Feathers and Thorne Series Books 1 - 3: The Complete Collection

Chapter Forty-Seven

Isabella

I wake abruptly in my bed, shaken by a dainty set of fingers on my arm.

Sam grins when I meet her tired, stressed eyes. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

My mouth is dry, and my head is spinning while I try to recall every bit of what happened last night. I still can only think of a few details about what occurred, my head tight with a migraine that feels like it’s been there forever.

“I… I don’t know. How did I get home?”

Her face falls, and she only shrugs. “I don’t know. I saw last night that some guy carried you into your apartment, and… and I know I should have called the police or something because you were bleeding and passed out, but I wasn’t sure, Bella…”

“Carter,” I sniffle, recalling a few bits and pieces of the night as I sit up. My cheek is sore, which explains the lapse of memory and the poor balance of my eyesight. “Concussion.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” she says, eyeing my fresh bruise. “I saw that guy leave about twenty minutes ago. I don’t know where he went, but I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

I look down, admiring my soft pajamas, but not sure how I got into them last night.

“It’s fine, Sam. I’m safe with Carter. He protected me last night from… well, from a very evil man.”

She shakes her head. “Was it the guy who marked your back and your legs?”

Craning my neck to stretch, I groan in my sore stiffness. “That is Carter, actually. But it’s different, Sam. He wouldn’t ever actually hurt me. That was just—”

“You couldn’t even walk,” she says under her breath, her tone filled to the brim with conviction. “If he is the one hurting you, then I know it can be hard to leave, but you cannot subject yourself to abuse and—”

“Abuse?”

Carter leans into my apartment, two coffee cups in hand.

Sam stands straight as though caught in a ruse, and I march between them, needing to clear the air from both sides. Carter comes in when I prompt him, and he sits on the couch, sipping on his coffee while mine stays perched on the table.

“Sam, this is Carter, my boss,” I breathe, as though introducing absolute strangers when they both clearly already have formidable opinions about one another. “Carter, Sam is my neighbor, and she just moved in not long ago. We’ve become friends since then.”

They both nod and greet one another from afar, like two opposing cats sheathing their claws. I can’t help but feel pressure to calm tensions here, but my head is spinning, and I can’t stand straight without feeling like the world is vibrating around me.

“I… I, um…” I stammer, reaching for my coffee and instead practically landing forward on the table. Carter is by me in a second, moving to have me sit on the floor. “Thank you.”

“Of course, dove. Just relax. You have a bit of a concussion.”

I groan, “Yeah, I know it. He kept punching me, Carter.”

He lightly presses into the spots that ache the most and manages to soothe the painful portion of my bruises with his cold touch. I hardly even wince when he pokes into my temple, most surely marked with the worst bruise by the pain that pulses there.

“Who punched you?” Sam asks, carefully watching Carter as he dotes over me tentatively. She doesn’t trust him, and I suppose after her viewpoint of things, I can’t exactly blame her for that. “You can tell me, Isabella.”

“It’s not Carter,” I insist. “He protected me last night, and…” My heart drops in realization. “Oh god, my father, Carter, we have to protect my father because—”

I am stopped the minute I stand up, Carter wrapping me in his arms and leading me through the narrow kitchen. I sit at the dining table with his command, staring out the windows to the rainy Manhattan world below. He drops off my coffee cup for me to nurse and picks through my kitchen as usual.

He pulls out a few ingredients to make breakfast, and Sam slips past him uncomfortably. She takes a seat beside me with eyes on Carter like a hawk sees roadkill in the distance.

“You’re really okay, right?”

“Yes, Sam. I promise. I’m safer with Carter than I am with anyone else.”

She leans in, her lips practically brushing my ear as she adds, “He looks like a freaking model, Bella.”

I almost choke on my coffee in laughter, but Carter flicks a look in my direction, an innocent look on his face while he scrambles eggs in a pan. I turn toward my neighbor with an amused snicker.

“His name is Carter Blackthorne. His family is really influential in New York.”

Her brows crease. “How are they influential?”

My lips purse, and I only shrug at first, trying to pull together a worthy response. I can’t sit here and explain his many seedy deals and his shadow guard of men with guns that lingers around him at all times.

He probably has a bodyguard on the sidewalk downstairs, next to his car, waiting with maybe, just maybe, Ernesto behind the wheel again. Their argument was brief but still managed to cut Carter deep.

I hate seeing him mad at his family, with me being behind the source of contention between them.

I recall Tristan at the office last night and the gala I missed, and guilt pours over me instantly.

“Oh no, Carter. The gala… I missed the fundraiser! I’m so—”

“Stop apologizing, dove,” he mutters like an afterthought. “There’s another one in two nights. Don’t worry about it.”

I chew on my lip for a moment. “What about Tristan? Should I worry about him?”

He glances over in my direction, glaring through Sam and briefly snaking his gaze around me. I find myself sinking into my chair under the weight of his focus, and then he returns back to the cooking omelet in a pan before him.

“We don’t have to talk about Tristan. He’s been dealt with already.”

My teeth chatter in a cold chill, the window perched up just enough to let a winter breeze shift into my apartment. That, combined with the uncomfortable nature of this conversation, makes chills lace down my spine.

