The Kiss Plot by Nicole French

Twenty-One

Zola’s next suggestion was to research Carson’s company rather than the man himself.

“That makes sense,” Skylar remarked as we bent around her computer back at the house. “What do historians always say? Follow the money?”

So we did. And while John Carson appeared to have hardly any web presence, after he became CEO of Chariot approximately twenty years earlier, his mark was obvious on the company’s life. After becoming one of the original purveyors of biological weapons during the fallout of the Vietnam War (and suffering the public blowback for it), Chariot quietly went back to electronics and parts manufacturing for a solid twenty-five years. They didn’t seriously get back into warmongering until after 9/11, though it was clear they never completely abandoned the research.

“Look at the shareholders’ reports,” Zola muttered, pointing through a few charts. “Their profits tripled. Every year.”

“Whoa,” Brandon said from his place on the couch, where he appeared to be looking at the same documents. “Looks like that’s also when they became a major supporter of a bunch of the war hawks in congress too. Did you see?”

When we looked closer at nearly every political contest, local and national over the last twenty years, Chariot’s political donations were nearly on par with the Koch brothers or Tom Steyer. Simply put, John Carson appeared to have nearly every major politician in his pocket, and had for the last two decades.

“I’d bet a thousand dollars that John Carson helped co-write the Patriot Act,” Ray said. “No more warrants on domestic surveillance? They would have been all over that kind of technology.”

“So Chariot now just makes stuff that spies on people?” Skylar asked between her teeth. “Or other stuff too?”

“Ohhh, they make a lot more than that,” Ray said gravely.

“Weaponry. Systems. Missiles,” Brandon chimed in. “You name anything that blows shit up, they make it. And they sell to about half the countries on the planet, or have since John Carson took over from his father in the nineties. Think Tony Stark before he became Iron Man, and that’s basically your dad, Jane. Well, maybe not Tony Stark. Obadiah Stane’s a better fit. Iron Monger, you know?”

He bounced between Skylar’s and my blank looks. Brandon always was a closet comic book fanatic, but it was actually one of the things I liked most about him. Underneath his sleek exterior, the guy really was a total dork.

“Since when did you become anti-gun?” Skylar asked.

Brandon glanced nervously at me. He didn’t realize I knew about his past—the one where he used to run around with hoodlums in South Boston until he was about twenty-one or so. I happened to know he still kept a loaded gun in a safe next to their bed. It was cause for many an argument between him and Skylar.

“This has nothing to do with that,” Brandon replied acerbically. “Over the last twenty years, Chariot Industries became the largest arms dealer in the world. John Carson has most of the federal government in his pocket, and probably most of the military too. NRA. GOP. DNC. Name your political acronym—he controls them all and sells bullets to everyone else on the planet that matters. He is the last person you’d ever want to piss off.”

Eric sank further into the sofa, where he hadn’t moved since we’d all migrated back to the house.

“Oh, fuck,” he moaned softly to the ceiling. “What the fuck are we going to do?”

We spent another few hours combing the internet for anything else that could get Zola started on an investigation he now insisted on spearheading. Even if the Brooklyn DA didn’t want to take it on, he had friends at the FBI who might. But Brandon was right: John Carson was a ghost. The fourth-generation head of a company that first made its millions profiteering during World War I, there were virtually no photographs of him past the age of fifteen or so.

“Here’s…oh, no, I think this is his father again, Jane,” Zola said when he found yet another picture of a heavily side-burned Gabriel Carson from the seventies. “Your grandpa sure liked a good leisure suit.”

I scowled. “He was not my grandfather. None of these people are my family.”

Zola shut his mouth—it wasn’t the first time I’d snapped at someone for making that kind of remark.

“Here!” Brandon said triumphantly. “Found him!”

We crowded around his laptop to look at a grainy People Magazine spread from the late eighties.

“That’s not him,” I said. “That’s Gabriel again.”

“Not him,” Brandon said. “Him.”

He pointed a big finger at a man lingering behind the principal three in the photo. It was unclear, but if I squinted, I could make out the features of a much younger man who had the same hooked nose and curly hair as the one who had so rudely disrupted my wedding. His eyes were dark, and he scowled in the photo.

“It says President Bush and the First Lady with Gabriel Carson and son, in Kennebunkport, 1988.”

I shoved my face closer. “Holy shit. That is him, isn’t it?”

