by M. G. Morgan
Reality crashed back around me and I jerked free of his grip, his eyes were dark with a mixture of lust and pain and he dug his fingers into my back in an attempt to draw me closer once more.
I lashed out, my hand connecting with the still heavily bruised side of his face but it didn’t make me feel any better. I moved to strike him again. He’d hurt me, planning to leave me, it didn’t matter how noble he thought his actions were he’d kept secrets from me and I could have lost him because of them.
“What the hell?” He muttered blackly, catching my wrists in his large hands holding them down by my sides, his attempt at preventing me from hitting him again.
I fought his grip, lashing and kicking, my anger and upset pouring out of me in a haze of violence.
David scooped me up into his arms, keeping me locked against his body and the tight grip he had on me made any sort of fighting impossible.
He carried me into the house and I wailed and growled threats at him and anyone who would listen.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” I cried, fighting his hold as he brought me straight into his office and dumped me unceremoniously on the couch.
He crossed the floor and slammed the door, sliding the lock home before I could drag myself onto my feet.
David spun to face me, his dark eyes sparking with rage. At any other time I might have been afraid of the look in his eyes but I was beyond caring.
He’d hurt me, made me believe the worst was possible, that it was going to happen. He’d given himself over to them so willingly without a thought for what it would do to me, or Jenson, or even our unborn child.
“Who do I think I am? I think I’m David Ashcroft, I think I’m your husband and I would have thought you’d have been happy to see me. Or have I been gone that long that you’ve forgotten how to love me?” His voice rumbled from his body, a low hoarse whisper that filled the air with the threat of violence.
“You went with them! You let them take you instead of fighting it! You left us here on our own!”
“I did it to protect you, I did it because I love you!”
“And what would have happened if they’d killed you? What would happen to Jenson, or this little one,” I said my hand pressed to my stomach. “What would have happened to me? How would I have lived without you?”
The fear and pain of everything that had happened washed over me in one tidal wave of emotion, reducing me to a blubbering mess.
My knees buckled beneath me as my voice disappeared behind my sobs but David was there to catch me before I could hit the floor.
He wrapped me in his arms, his grip on me tightening, keeping me upright as he kissed my tears.
“I would never leave you, Carrie, that was never going to happen.”
“How can you know that? How could you possibly know they wouldn’t kill you?”
“I know because they need me, they want things from me that only I can give them if I’m alive.”
I shook my head and fought against his hold. I knew he was only telling me this to make me happy, to make me feel better about one of the darkest moments of my life. But it wasn’t possible, this wasn’t something he could just wipe away with a few pretty words.
“Carrie, you know I would always find a way home to you and Jenson, I wouldn’t ever leave you, I love you too much to ever do something like that.”
Placing my hands either side of his face I pulled his head down towards mine.
“I know you would never go willingly, I know you would fight it every step of the way but life doesn’t always serve us up the choices we’d prefer. And the last thing I want is for you to make it easy for them, you think I’m precious but I feel the same way about you, David Ashcroft. Without you there is no living.”
He covered my hands with his own as I spoke, his fingers sliding down over my bare skin igniting the spark between us.
Jerking me in against his hard body, the heat from his skin radiating up out of him and through my clothes, I ached to taste him.
As though he could read my mind his eyes darkened, not with anger but lust. He’d suffered at the hands of the men who had taken him and whatever they wanted from him I could see the promise of it lurking in the recesses of his mind.
Haunting him.
“Death itself, Carrie Ashcroft, wouldn’t keep me from your side. I’m drawn to you, a fight I can’t win, a fight I don’t want to win. You’re my home and in you I find my solace. A man would do anything to keep the kind of peace you bring me. I would do anything to keep it and if that meant defying Death itself, then I would do it and succeed.”
His mouth crashed down over mine, his kiss hot and demanding. He bent me in against him and I breathed him in, the taste of him coating my tongue and still I wanted more.
A primitive part of me wanted to crawl inside him, to wrap him around my body and never let him go, at least then I would always know he was safe.
The tickle of air against my skin alerted me to the fact that his hands had made short work of my blouse and my jeans quickly followed until I was exposed to him.
He groaned into our kiss, his teeth nipping and biting as he broke away from me. Clutching at him, I tried to draw his lips back to my own but he had other ideas.
He dived low over me, his teeth grazing the soft flesh of my breasts that spilled up and over the cups of my bra.
I let my head drop back, wrapping my hands around the back of his neck. The feel of his mouth on me, his hands manipulating my sensitive body, I was in ecstasy but still it wasn’t enough.
The bra gave way beneath his hands and my breasts spilled free, David’s hot mouth clamping down over my nipples before I could even draw breath.
I cried out but no sound left my mouth. Instead I arched up into his touch, my body one giant pulsing ache that knew instinctively it needed to get closer to him, that only he could provide me with the release I quivered for.
