Hard Liquor: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #2

by Blair Babylon

  Gen could barely open her eyes after that intense orgasm.

  She wanted more and more of them, even if it meant being his sub.

  Damn, Arthur was good at that.

  Even when she had asked him to do some “desensitization therapy,” a suspicion had sneaked around her brain that maybe he wouldn’t be able to do it. Maybe she would be too scared, too wussy, or too damaged to get through it.

  Her future might have been a cold, sexless, lonely one.

  But instead, Arthur had driven every fear out of her head.

  Even when they had been in the bed, she had been almost okay. Once he had carried her to the chaise lounge, his hard body and his masculine scent and his unrelenting touch had filled her entire mind and heart.

  She still felt like she couldn’t get enough of him. Her leg curled around his muscular thigh, her arm rested on his burly chest, and her head was pillowed on his wide shoulder. Even with his arms wrapped around her, his cheek resting on the top of her head, and all his firm, naked flesh pressed against hers, Gen wanted to get closer to him, somehow.

  Yeah, she wanted more sex.

  Lots more.

  Arthur twitched in his sleep, his arm jumping a little. His arms tightened around her like he had just found her in his arms. He stroked her arm, sighed, and settled. His breathing deepened and slowed.

  Hmmm. Finding a naked woman in his arms in the middle of the night must be a common occurrence for him, since he had casually gone back to sleep.

  That shouldn’t surprise her in the slightest.

  Gen wanted to chuckle, but she didn’t want to wake him up again.

  Instead, she closed her eyes that last little bit.

  As she fell asleep, she didn’t even notice that Arthur’s arms were around her so firmly that she would have had to struggle to get away, and he was so strong that she might not have been able to escape at all.

  James Bond Was A Fictional Character

  GEN rode in the passenger seat of the stormcloud gray Mercedes as Arthur drove them back to London. The expressway wound through the countryside and then the city, a long asphalt ant trail of British cars and trucks speeding along and politely allowing each other to pass.

  She watched for cars following them through the rear view mirror on her side of the car, but couldn’t find any.

  Finally, the suspense got too much for her, and she asked, “Are we being followed this time?”

  Arthur glanced at the middle rear view mirror while he aimed the car toward the city. The morning sunlight reflected in his silvery eyes. “That private detective in the red Saab beater is back there, the one who works for my brother. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had been hiding in the bushes last night, photographing our guests as they entered and left the house.”

  “Are you sure he’s working for your brother?”

  “He’s certainly not been trained by a proper intelligence service,” Arthur scoffed.

  “And what would you know about that?” Gen asked.

  “I watch James Bond movies just like everyone else, and I’ve read a few John Le Carré novels. The BBC did a smashing version of The Night Manager.”

  “Yeah,” Gen said. “Right.”

  “What, you don’t believe me?” Arthur asked, laughing.

  “You just answered a question with a question,” Gen said.

  “Actually, I answered a passive-aggressive mutter with a question.”

  “That’s deception. You taught me that.”

  Arthur laughed. “Did I?”

  “You just did it again.”

  “You didn’t ask a question.”

  “Arthur, are you a spy?”

  “Of course not. How could I fit all my carousing and drunken debauchery around a government career?”

  “James Bond seems to.”

  “James Bond is a fictional character.”

  “Written by a guy who was a real spy.”

  “During the War.”

  “Which was World War Two.”

  “Of course. I’m British.”

  “Are you as British as Ian Fleming and John Le Carré, though?”

  “Certainly.”

  “So you’re a spy.”

  He was laughing as he drove, but he kept looking in the rear view mirror. “If I were a spy, I would know where you disappear to most mornings, so very early, and on weekend afternoons. I’ve begun to wonder if I’m your side dude.”

  Gen cracked up. “Oh, my God, Arthur! Side dude. You almost managed a Californian accent.”

  “I’ve been speaking with Casimir lately. He is slowly losing his Dutch and British accents, even when he speaks to me. I must be picking up his surfer accent. When you meet him, tell him that he sounds like a Californian surfer. He’ll love it. Trust me on this.”

  Gen was laughing at that, too. “Oh, yeah. Even without meeting him, I’ll bet that he would swell up with rage like a bright red balloon.”

  “You have met Caz!”

  She laughed so hard that she almost missed when the faded red Saab changed lanes to stay one car behind them. “Arthur, that Saab is still back there.”

  “I’ve been keeping an eye on it. He’s an amateur codswallop and doesn’t worry me at all. Now, the important point of this conversation is, where do you go in the mornings and afternoons? Are you religious? Do you go to Mass or to Buddhist meditation?”

  “No.”

  “Satanic goat sacrifice?”

  “No!” she laughed.

  “Tell me.”

  “Oh, Arthur. You don’t want to know. It’ll kill the conversation.”

  He reached over and took her hand. “I’m listening.”

  “It’s my mother. She had a stroke.”

  “How bad is it?”

  Gen bit her lip, but bravery with Arthur beside her had seemed so easy lately. “You could come with me, if you wanted to.”

