Twins for the Mafia Heir (The Warwicks #3)

37. Achilles

Chapter 37

Achilles

T his time, it’s Emma holding out a black card for the man behind the counter to inspect, and it’s Emma who leads me into the private elevator.

Her grey eyes glow in the light of the elevator’s small chandelier as she stares up at me. Her sweet smile turns feisty the higher we climb. I brush my fingers across her cheek, unmarred by any bruise, and bend down to kiss her lips-

She ducks out of my grasp and slips out of the elevator, more smoke than human. The lights of the hotel room slowly fade into their full brightness, limning her platinum hair with a glow like a halo.

I follow, like a goddamn guppy tempted by an anglerfish.

Emma’s arms reach up. Pull me down. Wrap tight around my neck. Her mouth is soft and hot and sweet as candy against mine. When my teeth knead her bottom lip, she opens up for the sweep of my tongue.

We don’t even make it to the bed. I sink to my knees with her body crushed against mine, and lay her down on the plush carpet. I don’t know where our clothes went, but they’re gone now. Her elfin body stretches out beneath me, the nipples of her small breasts perked. I kiss them, lick them, pinch them tenderly between my teeth, and press my knee up between her legs.

She’s already wet against my leg, the pulse of her heartbeat echoing the pulse of blood through my cock.

I’m not ready yet, though. I have to worship every inch of her body with my mouth first.

I have to show her just how much I’ve fucking missed her.

Squeezing her breasts in each of my palms and grinding her clit with my knee, I kiss my way up and down her neck, across her collarbone, over her sternum and stomach. Emma mews with need and clutches at my hair, desperate to get me closer, get me inside her. Not yet, it’s too soon. I want her fully unraveled before I bury myself in her pussy.

I flatten myself down on the carpet, and bury my face between her legs. My tongue drags up and down her clit, turning her breathing into panting. Her hips buck, craving more, more . I’m all too happy to oblige and thrust my tongue into her pussy.

Emma’s fingernails drag up my neck and scalp, her pelvis rolling up against my mouth. She’s got me as close as I can be, but it’s still not enough. I’d devour her if I could.

Her spine tightens, her thighs pressing on either side of my skull, deafening me to everything but her heartbeat. When she cums, her scream drowns out even that. I feast on her slick and carry her through one orgasm and straight into another and into a third.

She’s sobbing and incoherent when I pull my aching jaw out from between her legs. Her body is so loose that it takes no force at all to flip her on her stomach and prop her ass up in the air. When I thrust into her pussy, her cry is muffled by the carpet.

I use my grip on her hips as my anchor and start slamming into her hard and fast. Emma’s knuckles turn white as she grabs fistfuls of the carpet, hanging onto reality by threads. Every time I thrust I go deeper. Every slap of our bodies is a lightning strike of pleasure. Every time Emma’s mouth opens, a sweeter and sweeter sound comes out.

The end comes too soon. But it’s not the end I anticipate, where I pour my seed into Emma’s waiting body and carnal ecstasy crashes over my head.

It’s the moment I open my eyes and realize I’m not fucking wildly in a hotel room, but sleeping on a couch alone in a safe house. The rising sun is just barely starting to turn the dark around me into hazy lavender shapes. I sit up, shuffling uncomfortably around the erection in my pants, and drag my hands over my face.

The hours I sleep are few and far between nowadays, but it doesn’t help when the dreams are so vivid it doesn’t feel like I’ve slept at all. The days have melted into weeks, and I’ve avoided making a decision about what comes next. Partly for Sidony’s sake, and mostly for mine.

There have been days I had to physically hold myself back from buying a ticket across the ocean. Others, I only avoided buying a ticket to London by a hair. I’m caught squarely between chasing down love, vengeance, and releasing both so I can move forward into the future with the last member of my family I have left.

For the second time in my life, I find myself unable to make that decision, paralyzed by the loss I’ve suffered. But this time, the loss was caused by me alone, and while it’s repairable in theory, it might be too late to do so.

“You’d be disappointed in me, Maddie,” I murmur to myself, “if you could see me now.”

The wind over my shoulders is bitingly cold, but I’m still sweating as I stab my shovel into the frozen earth and pull out another mound of dirt. Beside me, Piers drags his arm over his forehead, wiping away perspiration and leaving mud behind. I’ve never dug a grave with my own two hands, but digging one into a backyard in Scotland in the heart of February is not the best place to start.

