You are Mine (13 page)

She didn’t move, nor did she speak. She only
stood there while he drank her in as he rose to his feet. Drawn by
the raw need and obvious intent on his face, she took a step
towards him, only to have him aggressively crowd her, backing her
up until the back of her knees bumped the bed and she sat down on
it. Anticipation thrumming through her, she inadvertently widened
her thighs and squirmed when the movement drew his gaze to her
mound.

Avarice
. The word echoed loudly in
her head when Brian looked in her eyes as he once again kneeled
before her and placed his hands on her knees, pushing them apart
and pulling her forward so she sat on the edge of the bed. Still
looking into her eyes, he lifted first one leg and then the other
and placed them over his shoulders. She fell back, catching herself
on her elbows so that her back arched off the bed. “Please, baby,”
she begged when after sliding his hands under her behind as if to
lift her, he didn’t, but simply held her like that and stared down
between her thighs.

He finally lowered his head and softly
nuzzled his mouth against her lips. She moaned. He licked her from
bottom to top…
several
times. She screamed and fell back
against the mattress, her hands gripping the coverlet until her
fingers ached. When he tongued the little bundle of nerves and
sucked it to the roof of his mouth, she felt sanity begin to leave
her and head thrashing back and forth as she screamed her release,
she pushed her hips toward his mouth, feeding herself to him in a
frenzy of need.

And he fed from her greedily, licking and
laving, slurping and sucking until her screams turned into sobs and
those into pitiful whimpers begging him to stop…to keep going. So
out of it, she only vaguely heard the unbuckling of his belt and
the unzipping of his pants before he was on top of her and sliding
into her, arousing her enough so that she was soon forgetting her
lassitude and wrapping her naked limbs around him and moving in
tandem with him as he thrust repeatedly into her. Her world knocked
off its axis for the second time that night, she clung to him as
she followed him over the precipice.

BRIAN jerked awake when his cell phone rang
shrilly from the bedside table. He looked at his watch, noticing it
was a little past eleven. They’d been asleep just over an hour.
“Who is it?” he said into the phone. He sat up fully alert when he
got his answer.

Shortly after hanging up, he reached over a
couple of pillows and shook Caroline awake. He didn’t want to, but
knew he’d never hear the end of it if he didn’t. “Wake up,
Caroline.”

“Hmm? Why?” she asked groggily.

“We have to go home.”

Not as alert as Brian had been a few moments
earlier, she nonetheless did sit up. “Okay. Absolutely. Umm…how
come?”

“I just got off the phone with the security
firm. Someone tried to break into the house. They’ve notified the
police and sent a car over.”

Chapter Nine

Caroline took a deep breath and pulled
Brian’s dinner jacket a little tighter around her. She’d been in
such a rush to dress and leave the hotel, that she’d just put on
the same dress she’d worn to her parents’ party. Brian wore his
same suit, but without his tie. As did Jae. She tuned into what the
police officer was saying as they all stood looking at the side of
the house. She bent to pet Motley, who was standing guard at her
side. The dog had run out to greet them almost as soon as they’d
arrived.

“It looks like the perpetrator got in that
way,” the officer told them and pointed to the French doors, which
stood ajar and showed a busted lock. “First-rate security system
that you have, the silent alarm connected to this door alerted your
security company, and they phoned us immediately. My partner and I
were patrolling the area, so arrived within minutes -- right before
a guard from your security company.”

“So you’ve apprehended him, then?” Brian
asked. “Who is it?”

The officer shrugged. “Some sixteen-year-old
kid looking to score. He’s in the patrol car, but he’s actually a
neighbor of yours of sorts. He lives a couple of blocks away. It
doesn’t look like anything was taken. He had nothing on him when we
grabbed him and he was barely five feet into the house by then.
Your security company’s to be commended for such fast and thorough
work. When they called us, they were able to relay which ingress
had been breached. If we hadn’t known that, I’m not so certain we’d
have caught the kid.”

“We should still go through the house to
make sure nothing is missing, right?” Caroline asked.

“Of course, ma’am.”

