Only Love (The Atonement Series) (27 page)

I glared at Liam instead of my sister because I felt like knocking her the fuck out and that
wasn’t
a good thing in my present state of mind. She’d managed to alienate both my mother and I with a few carefully chosen harsh words because everything had not gone according to her schedule and I found this to be ridiculous and unnecessary. If she was this bad now, what would she be like for her wedding? A major bridezilla no one would want to work for but of course everyone would happily line up to help because she had nothing but too much time on her hands and plenty of money.

Now that she was marrying Liam, she’d gone part time at Amazon and planned to quit shortly after they’d been married six months so she could slowly become part of Seattle society and prepare to have her two gorgeous and spoiled children for her handsome husband. Of course she wouldn’t raise them herself—that was what cheap, illegal nannies from Guatemala were for.

Perhaps when the children got a bit older, she might trust a peasant from some European country but she would make sure the nanny was butt ugly and had not a snow ball’s chance in hell of catching Liam’s rogue and wandering eyes.

“Colin actually came to me and told me what was going on so there is no animosity there,” I began in a soft voice. “I’m not sure if you are aware but he is dating Mikayla Shevchenko—”

“You don’t mean the daughter of that notorious
little
man who is over the Shevchenko cartel? Oh my God. She’s going to turn our engagement into some kind of folly from
The Godfather
except all the criminals are Ukrainian! Liam, make them leave now,” Caitlyn interrupted before she began to hyperventilate.

“For once I agree with my sister,” I murmured.

Drake took my left arm and walked me a few feet from Liam and Caitlyn. “What the
hell
is going on? Your sister has been acting like a major bitch and drama queen of the century all evening and now you suddenly agree with her?”

“What is this all about?” Liam yelled out to us.

I placed a soothing arm on his shoulder before we joined the engaged couple again. “Listen, Drake doesn’t even know. I haven’t had a chance to tell anyone because I wanted to tell you all at the same time. Apparently, Mikayla has set it up for some hit men to assassinate Drake…tonight…here at the party.”

“That’s insane!” my significant other exclaimed. “Why would she want to take me out and why would you believe this silly story just because Colin told you? This is getting ridiculous.”

“It’s not a silly story if it’s true,” Liam responded and looked like he took the news a lot more serious than Drake did. “Why does she want to do something foolish like that in public?”

“Colin said she is determined to get Drake back and if she can’t have him then he has to be taken care of.” I stared at my boyfriend then. “Apparently you know too much about their business and if you aren’t prepared to be family then they consider you a threat. You have enough information on them to send the whole Shevchenko Mafia to prison for the rest of their natural-born lives. To me, that speaks of an excellent motive.”

Drake’s goofy smile disappeared as he became stone-cold sober. “You aren’t kidding about this? They want me dead?”

Liam placed a steady hand on Drake’s shoulder. “Not to talk of the obvious, pal, but if I was them and you were working for me and you didn’t plan on becoming family…I’d kill you too. Better to be safe than sorry. You have no ties to them and there is nothing to say you wouldn’t turn them in one day. They can’t just take your word for it. Even I know that.”

“So, what should we do? I don’t have a clue. I asked Colin but I immediately thought of you two. Maybe we could just slip away?”

“I think that would be a great idea,” Caitlyn spoke up. “You have a spare key to my condo. You two should sleep there for the night and we can address this at breakfast tomorrow morning. You can come by Liam’s and we’ll all talk about where we should go from here.”

As much as I hated to agree with my sister yet again, she had a point. We wouldn’t be safe at the hotel and Mikayla was staying with Colin in the same building where Liam lived so that wasn’t exactly the smartest plan. No one knew about Caitlyn’s condo that had been in our family for a generation and we’d actually inherited the property when our father died.

“What about a vehicle? They had to have seen our rental,” Drake elucidated out loud.

“Take my car.” Caitlyn handed us the keys to her 2013 Volkswagen Touareg Lux. Similar to my Ford, it had cost her thirteen thousand more and was black. It was a lease but she’d traded up from a 2011 Jetta and loved that vehicle.

I stared down at the key which was also the fob as well although she had a keyless entry system and the car vehicle didn’t require the key to start up once you were in the vehicle—all you had to do was push a button and the vehicle started on its own.

“Are you sure about this?” I questioned her with a sincere stare.

She rolled her blue eyes. “Listen, it’s just a stupid car. You two wreck it, you can pay for it. I don’t want any drama at my engagement party under any circumstances so we’ll just have to get together tomorrow.”

“Since I am the one who started all this mess, why don’t you two come by?” Drake suggested. “I will cook anything you want—my treat.”

I could already see the wheels in my sister’s head turning. “Oh yeah, I wanted to talk to you about our wedding. Liam and I think it would be great if you could be our chef at the event. We ate at Rouge and the food was to die for!”

I rolled my eyes before I grabbed Drake’s hand. “We are going to see if we can sneak out but we’ll talk more tomorrow morning, okay?”

“You don’t have to ‘sneak’ out. Caitlyn’s car is parked in the garage. You’ll just look like the owners of the house leaving. You don’t have to go through valet but you will have to go through this door right here and to the garage.”

Liam opened the French doors and we followed them inside. They led us straight to the garage where Caitlyn’s SUV was parked between a Range Rover and a Porsche Cayenne Turbo.

Drake whistled. “Must be nice to have friends in high places.”

