by Zara Chase
Alone in her huge bed on her first night home, it took her an age to get to sleep. No sooner had she done so than she woke with a start, sweating, unable to breathe. She was beneath that water again, being held down, struggling to get free, trying to scream that she wasn’t ready to die. She didn’t think that any sound had come out, but her door crashed open, and Isaac and Nick both stood there. She blinked at them without really seeing them, disorientated, still in her own version of hell. She was vaguely aware of Isaac nodding at Nick.
“I’ll take it,” she heard him say.
And he did. He climbed into bed with her, pulled her into his arms and stroked her back, soothing her like she was a small child.
“It’s okay, babe. It was just a dream. You’re safe now. I won’t let anything happen to you ever again, I promise.”
She curled up at his side, her head resting on all those taut muscles that made up his chest, feeling safe and protected. Not once did she doubt his ability to look after her, and it didn’t occur to her to mind that she’d placed her trust in him. Trust wasn’t the same as emotional involvement. He was erect. She could feel his cock pressing against the side of her thigh but knew he wouldn’t attempt to make love to her. Nor would she try to persuade him, as she probably could have done if she’d put her mind to it. There was something right, something soothing about just being held in the circle of his strong arms.
Paige fell asleep with a smile on her face.
Her life fell into a pattern as she waited for the day of the funeral to come round. Isaac joined her at night and simply made her feel safe. The pheromones shot back and forth between them, building, pulling them even closer together, but Paige pretended not to notice. She’d already booked her return ticket to London online and would leave two days after the funeral. Once she was back on home territory, she would no longer have nightmares and could put Isaac Drake and his lazy, coercive charm behind her forever. It would soon be time to pick up the pieces of her life and move on.
Hold that thought, Paige.
Lana’s brother Sam called at the house to see them all on the night before the viewings. He’d aged ten years since Paige had last seen him.
“I don’t know what to say to you, Paige,” he said, shaking his head.
“It’s not your fault. You’re not responsible for your sister’s hang-ups.”
“Then why do I feel so guilty?”
“How is she?” Nick asked.
“Pleading guilty on all counts.”
Paige blinked. “We didn’t know that.”
“Well, once she realized that Mike’s little…er, predilection would be plastered all over the media if she didn’t, it was a no-brainer for her.”
“She’s trying to protect her kids,” Paige said softly.
“Exactly. I think her lawyer’s worked out some sort of deal with the DA. She pleads guilty on all counts but will say she killed Ellie in a moment of insanity because she was jealous of her and wanted Mike to have her job.”
“Well, that is true, as far as it goes,” Isaac said.
“What about the kids?” Paige asked.
“Mike’s taken them to Orlando for a week. Keep them out the way until the furor dies down and the funeral’s over. They’re lost in the Magic Kingdom, but Mike’s lost in his own version of hell.” Sam sighed. “Blames himself, of course.”
They sent Sam on his way, promising to see him at the funeral home the following day for the first of the viewings. Paige wasn’t sure how she felt about it but knew she’d get through it, just so long as she had her two guys to lean on.
Isaac and Nick were towers of strength, guiding her through it. Like most things she feared in life, the reality was easier to handle than the anticipation. The chapel was crowded on both days, and most of the people were strangers to Paige. Isaac knew a lot of them, but Nick seemed to know them all. They signed the book and exchanged fond reminiscences of Ellie and Greg, both with Sam and the three of them. Everyone had a different story to tell about their Ellie’s kindness that Paige found comforting. A lot of them were, Paige guessed, from the life, but they didn’t make it obvious.
On the night before the funeral, Paige wanted more than just a cuddle. She ran a finger down Isaac’s broad chest, stopping just short of his pubic hair.
“I need you,” she said softly.
She expected him to put up objections, but instead he just flashed a slow, sexy smile that brought every cell in her body to enthusiastic life.
“I know you do,” he said. “But you’re gonna have to settle for slow and gentle.”