I backed up so the others could see. He stood with the Bushes, one of the most important political dynasties in history. It was well documented that George W. had been a Skull and Bones member during his time at Yale. Maybe he had been a member of Janus too.

“Send me that link, will you?” Zola asked. “Right now, it’s the only identification we have. But I’ll need it to start the investigation.”

“And you’re sure your friends at the bureau won’t tip him off?” Eric asked for the fifteenth time.

Zola nodded. “These guys are friends of mine from the Marines. We did two tours together. Patriots, all of them.”

Eric nodded, and Brandon typed away while the rest of us adjourned to the living room. The photo felt like the hammer coming down on a nail. Our fate, somehow, was sealed with the realization that John Carson wasn’t just a strange, vindictive man who seemed to appear out of thin air to ruin Eric’s and my life. He was a real person. And real people had real weaknesses.

* * *

A few hours later,after Zola had left to get the last train back to New York, Eric and I finally lay down together in the dark.

We had not, after all, decided to sleep in separate bedrooms. But oddly, neither of us had gotten undressed, just lain on the bed in our clothes and faced each other on the pillows.

Everyone had decided it would probably be best to leave in the morning. An evening storm had hit Boston with the first snow of the season—even if Carson knew the coin was out of commission, no one thought he would retaliate until at least the morning, and that was only if he really was monitoring it that closely (Eric seemed to think he was, but I had my doubts that a very busy CEO was that obsessed with our sex life). At best, he’d send a new one with a strict order to wear it immediately or else. At worst, his thugs would try to force Eric into a van again.

“If he tries to abduct you…well, it’s not like we don’t have security,” Brandon added as we made our way upstairs to the bedrooms. He’d already called in two extra security men to guard the house that night, just as a precaution on top of Tony plus Skylar and Brandon’s usual detail.

So we decided on England, and from there, Europe. A perverse version of the honeymoon we never took.

“The U.K. has a good relationship with the U.S., but they don’t buy from Chariot,” Ray had informed us before leaving. “Lockheed wrapped up those contracts years ago, and I happen to know the current Prime Minister really does not like Chariot or any of its champions. It’s unlikely John Carson has MI-6 at his disposal.”

It didn’t make us feel completely better. But it was something.

So we packed our things that night, ready to make our move as soon as we could. Eric had only placed one phone call—a telegram to be delivered to Nina’s apartment tomorrow evening, informing her that we were taking a sudden honeymoon for a few weeks and requesting her to step in at board meetings. It wouldn’t go over very well, but it was a stopgap at least. Because we were together, we wouldn’t be violating the terms of Celeste’s will, and on top of that, it wouldn’t tip Calvin off immediately as to where we were.

“I don’t want to run,” I finally admitted as I turned onto my back. “It feels…wrong.”

Eric sighed. “We’ve been over this. It’s temporary. Just until Zola, Brandon, and I figure out what to do next. Brandon and I aren’t Jeff Bezos, but we’ve got resources between us. And Zola has at least a few people at the FBI on his side. We just need to figure out what Carson wants. His pressure point.”

I shrugged. “Maybe it’s just easier for you. This is what you do, right? Run away?”

Eric frowned. “Is that really what you think?”

“It’s becoming a bit of a pattern.”

He stared at me. “Takes one to know one.”

“That’s not fair. When was the last time I ran away from you?”

“I had to chase you into the ocean. You ran then.”

I didn’t say anything. It was true. But it wasn’t the same thing. Over the last six months, for the first time in my life, I had become the more tenacious of a pair. I had changed. I had stuck around. I had wondered where this man had gone. And it had hurt. So. Much.

“I’d follow you anywhere, you know,” Eric said quietly.

I remained silent. Would he, really? When he’d been so eager to leave?

Eric reached and turned my cheek so I was looking at him. I closed my eyes. He waited until I opened them again. And still, there was that open, almost plain face that sometimes flashed with such extreme, heart-wrenching charisma, I almost couldn’t take it. There was that earnest sorrow. The mask had evaporated.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For the way I’ve been acting. For that comment at dinner about Caitlyn. For everything.”

“Did you really talk to her?” I asked, surprised by how much the idea really hurt. In the grand scheme of things, Caitlyn Calvert’s pettiness seemed so small now. But she fit into Eric’s world in a way I didn’t. There was a part of me that might always feel threatened by that.

He shrugged. “Over speaker with everyone else. To be honest, she’s a big reason I didn’t want to go to Violet’s for Thanksgiving. They’re…well, I missed Nina. But Jane, you’re my family now. You have to know that.”

