Paradise: The Masters of The Order Novel Two (19 page)

"You belong to me."

Finally freeing himself, he eased into her and made them one. Even slicked and ready from release, her body struggled to accept him while those eager hands pulled him closer. He pushed deeper and deeper still, holding her eyes as he possessed her body and mind. Each slide was tender, measured. There would be no force, no pain in his possession of this woman. He stroked in and out with infinite patience until his entire girth and length found a home inside of her.

He held her gaze and went still. They fit it each other perfectly. Nothing was between them. He was raw, exposed. She felt it too. He could see it in her face, feel it in her body.

In all his years, he’d never experienced passion like this. It swept away the darkness and carried him into the light. He began to thrust gently, unprepared for the way this lovemaking would transform him. It ripped him apart at the seams. With each caress, the fiery, compassionate woman beneath him tore him to pieces, until emotion unlike any he’d ever known, nearly brought him to tears.

Isabella belongs to me. And I belong to her. My destiny. My paradise.

His eyes burned with unshed tears. He wanted to speak, but knew if he opened his mouth, the dam would burst. Looking into her eyes, he tried to tell her how he felt with his body, letting the intensity of their connection spiral through them as he made love to her. When the tears started to roll down his cheeks, his lips parted to release the words he could no longer hold inside.

“I’ve searched for you, waited so long to find my destiny. I love you,
Paradis
. I love you forever.”

Her next word shattered his soul.

*****

It was too much. Jacques invaded everything. Her body. Her mind. Her heart. Her soul. How did she think she could shut him out, love him one last time and not let him in? He was everywhere, binding her to him with a magnetism beyond comprehension. Her mind struggled through his possession desperate for retreat, for safety from the terrifying truth blazing in those copper eyes.

Isabella didn’t have to hear Jacques say he loved her. She already knew.

And she knew something else. She loved him too. Wholly, completely and forever. She found herself opening her mouth to say words better left unspoken, then closed her lips and laid her head back on the table.

Forever won’t be long enough.

The word cut her throat as she said it. “Blue.”

*****

“No!”

Jacques fell back. That word, that curse, shot through his heart and sent his body and mind reeling.

Isabella sat up and moved toward him. “I have to leave, Jacques. I can’t stay...”

The words sliced through his skin, ripping open his chest to expose the heart that beat for the woman who was about to kill him.

“…It’s not you, it’s me…”

The syllables ran together as his mind tried to shut out their meaning. He fell to his knees unable to hold his body up under the weight of his panic. She shot to his side, knelt and wrapped her arms around him.

She can’t do this. I still have a few days to convince her to stay. To show her that she holds my life in her hands
.

If he lost the ability to look at her, to wake up next to her every day, to feel her body next to his, he would die. He let his vulnerability to her humble him and for the first time in his life, begged for mercy.

“Please, don’t do this, Isabella. Please.”

Tears streamed down her face, but instead of offering compassion, she destroyed him. “I’m sorry, Jacques.”

With three simple words, she utterly destroyed him.

His life line snapped, leaving the man in love dead in its wake. He jerked free of her wicked embrace and shot to his feet, the anguish of her rejection like venom pouring through his veins. She was mocking him with her tears. Emasculating him with her platitudes. Violence rose from the ashes of his love for her and revived the beast at his core. Only now the beast was colder, meaner and lusted for her pain.

He slapped Isabella hard across the face. She fell onto the floor, fear filling her eyes. He loomed above her, sucking delight at the red mark marring that pretty cheek.

“Sorry. You think you can leave me with a simple apology?” The voice was an inhuman growl. “Words can’t repay what you’ve taken from me.”

He pushed her down when she tried to sit. Blocked her path when she tried to crawl away. “This is not a game, Isabella. You will honor the rules and finish what we’ve started.”

A voice in his mind screamed for him to stop. To find some compassion where she had none. To follow the rules himself. He’d given her the power to end this with one cursed word, but his need for vengeance allowed him to ignore that. To refuse the frightened girl at his feet an escape from his wrath. She rewrote the rules when she denied him compassion and she would feel his pain burn into her skin for what she’d done.

She may leave, but she would never forget.

“Offer me an even exchange, Isabella. My pain for yours.” He leaned over, and drawing near to her ear, said, “Say yes, Isabella.” The command was an icy dagger aimed at her heart.

She hung her head. “Yes, Jacques.”

He pulled her to a stand, her naked body quivering. “Remember, you did this to yourself.”

*****

Jacques dragged her by the hand into his study and left her standing in the middle of the floor.