“Anything. Just fuck me, Isaac.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Should we call Nick?”
“Nope. You’ll have to make do with just little old me tonight.”
“Damn!” She grinned up at him. “Fortunately there’s nothing little about you.”
He chuckled. “Well, there is that.”
Paige laid back, closing her eyes, content to be passive and let him go to work on her. She sighed softly as Isaac’s large hands took possession of her body with an assurance that stole her breath away. There were no spankings tonight, no sex toys, no games. He simply brought her alive by working his magic with a slow deliberation that shot a vortex of desire through her and set her body pulsating with need. Inventive as ever, he started at her lips and worked his way down, causing her body to tingle every place he touched it. She expected him to kiss and to nip his way toward her cunt. Instead he licked, his tongue rasping against every erogenous zone she possessed, quite a few of which she hadn’t even known existed.
Paige squirmed beneath his hands as his tongue rasped her rock-hard nipples, sucking them into his mouth one by one, scraping his tongue around the areolae and sending carnal sensation shooting straight to her pussy. As always, she was soaking wet. She lifted her hips even though he wasn’t on top of her, and they met fresh air.
“Patience! I won’t fuck you if you don’t keep absolutely still.”
Paige immediately stopped moving, and Isaac continued torturing her. Just when she thought she couldn’t take it a moment longer, his lips finally traversed her abdomen and sank into her clit. At the same time two and then three fingers slipped inside her. It was too much. Her senses rebelled. She bucked against him and came in his mouth.
“Naughty girl,” he said, lifting his head and grinning at her.
“Sorry, but I needed that.”
His chuckle was decidedly wicked. “So I gathered.” He placed her hand round his rock-solid cock. “Reckon you need this as well?”
“Absolutely.”
Isaac positioned himself over her, supporting his weight on his arms. This was when he would lose control and fuck her hard, the way they both liked it. To her infinite surprise, he worked his way into her with such slow consideration that it almost blew her mind.
“I won’t break,” she said, twisting with impatience beneath him, lifting her pelvis so that he sank a little deeper into her.
“Try it this way. We’ve never done it softly before. You might like it.”
“And you might kill me if you don’t do it now!”
Before he could prevent it, she wrapped her legs round his waist, and with a feral groan he sank all the way home. She hadn’t had sex for several days. Her vagina had contracted, and he was so big that she could barely accommodate him. It felt glorious! She closed her eyes and expelled a long sigh, thinking she could do this with him forever.
“God, Paige, it’s so fucking tight.” Paige instinctively clutched him tighter with the walls of her vagina. “That’s it, baby. Hold me in there. Let’s do this.”
“No argument from me, big boy.”
Isaac gradually increased the pace, and they fell into the age-old rhythm that had driven so many women wild over the centuries. She climaxed again seconds later, screaming his name, begging him to fuck her.
Isaac groaned, shot his load deep, and collapsed at her side, breathing heavily. After a moment he le
vered himself up on one elbow and caressed her face with his eyes.
“Paige, if you only knew how much—”
She offered him a slow, sultry smile, satiated to her toes, completely incapable of movement. “Hmm, knew what?”
He shook his head. “Not now, it’s not the right time. Let’s do tomorrow, get the funeral out the way first, then I need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“Are you all right?” He brushed the hair away from her brow. “I didn’t hurt you?”
“Stop worrying so much.” She wriggled into a more comfortable position. “You did okay, seeing as how you were treating me as though I’m made of glass.”
He choked on a bark of a laugh. “I told you slow and gentle wouldn’t be so bad.”
Paige mumbled a response, curled up in his arms, and with her head resting possessively on Isaac’s chest, fell into her first dreamless sleep since the attempt on her life.
The following morning, Paige woke alone. Isaac was in the habit of rising with the sun and getting to work. He wouldn’t be working today, she realized with a jolt. It was the day of the funeral. Thanks to Isaac’s wonderfully distracting hands and tongue, the thought no longer filled her with dread.
