James loosened his grip on my neck. He staggered away from me, his whole body trembling. “Please, Tess, stop. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Tess?” Hope flared inside me. “That’s the first time you’ve said my name tonight.” I rushed to him and pressed my lips against his. He stilled, but I didn’t pull away. I knew what his touch did to me, lit me up like the stars in the night sky.
James fell to the floor and began to convulse. I fell to my knees next to him, reaching for him, attempting to keep him from hurting himself. If his reaction to the kiss was this violent, I knew he felt something, too. If I just pushed a little harder, maybe I could get him to break through the walls the council made him put up. It was a gamble, but I knew, had our roles been reversed, I would want him to bet it all, too. I bent over him and began to share with him every beautiful moment we’d shared together.
The piano room.
Reading Jane Eyre.
Playing in the snow.
Reuniting in the small, cramped jail cell.
Losing ourselves within each other in the woods.
James’s eyes closed and he didn’t move. I pressed my ear over his chest to make sure he was still alive. My heart was pounding so hard against my ears, I couldn’t hear his. Or at least that was why I hoped I couldn’t hear his. It could very well be my heart was pounding for his quiet one, too.
Slowly, James reached a hand up and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. A sigh shook my entire body. His eyes fluttered open. “Tess?” he asked weakly.
I nodded, blinking back tears. “You’re back?”
James reached up and pulled me into his embrace, wrapping his arms around me. “Only because of you,” he whispered into my ear. “I’m so—”
I turned my head and pressed my lips against his. This time he pressed back. I shifted my body so I was straddling him. “I don’t want to waste any time with pointless apologies. The council doesn’t get to steal any more from us.”
James sat up so I was in his lap. I wrapped my legs around his waist, my nightgown riding up in the process. “I have missed you,” he said, pressing his forehead against my chest, his fingers trailing up and down my exposed legs.
He tilted his head and began to kiss up and down my neck, and I thought my heart would be the one to give out. “I missed you too,” I half moaned.
James took my face into his hands, gently rubbing my cheek with his thumb. “What are you doing here?”
“We’ll talk about it all later. Right now, I just want us. I want you,” I mumbled, bringing his lips to mine. He turned us over so I was lying on my back. He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it across the room. My back arched under his touch, and my shoulders pulled up off the floor. “I just want us forever,” I breathed.
We were the ocean McNair spoke of. We were gentle and wild. We rushed and remade. We had the power to protect and destroy. And as we moved together on the floor of his room, losing each other under the current, I didn’t need some far off land. I just needed him.
He was my anchor.
And I was his Viola.
…
Later, as we lay tangled in each other, James made me promise to never allow myself to be alone with Terrance. I assured him that his nightmare would remain that—a nightmare. I avoided alone time with the sleazy teen as much as I could. I also told James everything that had happened after he left. I told him of the people I lost and informed him about George’s new place in my life.
“You really think your father would align with him? Then why stop you from trying to meet him?”
I sighed, casually running my fingers up and down his back. “I don’t know. But he’s the only man who has approached me with any sort of plan or information. That was the whole reason my father sent us here.”
“Unless someone got to your father’s man first.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“For some reason, George wants to take the council down, right? Well, he has the ability to read the secrets of any man he touches. Say he found your father’s man and discovered his plan. What would he do?”
“Kill him and take his plan for his own?”
James nodded. “Exactly. Then, he would convince you he’s on your side. You would pass along to your father whatever information he wanted you to know. Thus, setting off a series of chain reactions that would accomplish his own end game. Your father and George might have the same goal, but I doubt it’s for the same reasons.”
I furrowed my brow. “But that still doesn’t explain why he would get Louisa to lure me out of hiding. He wanted to bait me into coming here, and that was before my father even got the information he needed from Abrams.”