“Then tell your wife to get with the program. She’s either with one of us, or she’s a liability.” Jasmine’s chin tilted up, a defiant set to her jaw. She wasn’t backing down.
Neither was Nate. His hulking frame seemed to curl around her menacingly, his voice taking on a tone that sent chills down my spine. “Holland is not yours to order around. She is mine. Do you hear me? Touch her and I don’t care who you are to me, I will destroy you without mercy.” Jasmine’s eyes went wide as Nate withdrew his threatening stance. Then he turned and addressed the rest of us. “Don’t forget that it’s you who needs me, not the other way around. Touch my wife again—any one of you, for any reason—and I’ll make you pay. I promise you that.”
Then he turned and stalked off, leaving the rest of us stunned silent. My mind though, was never silent. Like Sam, Nate had been forced to marry Holland. I’d never seen such fury in someone’s eyes, but to think that anger had been because Holland had been hurt? As much as I despised strong-armed tactics, Nate had been nothing short of fierce in his defence of my friend. He scared the living crap out of me, but at least he was willing to fight for her honour. I had to wonder if I’d ever inspire that kind of emotion in Sam. Would he ever fight for me?
“You’re shaking.” Sam’s arms tightened around my frame.
“I’m fine,” I insisted. “But we need to get them cleaned up. Why don’t you get some ice and meet us in Abbot’s room? Jasmine and I can help them get there.”
Sam looked at his mother with a quirked brow, as if asking ‘Is that cool with you?’ Jasmine nodded and together we took the twins upstairs, Abbot sporting a split lip and Kristian a cut brow.
“Why didn’t you hit him back?” I asked Kristian as I pressed a damp cloth over his eye.
He winced a little from the pain, then met my eyes. “Because he’s right. We need him more than he needs us.”
“That doesn’t give him the right to hit you and get away with it.”
He shrugged. “He had to hit someone. If he did nothing, it would mean hurting his wife was OK. Would you prefer that?”
Never. Violence was never the right answer.
“I’d prefer it if no one got hit at all.”
“Sometimes fists speak louder than words.”
Sam arrived with a bucket of ice, placing a handful inside a napkin and handing it to Kristian. “Think you’ll be able to see out of that tomorrow?”
Kristian chuckled a little and shook his head. “Nah, mate, he got me good. Eye’s already closing up.” He pulled the ice away from his face and showed Sam the swelling on his eye.
“Always has had a good right hook on him. What’d you do, anyway?”
“He didn’t do anything,” I answered for him, taking his hand and guiding the ice back to his eye.
“I just told him that I didn’t know how his wife’s face got bruised.”
“Which is true,” I said. “He wasn’t even in the room when it happened.”
“When what happened?” Sam asked, looking between us.
I dropped my gaze to the floor. I didn’t want to be the one who dobbed in his mother.
Kristian didn’t volunteer the information either.
“Somebody had better tell me what the hell is going on,” Sam boomed, causing me to jump slightly and close my eyes against the sound. I hated yelling. When I was small and my parents would fight, I used to take all the toys out of my chest and climb inside it with my blanket, then close the lid to muffle the sound. Once, I fell asleep in there and they thought I’d run away. When I woke up, there was a policeman in the living room asking for a recent photo of me. Boy, did I get a whooping over that. I couldn’t sit for a whole day, plus they took my toy chest and cut it down as firewood. I just sat on my bed and blocked my ears after that.
“I hit her,” Jasmine confessed as she entered the bathroom with a bloodied washcloth in her hands. “She wouldn’t shut the fuck up, so I made her. She obviously went crying to Nate over it.”
“Nah,” Abbot said, leaning against the door frame with his own bag of ice against his lip. “I don’t reckon she did.”
“Then how did he find out?” Jasmine said.
Tugging his unruly shoulder-length hair behind his ear, Abbot bounced a shoulder. “I don’t know. But he came down last night demanding to know what happened. She told him she fell, and he didn’t believe her.” He nodded towards Kristian. “We backed up her story, but he didn’t seem to believe us either.”
