Always You (19 page)

Chiara met him at the bottom of the stairs. Her face was so taut with worry and concern, John feared it would crack if she spoke. “You’re drenched,” he commented after embracing her.

She tensed in his arms. “It’s storming outside,” she said in a strange, brittle voice.

“When George called, I went right to my mother’s to get Chiara,” Cady said. “She was so worried about you, she was waiting for me at the curb when I picked her up. She got soaked.”

John held Chiara’s shoulders and stared into her eyes. “I’m all right,” he said firmly, determined to put her mind at ease. “I didn’t need you to come down here.”

“I called Cady,” George confessed.

John looked at him, confused.

“I wanted to come straight here,” George said. “I thought I should tell Chiara, but I didn’t want her to come racing down here in a panic. So I called Cady first, and she picked up Chiara and brought her down here.”

“I wish you’d have just done what I asked, and taken my car back to your dorm,” John grumbled.

“I thought you might need bail,” George explained. “Would you rather I called Mom and Dad?”

John gave him a look that clearly said, “Don’t be stupid,” before he turned back to Chiara. He took off his Chesterfield and started to drape it around her.

“I’m fine,” she said, scooting from under the heavy black coat. “I just came down to make sure—” She choked on a sob. “To make sure that you were all right.”

She flinched a little when John took her damp shoulders. “He’s in custody,” he told her.

“So it was the same man?”

Cady stepped closer, her delicate eyebrows drawn at severe angles. “The man who attacked Chiara in Chicago?” she asked. “He’s the same man who mugged you?”

“It seems so,” John said.

“What’s his name?” Cady demanded. “Why is he targeting the two of you?”

George, John noticed, was easing farther away.

“Cady, I need to go home,” Chiara implored.

“George, give me my keys,” John called to him.

“I need a lift back to the dorms, too,” he said, tossing John his car keys.

“I’ll take George,” Cady offered. “He’s on my way.” She pinned John and Chiara with an incisive stare. “We’ll be talking about your mugger when I get back to Mama’s house.”

Chiara took Cady’s sleeve. “I want
you
to take me to Mama’s. Please. Let’s go.”

“Chiara, I can take you,” John said. “It’s no problem.”

She kept her eyes on the floor. “I don’t want you to.”

“You take George,” Cady advised gently. “I’ll take my sister home. I have to pick the twins and Virginia up from Mama’s anyway.”

“I’ll drop by after I get George to the dorm,” John said.

“Don’t,” Chiara said. “I don’t…you shouldn’t…”

John seemed to be the only one who understood her halting request. “Why not?”

She wrung her hands in anxiety. “I just don’t want you to!” she blurted. “Cady, let’s go.” She started away, pulling her bewildered sister after her.

John began to follow her. “Chiara, don’t walk away like this!”

“Leave me alone!” Chiara whirled on him, her flared knit skirt swirling around her ankles. Her voice was close to a shriek as she pleaded with him. “Stay away from me, John, please.”

Several police officers looked up from what they were doing. John decided it was probably best not to press Chiara further, given her emotional state and the fact that he’d just been released from police custody.

Cady intervened. “Let me get her home and into some dry clothes. You can talk more later.”

“I won’t want to talk later,” Chiara said grimly. “Come on, Cady.”

* * *

Cady’s Honda Pilot had barely come to a stop at the curb before Chiara shoved open the passenger door, sprinted up the stairs in front of Abby’s house and bolted into the house.

“Chi, is everything okay?” was all Abby got out before Chiara ran up the two flights of stairs to the attic, threw open the trapdoor, and locked it shut behind her. The thick weave of her long-sleeved top and skirt seemed to weigh on her petite frame as she paced the rug floor in her soft-soled boots.

Her mother’s words echoed in her head, the one place where she couldn’t close them out no matter how hard she tried.
Maybe if you’d done like you were supposed to, John wouldn’t have had such a hard row to hoe.

Chiara tortured herself, wondering how much more John’s love for her would cost him. She went to the tall windows, pressing her hands against them. Rather than feeling sheltered from the storm that continued to rage outside, she felt trapped. Home was supposedly the safest place for her right now, but just as she’d placed John in danger, her presence now endangered her whole family.

She peered at the cars parked on both sides of the street, wondering if one of them contained yet another man in black who watched Abby’s house, carefully choosing his next victim. She perched on the wide windowsill, shivering in her damp clothes, and she watched the street, a silent sentinel determined to protect those she loved, even if it meant leaving them.

