Legal Heirs - Box Set Edition: Books 5-8 (Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles) (25 page)

“That’s not a bad idea, except that my birth control shot has another month before it wears off,” Charlotte said, and she smiled at her husband as he sat up in bed. “Hey, where are you going? It looks like we have the house to ourselves, I don’t know about you, but I can think of a number of pleasurable activities to keep us busy.”

“I have a surprise for you, remember? Let’s get dressed and get going, we’ll take care of business when we get there. Come on, my love, get moving,” he said and grinned his disarmingly sexy crooked grin.

“Wow, this looks like a familiar part of the world,” Charlotte said, while she was getting dressed Finn had packed a picnic lunch, now he was driving through their former college neighborhood. He stopped the car in front of the tiny bungalow they had shared with JP back in their law school days, and Charlotte caught her breath and stifled a sob when she saw the house.

“It’s prettier than I remembered,” she said, wiping her eyes. “So many good memories, the three of us spent a thousand perfect days in this house. Why did you bring me here, my love?”

“I didn’t mean to dredge up memories of JP,” Finn said quietly, leaning his cheek against the steering wheel as he studied the face he loved most in the world. “I bought it last spring, a few months before I went away. I drove by one day and there was a for sale sign in the yard, so I just bought it… for you. It’s been cleaned up and repainted and the yard has been replanted… I don’t know why I felt the need to own it. It seemed like part of us, so I didn’t want it to belong to strangers any longer, I thought you might like to come back now and then to the place where we began and…”

She leaned over and kissed him, a deep, soft, wet kiss that set them both on fire. “My love my love,” she whispered when they came up for air.

He wanted to carry her over the threshold, but that was impossible with only one unbroken arm, so they simply held hands as they wandered through the rooms. Her old bedroom was at the back of the house and when she opened the door she gasped. A beautifully ornate, and dreamily inviting antique brass bed stood right in the middle of the room, covered in layers of plump pillows and pure white linens.

She gazed up at him with happiness that she could barely contain, and she cupped his face in her hands and held his lips to hers. He led her to the cloud-like bed, their hands frantically undressing each other with the memory of that first night spent together heating their blood like a drug.

“Hurry, I need you,” she groaned, as he tore his shirt off with one hand, and sent buttons flying and clattering across the wood floor. His lips covered her lips, parting them, his tongue insistent as it twined with hers. He lifted her onto the bed with one powerful arm, as his mouth teased first one nipple then the other. She cried out at the sharp bite of pain as he sucked hard, teeth scraping the sensitive tip. Her body arched, lifting her breasts to his mouth, the source of both pleasure and pain. She marveled at the feelings he roused in her as he ravaged her body, and she studied his handsome face, his eyes had darkened to a stormy grey with heat and passion.

“Hold on to the headboard and don’t let go,” he said, pinning her wrists in his hand and lifting her arms over her head, his voice fierce and demanding.

Her fingers curled around the cool metal of the bed and she felt herself vibrating down to the very core of her sex just imagining what he was going to do to her. She was dizzy as she watched him poised above her body, he was so fucking sexy. His body was awe-inspiring and elegantly perfect with its powerfully ridged and sculpted muscles. As if to accentuate his masculine beauty were the wickedly provocative tattoos and scars that her hands itched to trace and explore. She held onto the bed, aching to touch him, to feel his hot skin and the ghosts of his wounds, and his long, thickly veined cock. There was no breaking free of the hold he had on her body, her heart, and her emotions. The good and the bad in him unleashed a wild, reckless, and irresistible need in her. She relentlessly craved all that was Finn, his classic good looks and war-hardened body, his kindness and sense of all that was fair and just. And for better or worse, she was hopelessly intoxicated by his relentless, incendiary, renegade spirit.

