Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series (61 page)

TEN

In the end, I don’t need to think about anything. Pepito shows us to two adjoined guest rooms deeper inside the mansion and has a maid fetch us water and clean clothes. I know he’s looking forward to the other half of the money Luis promised him, but I have a feeling him helping us has more to it than just financial gain. I can tell just by the way he speaks that he detests the Ross family. They’re at the helm of a rival cartel, after all, and no doubt he can see how aligning with us might help his own cause.

Jase and I are shown a room and left to ourselves. I’m exhausted. The first thing I do is place the briefcase on the four-poster bed and collapse face first beside it, not caring that I’m probably getting the ivory-colored duvet all dirty.

Jase places a hand on the small of my back, his touch gentle but firm.

“You okay?” he murmurs, leaning down so his lips are at my ear. I turn my head to the side so I can see his face, smiling tiredly as I run a hand through his dark hair. He normally keeps it cut quite short, but it’s started to grow out during the time we’ve been holed up in Colombia.

“Yeah,” I whisper, reaching for his lips and tracing them lightly with my finger. “You think Luis will be all right with Donny and Agent Dunn?”

Jase shrugs. “He’ll be fine.”

I feel my smile fade. “I wonder what Elliot’s doing right now,” I say, grief squeezing at my throat.

“We’ll be there soon,” Jase replies, taking my hand and pressing his lips to the inside of my wrist.

“I’m scared,” I whisper, looking into Jase’s dark eyes.

He brushes loose hair from my face and tucks it behind my ear, running his fingers along my jaw.

“You gonna tell me what he said on the phone?”

I’d almost forgotten that Jase didn’t hear that portion of the warped conversation I shared with Dornan.

“He said one for two wasn’t a fair trade,” I tell Jase. “He says if we want him to let go of Amy and Kayla, he wants Donny and me in return. He said it would be our last secret.”

Jase looks deeply troubled by this. He pulls my head down slightly and kisses me on the forehead, but I can tell his thoughts are elsewhere.

“I don’t want to die,” I say softly. “I wanted to die for so long, but I don’t want to die anymore. I don’t want to go back to him.”

Jase’s jaw clenches. “You’re not going to die, you hear me? I couldn’t save you six years ago, but I’m not letting anything happen to you. Not now, not ever. You hear me?”

I lick my chapped lips and roll onto my back, pulling Jase’s hand as I stretch out on one side of the bed. He scoots closer, also on his back, so we’re both staring up at the ceiling.

Someone put those glow-in-the-dark stars up on the ceiling a long time ago. It’s late afternoon, but in this windowless room, the stars shine weakly in the dim light. It’s such an innocent thing amongst the brutality of our everyday existence, that it stirs something inside me, and I begin to cry. I don’t sob. I weep, tears spilling from my eyes and tracking down my temples before being absorbed into my hair. Some cling to my neck and earlobes, and others pool in the inside corners of my eyes until I blink them away.

“I don’t want to die,” I say quietly. “But if it’s me or those girls, I’ll die without another thought. Elliot’s already given up everything for me. Everything. His whole life, Jase. I can’t let a little girl and her mother die because I lived.”

“You’re not going to die,” Jase says resolutely, squeezing my hand almost painfully. “I refuse to believe that you could just die after you’ve already cheated death once. More than once.”

I don’t say anything, just swallow back more tears and stare at the crudely stickered ceiling.

Jase lets go of my hand and rolls onto his stomach, his side now touching mine. He scoops a hand behind my head and pulls my face up to meet his, and I see the terror and sadness in my soul mirrored in his own dark eyes.

“Can you forgive me?” I blurt out.

He closes his eyes, resting his forehead on mine for a moment.

“For what?” he breathes.

“For everything. For keeping things from you. For not coming back for you all those years ago.” I think of our baby in his hands, how she was much too small. How she fit into one of his palms. How it isn’t fair.

