Redemption (16 page)

“It's just me, old girl. Come and bring your friends in here for a cup of tea.”

Lily sighed in relief at Jefferson’s voice floating in from the kitchen and followed his voice, anxious for a cup of tea.

Lily walked into a sight she had never seen in her kitchen – a tea kettle on the stove warming, an assortment of cakes and scones on a tray, as well as bread and cheese ready to be sliced.

“Jefferson, you’ve outdone yourself. I thought you wouldn’t come until tomorrow?” Lily went over the young man with light brown hair and soft green eyes, giving him a big hug that ended with a sloppy kiss on the cheek.

“Well, when you mentioned friends coming with you, I realized they were most likely of the human variety and would need a little something to fill their bellies.”

“Yes.” Renee stuffed a scone in her mouth. “So good.” She chewed ravenously, before gulping down a nearby cup of tea.

“Guess I was right,” Jefferson laughed, the apron tied around his waist swishing with each breath.

Lily made all of the necessary introductions as they gathered around the table to settle in for their meal.

“When was the last time you fed?” Ryan whispered into Lily’s ear, while slipping his arm around the back of her chair.

“A while,” she sighed, her own hunger gnawing on her insides.

“Don’t worry old girl. I didn’t forget you.” Jefferson brought over a large mug of crimson liquid. “Our favorite butcher was glad to hear one of his best customers was coming back to town.”

“Thank you.” Lily sipped the blood at first, in an attempt to be polite but once the sustenance flowed down her throat she gulped it down.

She slammed her mug down once she had drained every last drop from the mug.

“Sorry.” She licked her lips to remove any remaining traces of pig blood.

“So, what now?” Abe asked, before stuffing a large vanilla cake in his mouth.

Lily took a deep breath as she surveyed the table. “We wait.”

There’s a lot you’re not telling me, isn’t there?” Ian sat back against the headboard as Becca paced in front of him with the sheet wrapped tightly around her.

“There is no way I can tell you everything. I wouldn’t even know where to begin...” She bit down on her thumbnail as she turned to make another pass across the room.

“You tell me then, how should we be looking at this? Should we be using your FBI skills or should we work with what you know from your time at Manchester?” He raised his brow as she finally stopped to look at him.

“Manchester, definitely. Certain people in the FBI know about these things but it wasn’t like we were trained on ways to banish a demon or how to summon…” she cut off mid-sentence and froze.

“What?” Ian jumped up anxiously to her side.

She turned toward him, and his hands instinctively went to rest on her hips. “Peter. I can try and summon Peter.”

“He’s an angel, right?”

“Not just an angel.” She looked deep into his eyes and smiled. “He’s the right hand.”

“What do we do? Chant or something?”

“Um, no.” She felt her breath coming out in soft pants as she realized they were pressed tightly against each other. “I just have to concentrate. I’ve only done it once before and it was with Lily.”

She backed away from Ian’s embrace and his arms fell to his sides. She immediately felt the loss of their connection and was wondering if he did too.

Becca went back over to the bed and made herself comfortable. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths as she lay as still as possible.

“Can I try too?” The bed dipped just a bit as Ian came to lie at her side.

“Sure.” She kept her eyes closed and despite Ian’s proximity, she was able to keep her breathing calm.

Peter. Peter. Peter. Peter. Peter.

Over and over she visualized him in her mind, concentrating on her memories of his face. His shaggy brown hair and crystal clear, blue eyes, his smile, his presence… She remembered what it felt like to be near him, the connection and the feeling of rightness.

While Becca concentrated on contacting Peter, Ian concentrated on Becca.

Ian thought about how his whole life had been planned and scheduled up to the last detail until he graduated from the conservatory. Who his friends were, what schools he attended, how he would dress… He was his parent’s only child and there was nothing they wouldn’t do for a Holt legacy.

