Legal Heirs - Box Set Edition: Books 5-8 (Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles) (27 page)

“Charlie?” Finn asked, and covered her belly with his large hands as their new son flipped and danced inside her.

“Charlie,” she said, nodding with certainty. “Charles for my dad, and John for JP, what do you think? John Charles Hale, it’s a good strong name.”

His hands gently drew her face to his, his thumbs smoothing over her lips and cheeks, “A good strong name,” he echoed before he kissed her, his lips descending and capturing hers as the heat of their bodies rose between them.

The spa host cleared her throat slightly and continued what she was saying, “All the treatments today are safe for the expectant mother; so you can relax and let us pamper you. As well, if you should wish to be alone, our aestheticians will anticipate your needs and give you privacy. Now if you will follow me, the treatments can begin.”

They had in fact been pampered in an airy, high-ceilinged room with dozens of tall windows, or ‘Ventanas’, as they were called in Mexico, thrown open wide. Lush bougainvillea blooms cascaded from multi-level terraces and painted the seaside vista beyond the ventanas in vibrant shades of pink, green, and azure. Charlotte lost track of all the parts of her body that were oiled, and kneaded, and massaged, to the point where she felt boneless and buoyant and stress-free. Her ardor for her husband finally unleashed itself as they sat on muslin covered mats facing each other, and their bodies were painted with slippery, aromatic clay. A young man’s hands worked deftly over Charlotte’s body, smoothing the clay over her long, narrow back and round belly, then up to her full breasts. As Finn watched she could see his eyes darken and narrow with need. He said something in Spanish to the young women whose hands applied the clay to his body, and she lowered her eyes and left the room quickly, followed by the young man.

“You’re muddy,” he said, his voice low and full of intent, as he lifted Charlotte and sat her on his lap, his massive erection looming between them.

“Only my top half, you stopped that nice man before he finished getting me really dirty,” she said, kissing his face and the edges of his mouth. “He was good at what he did, truly skilled, that young man, but his hands were small like a woman’s. I prefer your hands on my body, big and rough, they know just what I need.”

His hands slid over the clay slicked mounds of her breasts, swollen and hot as they always were when she was pregnant. She moaned as he roughly tugged her aching nipples, and then he, too, groaned when her hands closed around his cock.

“I was afraid I was going to have to hurt him if he didn’t take his hands off my love. I thought it would be a rush to see another man exploring the treasures of my wife’s body while I watched, but it was torture,” Finn said as he gripped her waist and lifted her, holding her poised above him for a moment. She closed her eyes and held her breath as the velvety head forced her to open to him as he thrust upward and she sank down, groaning at the shocking fullness. He held her with a hand spread across the small of her back while the deft fingers of his right hand worked her clit and his long, thick cock pumped into her. She began to quake and spasms of sensitive tissue rippled and gripped, milking him, driving him to plunge so deeply into her that she cried out and felt one long, endless orgasm surge through her. Her body shuddered and stiffened just as his did, leaving them mindless, rung out and limp, as they fell back together on the mat, entwined and inseparable.

So she lay in bed the next morning remembering and reliving the sensual, complex gift of her husband’s love and lust for her. She had strayed from the unwavering perfection of their union in the few days she had spent with Bly the year before. She couldn’t lie to herself about that time, it had been undeniably hot and erotic. Finn didn’t question her about it, he wasn’t interested in details that would surely burst the dam of his carefully restrained rage against Bly. Better not to know, best not to dwell on that which was unchangeable. Her connection to Bly was absolutely unchangeable, even if her love for him was a lesser love than what she felt for Finn. Atticus was the tie that bound the three of them together into an unorthodox and inescapable family unit.

Finn had left a hastily scribbled note tucked into the room service menu, it said he had gone for a run on the beach and to please wait for him in bed. She smiled at that, and lifted the note to her lips and kissed the large, scrawled handwriting that was
so
Finn. She ordered coffee and fresh fruit from the menu, then brushed her teeth and pulled an old pair of Finn’s tattered khaki shorts on over her growing belly. Then slipped into one of his ‘NAVY PROUD’ t-shirts. She had just secured her hair into a high, sleek ponytail when she saw the man’s face in the mirror. She opened her mouth to scream but his gloved hand clamped down on her mouth and he held her pinned against him with an arm that felt like a band of steel.

