24th January
Somerset
LAND Rover knew how to make luxury vehicles, and I’d learned that information firsthand. I loved my car, and now that I’d gotten the hang of driving lefty, I was venturing out more than ever before. I think sometimes, Ethan might have second-guessed his birthday gift to me. Too late now, Blackstone. But he’d just have to deal with it. I was the driver in the family for the time being. He had a cast he could walk on, but only using crutches. He needed a few more weeks of bone-healing time before he put much weight on his left leg. He’d still have the cast when the baby was born. Something that annoyed him greatly, I knew, but he didn’t complain about it. I didn’t complain either. We both knew how much of a blessing it was to have him in the cast…over the unbearable alternative of him not being here at all. Hell, I loved that damn, inconvenient cast.
I’d left Ethan at Zara’s mercy. Tea party today. I don’t think he really minded a bit. In fact, he’d seemed quite into the whole thing, even putting on a velvet jacket and a fancy bow tie- cravat thingy. I took pictures of them together with my camera. They would be priceless keepers for sure. Robbie’s wife, Ellen, had made the prettiest spread for them, iced cupcakes and strawberries, and tea, of course, with milk and sugar. I would’ve stayed and joined in, but I needed my twice-weekly massage more than I needed tea and cake. Especially now that I was bigger and experiencing all kinds of aches and pains. Back pain, pelvic pain, and even the occasional headache. The massages helped me so very much.
I’d been enjoying regular massages since Christmas, when Ethan purchased a decadent amount of treatments for me to enjoy. God, my man gave the best gifts. But after we’d made the decision to spend his recuperation time at Stonewell, I was in need of somebody local to help me get through the final weeks of the pregnancy. Enter Diane, who took very good care of me with her Aromatherapy and Reflexology talents, and thanks to Hannah pointing me in the right direction.
I pulled up to her little shop called Treats, and parked on the street. The historic village of Kilve was tiny, but complete with a seventeenth-century coaching inn called The Hood Arms, a thirteenth-century church named St. Mary’s, and its famous fossil-laden shore at Kilve Beach. It looked like an old postcard to me, and was so very peaceful. I think both Ethan and I instinctively understood that the peace of this place, combined with its natural outdoor beauty, was exactly what we needed, and doing us more good than anything else could. We planned to stay at Stonewell until mid-February. So, we’d be in London, where Dr. Burnsley was standing by with his superior medical experience, to deliver our Laurel-Thomas, hopefully by my due-date on the 28th of February.
As I walked to enter Diane’s shop, a beautiful young dog got up from underneath the sidewalk-table where he’d been sitting. He wagged his tail enthusiastically and hunkered down to greet me in that universal way dogs have of showing you they are friendly. “Well, hello there, handsome.” I bent down and pet the top of his head, the fur thick and dark around his face, but more amber on his chest and belly. He wasn’t a small puppy, but more like an adolescent dog, and he was definitely a he. I knew his breed—German Shepherd—and thought he was absolutely beautiful. “What’s your name, gorgeous boy? Are you waiting for your owner?” I spoke to him as I rubbed through his silky fur, loving the color of his golden eyes. He licked my hand and leaned into me as I gave him some attention, wondering why he had no leash or collar on him. Surely he belonged to somebody.
He looked at me solemnly when I stood up to go inside the shop for my appointment. “I have to go in now, fella,” I said.
He barked once as if he were saying, “Don’t go…” It rather broke my heart to leave him.
“NOW I need a very long nap, Diane. God, that was wonderful.” I complimented her and rolled my neck, breathing in the aromatic oils she used at the shop. As I handed her my card to pay, I heard the bark again. And there he was, staring in through the glass of the shop window, wagging his tail at me.
“Looks like you have an admirer, Brynne,” Diane chuckled. “I bet he’d go home with you, if you allowed him.”
“He would?” But what about his owner? “Who does he belong to?”