David lifted me into his arms, carrying me backwards until I felt the wall slam into my back. David’s arms took the brunt of the blow but it was still enough to knock the air from my lungs.
He held me in his grip pinned between his hard body and the wall, his mouth driving me to delirium. The vague sounds of him unbuckling his trousers made me whimper a little louder.
I knew what was coming and I desperately wanted it, I wanted everything he could give me.
“We never did get to finish what we started in the garden,” he growled the word against my ear as he plunged his fingers into my wet core.
I gasped, my eyes rolling back in my head as my body went rigid, the invasion of his fingers so sudden.
“Look at me, sweetheart. Carrie, look at me.” He commanded, his voice hard as he plunged his digits in and out of my core.
I met his gaze, my eyes heavy, each breath I took short and gasping like a fish out of water.
“I will never leave what is mine.” He ground the words out as his fingers claimed me, the pleasure building in a lethargic spiral deep in my belly.
“Say it,” he urged, his fingers picking up pace but it was the feel of his erection against me that made me whimper.
“I need you, David, please.”
He shook his head but I could tell from the wild expression in his eyes that he was struggling not to bury himself to the hilt in me.
The mere thought of it was enough to make my mouth go dry.
“Say it, I will never leave what is mine, I need you to understand it, I need you to feel it.”
“You’ll never leave what is yours…” I gasped, his fingers sliding against the small bundle of nerve endings inside my entrance.
“Are you mine, Carrie?”
I nodded, biting down on my lip as he thrust his fingers into me again.
“Out loud, scream it out loud,” he growled, his fingers sliding out of my body.
I watched him lift his hand to his mouth and suck the juices from his fingers, my body clenched in response.
“You taste like you’re mine.
Say it,” his voice rumbled through me.
“I’m yours, David, I always have been…” my words were breathy but it was enough and I watched the possessive darkness in his eyes spread as he grabbed my hands and clamped them above my head.
“Mine,” he drove himself up into my body, his cock filling me utterly and completely forcing my body to stretch to accommodate him.
“You are mine, Carrie,” he withdrew until there was nothing but the tip of him left resting against my opening, “all mine and I will never leave what is mine.”
He thrust back up inside me and I cried out.
He shifted against me, grinding his body into me. He loosened his grip on my waist, his one handed hold tightening around my wrists as he let my weight and gravity pull me down onto his hard length.
David’s mouth found mine and I cried out into his kiss as he found his rhythm. Each thrust felt as though he was pressing deeper into my core, pushing up inside me to a place where only he belonged.
The pleasurable spiral he had started with his fingers built quickly and sweat trickled down over my skin as I tried to hold it all inside.
He tightened inside me, his shaft thickening, growing impossibly hard as he reached the point of no return and it was enough to tip me over the edge.
I screamed and he swallowed it in, drinking down my orgasm as I thrashed in his arms.
“I’ll always find my way home, Carrie, I’ll always come back to you,” he groaned and I felt him throb deep in my core.
His warmth spread up into my body as he jerked and thrust in harder and deeper, filling me with his seed, his mark.
He growled against my neck and I let my body clench around him, drawing him deeper. I pressed my head back against the wall as he flooded into me, his orgasm mingling with mine. The ripples he created in my core enough to turn my legs to jelly and it was an effort just to stay with them wrapped around his waist.
Chapter 8
David released my hands and I let them drop down to wrap around his neck. I clung to him as he lifted me away from the wall and carried me to the sofa.
He sat and I curled in against his body, his scent a mixture of leather and mint, mingled invaded my senses.
I trailed my fingers around his chest, his skin slick with the sweat of his exertion.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you what my plans were.” He said, his tone gruff against my hair.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I knew you’d try to stop me and I couldn’t risk you getting hurt. You weren’t supposed to find out that it was planned.”
I stiffened in his arms, “you’d have preferred I thought it was just a straight up abduction. David, I thought I’d lost you. I saw the fear in your eyes, that’s not something you can fake.”
“I wasn’t afraid for me, Carrie, I saw the look he gave you. I was afraid he would change his mind and go after you instead…”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. I knew the man he was talking about, I’d seen the dead look in his eyes and I’d known he was the type of man who would kill without even batting an eye at the pain and horror he created.
“You can’t always protect me, it doesn’t work like that. Especially when it puts you at risk.”
“We’re going around in circles, I’m sorry I frightened you but I’m not sorry that I did what I needed to do to protect the people I love. I’m never going to apologise for that.”
I sighed and wrapped my arms a little tighter around his neck. He was right, we were going around in circles, he would never understand just how frightened I was. I knew he would try to protect me no matter what and that one day he would pay a price for doing it.
“What do they want?” I said, pressing my face in against his neck and inhaling his scent.
David stiffened against me and I winced as he tightened his grip around my body so much he restricted my breathing.
