Corps Security, The Series (1)(18)
I shake myself off, mentally berating myself for going there. I just eye fucked this complete stranger without even saying hello. Maybe I shouldn’t have had that last drink.
I look back up and meet the most stunning green eyes I have ever seen. Eyes I have seen before. Eyes I have spent hours gazing into. Loving and planning. Eyes I have been mourning for the last twelve years.
Feeling dizzy, I reach out to steady myself, catching the first thing I find, which I think might be Greg.
“What the fuck?” he mumbles under his breath.
This isn’t happening.
This can’t be happening.
He’s gone. I know he is. If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t have just spent the last twelve years missing him so ferociously with every fiber of my being.
The last thing I think before I feel my world spinning and crashing down on me is that Axel isn’t gone. He isn’t dead. I didn’t lose the last part of him when his baby bled out of my body on my eighteenth birthday.
And before I lose all touch with reality, I swear I hear, “Are you fucking kidding me? Isabelle is your goddamn Iz?”
I must be dreaming because MY Axel would never sneer my name with so much anger and hate.
CHAPTER 5
“Baby,” I hear his deep voice seductively rumble as he trails his fingertips up my spine.
God, I love how he wakes me up, always touching my skin like just the contact alone makes him feel whole. His hard body is pressed tightly to my own, keeping me snug and warm against his side.
“Baby girl,” he croons in my ear, kissing the spot right behind it—the spot that never fails to make my body go from warm to boiling. Goose bumps instantly start to sprinkle against my skin.
No one has ever set me on fire like he has.
No one has ever loved me like he has.
Axel, my love, my heart, my everything.
I’m finally back in his strong arms.
How did I get here? My heart skips a beat and my breath stalls in my lungs.
It’s all been a dream, it must have been. Just a terrible nightmare I never thought I would wake from.
My parents are still alive.
Ax isn’t leaving me.
Our baby is still safe within my womb.
Everything is perfect.
The enormity of this moment hits me like a Mack truck. Big, body-heaving sobs rack my body.
He’s here; my Axel is here. I am finally back in his arms.
“Baby girl,” his voice says again, getting fainter like he is down a long hallway.
“Izzy? Baby girl, please wake up.”
Why is Greg holding me? He shouldn’t be here. This isn’t right. Where is Axel? He was just right here. I don’t want Greg, I want Ax!
My crying intensifies, and I can feel his body tensing, trying to figure out how to calm me down. I can hear myself; I must sound ridiculous with my hysterical babble. I’m begging Greg, begging and pleading for him to take me back to Axel. I know I don’t make any sense but I just can’t seem to figure out where reality is and where I left Axel in my fog.
I want that dream back. I can’t lose him again . . . I won’t survive it a second time around.
I eventually settle down to just a few shudders, my breath escaping my body. I try desperately to make sense of this situation. How did this happen?
Looking around, I notice for the first time that we are in an office of sorts and I am sitting on a large leather couch pushed off to one end. Maddox is standing next to the door like a guard. His face has lost the small touch of friendliness he had before and has now taken on a fierce look of pure rage. I look up at Greg with what I’m guessing is a face of pure confusion. He returns my look with a small, forced smile.
I can hear Dee now that I have finally stopped my grief-filled sobbing; she sounds like she is a million miles away. She is muffled enough that I can’t understand her words, but the venomous tone to her voice is clearly reaching my ears. Greg is still holding me tightly in his arms, whispering reassuring words in my ear. At least I think they are reassuring. His tone is soft and slow, delicate. My mind can’t catch them though; I am still searching for Axel.
“Move the fuck out of my way, woman. I will not tell you again.” I hear the steel-like tone attached to the voice I haven’t heard in so long. He sounds almost feral. That is not a tone I have ever heard his voice take. “I will get back there. Do you fucking hear me, Isabelle? I will be talking to you!” he continues to boom through the office door that Maddox is guarding.
At the sound of my full name, my body goes rigid. I can feel every muscle individually seize up. Each bone seems to have turned to stone, and tremors are starting to work their way through my body. My heart picks up speed and my breathing becomes shallow.
No one has called me that in two years; and no one would dare. That was the name, the only name, Brandon used with me, and it was almost always followed by his fist or foot. No one who knows me would use that name. The first time Dee called me that after I left Brandon, I had to be admitted to the hospital because I couldn’t calm down.