the middle of the bathroom with a thunderstruck expression on his face.
“You might as well join me,” I said with a casual shrug. “No offence, but you look like you need it.”
His lips pressed into a thin line. “I spent an hour digging through a dusty old mausoleum this morning, so I’d be surprised if I didn’t look and smell like a pile of trash right now.”
“You were in a mausoleum?” I said, nose wrinkling.
“Yeah. That’s where I found my uncle’s tapes,” he replied before lifting his shirt over his head. His shoes and pants came off next, and then he walked over to the shower and stepped in next to me.
We didn’t speak after that. We just stood together under the streaming water and helped each other get clean, soapy hands traveling over every inch of our bruised, battered bodies.
When I closed my eyes and stuck my face under the hot spray for a few seconds, Nate’s hands began to roam over my back, and he moved his head down to my neck and pressed his lips to my skin.
In a surge of heat, my body remembered the last time he let his guard down around me and kissed my neck like that. Something wild fluttered inside me, like butterflies set free, and I turned back to face him and tangled myself in his arms.
We still didn’t need to say a word to each other. We both knew what was happening. What we wanted and needed.
Nate’s hands moved to my ass, and he lifted me up, eyes swirling with fire and lust. Without hesitation, he slid inside me, finding me slick and ready. I gasped and grabbed onto his back, raking my nails down his skin as he bounced me on his cock. He picked up speed, pumping in and out so hard that it almost hurt. The savagery of it sent me spiraling out of control faster than ever before.
“Oh, fuck,” I whimpered against his mouth as his body bumped up against my clit with each rough movement. “I’m gonna…”
I couldn’t even finish the sentence. My orgasm slammed into me like a freight train, sending me flying over the edge, and my body shook like crazy as I gasped and moaned. Nate held me in place, hips still pumping fast and hard.
“Do it again,” he commanded, his voice coming out in a low growl. “Come for me.”
I knew he loved the feeling of my muscles contracting on him, so I closed my eyes and let the warm pressure build in my core again, waiting for it to explode outward. It didn’t take long. Another few thrusts and I was spiraling out of control again, panting and moaning.
Nate kept going, fucking me like a crazed man. My eyes fluttered open as the heat from my second climax faded, and I dug my nails into his back and slid my mouth over the shell of his ear.
“This doesn’t mean I forgive you,” I said breathlessly, feeling the stirrings of yet another orgasm. “For any of the shit you’ve done to me.”
“I know. It doesn’t mean I trust you, either,” he muttered in response, sinking deep enough to make me cry out.
The timbre of his voice was enough to push me over the edge again, and I tipped my head back and gasped. As stars exploded across my vision, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’d made the right decision earlier when I told him I wanted to stay with him. Whether he liked it or not, I wasn’t really his captive anymore. I was here willingly, captive to my insatiable need for his body.
I didn’t want to be free from that. I didn’t want him to let me go.
He kept fucking me, driving me mad with every harsh movement and rough kiss. Then his hips bucked as his brows furrowed. He let out a deep groan and stilled, spurting his release deep inside me.
When he finally lowered me back to the tiled floor, I could barely stand on my own. My legs felt like jelly. I managed to remain upright long enough to wash away the fluids leaking out of me, and then I stepped out of the shower and collapsed onto the fluffy bathmat with a deep groan of satisfaction.
Nate turned the water off and grabbed two towels from a silver rail. He tossed one over to me before drying himself off, eyes never leaving me.
“You can sleep in my bed tonight,” he finally said. “With me.”
The intensity in his eyes as he looked at me made my stomach flutter. I rubbed the soft towel over my arms and shook my head. “I don’t want to sleep just yet,” I murmured, cheeks flushing with warmth.
“You should. You can barely even walk.”
I looked down at the bathmat as my core clenched like a fist. I thought I was completely and utterly spent just moments ago, but now, frissons of electricity were jolting through me all over again. I needed more from Nate tonight. So much more.
I looked up at him again.
“I’m not tired,” I said, letting the towel fall away. “But you can take me to bed anyway.”
8
Alexis
I lay on my back, sheets tangled around me as perspiration dotted my temples. I’d finally reached my limit. The last hour wasn’t all sex—some of it was just Nate and me exploring each other’s bodies while frantically kissing, licking, or biting—but I was getting sore now, and I needed time to recover. There was only so much I could take.
“Tired yet?” Nate asked, looking over at me.
I sighed. “Physically, yes. Mentally, no,” I said, wishing I could switch my buzzing mind off. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”
He sat up, rubbing one hand over his eyes. “Me neither. I haven’t slept in two fucking days,” he said. “Unless you count the fifteen minutes after Greg knocked me out.”
“It’s because of everything that’s been happening,” I said. “I mean, we have the fucking Blackthorne Butcher locked in a bunker right now. I don’t think I’ll be able to rest until I have some answers from him.”