It was my future brother-in-law’s turn to roll his eyes. “Believe it or not, I have more money than the guy who owns this house. I never bothered to buy an estate yet because I didn’t think I was getting married any time soon and didn’t want a commute into Seattle. That is why I don’t have all this shit but I could buy him out twice over. He’s just a partner but it was Colin and I who founded uConnect.”

“Well, I know all about the trappings of wealth. You’re talking to Drew’s cousin and my family is not only part of the WASP elite on the East Coast but they’re a political family as well. I grew up on an estate that would make this place look like the guest house.”

I rolled my eyes and opened the doors with the remote before we both climbed in, me in the driver’s seat and Drake in the passenger’s. This obviously annoyed my lover who would have rather driven but I was too lazy to give directions and it was easier for me to drive since I knew where we were going. Liam and Caitlyn stayed behind to not only slide up the garage door but slide it down as well. I didn’t even start breathing normally until we were on surface streets, heading toward the freeway to get back to downtown Seattle from Bellevue.

“You had me worried there for a minute,” Drake finally spoke as I entered the highway and kept looking suspiciously in the rear view mirror. “Is that where you were? Talking to Colin?”

“Yes and no,” I replied before I breathed deeply. “I called my mother because I was worried about her not showing up. She’s seeing Doctor van der Meer and he is trying not to put her on too many drugs but it doesn’t help when she can get prescriptions from her primary care physician who hands them out like candy. She’s not doing well at all and that’s with her
not
knowing what really happened. Perhaps Caitlyn is right and it’s just better to take what we know to the grave. I don’t see how my mom finding out the truth would help her. It’s not going to bring her any closure.”

Drake placed a hand above mine on the steering wheel. “You’re more nervous about this than I am. When you think about the whole situation and who we were just dealing with, we got out of it okay, didn’t we?”

I turned to him for a fraction of a second before I stared down the highway again. “Yeah, we did. Although I am beginning to wonder what kind of women you usually attract if I am considered an anomaly.”

“You know you aren’t just a regular chick, Deirdre. There is a reason why Colin has tried to hold on to you because he knows he’ll never find another like you. Maybe I am just one lucky son of a bitch because you’re the second woman after Gisele I want to hold on to and never let go. It’d kill me if I ever lost you and if they ever did anything to hurt you.”

“I’m not made of china, Drake, and I knew what I was getting involved with the first night we made love so nothing that happens is really all that big of a surprise. The last thing I need is for you to go all soft on me at this moment.”

His hand grabbed mine and led it to his groin. “Babe,
soft
is the last thing I am right now when I look at you in that sexy dress.”

I smiled as I shook my head. “You are incorrigible. I am not sure I could…in my sister’s bed I mean.”

“We’ll change the sheets. Stop being so goddamn provincial for Christ’s sake,” he remarked in a lust-filled voice.

I couldn’t deny he had a point. I would hardly lie and say my engine wasn’t revved because it was and I wanted him as much as he wanted me. There was something about him I found absolutely irresistible and it had started the first day we met. I didn’t think it was fair lust should have turned into love but in our case that was exactly what happened.

Colin had been so easy. He was sexy but I wasn’t attracted to him immediately and certainly didn’t want to jump his bones. He was a good looking guy, similar to Jensen Ackles who I thought was adorable but I didn’t lust after him. Drake was definitely a Jared Padalecki; there wasn’t a way to describe his sexual magnetism but you knew if you had him in a room alone, you would definitely find a way to seduce him.

I hated to use pop culture references but I hadn’t been myself lately and I felt like my brain seemed to be connected straight to the female parts between my legs lately and this proved a problem because I couldn’t think of anything but sex when I was in Drake’s vicinity.

We arrived safely to my sister’s condo building. I put in the code to enter the secure underground garage and parked in her spot before we both got out.

He walked over to me and embraced me from behind, pressing his hard-on against my ass. “So, why didn’t you ask her for the keys to the pad?”

I turned around and faced him. “Because it used to belong to both of us before she bought me out. I have the keys to her condo unless she changed the locks.”

Drake and I walked inside, took the elevator up to my sister’s floor and walked to her place. My key fit perfectly and opened the doors to her condo. That was a relief because I didn’t know what would have happened if she had changed the locks.

The moment we were inside, I turned on the hallway light while Drake closed the door and locked it securely.

My heart beat so hard in my chest, I felt like it burned as I turned toward him and he met my gaze. He crossed the space between us with several steps and we kissed one another hungrily as if we were both starving to feel each other’s touch and taste one another.

He pressed me against the wall, slid my dress up until it was around my waist and knelt down before me. I had on the slimmest of red silk thongs because I didn’t want them to show through the dress and Drake quickly broke the strap. His fingers reached for my throbbing sex as he parted me open and began to tease me with his tongue.

My whole face lit up with heat and pleasure as he pleased me the way he knew I liked. I slid the leg he held on his shoulder to give him ample access and he suckled my clit in his mouth. I gasped out loud and could feel the orgasm begin to build from my strained breasts still wrapped in the constricting fabric to the tip of my toes.

I was so close to the edge, when he suddenly pulled away and stood, I breathed hard and looked at him with intense desire before his lips devoured my own yet again and all I could taste was me and smell my scent on his face. He unzipped his pants, spread my legs and slid his cock inside me to the hilt before I was suddenly hoisted around his waist as he held me up and continued his assault on my body.