“I’ll give you a raise if you can find out anything about Juliette. Anything at all. Parents. Siblings. Hospital records. I’ll see what I can do on this end.”
“Got it. I’ll call if I find anything,” Calliope said. He could hear one of his dogs barking in the background.
“Who is that? Brutus?” he asked.
“Max. They miss you.”
“I miss them, too,” Kingsley said. “Talk soon.”
“Hey, King?” Calliope asked before he could hang up.
“Oui?”
“She’s never coming back, is she?”
“I don’t know. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.”
“Fuck.”
Kingsley laughed.
“Sorry, boss,” Calliope said.
“Don’t be sorry, chérie. I feel the same. If...” He stopped and took a breath. “Cal, if she calls for any reason, give her a message for me.”
“What’s the message?”
“Tell her I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? For what?”
“She’ll know.”
“Okay,” Calliope said, her voice soft. “I’ll give her the message. Do you have any idea when you’re coming back?”
“I’ll come back when I can convince Juliette to come back with me. I’m not leaving this island without her.”
“Then stop wasting time talking to me. Go get her, boss.”
Kingsley smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”
He hung up the phone and threw on clean clothes. For months now he’d been living the life of a beach bum. Doing nothing, going nowhere except from one beach to another. Weeks had passed when he hadn’t even bothered putting on shoes.
But he had never desired any woman the way he’d desired Juliette. And he hadn’t been exaggerating. He would not leave Haiti without her. Enough killing time. Enough hiding. Enough grieving.
It was time to go back to work.
He made a call to his accountant and had money wired into a Haitian bank account.
Then Kingsley got dressed and went shopping.
First he rented a car using the fake ID he’d brought with him in his duffel. They didn’t care about who he was at the rental place anyway, as long as the money was real. He picked out a black Jaguar. Something sleek and shiny, but not ostentatious.
Second he purchased five suits in beach-appropriate colors. He felt more like himself already.
Third purchase, a gun and ammunition. By sleeping with Juliette he’d inadvertently found himself swimming in the deep end of the ocean. He needed to be prepared.
In two days, he had transformed his beach hut into a home worthy of a woman like Juliette. Complete with a much larger bed.
Without waiting for an invitation Kingsley knew wouldn’t come, he drove the long winding road up to Guillroy’s home, where Juliette had taken him. In the light of the late-afternoon sun, the road appeared far less treacherous than it had when Juliette had driven him there two nights earlier.
He’d paid close attention to everything she’d done, every turn she’d made. He even knew the security code she’d punched into the gate. He didn’t punch it in, however. He parked the car far back from the gate to the house and walked through the trees on the side of the road until he found the edge of the property. It was easy enough to scale the wall and jump down onto the lawn. He stayed away from the driveway, from the one security camera he’d noted, and took the most circuitous, most hidden route possible to get to the house.
He couldn’t get caught. He knew that. If he got caught breaking into Guillroy’s house, he could be arrested and deported.
But he had to see her again. She’d said they could only have one night together but he refused to believe she’d meant it. He needed all her nights, not just that one. And he needed to give her all of his.
Kingsley made it to the house at last and carefully walked its perimeter, looking everywhere for Juliette. The house was open on every level—open doors, open windows. Anything to keep the air flowing and the heat at bay. Finally he saw her. She emerged from a set of open double doors at the back of the house and stood on the balcony looking out onto the garden. The sight of her alone swept the breath from his body. She wore a white dress, strapless with an ankle-length skirt that moved with the breeze. Every kiss of wind bared her long beautiful legs to her knees. He grew hard simply looking at her. He’d been joking with Calliope when he’d said he would have this woman or die trying. Now he made the vow to himself. Whatever it took, she would be his.
He started to step out from the shadows of the trees, but then a man appeared behind her. He was tall, gray-haired, handsome as Calliope had said. He dipped his head and kissed Juliette on the side of her neck.
It was nothing but a kiss, a gentle kiss between lovers. But the sight of Juliette’s passive resigned acceptance of the kiss sent possessive rage welling up within Kingsley. It took everything within him, all his sanity, all his willpower to not pull his gun right then and shoot Gérard between the eyes.
Gérard took her by the arm and together they walked along the balcony and disappeared through another door.
Without knowing why he did it, Kingsley walked up the steps. He took off his shoes and as silently as he could, followed them.
The door they’d passed through led to some kind of sitting room. He went through the room and out into the hall. Carefully as he could, he looked in every room he walked past. One room was well decorated with a woman’s taste—French novels on the shelves, a Bible by the bed and the scent of jasmine perfume in the air.
Juliette’s room.