How, had I played things differently, we might still have her here with us, waiting to be born, healthy and alive.

But instead, she’s gone, the only thing left a box of ashes in a briefcase at the foot of the bed.

“For losing our baby.”

A strangled sound comes from Jase’s throat, and he lifts his head, pressing his lips against my eyelids.

“You can’t torture yourself with these fairytales of how things might have been, baby. If you hadn’t gone back to him?” He swallows thickly. “If you’d realized you were pregnant, if we’d just gone away … we’d be hiding. We’d be waiting, every minute, for him to knock on our door and take her away from us. It would be living a lifetime of days hiding in the dark, waiting until he came and killed us.”

I take in a ragged breath. “We might die anyway.”

He nods; the resignation on his face is oddly comforting. He knows that death might be a possibility. I can’t do what I need to do if Jase is trying to stop me.

I can’t save those girls if I’m being held back by the man who loves me.

“We might.”

“I refuse to die without taking him down with me,” I say, wiping my tear-streaked face and sniffing loudly.

“We’re in this together,” Jase says urgently, pressing his hands to my cheeks so I can’t look anywhere but at him. Not that I’d want to. I could look into those eyes for a lifetime, however long or short that lifetime might be. I nod my head, more tears falling. I love him. I love him so goddamn much, it feels like I’m being crushed in a fucking vice.

“Tell me,” he says softly, stroking my hair. “Tell me what’s going on in this head of yours. Stop trying to carry everything by yourself, baby.”

I’m so overcome by emotion that I almost choke. Love and pain and longing all smashed together in a violent poison that courses through me.

“Tell me what you feel,” Jase whispers urgently.

A sob hitches in my throat. How do I feel? “I feel … empty.”

I screw my face up, letting one hand trail down and press into the hollow between my hips where hope and new life used to live.

“I didn’t want her at first,” I confess, no longer able to see through the tears. “I didn’t want her, not in that place, not in that existence. I thought she was Dornan’s, and I just wanted her to go away.” This truth has existed in me, but it’s been buried beneath more urgent, more obvious things, until now. I’m almost shocked by my own admission as I cover my mouth with my other hand. “I didn’t mean it, though,” I whimper, taking the hand from my mouth and pressing it to Jase’s chest as he watches me, his expression pained. “I wanted her. I wanted her so much, Jase, and now she’s just
gone
.”

Now she’s just ash.

“Baby,” Jase whispers, his own eyes full of tears, “she didn’t die because you didn’t want her.”

I wipe my cheek on my shoulder. “Everybody dies because of me,” I cry. “People suffer when I’m in their life. I’m like this poison. And I’ve infected every single person I’ve touched.”

“Shut up,” Jase says urgently. “He did this to you. You were a kid, and he did this to you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I shouldn’t have gotten into that car,” I sob brokenly, remembering the afternoon Dornan knocked on our front door and stole me away to my death. “I should’ve tried harder. He told me to hurry along. I knew something was wrong. And I just walked away with them.”

“You were a victim, baby.”

I shake my head. My body’s trembling, every nerve vibrating with fear and grief. And try as I might, I don’t know how to stop it.

“What do you need?” Jase whispers, pressing his lips to my throat.

I close my eyes. What do I need?

“I just need to feel something,” I finally whisper. “Something else. Just for a moment.”

I feel Jase’s lips leave my neck, and then they’re on my mouth. I wrap my arms around him, pulling him closer, kissing him like it might be the last time we touch each other.

Because it might very well be.

He kisses me with a reckless urgency that makes my heart beat wildly, like he’s going to devour me, like we’re going to become one. His hands are everywhere, firm and insistent as I melt into him.

I reach my hand out and find his, linking my fingers with his and squeezing tight. I’m suddenly a girl again, walking along the pier with the first boy I ever loved, our hands melded together as our eyes spoke a secret language that nobody else understood. I don’t deserve him, but he’s here, and he loves me, and he’s mine. I reach my other hand between us and start tugging at his belt buckle, needing him, needing more, but he pulls away, shaking his head.

