by Stacey Lynn
“You saved me,” she cried. She shoved her forehead into the crook of my neck and clung to me like she couldn’t breathe without me suffused to her.
I would never complain.
“I was so scared. And he…he…”
“He didn’t do what he wanted.” I tightened my hold on her and pressed my lips to her temple. “I will never let anyone hurt you. Ever. And when you’re ready, we’ll get on this plane, fly to wherever you want to go, and we’ll stay there for as long as you want.”
She trembled in my hold, sniffling and crying. Even her cries sounded like her throat was scratchy and with every sound she made, I fought the overwhelming desire to go back and fucking murder the bastard I hoped was still passed out on that kitchen floor.
I definitely broke his nose. Maybe his cheekbone.
It wasn’t nearly enough.
As soon as Claudia and I could talk, and I found out who he was, I’d destroy him.
“I’m okay,” she whispered. “I’m okay and you saved me.”
If she wasn’t still crying, my chest would have swelled with pride. I hadn’t done anything different than be a decent man, but I liked she thought of me as her savior.
I’d do my damnedest to live up to it.
“Ready to get on the plane?” I asked.
She nodded against my shoulder and pulled back.
When her face was inches from mine, I swiped away her tears with my thumbs, cupping her cheeks in my palms. Then, I leaned forward, slowly, giving her plenty of time to pull away from me, but she didn’t. I brushed my lips across hers once, then twice. “I’ll always save you, Claudia.”
She huffed out a hoarse laugh and nodded. “I know.”
Flashing me a timid smile, I brushed away the few remaining, drying tears on her cheeks and dropped my hands from her face.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
She climbed out of her seat and I met her at the front of the car. Lifting her hand to her forehead, she scanned the horizon, turning in a slow circle. I gave her time for whatever she was thinking and when she turned back to me, her hand fell and reached for mine.
I took it and squeezed. “I never want to come back here. Ever again. There’s nothing left for me.”
The Real Estate Deed told me that might not be true, but I’d wait for her to talk about it. The prick might not have violated her, but he still assaulted her and terrified her. I knew from what Sophie went through I had to wait until her to want to talk about it.
And none of it would happen until she could speak without sounding like she’d had her throat shredded.
––––––––––
I was on the couch on the airplane, guitar in my lap, my notebook and pen next to me. After we boarded, Claudia told me she wanted to go back to New York, so we were thousands of feet in the air, soaring along the East Coast and words were finally flowing.
My reputation was being restored. My sister had stood up and taken all of her power back, something she thanked me for, actually thanked me for when she clung to me on the stage what felt like a lifetime ago but was just more than twelve hours ago.
And in the bed at the back of the plane, Claudia was sleeping after I had her drink water. I lay with her and held her until she drifted back to sleep and while I didn’t want to tear myself away from her, lyrics and melodies spun in my mind, forcing me out of the bed.
“Captivated By You” was now officially done.
It was my best work yet.
Perhaps that’s what happened when a man realized he’d fallen in love, side-swiped by a beautiful brunette.
Words continued to come, even while I kept one eye on the door to the bedroom, anticipating her waking at any moment.
We hadn’t been able to get in the air until after nine o’clock and we’d only been in the air for a couple hours. But two plane rides in one day, the stress, the assault…all of it was taking a toll.
I was exhausted, but lyrics continued to invade my brain, making sleep impossible.
I dipped my head, strumming my guitar with my head down when I felt Claudia’s presence before her bare feet appeared in my view.
“Hey,” I said, lifting my head. I swung my guitar to the side and pulled her into my lap. “How’d you sleep?”
She had a bottled water in one hand and she took another drink before answering. “Better. My throat hurts, but not as much.”
“Good.” I had to bite back a growl but as she settled against me and sighed, the anger was easier to push aside.
We were silent for several moments. By the tension in her shoulders even as she rested against me, I knew Claudia was struggling with her thoughts and most likely her memories, so I comforted her by running my hand up and down her back. She was still wearing the same black dress she’d worn that morning at the press conference, but I didn’t have clothes for her to change into. I knew all she’d want was to get out of it, wash off the day and the reminders of that asshole, and most likely, burn it.
“I never liked him,” she said. Her voice was so hesitant, I tensed for what was coming. “Harrison, I mean.”
“But you were going to marry him?” I still couldn’t erase the way he’d called her his fiancée. The way his face twisted as he called her a cunt. Goddamn it. Why didn’t I kill him when I had the chance?
“Sort of. I considered it, but mostly my dad was indebted to Harrison’s dad, Edward. Big time. Harrison and Edward are both lawyers and are also the trustees of my trust fund. When I was still a teenager, my dad made a deal with Edward that I would marry Harrison some day. I didn’t know until after my parents were dead.”
My arms tightened around her. “Did you want to marry him?”
She turned to me and I found I couldn’t look at her. I kept my gaze focused on the windows across from us, where all I could see was the black sky. Her palm pressed to my cheek and pulled me to look at her. “It was what my parents wanted, Liam. For awhile, I tried to like him, but slowly I realized I couldn’t stand him.” Tears filled her eyes and she took a deep breath, her chin trembling as she tried to continue. “I thought if my dad had wanted him for me, he’d be a good man.”