He held her back to his front and the two of them stared into the mirror as he bent his lips to her ear and spoke. “Don’t scream, don’t make a sound, or I’ll cut that baby out while you watch, understand?”

She was shaking so badly that she could only nod her head once as she stared at his face in the mirror. He was deeply tanned and his hair was glossy black and slightly shaggy. He was tall and lean, and his arms bulged with enormous muscles, and he was absolutely the most handsome man she’d ever seen. Most of all he was frightening, his voice was deep and brusque, and his eyes glimmered with a touch of insanity. It was his eyes that held her and shocked her to such an extent that even when his hand fell away from her mouth she couldn’t utter a word. He quickly replaced his hand with a sturdy piece of duct-tape, thwarting any hope of her recovering her wits and screaming.

He held up a syringe and spoke slowly and calmly, his eyes still holding hers in the mirror. “I don’t know how this drug will affect your baby, so you can come with me willingly, or I can drug you. It’s your choice, do I have to use this or not?”

She shook her head and his eyes cleared and as they did her eyes widened. His eyes were as beautiful as his face, they were blue, a startling shade of sapphire-blue, the exact color as hers, but he didn’t seem to make the connection.
Christopher!
She wanted to scream, why
hadn’t
she screamed, dammit? Fuck it all, he
was
her brother, there was no question. The man who had gagged her and was now leading her out of the room and across the grass to a waiting van, was Christopher Tremont. He opened the cargo doors and pushed her roughly inside and taped her hands behind her securely. He slammed the doors, then climbed behind the wheel and drove away. Charlotte got to her knees and struggled to see out the back window, she saw Finn climbing the stairs to their room. He had taken off his t-shirt and his body glistened in the morning sun. She tried to call out, then she fell back as the van turned a sharp corner and she kicked against the doors.

“It’s no use, so save your strength, you can’t escape, and your husband can’t save you. You’re a very beautiful woman, now you’re all alone with a ghost. That’s what they call me,
el phantasma
; the ghost. I don’t exist and I don’t care if you live or die, you realize that, surely. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a woman who stirred something in me, a long, long time. So for your own safety, don’t provoke my anger,” he said, and turned to look at her. His voice was cold and hard without a hint of mercy, and no hint of their connection. She curled into ball and closed her eyes and wondered if Finn would get to her in time.

She didn’t have to wonder for long, soon the van stopped and she could hear the roar of engines outside. The doors flew open and he hauled her over his shoulder and walked toward a waiting twin-engine airplane. He dumped her in the rear seat and handed a wad of money to a boy who removed the blocks from the planes tires. Then he sat in the pilot’s seat, put on a headset and said something in Spanish. The plane taxied down the runway, picked up speed and she felt the wind lift and carry them. He turned to look at her only once, and she stared into his eyes, willing him to see her, but he turned away without a flicker of recognition. So she knew that life as she knew it was over, he was taking her far away, Christopher was an accomplished aviator, after all. He was also, ‘the ghost’, the deadliest killer in the world, and he had a score to settle with Finn. She closed her eyes and prayed a silent prayer, not for herself, but for her baby. She prayed that somehow Charlie would survive and that Finn would find him and take him home to grow up happily alongside his brother and sister.

Chapter Three

Present day…

“What a fuckin’ kick in the ass! Ya’ll are cruising all the way from DC to Mississippi on Harley’s and I have to put up with Matilda’s wedding bullshit and then fly to Paris. I’m tellin’ you, life is not fair, and I miss Hadley like a motherfucker.” Cuatro Rhodes said, and took a long drink of his beer, then threw back a shot of tequila, and Atticus and Holden did the same. They were still a year away from the legal drinking age but Cuatro had supplied them with convincing fake IDs.

“Agreed,” Atticus said, “I don’t know which is worse for you bro, missing our Sons of Anarchy road trip or having your sister drag you around while she tries on wedding dresses.”