Isabella stood, shaking and silent, while he stepped away and opened the closet door. Part of her wanted the floor to swallow her up, but she owed him this. She’d taken his heart; she would not take his pride. Jacques didn’t explain what he would do, but she understood. An even exchange. Her pain for his. She would offer her penance and then walk away.

Drawing a deep breath, he circled around her and stared, his entire concentration on her body. He was different from the time before and she knew why. This time, he was punishing her. Remembering his words about punishment, she tried to find solace in them. To a man like Jacques, punishment was a form of care. Maybe the physical pain was meant to snuff the pain in her heart at what she’d done to him.

With a practiced flick of the wrist, Jacques slapped the cane against the arm of the chair next to her, testing it. The harsh crack echoed in the small room and she struggled to keep her composure.

“Repeat after me, Isabella,” he snapped her name with ferocious challenge. The first lash came like hard fire against the front of her thighs just above the knees as he sneered, “I’m sorry, sir.” Then another landed with brutal precision across the back of her legs.

The pain was caustic, burning into her skin, far more devastating than she’d expected. A guttural cry ripped from her throat, “I’m sorry, Jacques.”

“No,” he roared and hit her again. She felt his ire flow through the cane as he repeated the cruel words. “I’m sorry,
sir
. Say it!”

Her lips pressed tight. She would scream her apology one thousand times, but she would never call him “sir.” Their love affair might be over, but she would never deny the intimacy they’d shared. Her pain for his, but she couldn’t let him lock her on the other side of the wall.

More blows. More screams. Until everything was replaced by hissing breath and the unholy whistle of the cane cutting through the air. Again and again. Layering precise lines up and down her body. One across the back of her, its mirror image across the front. He hit her thighs, her bottom, her belly, her back. Around and around and around. Faster and faster until she couldn’t differentiate the blows. Jacques showed no mercy, no pity, as he escalated the violence with each touch of the cane.

Her body writhed in agony. The sting of the blows blended with the throb of the welts until Isabella burned with despair. There was no care in this, no benevolent purpose behind this cruelty. She’d been wrong. Her punishment wasn’t meant to snuff the pain in her heart.

It was meant to break it.

She dropped to her knees, her head falling to the floor between her arms, and wailed into the carpet, “I’m sorry, sir!”

The cane landed with a soft thud next to her head. Swollen eyes watched through a veil of sweat-soaked red hair as Jacques turned his back and walked out of her life.

14

Scary Roads

Jacques sat on the edge. The edge of the terrace and the edge of his sanity. The world had spun free of his control, leaving him frozen on the brink. He’d lost control of Jerard. Lost control of Isabella. And worst of all, lost control of himself.

There was no majesty in the sea. No beauty in the fading sun. No shine in the rising moon. His world was black and in that horrible moment of crushing solitude, he understood why. The darkness emanated from inside of him. It poisoned the light. Jerard’s light. Isabella’s light. His world would always be dark.

The words he’d believed in all his life took on a new meaning in Isabella’s wake. They weren’t a promise. They were a curse meant to create a vast, unquenchable longing for a destiny he would never possess. A punishment for the sin of his very existence. The epiphany put him somewhere beyond anger, beyond feeling. It did to him what he had done to so many others.

It broke him.

*****

One hour.

It had taken no more than one hour and Isabella was packed up, shuttled into a car and ejected from Jacques Meszaros’s life; the beautiful fantasy shattered into a thousand shards like crystal thrown against stone.

She wanted to hate him.
Realmente. Muy realmente
. Hardcore or not, how could a person do that to another human being? For pleasure. For punishment. For any reason. The savagery was unfathomable. She cried through the entire trip back to Paris, disillusioned, ashamed and in unbearable pain. But the physical pain paled in comparison to the painful truth. It had taken Jacques exactly four days - ninety-six hours - and she was completely and indelibly his. Nothing he had done changed that and no amount of hours or days or miles would either.

Jacques Meszaros was gone from her life, but never from her heart.

As angry as she was at him, she was more angry with herself. Jacques warned her. She played with fire and she got burned.
So cry me a river
. The entire fiasco in Monaco, from start to horrifying finish, was her fault and she knew it. She would never forgive herself for what she’d done to him. As for the ending, she did what she had to do and now she had to move on.

And here I am, playing with fire again
.

Jacques played with her heart. The man she was meeting today was playing with her life. Dr. Boucher was one of the finest doctors at the Institut and that meant one of the finest in the world. Had she not been on staff, it would have taken months to get a consultation with him, if at all. She should be grateful. Instead, she was terrified.