“Fuck,” I whispered and pulled her against me. “You don’t have to keep explaining, just know that I’m going to destroy him.”
“I just want to stop thinking about him,” she cried.
“You will. I’ll make sure of it.” I gave her a couple moments to let it all out before asking, “What was the Real Estate Deed stuff about? I grabbed the paperwork when we left.”
“I don’t even really know,” she said, shaking her head. “He controls my trust and said he’d used the funds to buy the house for us before it went up for auction like it was supposed to. When I told him I didn’t want it, that was when he got angry, and…”
“Stop,” I whispered. “Say no more.”
I’d seen it. I didn’t want to hear about it. That could wait. I just wanted her next to me. I gripped her in my arms and rose to my feet.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m taking you to the bed. I want to hold you and be next to you when I tell you I love you.”
Her head jerked. “What?”
I kissed her lips quickly, kicking open the door to the bedroom at the same time. “You heard me,” I said. We reached the bed and I climbed onto the mattress on my knees, setting her down gently. I followed, rolling to my side next to her as she curled into me. “I knew it before you took off this morning, and if I hadn’t known it then, I would have definitely known it when I walked into your house and saw him with you. No one will ever hurt you again, Claudia, not while I’m in your life, which I plan on being for a long time.”
“You love me?” Her hand brushed against my cheek. I turned and kissed her palm before she slid her hand down my neck, to my arm and traced the ink on my knuckles. I watched every fascinating, gentle brush of her hand on mine.
I’d memorize the feel of her. Her scent. The way she laughed and
brushed her hair out of her eyes. I’d memorize every damn thing about Claudia Townsend.
“Yeah, sweetheart. It’s fast, it’s early. I get all of that. But I want you to know that when we get back to New York, the first thing I’m doing is calling your aunt and getting that contract torn up. I want nothing in between us. No more secrets. Nothing that can keep us from each other.”
She shook her head. “She won’t let you. They’re strict and would never allow it.”
“Then we live like it’s not between us and when our time is up, we keep living like it never was between us.”
She tipped her head back. Sweet, chocolate eyes met my gaze. I’d owe Anne a helluva lot for forcing me to go to Infidelity with her.
She hadn’t just saved my career. She’d given me everything I wanted out of life.
This woman. In my arms. My bed. My homes. On my tour bus. I’d take Claudia with me wherever she wanted to go, whenever she wanted it. She’d had enough pain for a lifetime and I’d see to it she feared no more.
“You’re a very good man, Liam Allistor,” she teased, lips lifting into a grin. She’d said it before. It meant more now. “I love you, too, you know. I don’t care who you are or what you do or about your money. I just love everything about the man you are.”
She’d already told me. Hearing it while she was fully awake and alert meant an infinite amount more.
“Good.” I brushed my lips against hers. I wanted to take more. Give her more. Give her everything. But like I had to do before, I’d wait. Tonight wasn’t the night, not after her day. Not after Harrison. My dick, slow to get the message I was trying to send it still hardened, but I pulled away from her kiss and settled her against my chest. “We’ll figure everything out, Claudia. And everything will be smooth sailing from here on out.”
It was a promise I’d die trying to keep.
Because Claudia Townsend was a woman worth dying for. I might not have known her long, I certainly didn’t know everything about her, but that didn’t matter. My dad had always told me that the heart wanted what the heart wanted and you were a fool to fight it.
I might have been arrogant, bossy sometimes with a loose hold on my temper. I was also rarely patient.
But damn it, I was definitely no fool, either.
“I love you,” I told her again, kissing the top of her head. “I always will. I promise.”
She leaned up, pushing off my chest and grinned. The first true grin I’d seen from her in days and fuck, it did things to me. “I promise to love you too. Always.”
We sealed our promise with a kiss, thirty thousand feet in the air, flying toward our future. We continued kissing, relishing the moment and the quiet and the past that would soon be far behind us until we landed in New York, and our forever began.
EPILOGUE
CLAUDIA
10 months later
My man. Liam Allistor. Rock God. Sex God. No longer Bachelor of the Year on any magazine covers because everyone in the world knew that even if we weren’t married or even engaged, he was taken.
He made it clear in every moment of our private life together and he had since he’d whisked me away from Savannah almost a year ago. As soon as we arrived, together, we’d shredded our Infidelity contract. Since he couldn’t buy it out, every month we wrote a donation to a different domestic violence shelter or a rape crisis center, all over the country. Then we began living as if it never existed in the first place. It wasn’t difficult. Our love was real. Our relationship was real.
I didn’t return to school and I didn’t get a job because Liam declared he wanted me to go on his next tour with him, which we were currently in the middle of. But it didn’t matter that I didn’t provide financially to our relationship, we were on equal footing with absolutely everything.
He made the fact he was off the market even clearer in every moment of his public life. It didn’t matter if he was on stage or on television promoting his album and his tour that most were saying was his best one yet.
