The Contract (Nightlong #1) (28 page)

“She’s a pathetic liar. How did she get away with this?”

Shaking his head, which had sunk into his shoulders, he muttered, “Because I thought the only true probability, impossible.”

As we neared the city, he said, “It’s time to close down Pernox.”

“How?”

“The way Daltrey wanted. We let the whole world know who is a member… and where it all takes place. Then we have to start running.”

“What, from her?”

“She’ll find us if we don’t run, Ciara.”

“No. She should go to prison,” I pleaded.

“She has a ton of money and my surveillance equipment. She will come to us and we will deal with her.”

“I don’t want this. I don’t want this life. I never wanted it. I just want you.”

Turning to me briefly, he said, “Now you know why I didn’t initiate this myself.”

I SAT BY THE WINDOW of our hotel room, watching the fountain show in front of the Bellagio. Tourists came to the front every twenty minutes or so to watch slightly different variations of spray pass before their eyes. I was mesmerised, too. And it was only water.

Dante was busy in the shower. We’d checked in using our fake passports and we both hoped nobody would check our names, his pseudonym being Ethan Radley and mine being Cleo Patrick, of course.

His phone started buzzing and I got up to walk to the coffee table. It was the phone his father had been using earlier and I saw the caller was unknown.

“Your phone’s buzzing!” I shouted.

“Wait… I’m coming!”

I heard him jump out of the shower and he leapt from the bathroom with a towel barely wrapped around him.

“Answer it,” he said.

“Hello?” I asked, putting it on speaker.

“Cleo. It’s Dick.”

I looked at Dante who looked as worried as me. “Hi.”

“It’s done.”

“What’s done?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know and don’t think for one second I didn’t imagine him to be too dickless to do what should’ve been done ages ago.”

“What’s, done?” Dante growled into the phone.

“Her. She was speeding away from Pernox when she got flagged down by armed robbers eager to steal a bunch of notes from her purse. Some of the bloodied ones got left behind as a bit of an explanation, you know? Image coming through now…”

We both looked down at the screen and stared at the image Dick had just sent through. Shay sat at the wheel of her car, bullet right through the middle of her forehead.

“They won’t trace it to the club. She was speeding towards the M25 when it happened. It was quick, painless. I didn’t do it for you, I did it for him. Now we’re finished with this. He got justice, finally.”

Justice would have been a prison sentence
, I thought. Not the easy way out. She should have paid for her crimes, over and over.

Dick hung up and all that was left was the image of Shay, dead on the screen, staring back at us.

“He’s some piece of work.”

I looked into Dante’s eyes and he shook his head, telling me not to say anything.

“No,” he mumbled. “No.”

Dante began shaking, unable to voice how this made him feel. This was the most unfathomable reality of what had happened. For so many years, he’d imagined every other scenario – just not this one.

Shay killed his brother and a part of him had always refused to entertain the notion. Maybe a part of him had always known the truth and he’d locked it away, deep inside his mind, to protect himself – because getting involved with the wrong woman had ultimately cost him his brother.

Dante put a hand on my shoulder and tugged me close, his chest heaving so violently I thought he’d been winded or was about to lose the ability to breathe. Craning my neck back, I looked up into his eyes and saw a stormy torrent of grief swelling his heart, threatening to smash open his chest. My hands pressed against his chest, I barely whispered, “Kiss me,” and he lurched down and tore open my mouth, plunging his tongue inside. My hands slid from his chest to behind his neck and his damp body felt cool against the heat radiating from mine.

His towel fell from his body, the warmth emanating from his groin unmistakable.

“Ah Ciara, what would I do without you?”

“Let’s go to the shower. Help me.”

He knelt down and pulled my sandals off while I shifted the straps of my dress from my shoulders and wriggled it down to my hips. He pulled it off over my feet and on the way to the bathroom, I pinged my bra off and it dropped to the floor.

He set the shower running and we waited for steam to start spreading around the room. He jumped into the shower and when he was hidden behind the misted screen, I removed my underwear and stuffed the sanitary pad I’d been wearing in the bin.

Stepping into the shower with him, I wrapped my arms around him from behind and smoothed my hands up and down his abdominals, counting them as I went. Kissing his back, I whispered, “How much do you love me?”

“Too much.”

My hands slipped down his belly and I twirled a finger through the line of hair between his navel and pubic bone. His firm buttocks pressed against my belly and heat stirred inside my pelvis.

“What do we do now?”

“Whatever you want to do, Ciara.”

“I want to get lost with you.”

He turned in my arms and smiled slightly. “My ruffian Irish princess, aren’t you?”

“I’m your wild lioness, protecting her mate. I’ll hunt for you,” I said, kissing his nipple, “kill for you, pounce whenever you want me to… lie lazily with you in the sun, be ready for your loins whenever you want me.”

“Loins,” he repeated, “what a perfect word.”

He threw me up into his arms with such ease, pressing me up against the tiled wall nearby. He bit my nipples, making me writhe against him. I tried to snake down his body to impale myself on him but he held me so tight, I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t speak because I was burning so hot for him.

Grabbing my hair tight, he yanked my head back and my neck was exposed for him to suck and lick, kiss and murmur against.

“Ah,” I cried, when he pushed his hips into mine and slipped inside me.

“Ciara,” he whimpered.

“I’m here. With you.”

He held my buttocks tight in his hands and buried his face in my neck as he swept in and out of my body.

“Ah, Dante,” I cried, his cock sliding easily through me, my empty ache diminishing as he filled me again and again. Riding me, I felt the strength he possessed holding him up when what he’d been through would knock most people down so they’d crawl the rest of their way through life. He broke me wide open and it made me feel free, his savage cock cutting and digging deep inside my injured womb.

