Savage

J
enna Carver let
herself into the apartment with the key Farrell had given her last week. After eight months, she knew only a few things about Farrell Black. One of them was that he didn’t trust easily, didn’t open his heart to anyone. Which is why she’d been surprised when he’d given her the key.

But her surprise had quickly been replaced by fear. She’d made promises to herself, and they didn’t include getting distracted by someone like Farrell Black. Someone who was strong and gorgeous and even kind — to her at least — but who made his living working for some of the most ruthless men in London. The heady combination of lust and love that roared through her body when he touched her was irrelevant, as was the fact that she’d fallen deeply and hopelessly in love with him.

He’d been honest from the beginning, even if he hadn’t gone into detail. He didn’t believe in the rule of law. He was a criminal. He would always be a criminal. According to him, there would always be people who didn’t play by the rules.

And you didn’t stop rule breakers by making more rules.

That was better left to people like him. People who did the things no one else wanted to do. People who were willing to get their hands dirty.

But she’d seen the result of crime — both organized and otherwise — in the neighborhood where she’d grown up. Drug dealers and pimps and loan sharks didn’t make the world a better place, whatever Farrell wanted her to believe. Her own father had been a janitor most of his life, towing the line even when her mother seemed drunk for weeks at a time. He’d never resorted to crime, but it had been all around them, and Jenna had no intention of living that kind of life. She’d worked too hard. Come too far.

And now there was someone else to think about.

She crossed the expansive loft, taking in the industrial atmosphere for the last time. With concrete floors, exposed pipes, and a sometimes leaky roof, it wasn’t exactly comfortable. But Farrell insisted he liked the place, and somehow she’d grown to like it, too. Her eyes landed on the big bed in the middle of the room, the sheets still rumpled from their lovemaking the night before, a vibrator sitting on the nightstand. She couldn’t stop the images that flashed through her mind.

Farrell’s head between her legs while he lapped at her sex until she cried out in ecstasy.

The expression of ownership in his eyes when he drove into her.

The feel of his hands on her hips before he invaded her from behind.

The memories caused a flush of heat to rise to her cheeks. She’d never done with anyone the things she did with Farrell. Never said the things they said to each other in the heat of their passion.

She’d let him consume her. Own her. Occupy her.

But if she let him, he would destroy her. And their baby, too.

She set the key down on the dining room table and pulled the little white stick out of her pocket. It was stupid to carry it around when she already knew she was pregnant. But it still didn’t seem real, and she found herself staring at the pink plus sign, trying to remind herself what was important. Trying to banish the panic that swelled like a storm inside her at the thought of leaving him.

Telling him wasn’t an option. Men like Farrell didn’t have babies. And if they did, they didn’t make good fathers. She wanted more for their child than a father who could go to jail or be gunned down by a rival at any minute. She wanted a white picket fence and a man who would be home for dinner. A man who would keep them safe.

They were things she said to herself a hundred times in the week since she’d found out she was pregnant. She repeated them like a mantra, a way to remind herself that the way she felt about Farrell — the way he’d moved into her heart like it was an empty room that had been waiting just for him — didn’t matter in the face of this new responsibility. It didn’t make it hurt any less, but it did harden her resolve when she felt it waning.

Which was a lot.

She pulled out the letter she’d written the night before and set it on the table under the key. It didn’t say anything about the pregnancy. In fact, she’d erred on the side of coldness, just to make sure he wouldn’t come after her. That part hurt, because even though Farrell liked to act like nothing could touch him, she saw the shadow that dropped over his eyes when he talked about the past, felt the air around them thicken with pain whenever the subject of his family came up.

Most importantly, she saw the way he looked at her. Like she belonged to him. Like she always had. And that meant her letter and abandonment would hurt him. And she never, ever wanted to hurt the man who had held her so tenderly, made love to her so passionately, looked at her with such love.

She shook her head as if that would banish her second thoughts. She’d already made her decision. She would go to New York, leave no forwarding address, make sure her sister, Kate, understood that she didn’t want to be found. She would have her child, raise him or her to be honest and true. She would begin again. It wouldn’t be easy, but she had her degree. She would manage.

