by Ace Gray
I jolted with each sting and the nipple clamps shook and swayed. I didn’t know if the stones or the spanks were responsible for more of my mangled cries.
"I need this heart and I need this body for as long as we both shall live."
He rimmed his finger through the slickness between my thighs then cracked against my backside twice more. My heart was thundering but only for him. My body trembled too. Nothing existed in the whole damn world besides Nicholas Bryant.
Without warning, he shoved his fingers into my hair and arched me back toward my bound arms. The motion sent the jewels swaying and I winced. He wasn’t watching my face, just the stones as they swayed hypnotically back and forth. I couldn’t breathe and had to find his eyes to settle my heart. Deep, pure blue colored every inch of his irises. For a moment, my entire universe existed in the profound pools of his eyes. I almost came right then.
As always, he sensed how close I was and let his hands dropped from my body. I sagged, still helplessly tied, back to his thighs, gasping for a decent sized breath. It wasn’t lost on me that a sizable erection now pressed into my arm.
Nick turned his attention to the camera and snapped a photo of me.
“Jesus, that’s perfect,” Nick said as the camera went crazy.
I stayed put and turned to face him, my vision blurry. Nick snapped furiously as I indulged him, looking up in the direction of the shutter snaps as best I could from under long eyelashes. Lying across his lap was doing nothing to ease my desperate want.
“Please!” I broke.
He snapped two more photos then chuckled as he set the camera down. Gently, he lifted me from his lap only to drape me along the bed. He quickly pitched his shirt and vest then fidgeted at his belt. His cock pressed hard against the fabric, keeping his pants in place. My fingers took to drumming against my forearms again, wanting nothing more than to reach out and strip him. I didn't mean to dig my nails into my own flesh when he finally got naked, but I couldn't help myself.
Nick crawled onto the bed and pulled me to my knees. We sat nose to nose, with me squirming against the ribbon still wanting to run my fingers over every inch of him. He curled his grip into my smarting ass and lifted me again. Nick held me so I hovered just above his erection and my greedy sex pulsed with anticipation. When I dripped onto him, he held me just out of reach, his smug smirk firmly in place.
I bit my lips and wiggled my hips, hoping he would falter, and I’d fall onto his perfect, waiting penis. His hands curled into my fresh welts and stilled me. I was rewarded with a devilish smirk, and the tip of his dick teasing at my slick slit. When I bit my lip to keep from begging again, he pulled my hips down. Hard. I cried out and couldn't help but scramble.
Nick didn’t flinch. He sat buried inside of me and only when I stopped bucking did he lean forward to press his ear to my chest. I should have known there was a reason he’d chosen this position. It was a different type of toe-curling to know he cared that much.
Once he was satisfied with my heart beats, he angled me backward. His chin nodded, encouraging me to glide up his cock. At the last moment, right before he fell out of me, he used the dangling nipple jewels to pull me back down.
“Ahhh!” I screamed as all sorts of sensation shot through my body.
When I arched away from him, writhing wildly, his hands roughly shoved into the crease of my hips and drove me down. I gasped again, trying to catch my breath, impaled as I was by the ridiculously perfect cock inside me but he tapped on my ass, a signal to slid back up along his length. Nick made me keep going, sliding up just so he could shove me down—every time an assault on my pleasure senses. Just when I thought he’d let me set the rhythm on my own, his hands would come back to the nipple clamps and guide me. My whole body would contort and writhe against him.
I loved every minute of it even though my heart picked up pace as my orgasm neared. I was so lost to his touch, I couldn't tell if it was with the good or bad kind of thrumming. Honestly, not a single brain cell cared to figure it out.
He shoved harder into me and I was sure his next thrust would send me over the edge. Nick knew too. He humored me and pressed deep into me. Those amazing, wonderful, perfect waves started to wrack my body. He ripped off first one jeweled clamp then the other, thrusting twice more before coming himself. His hips kept rolling, pushing cum out onto our legs and making the sheen that had developed between us all the more sticky. I couldn’t do anything but sag into his firm body, my heart still a jackhammer.