He pulled my chin toward him and examined my lips a moment. His mouth trembled, and I could feel mine do the same. I wanted to kiss him, but at the same time, that never seemed to rid us of the past that hung around like a ghost.

Eric seemed to understand. Instead of a controlling, forceful movement, he simply stroked the side of my cheek. Then only after our breathing calmed, he placed a chaste kiss on one corner of my lips. I welcomed the touch, but the rankling from the past several weeks still lingered.

He broke away with a sad expression. “It’s going to take more than that, isn’t it?”

I quirked a brow. “You think?”

Eric sighed, but didn’t argue. “We could go back. Be roommates for the next month. Pretend the necklace was run over by a car and let him give me another until you can leave for good. I never—Jane, I swear to God, I never thought it would be this insane for you. You don’t have to bear this shitty burden. I don’t for one goddamn second think I’m worth it.”

I toyed with his hands. His fingertips were calloused—from climbing, he told me once. So unlike what you would expect from a blueblood like him.

“The problem in the church wasn’t that you screwed Caitlyn five years ago,” I said, surprising myself when I changed the subject completely. “I just want to make that clear. It’s that you never told me. Just like you never told me about your family, your dad, Penny, Janus…” I started to feel dizzy with all the secrets this man had kept. “It’s that even now, I’m still kind of in the dark…”

“Jane…”

“What did he do to you?” I asked suddenly. “Really. I need to know.”

Eric stilled. “Who?”

I turned so I could see his face clearly. He didn’t have to look at me, but I wanted to look at him during this conversation.

“Carson,” I said quietly. “Why—what are you so scared of? Really?”

There was a long silence—long enough that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then Eric’s hand stretched and took a harsh grip on the sheets.

“He…kept me in a room,” he said. “In the dark. Only ten days, right? Long enough to make me feel like I was going crazy.”

I sucked in a breath, though I had a feeling this was only the tip of it.

“And when he did come in…he was angry, Jane. He was angry I’d defied him. He was angry about you. So he punished me. And he did everything he could to make sure I would associate that punishment with you.” He laughed, then, a sharp, blistering sound that hurt my ears. “He did a pretty good job of it at first.”

I waited a bit longer for him to elaborate, but it soon became clear he wouldn’t. Well, not without my prodding.

“How?” I pushed as gently as I could.

“Jane, you don’t want to hear about this.”

“Yes, I do. You went through this for me. At the hands of my fucking sperm donor. Tell me. Please.”

There was another chest-moving sigh. But eventually, Eric told me what happened.

I stared at the wall with my cheek buried into my pillow, wishing I could touch him while he spoke, but also sensing it would not be welcome. Because his story was gruesome.

It had taken two days, maybe three. There was a hatchetman, some former KGB goon who wielded torture tools like a musical conductor. Rib-cracking kicks to the side, or blows to the temple that made him see stars. Some casual waterboarding. Dutch scratching, which was a far too humorous name for beating the hell out a man’s crown jewels with a knotted rope. They’d made Eric hate almost every part of his body—including the one I loved most. And when they weren’t doing that, they’d forced him to watch a slideshow of photos…photos of me. Right before they would start it all over.

“That’s insane,” I whispered as he finished his terse, but effective descriptions.

“He is,” Eric said. “Carson got mad, though, when he left a bruise. The point, he said, was always to remain discreet.” He barked a sardonic laugh. “That black eye wasn’t very discreet, was it?” He pointed at the skin around his eye that had all but healed at this point.

“Seriously, though.” I pushed up from the bed, full of anger. “Who the fuck does this guy think he is, Vito Corleone? You can’t just rip people off the streets and torture them, for Christ’s sake!”

“Most people can’t, no—”

“We need to call the police.” I wiggled insistently, like the extra movement would make me feel like I was doing something. “You should have told Zola all of this. He could call the FBI. Someone needs to know.”

“Jane,” Eric said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But he—

“It doesn’t matter,” he crooned, stroking my back like I was a frenzied animal. “It really doesn’t matter.”

“What? How can you say that?”

“Don’t you see?” he asked. “It didn’t work.”

I blinked, sucking in breaths to tame the rage burning in my chest. “It…didn’t?”

“John Carson wanted me to walk out of that room hating you, Jane,” Eric said, pulling me up his body so I sprawled over him, but we were face-to-face. His hands slid up and down my arms. “But I couldn’t. I knew it the second I saw you again in my apartment. That he hadn’t even scratched the surface of what I felt. I could never hate you. Not even close.”