“Wait,” he says. He sits up so he’s got a knee on either side of my body, reaching down and undoing my dress buttons one by one until it falls away to my sides, exposing my scarred torso framed by black lace bra and panties. I try to pull the dress back over my side to cover the horror of what Dornan did to me, but Jase stops me, taking my hand firmly and placing it back at my side.

He holds my gaze, and in it I see my salvation. The one person in the world who understands me. Who gets me.

“You are beautiful,” he says, running his fingers down my marred flesh. “All of you.”

I bite back tears as he lowers his mouth to my stomach and starts kissing me. He should hate me, he should find me the ugliest thing in the world, but he doesn’t.

“What do you feel?” he asks me again between kisses.

I’m crying again.

“I feel empty,” I sob. “I feel like I don’t deserve you.”

He trails his kisses down lower, to my hip, to my thigh. I gasp when he places his mouth on my panties, over the most sensitive part of me and sucks gently.

It’s been weeks upon weeks and we haven’t so much as touched. It’s been too raw, too horrid in the aftermath of losing a child to even think about going there. But I need him, and I need this, and he knows it.

I pull in a strangled breath as Jase moves my panties to the side and places his mouth directly on my sensitive nub. It’s so fucking good, I feel like I could come with just a few more seconds of his tongue. I grip my hands in his hair, pulling gently as he continues to work his tongue over me.

“Jesus,” I whisper, my hips moving involuntarily as my entire body starts to feel hot and restless. Jase takes his mouth away long enough to rid me of my panties, sliding them down my legs and throwing them on the ground as he resumes his worship of my body. Now there’s no material hindering his access, he uses both hands to push my thighs as wide as they’ll go, burying his head between them once more.

I’m panting now, so fucking close to the edge I can hardly bear his tongue on my clit. It feels so good it hurts.

And, I realize, I’m still crying. Weeping, so overwhelmed with everything that’s happening inside me. The grief and the fear and the pleasure, all wound tight together waiting to crest off that cliff and shatter below until they’re indecipherable from each other.

Yes.

Maybe he senses I’m close, because he moves his tongue faster, a hand on each of my ass cheeks squeezing hard, pleasantly painful.

Yes.

It all crashes into me at once, every beautiful thing unleashed in a torrent of endorphins, a wave that slams into me so hard I lose my breath as I see white and stars. I squeeze my eyes shut, my body shaking, my breathing ragged but the feeling in my chest most welcome. It feels like lightness. Like pure, stark, unadulterated
relief
. It’ll probably only last a moment before everything else weighs me back down, but it’s exactly what I needed.

I open my wet eyes and he’s there, waiting, watching me. I smile through my tears, pulling Jase down so his body covers mine, kissing him and tasting myself.

“What do you want now?” he asks between feverish kisses. I feel the unmistakable hardness of him pressed into my stomach, ready for me if I want it.

And I want it.

“I want you,” I murmur, reaching my hands down to unbutton his pants again. This time, he doesn’t stop me, holding himself above me as I unzip his jeans and push them down with my hands and heels, taking his silk boxers along with them. I take his hard length in my hand and pull him down between my thighs, to my wet heat.

He hovers at my entrance, one hand at the base of my throat. “I love you,” he whispers, pushing into me, filling me so it almost hurts. I cry out against his mouth as we kiss again, a fiery exchange between two lovers who might be joined together for the last time.

I don’t want to die.

Fresh tears prick at my eyes as I think of what we’ve lost. As I birthed our baby too soon, as she came into the world dead before she’d taken her first breath. Grief tears at me as I remember how she was the last thing inside of me, and how much it still aches that she’s gone.

I’m sobbing. Jase stops, wipes tears from my cheek. “You want me to stop?” he murmurs.