Trinity Broken

by Jamie Craig

  Josh knew that probably wasn’t an idle threat. Sara wasn’t big on saying things she didn’t mean. “I never had anybody threaten to drag my ass anywhere, before.” He lowered his head, sighing against her skin and allowing all the pleasure to simply roll through him. “You feel so good.”

  When he skimmed his mouth along the planes of her strong jaw, Sara shivered. “Obviously, nobody has ever loved you as much as I do then.”

  Josh froze, pulling back to study her face. There was nothing but sincerity in her eyes, and she’d delivered the sentiment in such a straightforward manner he knew he couldn’t doubt her. “I…Jesus, Sara.” She looked back at him, unwavering. Whatever had been blocking his feelings before was broken now, and the words came to him with an almost practiced ease. “I love you.” He lowered his mouth to hers, saying the words again against her lips.

  She eased her hold enough for him to start moving again, though this time, he didn’t refrain from pouring his all into it, sliding out nearly all the way before thrusting back in as deep as he could go. Whimpers rose in her throat as he caught her wrists and twisted them over her head. It pulled her breasts taut, and Josh used his free hand to pinch and pull at her nipple, but it only spurred Sara to push him harder, writhing beneath him as she swallowed each of his endearments.

  Every movement she made—from arching her back to clenching around his cock to biting at his lips while he kissed her—sent chills down his back. She seemed to be consuming him with her body and her mouth. The chills multiplied, rolled down him in wave after wave, until every inch of his body vibrated. His fingers tightened around her wrist and she arched her back one more time, rising off the bed to match his final, hard thrust before he exploded inside her.

  Sara remained still for long seconds after they came. It wasn’t until Josh began raining kisses along her neck that a final, deep shudder wracked her body, and she broke free of his grasp to twine her arms around him and seek out his mouth with her own.

  “Do you get it yet?” she said. “You can’t go. You have to stay.”

  “I get it,” he assured her. “I get it. How could I possibly leave now?” He rolled onto his back without breaking the contact, pulling her onto his chest. They were silent for several moments, enjoying the slow comedown, before he tentatively asked, “And does Cam…I mean, what does he…think?”

  She drew lazy patterns along his skin. “About you, you mean?”

  “Yeah. About me. About what you just told me.”

  “He knows.” Lifting her head to look at him, Sara rested her chin on his chest. “I can’t put words in his mouth, Josh. But I can promise you that he’d hurt just as much as I would if you weren’t here.”

  Josh nodded. He didn’t expect Sara to be able to put words in Cam’s mouth, but he was relieved Cam knew Sara’s feelings—and he was relieved Cam appeared to have strong feelings, too. Josh’s feelings for Sara were as straightforward as these sorts of things could be, but his feelings for Cameron seemed to be more complicated, if only because he had never been this close to another man.

  “Think we should move my stuff in here before or after he gets back?” Josh asked.

  Her blossoming smile was slow and brilliant. “After,” Sara said. “I want to see his face when you tell him you want to move in here. I want you to see his face. And then I want both of you in this bed with me, naked.”

  “I mentioned today how brilliant I think you are, right?” He kissed her forehead and the doorbell echoed through the house. “And there’s our food. Nice timing. Do you want to go answer the door?”

  Her answer was to roll off him and grab her robe from where it was thrown over the footboard. “You stay. I’ll bring everything in here.” She shot one last grin over her shoulder. “I want you to get used to that bed.”

  Josh wanted to, but as soon as she was out of his sight, all of his nerves, excitement and fear from earlier roared back. He wrapped the sheet around his waist and hurried into his bedroom. He opened the laptop without sitting, refreshing his email one final time. Holding his breath, he opened it. And smiled.

  * * * *

  Josh was pulled from his own mind by Sara shifting positions, a small moan escaping her throat. He tensed, his gaze darting to Cam, but the sleeping man was still dead to the world. She moved again, slowly swimming out of sleep. He took her hand, holding it lightly, wanting to tell her without words that he was there.

