I Thee Take: To Have and To Hold Duet Book Two Page 8

  I bring the bottle of whiskey to my mouth and swallow two mouthfuls as thoughts swim in the chaotic sea of my mind.

  The voices from that dream. Were they Lenore and Uncle David? I recognize the scent of the aftershave. It’s my uncle’s. Something he has custom made. But was the other voice Lenore’s? What had she said? Why can’t I fucking remember what she said?

  I drink more, the liquid sloshing in the bottle.

  It’s cold down here. And damp. If I close my eyes and stand very still, I swear I can feel the sea pressing against the rock. No. That’s not true. Not yet. That only happens in the tunnel.

  I walk to the farthest cell. The one where Scarlett’s brothers were killed. I shine the light through the bars to see the dark stains in the stone floor. Evidence of their deaths.

  If my family had gotten down here the night of the massacre, they’d be alive.

  But we’d been ambushed. We’d had no chance.

  The heavy door creaks as I push it open. There are two cells down here. I guess it was a fifty-fifty chance my uncle would have put the De La Cruz brothers in this one. Even he doesn’t know about the tunnel.

  I walk to the far corner where the carcass of an old mattress rests. That was here before I was. I don’t know why I know that. Don’t know if it’s true knowledge, some memory I haven’t lost, or my mind playing a trick on me. This part is almost as bad as not remembering them. I don’t trust myself. Don’t trust my own thoughts.

  I shove the mattress away. It’s light and something scurries from underneath it. I search the stones behind it and sure enough, I see it. The false stone.

  Laying the flashlight down I set my hands on it, feel the smooth surface. Even though it’s made to look like the others, there’s a textural and a temperature difference.

  Like I knew of the stone’s existence, I also know how to access the tunnel behind it. Because this false rock is a doorway. A secret way on and off the island.

  A memory comes then, sharp as a blade. Blinding as a bolt of lightning. It hurtles into me at once and I hear a crash, feel liquid splash my legs.

  Michael, Dante, me and dad. We’re young, I’m eleven which makes Michael twelve and Dante ten. My father is holding Dante’s hand and mine. Michael is too grown up for it, always wanting to show how brave he is. He wants to make Dad proud. We all do.

  “Your brothers are too young. This is our secret, just us,” my father says. “Michael, it’ll be your job to look after it one day. To tell your brothers.” Elizabeth wasn’t born yet, I realize. I wonder if her birth was planned or a happy accident.

  He pushes the rock out of its place and there, behind it is a black hole.

  “And Cristiano, you’ll help him. You’ll be his right hand.” He looks down at us, making a point to stop so we are looking up at him. “You’re blood. Never forget that blood matters, boys.”

  Michael and I both nod.

  “What about me?” Dante asks.

  My father ruffles the hair on his head. “You’ll help them too, but there’s plenty of time for that. You just be a kid a little longer.”

  We turn to look into the dark hole. I pull back but he shines his flashlight inside, and I can see that it’s a tunnel. Just a few feet inside is a shelf stocked with flashlights, batteries, even canned food and bottles of water. There is also a pistol and several rounds of ammunition.

  “It leads to the mainland. But it’s eight kilometers long so you’d better have on good shoes,” he says, and he lets go of my hand to unpack the bag he brought down with him. Inside it are supplies, food and fresh water to replace the expired bottles. New batteries to replace the old in the flashlights even though they still work. “Go on, boys. Not too far though. Dante you stay and help me.”

  I hear my brother whine about not being allowed to come with us as Michael and I take one of the flashlights and go exploring. It’s a single long, deep tunnel, and it’d be pitch black if we didn’t have the flashlight.

  “I bet there are ghosts down here,” Michael says.

  “I know there are,” I tell him. It’s even colder in here than it was in that cell. We take a few more steps, even the sound of our breathing seeming to echo off the walls.

  Michael turns to me. “You scared, little brother?”

  I shake my head, but it’s not true. I am a little scared.

