Hearts On Fire (Heart's Revenge Book 2) Read online

  Eventually, we make our way to the bedroom with the pretense of going to sleep, though we both know that’s not going to happen. Not right away, anyway.

  Essie stands at the end of the bed with her arms wrapped around her body. I unfasten the top button of my shirt, and then I pull it over my head, letting it fall to the floor. Essie watches me take off my watch, kick off my shoes and socks, remove my belt.

  “I’m not used to this,” she says softly.

  “Which part?”

  “Any of it.” She hugs herself tighter. “I’ve never been like this with a guy before.”

  “In his bedroom, watching him undress?”

  “You know what I mean. I’ve never been in a relationship with a guy before. Not that that’s what’s happening now, but…y’know. I’ve never been in a guy’s apartment before. Not to spend time with him, anyway. I may have visited briefly, and then left afterwards. But hanging out is kind of new to me.”

  “Me, too.” She looks at me like she doesn’t believe me. “What?”

  “You don’t bring girls back here?”

  “I bring you back here.”

  “Aidan.”

  “No, I don’t bring girls back here. This is my personal space. Generally, I like to keep it drama free.”

  Essie bursts out laughing. “Then you really shouldn’t have let me through the door.”

  I pad barefoot over to her and I run my hand over her hair. She closes her eyes, leaning into my palm. She’s so beautiful. I often find myself wishing there was another word, another more effective word for describing how stunning she is. I keep that to myself, though. Essie’s not ready to hear what I think of her. Not in a situation outside of sex, anyway.

  I kiss her forehead and she makes a soft humming noise. “Take off your clothes,” I whisper into her ear. I feel her skin break out into goose bumps underneath my other hand, where I’m touching her arm. “Take them off and I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Oh? And how do you intend to do that?”

  I run my finger along the hem of her shirt, tugging at it. “You can tell me exactly what you want me to do, and I’ll do it without question.” She has such a fierce personality. I know she definitely wants me to dominate me sometimes. I have to admit that I prefer being in charge, but I’m willing to defer to her occasionally. I’ll basically do anything to make her happy, not that I’m going to tell her that any time soon. Can’t have her getting her way all the time.

  Essie gives me a curious look. “Anything?”

  “Anything.”

  She gets undressed in record time. I love watching her shed her clothes. It’s as though she’s shedding her skin, becoming someone or something else, fragile and new. “Carry me to the bed,” she says.

  I can see that this is going to be an interesting experiment. She hasn’t told me how she wants me to carry her, so I stoop down and grapple her around the waist, throwing her over my shoulder. She screams, and then screams louder when I spank her ass.

  “I didn’t tell you to do that,” she wails.

  “Didn’t tell me not to, either.” I throw her down on the bed, trying my best not to laugh.

  “You’re going to pay for that,” she informs me.

  “How? I’m intrigued.” I climb up onto the bed, trying not to look like a predator as I move towards her, but damn if I don’t want to ruin this girl. Damn if I don’t want to hear her scream.

  “You’re going to be paying penance all night,” Essie says. “First, you have to massage my feet.”

  “Nope. That’s not what you really want,” I tell her. I snap my teeth at her feet when she tries to shove them in general direction.

  “It is what I want.” She’s keeping a straight face, so I’m half inclined to believe her.

  “Okay. Hand ‘em over.”

  She places both of her feet heavily into my lap, and I pull faces at her as I rub her arches. She flips out when I try and kiss them, though. “Absolutely not. That’s revolting.”

  “I think you have very lovely feet. Maybe you can use them on me later.” I wink. She gets my meaning straight away and rolls her eyes.

  “Maybe. If you’re lucky.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  Essie spends a long minute looking at me, and I can tell she’s trying to figure out how best to punish me. She has a wicked look in her eye. After a very long time she inhales through her nose, looking up at the ceiling, and she says, “Make love to me.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Make love to me. No rough stuff. No teeth. No kinky shit. Make love to me.”

  I sit back on my heels, watching her. Is she fucking with me? I feel like she is. Under no circumstances have I ever imagined her saying those words to me. “I can do that, Essie,” I say softly. “Are you sure you can handle it, though?”