“He’s a stray. Just showed up a few days ago, and has been lingering around the shops for scraps. It’s so sad what people do to innocent animals. Especially the big ones, as he will be when he reaches his full growth. The larger dogs get abandoned, dumped on the side of the road.” She shook her head and grimaced disgustedly. “Arseholes ought to be abandoned to the cold with no food or shelter, and see how they like it.” Diane looked out the window at him. “I’ve been putting out some food, as has Lowell from next door because we don’t want him to starve, but he really needs a home, and a family. A big dog like that needs open space where he can run.” She winked at me with her pretty hazel eyes. “He would make an excellent guard dog and protector. I imagine your husband would very much approve.”
“LET me do all of the talking, okay?” We shared a look with each other, his round golden eyes lifting up to hold mine as if he understood me. The new leather collar and leash looked good on him. And he was fluffy and clean now, thanks to Diane pointing us in the direction of the pet supply and groomers, where her son, Clark, just happened to work. With Clark’s helpful assistance, I chose dog food, a bed, dishes for food and water, and even some doggy chew-toys, while he was being bathed and groomed. Then Clark loaded everything into the back of my Rover, and waved cheerfully to me as I drove away. And just like that, the decision was made.
The drive home was fun, and I don’t think I ever stopped grinning once. I had a furry passenger sitting in the front beside me with a seat belt strapped across his chest. My dog. I could tell he loved me already.
Nothing left, but to drop the bomb on my husband.
“I need to figure out a name for you,” I said to him as we went in search of Ethan and Zara. His toenails clicked on the wood floor as he walked beside me. I swear he was on his best behavior, trying to show me what a good dog he would be. I wasn’t worried, I just didn’t know what Ethan would say when I showed up with a big German Shepherd, and announced I’d be keeping him.
I was about to find out.
I could hear them before I went in, and knew what they were doing before I saw the evidence. They were playing a game that Zara loved, and Ethan, probably not so much, but he was a good sport about it. Pretty Pretty Princess. I’d loved the game, too…when I was little. There were photos of my dad wearing the crown and other jewels, happy as could be, indulging me in playing a ridiculous little girl’s dress-up game just because it pleased me. You were so good to me, Daddy.
And there was Ethan sporting a turquoise necklace and matching earrings, battling Zara for the win. “Ah ha, the black ring is gone!” he boasted across the table from Zara, in her blue and yellow party dress.
“But you don’t have the crown,” she smirked, poking her finger into the frosting on her cupcake and licking it off.
“I probably will win it, though,” he teased, “I think I’d look good in a crown.”
Zara giggled at him, and my heart just melted into a puddle of goo. I knew Ethan would be such an amazing father. Just watching him interact with Zara was a beautiful thing. It made my heart so happy, I needed to rub my belly to remind myself everything was still real. Yep, that was a miniature rump underneath my hand. I grinned as I worked out the position of head vs. legs and decided that my butterfly angel was upside down. It was fun to figure things like that out.
Sometimes my new life felt more than a little unreal. So much had changed in such a short time. But, moving forward was my only option, and desire. With Ethan’s commitment to me, his devotion and love, and our child, how could I want anything else?
My companion whined softly beside me. Ethan and Zara looked over and spotted us. I checked Ethan’s reaction, and decided to just stand there, and smile. Hoping for the best, and waiting for him to figure it all out.
“YOUR doggy looks like Sir Frisk,” Zara informed me.
“And who is Sir Frisk, may I ask?”
“A dog in a painting at my house.”
“Really.” I was very intrigued by this information. I’d checked out most of the art at Hannah and Freddy’s Hallborough, but I didn’t remember a dog painting.
“I’ll show you when I go back home. It’s a very good painting of a dog, Auntie Brynne.” She nodded her head seriously, and petted him all the way down his back, in long, careful sweeps. “And he looks just like him,” she reminded me.
My new dog must’ve thought he’d died and landed in doggy heaven, as he lay at Ethan’s feet with a very dedicated little girl working over his freshly washed fur with lots of soft stroking. I don’t think he could’ve been coaxed out of the house if our lives depended on it.
“So, while I’m fighting to take the crown in this game, you’re collecting stray animals and bringing them home?” he asked dryly, giving me the added tilt of his head with an eyebrow raise. And so devastatingly sexy doing it, I could lick him.
