Legal Heirs - Box Set Edition: Books 5-8 (Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles) (15 page)

“Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte,” he murmured on and on until at last he gave in to the exquisite pleasure of possessing the woman he loved. He didn’t want anything more then, only to feel that they were one being and to empty himself in the sweet depths of his Charlotte.

When they woke in the morning, after a very few hours of sleep, their bodies were still entwined. The curtains had been left open the night before and rain beat like fists against the windows. Bly kissed her then slipped out of bed with a happier than happy smile. Charlotte watched as he fished the iPod from the pocket of his jacket and popped it into the dock on the bedside table. Piano music played, sexy and melodic. He climbed back into bed and curled around her in the dreamy bed and Maroon 5 began to sing.

“
Sunday morning rain is falling, steal some covers share some skin, clouds are shrouding us in moments unforgettable, you twist to fit the mold that I am in… that may be all I need, in darkness she is all I see, come and rest your bones with me, driving slow on Sunday morning and I never want to leave.
”

“Bly the hopeless romantic?” she smiled as he covered her face with soft kisses.

“My Charlotte brings out the best in me,” he said before his lips covered hers and they were lost to the world for the rest of the day.

Rain poured down on the streets of Manhattan, but inside the Plaza suite the two lovers made up for the years they’d spent dreaming of each other. They made love slowly, aching for each other, his mouth and fingers bringing her to orgasm until she was too weak to lift her legs while he sank into her. Then they fucked like two people gone completely mad, with her on his lap, face to face, which was agonizingly deep, and he told her he should stop. She said no, keep going, and he kissed the tears from her cheeks then shouted through clenched teeth at the intensity of his release.

At the end of the day they lay together in the huge bathtub and she stiffened as his fingers moved gently over her battered sex. “I won’t touch you anymore,” he said, “I hate that I’ve injured you,” he said and there was both remorse and awe in his voice.

“I don’t hate it at all,” she said, “It’s such a pleasurable pain. We never quite fit together physically, maybe we should have taken that as a sign long ago.”

“Don’t say that, I’d give up sex to be with you. All I need is you near me to feel that my life makes sense. Things are just things, money can buy physical comfort and that’s all. You’ve shown me that money can’t buy what truly matters. Okay, enough deep thinking for now, so to speak. You shave everything on your body, I’ve noticed, every delectable inch,” he said and his hand stayed away from the soreness he had caused and rested on the smooth V where her legs came together.

“I like it smooth, I used to shave my… well, you know. Now I go to a spa where they do ‘Sugaring’. It hurts like a son of a bitch, I must really be in to pain, now that I think of it,” she said and they laughed.

“Sugaring? Well, it is very, very sweet, there’s no doubt about that, and it is sleek and pretty this way,” and he had to fight not to touch her and feel her squirm under his fingers. His erection pressed hard and huge against her back and she turned and hovered above him, resting on her knees.

“Stand up,” she said and when he did she stroked his thighs, kissing and licking as her mouth moved higher. She cupped his heavy balls and took his cock in her mouth as his hands tangled in her hair. “Charlotte,” he groaned with his head thrown back as she licked and sucked and drew him in more and more deeply. “Stop now… fuck!” he shouted as she refused to release him. He jerked violently at last and still she held him captive as she raised her sapphire eyes to savor the expression on his face.

*

“I need food, sustenance, you’re draining all my strength. I think you’re trying to kill me,” he said as they lay tangled together among the ruined bed sheets. He reached for the phone and asked the operator for room service, then covered the receiver when Charlotte said she was the one who had suffered bodily injury.

“What do you care who knows?” she said, grabbing the phone. “Hi, room service? Would you please send up some kind of cold pack for my private parts because as you may know, Mr. Bly’s assets are indeed HUGE!”