It didn’t matter if he was doing a radio interview or we were caught walking the streets of New York or Los Angeles hand-in-hand by paparazzo.
We were together. No one doubted it.
It took weeks for the media attention after Sophie’s speech at the media conference to die down, but once it did and life settled for Liam and me as we continued to get to know each other and fall more in love every day, he was no longer regarded with suspicion, but adoration. My father’s life was re-displayed on the news, but this time it reached gossip sites and blogs.
I quit looking at them, and then I quit caring. People could say whatever they wanted about my father or me.
As for me and my past in Savannah, I didn’t know how and I never once asked, but approximately one month after we were living in New York at his place in Greenwich Village, a package arrived in the mail for me.
In it, was the contract my father had signed with Edward and in bright red letters stamped across the front of it was the word VOID.
I’d collapsed to my knees and cried. I had wanted to ignore and forget everything, but somehow, some way, Liam took care of it, making sure no one, neither Harrison nor his dad, paid retribution for either the agreement between Edward and my father, or for Liam beating the crap out of Harrison.
It’d thrown me into a tailspin, memories flying into my mind so hard and fast I called the only person I could think of who would understand. At Sophie’s urging once I told her what happened, I began seeing a therapist. My experience and that horrific day with Harrison hadn’t been as traumatic as hers had been, but it had taken me a full two months to open myself physically to Liam again.
I’d despised the fact every time we tried to move past kissing, I clammed up.
He kissed me and hugged me and waited until the moment I was sure we could move forward without that between us.
Now, I couldn’t get enough of him. I never wanted to get enough of him. Every day we learned things about each other that made us alternate between laughing so hard I cried, or so irritated I could spit nails. He hated when I left clothes on the floor and dishes in the sink. It drove me crazy the way he squeezed our toothpaste from the middle of the tube, crinkling it together.
None of that mattered. We’d been through real issues and we continued facing them together.
And tonight, all of it was coming to fruition as I met Liam backstage after he’d just accepted the award for Best Album of the Year. It accompanied his award for Best Song of the Year that he’d accepted earlier for “Captivated By You”…the song he’d written for me in Anguilla that I never ended up hearing until he’d recorded it.
I cried every time it came on the radio.
I spied him across the crowded room backstage at the awards show and politely pushed my way toward him.
As soon as he saw me, he thanked the reporter he was talking to and pulled me into his arms, lifting me off my feet. “Your speech was beautiful. You absolutely nailed it, and I’m so proud of you!”
I hugged him fiercely, kissing him appropriately for the moment but filled with passion.
He stole my breath. He provided me solace and safety. We traveled constantly. We were rarely at one of his homes. But it didn’t matter where we were or where we were going. Being at Liam’s side gave me the life I always wanted. One filled with true, complete, unconditional love and acceptance. And it wasn’t just with Liam, but his family and Karen as well.
She had long since replaced me as her temporary assistant but we got together for dinner at least once a month. The more we got to know each other, the more she reminded me of my mom. It took awhile to push past her professionalism and aloof demeanor, but I loved her almost as much as I loved Liam and his family who had treated me like their daughter since shortly after we returned to New York.
“I couldn’t have done any of this without you,” he whispered in my ear and set me back on my feet. “Let’s hope this next performance goes as smoothly, shall we?”
&nb
sp; “What?” I was smiling at him so hard my cheeks hurt. He wasn’t making sense. “What do you mean?”
Liam gestured to the reporters behind him and flashed me a sly grin. “I have something for you.”
What was he getting at? Earlier tonight, he’d draped a string of diamonds around my throat as I was getting dressed and I raised my hand to finger them. “You’ve already given me everything I could possibly want.”
That had nothing to do with the diamonds. Everything to do with him.
“I’m glad you think that, sweetheart, but there’s one more thing I think you need.”
At the strange declaration, he dropped to his knee in front of me.
My hands flew to my mouth and I gasped. “Liam—”
He ignored me and reached up, taking one of my hands in his—my left hand—and pulled it toward him, kissing it before smiling at me.
“I love you, Claudia. Love you to the depths of my marrow and the bottom of my soul. There is not a single thing about you, the beautiful woman you are, that escapes my notice on any single given moment. Marry me. Will you?”
He was doing this. He was really doing this. I blinked rapidly, flashes from the crowd around us momentarily blinding me and I almost missed it as he reached into his tuxedo and pulled out a small black box.
“Marry me,” he repeated as tears built in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. He popped open the box and blood drained from my face so quickly I was afraid I’d fall over. The ring was massive.
It also matched, exactly, the center stone on the necklace he’d given me earlier.
“Liam—”
I was too stunned to say anything but his name.
“What do you say, sweetheart. Be mine?”
He glanced around the room and I followed. Everyone was staring at us. Red little lights blinked on video cameras. Microphones were pointed in our direction. Camera flashes continued to light up the room.
I looked back down at him and found my voice. “Don’t you know?” My voice trembled as I spoke. “I’ve been yours since the first island trip. And it has nothing to do with my signing a name to a contract, but because I gave myself to you and since that day, you’ve always treasured it.”