Dr. Boucher's office was sterile, efficient. No personal pictures. No knick knacks. No reprieve from the medical. A series of framed certificates and awards chronicled his accomplishments. Walls of books, neat stacks of papers, two computer screens, the space told her everything she needed to know. This man was an intellectual dedicated to his profession; his office, a place for study and serious contemplation. Instead of comforting, the thought made her more afraid. Dr. Boucher would be cold, unfeeling, indifferent to her fate. She was another data point. A statistic. A lab rat.

The doctor entered and extended his hand. White coat, bow tie, silver framed glasses, grey hair.
Ah, sí
. The quintessential intellectual. Everything about his demeanor supported her assessment until he spoke.

“Are you prepared to fight?” The clipped tone caught her completely off guard. When she didn’t answer, he repeated the question.

“Yes, I think so,” she replied weakly.

“You think so? We are talking about cancer here, aren’t we?”

“What?”

“You have cancer, Isabella.”

There was no emotion in her voice as she answered, “I know.”

“And you’re not mad as hell about that?”

“I, um…”

“Because I’m angry, Isabella. I’m fucking livid. I’ve ruled out surgery for now. It’s too risky. The alternative course of treatment is highly aggressive.” He looked her straight in the eye. “I plan to save your life, but I can’t do it alone. So I’ll ask you one more time. Are you prepared to fight, Isabella? Are you prepared to fight for your life?”

Forget the heady scholar. Dr. Boucher was a soldier; his office, a battlefield of sorts. The degrees, the awards, the books, the computers, they were his weapons.

“Yes, Dr. Boucher. I am ready to fight.” Her voice was firm despite her doubts.

How can he fight on against a horrible enemy that takes so many innocent lives? How can he not run from the sea of despair that dwarfs his efforts? How can he have the courage to fight another battle with an infinitesimal chance of victory?

As if he read her thoughts, he said, “Hope, Isabella. I fight for you because I have hope.”

The determination in his eyes gave her courage, but she didn’t dare to hope. She did however refuse to go down without a fight and she’d found her champion. Sucking in a heavy breath, Isabella put her life into Dr. Boucher’s hands.

*****

Craig had a vice grip on the steering wheel.

How could fate choose this for a woman like Isla? Aren’t there enough assholes walking the planet to target or is there some cosmic conspiracy against angels?

Three days ago, he’d been so excited to see her. Envisioned a long night of ice cream and chocolate martinis, the barrage of curse words she would spew when he told her about his latest break-up, the passion in her eyes when she told him all the dirty details of her Jacques. And then she stepped through the gate. One look and he burst into a sprint.

“Oh, no, baby. What happened? Oh, no. No, Isla.”

She collapsed into his embrace. If he hadn’t been holding her up, she would have fallen to the ground with the weight of her sorrow. It exploded all over him. He held tight while she fell apart in his arms.

“Let me help,” he’d offered as he wiped the tears from her cheeks knowing he couldn’t. Even a best friend was powerless to heal a broken heart. Isla tried to lie about Jacques, but come on. She wasn’t in love like he was the Queen of England. He wanted to knock her on the forehead to remind her who she was talking to, but given the state she was in, put a lock on his lips and listened. He did not hear what he expected.

Cancer. Fucking cancer.

So now, here he was, driving his best friend to Institut Gustave Roussy like he’d done so many times before. But this time, Isla wasn’t going to work. She was checking herself in, giving them permission to pump poison into her veins, shoot radiation into her brain, essentially reduce her to a comatose shadow of a person for two weeks, all in an almost certainly futile attempt to destroy a microscopic killer. And all he could do was try to snap the goddamn, motherfucking, cocksucking steering wheel in his hands.

“Promise me you’ll come every day,” Isabella said from beside him.

“I don’t plan to leave, Isla.” His suitcase was in the trunk next to her overnight bag.

“You can’t move into the hospital, Craig,” she chastised him. “You have to eat and sleep and shower.”

That was so like Isla, worrying about everybody else and not herself.

“You won’t know if I stink anyway, bossy girl.” He’d meant to make a joke, but man, he missed by a mile with that comment. “I know all of the nurses, they’ll fix me up.”

She turned, trying to look threatening.

“If you don’t take care of yourself, I’m going to kick that cute ass when I wake up.”

She just looked sad.

“Kick away, angel. I’m looking forward to it,” he could barely get the words out past the lump in his throat.

Silence filled the car until she said, “I’m scared, Craig.”

He released the wheel and reached across the seat for her hand. “I know, baby, I know.”

*****

“Please come to order. The honorable Whalen van Reimsdyk presiding.”

The judge entered the courtroom and before his ass even hit the chair, Hartnell’s hired gun shot to his feet. “Your honor, we reassert our objection to the timing of…”

“Sit down, Buddy.”