His gray eyes suddenly looked so much older than they had even two weeks ago. And was it just me, or had a few new silver hairs made their dashing appearance near his temples?

“I’ve been waiting for you to come back,” I whispered, suddenly terrified by the truth that had been haunting me: that maybe he never would. All the anger I’d felt over the past few weeks really just came down to protecting myself from the fact that this man could hurt me more than anyone else. And had.

“Maybe I thought if you knew…you wouldn’t want the real me,” he admitted when I thought he wouldn’t respond at all.

I smacked a palm half-heartedly on his chest. “Haven’t I shown you everything I am? Crazy dyed hair and all?”

“That’s just cosmetic. My secrets run pretty deep.”

“What did you say? You just wanted me? Well, I just want you.”

Eric sighed. “I don’t want to keep secrets from you anymore,” he said quietly.

“Then don’t.”

“Even if that means we have to be a secret together?”

“You’d walk in, and it was like I wasn’t there,” I said as a tear escaped. “All those years we fought. We yelled. We sparred. But you were never like that. You never treated me like I was invisible.” I sniffed and swiped at another tear. “I gave you everything, didn’t I? But you held yourself back.”

Eric didn’t move, his tortured expression cast in stone as he listened. But then, suddenly, he pulled me to him, clasping my head against his broad chest so hard that his fingers dug into my scalp.

“I was protecting you,” he said fiercely. “Do you understand now why? He’s a monster, Jane. I didn’t want you anywhere near him. And when he grabbed you—even the fucking suggestion that he would do anything to you like what he did to me…”

“I…I know.” My voice was muffled against his chest.

“I couldn’t talk because they were listening, but I wanted to tell you everything, Jane. Everything.”

“What about before?” I pushed, though I didn’t fight his embrace. “Even before the wedding, you kept things from me.”

“I didn’t mean to. I swear to God, I didn’t mean to. I—fucking hell. Before the wedding, those months…”

He finally released me, and I pushed up on my forearms, still balanced across his chest. He cupped my face between his hands, cradling my cheeks like he was mining for gold.

“Every moment I’ve spent with you—from the beginning, Jane, not just the last six months—every fucking moment has been the happiest of my life. Fighting, fucking, laughing, talking. I’d take them all again. Every single sorry one of them, so long as they were with you.”

I watched him for a long time, doing my best to read his face. That mask still didn’t appear. Every fear he had was still written plainly over his features. He looked tired, sad, worried, and upset. But more than that, he looked very much in love. With me.

“I’m still mad at you,” I said as I closed my hands around his wrists, holding them where they were.

“Then why?” he asked. “Why fight so hard? With me? For me? Because you do, Lefferts. I know I’m not worth it, but I’m so goddamn glad you do.”

“Because the fucked-up truth is, I’d rather be mad at you than pleased with anyone else.”

A small smile peeked through the gloom. “No one loves to fight me like you do?”

I couldn’t hide my own smile either. “Something like that.”

And then, because I couldn’t not, I kissed him again. It wasn’t an angry kiss, or the kind of kiss so steeped in lust it choked. It was the kind that just belonged. Like we always had, against all odds, right here. With each other.

Eric’s mouth opened to mine naturally, and he released my face so he could wrap his strong, lean arms around my body and roll me to my back, caging me against the bed. Caging me and freeing me all at once.

“Jane,” he whispered as he nuzzled my neck, pulling away Skylar’s black cardigan, and then tugged at the thin straps of the red dress. “Jane, please.”

But I didn’t want him to beg. Not now. More than anything, I wanted to make him feel strong.

My hands wove into his thick blond hair, pressing his face lower as he inhaled my skin. My fingers slid lower, under his collar, helping him from his shirt as well until finally he pushed up on his knees, giving me a fine view of his solid, muscular form as he removed the shirt completely.

“Come here,” he urged, pulling on one of my hands until I was kneeling with him.

We quickly shed the rest of our clothes, eager to find skin to warm skin in the dark. The world was so cold beyond the secure walls of this house, surging toward us, closer every second. And yet, we couldn’t do anything but this. Because if Eric and I were going to win this battle, we had to find each other here in the dark. We couldn’t stand alone.

He pulled me back on top of him once we were both free of all our impediments. Even my hair was stripped of pins, cascading all over my shoulders, a shadowy waterfall to shelter us both.

