Liberty At Last (The Liberty Series) (25 page)

“Please,” I begged again. “I’ll do anything.”

“Will you?”
he asked, and slammed all the way in to me in one smooth motion. I cried out, arching my back, feeling how full he made me. He thrust again and again, riding me, filling me, owning me. My orgasm instantly gathered around his length.
Already…so soon…
He could feel me starting to lose it and he thrust into me, hard and fierce and blind with need, and I could feel him start to come.

“Anything I ask?”
he asked, thrusting so hard into me I saw stars.

“Yes,” I whispered, my orgasm wracking through me, shaking my whole being. He exploded into me and I felt powerful, triumphant as he laid against my back, shaking and clutching me to him.

“Yes,” I promised.
Yes, yes, yes.

“A couple of things,” I said. “I need to get on the pill.”

“You think?” John said, and laughed.

“Ha ha,” I said. “Can you call your prescription guy?” I asked.

“Done,” he said, and I sighed in relief.

“Also, I think we should have Eva up for dinner,” I said, as we sat studying the takeout menu for the local Italian restaurant.

“Jake texted me a little while ago. She went home,” he said, without looking up. “He said she was upset.”

“That’s understandable,” I said, which was an understatement.

“I’ll go over and see her tomorrow in the morning,” John said. “If you can spare me.” He shot me a playful look.

“I’m pretty ready to spare you,” I said. “We didn’t get up until one, and I’m so tired I need to go to bed at seven.” I giggled, blushing.
And it hurts to sit down. In a good way.

“So now, pizza,” he said. He leaned over and squeezed my hand and we studied the menu some more. We were practically an old married couple.

I circled several pizzas, two “normal” ones and one “gourmet” one for John, because he was such a food snob, and heard my stomach rumble. I rubbed my hands over it; finally, with enough water and regular meals and snacks, I was starting to feel slightly less emaciated. But I still wasn’t sure about trying to go running Monday morning. There didn’t seem like there was enough of me still.

I circled a fourth pizza.

“Here,” John said, putting a couple of DVDs on the table in front of me. He picked up his cell phone and walked around the kitchen, ordering the food. I looked down at the blu-ray copies of
Pretty Woman
and
Titanic.
I looked over at John, stalking around the kitchen in low-slung sweat pants and a ratty tee-shirt, running one hand through his thick hair and clutching his cellphone in the other, barking orders like he was talking to his men and not an Italian restaurant. I felt the quiet of the house around us. I felt my soreness. I felt, for the first time in my whole life, like I was home.

I never wanted anything to change. I wanted to come home here, after some job other than stripping, every night for the rest of my life.
How could I do that?
I wondered.
How could I make that happen?

By believing,
my inner voice said.
By trusting. And by giving John what he wanted, one last time.

I didn’t know if I could convince him to leave his business behind. I just knew that I wanted him here, safe with me, in the real world. And I wanted that more than anything. I would run a thousand miles for that. I was going to show him.

“Twenty minutes,” John said, putting down his phone and coming over. He kissed me on the nose. “Enough time for another walk down the beach.”

“Let’s go,” I said, hopping up. I was wearing yoga pants and a hot pink tank top. I grabbed a gray hoodie and zipped it up; I grabbed John’s hand.

We walked out by the pool. It was still warm enough to use it, but we hadn’t. Not like we had used it a few months ago. I blushed at the memory. The hot tub, however, had never been broken in. It looked appealing in the late afternoon light.

“Hot tub tomorrow?” I asked, walking by it, looking out at the spectacular view of the ocean.

“Why not tonight?” John asked, pulling me to him and kissing me deeply. He was so relaxed, so unreserved with Ian gone and the guys not around.

“
Titanic
,” I said, by way of an explanation, standing up on my tiptoes and kissing him back. “It’s long. And it’s good. Plus, we’re eating four pizzas.”

He laughed and pulled me towards the beach. “I had Michael pick those movies up for us. So we’ll have them, forever,” he said, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. My belly pulled back against itself when he said this, and I got the shivers, but I pretended I was fine.

Forever.
I couldn’t imagine the perfection of being with John forever. I couldn’t imagine forever without him, either; but the idea of a life with him was so blinding in its beauty that I couldn’t look at it straight on.

I hope he’ll forgive me for keeping Catherine’s secret. Otherwise I won’t have to worry about that blinding light.

The beach was amazing in the late summer afternoon. It was early September. “The water finally gets warm enough to swim in,” John had explained earlier in the day, when we had come down and stuck our feet in. “Do you want to?” he asked me.

“Jump in?” I’d asked him, incredulous. I stuck my feet in. “Hell, no!” I said and he laughed. It was still cold, by any standard, and I was used to the always-freezing
Pacific
.

“Tomorrow,” I said to John now. “After you go see Eva, let’s swim in the ocean and then jump in the hot tub.”

“And then go commit unspeakable acts all afternoon before we go to dinner,” John said, turning to me and kissing me so deeply that every part of me, even all my sore parts, throbbed for him.

“Deal,” I said, kissing him back. I put my whole body against him and ran my hands through his gorgeous hair. I could see the streaks of gray shooting through it in the sun, but it only made him more precious to me.
Every second counts with you,
I thought.

He grabbed my hand and led me down the beach. “When I was a child,” he said, “I brought a bucket and a shovel down here every day,” he said. “I collected every color of sea glass for my mother, and every different colored rock I could find. And I went swimming. Even in May. My mother used to have to pull me out of the water. She yelled at me the whole time because she was freezing.”