  “It’s okay,” he says, taking my hand. “I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.” His smile is kind, reassuring.

  A few minutes later, Dad’s flashlight bounces upon us.

  I turn in time to see him, see his smiling face one more time before a sound catapults me out of the memory and into the present.

  Before I can think, before my vision even returns, I act. Instinct. I lunge blindly at the shadowy form of whoever followed me down here. I hear a gasp, then air forced from lungs as I smash the intruder into the jagged, hard wall.

  “Cr—”

  I hear the gasp, but it takes me a long time to come back to the present. For my brain to make sense of who it is. And all that time I have her back to the wall, my forearm at her throat cutting off her air.

  She makes a gurgling sound, and her hands fall away from my arm. She was clawing at me.

  I look at her. At what I’m doing. I blink, draw back.

  Scarlett.

  Not a threat.

  Just a Little Kitten who needs your protection.

  Something crunches underfoot as I move back, shift my hands to her arms to keep her from dropping. I look down, smell whiskey, see the shattered glass, the liquid already absorbed by the stone.

  Scarlett is coughing, almost doubled over. I return my gaze to her. I was choking her. I didn’t even think. Just attacked. It’s dangerous for her to be around me.

  “What are you doing down here?” I ask, my voice hoarse, my mind split between past and present.

  My father. Michael.

  I want to see them again. I’d give anything to see them again.

  At least Dante is alive. He needs you too.

  “What are you doing down here?” I demand, angry now, shaking her. What else would I have seen if she hadn’t interrupted?

  Her eyes are wet and red when they meet mine.

  “I needed to talk to you, and I saw you come down here.”

  I shake my head trying to clear the thoughts.

  She coughs again.

  “I didn’t know it was you,” I start, releasing her. I give her a little more space and run a hand through my hair.

  She stares up at me and I wonder what I look like.

  “Are you okay?” she asks me.

  I look away from her, look into the tunnel.

  Her gaze follows mine. “What is this?”

  I walk a few steps into the tunnel and pick up one of the flashlights. It goes on instantly, the light it casts down the tunnel strong. I check the date on a couple of the cans of food, the water. All up to date. I wonder if Dante’s been keeping the supplies fresh like our father had shown him. Like Michael should have been doing.

  “Come here,” I tell her.

  She comes and it surprises me when I feel her little hand slip into mine.

  “It’s cold down here,” she says, shivering, leaning into me a little. Her gaze is wide in the darkness that goes on for miles.

  I watch her in that leftover, shadowy light of the flashlight. She shifts her gaze to mine as if she’s oblivious to what she just did. “What is it?”

  “Tunnel. It leads to the mainland. I just remembered it.”

  She stops walking. “What do you mean you just remembered it?” she asks, her forehead wrinkling.

  I study her face in the dim light. Her whiskey-colored eyes. I feel her warm hand in mine and hold it tighter.

  She trusts me. Whether she realizes it or not, she trusts me.

  “Scarlett.” I touch her cheek, tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

  Did my uncle give up her location? Did he know what they’d do to her? Is that why he came with me to re
scue her? To keep an eye on things? He’s never been involved in anything outwardly criminal. It had surprised me he’d wanted to come.

  Her hand comes to my face and she wipes something off my cheek. We both look at her thumb and see the smudge of red. The small but sharp shard of crystal.

  “What did you do?” she asks.

  I lean in and kiss her. She’s safe. She’s here. Safe and warm in my arms.

  “Cristiano?” she asks when I pull back.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  I kiss her again and this time her eyes close and she kisses me back.

  I set the flashlight on the shelf beside us, knocking two bottles of water to the ground. They make a thump then roll away into the pitch-black dark.

  When she looks back up at me, I take her face in my hands and kiss her deeply. Sliding one hand beneath her top, I slip it up over her belly to cup her breast. She’s not wearing a bra. She’s in an emerald-colored slip. She must have just come out of bed.