“’Fraid so, Blackstone,” I shot back confidently. “He’s a good one.”
“Well, that’s obvious, my darling. He chose you, so he must be good,” Ethan said, bending down to rub under his chin. “Are you going to protect your mistress and keep her from danger, young sir?” He spoke earnestly to the dog, eye to eye, man to man. “Hmmm? Because, it’s a very important charge, but somebody’s got to do it. If you want the job, it’s yours.”
I laughed at how sweet he was about everything I tried to do. Could there be any man on earth more perfect than my man? Highly doubtful. “So you approve of him being our new guard dog here in the country?”
“I do, my beauty.”
“WHAT a beautiful dog. Oh, my God, he looks just like Sir Frisk.” Hannah bent down to pet him and held his face as she studied him thoroughly. “He could be his descendant.”
“So everyone keeps telling me. I want to see this painting.”
“I’ll show you,” Zara said, grabbing hold of my hand.
Ethan stayed in the kitchen with his sister. He wasn’t quite up to navigating marble staircases like the one at Hallborough just yet. “You take good care of your mistress, young sir,” Ethan told the dog in a serious tone. “And you be careful, too,” he told me, with a pat to my belly, and a kiss to my forehead.
“I will.” I put my hand to his cheek and mouthed, love you.
“Me too,” he whispered. That was my Ethan, still controlling and protecting even while semi-mobile and using crutches. He was determined to be off the crutches by baby time and just have the walking boot. I knew he was disappointed he couldn’t do some of the things he wanted, but he hadn’t uttered a single complaint. Broken legs heal.
Zara took us to the guest wing of the house. The part they used for the bed & breakfast, which was why I hadn’t seen the portrait of Sir Frisk before. I’d been to the gallery, of course, which in stately homes such as Hallborough, was simply an elegant room in which to showcase the private collection of art the family had acquired over time. Hallborough’s gallery had quite a few marble sculptures, and some lovely paintings, but I’d not spent a lot of time over here studying everything in minute detail. I hadn’t had the time, and had been working on my own garden and decorating projects at Stonewell.
She stopped us at the end of a hallway, with doors on either side opening into guest rooms. Right above a carved table hung a large painting of a German Shepherd in rich detail, almost photographic in its execution. I immediately thought of the camera obscura and figured the artist must have employed the use of one to do this portrait. The subject did, indeed, look like my new pet, in coloring and in body shape. A gold plate had been made and attached at the bottom of the ornate frame with the title of the work Sir Frisk engraved into the brass.
“Well, that is something, now, isn’t it?” I grinned at Zara. “They do look almost exactly alike.”
She giggled. “Said so, Auntie Brynne.”
“I like the name. Do you like it, Zara?”
She gave me a serious nod. “That’s his name. Sir Frisk,” she said with authority, as if the decision had been made from the beginning. “He can play with Rags and they will be best friends.”
“What do you say, Sir Frisk?” I asked him. He lolled his tongue out happily, and cocked his head at me. “I can call you Sir for short.” I scratched him under the chin and I’m pretty sure he was in doggy love with his new life regardless of what we would be calling him. But still, he should have a regal name to go with his gorgeous bearing. “Sir Frisk it is then,” I announced.
Just then I felt the baby kick. “Oh, baby’s moving,” I said to Zara. “Do you want to feel?”
“Yes, please.” I brought her little hand to just under my shirt and pressed it flat down. Her eyes grew wide and she got excited. “I feel her moving around. She likes Sir Frisk and she wants to play with him.”
I laughed at her antics. “Well, we don’t know if the baby is a girl. It might be a boy I’m having.”
Zara ignored that possibility and said, “It’s a girl, Auntie Brynne.”
“How do you know?”
She shrugged. “Because I want a girl baby.”
Leave it to a child to tell you how things should be. Since we’d met, I’d learned Zara had opinions on things. On lots of things. And she had no qualms about expressing her opinions, either. She was, quite simply, lovable down to the hairs on her head. No matter what the sex of my baby, Zara would be the best cousin ever. I felt really happy at that thought.