“Give me that,” he said, and tried desperately not to laugh as she snuggled against his chest and giggled. His hand played in her hair as he spoke into the phone, “You’ll have to excuse my wife; she’s on medication that makes her a bit loopy. I’d like to order a steak please, large, rare, with any and every side dish, asparagus, potatoes whatever you have. My wife will have grilled fish, shrimp, lobster, scallops and a half dozen chocolate soufflé’s. Oh, and if you’re chocolate soufflé’s are not the best in the city, send out for them, thank you.” He turned on his side and lay face to face with Charlotte, “You’re so funny aren’t you? I should hold you down and make sure you really are in pain before your icepack arrives,” he said and they kissed until the room service waiter arrived.

*

The dining table in the suite was a groaning board of delicacies. They finished eating and they were sated with food and sex and love for each other.

“Where is your body guard, I thought you never left home without him?” Charlotte asked, leaning back in her chair. The food had been excellent and she was stuffed but she definitely had room for a few bites of chocolate soufflé.

“Billy Kipling is on vacation, I’m not completely heartless; he brought his daughter Vivi to San Diego for the summer. I don’t want to discuss security right now.” Bly leaned across the table and fed Charlotte a bite of chocolate soufflé and as she closed her eyes to savor the taste he spoke. “The last time we shared chocolate soufflé you were beautifully pregnant and I asked if your baby was mine,” he said and his eyes held a world of hurt.

“I answered you truthfully that night. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that he was yours, if I had known… well, that doesn’t matter now. I didn’t know until he was about a year old. One day when he had just learned to walk, he toddled over to me and looked up in a certain way and there you were. I was pregnant by then with the baby I lost in the car wreck. Then I was in the hospital and they said there was the possibility that I wouldn’t have any more children. Whatever I say to you won’t undo what’s been done, the truth or lack of it can only hurt Atticus and that will be the worst outcome of all. I’ve never opened the results of the paternity test and you never requested a copy. You held Atticus in your arms in London when he was five months old and you didn’t believe he was yours. You were so certain of it that you simply let it go. If I had known then, in the beginning, I would have made a different choice. I’m not the only one at fault here, maybe my sin is greater, but sin is sin. Sins of omission, lies and now adultery. I know you’ll want a relationship with Atticus and we’ll figure that out somehow. You won’t like what I’m going to say, but here it is. Finn and Atticus are devoted to one another, they’ve bonded deeply. Atti is seven years old, he’s not going to give up the man he knows as his Daddy,” she said, and drew a deep breath, the first she had the courage to take.

He looked away from her but his hand reached across the table and held hers. “What will we do Charlotte? How can we untangle this web without hurting our little boy?”

“I’ll take you to him, he’s so amazing, Bly. He’s you and he’s me… and like it or not, he’s Finn. I grew up amidst so many obstacles, I was illegitimate and poor in a small southern town. It was bad enough when my mother was alive, then she died and her family gave me away. You have no idea how bad it got when I was passed from one foster home to the next. No one had noticed me before, I was too tall and too skinny, all sharp angles. Girls my age bleached their hair and had cute small noses and suntans. I had this black hair down to my bony ass and my mother wouldn’t let me out of the house without a gallon of sunscreen. The summer she died I went through puberty and filled out in certain places,” she looked at him and blushed and his eyes drank her in as he imagined Charlotte, so young and beautiful and innocent… and so alone. “Anyway, I wanted to raise a family in a real mommy and daddy household, I…”

“Charlotte, I told you long ago I wanted to have babies with you, I asked how many children you wanted. I promised you we would fill my big empty house with children, why did you refuse to hear me?” he asked, and his fist came down hard on the table he was so desperate to know her answer.

“You and I together are too much, too strong, too controlling, Bly. I was afraid I would disappear into you and you would send our children away to school in some foreign country. Which is exactly what you’ve done with the twins. After I realized Atticus was yours, those twins were already on the way and I knew you would make a difference. You would put our son before them, and that wouldn’t be fair,” tears streaked down her face as she spoke, as the realization came to her that their lives really could have been a paradise.