Ian’s mother, Marian, encouraged his music when he was a child. She made sure he had the finest teachers and the best piano to study on. She didn’t realize that her encouragement would pull him away from his expected path to honor and glory. In her mind’s eye, she saw him on the Senate floor right next to his father, Bradford, helping lead the country into the next age. But instead of studying law at Northwestern with his football scholarship, he decided to attend the Boston Conservatory. Marion was enraged, Bradford was proud. It was a subject his parents had fought endlessly over. Bradford had been an outstanding prosecutor in his younger years and always knew how to win an argument, so most of them ended in his favor.

When Marian realized she was fighting a losing battle, she gave up that fight and took up another one – finding Ian a wife. Every decent looking woman in Ian’s age range that was a registered Democrat was paraded in front of him. Ian admitted to himself he had been somewhat of a player at one time, but he was never serious about any of them. He certainly had never been in love.

The night he met Lily, he had been having an inner debate on the way he had been living his life. He loved women and knew what amazing sex felt like, but he’d never had that connection that people wrote about in love songs. Ian had no one to share his accomplishments with. No one to share a life with, like his parents had always shared theirs.

Lily was a breath of fresh air. She wasn’t from any political circle, yet she was accomplished and wealthy in her own right. She could hold her own in any argument and she most definitely challenged him in the bedroom. She was a perfect fit, yet there was something missing. Something he didn’t even realize until Becca came into his life. Where Lily brought excitement and challenges to his life, Becca felt like his best friend.

The night Becca told him about Lily and the world they lived in, his first instinct was to jump in head first. He blamed his desperate need for Lily on love, when in reality he never knew what it was. Just talking to Becca about her life and the way she had lived, he felt a more intrinsic connection with her in hours than he had in months with Lily. After visiting The Manchester Group and learning Becca’s horrific story, he began to let his mind wander.

He began to work on a theory of why Lily had chosen the path she had. Not only was she attempting to save him from danger, but herself as well. He thought that until he had entered her life, Lily’s only purpose for being was Becca. Then he came in, swept her off her feet and messed everything up. He caused her to go against a vow she’d kept to her husband for so long and her core nature of how she lived her life. He came to believe Lily’s life had a purpose and he was never intended to be a part of it.

Now, lying next to Becca, listening to her even breaths, he just knew she was the reason his life had taken the turns it had. Every step in his life had led him to the moment he would find his other half. He had fought it at first; after all, Lily had been his soul reason for living for months. But that desperation is what led him to Becca and he knew he couldn’t waste another of the few precious moments they might have left without telling her how he felt and hope that their futures lay together.

“I don’t think this is working.” Ian pulled Becca out of her concentrated gaze as he turned onto his side.

“It hasn’t been that long. Just keep trying,” Becca huffed, and closed her eyes tighter.

“I know time is an odd concept in this place, but I think it’s been at least a few hours. I think we need to talk about something else.” Ian rested his hand on her covered stomach.

Her breath hitched as the warmth of his hand flowed to the center of her body. “What-” She attempted to clear her throat to control her thoughts from turning down a road she thought they should never go down. “What did you have in mind?”

“I think I should get one thing out of the way first. I think I understand Lily a little better now. What I mean is, her motivations for living the way she does.”

Becca nodded silently for him to go on.

“The reason she never had a relationship was because she could never let go of Ryan. I think maybe being with me was just a fluke. She tried to believe that we were what each other needed and ran away from it to protect both of us. I think maybe her mission in life is to protect you and do what she needs to do to move on to the next life – a life where she can be with Ryan again.”

Becca wiped a tear that had traitorously escaped onto her cheek. “You’re right,” she sniffled. “At least about her. Until she met you, she never even talked about a romantic relationship. I think it was literally hell on earth for her the day we had the sex talk. If she could have blushed, she would have been a tomato.” Becca laughed at the memory of Lily supplying her with a pint of chocolate-chip cookie dough ice cream while the talk of the birds and the bees was attempted. “I could tell she was lonely, but whenever she got too down she asked for another assignment and we were off to help someone else in a new part of the world.”

“You didn’t mind all the globetrotting?” Ian let his index finger lightly trial up and down her stomach.