Nick emptied completely before he noticed how spent I actually was. His eyes flashed with concern just before he scrambled to untie me. My face twisted when he pulled out of me and pressed his hands up against my bruised backside to get at the ribbon.
“Jesus, Nick," I gasped.
"You're heart?”
"Is fine." I took a deep breath and he gave me one hell of a skeptical face. "It's hammering because you drive me crazy. The moment I met you it started pounding around all crazy in there. Who fucking knew it only gets better?”
I smiled and laid my hand to his heart; faint marks wound around my forearm where the ribbon had gripped my skin. His was calming down but even his heart thudded a little too hard in his chest. I flexed my fingers into his perfect skin and he understood. He even smiled and leaned his forehead to mine.
"Thank you,” he breathed. "Thank you for that, for knowing what I needed and being it, without hesitation. For letting me take control. For being you. And being mine." He was so sweet and earnest that my heart did thump.
Of course he noticed but rather than get upset he lowered himself to bed and pulled me into the crook of his shoulder. Nick traced my favorite small circles up and down my arm, and I listened as his heartbeat slowed. I willed mine to match his. I could have sworn they were beating in unison when I finally fell asleep.
20.
“Shhhh Kate, calm down. Please, please, please calm down, sweet girl.” Julia slowly, almost hypnotically, rubbed my back.
I hadn't been dreaming of anything that I could remember when I shot up from bed. Luckily, she’d been there to hold me but that didn't change that my heart ached worse than it had since leaving the hospital. This was the kind of sharp shooting pain that made me clutch my chest and fill with fear—the I-might-actually-die kind of fear. Eventually, I could breathe again, and I sagged into Julia’s fluttery, delicate arms.
"What just happened?” For the first time since I’d known her, Julia’s voice wavered.
“It’s my heart." My hands kept on rubbing at my chest.
"You looked like…”
"Like I was going to die." I finished the words for her. "I felt like it." My voice shorted out too.
Now that adrenaline wasn't coursing through my veins, I was shaken, a tear rolling down my cheek.
“Oh honey.” Julia was still rubbing my back, her strokes picking up pace. “Nicholas asked me to stay with you, to make sure you follow Dr. Chamber's orders, but I had no idea…" she stuttered a little, her eyes wide, before adding, "I’ll get you some chicken soup.”
She had made me pancakes the last time she tried to care for me, and I knew being busy made her feel useful, so I let her spin in ballerina-like frazzled circles on the way to the door. Honestly, I didn’t know how to stop her. Or to say that, for once in my life, I desperately needed someone. Just as Nick always did, Julia must have read my thoughts because she hovered in the doorway rather than leaving. Her hand fluttered nervously against the wood the way it always did near me.
“It’s that bad huh?” I leaned back into the pillows when I asked.
“Hum?” She smiled lightly, feigning confusion, but her gunmetal eyes couldn’t lie.
“Not only do I feel like death, I look like it too?”
“You are gorgeous darling, even now.” Julia smiled her broad, practiced smile.
In that moment the realization hit me that I’d seen Julia smile many times but it’d never lit up her entire face. Once or twice, I thought it had, but look
ing back her eyes never wavered. Not when we met. Not when Nick and I had gotten engaged. They changed color like Nick’s but they never actually beamed or twinkled.
My compulsion to comfort overtook me as quickly and violently as it usually did with Nick. Words vomited out before I gave it a second thought. “Christopher did this. He did this because he’s a psychopath and he’s a fucking nut job because Francis never put a stop to him. We have to get away from him. Somehow.” Her face pinched uncharacteristically. “Leave Francis. Walk away from the Winthrops. Please.”
“Kate…” She walked back toward me, her hands still moving nervously through the air.
“Look, I’m not asking for me. Or because of this.” I gestured at my chest. “Despite what Nicholas thinks, I’m strong enough to live through this. But Christopher did this to hurt your son. He will stop at nothing to take what Nicholas loves.”