“Do your people have everything you need?”
Brian asked. “Per Topnotch Security policy, someone will be here
soon to fix that lock.”

IT was two thirty by the time they were able
to go back to bed. They’d filed a police report and waited while
two men had fixed the lock on the French doors. Having checked out
of the hotel before they left, they were now in their own bed.
Brian pulled Caroline into his arms and sighed as she made herself
comfortable.

“We’re going to have to change those French
doors, I think.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s a fact. They
should be fine until we get back, though. The glass is reinforced
and that burglar bar they put across the bottom should work pretty
well as a deterrent.”

“I’m glad they caught him before he could
take anything or do any real damage,” she said around a
jaw-crackling yawn, “but it still sucks to have your property
invaded -- in any kind of way.”

“I know,” Brian said as he felt sleep
sinking into his bones and begin to pull him under like he was a
drowning man. He burrowed into the pillows. “God, I’m
exhausted.”

“Me, too,” Caroline murmured.

He’d just drifted off when he heard the dog
scratching at the door and whimpering. “Your turn to take her back
to her bed,” he said, his limbs feeling like lead and making the
fifteen feet spanning the distance from their bed to the door seem
like fifteen miles. “I did the last time.”

“No, I did,” Caroline protested, “and
besides, I’m too tired to move from this bed.”

“So am I.”

“But I worked so hard today,” she murmured,
her words barely audible as she buried her nose in his neck.

“So did I,” Brian argued in a slurred voice
as he absently caressed the arm she’d thrown across his chest.

“But, I’m pregnant.” And even though her
words were just as slurred as his, he heard the triumph in
them.

He lay there, not wanting to move, but
knowing he was defeated.

But he guessed she still had some doubt that
he’d get up because she reminded him, “With
your
child.”

Brian playfully pushed her off of him,
prompting a laughing protest, “Hey!” But he noticed she wasted no
time in curling up with a pillow in his absence.

As he climbed out of bed, he pinched her
lightly on the behind. “Don’t think you’ll be able to run me around
with that excuse throughout this entire pregnancy.”

Again, her words were slurred, but he
distinctly heard the confidence that belied what she actually said:
“Of course not, darling.”

***

“IT’S just gorgeous,” Caroline observed as
they rode up the long drive to the Grand Hotel. They’d driven seven
hours from Chicago to St. Ignace, Michigan and had taken a ferry
across Lake Huron to the island. The carriage ride, provided by the
hotel, was the last leg of their journey. Caroline found the entire
island charming, and felt like they were visiting another world
entirely. The island looked like a Victorian village with much of
its architecture featuring rounded corners and gabled roofs.
Indeed, motorized vehicles were not allowed anywhere on the island.
To Caroline, the sight of horse-drawn carriages and bicycles added
greatly to the charm of the popular vacation spot. They’d arranged
to leave their own cars parked in St. Ignace.

“This is supposed to be the longest front
porch in the world, right?” Caroline asked as they disembarked.
“Close to seven hundred feet or something?”

“Or something,” Brian agreed.

“It’s six hundred and sixty feet long, to be
exact, Mrs. Singleton-Keenan,” Jae corrected.

Caroline looked back at the wood-framed
building, thinking it looked like a longer version of the White
House, except it had a sloping roof, which was painted green. “It’s
lovely,” she murmured, knowing immediately that she’d have to paint
it. It was fronted by lush green forestry and she could see the
forest looming over it in the back as well. She then remembered
that most of the island was preserved as a state park.

“It can take up to two hours for delivery of
our luggage,” Brian was saying, “so it probably won’t be here yet.
But let’s go check in and get to our new digs, shall we?”

ENTERING the two-story cottage, Brian,
Caroline and Jae immediately took a self-directed tour. “Well, if
the rest of the place is anything like this,” Caroline began as she
slowly did a three-hundred-and-sixty degree turn in the middle of
the parlor, “then we’re in for a great stay.” The room was ringed
by windows from floor to ceiling and had a soothing white and
ocean-blue décor. A mixture of white wicker and white wood pieces
were side by side with white sofas and chairs trimmed in the same
blue. In the center of the large room, several white columns
circled an area of the high ceiling carved out to hold a stunning
blue-accented chandelier.

