His lips didn’t move against mine at first, they just rested there in silence as if getting reacquainted, but it became too much for me. I released my anticipation with a tremble, shuddering harder when he responded by cinching his arms around me and lifting me off the floor. I wrapped my legs and arms around him, wanting everything else to be able to wrap around him as well, so I wouldn’t have to be without him again.
The burst of his heart shunned the two layers of cotton separating our bodies. It rattled its beat into my body, filling my soul with an intimacy I’d never known before William and I knew I never would with anyone else.
Despite the waist my legs were wrapped around and the neck my arms clutched to, his mouth distracted me from these other embraces and it wasn’t long before I was gasping in the parted spaces of our mouth—as if I’d drown from it.
“Alright, we’ve been patient enough.” I was vaguely aware of a voice interrupting our reunion from behind, but it wasn’t until I felt two sets of arms wrap around us that I took any notice of it.
He groaned with his lips still adhered to mine.
“You’re only delaying the inevitable, William,” Joseph warned, as Cora’s and his embraces tightened. It was a good thing I didn’t need to breathe anymore because it would have been impossible.
William sighed and squeezed me tighter to him for a moment before gripping his hands to my h*ps and hoisting me down from the position I would have spent the rest of my eternity in.
“I think I know why little brothers are generally classified as annoying,” he said, smiling between me and Cora before embracing Joseph.
“Thanks for taking care of her,” William said to Joseph. “You too, Cora.” He patted his brother on the back before grabbing up Cora, who barely reached the height of William’s armpit, in a hug. “She looks better than the last time I came back from an extended vacation.” He used the term we used for the endless missions the Council sent him on; partly because of his unparalleled skill in the medical field as a doctor with two centuries of experience, but mostly to keep us apart I guessed.
William had been doing his dutiful part as an Immortal this past summer in hopes he’d gain favor from the Council so they might consider granting us a Betrothal. He was doing this all for me, because I’d asked him to—it was ultimately my decision that tortured us both by the thousands of miles that separated us more days than we were together. Yet another thorn in my side senactually, this was more like a stake through my heart—was an Immortal stipulation that we were not allowed to choose who we wanted to spend our lives with.
The Council did that, by granting Betrothals they deemed satisfactory by plugging an equation into their dimwitted minds and shooting an answer out their butts. It was a bunch of bull to me, but Immortals were as merciless as they were dogmatic and I knew the penalty William and I would face if we broke the rules. I didn’t mind risking my neck to shun the Immortal way if it meant being with him every way possible, but I wouldn’t risk his. Not again.
“She did better this time, too,” Cora lied, looking at me with a knowing expression. “She got out of bed most mornings on her own”—another lie—“and even managed to kick Patrick’s butt a couple of times during her training.”
This was actually true. The Council had assigned my strength training to Patrick—William’s younger brother, Joseph’s older brother, and my biggest bother—who was as adept at martial arts as he was at running his mouth. Patrick was my age, the worst kind of good-looking because he was fully aware of it, and incorrigible in the non-charming kind of way, although there wasn’t a fiber of his make-up he didn’t see as charming. He’d classified himself as a lady’s man first and foremost, although I had yet to see him with an actual lady who wasn’t his sister-in-law. For the past few months, I’d spent a few hours every day learning how to spar, jab, block, and generally become a butt-kicking, bad-ass Immortal thanks to Patrick.
Despite my earlier view of Patrick being a carefree charmer who would rather smirk at responsibility than embrace it, he’d proven me wrong. But this was Patrick we were talking about, so he could always be counted on to add some infuriating comment or obscene gesture just when I’d let myself be impressed by him, and the past few times, I’d been angry enough to drop him, thanks to the moves he was teaching me.
William released his hold on Cora and slid back to me, eyeing me with pride. “Bryn’s a woman of many talents,” he said, his eyes flashing with a hidden meaning that made me blush. He drew me back to him and placed a kiss over my forehead. I felt a little self-conscious having Joseph and Cora as an audience to our intimacy, but William didn’t look the slightest bit uneasy.
He lowered his mouth to my ear. “I’m whole again,” he breathed. I didn’t need an explanation—I couldn’t have understood what he meant better.
I unhooked one of his hands from my waist and lifted it to my heart. “Me too.”
He closed his eyes and left his hand where I held it against me while his expression grew peaceful and the lines of exhaustion etched in his face (he always came back with the pain of his missions carved into it) melted away and he wore the face of William that was rare. It was a worry-free one.
“Why don’t we have a seat and catch up?” Joseph suggested, just in time too, because my heart was not the only thing acting erratically from the continued pressure of his hand. The only thing that kept me from wrapping myself around him again was Cora and Joseph’s proximity to us. I surely would have kicked or punched them as my limbs searched for their places to attach.