“Too bad he won’t wake up for a few more hours.”
“Yeah. It sucks,” I muttered.
Nate sat up straighter. “I guess we could figure out some questions to ask him. That way we won’t forget about anything once we’re down there with him,” he said. “I still need to hear everything you know about your dad, too.”
I lifted myself up, resting on my elbows. “Sounds like a plan.”
“We’ll go down to the library to do it,” he said. “I’ll get you something to wear first. Wait here.”
Nate strode out of the room. When he returned a few minutes later, his arms were laden with several large plastic bags. They were transparent, and I could see that they were filled with smaller bags, little boxes, and fabric.
“Colette is supposed to donate this stuff soon,” he explained, dumping it all on the floor next to the bed. “It’s all the stuff my mom bought and then decided she didn’t want anymore in the last few months. Clothes, shoes, purses, and so on. Most of it is brand new with tags on, and anything that isn’t has been cleaned.”
“Will any of it actually fit me?” I asked, eyeing a silken dress that was spilling out of the first bag. “Your mom is way taller than me.”
“I think you’re about the same size as her, so it should be fine,” Nate replied. “You might just have to roll up some of the pants.”
“All right. I’ll have a look,” I said, moving down to the floor. I glanced up at him and gave him a grateful half-smile. “Thanks.”
Nate’s face remained impassive. “I’ll go and get us some food while you pick something to wear.”
While he was gone, I sorted through the bags and found a pair of black straight-leg jeans, a white roll-neck jersey sweater, and a gray wraparound coat. I was also fortunate enough to find a bag of lace and silk underwear from a local lingerie store. All of it was brand new wi
th tags still attached. Clearly, Annalise liked to shop, and she simply didn’t have time to wear everything she purchased.
The only thing I couldn’t find for myself in her cast-offs were shoes, because she was two sizes bigger than me. I figured I could just wear my socks and sneakers that were currently sitting on the bathroom floor, though. Unlike my old clothes, they weren’t stained with blood. Just dirt.
Nate finally returned with a large gold-rimmed plate of fruit, croissants, cheese, and rolled-up cold cuts. “I don’t know what you like, so I got a bit of everything,” he said, holding it out toward me.
“Thanks. Looks good,” I murmured, taking a croissant. I nibbled on it as he led me out of the room and down the hallway. We took a left somewhere, headed down another hall, and stepped through a set of double doors that lay at the end.
When Nate flicked a switch on the wall to light the room beyond, I almost gasped in astonishment. It was one of the most beautiful spaces I’d ever seen.
Polished wooden paneling rose from a marble floor to a plastered ceiling covered in Rococo embellishments with gold trim. Large mahogany tables dominated the first third of the space, surrounded by chairs with crimson velveteen seats and backs, and crystal chandeliers hung above them. Row after row of bookshelves lay past the tables, packed with leather-bound books, and an ornate marble fireplace sat at the far end of the room.
“We’ll sit here,” Nate said, striding over to the first table.
I followed him and slipped into one of the chairs. He sat across from me and leaned forward, hands arranged on the table in a pyramidal shape. “Tell me everything you know,” he said, intense blue eyes focusing right on my face. “Everything your dad told you.”
I hesitated and scratched my ear as I tried to figure out where to begin. “I guess I should tell you what his letter said,” I finally ventured.
“You mean the one he wrote to you while he was in prison?”
I nodded. “Yes. It’s pretty long, but I know it by heart. If you get me a computer or some paper, I can write it out for you.”
“Okay. Hold on.”
He got up and stepped over to an exquisitely-wrought cabinet that sat near the first row of bookshelves. When he returned, he had a silver laptop in his hands.
He placed it down in front of me and opened it up. “Here.”
I took a deep breath and lowered my hands to the keyboard as a clear image of my father’s letter flashed in my mind. Ten minutes later, I had the whole thing typed out and ready to show to Nate.
My darling Alexandra,
Happy 16th birthday! I hope you’re having a fantastic day.
I wish I could be there to celebrate what a wonderful young woman you’ve become, but unfortunately, if this letter has made it to you, it’s because I’m gone. I also wish I could sit here and write out all the fatherly advice that I wanted to give you on such a momentous occasion, but I am short on time and paper, so this will have to do.
I want to ask you to do something for me, darling.
No doubt you’re wondering why I’m asking you and not your sister or mother. Please allow me to explain. It’s not because I love or trust them any less—of course I don’t—it’s because of what I see in the three of you.
Your sister has always taken after your mom: imaginative, creative, passionate, sensitive, and gentle. My two artists.
You were always like a mini-me. A budding journalist. Inquisitive, resourceful, decisive, and hard-nosed. You don’t take no for an answer, and you don’t give up. Now that you’re no longer a child, I have a feeling those qualities will be even stronger within you.