“Yeah, he put a hole in the wall in our room as a warning. Said it’d be us if he found out we were lying,” Kristian added.
“Guess he followed through with his threat, then,” I said.
Kristian nodded. “Maybe he kept at her and she cracked, told him the truth. He’s had this massive caveman boner for her since they met. He’ll do anything to keep her. I suggest we give them some space. He’ll calm down. He always does.”
Once the twins were cleaned up and Jasmine seemed to relax—with the help of a hefty glut of whiskey in her morning coffee—Sam took me outside for a walk along the beach so I could clear my own head.
“You were pretty great back there, jumping in to take care of the wounded the way you did. I can see why Jasmine thinks you’re going to fit in well with the family.” He stopped and picked up a shell, throwing it sideways into the water so it skipped along the surface.
“She said that?” After her comment the previous night, I wasn’t sure what she thought of me at all.
He nodded, then threw another stone. “Said you’ll make a good wife and mother, that she sees you being good for us. She’s looking forward to having another woman around the house.”
My mind was stuck on the part about being a mother. They expected me to produce children?
“And what do you think about all that?” I asked, trying to keep my slight panic hidden.
He looked at me for a moment, then took my hand, lacing our fingers together. “I think you’re a hell of a lot stronger and smarter than anyone has ever given you credit for.”
I smiled and caught my hair in my free hand, stopping the chocolate strands from whipping me in the face. “Is that a compliment?”
He pulled on my arm a little, guiding me until we were toe to toe. Then he lifted my chin and looked into my eyes. “Yeah, peaches, that’s a compliment,” he said, just before he brought his mouth to mine. I hesitated, then slowly slipped my arms around his neck and curled my toes in the sand. God, I love it when he kisses me.
“Thank you,” I murmured when he released me, leaving my cheeks flushed and my legs shaky.
“For kissing you?” He grinned as if he thought that a funny thing to be grateful for.
I guess he’s never been hard up for a willing pair of lips to kiss.
I nodded. “And for being nice to me. I know this probably isn’t how you imagined getting married, and I know I’m not the ideal choice for a man like you. So I appreciate that you’re giving this a chance when you could just as easily be callous and resentful.”
He released a slow breath. “Why do you keep putting yourself down like that?”
“I’m not,” I argued. “I’m just being honest.”
“No. You’re being self-deprecating. I’ve told you that I like you. I’ve told you that I think you’re rare and perfect. Do you think I’m lying to you?”
“No, I just… I think you’re being kind.”
Placing his hands on my arse, he roughly pulled me flat against his body, his hardness pressing into my soft lower belly. Oh my. “Does this feel kind to you, peaches? Or does it feel hard?” He ground his hips to further punctuate his words. Oh my my.
“H-h-hard,” I gasped, my mouth suddenly super dry.
“So, when I tell you that I think you’re gorgeous and that I want you, do you believe me?” He rolled his hips again.
I closed my eyes. “Y-y-yes. I b-believe you.”
“Then I don’t want to hear you putting yourself down or doubting what I think of you a
gain. If I say I like you, if I say I want you, if I say I’m ecstatic that I’m going to be the first man inside that tight little snatch of yours, then that’s exactly what I mean. I won’t lie to you, Alesha. We might be thieves, but that doesn’t mean we’re bad people.”
“OK,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
He took a hold of my chin. “Don’t be sorry. You’re a Cartwright now. You don’t have to be sorry for anything.”
Chapter Five
I Stole A Unicorn
Had I known that I’d soon be on my honeymoon with the sexiest bad boy on the planet, I would’ve been a little more discerning in my recent underwear and swimsuit purchases. Everything I owned was, in a word, practical. There wasn’t a shred of lace or silk anywhere. It was all basic cotton for comfort, and my bathers were black with a high neck and a zip up the back so when I did laps at the local pool, my straps didn’t fall down. I didn’t do sexy. I’d never had reason to. Before now.