William gathered up my hands and led me to the recliner stuffed in the corner of the living room. It was something straight from the seventies—olive green, threadbare along the arms, and downright ugly, but it was Joseph’s favorite piece of furniture in the entire house that was brimming with modern designs and comforts.
Being the wife she was, Cora didn’t relegate the recliner into a back room or office, but put it on display in the living room, much to her chagrin. She scowled at the thing every time she looked at it and William and Joseph had made it their mission to use it every chance they got just to prove its worth.
William plopped down in the chair that belonged in the bargain basement of the Salvation Army and pulled me down onto his lap. Maybe this ratty old thing wasn’t so bad after all . . .
Cora smiled without humor at William, while the two brothers exchanged grins full of camaraderie. I curved my head into the bend of his neck, breathing in the scent of him that was aromatic in a spicy/woodsy kind of way . . . in a delicious kind of way.
Whenever he was gone, I found myself making a lot of recipes with cinnamon. When I’d added it to taco meat one night, I’d been banned from the spice cupboard and doled out whatever I needed from Cora or Joseph in rationed quantities. I also found myself lying in the center of a forest after a rain storm, when the scents of the musky woods would be at their strongest.
If being in love made a person mad, then being away from the one you loved made you a lunatic. I recognized the symptoms and knew I was walking the fine line of sanity virtually every hour he was gone.
“How was Africa?” Joseph asked, his amusement dimming.
“Long,” William said, sighing. “Not much has changed from the last time I was there, either. Although this time, the pieces of human bodies I was putting back together were those of the tribe who did the massacring last time. It never ends . . .” His voice sounded heavy, tired even. “For every body I’d sew back together, there’d be ten I couldn’t. There’s so much evil out there,” he said, his body growing tense. “It never ends. It never will end.”
Cora chimed in before Joseph could: they were both hopeless optimists to the end “But there’s plenty of good out there that’s worth protecting, don’t forget that, William.”
He took in a heavy breath, my chest rising with his. “You’re right, although it’s difficult to remember when everything good in your life is half a world away.”
“I’ll second that,” I mumbled.
“How’s the family been?” he asked, tracing patterns into my palm.
“You haven’t seen anyone else yet?” Joseph asked and I wondered if he was being serious. When his smile broke, I knew he wasn’t.
“For some reason I just had to get here first.” William’s arm tightened over me.
Cora jabbed her husband in the ribs as she took a seat beside him on the couch. “Father’s been alright, kind of removed.” Joseph rubbed at his ribs, feigning agony. “Well, more than usual, at least. And Nathanial and Abigail—”
Cora set her jaw and exchanged a quick look with me; this had been a regular topic of our morning conversations. The oldest Hayward brother and his wife had gone from disinterest, to dislike, to disdain for me. If I answered the telephone in Joseph and Cora’s house while one of them was calling, they hung up. Maybe they didn’t know Joseph and Cora had this twenty-first century invention known as caller ID.
Then again, maybe they did.
“Let’s just say they’ve been just as ‘friendly’ as ever,” Joseph finished, pointing his eyes at me to demonstrate who their “friendliness” was directed at.
William exhaled, popping my chest forward with a sudden burst, and I felt a flash of anger so scalding running through him it was uncomfortable.
“Any news from Newburg?” William asked, keeping his tone regulated, and I’m sure a silent, but potent exchange was taking place in his eyes to his brother. He didn’t want me to worry about any retribution or payback we might suffer from John Townsend’s Alliance of Inheritors.
Four months back, when William saved my life by making me Immortal, I’d wound up at Townsend Manor where he was posing as a professor in the most powerful and destructive Inheritor Alliance in the world in order to unveil how they were upending the Mortal world so the Guardians could put a stop to it. The night before I was set to escape from Townsend Manor, I ended up Betrothed to John Townsend, the most powerful Inheritor, the most corrupt Immortal, and the man most capable of making my skin crawl. Twelve hours later, he had me sentenced to death, where he and his six other Council members very nearly succeeded in sucking away every last drop of . . . me.
The night of the Betrothal Ball when I’d been Betrothed to John, I knew I’d wind up dead because of him one day, but I suppose I’m to blame for expediting it by him finding me making out in bed with William, who he also discovered that same morning had been betraying him the past ten years. Talk about the perfect storm.
“No, it’s been quiet,” Joseph said, dropping his head. “Too quiet.”
William nodded and I sensed a storm of contemplation roll through his mind.
The pensive silence was shattered by another Hayward entering the living room. The screen door slammed shut again, but this time it didn’t announce my beloved, but my bane. I sighed before he opened his mouth, already well aware of what he’d be serving. Sarcasm with a side of ego.