Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense) (23 page)

“This is our honeymoon, after all.”

“There’s a bed and breakfast up the way. I can give you directions.”

Jack writes them down and stuffs a twenty-dollar bill in the tip jar. We clean up our table and walk out. I don’t know how he can walk at all after all the food we ate. I flop into the Corvette, stuffed and exhausted.

“Read these off to me, will you?”

I nod and give him directions as we go turn by turn. The route takes us up into the hills.

When we arrive we find a big, rustic house overlooking the ocean. Jack and I walk inside and a chime announces our presence.

An older, heavyset woman emerges from the kitchen. She doesn’t miss a beat and says, “Can I help you?”

“We need a place to stay.”

“Usually we require a reservation, but I have some rooms available. How long did you need?”

“Just two days,” Jack says quickly. “We’ve been on the road for a while. We need a day to rest up, I guess.”

“Of course. Come this way, let’s get you settled in.”

Jack shrugs and we follow her. He fills out the register. I feel a weird urge to correct him when he records me as Ellie Marshall. This place goes all the way, keeping a big register book where all the guests sign their names. Real keys, too. She takes one and leads us upstairs.

Our room looks over out over the ocean. There’s a small balcony with a cast-iron railing, a huge brass bed, and that’s it. No television or anything like that.

“Breakfast starts at nine, and we serve until… Well, you’ll probably be the only ones here until the weekend. Just don’t stay in bed too long.”

She gives us a sly look. “Need help with your baggage?”

“Yeah,” Jack says.

From the voices, I assume her husband helps him carry it all up, but I never see the man. Jack drops in a side chair and his head lolls back. He lets out a long groan and stretches his legs.

“Lots of driving,” he says, yawning. “Tired.”

“Shower?”

“You first,” he says, waving his hand.

I shrug and open the closet. The owners have kindly provided his-and-hers robes. I slip into mine, boldly undressing right in front of Jack before I grab a towel.

I barely make it into the bathroom before he grabs the door and follows me in. It’s a tiny room for such a big house, a little cramped with just the two of us. There’s just a shower cabinet, no tub.

I hang my robe on the hook without a word. Jack does the same and we stand there naked and shivering while the hot water starts to stream from the showerhead.

Once inside we press into each other to stay under the warm water. It’s surprisingly cold in here. Jack grabs the soap, pulls me against him, and starts lathering up my back. We take turns with it, writhing around each other in the hot water. By the time we’re done I feel a hot need between my legs, and Jack’s cock is hard as a rock. It keeps bumping into me. He almost looks embarrassed when it does.

I like feeling him all slippery and soapy. His skin is so warm, hotter than the water itself. The feeling of the water running between us when I step back from him makes my heart flutter.

Jack stands behind me while I turn in place and rinse myself off. I have no choice but to grind against him in the narrow confines of the shower cabinet. He does the same. When he rinses his back he holds me in his arms and warms me with his body, but my back still gets cold until he rubs it with his hands.

We dry off and swaddle ourselves in robes quickly. There’s a gas fireplace in the room. Jack turns it on with a
whump
and it quickly begins to heat the small space. After a few minutes I shrug out of my robe and sit on an ottoman near the fire, slowly drying my limbs with a hand towel.

“You are so fucking sexy,” Jack purrs as he gently dries my hair.

Once we’ve dried off, he peels back the covers. There are heavy blankets on the bed, so I don’t bother putting anything on before I slip in. Jack doesn’t, either. It feels strange to even lie covered in bed naked. I don’t sleep naked and the only time I’ve ever really been unclothed in bed is with him.

I turn on my side. Jack takes me in his arms, holding me from behind.

He presses his cock inside me slowly and finds me wet and ready. He spoons up against my back and holds there, his throbbing cock filling me. When he starts to thrust the motion is gentle and slow, like the waves lapping the shore. I find a steady rhythm with him, moving my hips in time with his to guide his hardness against just the right spots.

It’s lazy and more relaxing than our last, frantic session. I like it both ways, I realize. He’s very quiet except for the occasional gentle moan in my ear, and I keep my mouth closed, straining not to cry out when he sends a shock wave of pleasure through my body. He reaches to stroke my clit but I pull his hand away.