Kingsley entered it, shut the door behind him. He opened the closet door and found her clothes hanging there. A few of the island print dresses still had tags on them. They were from the finest fashion houses, the most luxe designers. One dress cost more than one of Kingsley’s hand-tailored suits. He saw the canvas bag she’d carried on the floor of her closet. It still had the rocks in it. Why did she have a bag of heavy rocks? It made no sense. He closed the closet door and gazed around her bedroom. The bed was queen-size and the sheets were white, soft, and the bed looked inviting and luxurious. This was a room designed for seduction, for sex. It even had a slatted headboard and he noticed dings in the wood and faded areas. Someone had been cuffed and/or tied to this headboard on many occasions. His own bedposts bore the same marks. The candles on the bedside table no doubt served a dual purpose—ambience and sadism. He opened a drawer and found further evidence of this—lubricant, handcuffs, a small flogger. But he saw something else, too. A book. Kingsley fully expected it to be a book about sex, but it wasn’t. It was a biography of Virginia Woolf translated into French. He flipped through it and found where someone had left in a bookmark. It was on the page that detailed Woolf’s suicide.
Woolf filled the pockets of her coat with stones, waded into the river, and drowned herself.
Kingsley closed his eyes and felt the life go out of him. Juliette was planning to kill herself. That’s what the rocks in the bag were for, why she’d had rocks at the ready when the boys attacked the birds.
Sickened by his discovery he shut the book and shoved it back into the drawer.
He withdrew quickly from the room and walked down the hallway again. He had to see her if only to see that she was alive and well. Or at least alive. If she had a plan to kill herself, she certainly wasn’t well.
Kingsley found a room with a door that led to an interior garden. At the far end of that room was another door, a glass door standing open.
Quietly...so quietly he didn’t let himself breathe, Kingsley came to the glass door. He angled himself so that he could see out, but no one could see him inside.
They stood in the center of the garden, Gérard and Juliette. And now the kiss they shared was one of ardor, at least on Gérard’s part. Juliette stood before him, receiving the kiss and returning it, but without any of the passion Kingsley knew she had within her.
Gérard’s mouth moved from hers t
o her neck. He pulled her dress down and bared her breasts to him. He cupped the back of her neck, forced her to arch her back, and then kissed her breasts like a man possessed. Juliette put her hands on his shoulders to steady herself and she received his attentions without protest. Not only did she not protest, she seemed to enjoy it, him, all of it.
With a show of strength that Kingsley found in poor taste, Gérard lifted Juliette and carried her five steps to the chaise longue that sat under an umbrella by a clear blue swimming pool. He stripped naked in seconds and pushed the skirt of Juliette’s dress to her stomach. She had nothing on underneath and when he mounted her and entered her, she gave him no resistance at all. She simply opened her legs, received him into her and let him have his way with her body.
Gérard sucked hard on her nipples and she lay beneath him, running her hands through his short silver hair, whispering words that must have been encouragements, though Kingsley couldn’t hear them. He thrust hard into her body and she lifted her hips to take him. He gripped her shoulders as he bore into her with his most powerful thrusts. She should have just lain there. She should have hated it. She should have borne it in stoic silence, made a martyr of herself, or a corpse. Instead, as his hips pumped into hers and his hands grasped her breasts, pinched her nipples and rubbed her clitoris, she pumped back, moving with him, an equal partner in pleasure.
After a few minutes Gérard pulled out, motioned with his hand, and Juliette turned over onto her hands and knees. He entered her from behind now, gripping her hips, pulling her back hard against him as he pushed forward and into her.
Kingsley took the tiniest step forward and Juliette’s eyes flashed open. Had she heard him? He knew Gérard had not. He was too lost in his own pleasure to even notice her utter indifference to him. But Juliette, she stared into the shadows where Kingsley stood.
“Go.” She mouthed the word at him. “Go.”
It was the last thing he wanted to do. But Gérard gave a hoarse cry as he finished inside her and rested his body on top of hers.
Gérard pulled out of her body and she rolled onto her back. She smiled up at her lover and mouthed, “Merci.”
He had two choices as he counted them. He could kill Gérard right now for no other reason than he’d touched the woman Kingsley already considered his own property.
Or he could do what she’d ordered him to do.
She’d told him to go.
Kingsley left.
17
Upstate New York
JOHN APOLLO CHASED Daphne all the way into the woods behind the school. Daphne feinted left, but he didn’t fall for it. She took a sharp turn right, and he followed close behind. He was fast but she was faster. But he was male and had better stamina. After two miles on rough terrain she couldn’t go another step. She collapsed against a tree and swallowed air until she coughed.
“Don’t touch me,” she said when he came to stand in front of her.