  Visiting Momma #2

  AT the nursing home, Gen sat beside the bed and lifted her mother’s hand. The frailness of her skin-wrapped skeleton caught her in her stomach again. Her bones barely lifted the quilt that covered her, and Gen had the sudden idea that even the blanket might snap her fragile bones. Maybe even the weight of the sunlight might be too much for her.

  She said, “Hi, Momma. I’m here.”

  Her mother, lying in the hospital bed as she always was, stared at the ceiling. Antiseptic smell filled the air and itched Gen’s throat and nose. She felt like she needed to sneeze.

  Gen said, “Momma? Shall we continue our book?”

  Arthur leaned against the wall beside the door, watching them both. He asked, “What happened to her?”

  “Massive hemorrhagic stroke,” Gen told him, the words bitter in her mouth. “It was a miracle she survived at all.”

  “She doesn’t know who you are.”

  She turned back to look at him. “Not at the top level, anyway, but I think she knows. I think she knows someone is here who loves her.”

  Arthur’s arms were wound tightly over his chest, and his legs were crossed at the ankle. His body looked like he was being twisted into a knot. “Do you visit every day?”

  Gen shook her head. “Work has always made it difficult, and now with maintaining our little charade, it’s even harder. I only got here three times last week. I usually manage more than that.”

  “But she doesn’t know who you are.”

  “I know who she is, and she’s less agitated when I’m here. That’s enough.”

  “It’s fruitless, you know. Don’t people tell you that it’s a waste of your time?”

  If Gen hadn’t known him quite well, she wouldn’t have heard the catch in his throat. “Arthur?”

  He stared out the window, his burly arms wrapped around his chest.

  Gen knew that the window overlooked an alley, and an apartment building across from the nursing home blocked any other view. He wasn’t looking at anything.

  He repeated, “It’s fruitless.” His throat closed on his final word
so that he sounded like he was choking on it.

  Okay, this was weird. Arthur had two modes, the jovial, devil-may-care debauched drunk and the serious, intense man she had caught glimpses of when there was a threat.

  At that moment, he was entirely different. His silvery eyes were narrowed, and he reached up and rubbed one of his eyes with the heel of his hand. Pain and suffering leaked from his every motion. He was shaking.

  “Arthur, are you all right?”

  “Why are you spending so much time with her? You know it’s not going to help matters, don’t you?” he whispered.

  Gen might not have Arthur’s extensive knowledge of deception that he had displayed in the courtroom, but she had seen a lot of clients in their cells and the courtroom dock.

  Distress came in many forms, and Arthur was in trouble. He was having a panic attack and almost about to break on some deep, primal level.

  She stood and walked over to him. “What’s going on?”

  He was leaning his head against the wall. “I shouldn’t be here.”

  Gen grabbed his hand and tugged him outside the room and into the hallway. Her mother didn’t need to hear this, if her mother could hear anything. “I don’t expect that it will change anything for her. I expect that my presence keeps the staff on their toes. I expect that she will receive better care because I’m here.”

  Arthur stared out the window on the other side of the hallway. Cold light touched his face. “Is her care a problem?”

  “It’s why I moved her here.”

  He was breathing more easily since they had diverted from the topic a bit. “What happened?”

  “She was in a nursing home outside of London. It took me three hours to get there, and another three to get home. I could only get there once a week, and sometimes, I let two weeks go by. One Sunday, I found bruises on her wrists and ankles. Another time, on her shoulder. They said that it was normal because she’s old. They said that she banged herself.”

  Arthur shook his head. “She’s too far gone for that.”

  “She was even more lethargic, just sleeping and not even waking up. I think they were tying her down. I think they were giving her sleeping drugs all the time.” Her eyes burned. “I’m not sure what else might have happened because she can’t tell me.”

  Arthur reached for her with his hand, his fingers searching for hers.

  Gen twined her fingers in his. “Since she’s been here, since I can visit almost every day, nothing like that has happened. When the bruises faded, there weren’t any new ones. She’s okay. I mean, I don’t know if she is, but she’s more okay. It’s cleaner. The staff is around more, and they’re nicer. She doesn’t have bruises or sores.”

  “That other nursing home should be reported.”

  “It has been, a lot, but that’s where they put her.”

  “Who put her there?” Arthur asked, turning his head a little.

  “The NHS did some means-testing of her finances. They accused me of stealing from her because she paid the tens of thousands of pounds for my bar course before she had the stroke. They want me to pay that money back. They said that she should be able to contribute more, and if she can’t, then she has to stay somewhere that is covered by what they will allow her. That’s why she was in the other home.”

  “But now she’s here.”

  “I moved her here. I’m responsible to top up the payments and make up the difference.”

  He looked around the hallway, his eyes slowing over the nice curtains on the windows, the desk farther down with bustling nurses, and the janitors constantly cleaning the place. “Your pupillage can’t be paying that much.”

  “It doesn’t cover even half of what I’m expected to contribute. I’ve been dipping into our savings.” Which were now gone. She would have to negotiate with the home to delay payments until October, six months away, when she would hopefully start being paid as a member of chambers, if she were offered a position.

  “But you’ll be offered tenancy soon,” Arthur said.

  Her breath fluttered in her chest. “I have to be.”