Then my second surprise.
I took another glance at the painting, Sir Frisk, because there was something about it that was very familiar… Something also told me I knew that artist’s hand. I’d worked on other things very similar. When you conserve art, you spend many quiet hours with a painting and you get to know the artist even though they’ve been dead for a long time. You see how they set down the images they create, and their process becomes recognizable the longer you spend with the works.
Was it possible?
I looked closer and scoured the bottom for a signature. The glaze had darkened over the years, partially obscuring the lettering, so it wasn’t easy to make out, but it was there. The letters were also made smaller than typical for the particular artist I had in mind. But I knew what I was looking for. I could smell victory when I made out the letter T followed by MALLERT—before the rest was hidden by the edge of the frame. My heart pounded deeply as I realized what I was staring at. A previously unknown painting, of a very handsome dog named Sir Frisk, painted by the skillful hand of none other than the celebrated, Tristan Mallerton, creator of Lady Percival, and hundreds of other masterpieces. Jesus Christ, what else do they have in this house?!
I so needed to call Gaby and tell her this fantastic bit of incredible news.
6th February
BRYNNE was so beautiful. I was admiring from the bed, where I had a great view of her in front of the mirror as she brushed out her hair. She’d always been beautiful to me, but my connection to her now was so much deeper than it had been before. More inner feelings. My accident had broken through the really impenetrable part of me, when I was faced with saying goodbye to her up on that mountain in Switzerland. Everything seemed to reset, or realign, within my emotional grid. So the horribleness of my past was now made less important, because of what I had with her. Brynne, and our life together, was the most crucial part in making me the man I had become up to this point in my life. It was a hard concept to explain in words, but I knew how I felt, and it was a great deal better—like I could get beyond the events that had shaped so much of me in the past decade, and finally put them in their place. And leave them there.
This included Sarah Hastings for me, and Lance Oakley for Brynne. Peace, for lack of a better term, had been made and accepted within the constructs of our relationships with those people. For me, I’d made apology to Sarah about my part in Mike’s death, and as difficult as it’d been, it was crucial in letting some of that guilt go. That’s what she’d given me the day before Switzerland. Forgiveness. Dr. Wilson seemed to know what he was doing when he assigned homework. I was giving the therapy my best go, and hoping for the best, too.
Brynne had her own reasons for meeting Lance Oakley and hearing his version of things. I might not believe a word of what he’d told her was the truth, but I also knew it didn’t matter what I believed. I’d never seen the video of her and him, and I never would. Brynne was the person in charge of her destiny, and she was the one who called the shots when it came to her emotional healing. If what he’d revealed helped her to feel better about herself, then I was in full support of it. I couldn’t deny that I was fucking thrilled about Oakley being gone from London, either. That cocksucker would have been a massive problem for me if he’d decided to stick around and be her new friend. I could be reasonable to a point, and he would be fucking well past it.
In the end, both Brynne and I learned a valuable lesson about trust and respect for the parts of us that needed to stay separate. And that nothing was more important than the other person’s happiness. She loved me, and I knew that, just as she knew how much I loved her. I tried to show her every chance I got.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked, as she came out of the bathroom dressed in a filmy nightgown I could see right through. Much better than that ugly thing I destroyed. She’d grown curvier, but her frame was still the slim shape as before, and except for her belly and breasts, she looked mostly the same to me. My beautiful American girl.
“Nothing but how beautiful you are.” I held out my arms. “Come here, baby.”
She smiled her half-smile and crawled up into bed, carefully pulling back the sheet and blanket to expose me. I don’t think the state of my cock was a surprise for her, either. It still worked just fine even if I couldn’t stand, or carry her when we were in the heat of fucking. My leg would heal in time though, and I would eventually get back to normal with how I liked to make love to Brynne.
“I thought so,” she purred, before hiking up her nightgown and straddling me. She sat down right over my rock-hard length, her legs splitting open so the folds of her pussy kissed the length of my cock.