“Your honor, if I may…”

“I said. Sit. Down.”

If you were fool enough not to know it already, the growl from the bench announced that no one disrespects the honorable judge in his house. Buddy Rae Simmons sat right on down. Sabin winked at Joe Lee.

Whalen was a reasonable man, as anticipated, and it didn’t even take forty-five minutes before Hartnell and his high priced posse of legal fools found themselves hightailin’ it out of court with a fine instead of an injunction. The cost of the work stoppage in New Mexico was worth the look on Joe Lee’s face.

Sabin was reaching for his phone to snap a picture to text to Jacques when Joe Lee walked up to him. “Spare a moment, Sabin.” he asked as they left the courtroom.

“I suppose so.”

Sabin sent Lily ahead to wait in the car. She’d played her role perfectly. In Texas, the man with the biggest hat and the prettiest girl wins. No hats in the courtroom, but his arm candy was a stunner. He thought the macho routine was dumb, but when in Rome.

Lily really got into her role. You’d never guess she was a self-proclaimed celibate. She'd come a long way since the Order sent her to live on his ranch, but she still had a lot of healing to do. She didn’t lay one finger on him, but the heat in those exotic eyes and the sexed-up body language poured over him like sweet molasses throughout the entire hearing. He felt sorry for the fake blonde cozying up to Joe Lee.

Sabin met his nemesis in the vestibule of the courthouse. His bodyguards stood off at a discreet distance. He hadn’t gone anywhere without them since the government approvals for the New Mexico facility became public. The man in front of him was the rat who crawled from the bushes, but he knew one thing for sure: if there’s one rat you can see, there’s gonna be fifty you can’t. The others hid behind Joe Lee, but they were there and posed very real threat. It would suck to be dead, so he lived with his shadows.

“Sabin, my boy.” Joe Lee’s face split with a grin as he extended his chubby hand.

Sabin grinned back, looking for Joe Lee’s shadow. It was usually his dipshit son, Blake. “You wanted to talk. Cut to the chase, Joe Lee.”

“We are prepared to negotiate.”

“We?”

Joe Lee ignored the invitation to name names. “My partners and I are willing to pay a very generous price to purchase your intellectual property and take over the facility in New Mexico.”

“My partners and I weren’t aware that it was for sale.”

Joe Lee clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder. “You’re a Texas man, Sabin. Wouldn’t you rather have trustworthy partners?”

Sabin rolled it off. “By trustworthy, you mean American?”

“What else?” said the xenophobic idiot. “Our price will make you a very rich man.”

He had to laugh at that. “I’m already a very rich man.”

Joe Lee’s eyes turned a little meaner. “You can’t take it with you, Sabin.”

There was the chase: money does nothing for a corpse.

Conversation over.

Before Sabin turned to leave, he sneered and Joe Lee backed up. He may be a wimp, but not a complete idiot. “Let me make this real simple for ya. First, I’m not your boy. Second, you’re not worthy to shine the shoes of Jacques Meszaros and Takahiro Kotani, you ignorant ass. And third, when I’m through, maybe I’ll buy JLH Oil and your coward ass cohorts out of bankruptcy. Nice chattin’ with ya, Joe Lee.” He started away.

Joe Lee called after him, “Don’t hold your head too high, cowboy. You’re walking down a scary road.” Sabin didn’t look back until Hartnell fired his real shot. “And you ain’t walkin’ alone.”

Sabin took off at a full run, heading straight for the car. He fucked up. Huge.

He tore open the door. “Lily.”

Wide, wet eyes met his as his bodyguards, the ones who stayed with him, jumped in.

Christ Almighty, how long was I talking to that prick? Did they have time to…?

Her black hair was a mess; her blouse, cut straight through from her neck to her waist. He threw his arms around her as the car sped away from the curb.

Lily was fragile and not just physically. The Order sent her to live with him so he could protect her. Fucking protect her and he let this happen. It took him days before she’d refer to herself in the first person; a week, before she’d look him in the eye. She hardly spoke, made no requests and shied away from the slightest physical contact. He was going kill for this.

“The man who sat behind Joe Lee gave me a message.” Lily’s words were barely audible. “For you.”

And Blake Hartnell was the dead man.

“Did he rape you, Lily?”
Sweet Jesus, let the answer be no
.

“No. He cut my blouse with his knife and said to tell you that if you and Jacques don’t shut down the New Mexico facility, he will.”

*****

“Hey, baby, wake up. You’re having a bad dream.”

His lover du jour shook his shoulders. Teo could tell by the way she said “baby” that she didn’t remember his name.

Been there, done that.