“Good girl,” he said, his voice dark and rough, as she held tightly to the bed. His hand traced the curves of her body, absorbing the feel of her silky skin. He kissed and then dipped his tongue into her naval, her hips arched toward him as he kneeled above her and skimmed her jeans down and tossed them aside. She was amazed at what he could do with only one free hand, the man was a magician. “No panties, just the way I like my love,” he practically growled, “don’t let go, Charlotte, just feel my touch on your beautiful skin.” Before she could think or say a word, he lifted her leg over his shoulder and lowered his scandalously erotic mouth to her naked pussy. He devoured her, bringing her to the edge quickly, his tongue hot, greedy, and skilled, familiar as he was with the nuances of Charlotte’s body. He pushed one finger roughly inside her and then another, so that she cried out and felt herself falling away, she shuddered beneath him, writhing and moaning as first one climax and then another coursed through her.

“Finn, no, yesssss, please,” she begged between clinched teeth, until finally she let go of the headboard and wrapped her hands around the thick length of his cock, needing to feel him inside her, filling and quenching the fire he ignited.

“Wait, my love, let’s go slowly,” he said, his fingers moving inside her with a hard and relentless pressure. The feeling was too intense and she wanted to tell him to stop, but a monster orgasm gripped her, dissolving her protests with spasms of unseemly pleasure. He smiled and lifted an eyebrow as he raised a finger to his mouth and groaned in unadulterated pleasure at the taste of her. There was no more waiting then, he had unearthed that part of her that was primitive and savage; that wanted him inside her to satisfy an ancient and inescapable need. She thrust her hips up and gripped his ass with one hand and guided him inside her with the other, groaning with satisfaction as his cock opened and filled her. He let her do as she pleased with his body, he surrendered to Charlotte, just as he had done the first time they made love, long ago, in secret, in that very room.

His only awareness was to claim her as his; that his true purpose in life was to live a long life with the woman he loved. Her skin and her tight, sweet pussy were so searingly hot he felt there would be nothing left of his body but ashes, and that seemed to him the most exquisite way to go. It took a moment for him to regain control, then he cupped her small, firm ass, and thrust into her deeper and deeper. Her brow furrowed at first, and her eyes squeezed shut, as he punished that spot deep within her that was pure sensation.

“Look at me, Charlotte, feel it, let go,” he said as he pushed her past the threshold of pain.

She matched his movements and the feeling was a searing fire that became a slowly building ecstasy. As she moaned beneath him, their eyes met and held while tears spilled down the sides of her face. He kissed them away until his tongue was salty, and he was deluged and satisfied with all the sweet, sweet flavors of Charlotte.

“I’m so insanely in love with you,” he roared as she seized around him, her sex clinching hard, drenching his cock, her nails digging into his back and drawing blood, driving him past any hope of return.

They lay in the cozy bed, happy and exhausted at the end of the day. They had made love time and again, sometimes slowly, with leisure, and then fast and hard, with rough, painful abandon. That was the nature of their love, Charlotte realized. There was the sure and comfortable safety of Finn as her husband, and father to their children, combined with the edgy, deadly dangerous, covert operative, whose scalding, tough and turbulent love making left her raw, and sore, and craving him like a junky craved a fix.

Charlotte stretched out in a lovely stupor across Finn’s broad chest, drops of blood had dripped from the stitched up cuts on his face and dried on her cheeks. His bottom lip was split and swollen with an ugly purple bruise to the side, and darker bruises covered his cheek bones and most of his face. Bly had looked just as bad, and she was shocked to think that Finn had inflicted just as much damage with only one working arm as Bly had with two. Her husband had spent most of his adult life as a technically flawless killing machine, eradicating countless would-be monsters from the world. That fact, she realized, his stealthy skill, lethal precision, and single-minded pursuit of his disreputable craft, made him forbidden, alluring, and even more seductive.
How fucked up am I, s
he wondered? The bad boy always won the girl, and Finn was no different, the darkness in him was a magnetic force she never wanted to be free of. 

“I thought of renting this cottage out, but I’ve decided we should keep it as our secret love-nest,” Finn said, brushing the hair away from her face and frowning as he tried to wipe the specks of blood from her cheeks. “What my mum said, that we should make another baby, is that a possibility?”

“I absolutely want to,” she said. “I said from the beginning that I wanted three babies, and yes, we are definitely keeping this house. I have about a month before my birth control shot wears off, I’ll ask the doctor how long afterword we should wait, and then we can see if nature takes its course. We should practice a lot before hand, you know, because practice makes perfect.”