She ran her fingers across the name on the envelope one last time.

Farrell.

It seemed impossible that she would never speak his name aloud. That she would never say it as he moved over her, their bodies entwined.

But Jenna knew firsthand that if you didn’t have a plan for your life, it would just happen to you. One day you’d be young and full of promise, like her parents in their wedding photos. The next you’d be cleaning up after your alcoholic spouse and getting dressed for the dead end job that barely paid the bills.

No. She would be smarter than that. She would be practical. She would do the right thing even though it was hard. Even though it felt like someone was wrenching her heart, still bloody and beating, right out of her chest.

She removed her hands from the letter, took one last look at the loft, and hurried for the door, fingering the pregnancy test in her pocket.

It was the only thing that kept her from staying forever.

“
L
ooks
like she’s out cold.”

Jenna looked up at one of the flight attendants, his eyes on the little girl asleep in the seat next to her.

She smiled. “Too much excitement for a four-year-old.”

“Sometimes it’s too much excitement for me,” he deadpanned.

Jenna laughed softly.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked. “We’ll begin our descent to Heathrow in about twenty minutes.”

“I’m fine, thank you,” Jenna said.

He nodded, then touched her shoulder as he passed. It was a small gesture, but it took her by surprise. The gentle pressure, the warmth of his palm. It had been purely professional, but it caused a powerful surge of longing to roll through her body. It had been a long time since she’d been touched even casually by a man. Her first year in New York she’d been focused on settling in. Later, after she went to work for Nico Vitale, there had been plenty of men around, but as nice as they were, they weren’t the kind of guys she wanted around Lily. And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Not a single one of them had approached her for more than friendly office conversation. She’d always wondered if it was because of Farrell.

The name tore through her like a hurricane.

Farrell Black.

Crime lord. Genius. Lover.

She’d met him when she was fresh out of college, living in a dumpy little flat not two blocks from the childhood home she abhorred. She’d been desperate for a job that would prove she was more than the daughter of an alcoholic and a janitor, and she spent her days combing the job listings online and sending out her resume.

Then one night she’d gone to a local pub after a particularly demoralizing day. Kate had called to say their mother was drunk, standing in the middle of the road in nothing but a T-shirt and her underwear. Jenna had rushed over to help, but by the time they’d wrestled their mother into bed amid a torrent of cursing and name calling, Jenna had been late to an interview. She told herself it wouldn’t have mattered — the sour-faced man who interviewed her hadn’t once cracked a smile — but it was small comfort. She was at the end of her rope. Depressed, lonely, beginning to wonder if everyone had been right about her after all. If she was destined to remain poor and desperate in spite of the years spent studying at university while her friends partied and traveled and had sex. She’d been sitting alone, hoping none of the men in the bar would approach her, when she’d looked up to find Farrell Black standing there — all six feet, four inches of him.

Her heart had seemed to stall in her chest. He looked down at her with eyes so dark they were almost black, his gaze scanning her body with such intensity she almost believed he could see every inch of her, even through her clothes.

He was massive, his shoulders straining against the fabric of his long sleeve T-shirt, the cut of his biceps visible even through the fabric. His knuckles were bruised and scraped. Tattoos peeked out from the neckline of his shirt, and when he leaned over the bar to order two beers, she saw more ink at the back of his neck. She had the crazy desire to see him naked. To uncover the image on his back, trace the lines of it with her fingers, touch her lips to the rippling muscle she knew would be there.

She’d had to shake herself from the fog that had dropped over her normally rational mind. But when she really looked at his face, she was more captivated than ever. A faint scar ran under his left eye, all the way to a jawbone that was so defined it could have cut glass. Instead of marring his good looks, the scar seemed to deepen them, and she felt a dangerous kind of thrill, like riding on the back of a motorcycle that was going too fast.

Terrifying yet undeniably exciting.