I thrust up against the slick heat of her and groaned from the contact. “Oh, fuck, you feel so good.” I grappled with the hem of her gown and pulled it up over her head, tossing it away. “That’s much better,” I told her, roaming my eyes over her naked body. I could never get tired of looking at her, pregnant or not, she captivated me. I dipped down to a breast and sucked the nipple into my mouth as she started rocking up and down the shaft of my cock.
She pushed her tits against my mouth so I could work both of them over good, sucking and biting the nipples until they were tight and hard, and she was about to come from sliding her clit against my cock.
“You want to come, baby?” I met her eyes and saw the slack-jawed desperation in her expression. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you,” I told her.
“Ahhh…I want to come with—I want your cock in me when I come…right here.” She rotated her hips and really worked her sex over me good, the scent of her arousal in the air making me burn hotter. Then she lifted up onto her knees and took my cock in her hand.
Oh, fuck yes!
She moved slowly down and impaled herself on me.
Felt so fuckin’ good I growled from the pleasure of the hot grip of her inner walls clamping around my convulsing cock. I took her mouth and plundered it with my tongue, sweeping around in a circle as deep as I could go. I always wanted to be inside her in as many places as possible. Something drove that need in me, and I only knew I was compelled to be that way with her and couldn’t rein it in. I also knew she loved me to be that way.
I settled my hands beneath her bum and we started to go at the fucking in earnest—me thrusting up and lifting, her riding up and down my cock with a little squeeze of her muscles and a twist of her hips. We made it last as long as we could, slowing down just enough to keep us on the edge. I let her keep the pace she liked. We’d be at this for as long as she wanted. I was always all about pleasing my girl, and thought she was so goddamn sexy when she got desperate for my cock and didn’t want to wait for it. I loved working her up into a fuck-frenzy to pull us both over the edge when it was time for us to fall.
She reached her hand around and found my sac, squeezing my balls and my cock simultaneously, flipping my switch.
And propelling the pace of our fucking into overdrive.
“You’re so fuckin’ perfect, baby. My cock feels so good inside you! I want you like this forever. I’ll never stop crawling up…inside…YOU.”
“Don’t ever stop, Ethan. I don’t ever want you to stop.”
“Never, baby…I’m doing this for the rest of my life.”
I brought a hand forward to find her soaking clit and circled it as she continued to ride me. Tonight I wanted to come with her—both of us at the same time. It was important to me. I wanted to feel her spasms when the top of my cock shot off inside her. I wanted to swallow her cries when my tongue owned her mouth, and I savoured the sweet flavour of her.
Of course, I had to stop eventually, after I’d made her come, screaming my name. And after I’d poured everything I had deep inside her. It was the meaning behind our words that were significant, not the literal definition. I would never stop loving Brynne, and fucking wildly at times was definitely part of demonstrating that love. We had always been on the same page with the sex. Thank the gods for whichever one of them blessed us in that sector. I was under no delusions about how unusual and rare it was to find someone so compatible.
I lifted her off my hips, settling her on her side so we could face each other. I still needed to be able to look into her eyes and kiss her afterward. She was sleepy and soft from climaxing, and I worried that maybe what we’d just done was a little too much, and too rough for her more advanced stage in the pregnancy.
“Was all of that okay, baby? Maybe we shouldn’t have been so rough at it.” I traced her lips with my finger. She opened her mouth for me and I slipped my finger in between her lips. She closed them in on my digit, wrapping her warm tongue around it, sucking gently. I felt my cock twitch and start to harden up again. Not happening, you fucking Neanderthal. You can’t.
“Mmm hmm, don’t worry. I feel wonderful right now,” she murmured with her eyes barely open. “I needed that orgasm. Badly. And I love you…”
“And I need to kiss you now,” I said, dipping my lips to hers, our heads resting on the pillows.
So I kissed my girl, and told her all of the things that were important for me to say to her, and necessary for her to hear from me, until we fell asleep, tangled together, our bodies touching wherever we could comfortably connect.
I felt something different. Utter contentment…and peace. It was the first time I could ever remember feeling that way, and I prayed it wouldn’t be the last.