That’s why I want to ask this favor of you (and of course, feel free to ask your mother and sister for help if you need it. This doesn’t have to be a secret. I just have a feeling that you will be the one to see this through to the end due to that wonderful stubborn streak you inherited from me).
Here is my request.
As you continue to grow and think about your future, don’t give up on me or my case. Look at what happened to me, and other people like me, and find out why things like that end up happening in this world. Get those answers for yourself, and then do what you want with that information to make things right for everyone. After all, people should get what they deserve in life, shouldn’t they?
I know I am being very vague, but I think you understand what I am saying by now.
I wish I could help by telling you where to begin your studies and where to look for more information. Unfortunately, I can’t be specific about anything, because I know the guards are reading these letters before they take them from me, and I’m sure anything with the ‘wrong’ sort of material/information will be burned as per the request of those who put me here (Hello, guards. Nothing to see here—just a letter with some future career advice for my beautiful daughter!).
Have a wonderful life, darling. I love you more than anything, and I wish you nothing but success and happiness.
Love,
Dad
PS. Please help your mom take care of the books from my study at home. I asked her to hold onto them for you a long time ago, even if you were forced to move away from Avalon. Whenever you get a chance, please read the books as well. There should be lots of educational things in those texts that will help you with issues you might run into as you get older and learn more about the world.
PPS. Remember, if you’re ever feeling completely lost, look up to the sky, think of me, and let the stars guide you home.
Nate’s brows furrowed as he scanned the pages. Then he pushed the laptop aside and looked at me again. “He obviously intended for you to read between the lines and clear his name with whatever he was keeping in his study.”
I nodded. “Yup. He couldn’t say anything outright because the prison guards might’ve confiscated the letter.”
“What does this part mean?” he asked, pointing to the very last line. “About the stars guiding you home?”
“I think it meant that I’d have to come home to investigate everything. To Avalon, I mean.”
“Hm. Okay. So what did you find?”
“Not much.” I sighed and leaned back in my chair. “He kept all his notes on the case hidden in books, so the police didn’t find them when they searched his study, but most of them were ruined before I got to them.”
“How?”
“When we moved away from the island, a lot of the boxes ended up with water damage because of a leak somewhere, and most of his books were destroyed by that, including the notes.”
“Shit.”
“Not all of it was lost, though,” I went on. “There were a lot of pages that had visible words. Sometimes entire strings of them. Not enough to form entire paragraphs, but enough for me to get an idea of what happened back then.”
“How so?”
“Well, I saw a lot of words like ‘investigate, organization, conspiracy, danger, expose, money, connections, elite, power,’ and other similar stuff,” I replied. “I also saw ‘Arcadia Bay’ and ‘Golden Circle’ mentioned several times, along with the number twelve. There were a few references to ‘Avalon’s most powerful families’, too, but it seemed like he didn’t actually know which families, because there was an intact string of words on one of the first pages that said: ‘still need to narrow it down and get the right names from source when available’.”
“So he had a source.” Nate’s forehead wrinkled. “Did he say who it was?”
“No. I have absolutely no idea who it was,” I said, shaking my head. “If I did, he or she would’ve been my first stop when I came back to Avalon.”
“Damn. What else was in the notes?”
“The rest of the visible words were just common ones like ‘the, it, with, as, and, are,’ and so on,” I said. “So that was pretty useless. But like I said, what was in there was enough for me to get an idea of what happened to my dad. He was looking into a criminal organization that was operating here on Avalon, and they were called the Golden Cir
cle. He wanted to expose them.”
“He didn’t say what he thought they were doing?”
“I think he did, but those pages were completely washed out,” I said. “There were a couple of other pages that were completely intact, though. There wasn’t much on them, but if you get me a pen and paper, I’ll show you what they looked like.”
Nate got up again and retrieved a large notepad and pen from the cabinet. I took them and moved closer to him so he could see exactly what I was writing.
“The first intact page had something like this,” I said, writing out ‘IL?’ in large letters.
His brows puckered. “Just that? ‘IL’ with a question mark?”
“Yup. I figured it could be someone’s initials, or maybe a reference to Illinois.”
“Illinois is two thousand miles away. How can it be related to this?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe there’s someone there who knows something. Or maybe it’s just a person’s initials, like I said before,” I replied. “It could even be initials referring to a company, or some other place. There’s no way to know for sure.”
Nate drummed his fingers on the table. “There’s no one in my family with a name beginning with ‘I’, so it can’t be a Lockwood,” he said. “But I still think it’s a person’s initials. It seems like the most obvious explanation.”
I nodded and turned to a new page. “There was also a drawing with these words,” I said, sketching out a large circle. I put a dot in the center and twelve dots around the edges, like a clock. Above the image, I wrote the words ‘Golden Circle’ and ‘Bodies = ???’.