The prospect of breakfast made her stomach roil. She hit the shower instead, standing for a long time under the hot jets, preparing herself for the day to come. She finally stepped out into the steam-filled bathroom, dried herself and then her hair. Paige pulled on the elegant shift dress she’d found in a boutique in Corey Avenue that Nick had taken her to the previous day. Her shoes sported heels four inches high. She smiled. Ellie would have thoroughly approved. She wore a fascinator in her hair, with a short veil that covered her eyes. It disguised the now-smaller dressing on her temple and the ugly bruise that surrounded it, but its real purpose was to hide her tears from the world. They were laying her dear friend to rest today, and Paige knew that she’d weep buckets. She always cried at funerals, and at weddings, too. But this time she’d be lamenting the unnecessary sacrifice of such a vibrant life, cut short way before its time.
With a final glance in the mirror, she picked up her purse, checked that she had a full packet of tissues inside it, and headed for the stairs.
“I can do this,” she said to her reflection. “I absolutely can.”
Chapter Nineteen
Paige walked carefully down the stairs, aware of Isaac and Nick standing in the hall below, watching her intently. The lower floor had been transformed since yesterday. Caterers bustled about with quiet efficiency. They had taken over Nick’s kitchen and had set up tables with crisp linen cloths in the formal sitting room, the den, and outside in the pool area. A bar had materialized in the corner of the den. All Nick’s work, Paige supposed, feeling guilty for not having done more to help. Not that Nick would have let her, but she should have insisted.
“Those legs seem to get longer by the day,” she heard Nick say to Isaac, admiration in his voice.
Isaac whistled softly as her feet hit the tiles of the hallway. “You look gorgeous,” he said, kissing her cheek almost chastely.
“You two scrub up quite well yourselves.”
Isaac looked devastating in a lightweight, superbly cut, pale gray suit. She couldn’t help noticing that the color perfectly matched his eyes. His shirt was blindingly white, and he wore a vivid silk necktie with a surrealist pattern on it that would have given Dali pause. He’d gotten it exactly right—somber but not funereal. Nick had expressed his own laid-back personality by wearing pale blue dress slacks and a white mesh T-shirt beneath a suede jacket, his dirty-blond hair flopping in disorderly waves over his forehead.
“You okay?” Isaac asked.
“I’m fine.” Paige tried to suppress a shudder but didn’t completely succeed. “Let’s just do this.”
“The car’s here,” Nick said.
Isaac and Nick took up positions on either side of her as they escorted her to the door. She wanted to tell them she could manage on her own, except she wasn’t so sure if she actually could. Nick took her hand, Isaac slipped a protective arm round her waist, and the gratitude she felt toward them for instinctively recognizing her angst filled her with emotion.
She couldn’t remember much about arriving at the chapel. She did register that it was filled to bursting—standing room only. She walked down the aisle with her protectors still supporting her, Sam and his wife immediately ahead of them. She sat in a front pew between Isaac and Nick, holding their hands, biting her lip and willing herself not to cry when the service got underway. She tried not to look at the coffin. Ellie’s death was somehow more real now that the lid was closed, and it was covered with floral tributes.
Isaac stepped forward, ready to deliver his eulogy. Nick captured the hand he’d just released and now held both of Paige’s in his own.
“It’ll be okay,” he whispered, seemingly sensing that this was the moment Paige had most dreaded.
Isaac walked slowly to the lectern, every eye in the place following him. He stood there, absolutely still, and Paige could have heard a pin drop. He allowed the silence to linger for a moment before his gravelly voice, low yet commanding, effortlessly held everyone’s attention.
“Ellie Carter was a warm, clever, caring, and giving person who instinctively understood what made people tick, often better than those people understood it themselves.”
Paige and Nick shared a glance. That was certainly true, at least in Paige’s case.