“Charlotte, for the love of God, I would never have sent our children away. Every day that I’m away from you is painful to me. You and I together was my only chance for a normal life. I’ve tried to love other women, but it’s no use, I belonged to you from the first moment I met you. If I could change it, I suppose I would, God knows I’ve tried,” he said and he stood and led her back to the bedroom.

“Bly,” she said, settling onto the exquisite bed, “I’ve made mistakes and questionable choices, and yes, I have regrets. There is no map for all the hidden places in the human heart. Maybe I haven’t done a very good job of navigating all the twist and turns. My own heart has betrayed me more than it will ever betray the ones I love. I’m the one who’ll pay whatever price the world exacts for the choices I’ve made and the feelings I’ve felt. There will be a reckoning someday, I’m certain of that. A ransom that only I will owe to offset the joy and sadness for having loved too many, and too much.” She shrugged out of the bathrobe she was wearing, slid under the covers and pulled them up to her chin.

Bly gazed down at her, filling his mind with the sight of Charlotte in his bed. The long black hair spilling across the pillow, her beautiful sapphire eyes were full of sorrow and remorse. She was an ache he couldn’t and didn’t want to overcome. His eyes softened and he said, “It’s impossible for me to see you in bed and not make love to you, and I intend to do just that, but you need to understand something first. I will do what’s best for our son, he won’t be hurt by our mistakes. I want to raise him and I want you to divorce Finn and marry me, as it should always have been. I’ve never forced you to be with me, I see now that I should have, but my love for you binds my better judgment. I need to tell you how it is in my world, and how it will be for Atticus, so please pay attention. The Bly Corporation was created in 1883 by my grandfather and inherited by my father, the first Holden Bly, when he was thirty years old. My father formed an irrevocable trust that will last for three generations, whereby control of the company and its assets pass from father to first born son. My father died before I was thirty so I took control while I was still in my twenties. If I live a long life, I’ll retire and my son will replace me when he turns thirty. As with Amanda, all subsequent heirs will benefit from a private trust, but the sole heir to billions of dollars in holdings go to my first born son. He can’t give it away, he could be deemed mentally unfit, but that’s not going to happen. I won’t take a little boy away from the life he knows if that’s not what he wants, but Atticus will inherit one of the largest corporations in the world when he turns thirty.”

“And if he doesn’t want it, what then?” Charlotte asked, sitting up to put her arms around Bly. It all sounded so complicated, and not at all like something she wanted her son to be saddled with for life.

He threw the bed clothes back and pulled her up and against him, his hands rested on the small of her back and the feel and smell of Charlotte made any rational thought difficult. His mouth covered hers and he moved his hands to her breasts and looked into her eyes. “Charlotte, whatever you decide to do about us I’ll go along with, although you are not shutting me out again. One thing I will never waiver on, even for you, is that Atticus is my legal heir. He decides what will make his childhood a happy one, if he can’t be happy unless Finn raises him, so be it. I want to know him and be available to him, I want him to know I’m his father when we all decide that he’s ready. He
will
take over Bly Inc. when he’s thirty, it’s his destiny and his birthright, and it’s profoundly unchangeable.”

So that was it, she thought, Atticus might want to be a sailor or an astronaut or a civil rights attorney. He was a headstrong child, like her and like Bly, he would want to choose his own way in life. What he was going to be was a billionaire many times over. He would inherit the good and also the bad. It would mean carrying the heavy burden of power and always questioning who he could trust. He would be faced with false friends with selfish motives and he would never again be without a body guard. Perhaps worst of all, he would be set above a half brother and sister who would resent him for the rest of his life.

“Come to bed now,” she said, pulling him down and letting her hands revel in the feel of his muscled shoulders and chest. She moved lower so that the rippled bands of his stomach tightened and a moan escaped his lips as her hand circled his erection. “I need this now,” she whispered, “I need you to make me forget all about what might have been.”

Chapter Three

“What would you like to do today, other than what we just did? Which was highly satisfying for me and I hope you it wasn’t too bad for you,” Bly said as he and Charlotte were drying off after they had showered together.