They’d talked long into the night, and again the next night. She’d been surprised to discover that he was educated at Oxford, although he’d never actually graduated. He wouldn’t talk about his childhood or his parents — other than to say they were dead — but he was honest about the fact that his business interests were less than legal. He was a strange amalgam of brutality and refinement, a man who talked passionately about film and literature and philosophy only moments before his gaze hardened like stone. There was something violent about the energy that surrounded him, and she’d been horrified to realize that rather than scaring her, it turned her on so powerfully she’d grown wet sitting next to him.

She’d resisted it for a time, giving herself pep talks about why Farrell was bad for her. Why being with him would only lead her toward the life she was trying to escape. She continued resisting — at least in her mind — even after Farrell had taken command of her body, showing her a side of herself that was so dirty, so shameless, that she sometimes blushed the next day thinking about what they’d done together.

Eventually she’d given in. She’d felt helpless in the wake of his hold on her. How could she resist when giving in was so delicious?

But then she got pregnant, and she hadn’t been able to remain in denial. She’d agonized for weeks over whether to tell Farrell. Whether to stay or go. She was still agonizing the night he came to her apartment with blood on his hands. She’d been worried at first, but he’d only laughed, informing her that it wasn’t his. He’d said it with so much certainty that she knew it had never — would never — be his. And in that moment she knew what she had to do.

She’d worked her whole life to build something better for herself. She wanted a clean life, an honest living, the respect of the people around her. She would not give her child the kind of life she had growing up. A life filled with insecurity and fear. She would do better.

And she had. She’d left London, leaving a note she could only hope would make him stay away. She’d gone to New York, gotten a job with MediaComm in the marketing department, and then as Nico Vitale’s assistant. When she found out that he was the boss of the New York crime family, he’d met her concerns with surprising kindness and a promise that she would only work on the legal side of his business, arranging charitable contributions and discreetly seeing to the details of his personal life. Any hesitation she’d had was banished by Nico’s assurances and an increase in pay that meant she would be able to better care for Lily.

She’d half expected Farrell to chase her down, to find her and discover she was pregnant. But the letter she’d left him must have served its purpose. She never saw or heard from him again.

And now she remembered why she didn’t allow herself the luxury of memory. Remembering Farrell and all that had happened between them was like reopening an old wound; it hurt like crazy and was painfully familiar. It was better to forget. That’s how she’d survived without him all this time.

Her life had been her daughter and her career until the Syndicate fell, which is how she found herself out of a job when she got the call saying her father had been killed. It hadn’t quite hit her yet. She hadn’t seen him or her mother since she left home for New York, and his death still felt surreal, like something that was happening to someone else. Her father had been an honest, hard-working man, a good man, and she suddenly wished she could go back and do everything differently. Stay in touch with her parents. Find a way to visit without worrying that Farrell would discover Lily. Be there for her father in what must have been a lonely middle age.

But of course, there was no going back. She could only pay her respects, say goodbye, be there for her sister and her mother.

All of which meant being back in London. Close to Farrell.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our descent to Heathrow International Airport.” The announcement, spoken by a woman, came over the loud speaker. “Please return all trays and seat backs to their upright position and buckle your safety belts.”

Jenna reached over to check Lily’s seat belt, trying not to wake her. Her long brown hair — the exact shade as Jenna’s — was tangled around her shoulders, her small chest rising and falling at even intervals. She was so beautiful it made Jenna’s heart hurt, and she felt the ferocious determination that always rose in her when she thought about Lily. Being her mother was the most important job of Jenna’s life. She would have to be careful, keep a low profile while they were back home. She might be alone, but she was making a good life for her daughter. Lily was happy and safe. There were no threats to their well-being, no worries about police or criminal rivals, a very real concern after seeing what Nico and Angel had gone through when they got on the wrong side of Raneiro Donati before the Syndicate fell.

Jenna had no desire to get mixed up in anything of the kind. She would attend her father’s funeral, spend some time with her mother and Kate, help them deal with the aftermath of her father’s death. Then she would go back to New York, find a new job, pick up where she left off.

It was for the best.