This one is about the journey, not the destination.

His hands go to my breasts instead. I rest my hands on his and draw my legs up as he starts to fuck me faster, grunting. He surrounds me, draws me into himself, overwhelms me. The power in his thrusts makes me shudder, from the intensity of his cock filling me and the straining, shivering restraint he shows.

I whisper a single word, “Harder.”

His thrusts grow more urgent now. I guide his hand between my legs and let out an excited yelp. I don’t have to offer much guiding. The feeling of his wrist flexing under my hand while his fingers slowly circle my clit makes my eye roll back. He begins to pick up speed, letting out a little grunt with every thrust.

Come on, Jack.

“Come for me.”

I can almost hear his expression. He wraps his arms around me low and pleasures me with his hand while he thrusts faster and faster, giving in to himself as he takes his pleasure from my body. He strains and buries himself deep and I can feel his cock throb as he loses all control and explodes inside me.

My climax comes slowly in a wave that peaks with him still inside me. He doesn’t draw out at all. He keeps his cock in me and me in his arms and pulls the blankets over us.

“Sleep, honey.”

I love it when he calls me that. He starts to snore into my neck, drifting off before I do. I feel heavy, like my limbs are packed with sand.

Sleep takes me, too.

I wake up sprawled out on my back, the covers tucked up to my neck. It’s the scents that wake me. I smell bread and fresh eggs, and the tangy, meaty smell of sausage.

“The owner didn’t mind letting me bring you breakfast, hon.”

We eat together in the bed, trays propped up on our legs. I don’t want to go anywhere today. I don’t even want to put on clothes. I finally take the sweatshirt Jack was wearing yesterday and slip into it, but that’s all. The way he looks at me when I move, carefully waiting to catch a glimpse of my bare ass when the hem of the shirt pulls up, amuses me.

I flop back on the bed and sprawl out. Jack is still sitting up, next to me. He scoots down the bed and takes my hand.

“What should we do?”

“I think we should stay in this room and have sex all day until we get too tired or hungry to leave.”

“I like that plan. I mean in a longer term, though.”

I sigh. “Do we have to talk about this?”

“Yes. Just a little. Then we can go back to it for a while.”

“Mmm. I think we should go home.”

“Go home?”

“Jack,” I sigh.

I sit up and turn on my side. “My house is
mine
. My mom has remarried. My stepmom, I mean. There’s nothing connecting me to her anymore. She has a new husband. She should move out, and you should move in with me.” I let out another sigh, and my voice trembles a bit. “My dad would really like that.”

“I’d like that. I think it’s a great idea. I’d feel like I was taking advantage, though.”

“You’re my husband,” I say, taking his arm. “I can help you while we start our life together. It’s over. I’m not alone anymore. You’re not alone.”

He turns and puts his arms around me. “With you by my side, I can do anything.”

We start to sink into the bed, and he starts hitching up the sweatshirt.

Then there is a knock at the door, and the unmistakable sound of Richard Marshall’s voice.

“Jack, I know you’re in there. Open the fucking door. Now.”

Jack

This is it.

From the minute I got back to the States I knew this would happen. This my Rubicon. My Waterloo. I’m standing at the Crack of Doom with the One Ring. Childe Jack to the Dark Tower Came.

The door shakes on its hinges and my father bellows, loud.

“Open the fucking door!”

I give Ellie a glance and she pulls the covers up to her chin. I turn the lock then spin the doorknob on its oiled core. It’s slick in my hand from the sweat on my palm. When I open it my father stands in the doorway flanked by a pair of his goons looking like CIA extras from a shitty spy movie.

“Where the fuck have you been? You left your assistant in charge of your department and you’ve been ignoring my phone calls for days. My wife can’t get ahold of her daughter and her staff says no one has seen her since Sunday.”

His voice sort of trails off. He sees Ellie and flinches, his eyes going wide. It’s weird to see genuine emotion on his face.

“What the hell is this? What are you doing here with her? Are you out of your goddamn mind, boy?”

“I haven’t lost my mind, I’ve found it.”

“Fuck, fuck,
fuck!”
he roars. “I hope nobody saw you. I can’t have my son fucking a—”

Ellie’s voice cuts through his like a thin, sharp blade.