The thought made my heart shudder again. I masked the pain but my whole body still tensed. Julia slowly folded back down sitting on the bed, this time near my shins.
“Julia, Ari could be next. Hell, you could be next.” I sighed. “Or best case scenario, he’s done with us for now, but it still leaves you married to the man who beats you and supports this, or turns a blind eye to it, or whatever it is that Francis does.”
Julia carefully wrapped her arms around her ribs as she listened. Judging by the progressive sag of her shoulders, everything I said was already a truth gnawing at her insides. My words had to mimic the ever-present jumbled dialogue in her head. I shuffled as best I could, covers in tow, to comfort her the way she’d done for me. I even rubbed her shoulder gently.
“I’m not like you, Kate. But God, I wish I was.” She sagged into my arms. “For twenty-two years I have wished I had the strength to provide for my children. That I could bear the scrutiny and protect them all the same. But I’m not like you. I’m not strong enough.” Her shoulders heaved. “I never was.”
“Julia, once, I overheard you saying you married Francis to afford Nick and Ari opportunities they wouldn’t have otherwise. Did you mean it?”
“That was my greatest hope.” Julia twisted, putting us nose to nose.
Her eye color wasn’t familiar to me but it pulled on my heartstrings all the same. Literally. My heart faltered. Her slight palm lifted to cradle my face, stroking my cheeks tenderly as my body trembled.
“But Julia. Look at them. Haven’t you succeeded?” I implored. “Ten times over?”
“No sweetheart.” She smiled a positively dejected smile.
“I don’t understand. Please elaborate,” I squeaked out.
“Oh darling, I’m supposed to be helping, not hurting you.”
I rolled out of her grasp and rested my head on her shoulder, the way I would have if she was my mother. She sighed softly and her fingers curled frailly into mine, a ghosted mirror of Nick’s. The longer we sat still, the thicker the silence became. When I almost suffocated, she cleared her throat. Just as Nick did, she waited until the last minute to start talking.
“I loved Nicholas’ father. Truly, madly, deeply. I didn’t care that he had money, I only cared that I saw the world when I looked at him, everything made sense when I looked into his dark brown eyes.”
My heart clenched at the description I could relate to intimately.
“You see, I was born and bred to be a wife, and a mother. In my day, you only went to school to land a husband, not a career. I expected to get married, run a household, plan dinner parties but not to fall in love. That’s what Connecticut family money does to you.
“When I found a man that actually made my heart pitter-patter, I almost didn’t know how to handle it. I ran away for the briefest moment, but then I threw myself into him and our relationship without any concern for myself.
“I lost myself in him. In us. And I wouldn’t take that back for anything. My world revolved around him and I loved it. First cooking and cleaning, then later, coordinating the household. I hosted events here and in the city. Never once did I complain, never once did I want to. But the day I found out I was pregnant all that changed.”
A defensive scowl crept onto my face, but mercifully, I kept my mouth shut.
“I had the perfect life and a baby meant it was getting better. The day my doctor told me I was carrying Nicholas I knew something bad would happen. I didn’t tell anyone, but I could feel it in my bones. No one deserves to be that happy.”
The longer she spoke, the more I recognized Nick in her. She’d passed down her ability to keep a facade while feeling unworthy, and—to top it off—her fatalistic views on happiness.
“Two weeks after I found out about Nicholas, we found out about the cancer. And that stays between us. I’ve always told the children it was a short and sweet diagnosis. That their father didn’t suffer.”
Her eyes had shifted to a pale, ghostly gray. Again it wasn’t a color I knew but it made my stomach churn all the same.
“We made every preparation, for the baby and for chemotherapy. It’s an odd pair, life and death, right next to each other like that. But we managed. And Nicholas was a miracle.”
A sad smile tugged at the corners of my lips.
“I wish you could’ve seen them together.” Julia managed a laugh but it was through the first of giant, crocodile tears. “My husband would go tearing through the yard in Prada loafers if it meant playing catch with his son. He cooked hotdogs over the fire pit with a vintage Cartier watch on. Nothing mattered but his family. When he found out we were having a baby girl, he wept. And to this day, I don’t know if it’s because he was going to have a princess or because he would miss her growing up. She was a complete surprise. After the chemo we didn't even know we could conceive.”