“When my twin brother and I first met Ellie ten years ago, we were brash twenty-three-year-olds who thought we knew it all.” A soft rumble of laughter echoed through the chapel. “We were in LA, fresh out of college, trying to make it by managing wannabe rock stars. We hit pay dirt, more by luck than through any wisdom on our part, and signed a kid who happened to make the charts with his first single. He needed a publicist, and Ellie just happened to be in town.” Isaac paused, his gaze roving over the packed chapel. Every eye was trained upon him, and he must be aware that he held them in the palm of his hand. “Even we’d heard of Ellie Carter.” This produced more laughter, louder this time. “And we were so starstruck that we signed the worst contract known to man, the terms completely biased in Ellie’s favor, without even running it past an attorney first. We knew it all, remember, so what did we need with lawyers?
“Oh yeah, Ellie was warm, kind and generous, but when it came to business, she was a Rottweiler. Trust me, I know about what I speak.”
Paige dapped at the corners of her eyes with a tissue as more laughter echoed through the chapel. “He’s good,” she whispered to Nick.
Nick chuckled softly. “And that surprises you?”
“I didn’t know that about him and Ellie.”
“I’m betting there’s more. We’ll grill him later.”
Isaac waited for the laughter to die down again before he continued. “When I realized what we’d done, I tried to wangle our way out of the contract. Asked her to rethink the terms. She refused, of course, as she had every right to do. Instead she offered us both jobs. When I asked her why she’d do that when we were such jerks, she laughed, said she knew we’d learned a hard lesson and that we’d never make the same mistake again.” He paused. “She was right, we never did.
“This service is a celebration of Ellie’s life. Of all the lives she’s touched and enhanced. Judging by the number of you here today, that’s quite a few.” Heads nodded. “I don’t doubt that you all have stories to tell about Ellie’s intuitiveness, her ability to live for the moment and be herself without fear of reprisals.”
“That’s true enough,” Nick mumbled.
“Ellie was taken from us before her time but, know this.” Isaac’s voice rose. “She didn’t waste a moment of the time she had on this earth regretting anything she did, nor should we. If we take anything from her untimely demise then it ought to be that life is for living because none of us know how long we’re destined to be here. ‘Say not in grief,’ he quoted, ‘she
is no more, but live in thankfulness that she was.’”
Paige gasped at the beauty of his words and sobbed against Nick’s shoulder. His arm snaked its way round her shoulders, strong, reassuring, soothing.
“The mystery of Ellie’s death confounds us all, her friends.” Isaac’s gaze rested on Paige. “But the mystery of love is greater still. To live in the hearts of those she leaves behind, as Ellie surely will, is not to die.”
Isaac’s eyes now lingered on the closed casket. “Sleep well, Ellie,” he said softly. “We all love you.”
Sniffling and loud clearing of throats echoed round the chapel as Isaac resumed his seat beside Paige.
“That was lovely,” she said, slipping her hand back into his. “Thank you.”
Nick reached over and touched Isaac’s shoulder.
The rest of the service passed in a blur. Paige vaguely recalled leaving first with Sam and his wife, greeting people at the door while Isaac and Nick ensured they knew where to go for the reception.
Back at the house she spoke to people—Melanie, Talbot, Lieutenant Weir, and Detective Archer, people she’d seen at the funeral home during the viewings. It was surreal. She had no idea what she said to them, how she got through it without breaking down, but somehow she did.
“Okay, babe, that’s it.”
Paige started violently. She’d been standing on the dock, staring at Nick’s boat, snatching a minute for herself. That minute had obviously stretched, and Isaac appeared to be telling her that everyone had left.
“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I haven’t been much help to you, have I?”
“You did great. Go and get changed, and by the time you come back down, the caterers will have gone.”
“Yes, I’ll do that.”
They walked hand in hand back to the house, and Paige slipped up the stairs. She stripped off and took her second shower of the day, hoping to wash the feeling of loss and despair from her skin. She pulled on a pair of shorts and a vest over her nakedness, not bothering with underwear, and wandered barefoot downstairs.