“The less you know, the better…”
“Cut the crap, David, I’ve been through enough already. I deserve the truth and you will give it to me.” I pulled out of his grip and sat upright in his arms.
“I like it when you get bossy,” he said with a smile. But the expression never truly reached his eyes, it was nothing more than a diversion tactic.
“Tell me what they want,” I said, my tone brooking no argument.
“Carrie, seriously, you don’t need to worry about it. I’ll find a way around all of this, I always do.”
“It’s that bad?” I asked, placing my hand against his cheek to stop him from turning his head away from me.
David sighed and pressed his hand back through his hair. I knew the expression he wore intimately, it was the one that said he wished he could be anywhere but where he was.
I’d never been on the receiving end of it and it hurt to see him give it to me now.
“You want me to tell you?” He said angrily, sliding out from my grip he left me on the couch as he climbed to his feet and began to pace back and forth.
“Yeah, I want you to tell me. We don’t need any secrets between us, David, and whatever it is we’ll figure it out together.”
He paused in front of the fireplace, his broad shoulders were knotted with tension as he stood with his back to me.
“They want me to kill for them.”
His words dropped into the middle of the room like a cluster of bombs, each one more devastating than the last.
“Kill for them.” I repeated his words. I’d misheard him, there was something wrong with my hearing and this was nothing more than a misunderstanding.
“I have forty-eight hours to take down the target or they’re going to start taking away the people I hold most dear.”
“David, this is madness. They can’t honestly expect you to just kill for them. You’re not a murderer.”
He shrugged and crossed the floor back to the couch. As he dropped down onto the seat I crawled over to him and cupped his face with my hands, forcing him to look at me.
“We’ll find a way out of this, Aaron has…”
David cut me off, his hands reaching up to mine and pulling them away from his cheeks.
“Carrie, I don’t have a choice in this, not when it comes to you.”
“No one is going to take me away from you.”
He pushed up from the couch, towering over me. “I knew this was a mistake, I didn’t want to tell but you but you demanded to know. And now that you do, you think we can just talk our way out of it.”
“That’s not what I thought, David, I…”
“Carrie, you’re just not getting it. They need me, they can beat me, break bones even, but they still need me so they won’t kill me. You, however, are the leverage they need to make me dance to their tune.”
Pushing up from the sofa I jabbed my finger into his chest but it did nothing to move him. His body practically vibrated with barely restrained rage and I ached to take the burden of responsibility he felt.
“We know who they are, David, and we know the real reason behind everything they’re doing.”
David’s face blanched, the colour draining away and he swayed where he stood.
“Melissa…”
I nodded, how could he possibly know? I hadn’t told him and I knew for a fact that Aaron hadn’t managed to get word to him about the new developments.
“How much do you know, Carrie?” He said, moving towards me.
“Everything, Henry left a letter. He thought he could beat them at their own game and he failed.”
“So why do you think we would fare any differently?”
“Because we’re together, Henry created this mess, it was his choices that led to this point. We won’t make the same mistakes.”
“Henry kept us safe because he had his own leverage against the Banks, we don’t have anything to offer them at all.”
I didn’t remember any mention in the letter of leverage that Henry had. He was terrified that they would get their hands on Melissa and the way he’d spoken abo
ut it all he’d been pretty adamant that they never would.
So what kind of leverage could he have possibly had, especially after the death of Melissa?
“He didn’t mention anything about leverage and neither did Gertrude.”
“You spoke to her about all of this? How much did she tell you?”
“She told us about the part she played in it. She made it sound as though Patricia was the one to blame.”
David didn’t say anything but I knew from his tight lipped expression that he was keeping something from me. But he wasn’t going to tell me whatever it was that was playing on his mind.
“I need to go and get a shower, you should spend some time with Jenson, he needs you.” I said, trying to keep my expression as neutral as possible.
I hadn’t told him about Tamara and the part she’d played in his release. Maybe he knew but I didn’t have time for the interference he would run if I told him I was going to meet her at the club.
If he could keep secrets from me because he thought it was for the best, then so could I. But if Tamara thought I would go to our meeting without backup then she was sorely mistaken.
I’d played by everyone else’s rules far too often and it never got me the results I wanted.
Not anymore.
Enough people had tried to interfere with my family, enough threats had been made against the ones I loved and I was through with it.
I would find a way to end this, once and for all and I would start with Tamara and her manipulative nature.
Chapter 9
Standing in front of the mirror I applied the last slick of my lipstick and stared at the reflection of the woman staring back at me.
I was tired and the bags beneath my eyes gave credence to what I was feeling.
I hadn’t really put much thought into whether David would try to stop me from going to Tamara. It was a certainty and the more I tried to pretend that it wouldn’t happen, the more I was just deluding myself.
But there was nothing else I could do. I wasn’t going to walk into Tamara’s club like the sacrificial lamb she seemed to think I was.
I wouldn’t beg for the information I wanted from her. She would give it to me.