Brian was frowning at all the windows. Too
exposed, he thought. He looked at Jae and could tell he was
thinking the same thing.

“Of course there’s way too much exposure,”
Caroline said as she made a turn around the room, “but it is quite
lovely.”

Brian narrowed his eyes. “We could keep the
curtains closed, I suppose,” he suggested, testing her.

Looking thoughtful, she pouted a moment
before saying, “I’d rather not, but if that’s what’s best, then of
course we’ll do it. Though, I must say, I think we should be living
our lives normally. We don’t know if Brickman will figure out where
we are or not, but if he does, he might not ever try anything if
we’re all shut in, and that would make it even more difficult to
catch him.” She sighed, “I mean, I just want this to be over. I
want my life back,” she said plaintively, “so if leaving the
curtains open will somehow lure him into thinking I’m an easy
catch, then I say we go for it.”

Jae spoke up. “She does make a good
point.”

“I know,” Brian muttered, “but I don’t have
to like it that something that makes sense also increases the
danger factor.”

Caroline walked over and patted his arm in
consolation. “I’ve got my gun, you’ve got your gun and Jae’s got
his gun. We’ll talk to the local police and hotel security, and I
think we will have covered all of our bases.”

Brian shook his head, thinking this was one
hell of a fix. He’d insisted that Caroline start taking shooting
lessons, and even with hating the very sight of a gun, she was a
pretty good shot -- good enough to protect herself if that’s what
it came down to, which he certainly hoped it wouldn’t. He nodded.
“It’s the best we can do for now. Let’s gather up our respective
licenses and make that trip to the local police station to let them
know what’s going on.”

FROM his position on a wooden bridge, Brian
looked out over Lake Huron. The water was a brilliant shimmering
blue and only added to the grandeur provided by Arch Rock, a
natural perfect limestone arch formed during something called the
Nipissing post-glacial period, according to their tour guide. The
craggy gray structure covered sparsely with green foliage
apparently rose a majestic one hundred and forty-six feet on the
lake’s shore and spanned fifty feet across at its widest point. It
was the third stop on their carriage tour and the shortest one,
which he knew was frustrating Caroline to no end. His gaze found
her. She was as close to the arch as she could get without crossing
over into the restricted area, and furiously snapping pictures
while Jae stood no more than three feet behind her.

It was their first full day on the island
and he was glad they’d decided to come. The trip was doing both of
them a lot of good. The serenity of the island helped them to relax
and slow down. Brickman was never far from his thoughts, but he
wasn’t at the forefront, and that was enough for now. He only hoped
that the other man would fall for the trap he and Jack had set, and
that they’d be seeing him before he saw them. He’d discussed the
plan with Caroline and they’d fine-tuned it together, adding a
couple of ideas that she’d had. Now all they could do was sit back
and wait and hope for the trap to be sprung. “And knowing
Brickman’s overlarge ego and his obsessive nature, it will happen,”
he mused aloud, “Hopefully.”

Just as the tour guide announced it was time
to board the carriages again, Caroline appeared at his side,
followed by Jae. “Hey. Get what you wanted?” he asked her.

“I did, but not nearly enough,” she said
with a frown as they joined the rest of the tour group to walk back
to the carriage. “I think I’ll have to come back on my own, or I
should say we will, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Sure, no problem,” Brian said as he rubbed
her back. “Just tell me when.”

“Isn’t there something you’d rather do?” she
asked. “So far it’s been all about me -- not that I mind that, you
understand, but you should have some fun, too.”

“The tour has been interesting,” Brian said,
“but don’t you worry. Jae and I have already discussed this, and
we’re going golfing.” Caroline’s face fell and he laughed. “You
don’t have to come with us. We decided that we’d each take some
time separately so that you’re never alone.”

Her relief was plainly visible. “Oh, okay,”
she said as she climbed into the carriage and scooted over on one
of the bench seats to make room for them. “When is this
happening?”