Standing in the warm tropical water in a set of nanna bathers while I tried not to fall over my tongue at the sight of Sam’s naked chest only served to remind me exactly how out of my depth I was. I wasn’t the girl who got the guy. I was the girl who read the books about the girls who got the guy. This couldn’t possibly be my life.
So what if he was a criminal? He was gorgeous, he was fun, and he was kind. I wanted him. I wanted him from somewhere deep inside my blood. So he lived on the wrong side of the law? So bloody what.
Wait. So what?
What am I even thinking? Of course it mattered that he was a criminal. It should matter. Shouldn’t it?
But what if it didn’t? Now that was something to ponder. Did I seriously not care about the whole family of thieves thing? When I was with him, I didn’t care about much more than when he was next going to touch me. The times I did think about his chosen vocation were during these quiet moments when the walls of my new reality wavered, when I felt that perhaps my meeting him was just a dream. That was when I ran through the facts, when I told myself I should care. So maybe I did care that he was a thief, and maybe I didn’t. Either way, I was a part of it now.
This was my life.
“Ready, peaches?”
I took a breath, meeting his eyes as I pulled my mask over my head. “As I’ll ever be.”
After getting past the drama of the morning, Sam and I gravitated towards activities more fitting of a newlywed couple on their first island adventure. No, we didn’t start bunny humping in our room (get your mind out of the gutter). We booked a snorkelling adventure instead. Right now, to add to my sexy bathers, I was also wearing a giant pair of flippers, half-face goggles and a snorkel. Say it all together, ladies and gentlemen—se-xy! That’s right, walking like a duck with my eyeballs sucking out of my face and my lips protruding around a plastic tube was as alluring as it got.
Somehow, when Sam put the exact same gear on his body, he did look hot. There wasn’t a single way in the world to make that godlike man look unattractive. Go figure.
Gliding forwards in the water, we followed along the reef, watching colourful fish dart in and out of the brilliant coral. At one point, Sam took my hand as we swam along together. It was like floating through a dream in which I ceased to be me. The Alesha I was, the one who lived in Melbourne, worked with the dead and constantly worried what her father thought wasn’t in the water with me. I was someone else. I was Peaches.
Pointing ahead, Sam directed my attention towards the ocean floor where a ray was shuffling about in the sand and kicking up a dusty cloud. He signalled to dive down farther and we released our hands, taking a deep breath and angling ourselves towards the ray.
Keeping at a respectful distance, we watched it shuffling, most likely hunting out a food source. It kind of reminded me of a little puppy playing in the dirt and I couldn’t help but laugh—which was probably a bad idea under the water, because I couldn’t really coordinate holding my breath while laughing and ended up sucking in some air. Except there wasn’t any air, only water, and people can’t breathe under water.
Needing oxygen faster than a crack whore needed a hit, I powered myself towards the surface, bursting through to take great gulps of air, blissfully easing the burning in my lungs.
“Holy crap,” I gasped, pulling the goggles from my eyes and wiping a hand over my face. That was close.
“You all right?” Sam popped up only seconds later, a concerned look creasing his brow as he removed his gear.
“Yeah.” I looked towards the beach. “I just ran out of breath.”
He placed a hand against the side of my face, his thumb caressing my cheek. “You scared me.”
“I’m OK.” Albeit horribly embarrassed.
Bringing his body closer, I felt the warmth of his chest and then his mouth pressing against mine, kissing me softly with just a tiny bit of tongue. I could taste the salt of the sea as I wrapped my arms around his neck to deepen the kiss. He made me nervous and eager. I wanted to experience what it was like to be this new woman, the object of Sam’s desire.
“Maybe it’s time to head back,” Sam suggested when we gave our lips a brief pause. Then he kissed me again as if he couldn’t stop himself. I had to wonder if he really wanted me as much as he claimed, or if he was just excited by the fact that I was still a virgin. To me, it was an embarrassment. But to him, it was arousing. I didn’t really get that about men. Why would having sex with a nervous girl who was likely to bleed everywhere be a turn-on? Wouldn’t it be better to sleep with a woman who knew what she was doing and could therefore rock your world? For example, I read once that when Marie Antoinette married Louis XVI, they were both virgins and had no idea what they were doing. It was rumoured that the reason she couldn’t get pregnant was because they were doing it in the wrong hole (that’s her butthole for the ill-informed) and the moment they started using the right one, she was pregnant pretty much straight away. Talk about awkward! I didn’t understand the allure of that much cluelessness.