  She turned towards him, her lashes fluttering open. Josh caught his breath as he looked into her dark brown eyes for the first time in two years.

  For a moment, there was no response. She didn’t even blink.

  Then a small line appeared between her brows.

  “No…” It was barely a word, barely a breath, and her voice was rough from disuse. Her tongue darted out to moisten her dry lips, but it swept over the fullness as if in slow motion. “Please. Don’t do this.”

  “Sara?” He said her name like he was testing it. “Don’t do what?”

  His question seemed to alert her even more to her surroundings. She glanced down to look at their clasped hands, which brought Cameron’s arm around her waist fully into view, and she tilted her head as her gaze followed it over her body.

  Josh saw her tense the moment before she jerked as if electrocuted, catching her as she tore away from Cam’s embrace with strength he didn’t realize she had.

  But he never anticipated her scream.

  It was the sound of an animal in serious pain, or a terrified child. It was the sort of scream that echoed in his mind long after it faded from his ears. Acting without thought, Josh scrambled to his feet, wrapped his arms around her, and lifted her from the bed. He didn’t know what was wrong with her; he only knew he had to get her away from whatever had prompted that horrible sound.

  She didn’t struggle against him or try to break away, but she didn’t stop screaming either.

  Until somewhere amidst the cries he caught her litany of denial, more of the don’t and please he didn’t understand. The back of his knees hit the other bed, and he sat heavily onto it, Sara still in his arms.

  Cam had jumped from the bed, the sheets tangling around his legs, nearly sending him sprawling to the floor. He lurched towards them, and the closer he got, the more piercing Sara’s denials became. Cameron looked worried, reaching out to touch her. The second his fingers landed on her shoulder, she became frantic. Josh nearly dropped her as she thrashed in his arms, her feet connecting with his shins, her fists landing on him and Cameron in turn.

  “Get out of here,” Josh shouted, recognizing the source of her anxiety even if he didn’t understand why.

  “I’m not leaving her,” Cam growled. He tried to grab her wrist, but this time, her wild swing connected with his jaw, and the blow rang throughout the room.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  Sara’s hysterical tone drove Cam away. He stared at both of them in growing horror. “It’s me—” he began, but when she buried her face in Josh’s neck, he stopped, his throat working as if he was choking on the words.

  Josh rubbed her back, trying to comfort her, but he knew only one thing would quiet her. Cam looked at him helplessly, and Josh wished he could say something, but he had nothing.

  “Go,” Josh said softly. “Go get her something to eat.”

  With a shaking hand, Cam picked up his wallet from where he’d dropped it on the desk. He didn’t take his eyes off either of them as he backed out of the room.

  As soon as the door clicked, she relaxed against him, but the fear still rolled off her in waves. “Shh. Sara. It’s okay. Nobody is going to hurt you.”

  “Lies. Always lies. He always hurts me.”

  An icy hand gripped his heart. “No. No, Sara. Cameron would never…” She tensed again, arching away from him, and he realized he was going down the wrong path. “Okay, he’s gone. We’re alone now. Nobody is going to hurt you.”

  Her eyes were haunted when she finally lifted her head and looked at him. “That’
s what they always say. Why should I believe you now?”

  Josh cupped her cheek. “Sara, it’s me. It’s me, Josh.” She tried to turn away but he wouldn’t let her. “No, please look at me. You’re safe.”

  “There is no such thing as safe.” It sounded like she’d been forced to memorize it. Her gaze slid sideways, and he knew she was contemplating something, but as long as she wasn’t fighting him anymore, he didn’t care how much thinking she did. Then her attention turned back to him, and a ghost of sly intelligence lurked in those brown depths. “If I’m safe,” she said, choosing her words slowly, “then I’m not there. So tell me. Why would you drag my ass back?”

  “Because nobody has ever loved you as much as I do,” Josh whispered, knowing it was a lie but meaning it at the same time.