Chiara stared, unblinking. Ribbons of raindrops striped the long windows, almost mirroring the teardrops trailing over Chiara’s cheeks. Her eyes were raw from using the cuff of her sleeve as a handkerchief, so she no longer bothered to wipe the tears away. She really was a crybaby, and she refused to blame it on hormones and stress. Each tear was a symbol of renewed mourning, this time for John.

She sat on the windowsill, her shoulder pressed to the glass. The double panes were supposed to keep the cold out and the warmth in, but a chill still permeated Chiara’s damp sweater. She hugged her knees to her chest and rested her forehead on them. She sobbed a bit harder, her shoulders shaking, missing John so much already even though she hadn’t yet told him what she’d decided to do.

It was hard enough admitting it to herself, even as she forced herself to plot out her plan.

She was leaving St. Louis, first and foremost, and she would have to get the master chip from George and take it with her. The farther she got from her family and John and George, the safer they would be. Fear jabbed at her heart at the thought of packing her bags and heading to some unknown, unfamiliar destination.

“You can’t have it both ways, you idiot,” she softly berated herself.
At best I’m a hypocrite, staying in Mama’s house, hating every second of it, all the while endangering everyone here. And at worst, I end up being cruel if I move to a new city and have John’s baby on my own.

John had been her touchstone over the past three weeks, but now it was time for her to solve the problem of the master chip on her own. It was time to put John out of it, once and for all, before he really got hurt. Or worse.

Chiara sobbed in earnest, shaking from the force of her tears. Gone was her promise to John to stay strong and fight. She felt more alone, afraid and helpless than ever, and she hated it. She might have sat there all night, until her unfamiliar emotions condensed into nothing more than self-pity, if not for the dark shadow on the other side of the window.

Startled, she hopped off the windowsill and backed away from the glass. She’d reached the night table and the phone sitting on it before a flash of lightening illuminated the large figure who had tapped the glass.

“Chiara, open up,” John said, hooding his eyes with his hand to keep the hard, steady rain out of them.

“Go home, John,” she yelled, approaching the windows. “I told you not to come here!”

John’s hair and the shoulders of his coat glistened with rain, which as the evening wore on had become more like sleet. The shingles beneath his feet looked plenty slippery, and in his Chesterfield, suit and Cole Haans, John wasn’t dressed for climbing even under less icy conditions. “Let me in!” he directed more forcefully, hauling himself over the railing in front of the windows. “I almost slipped twice just getting up here. I need to talk to you.”

“There’s nothing to talk about, and I don’t want you here!” Chiara shrieked, her arms stiff and her fingers splayed.
“Don’t ever come back here!”

John stood there, the wrath of nature beating upon his head and shoulders and Chiara glowering before him. His heartbeat seemed to grow louder in his ears as he contemplated his next move. After the afternoon he’d had, he was in no mood to be rejected. For the second time that day, John did something totally out of character. Without thinking, he gripped the railing behind him for support and kicked the center support of the window frame. The locking mechanism flew into the room, along with a chunk of the wood it had been built into. Both windows crashed open, and John swooped into the room on a rush of freezing rain and bitter wind. As John strode toward Chiara, the crystal droplets dotting his coat and hair disappeared, melting in the heat of the room or from the heat of his temper.

John was furious, but this anger was different from the cool, killing rage that had fueled him in the parking garage. Fear flavored his fury as he made his way to Chiara, who stood her ground, looking at him with raw, wounded eyes. She’d tried to send him away before, but he’d worn her down. This time, she seemed willing to maintain her resolve, willing to kick him right out of her life under some misguided attempt to be noble.

He struggled to remain calm, so he could speak to her without frightening her. But one way or the other, he’d make her know that he wasn’t about to leave her, especially not over something neither of them had control over. The one thing he’d learned today was that he’d kill before he let anyone harm Chiara again. His consternation grew as he wrestled with his own desires and those he saw in the troubled depths of her eyes. What she wanted, what she demanded of him, was the one thing he couldn’t make himself do.