  “And I’m jeopardizing that by keeping you out of chambers for runs to try on jewelry and to attend charity balls.”

  “Not really. If we win your case, I’ll have a good shot at it. Quite honestly, my clients are coming back. I don’t know if I’m better at dealing with the upper-crusties or maybe they’re just more comfortable with me now, but Octavia said that she’s pleased. I think you saved my chances.”

  He nodded and rubbed one of his eyes again.

  “What happened?” she asked him.

  “What?” he asked, still not looking at her.

  “Who was in a nursing home?”

  He sighed. “It was a hospital, not a convalescent home. It smells the same.”

  “It’s the disinfectant. They all smell alike. Who was it?”

  Arthur sucked in a deep breath. “My mother.”

  “I thought they both passed away in a car accident.”

  He glanced back at her. “Oh, you Americans and your euphemisms for death. My father died at the scene. My mother lingered in hospital.”

  “Oh, God, Arthur.” She squeezed his hand. “You were how old?”

  “Nine. I was nine.”

  “You must have loved her very much.”

  “I suppose so. It’s been so long that I don’t remember it. I remember missing her. I remember that she wasn’t there anymore, and I didn’t know how to deal with that.”

  “Did they let you see her?”

  “My dear, at the moment my father died, I was the Viscount Arthur Finch-Hatten, the heir to the Earl of Severn, and no one could tell me where I should be.”

  “So where were you?”

  “In her room, in her bed, sliding between all the tubes and lines, trying to wrap her arms around myself. They kept slipping off, you see. She was limp and lifeless already.”

  A mental image of Arthur as a child trying to make his dying mother hug him slammed into her.

  “Oh, God.” Gen grabbed him and turned him around. “You were nine. Someone should have taken care of you.”

  He looked over her head, still not meeting her eyes. “I was well cared for. She had a private room with a bathroom, so I showered there. The hospital made sure I ate three meals a day and all the chocolate biscuits the nurses could smuggle to me. Actually got a bit porky in only a month.”

  “A month?”

  “Whenever anyone suggested that I leave her room, the conversation always ended with, ‘Yes, your lordship.’”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “At the end, my grandfather, the Earl, came and stayed near the hospital. He took my side. He must have known it wouldn’t be long at that point. Said that I was acting like an heir to an earldom should, that I knew my mind and wouldn’t take no for an answer, that I was a proper son of the Finch-Hatten family.”

  “Where was Christopher?”

  “He was so young. My uncle had already taken him.”

  “But you stayed with your mother.”

  “Her breathing got slower, and the breaths farther apart, and finally stopped. I wouldn’t let them take her away for over an hour after the last one. At that, my grandfather finally talked to me. He did it well, looking back.”

  She slipped her arms around his waist.

  He leaned into her embrace and laid his arms around her, too. He sagged in her arms. His hands roamed her arms, stroking her skin through her clothes. She rubbed his spine, rumpling his soft tee shirt.

  After a moment, he released a long, slow breath, exhaling a suffering tension, a tight sound in his throat that Gen felt in her own heart.

  She held him more closely, molding her body to his.

  He pressed her arms around his waist with her elbows, and she held him more tightly. He didn’t relent, his arms still pressing hers, and so she squeezed him as hard as she could, and she cinched her arms around his waist and chest like tight belts.

  Not like limp
and lifeless arms, but as hard as she could hold him.

  In seconds, his breathing deepened, calmed, and he rested his cheek against the top of her head.

  His voice was breathy when he said, “I hate that disinfectant smell. It was a long time ago. I hadn’t thought about it in years.”

  Gen would have bet her tenancy that was not true.

  He said, “I feel like I should talk you out of this, like I should drag you back to life.”

  “The way that no one did for you?”

  “That’s a harsh way of looking at it.”

  “I can’t, Arthur. I have to do what I can. There might be something of her still left in there. She might be frightened. She might be upset. She might be bored.”

  He sighed. “I can’t refute that.”

  Being Followed

  GEN read to her mother for half an hour.

  Her mother’s hand flopped on the handmade quilt, first the blue-veined back showing, then her curling fingers and palm.

  Back and forth.

  A square of light from the window rested on the homemade quilt, down near her mother’s feet.

  Arthur had opted to wait in the car with Pippa, saying that he had a book on his phone he was reading. He glanced back as he walked away from her mother’s room, and the haunted look in his silvery-blue eyes broke Gen’s heart.

  So, after a half an hour, Gen told her mother good-bye, kissed her on the forehead, and walked down to the car.

  The Mercedes was waiting in the parking lot—dang it, car park, Gen needed to start using the British words—just like Pippa had said she would be. It was facing away from Gen, with the trunk—boot—toward her.

  Oh, whatever.

  She walked toward the car.

  As she passed a white delivery truck—lorry—Gen’s elbow jerked backward. “Hey!”

  She stumbled three steps and was pulled behind the truck. A man stood there, still holding her arm. His gray-streaked beard crawled up his wind-slapped cheeks.

  Gen’s krav maga lessons kicked in.

  She yanked her arm away from the guy and punched him in the throat. His neck collapsed under her fist. She kicked his knee, and he crumpled.