“A what?”

She rises from the bed and strides over.

“A freak? An ugly bitch? What were you going to say? Well? Spit it out!”

For the first time in my entire life, I see my father sputter.

“This is over, right now. You’re both coming back with me. End of story.”

“No,” Ellie snaps.

“No,” I agree.

“What? Listen to me, you little idiots. We can still fix the damage—”

I hold up my left hand and proudly display my wedding ring.

“Fix this.”

My father stares at my hand. “Oh my God, what the hell did you do?”

“We got married.”

“What?”

“In Vegas.”

“
What
?”

“By Elvis.”

“
WHAT
?”

Lightning quick, he grabs fistfuls of my shirt. “You stupid little bastard, do you have any idea—”

You know what? If Dad wanted to wool me around like he did when I was a little kid, he shouldn’t have pressured me to join the Army.

I’m no kung fu master or anything, but it’s a pretty basic self defense technique, defending yourself from someone grabbing at your upper body. I don’t even really think about it. I twist, and two hundred and twenty pounds of middle-aged business mogul goes sprawling on the floor.

Ellie shrieks and jumps out of the way.

“Stop it!” she yells.

Too late.

My dad rolls over and gives me that look, and surges to his feet. He’s not that ungainly. Some of the college football star must still be in him, and he’s got height and weight on me. He tackles me into the door, slamming it back against the wall so hard it punches a big spidery crack in the plaster.

I do the only thing I really can do, in a situation like this. I punch my father square in the face.

It’s not a good punch. I didn’t have room to wind up and like I said, no kung fu master here. No one-inch punch. It’s enough to light him up and get him off me and I follow up on my jab with a right hook, and swing for the fences with a haymaker that doesn’t land because a pair of arms just wrapped around mine, another around my waist.

My father looks back at me, triumphant, as he wipes a thin streak of blood from his chin with the back of his wrist. A fist drives into my gut.

“Get
off him
!”
Ellie screams.

She runs at me. Dad tackles her around the waist, lifts her up bodily from the floor, and dumps her on the bed. Ellie throws herself at him like a wildcat, and he barely stops her raking his face with her nails by grabbing her wrist. The sight of him pinning her down by the arms renews my fury.

I kick my legs and I’m almost loose. It would take more than two guys to keep me from her. I’ll fight a whole fucking army, I—

Oh, they have a Taser.

Tasers
hurt
.

It’s like a sledgehammer in the middle of my back. Somehow I still struggle as the voltage races in hot knives down my arms, and rips control of my body away from me as all my muscles clench at once. I can’t fucking breathe.

Ellie!
I want to scream, but there’s no air in my lungs. I slump for a second when the pain stops and start to move, and then they hit me again. Thick black cloth pulls down over my face and takes the world with it.

When I wake up, I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. Every muscle is a knot of raw agony, like a knife blade lies wedged between my meat and my bones, all over. Even my fucking face muscles hurt. I can feel a bruise on my back, a dull throb amidst the chaotic agony. It takes me a minute to open my eyes, and one of them won’t go. I got hit in the face somewhere along the line and didn’t even feel it.

I reach up to prod the shiner on my eye but my wrist stops, hot pain digging into my flesh. A glance down and I see I’m cuffed to the bed.

The bed being a flattened reclining seat in a private jet. Talk about a gilded cage. Jeez. As my senses return one by one, filtering through the dull ache that throbs throbs my entire body, I start to hear the drone of the engines and smell the crisp scent of freshly shampooed carpeting. My father, being none the worse for wear, sits across the aisle with his feet up on an ottoman, sipping whisky from a heavy crystal tumbler while he reads the
Wall Street Journal
.

“The cuffs were a good idea.”

“Why’s that?” he says, almost disinterested.

“Because if I push hard enough, that newspaper will fit up your ass.”

He snorts. “You think you’re so fucking clever, don’t you?”

Still, he has not looked up from his newspaper.

“This will be easy to take care of. I’m already in touch with that moronic Elvis chapel. I made clear the value of their silence in this matter. Thankfully they’re the only witnesses. Fortunately for us, Nevada makes it easy to undo the drunken mistakes people make in their many chapels. The paperwork for an annulment is already in process.”