  She sticks her tongue out at me. “I’m a big girl. I can take anything you’ve got.”

  “I’m not talking about my larger than average dick size, beautiful. I’m talking about emotion. You don’t seem to like that very much.”

  She stays very still on the bed, looking at me, and I don’t know whether I should even wait for her to respond. When a full minute passes by and she says nothing, I take that as her answer. She’s challenging me. She’s also a little bit scared. I can see it in her eyes.

  Slowly, I stand up and remove my pants. She observes every movement I make in utter silence. When I climb back onto the bed, she makes a soft, low whimpering sound, and despite how turned on I am when we fuck and I manhandle her a little, this vulnerability she’s showing to me right now is far more exciting. I spend a long time running my hands all over her body. She’s nervous, and I want her to be relaxed, so I take my time. I kiss her deeply, and I really fucking mean it. She reciprocates.

  Her breathing goes from slow and sleepy to excited, and then to frantic. By the time I touch her between her legs, she’s gasping for oxygen and my dick is throbbing so hard. I fucking love this. I love that she’s handing herself over to me, when I know this is not her natural state of being. Her eyes are closed, head angled back, lips parted. I take her nipples into my mouth, one at a time, but I don’t touch her with my teeth. I use my tongue and my lips, and Essie winds her fingers into my hair, stroking softly.

  She uses her free hand to palm my cock, stroking up and down in smooth, fluid movements. Feels so fucking good. We share our breath and our heart beats as we kiss and caress one another, and I lose all sense of time.

  By the time I slide myself inside her, Essie seems like a different person. Relaxed. So calm. We rise together toward our climax on a wave of dopamine, and it’s a wonderful thing. There’s no screaming or frenzy. We cling to one another, raining kisses down onto each other’s skin and I can’t think of a time when I’ve felt more grounded or at peace.

  When we finish, Essie rolls from her back to her side, and I lift my arm so she can nestle her head in the crook of my shoulder. She curls around me, her arm across my chest, one leg draped over both of mine. It would be so easy to say the words right now: I love you. And I do love her. I love that she finally feels like she can curl up next to me, and I love that even though I’m no longer inside of her, it still feels like we’re connected, like we’ve merged and become one, into something bigger than ourselves and more important than an orgasm.

  “Thank you,” she whispers. I can tell by her voice that she’s about to drift off to sleep. I wrap my arm more tightly around her and kiss the top of her head. I know with an absolute certainty that she will still be here in the morning when we wake up. There is no doubt in my mind.

  Even before I open my eyes to the early sunlight that is just peeking through the curtains, I know that she’s still here, still in my arms. I can’t help the smile that spreads over my face.

  Bliss.

  Chapter Seven

  Essie

  Something doesn’t feel right. I can tell before I’ve even opened my eyes. For a moment I can’t remember w
hat it is, the burning, itching something at the back of my mind, troubling me. I struggle to remember for a few hazy moments until suddenly, immediately it explodes through my mind like a fireworks display. I sit bolt upright in bed, the room spinning crazily around me. “Shit! Shit, what’s the date today?”

  Aidan opens his eyes blearily and smiles at me. “It’s the seventeenth. Saturday the seventeenth.” He looks so goddamn perfect and beautiful and happy, the bed sheets barely covering his naked, amazing body, and I feel like bursting into tears. He lifts his head, his blond hair falling into his face. “Hey. Hey, is everything okay? You look a little freaked.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, everything’s fine.” I swallow, brushing my hair out of my own face, and then I spin around, throwing my legs out of the bed, getting up as quickly as I can. Everything is not fine. Everything is really not fine. Today is the seventeenth of April, and that means it’s Vaughn’s birthday. How? How the hell can I have forgotten? How could I have let his damn birthday of all days slip me by?

  “I’m sorry, I just remembered. I have…I have something to do this morning. I have to go.”