  I slide my hand lower into her panties as I deepen the kiss. My fingers weave through the mound of soft hair to cup her sex.

  She moans into my mouth, hers going slack for a moment. I love how she responds to my touch. How she gives herself to me.

  With my other hand, I undo my jeans, push them and my briefs down. I draw back to look at her, brush her hair back from her face again with both hands now.

  “I need you,” I say as she raises one leg to my waist.

  I lift her up, so she wraps them both around me, the wall at her back and me at her front. I kiss her again while with one hand, I push the crotch of her panties aside and draw back a little to look at her as I take her.

  She’s wet. Ready. But the thrust still forces the air from her lungs.

  Cupping her ass cheeks, I kiss her, watch her take me, our lips or tongues and teeth in constant contact. I listen to the wet sounds of our bodies coming together, hear our combined breaths sharp and broken with the thrusts.

  She feels good. So fucking good. Warm and tight and like home. Like I belong here. Right here with her.

  Here inside her.

  “I’m going to come,” she says against my mouth. “You’re going to make me come.”

  Her mouth goes slack as soon as she says it. I hear her moan and feel her walls throb around me. When they do, I come too, letting the pulses milk me as I watch her. Beautiful Scarlett. Beautiful, scarred Scarlett.

  My Scarlett.

  I love her.

  I know it in that instant. I know it as I empty inside her. I know it as I hear the breathy whisper of my name on her tongue.

  I love her.

  And this moment, now, us here like this, it’s honest and perfect while everything else is so utterly imperfect. While everything else is a lie.

  Her legs go weak around me so I’m holding her up, kissing her as I draw out of her.

  She’s out of breath and sweat beads her forehead. I rest mine against hers. I’m breathless too.

  “Everything is fucked up. Everything.” I cup her face, kiss her cheek, never taking my forehead from hers as a tear slips from her eye.

  “Shh.” She cups my face too, wraps her arms around my neck and buries her cheek in the crook of my neck.

  “Everything but you,” I tell her but I’m not sure she hears.

  17

  Scarlett

  “What did you mean when you said you just remembered the tunnel?” I ask Cristiano, thinking how strange the statement had sounded. We’re sitting in a hot bath after the episode downstairs. He’s behind me and doesn’t answer right away so I turn my head to look at him.

  He meets my eyes. “I don’t remember things.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He looks thoughtful, far away, his forehead furrowed. “I don’t remember things. People,” he pauses. “I don’t remember them, Scarlett.”

  “What?”

  He shakes his head.

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I say.

  “When I woke up, I had no memory of anything before the massacre. Nothing. Like the first seventeen years of my life didn’t happen.”

  I feel my forehead wrinkle as I try to follow.

  “I can’t remember my own mother.”

  I’m trying to process, trying to make sense of this thing that makes no sense.

  “None of them.”

  Something he said comes back to me then. When he gave me his mother’s dress, he made the comment he’d given it to me to see if he’d remember. I hadn’t understood what he’d meant.

  “Oh, my God.” I can’t wrap my brain around the scope of it. He must feel wholly untethered. Lost. What does he hold on to when he has no past?

  He shakes his head, moves to stand. I watch the water slide down over him, see the muscle, the scars, the tattoos. The wreck of the jagged script along his arm. I squint to read it, but no, that can’t be right.

  He wraps a towel around his hips then holds one out for me.

  I stand and he wraps me in it, then lifts me out of the tub and carries me into the bedroom. I’m surprised again by how gentle he can be.

  We stand at the edge of the bed as he dries the water from me.

  “Do you remember the first day?” he asks. “When I brought you in here?”

  I nod, trying to keep up when it often seems like he has half the conversation in his own head.

  “You made me remember the Crème Caramel. My mother’s. It was your eyes. They’re the color of burnt sugar.” He smiles but it’s gone in a second. “You made me remember, Scarlett. That’s never happened before.”