He slowed his thrusts to long and slow and I reached between us to give myself an extra helping hand. We both needed quick release now and a spark ignited the moment I circumnavigated my clit for him.

“Dante!”

He came inside me, his face buried in my neck, his poor soul weeping into my flesh. While he cried, I kissed every inch of his face and smothered him in my love. He needed me and I had vowed to marry him till death us do part – and I meant it.

“We’ll get through this together, I promise. I love you,” I told him, meaning every word.

He pulled out of me and collected a handful of cum and blood between his fingers, smashing his hands against his chest and belly, rubbing it all in his skin like a caveman.

“Me and you, we’re enmeshed Ciara. Every part of you is mine, and every part of me is yours. Your blood, your love, your bones… they’re mine.”

“They’re yours,” I repeated.

He kissed me under the shower and it wasn’t like we’d forgotten those we’d lost, it was just that we knew what we had and it was better looking forward than backward. It’d just taken us both a really long time to realise that.

***

DANTE woke me early the next morning, passing me a cup of coffee from the in-room service.

“What time is it?” I moaned, struggling to sit up in bed after the way he fucked me last night.

“Seven. I haven’t really slept. I just…”

“I’d have waited up with you,” I told him, reaching out for him. He sat on the edge of the bed next to me and I kissed his cheek. “Don’t suffer without me.”

“I don’t want you to suffer too,” he said, looking away.

“I know. So… what’s the plan?”

“The plan is to make no plan.”

I threw my head back laughing and took his hand. “Tell me we’ll be okay.”

“We’ll be okay.”

“Okay.”

Dante’s phone rang and he put it on speaker.

“Sexton?”

“You better come home.”

“What?”

“Come home.” Our driver sounded not himself.

“What happened?”

“I’ll explain… when you get back. Just come back.”

He hung up and I looked across at Dante.

This war or whatever it was someone was waging on us had seemingly only just begun…

Dante

ON THE FLIGHT HOME, SHE turned to me with tired longing in her eyes for what we’d never have and what I could never give her: a normal life. Despite this, she said, “Where will we stay?”

“Knightsbridge. It’s probably the safest place.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

She turned back, looking forward. I sensed she wasn’t at all satisfied.

“What is it, Ciara?”

“A feeling something bad’s going to happen, that’s all.”

“That’s all?”

She shrugged. “Could be nothing.”

“Could be.”

I hated to admit it, but I had the same feeling.

Sexton never sounded worried. Never. Yet on the phone a little over six hours ago, he called and sounded more than worried. It was more like sadness mixed with bewilderment in his voice – and fear – there was fear. Of what, I didn’t know yet. Perhaps Ciara was thinking about the same things as me – about Sexton and his tone of voice – and never having heard the former Army colonel sound afraid before.

***

WE met him at the airport, jumping straight in the back of the Phantom. Owing to the recent disaster at my mansion, I’d decided to start using Biggin Hill as my airport instead.

Sexton pulled away from the airport hangar and once we were on the road, I asked from the backseat, Ciara’s hands fidgeting in her lap beside me, “What’s happened?”

“Shay’s dead.”

“We know.” I sounded cruel, because I felt it. Shay betrayed me. Undermined me.

“That’s not all.”

“Then, what else?”

Ciara, in her fraught way, stared at her lap while biting her lip. She didn’t want to know the details.

“She couldn’t have stolen your business.”

Ciara’s eyes shot up to stare into Sexton’s through the rear-view mirror. “We saw security footage…” She began protesting, but Sexton shook his head.

“One of the girls called me on the emergency number you’d given them. She said Roman Cornish called back round to Pernox early this morning. Apparently a couple of his team mates are being bribed… since the fixer can no longer bribe him.”

I pre-empted more.

“What does Roman want me to do?”

“He said he’d pay you to investigate the PO Box. It doesn’t matter the cost.”

“Fucking hell,” I moaned, “I don’t need this.”

Ciara covered my hand with hers and muttered, “How do we know Shay wasn’t the one trying to bribe him?”

Sexton stiffened. “Because while he was visiting, he got a message on his phone from the fixer… and Shay was already dead by that point. She left half an hour before Cornish arrived and she only got two miles down the road before someone caught up with her.”

“My father… for Daltrey,” I explained, looking into Sexton’s eyes, “we asked him not to, but he didn’t listen.”

“She could have scheduled the message to Roman,” Ciara said, “it could still have been Shay.”

I stroked my hand over hers, knowing she was in shock. In despair. She needed proof Shay had died for a good reason. I could tell this was so hard for her to take in; she wasn’t from
this
world.

“Did Roman specify what was in the message?”

“Yes. It warned the fixer was watching him, waiting for him to slip up… that nobody is perfect and people like him always need things fixing.”

Slamming my fist against my knee, I growled, “This isn’t why I started fixing… this guy is using it for gain, not to help people.”

As we hit London at night, I felt half-dead, the time difference a killer. We needed sleep after barely resting last night.

“That’s why I called you back here… it seems we may have solved one crime, but not the other.”

Beside me, Ciara looked distraught, rubbing her eyes. I pulled her into my embrace, holding her close. She was my oxygen, quashing the noxious gases around me; she was lightness lifting my heavy weight up.

“We’ll be home soon, Ciara and we’ll sleep in your bed and rest soundly.”

“It’s our bed now, darling.”

“Yes, of course.”

I searched out her lips and pressed a gentle kiss to her mouth. Sighing, she bundled herself into my chest and rested as I slouched in my own chair, my eyelids fluttering open and shut too.

“We’ll be there soon, angel,” I whispered, my eyes falling closed.

TO BE CONTINUED…