  Her eyes widened, and in the second after, they welled with unshed tears. “Josh…” But no sound came out of her mouth, not even when she crumpled and buried her face in his neck.

  Her tears wet his neck, and he shed a few of his own in sympathy. “Yeah, it’s me,” he said. “It’s me. It’s me.” Over and over, rocking her gently and praying she’d be better by the time Cam returned.

  Chapter 4

  Waking hadn’t been the same.

  The light had been different, for one. In spite of the basement’s dark corridors, the rooms they always kept Sara in were brightly lit, too bright most of the time. There had been no stab through her eyelids when she’d woken up this time, and when she’d opened her eyes and been greeted by the soft shadows of Josh’s face, she was convinced she was dreaming.

  Those dreams turned very quickly into a nightmare when she saw the face of the man who held her close.

  Instinct took over, and she battled as best she could, clinging to the one who at least hadn’t hurt her yet. If that was their intention, if they wanted to catch her off guard to force her allegiance to a new captor, it succeeded, at least temporarily. She couldn’t look at Cameron’s face and not feel every burn and every cut and every shred of agony he’d inflicted over the past two years. She was half-convinced she would bleed just by his presence. She couldn’t even think about relaxing until long after he’d gone.

  Except…her captor wasn’t what he appeared. Or rather, he was exactly as he appeared. For the first time in months, a faint glimmer of hope flared inside her heart. It blinked out almost immediately, of course, because hope was too fragile to risk revealing. They always used whatever chink they could find. Sara wouldn’t be so foolish to hand over an opening even now.

  It took repeating words back to her only Josh would know for hope to return. She searched his face, noting how he looked different than the dreams she’d concocted to save whatever humanity she had left. His brown hair was longer, the ends curling, and there was a scar snaking along his jaw, but stubble he had never worn before hid it mostly from view. The eyes, though…

  The eyes were exactly the same.

  She cried in relief. She cried in joy. She cried simply because she truly felt something other than anguish for the first time in a very long time. All the while, his reassuring hands never stopped stroking her back, and his voice stayed soft in her ear, and Sara thought she could stay like that forever.

  But she didn’t. Because the one lesson she had learned was that it was better to give something up rather than have it torn out of her bleeding hands.

  She pulled back, reluctant to separate from his warm body. Lifting a hand to her face, she wiped away the last of her tears. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

  “Don’t. Don’t apologize.” Josh looked at her with glistening eyes. “Please don’t apologize.” He sniffed and wiped his nose, a gesture that made him look about five years old. “I was so…” His words faltered and he tightened his arms around her, like he was afraid she’d disappear.

  With the rush of adrenaline now abating, Sara lacked the energy to resist his embrace, even though that was the farthest thing from her mind. She didn’t remember his arms seeming so long before, and it took a few seconds of staring at them for her to realize Josh wasn’t the one who had changed. She was thinner. There was less of her to hold. There was less of her everywhere.

  She lifted her heavy head to look at him, and the sight of his reddened nose brought a ghost of a smile to her face. “You need a Kleenex. You look like one of my kids.”

  His smile matched hers, and he reached for a towel abandoned on the foot of the bed. He wiped his eyes and nose with a corner, then gently cleaned her face. Watching her carefully, he said, “Are you hungry? Cam went to get some food.”

  His words brought back the tension, erasing her lightening mood at the blink of an eye. “No. No…that was Cam?”

  “It was.” He frowned. “Who…who did you think it was?”

  She shook her head. Talking about it was as bad as it seeing it. “I’m cold,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself as her shivering grew worse.

  Josh reacted immediately, reaching across the short space between the beds and pulling the ruffled blankets off the mattress. He wrapped them around her shoulders, engulfing her completely. “I’m sorry. Is that better?”

  Sara nodded. It was only partially true. The heat that still warmed the fabric brought with it reminders of who she’d woken up next to, and she ducked her head, hoping Josh didn’t notice the panic in her eyes.