  “You have no memory of anything at all?”

  He shakes his head. “I know every detail from the day I woke up from the coma to now. And that night. The night of the murders. That I can’t forget. Can’t stop seeing.”

  “Have you talked to a doctor or something?”

  He gives a sad little laugh. It’s more of an exhale. “No. No one can know. Well, apart from my uncle. And I think Lenore suspects.”

  “What about your brother?”

  He shakes his head. “No. And he won’t know. I can’t let him down again.”

  “Let him down again?”

  “He had to deal with it alone. I was in a fucking coma. May as well have been dead for all the good I did him.”

  “Cristiano, I don’t think he’d—”

  “He can’t know, Scarlett. Ever.”

  I study him, but I don’t argue this. Not now. “Maybe it’s your brain trying to protect you or something. Maybe you should talk to someone. A professional.”

  “No. Drop it.”

  “But what if they can help? Maybe—”

  “Drop it.” He opens the towel to look me over and I know what he wants. I see it in the way his eyes have darkened. Feel it in the hardness that presses against my belly.

  I lick my lips, open my mouth to say something but he leans down to kiss my lips, the curve of my neck, the shell of my ear.

  One hand slips down my back over the curve of my hip to cup my ass. His kiss deepens and he slides his hand over. A moment later, I’m on tiptoe, my eyes wide open.

  He looks at me but doesn’t move his hand. His fingers.

  “I want this,” he says, watching me as his fingers play with my back hole.

  “Cristiano.”

  “Turn around,” he whispers.

  “I—”

  He turns me, not giving me a chance to comply. Sliding his hand up between my shoulder blades, he bends me over the bed.

  “I haven’t looked at you like I want,” he says, crouching behind me.

  “Cristiano,” I start, moving to straighten.

  He stretches a hand between my shoulder blades. “Stay.”

  “I—”

  But he lays the tip of his tongue on my sex and I gasp.

  And stay.

  With his hands on my thighs, he spreads my legs wider then sets them on my cheeks to splay me open. Dipping his head, he reaches his tong
ue to my clit before licking the length of my pussy up to my other hole, then back.

  Embarrassed, I begin to pull away.

  “I said stay,” he repeats, low and commanding.

  Again, I stay.

  “You’re very responsive. Always wet for me.” His tongue teases me, dips inside me then circles my other hole again. “But this right here,” he starts, straightening to stand and keeping one hand on my ass while opening the nightstand drawer with the other. “This I haven’t had a chance to make mine yet.”

  I swallow, liking his dark eyes on me, liking how big he is, how much bigger than me. How much in control of me he is like this.

  He gives me a lop-sided grin and opens the tube of what I guess is lotion or lubricant. I hear the pop then feel the cool sensation of it as he squeezes it onto my lower back.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making you mine. Every part of you.”

  “Cristiano, I don’t think—”

  “Down.” His hand splays between my shoulder blades. “I’ve taken your pussy. I’ve taken your mouth. But I haven’t taken your ass yet and I want to, Scarlett.”

  I shift my gaze to his cock and panic has me trying to straighten again. “You can’t put that in there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…I…well, because…” I don’t know. “It won’t fit,” I blurt.

  He laughs outright at that. “You’re good for me, you know that? You make me laugh.”

  “I don’t think it’s a laughing matter. I really—”

  But he leans down over me to kiss the corner of my mouth, swallowing the rest of my words. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it fit,” he says, and, eyes on me, smears the lotion around and then into me.

  I gasp, every muscle tightening.

  “Relax,” he says.

  I try. It doesn’t hurt. It’s just I’ve never had anything in there.

  “Okay?” he asks.

  I nod as he moves his finger slowly in and out while the fingers of the other hand slip between my legs to tease my clit.

  “Good little Kitten,” he says, and I lay my head down and close my eyes and feel. “Just relax, Kitten. We’ll go slow. There, like that, does it feel good?”

  I nod, eyes still closed.