“Give me your mouth,” Eric said even as he took it, his kisses hungrier this time, lush and full.

“I missed your voice,” I mumbled against his lips. Living in silence, him unable to speak. I hadn’t realized until now how much I thrived on his thoughts, not just my own.

He hummed into the kiss, then slid his tongue to co-mingle with mine, twisting and dancing in that delicious way that prompted deep moans from both our chests. Another kind of language, but ours just the same.

“Say it,” I whispered as his mouth floated over my neck again. “I want to hear it.”

Eric flipped me onto my back. “Say what, gorgeous?” He landed a kiss on one breast, then worshipped the other before he continued his path downward.

“My name.”

I felt a smile against my navel. “Jane.”

But I shook my head and pulled at his hair. “No, the other one.”

His chin balanced on my hip. Slowly, a sly grin twisted across Eric’s otherwise stolid features, casting it alight with fire and charisma. A fire blazed in my belly. The grin widened.

He pressed his lips to the soft skin of one inner thigh, then the other before he tugged lightly on the hair down there. Then he touched his nose to the quiver of nerves that made me shudder. “Pretty girl.”

I hummed and arched into his waiting mouth. “Again.”

“Pretty girl.” He said it again, but this time it was more of a vibration as his lips found my clit, and two of his dexterous fingers slipped inside me. They curled. He licked. And my entire body bloomed.

“Eric!” I cried as he took me closer and closer to that blissful cliff.

But just as I was about to topple over it completely, he pulled back and crawled right back up my body, maintaining that skin-to-skin connection both of us craved.

“Spread your legs.” His voice was low, but stronger than I’d heard it since before.

I hissed as the long, solid length of him pulsed against my thigh. It was like our hurried, animal fuck in the lab hadn’t even happened. This time every cell in my body wanted to unite with his.

He didn’t wait for my answer, just took my lower lip between his teeth and bit lightly. I did as I was told.

Eric’s eyes shuttered as he entered, one slow inch at a time, filling me, testing me, stretching my capacity. He waited a moment while I adjusted to his size. And then, as his poet’s eyes held mine in their thrall, he finally began to move.

His body found its rhythm quickly, muscles corded as he held himself to measured beats. With every thrust and pull, he drove us both higher and higher, past the point where any of the outside world could threaten our pleasure anymore.

Then he stopped, like he had just realized where we were.

“What?” I asked “Why—why are you stopping?” I rotated my hips toward him, but he didn’t move, just continued to watch.

“Are we really doing this?” he wondered. “You and me against the world?”

My body cried for him.

“Yes!” I whispered fiercely, clasping his face between my palms. “You and I were born to fight, Eric. Against each other, sure. But for each other…absolutely.”

He stared at me for a long time, and then he lunged forward.

“Eric!” I shouted, unable to hold it back. “Oh, God, p-please!”

“Give me all your screams, Jane,” he growled. “I’ll swallow them, every one.”

“ERIC!” I cried again, but he did as he promised, taking my cries with deep, forceful kisses, savoring the depths of my voice as an orgasm crested through us both.

Our bodies melted into each other, clinging to each other, slick and heated even as the cold from the outside pressed in on us more. Somewhere out there, a man who called himself my father wanted only to ruin a bond that now seemed critical to life itself.

I had never felt so sated. Or so scared.

“Eric?” My voice was smaller than it had ever been.

“I know.” He pressed his forehead against mine. Mind to mind. Soul to soul. “I know.”

“We have to go now, don’t we?” I refused to open my eyes. I didn’t want to see the answer I knew would be on his face. “We shouldn’t wait until morning.”

But I felt Eric’s nod anyway. In the dark, his arms tightened further, like he thought the wind howling outside our window might rip me away.

“Yes,” he agreed. “We have to go now.”

Part Three

Prolepsis

Are you so blind, oh, woman of mine?

Can’t you see the wretch that I am?

Flying this high, we soar, we die,

Cresting o’er sky and land.

The man in robes, the fools, the probes

Want questions we dare not ask.

So nights are spent with your jasmine scent,

Noses buried beyond our tasks.

Now hope alights before we take flight;

Will the hunter arrive with his killers?

Should his aim be true, should our faults accrue,

Would you stand fast as a pillar?

Be still unlike your heart of a sparrow

So that out of love, I might block the arrow.

“Fear Sonnet”

— from the journal of Eric de Vries