“He’s too far gone,” he muttered. “I buckled his windpipe. It’s too late to save him.”
I knew just as well as Nick did that he’d had no intention of saving him. That every punch was intended to end him. My womb tightened as I watched Nick pulling the ligature taut. I crept closer, the leaves soft underfoot.
“Don’t look at this, Grace,” said Nick, his voice tight and breathless as he pulled.
I paid him no mind and crouched beside him. The rain had stopped, and now the moon peeked out frombehind the wandering clouds. It allowed me to see him better. Tom’s bloated face turned a deeper red, his chest stilled, eyes bulging, as he gave way to death. I heard a soft whistling sound. I pressed his nostrils shut with my thumb and forefinger, pinching them. I held them until the whistling stopped, and for a short time longer, just to be certain.
I watched the light fade from his eyes so elegantly that it threw me deeper into ecstasy.
Pure, uninhibited, rapture.
When it was done, I felt Nick’s eyes on me, watching my chest heaving, overwhelmed as I was with desire. He drew me into his arms and kissed me, while his fingers found my sex. I groaned against him, tears streaming from my tightly closed eyes. Within seconds I was falling, shattering into thousands of pieces, crying against his mouth. I bucked lustily as he finished me, unravelled me, and left me limp in his arms.
But Nick wasn’t finished.
He spread open my legs and entered me, slamming me into the dirty ground, clutching handfuls of soil either side of my head. It was so good, and so right, to feel him inside me. I forgot the world. I forgot Louisa. But I could not forget Tom’s dead body beside us.
All I needed or ever wanted was him. Our bodies. The cold, wet soil. This exquisite death.
He reached his end and collapsed in my arms, panting, as his lips sought mine once more. Nick understood me so completely, on a visceral level, that I knew I could never accept another man. It had to be him, always. Forever.
“I’m sorry, Grace,” he cried between kisses, clutchingat me, as if begging me to stay when I had no intention of leaving.
“Hush,” I said, stroking his face. “It’s over now. Listen.”
Nick listened, softening his hard breaths. Only the sounds of the night returned to us; the moaning wind, the groan of the trees. The hum of the cars on the motorway.
“Why did you go with him, Grace?” he asked, cupping my face in his hands. “Why did you do it?”
Sadness flooded my eyes, making them sting. I looked down at the forest floor.
“I’ve no place with you,” I said mournfully, my voice thickening as the words left my mouth. “I don’t belong there. You knew it. You always knew it.”
“I made monumental mistakes, Grace. I betrayed your trust. I wish I could take it all back. It was out of fear of losing you, fear that if you knew of Louisa, you would never stay. That you would never understand that my soul is still yours, that it belongs with you.”
“How could that be if you still take care of her? Still visit with her? You held her to your chest like you – ”
“BecauseI have to, can’t you see?” He moaned his retort with such despair that I closed my mouth, and was unable to say another word more.
He let out ragged breaths, leaning over me, hunched and broken. The strain of keeping his secret had tortured him.
“I do it because she is my wife and she needs me. She’s alone without me. She’s lost, and very, very sick. If I’d been a good enough husband to her then I wouldn’t have allowed her to dissolve like she did, to become so unrecognisable,” he said, shaking his head in hopelessness. “But I need you tothinkabout this. What I do for her, I do because of the love weonceshared. She is living proof that I am a man of my word, that Icherishthe ones I love, always.
“What I do for her, I would do for you tenfold. I would be a slave for you, your loyal servant, always, because my heart belongs to you, Grace. I would keep your secrets. I would cherish your darkness like it was my own, becauseit ismy own.”
Tears fell from my eyes, my heart heaving.
He’d proven that. There was no denying it. My still-pulsing sex and Tom’s lifeless body beside us was proof enough of that. I knew he loved me.
“Butshewould never accept it. Even in her right mind, she would never, ever want to lose you to someone else. Even if a life with her was impossible.” I remembered how content she looked in his arms when he held her. How easily he made her feel safe.
“You are the woman I please now.Youare my priority, Grace. I vow, if you can forgive this, to never let you doubt my loyalty to you again,” said Nick, taking my hand in his and pressing kisses to my knuckles.
“Even if you mean all that...and I believe you do,” I said, eyeing Tom’s body. There had never been a greater example of his loyalty to me than now. “Whydid you ask me to marry you?”
He sighed, sounding exhausted and broken.
“Because I want you to be my wife,” he said, with a slight smile detectable as he kissed the sapphire on my finger. “The process of divorcing poor Louisa has been painstaking. It took years to get to the point where it was almost finished, when I only needed to say the word tohave it finalised. I baulked. Long before I met you, I left its status in limbo, so certain that I was simply incapable of moving on. It had been twenty years, and still, I felt I was betraying her if I severed our marital ties, even though she could never again be a wife to me. When I fell in love with you, all that changed. I saw a future; a lamplight in the distance, glowing just faintly, promising a way forward.”