John stood before her, the cold wetness of his coat further chilling her still-damp clothes. His shoulders rose and fell heavily, his chest heaved, and his hands clenched and unclenched. She had seen so many sides of him, but never this one, this hulking, larger-than-life figure who seemed capable of anything. Despite his fearsomeness, Chiara wasn’t afraid. This god of fury before her was still her John, the man she’d loved for so long that the love was a vital part of her, like her brain or her heart. His love had sustained her, had shaped life within her. He was incapable of hurting her. She didn’t shy away from the heat of his stare as he pinned her in place with his gaze.

“Do you want me to leave you?” He blanched as he asked the question.

The stiffness of his face and the finality of his tone told Chiara that he wasn’t asking about just tonight.

When she answered, her words trembled from her lips as hot tears spilled from her eyes. “I’ve caused you so much pain. I thought it was all over once your mother stopped using her switch, but it’s starting again and—”

He took her by her shoulders and raised her heels from the floor. “You gave me freedom! Can you imagine what it was like for me to sit there in my grandfather’s church, listening to him shout and spit about punishment and hell? My mother spent all day in prayer clusters and my father was always at work, so I had to sit there in the pews all alone.” He eased his grip, setting her flat on her feet but not releasing her. “Then came a Sunday when we were running late, and as we drove into the church parking lot, I saw you running across the street between Cady and Kyla, and you vanished into the park.”

John could see the image in his mind perfectly, and as with all fond memories, he relived it more vividly than he had when the memory was first forged. He could smell his mother’s overpowering lavender perfume and feel her iron-like grasp cutting off the circulation to his hand as she’d dragged him into the church. He’d pulled away from her slightly, straining to see Chiara. But she’d been so short, he’d lost sight of her and had tracked her big sisters instead, right into the park. He’d felt the sudden absence of the bright sun once he’d been pulled into the dark interior of the church and shoved into an aisle seat in a front pew. As his portly grandfather had preached, working up a sweat, John had stared at the seam of daylight peeking from beneath a cracked window.

Outside the church was where he’d find comfort. He’d known that instinctively, and the following Sunday, after Almadine had sat him in the front pew, he’d bounced right back up and followed her down the aisle. Outside the nave, she’d turned right and gone downstairs for six hours of devout prayer with her cronies. John had kept walking straight, right through the doors and into the clear spring day.

It was his first taste of total freedom and open rebellion, and it was delicious. He’d wasted no time in crossing the street into Tower Grove Park, and he’d found Chiara and her sisters.

Standing now in the darkened room with Chiara, with January’s frigid breath blustering around him, John made his confession to Chiara. “I found peace, faith, comfort, friendship and devotion when I went to the park with you. All the things I’d never found at my grandfather’s church, I found in you. You didn’t make me leave church every Sunday. I made that choice. Stop blaming yourself for all the punishments I got. It was a fair tradeoff for all the happiness you’ve given me.”

“You could have been killed this afternoon,” she wept.

“I wasn’t,” he stated firmly, reinforcing the obvious.

“He might come after you again. If you’re not involved with me, it might keep you safe,” she implored.

“He won’t.”

“You sound so sure. But I can’t take any chances. Not with you.”

He tightened his grip and gave her a hard little shake that made her head bobble. “Tell me what you want then, Chiara, once and for all! And you’d better mean it, or I’ll make the decision for you. I’m sick of you trying to push me away. Do you honestly want me to go?”

“No,” she whispered miserably.

“What?” he demanded.

“No,” she said a little more loudly.

“Then tell me what you want.” His eyes burned into hers, daring her to say anything other than what he needed to hear.

Chiara studied his face, unable to identify all the emotions shaping his features but fully understanding the impact they had on him. She knew him so well, loved him so well, that she could diffuse them if she were willing to answer him truthfully. She couldn’t make her mouth say the words she needed to, the ones that would send him away, hopefully to safety.

“You,” she finally said through a fresh fall of stinging tears. “I want
you
, safe and whole and—”

John ground his mouth to hers, pulling her to him. Chiara held his face, kissing him deeply, sharing the only warmth she could with the winter storm brushing her damp clothing with cold. John’s breathing came deeper and harder as his own heat mounted within him. Without separating his mouth from Chiara’s, he shrugged out of his Chesterfield and jacket, letting the heavy garments drop to the carpet. Chiara’s small, soft hands lightly came to rest upon his before guiding them to her breasts. John framed their firm fullness, stroking them, the dampness of Chiara’s sweater readily conducting the heat of John’s hands to her flesh. He trailed kisses along her chin and throat, supporting her with a hand at the small of her back when she hung her head back and pressed her hips into the hardness fighting the confines of his pants.