This was a whole different type of knife to the heart. It pounded in my chest, and I wasn’t sure if I was okay with it. Besides my breathing, only silence filled the room, both of us choking on emotion.
“You know, he suggested Francis.”
I had to bite back the What the fuck? that sat on the tip of my tongue.
“My husband could read my every thought. He knew I was devastated. He knew I questioned whether I could go on. And he knew I was terrified. And he, like Nicholas, stopped at nothing to solve a problem. So toward the end he suggested a wealthy, newly widowed replacement that would have me run his household, raise his child and keep me in the life I’d become accustomed to.”
“Oh holy fuck.” I couldn’t hold it in this time. The ramifications were too overwhelming. “There’s no way he meant for you to stay through…this.” I wanted to throw my hands up but something in her posture said don’t lose it. I’d break the spell.
“Sweet girl, you say that but you don’t know what it’s like. To make promises to someone you love like that.”
“But I do.” My words tumbled out. “Every time I look into Nick’s eyes I see my world staring back. I know exactly what it feels like to love like that, to swear like that. But I also know what it is to be loved like that. He’d sooner die.” I couldn’t help that my voice got more urgent.
Or that I grabbed her hand and squeezed.
“And what would you do for the children you feel similarly about?” She looked over at me, her eyes past forlorn, far closer to hopeless. After a few deep breaths, her gaze fell away.
“I don’t know much about children, but I had parents I loved dearly. I’d do anything to bring them back, of course. But what haunts me is that they died in pain. As futile as it is, I prayed I could take away their pain.”
Julia’s shoulders shook gently at those words. Rather than stare in wonder at the first genuine emotion I’d seen from her, I continued. It seemed far more appropriate.
“The man in Prada loafers playing catch in the yard only wanted to protect you. He wanted you happy.”
“And that’s all I want. Them safe and happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” Her tears were small, dainty things that still managed to roll down her face and onto her shirt.
“Julia, the only sadness in Nick comes from the result of you keeping that promise.”
I probably should have toned it down. I probably should have let her continue to weep on my shoulder in silence. I probably should have kept my nose out of Bryant family business. Then again, they were my family now too.
“Well then, I suppose “Oh holy fuck” is appropriate.” Julia’s practiced smile pulled up into place. “At least I was obedient to the end. To the end of all of us, it would seem.”
My heart thudded again. This time I didn’t think it was toxins but I couldn’t be sure. It was far heavier and every bit as painful as it had been earlier.
I rubbed her shoulders and she sagged into me. Consoling words kept tumbling through my mind but none of them were right. None of them could be strung together to make a sentence. Or at least not one that made anything better.
“I’m so tired of playing a part, Kate, of being in this balancing act where I choose between letting down my two little hearts and my one giant universe. I’m lost every day.” Her facade finally made sense; it was the only thing keeping her together.
Suddenly the right words bubbled up. “You’re far stronger that you think, Julia.”
Her head twisted toward me, and just like Nick, her eyes filtered to a disconcerting blue. We studied each other. Everything in the room quieted, even the ticking of the clock and vibrating of the inner workings of the building went silent.
Then it clicked, the final piece of the Julia Winthrop puzzle. Julia wasn’t just a reflection of Nick, but of me too. I was staring at a version of myself. Sure, I would fight and rail on if something like that ever happened between Nick and I, but I would be obedient in the end. I hated myself a little for that. But perhaps that’s why I could speak on a level no one else had. I too had seen my universe in someone’s eyes.
“If your husband had anything to do with the human being Nick is, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt…” I paused, taking a deep breath. “Nick’s dad would personally strangle Francis if he knew what Francis had done,” I said as Julia leaned on my shoulder the way I had on hers. “I know down deep in my soul, he’d put nothing else above you.” My hands curled inadvertently into hers. “Nothing,” I added vehemently.