  Aidan traces the tips of his fingers down my spine, making a very displeased sound. I shiver at his touch, from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes, my skin breaking out in goose bumps as I grab up my clothes and begin to wrestle them on. “Are you sure you can’t stay for half an hour? I make a mean breakfast,” Aidan whispers.

  Tears prick at my eyes. “God, I…I’m sorry. I really can’t. I have to get moving.” I pull myself together before I turn around and force a smile. “Thank you for a wonderful evening, though.” And the worst part is, I mean it because last night was the first time I’ve felt normal in…well, ever. Aidan flops back down on the bed, a sad smile playing over his lips. He looks like he knows. He looks like he knows this has something to do with Vaughn.

  “Okay, beautiful. I’ll see you soon?”

  I nod, backing out of his bedroom. “Yes. I’d like that.” I can’t believe I’m still entertaining this madness, even as I’m fleeing his apartment. I rush out without another word, my vision swimming as I stumble out the front door.

  At home, I clean my bathroom furiously, crying like a madwoman. I fold my clean laundry. I sit on my couch, staring at the wooden horse Aidan carved for me, feeling dead inside, for three hours. And then I stand up, grab my coat and my keys and I walk out of my apartment.

  Out on the street, the wind is bracing, stinging my cheeks, trying to find its way inside my clothing. I keep my head down, moving one foot in front of the other. I walk for twenty minutes, and then I stop to buy a bunch of white roses from a street vendor. I hand over twenty bucks and tell the stooped old man with the gnarled hands to keep the change. Everything feels numb. Even when the thorns on the rose stems bite through my thin gloves, I don’t feel the pain. Blood drips onto the cream material of my jacket.

  I stand outside the gates of Saint Cuthbert’s Memorial Cemetery, grasping the bunch of roses and staring at the closed wrought iron gates until my hands are bleeding all over the place.

  My heart is barely even beating as I finally open the gates and make my way across the cemetery, toward Vaughn’s final resting place. It stops altogether when I see there’s a figure already there, standing over my brother’s grave.

  What…what the hell?

  Tall, fair hair, broad shoulders... I’ve barely spent any time with him, but I’d recognize the casual slope of his shoulders anywhere—the way he rests his weight on one foot when he’s standing. It’s Aidan. Relief washes through me. For one tiny, fleeting, barely-there moment, I’m glad he’s here, to hold me as I mourn, but then the relief is replaced with a surging, burning anger that feels like molten lava boiling up from deep inside me. And then I’m dropping the white roses, and I’m running at him.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” My palms hit Aidan dead in the chest as just as he turns to face me. He staggers back, surprise flashing across his face. My fists strike out, over and over, at first hitting nothing but air, but then making solid contact with his body. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing here? What…what right do you have?”

  Tears stream down my face and I can’t catch my breath, but I keep hitting him, over and over and he does nothing to block the shots, does nothing to try to prevent me from hurting me. He stands there and he takes it.

  “Essie?” He steps into me, so there’s hardly any space between us. “Essie.”

  “FUCK YOU! Get the fuck out of here! You don’t belong here! I’m going to fucking kill you!” My arms fall to my side and I stand there, panting. I wipe angrily at my eyes. The expression on his face is one of deep pain, serious anguish, but I don’t care about that. I hope I hurt him.

  “You’re not going to kill me,” he says softly.

  “You don’t…you don’t know,” I sob.

  “I do. I do. And you’re hardly a murderer, Essie.”

  “Maybe not. But your brother was, wasn’t he? WASN’T HE?” I scream.

  Aidan hangs his head, staring down at the hardened ground. Vaughn’s body is down there, below us, trapped in a wooden box paid for by Aidan Callahan’s money, and I feel like my head is about to explode. “He wasn’t a murderer, Ess. He was an asshole and his priorities were definitely fucked up, but he didn’t mean to kill anyone. He made a mistake.”

  “Oh? Oh, well, that’s just hilarious. You call falling asleep at the wheel and killing an innocent guy a mistake? You know who I am. You’ve known this whole time, haven’t you? And you never said a fucking word!” My whole body is shaking. This, screaming at him, finally getting everything out in the open, feels strangely cathartic. This has been hanging between us for far too long.