John’s seeking lips parted to allow his tongue to dip into the hollow of her throat before his head moved farther down, to suckle the tiny tents his hand raised at her breasts. Chiara’s soft moans encouraged him, and he delighted each breast in turn, drawing her nipples into rock-hard points hungry for more direct contact.

He lifted her sweater and pulled the garment over her head. Her slender arms came down to cradle his head to her bare breasts. He tasted the most sensitive parts of them, tracking them with his tongue before pulling on them, creating a delicious tug that reached deep into Chiara’s core. John’s hands moved up her sides and along her back, the heat of his palms raising goosebumps where the cold air had kissed her.

Chiara slipped her left hand between them and tugged John’s shirt from the waistband of his pleated trousers. John returned his lips to hers, to free his hands to remove his shirt and unfasten his pants. They didn’t bother to make the short trip to the bed. Gently sucking the plumpest part of John’s lower lip, Chiara sank to the floor, pulling John’s weight half atop her. He supported himself on one elbow so he could look at her, and he felt every part of himself grow at the sight of her. Chilly air temporarily cooled the heat of the attic. It goosepimpled Chiara’s skin and kept her brown sugar nipples as taut as John’s touch had. Her hair was a dark cloud of silk framing her head. Her parted lips, slightly swollen and moist from his kisses, trembled a little as she stared up at him.

Through touch and the somberness of his eyes, John tried to tell Chiara what his words hadn’t. His body shook with suffering as much as passionate need. Someone had come after him as a way to get to Chiara, and while he hadn’t lost control, he’d come close. He would honestly have left John Doe’s brains splattered on the asphalt, and that scared him almost as much as wondering what would happen next. There was nothing more important to him than Chiara and the baby sheltered within her.

With a warm, strong hand planted firmly over her abdomen, John tried to transfer that message to her. She understood him clearly, and when he lowered his head to kiss the space between her breasts, Chiara invited him to take his solace freely. She raised one knee and hooked her toes into John’s waistband. She used her foot to shove down both his pants and his boxers. Kissing his way down to her navel, John put his hand under her skirt. He drew his fingertips lightly over her calf, the sensitive hollow behind her knee and her thigh before coming to rest at the humid heat between her legs. Her legs widened to better accommodate his hand and the long finger he used to trace the wet cleft covered by her panties.

The storm had done its job well, and the damp cotton stubbornly clung to her skin as he tried to lower her panties. One quick tug at the gusset tore the seam, snapping the piece in two and granting him unobstructed access to her slick sweetness. Chiara’s back arched and her eyes closed as her hips rose to meet the deliberate, skilled movement of John’s fingers. She clasped the sides of his head and brought his mouth to hers. Her tongue dipped in and out of his mouth, copying the movement of his finger, further stoking the fire in his loins.

John used both hands to free her from the wet weight of her skirt before wriggling the rest of the way out of his pants and boxers. He covered her with his body, the promise of peace and fulfillment moving through him as Chiara wrapped her legs about him and angled her hips upward, to welcome him. John forced himself to ease into her, savoring every grasping second of her body’s acceptance of him. Chiara showed none of his restraint, and she brought her legs higher, allowing him to completely entomb himself. He hunched over her, taking one of her dark peaks gently between his teeth, alternately nibbling and flicking his tongue over the pair of them until Chiara gasped his name and clutched his buttocks.

His hips moved, his abdominal muscles bunching and hardening in the rhythm Chiara set with her hands at his backside. He framed her head with his elbows, bearing most of his weight as he increased his speed and his depth, forging the deepest possible bond between them. Her fingers lightly stroked the supersensitive area just below his buttocks, then glided along his back and over his shoulders to his chest, where she dug her fingers into his hard pectoral muscles and brought her lips to the flat disc of flesh capping it. She scraped her teeth across it, then suckled and nibbled it, forcing a groan and a grimace of blinding pleasure from him. He rose on his hands and his arms shook as he stiffened upon her and erupted deep inside her. Chiara’s hips took over the movement his had temporarily abandoned, and once he was able to move, John came to rest on one elbow again. He used his other hand to separate their sweat-slickened abdomens, to give his thumb access to the hard kernel tucked within Chiara’s swollen folds.