Unfortunately, this is where Samantha Warwick asked to rest forever, and so this is where Piers and I will lay her.

She passed away quietly in her sleep last night, and instead of sorrow, Piers seems to be feeling mostly relief. He hasn’t shed a tear, not even when we wrapped his mum’s body in sheets. Perhaps it’ll come later, after the last bit of dirt has been resettled. Or perhaps he’s had too much time over the last year to mourn before his mum even died, and now the knowledge that his mum is no longer in pain has brought him freedom and peace.

Piers stabs his shovel into the dirt and leans his arms against the top. There’s color in his cheeks and nose almost as bright as his hair. When he looks at me, I’m wary of the intensity in his eyes.

That’s the look he gives me before he does something absolutely insane.

“I’m going back to London,” he announces.

I saw this coming, of course. His old mum was the only thing that kept his ass planted in this safe house for the last year in the first place. Otherwise, I’m sure he would have come up with some poorly thought out plan to sneak back into Wesley Hall and confront Fantasia.

Unfortunately, I’m in the same situation- displaced and on Fantasia’s bad side. That doesn’t hurt any less now than it did several weeks ago, but the pain has begun to distill itself into something new. The inklings of a plan Piers would certainly be proud of.

I might not be able to fix what I did to Emma, but there is something material I can do about my sister.

“I should go first,” I say, and Piers’s head whips toward me.

“Wait- you’re not going to tell me no?”

“I never told you that you couldn’t leave,” I say tightly. “I just said it would be very, very stupid if you did. But now…” I look down at the churned up dirt beneath our feet. We’re three feet into a six foot hole, with hours of work left to go. Piers looks out over the horizon, eyes squinted against the wind, his usually vibrant emotions hidden from me. A muscle ticks in his jaw.

Now, there’s nothing keeping him here anymore. And while I could deepen my roots here in Edinburgh and start a new life with Sidony… I don’t think that’s what either of us wants.

Every day, she asks me where ‘Raleigh’ is and when she’s coming back. Every day, she asks when we’ll be able to go back to Ashwood House. Time might eventually dull how much she misses the person and the place. How much I miss them. But just the same, to live our lives in hiding wouldn’t be worthwhile either.

Sidony deserves to live a life free of fear. And I deserve… to live.

I clear my throat. “I need to catch up with my contacts, first and foremost. Many of the people in London know me better than Fantasia, and I can only hope they’ll be glad to see me. Then I should check on the status of Ashwood House, and if it can be used as a viable meeting place.”

“For who?” Piers asks, then grimaces a little. “Where the hell are the other Ashwoods anyway?”

It’s my turn to grimace. “Many of them were happy to overthrow the Warwicks. They were less happy to accept Fantasia as their new leader. Most of them scattered back to their own residences around the country, or left England altogether. I’ve kept in contact with them, but whether they’ll come when I call is an entirely different story. And how to get them into Wesley Hall without Fantasia being aware-”

I look over at Piers, suddenly searching. “What do you want, Piers?” I demand. His eyebrows raise at my sudden urgency, and I clarify. “Do you even want the cursed place?”

He looks back to the horizon, thoughtful. Piers isn’t like us, like Fantasia and I. He didn’t spend the first seventeen years of his life being raised to rule a mafia house. He could walk away from this world and leave it all behind with relative ease. He’s charming, stubborn, and capable, and would probably land on his feet no matter where he went.

But there’s a glint in his eye that tells me he was never going to pick the easy route. When he turns back to me, he flashes a savage, crooked grin.

“Yeah, I do.”

Well then, for better or worse, that settles that. “You’ll be nearly bankrupt, you know,” I tell him. “And you’ll have to rebuild your following from scratch.”

“There you go again, underestimating me,” Piers says good-naturedly. I’m not happy that it reminds me of the day Emma accused me of underestimating her.

“Fine, then,” I say tightly. “I’ll fly back to London for information. You’ll stay here with Sidony.”

Piers opens his mouth to argue, but closes his mouth without a word. “All right. But you’re not talking to Fantasia without me.”

I heave a sigh. That’s only fair. Unfortunately for Piers, I’m lying to him when I say, “I’ll hold off, don’t worry.”