“Mmm, I’m hungry,” I responded against his lips, because I was. We’d missed breakfast, and it was well past lunch.
Pausing his exploration of my mouth, he looked at me and smiled. “I like you, peaches. I like that you know what you want.”
There was a lot I wanted that I didn’t say out loud. If he heard half the thoughts that went on in my mind, he’d probably run for the hills.
“I don’t mind you either.”
Heading back to shore, we didn’t waste any time returning our equipment before we headed up to our room, holding hands the entire way. This would be the first time that Sam had shown any sort of affection or intimacy towards me behind a closed door.
I could finally lose my virginity tonight.
That was a funny saying, ‘losing one’s virginity’. It was spoken about like it was an actual thing instead of an experience, and to speak of losing something implies that you want it to be found. Did anyone want it back once they got rid of it? Based on what I’d seen a couple of porn stars do, I’d say no.
As we walked down the hallway towards our room, I stole a glance at Sam’s face. He must’ve felt my nerves because he gave my hand a squeeze and said, “Relax, I plan to feed you.”
Did that mean he planned to feed me his cock? I’d seen some guy offer his dick as a substitute for food before. Holland and I had gone through a phase in our teens where we watched Internet porn, then discussed what we’d seen. It was both out of defiance and curiosity, because my dad wouldn’t let me be a part of the sex-ed classes at school, and since my mother had taken off by that stage, Holland felt it was her duty as my best friend to inform me. Somehow, I didn’t think ‘devouring pork swords’ was covered in class.
“Why don’t you grab a shower, and I’ll call room service. Anything you prefer? A burger?” He grinned, and I had a vague memory of demanding a burger from him the night before.
“Yeah, but only if it has bacon on it. And lots of fries. You can’t have a burger without fries.”
“Duly noted.” He grinned, then picked up the phone, dialling through to reception. Once he connected, I turned and headed for the bathroom. “Peaches,” he called after me, his hand covering the receiver as he beckoned me closer. I kept moving until I was standing directly in front of him. Then he gestured for me to turn around while he waited for whoever was on the other end.
Curious, I did as he asked, then almost stopped breathing when I felt his fingers on the zipper of my bathers, pulling it down to where it ended just below my shoulder blades. I held my breath the entire time, each release of the teeth like an incredibly slow seduction. Do it! my brain screamed. Take me and get this stupid rite of passage over with. I honestly didn’t want to draw it out. The faster we busted past that hymen of mine, the faster we could get to the good stuff. Every account I’d ever heard or read said it was better the next time, and I was growing impatient.
He pressed a tender kiss against my skin. “Enjoy your shower,” he said before turning his attention back to our food order. “Yes. Room 318.” As he relayed our order, he smiled at me and nodded towards the bathroom. I hadn’t moved yet, still buzzing with anticipation for something, anything. I wanted more than kissing and teasing. “Go.” He shooed me away with a laugh and I did as I was told, an automatic response that was a result of incredibly strict parenting.
As I turned on the shower, I thought for a moment about my father. He was going to be furious with me. Not only did I get married without inviting him, but I didn’t do it in a church, and as far as I knew, the Cartwrights weren’t the religious type. He wasn’t going to take the news of his only daughter’s nuptials well at all.
I did my best to put the thought of his reaction out of my mind. I’d been allowed to call him to let him know I was leaving the country—a call I had to make on speaker with a couple of Cartwrights listening in, a precautionary tactic to make sure I wasn’t reported missing—but I wasn’t sure if I’d get to see my family again when we returned to Australia. I didn’t know how strict my imprisonment disguised as a marriage really was.
Fools Rush In Page 4