  “Sara…” He brushed his lips across her forehead. “I’ll do anything I can for you. Would you like it if…you only shared this room with me?”

  The possibility brought her more to life than anything else he’d said so far. It wasn’t so much about not having to face those eyes as it was the implication the offer carried. “We’re not…going home?”

  “No, we can’t right now, sweetheart. I want to take you home, but it might be too dangerous for a while. So we’re going to do a little traveling.”

  “We. You, me and…”

  Josh looked ill for a moment before saying softly, “I’m not going to leave Cam behind. It’s too dangerous. We’ll work something out. We’ll have separate hotel rooms. Get a second car, if you want. But we’re all in this together, Sara.”

  “Are we?” The accusation came out without thought. “Where were you the past two years?”

  All the color drained from his face as soon as she spoke, and his cheeks looked ashen and waxy. If she had struck him, he couldn’t have looked more surprised. Or hurt. “I know that I…I let you down…” His mouth worked silently for a few moments before he found his voice again. “To put it mildly. But I’m not going to let anything else happen to you. I’m not.”

  “Don’t make me face him then.”

  Josh swallowed. “You don’t have to. But we will not leave him behind…He took you out of that place, which means they’ll be after him, too.”

  It was a mild balm, but Sara nodded in agreement anyway. Her Josh wouldn’t turn his back on Cam, either, and if she’d had any lingering doubts about whether or not it was really him, this banished them. But that didn’t make it any easier. It only raised more questions, crowding inside her already befuddled head.

  “I thought…Who rescued me?”

  “We both did. It was a two-man job. You know, I can’t do the things he can do.” Josh’s voice faded on the final two words, and he looked at her like he was trying to work through a riddle. “Sara, why don’t you want to see him?”

  How could she possibly explain? Images too painful to process offered themselves, but that meant facing what she had finally escaped. “Do you know what they did to me?” she asked instead.

  “No, I don’t. And you don’t have to talk about it now, or ever, if you don’t want to. Just answer one question for me, okay? Did one of…them…look like Cam?”

  Leave it to Josh to be smart enough to save her from having to say it out loud. Sara nodded, watching him carefully for his reaction.

  The sadness in his eyes only deepened. “You don’t have to see him. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he
reassured her again, “but you do know our Cam…your Cam…would never hurt you. He’s going to do anything he can to help you, too, and keep you safe.”

  Sara pulled the blanket more tightly around her. She heard the words, but it was hard to believe in them, no matter how much Josh might want her to. “I thought he was somebody else.” She couldn’t meet his eyes. “When I woke up. And all I wanted was to…get away. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. To go home.”

  “I know. I know. I want to take you home. I promise I will as soon as it’s safe. Tell me what you need. Are you thirsty?”

  “No.” She rested her cheek against his chest, breathing in his scent. “Because that means you’re going to leave.”

  “I won’t leave,” he murmured. “I’ll be here as long as you need me.”

  If he said it often enough, maybe sooner or later she could let herself believe it. Her hand ghosted over his chest, not quite touching, and she turned her head just enough to graze her lips along his shirt.

  “Lie down with me?” Sara asked. “Please? I want to fall asleep without being forced to, and I want to wake up…and not be there.”

  Josh nodded, turning to lower her to the mattress. He made sure the blankets were still covering her before lying on his side beside her and pulling her against him. It seemed like he was touching every inch of her, gently warm and familiar. He even smelled right. He put his arm around her protectively, and positioned his other arm to pillow her head.

  “Are you comfortable?”

  “Yeah.” With her last ounce of energy, she snuggled deeper into his arms, already welcoming the thick cloud looming on the horizon. “The only thing that would make this better is being in our own bed.”

  She was asleep before he had time to respond.

  * * * *

  Part of Cam knew he should be out getting the food Josh had instructed him to retrieve, but the force of Sara’s screams had kept him glued to the door, his hand on the knob as he fought every instinct he had not to break it down and go back inside. She was in pain. She needed him. Nobody understood Sara like he did, not even Josh.