Holden and Atticus laughed at that and Cuatro looked miserable and finished his beer. “You’ll keep an eye on Hadley for me, both of you, she’s handful in the first place, and now with all this Oscar buzz… Just keep the hard-dicks away from her, okay? I intend to marry your sister, Atticus, but she’s being a little bitch about it. Sorry man, inappropriate thing to say about the woman I love, you gotta know she’s messed with my brain,” Cuatro said.

Holden felt sorry for Cuatro, he really seemed to be in love with Hadley, and from what Atticus had told him, Hadley had zero interest in anything other than an acting career.

“It’s cool about your book deal, Cuatro, and the Paris Review is publishing your short story series, that’s major league,” Holden said. “What’s the book about?”

“Yeah, the book,” Cuatro was already drunk and beginning to slur, and Atticus gave Holden a look that said ‘what a cheap drunk, wasted after only a few beers and a couple of shots’. “Well, the book is just an idea at this point, but it’s gonna be about a fucking beautiful, complex girl and her obsession with stardom. She changes lives, she especially fucks up the man who loves her. Then she leaves a bloody trail of hearts that she chews up and spits out, but she does it so sweetly and with such skill, the poor bastards are happy to let her destroy them.”

“Right, I think it’s time to send you back to your sister’s house so she can put you to bed. Man, don’t you have a body guard? Holden here has a body guard, I thought all tycoons needed someone to watch over them,” Atticus said, and Holden motioned for his body guard, Cruz De Leon, to see that Cuatro was deposited safely at his sister’s town house on DuPont Circle so she could deal with him.

“You don’t have a body guard, Atticus, why is that? Cuz only the inner circle knows you’re a Bly, maybe the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree after all. I’ll be as bad off as Alex Bly when Hadley’s done with me, Holden’s daddy will never be normal since sweet-ass Charlotte stole his heart and his baby and left him…” Cuatro barely got the words out of his mouth when Atticus hit him. He landed on the floor and lay there moaning until Atticus reached down and helped him to his feet.

“Sorry about that buddy, but you’re drunk as shit and you crossed a delicate line,” Atticus said, he handed Cuatro a napkin from the bar to stop the blood flow from a cut under his eye. He dusted Cuatro off and smiled at him, but it wasn’t a real smile, it was barely contained fury. “I like you Cuatro, and I’m going to try and forget what you said about my mother, but you’ll need to stay away from my sister from now on. Come near her again, unless she actually wants you to, and you’ll deal with me. You see, the women in my family know what they want, and my mom and dad have been very happily married for a long time. Yes, I was a happy little accident, Alex Bly is my father, and my mother obviously wasn’t in love with him. Is that what you want, any meager crumb Hadley throws at you until she does find true love? Move on, brother, and don’t piss me off again or I will seriously fuck you up, you can count on that.” 

“Hey, Atticus, I’m drunk, man. I shouldn’t have…”

“Don’t worry about it, just go sleep it off,” Atticus said and nodded to Cruz, who hauled Cuatro out of the bar.

“Whoa, bad ass Texan can’t hold his liquor for shit,” Holden said. “You know his big sister will come looking for you now, you and Matilda, fucking and fighting, is all that going to stop when she’s married?”

Atticus shrugged his shoulders and ordered another beer, “Matilda’s bat-shit crazy, and she’s one conniving little bitch, but she’s addictive as hell. I don’t know, it is what it is. She’s got some kinky idea about us fucking in every room in the White House when she’s first lady. Knowing her, it’ll probably happen.”

“Well, be sure to steal an ashtray from the Lincoln Bedroom while you’re there. What do want to do tonight, or should I say
who
do you want to do? Have you noticed that group in the corner? The one wearing the ‘
I’m the bride
’ banner is looking pretty hot and bothered since you knocked Cuatro on his ass, maybe she likes it rough.”

“Yeah, well, I can handle a little friendly pain with pleasure, but I steer clear of the nut jobs who want be slapped around. That’s fucked up, if a man uses a woman for a punching bag, his ass belongs in prison not in the bedroom. Okay, little brother, I think a couple bridesmaids are calling your name. And remember, your penis is a weapon, keep it covered,” Atticus tossed him a couple of condoms and headed toward the group of girls.