  He spreads his hands out in front of him. “Neither did you, Essie. It was clear we both knew where we were and who we were. We danced around it every time we spoke. I was waiting for you to be ready.”

  “I was never going to be ready! When? When did you know?”

  He sighs, nodding his head. “Five years ago. I knew five years ago. I’ve always known. I’ve watched over you. Made sure you were okay.”

  This is a shock to me. Every single day I’ve been hating him and wishing him dead, and he’s been what? Looking out for me? “So you…you knew when I applied for a job at the law firm?”

  He just stands there, looking guilty.

  “Answer me!”

  “Yes, I knew. I asked Arturo to make sure you got the job.”

  My jaw drops. “You have got to be joking.”

  “I’m not. I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have interfered, but I wanted to make sure you were okay. I felt very protective over you even then. And now…now, I am falling in love with you,” he whispers.

  “You’re what?”

  He sounds more confident when he says it again. More resigned. “I am falling in love with you, Essie. And you’re falling in love with me. I know you are.”

  This is one of those moments when everything seems to stand still. You watch actors on television and in the movies live through these moments and it’s hard to comprehend how a few words can paralyze a person, turn them into a jabbering wreck. It all looks so false. And then someone like Aidan Callahan comes along and says something along the lines of what he’s just said to me, and suddenly it all makes sense.

  I start to laugh. Tears are still streaming down my face, but the laughter bubbles up and out of my throat, completely beyond my control. Even I can hear how completely hysterical I sound, but Aidan simply looks at me with this gentle, loving expression.

  “We don’t have to go to Hawaii,” he says. “We don’t have to do anything. We definitely don’t have to relive the past over and over, Essie. You and me. We can move forward together, if we trust each other. Do you trust me?”

  “I…I don’t…”

  “Just think, Ess. Think, just for a second. Is this how you want to feel for the rest of your life? Miserable and angry and alone?”

  Oh, no. No, n
o. no. Fire snaps through my nerve endings, like lightning striking my body. “You think you know so much, don’t you, Aidan? You know I love you? You know I’m miserable and angry and alone? Well, you don’t know everything, okay? I’m guessing you don’t know about the offshore accounts your brother was using to launder money, do you?”

  “What?” Aidan takes a deep breath, frowning, and then he tips his head to one side. “What are you talking about?”

  “Revenue for the Callahan company went up almost fifteen percent when you took over, didn’t it?” I say.

  He looks even more confused as the seconds tick by. “Yes, it did.”

  “Don’t be too shocked. Your brother was a good businessman. He increased the company’s profitability and hid the growth, squirreled it away, kept it for himself. He siphoned the money off and buried in overseas accounts so the IRS wouldn’t find it. When he died and you took over, you registered all profit so it looked like the company was doing so much better.”

  Aidan screws his eyes shut, shaking his head, as though this information is just too much to comprehend. When he opens his eyes again, his face falls blank. “I don’t care.”

  “You don’t care or you don’t believe me?”

  “No, I believe you. I just really don’t care. Whatever Alex did is on Alex. Like I said…we don’t need to live in the past, okay? This doesn’t have to be about Vaughn and Alex. This can be about you and me.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” I laugh, but my voice is hoarse, my throat sore from the cold and the warring emotions that are fighting to control of me. “Something like that isn’t in the past, Aidan. Something like that would be very important to the relevant officials now. Information like that is enough to shut down a company like the Callahan Corporation.”

  “And that’s what you want?” he asks quietly. He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t make a move toward me. He waits, lips pursed, for me to answer his question.

  I’m going to say yes. I’m going to tell him that all I need to do is place the large, brown envelope I’ve already compiled into a mailbox, and that’s it. It will all be over. But looking at him, seeing at the pain in his eyes, the weight of the hope he’s carrying heavy on his shoulders, I suddenly feel like I have a hand gripped tightly around my neck, stopping me from uttering a word. I feel like this is a standoff, like I’m hold a gun up to his head and I’m trying to decide whether or not I should pull the trigger.