“All of our babies are perfect, and the next one will be, too,” he said, turning onto his back and taking her with him. He loved her with a wild intensity that made his heart hurt just to look at her. Her long black hair against her pale ivory skin, and those brilliant sapphire eyes that looked at him with such love, she both broke and mended his heart all at once.

“Finn, I’ve been thinking about leaving Sheppard and Sheridan, my heart just isn’t invested in corporate law any more. Maybe we could work together, at your law office, I think I’m ready to do some good, something more than just kicking ass and taking names.”

“That would be unbelievably great,” he said, pulling her face down to his and giving her a tender kiss that quickly turned deep and insistent. “As long as you promise not to file sexual harassment charges against me if I can’t keep my hands off you near the water-cooler.”

“Okay,” she said, smiling, “I’ll be lenient, maybe I’ll let you coax me into the supply closet once in a while.”

“My love,” he said hesitantly, “I need to tell you something. I met someone while I was in Argentina, don’t give me that look, it was a man. When I was in the hospital in Houston I thought maybe I’d dreamt it, but I didn’t. I remember him and the atrocious things he did, things that aren’t easily forgotten. He was the man who broke my arm and shot me, we fought up close so that I saw his face clearly. I asked JP about him after I made my way back to our base camp. JP said he’s a Merc, a mercenary killer who’s for sale to the highest bidder no matter what the cause, just or unjust. Part of our mission was to locate and take out the leaders of the most influential South American drug cartel. The Merc was protecting the top cartel boss, he has a reputation for being the most blood thirsty man in the world, and he’s known only as ‘the ghost’.”

“Why are you telling me this, Finn, do I really need to know about the things you were involved in and the deranged murderer who tried to kill you?”

“You need to know because… we stood face to face, this ghost and me. He looks enough like you to be your twin, Charlotte. Do you remember the framed photograph Charles Tremont kept on his desk at the British Embassy? The picture of his son who died? I’d bet my life it’s the same man. I don’t know what could have happened or how it came about, but I absolutely believe ‘the ghost’ is your brother.”

Charlotte was speechless, she’d barely had time to process the news of JP’s death and now this. How was it possible? Christopher Tremont had been dead for at least eight years, Charles and his ex-wife had grieved for their son to such an extent that it ruined their marriage. How could Christopher, a decorated officer and pilot, end up as a ruthless mercenary protecting the life of one of the world’s most notorious drug lords?

“Finn, you must be mistaken, you had blood poisoning, maybe it was a hallucination. I just cannot conceive of such a thing, why would he fake his own death and go to the dark side, so to speak?”

“I don’t know, my love. I only know that he’s seen my face up close and personal, hopefully he believes I’m dead. I’ve run Intel on him and there’s nothing, he truly seems to be a ghost.”

“Let’s not mention this to my dad. It’s too bizarre, we should simply leave it alone, I can’t think of what else to do. It has to be a weird coincidence, you know how they say everyone has a double somewhere on the planet? It must be something like that. My dad has access to all sorts of government intelligence, if his son was still alive, surely he would know,” Charlotte said, and she tried to push it from her mind, as she and Finn curled together in bed in their new/old love-shack and contemplated a bright and shining future for their family.

*

Bly was supremely pissed off. Charlotte was lost to him for all intents and purposes, but that wasn’t how it was going to stay. That wasn’t his destiny,
she
was his destiny. How could she not be? He had been born under a lucky star, with money and power and all earthly pleasures offered up to him like a gift from God. And he’d been given Atticus, the son he’d dreamed of having with Charlotte since the first moment he laid eyes on her. His mind had become saturated with the essence of her all those years before, and to contemplate his life without the woman he most loved in the world would be blasphemy. She had grown his son inside her body from a seed planted in the fullness of their love. Then he was cheated of the joy of seeing her pregnant body, ripe and naked and hungry for his touch, while their child grew within her. Now he had bowed to Finn’s wishes and he saw his son on a schedule that was dictated to him, which sometimes made his blood boil.