“I won’t.” He was panting just as hard as she was. She’d never seen perfect John Apollo looking so wrecked. His dark hair fell over his forehead in a wet mass, his jeans splashed with mud and muck, his shirt stained with sweat. “I just need to talk to you. Please talk to me.”
“You killed my brother.” Her hatred for this man in front of her was like a poison arrow in her heart. She felt the point digging in deeper with every breath.
“I know,” he said between heavy breaths. “I know I did.”
Those were the last words she expected from him.
“I killed your brother, yes,” he said, and it sounded as though he were exorcizing a demon with his confession. “And I don’t regret it.”
“How can you say that? He was—”
“He was bashing another student’s face into the wall, Daphne. You’re sixteen years old now. Grow up and face the truth that your brother was a time bomb. And he went off.”
“You didn’t have to kill him.”
“Do you think that’s what I wanted? I was trying to restrain him, not kill him.”
“It doesn’t matter what you were doing. He’s dead.”
“He’s dead and another boy isn’t. My conscience is clear.”
“Well, good for you,” Daphne said, anger boiling as hot as her blood. “My brother’s still dead but you sleep like a baby at night.”
“I don’t. I don’t sleep at all at night. I can’t sleep.”
“Because you killed my brother?”
“Because I’m in love with you.”
Daphne only stared at him. He bent over and coughed.
“You’re in love with me?”
“Of course I’m in love with you. Do you think I’d run after you for three goddamn miles in the woods in loafers if I wasn’t?”
Daphne ran her hands through her hair.
She laughed.
She laughed and then John laughed. The laugh rolled through her like a wave washing all the anger out of her heart. It poured out sobs that crested and ebbed. Before she knew it, John had her in his arms.
“He tried to choke me once,” Daphne whispered in his ear. “I thought my own brother would kill me. But he loved me. He did love me.”
“He loved you,” John whispered, stroking her hair. “I’m sure he didn’t want to be how he was. He was lucky he had you to love him back.”
“I don’t love you back.” Daphne met his eyes. “I can’t.”
“I know.” John nodded. “It’s fine. I don’t expect you to. Just let me love you, and let me help you and that’ll be enough.”
“It’s not enough.”
“What else is there then?” he asked, wiping her face with the end of his sleeve.
She raised her face to his and kissed him. He pulled back and looked at her. She saw in his eyes it was the last thing he expected her to do.
His eyes changed from shock to something else. The change scared her, but she didn’t look away. And when he kissed her, she wasn’t shocked at all.
She opened her mouth and his tongue slipped inside. He grabbed the strap of her tank top and yanked it down her arm. A rough hand reached into her bra and cupped her breast, pinching the nipple and squeezing it. She’d never been touched like this before, and the pleasure of it left her gasping. He rolled her nipples between his fingers and she moaned into his mouth. His hips pushed into hers, and she felt something big and brutally hard against her, and it made her ache with a new kind of wanting. John lowered his head to her chest, pulled her bra down to bare her breasts and sucked on her nipple.
Nobody had taught her how to be kissed like this. She’d taken sex ed, but it hadn’t prepared her for being pushed up against a tree in the woods with a twenty-four-year-old cop sucking and fondling her breasts. She thought about asking him to stop, but right then he chose to slip his hand into her running shorts and touch her clitoris. All words, all rationality even, left her, and all she could get out of her lips was one desperate, “Please...”
Please stop? Please don’t stop? She didn’t know what she begged for, only that she had to beg for it.
John grasped her shorts and pulled them down and off her. He ripped her shirt up and off her and her bra joined the rest of her clothes on the ground. She needed skin, needed contact. With terrified fingers, she unbuttoned John’s shirt and got it halfway down his arms before he lifted her off her feet and brought her down onto him.
She cried out, a sound that echoed through the quiet forest around them.
Instinctively Daphne wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders. The bark on the tree cut into her naked back but she couldn’t feel it, couldn’t feel anything but him inside her.
“Shh...” John whispered in her ear. “It’s all right. I’ll make it all right.”
“I’ve never—”
“I know,” he said. His fingers dug into her hips. Why did this pain feel so good? So necessary? Like only this pain could banish the pain from her brother’s death? This was the pain she’d been waiting for. “Let me hold you
. I’ll stop when you tell me to.”
She buried her head into the crook of his neck and nodded. She didn’t want him to stop but she didn’t know what to do, how to proceed. John knew, though. He pulled her hips toward him as he pushed against her. When he did it again, it felt as if something gave way inside her and she opened up for him. Her body wanted him in it. Her head fell back and her hips moved on his, working against him and with him until he lifted her up again and brought her down once more, harder this time, impaling her on his cock all the way to the center of her stomach. His mouth was on her mouth