“No, I mean yes… sometimes. I was a moody teenager at times, but once I realized what we were really doing, how we were helping, I learned that it was what we were both born to do.”

He knew the next question had to be asked, but he didn’t really want to know the answer. “And how did Abe figure into the life you were meant to lead?”

“He...he was what made it all worth it, for a while at least. I used to joke with him that he was my reward from Peter, or whoever runs things up there for all my hard work,” she huffed, as she held the sheet tight to her chest. “You know how well that worked out.”

“Yeah, but he really loved you; still does as far as I could see.”

“I know, but...” she turned over on her side to face him, his hand slid to rest on her hip. “I just can’t.”

“I know that even if we do get out of here, after everything I know now, my future lies here.” He brought his hand up to lie gently over her heart. “It took meeting a vampire to help me find the human I think I was always meant to be with.”

“Ian...” Becca sighed his name in a whisper.

“Just let me get this out.” He gently ran his fingertip from just above her heart to underneath her chin. “Lily was excitement and adrenalin – something I thought I needed to survive. When I lost it, I was desperate to get it back. But the first night you and I met, after a while Lily was the furthest thing from my mind. I wanted to know you, everything about you. I tried to fight it, concentrate on what we set out to do, but I can’t anymore. Please don’t tell me I’m making a total ass out of myself.”

She let out a soft laugh as she gently closed her eyes. “The whole reason I came to you was to help Lily.” She opened her eyes to find his face mere inches away, his breath mingling with her own. She brought her hand to rest on his hip. “I can’t deny that it has been a very long time since I felt like this. I just didn’t want to let myself hope.”

“You want this? You want me?” he asked, his fingertip caressing her bottom lip.

“Yes,” she whispered, as her eyes darted down to his lips.

He pressed his lips lightly to hers before pulling back, leaving a wisp of space between them.

“That’s all I get?” She smiled as her heart skipped a few beats, her hand trembling as she brought it up to rest on his cheek.

“No,” he laughed softly against her lips. “I just don’t want to get too carried away. We don’t know who might be watching and if you keep panting the way you are, I might very well not give a fuck and take you right here.”

Becca let out a long, delicious moan as heat pulsed throughout her lower body. She hitched her leg over his hip before attacking his lips with a fervor she had never possessed before.

He responded with the same passion, pulling her on top of him, groaning at the warmth her contact caused across his skin. He let his body just feel for once – there were no consequences, no tomorrow, only that moment to touch and caress and desire what he had been waiting for his entire life.

“Ian,” she sighed, as his hand made its way between the lace and the skin of her backside.

“I can’t stop. I want you too much.” His other hand gently caressed the side of her breast that was pressed against his bare chest.

“Pull the covers over us,” she whispered as she nipped at his neck. “If they are watching, we’re not going to give them a free show.”

He rolled her off of him and they dug their way under the covers and back into each other’s arms.

“Now, where were we?” Ian asked with a quirked brow.

Becca took his hand and brought it down to her backside. “Right about here, I think.”

“Not quite.” He softly pecked her lips before he slipped his hand beneath the lace. “Yes, right here I think.” He gave her flesh a little squeeze before he brought his lips back to hers.

Mere seconds into their undercover make out session, they heard the Tersuline lock open and they froze as the door opened then closed. They both carefully peeked up from under the cover to find Liam standing with a smirk on his face.

“You leave us alone for hours on end and this is the moment you decide to interrupt?” Becca let her head fall back on the pillow in frustration.

“It’s time,” Liam answered.

Becca looked a little more closely to notice Liam was holding a bag in his left hand.

“Becca, it’s time to get dressed and say goodbye to your friend.” Becca shot up to sit in bed, but her protests were cut off. “Not forever, just for a little while. From what I’ve just witnessed, Mr. Holt will be a big part of our future plans.” Liam dropped the bag and turned to leave. “Ten minutes.”

The sound of the door locking signaled the end of the shortest chapter of Becca’s life.

“I promise, I’ll figure away to get back to you. If Lily is here, I know she will overtake that little shit and we will be out of here in no time.”