“You grew up here?” I asked. This statement suddenly opened up a new view of him, bringing a picture of him as a small, eager child, something I’d never considered before. “What was it like?” I asked. I looked back at the gorgeous house looming in the near distance; I couldn’t imagine growing up in a house like that.

“We didn’t move here until I was five,” he said, squinting up at the house. “Before that, we lived in the city. But I don’t really remember that.”

“And it was just you and your parents?” I asked. He’d never mentioned having a sibling; I was suddenly mortified that I’d never asked.

“Just me,” he said. “I used to have friends ask me if it sucked to be an only child, if I was lonely, but a kid doesn’t know what lonely is. It was just the way my life was, and it was as normal to me as the color of the sky. I never questioned it. I had wonderful parents. My mother was amazing — you would’ve loved her.”

“What was she like?” I asked. He’d shown me some pictures at the house; she’d had his thick, brown hair and smile, but her eyes were green. She was, of course, very pretty.

“She was proper,” John said and laughed. “At least, most of the time. She wore a lot of sweater sets — New England-y sort of stuff. Her family was from Boston and they were very stuffy. As in, High Tea at the
Four Seasons
stuffy. That’s where we used to go meet them. Until I was six and I broke a couple of plates because I was karate-chopping things.” He laughed and I could imagine him then, wearing a little tie with his unruly hair combed down, in some fancy restaurant with heavy tapestry, karate-chopping china.

“I bet you were cute,” I said.

“I was very cute,” he agreed. “But I was never invited back to the
Four Seasons
,” he said.

“My mom, she liked tea, and her style was very conservative, but she was very down to earth. She was really into nature, conservation, and the arts. That’s something only people with a trust fund seem to have time to cultivate an interest in. Conserving things and cocktail parties to save open space. My father and I both adored her, but we just used to lock ourselves in the den and watch sports.

“She was an art major at Wellesley and she used to drag us to the
Museum of Fine Arts
all the time, and the
Gardner Museum
, and Ian and I had to listen to her go on and on about different artistic periods. We nodded a lot. My poor father just wanted to go see the Red Sox, or the Bruins, or the Celtics, but my mother always made us go to the museums instead.”

“Did she watch golf?” I asked.

“Never,” John said, and smiled. “But she tolerated it, and she brought my father snacks when he watched it and would sit next to him and read a book, so it seemed like they were pretty happy. She picked out this house. My father always says that. She loved to wake up and go look at the ocean on one side, and turn around and see the lawn on the other.”

John’s face clouded for a moment. “She did not approve when I decided to go into the Navy. I’ll always feel bad that I made her worry. But in the long run, she understood that it was what I wanted, and she supported me. It’s not that she thought it was beneath me. She just hated violence of any sort,” he said. He looked down.

“My mother only wanted to see the beautiful side of things. Because she was raised the way she was, she didn’t understand that you have to fight sometimes. Sometimes you have to fight to protect what’s beautiful.”

“But you don’t
always
have to fight,” I said. I took his hands and looked at him. “It doesn’t always have to be your fight.”

He looked at me and smiled. “You kind of remind me of her right now, you know. What you’re saying. Except you don’t have the Boston accent.”

“Or the sweater set,” I said. “But I agree with your mother. I don’t like violence, either, and I don’t want you anywhere near it.”

“You have to understand. My mother did, eventually,” he said. “If you’re able to do something — if you have the power to do something, and you’re good at it — I think you have a responsibility. I’m good at organizing operations, I’m good at intelligence, and I’m good at fighting. I’m very good at fighting bad guys, Liberty,” he said, shaking his head and looking out over the ocean. “That’s what our government trusted me to do for years. It’s what my company does. And I’ve helped a lot of people. It’s my calling,” he said, and looked back at me. “I know what you’re asking, and I’ve agreed. But you have to understand. You have to understand what I’m walking away from.”

“I know,” I said. “I know how you feel. I know how important what you do is to you.” I felt my lip tremble. “I know what I’m asking.”

Because I
am
asking you to walk away from it.
For me. Walk away from it for me.
Be safe with me.

I clasped his hands. “I’m sorry I need this from you,” I said. “I just can’t picture a life worrying that you’re going to die every day.”

“Every day is like that anyway, if you think about it,” he said, and touched my chin. “No one is ever safe. But I’ll do it. For you,” he said. His eyes were blazing and he pulled me to him, kissing me deeply. He held me tightly, ferociously. “I will walk away from it all for you, Liberty. And I won’t look back.”

There was an aching in my heart: one part joyous relief, one part guilt for all I was asking.
I hope he thinks it’s worth it when it’s all said and done,
I thought.
I really freaking hope so.

That’s the thing about love, I guess. About trust. It was just another version of hope. It was your heart’s greatest desire linked to someone else, someone who’s thoughts you would never know, someone who had the power to destroy you just by walking away. You had to be crazy to love somebody.

You have to be crazy to love somebody, but loneliness will drive you to crazy things,
I thought.

I looked up at the man I loved. And scowled.

“Pizza?” John asked, gently, breaking the tension and intensity that had built between us.

“Lots of pizza?” he asked again, running his finger along my chin. “Don’t scowl. We have four pizzas and
Titanic
. Things can’t get much better.”