“If you’re okay, I’m going to go back to my apartment, but tonight they’re showing a movie on TV if you want to come over and watch it with me,” Sam offers. “I can buy another bottle of wine.”

“I’ll bring the snacks,” I reply with a grin. “Thanks for coming over, Sam. I’m fine. I promise.”

She leaves with a forced smile, making a huge effort not to brush against Carter as she races out of my narrow kitchen. My boss snickers through biting his lip, the door to my apartment closing on just the two of us now.

“Carter, about Tristan and last night, I—”

“Don’t talk about it, Bella,” he snaps. “I made sure Tristan learned his lesson, and he will stay out of my personal choices concerning you. Also, he’s fired from the family business, and you won’t be working with him directly anymore.”

My stomach is in tight, unforgiving knots. “No! I don’t want that, Carter, please. You can’t punish him.”

“I will do what I want. You will accept it and move on.”

I push away from the table, my chair knocking into the wall in response. I don’t intend to have an arguing match with him right now as I can’t tolerate more of a headache. I shove past him in the kitchen and dare to leave the apartment, maybe to barricade myself in Sam’s until he comes to his senses.

He catches me before I can do any such thing.

He pulls me back against him, his pelvis flush and taut, his growing arousal against my ass.

Kissing my neck, his lips work slowly up the side of my throat while his hands latch hard onto my sides. “I thought we talked about you running away from me, dove.”

“I’m not running away. I just don’t want to be the reason you and Tristan fight!”

His hands squeeze me harder, and I release a soft, subtle moan in response. His erection is already solid by now, begging to be unleashed.

“Running from me and yelling at me? Wow, dove. You’re really pushing your luck this morning.”

I try to slip out of his arms, thrashing against his chest, and he laughs in glee. He’s truly enjoying seeing me fail so outright in a scuffle as simple as this one. I can’t help but be frustrated and flattered at the same time.

Feeling him grow so attracted to me, even marked in bruises, is the boast I never knew I needed to my ego.

“Carter,” I whine, turning in his arms and hiking my thigh up to his hip. The bulge in his slacks centers right against my expectant damp sex. “You have t-to for-forgive and…”

He writhes his hips forward, purposefully digging his needy arousal into my clit.

“I love when you think you’re in control and try to tell me what to do,” he purrs, making out with my neck. He bites down on my shoulder, and I hiss. It only drives him to thrust against me harder. “You are so sensitive right now.”

“I’m frustrated,” I snap, sure of that emotion but not entirely sure if it will stick since Carter started grabbing and rubbing and kissing me. “You can’t be mad at Tristan.”

“And you can’t be wearing this many pieces of clothing,” he snarls. “Not while I need you to bend over my lap first.”

“Wh-what!”

He tears my clothes off with his fists, throwing my tatters onto the floor. He runs his fingers through my hair and curls his hands into my scalp. I bark in shock, Carter pushing me toward the kitchen. He flicks the stovetop off on the way and sits down at the chair remaining at the table.

With a sure grasp on my head, he pulls me to lay chest-down over his lap. I rattle in anticipation and anxiety. My heart is beating so hard that I’m sure he can feel it against his knee.

Being naked and vulnerable like this isn’t new to me, but it feels like the first time Carter is seeing me naked, and he drinks down the sight, one of his hands still tangled in my hair, keeping me down.

His other hand is running lightly over my lower back and down the curve of my ass.

“You are beautiful,” he breathes. “So fucking beautiful. But you’re also unruly.”

He slaps down hard against my ass, and I cry out in shock more than pain. The dampness between my thighs is hotter and wetter, and the more I try to wiggle free, the more Carter’s erection pushes against my stomach.

“Stop squirming.”

“You’re spanking me, Carter! What do you expect?”

He growls a noise, bringing another spiking hot pain against my ass. “Stop. Yelling.” He hovers his hand over my ass again. “By the way, if I’m mad at you, then why are you still calling me by my name, dove? You know better.”

I swallow hard and half abide by his wishes. “Sir! You—”

He spanks me again, more forceful this time, leaving a mark for sure. “Dove, I’m going to warn you once more. If you keep going on like this and defying me, you’re going to make me punish you more.”

I don’t know if it’s my own stupid gluttony for punishment or if it’s the frustration that he isn’t listening to me, but I can’t help and try once more to push off his lap and free myself of his insanity.

“Dammit. You just can’t learn.”

He pulls me off his knees finally and throws my back onto the kitchen table. I gasp, confused, and my blurry vision doesn’t help. I blink slowly, glancing from side to side, only being able to watch mercilessly as Carter undoes his belt.

I whimper, getting ready to beg for mercy.

He comes to my head and loops the belt around my wrists, over my body, and then ties it off on the table leg nearby. I struggle to pull my hands free, unusually throttled with thrill as he circles the table where I lay now, admiring my body and my vulnerability in this position.

“You don’t tell me who to forgive and who to be angry with,” Carter says in guttural warning.

He stops pacing right at my knees, my legs hanging off the edge of the table where he pauses, parting my thighs enough for that cold breeze coming from the cracked window to nudge my drenched sex.

“Just remember. Say mercy, and it will all end, dove.”

“What will e—”