Their Ballerina
Page 7
“You’ve gotta fuck those tits,” I tell Cash before climbing off the bed and pushing him aside so I can take his place. She’s dripping, her quivering muscles forcing cum down her crack and onto the towel underneath her.
“Please, I can’t take anymore.” She can barely talk, and mascara is running down the sides of her head toward her temples. Her breathing is broken and raspy.
“Didn’t know you could come so many times?” I ask before driving myself deep inside her. “I think you need more of my cock tonight.” She clenches around me, pulling me further into her tight heat even as she whimpers and swears it’s too much. Her body knows the truth, knows what it needs.
I don’t bother taking my time, sawing in and out of her the way I did with her tits. The sight of her losing herself again, all sweaty and oiled and screaming my name, makes me explode with a roar that fills the room.
It’s like I got hit by a train. I fall forward and barely catch myself before crushing Payton, rolling to the side, and sinking into the mattress with a groan that feels like it came from my toes. Cash is on the other side, and he drapes an arm around Payton and draws her close to him.
I join them, taking her chin in my hand and turning her face toward mine. I’ve never seen anything as breathtaking.
Until she opens her eyes, and they meet mine, and I forget how to breathe all over again.
13
Payton
Had to take care of something. Be back soon.
I read the short note again and wonder what a handwriting analyst would think of Kane’s chicken scratch. They’d probably decide he’s a serial killer, and for all I know, they’d be right.
That’s not the whole story, though. I know that too. And that’s what has me smiling as I remember last night. Just the memory is enough to curl my toes. I burrow a little deeper under the blankets with a happy sigh. My body feels loose, relaxed all over.
Like I had a good workout, come to think of it. I did, didn’t I? The best sort of workout I can imagine. I’m glad they’re the only men I’ve ever been with, that in a way, my body is theirs. It brings me a sense of satisfaction nothing else ever has, except maybe dancing.
I miss dancing so much. I wonder if I mentioned it to Cash or Kane, whether they’d help me find someplace new to dance. I don’t know how much longer I can go without it. They said Madison had a dance studio at her house, but I don’t want to intrude on her space.
The idea gets me out of bed, and within minutes, I’m dressed and beginning my usual stretching routine. The least I can do is stay supple for when I start practicing again. Even now, after only a few days of neglecting my routine, my muscles are tighter than I like. So even hours of sex aren’t enough to keep me conditioned.
Once I’ve cooled off, I take a quick shower and dress again, this time in my regular clothes. The apartment is still empty, and I have to wonder what was important enough to keep them away for this long. What would happen to me if anything happened to them?
No. I won’t let myself think about it. I can’t go that route, even if I’m used to life going to hell. I’m used to the bad things, the worst-case scenario. I have to get out of the habit of expecting the worst, and I might as well start now.
I wonder why they live together. Then again, they do a lot of things together, don’t they? My pulse picks up speed even at the slightest thought of what they did to me. What they do to me.
What do I know? I’ve never had a twin. I don’t understand what it means to be that closely linked to somebody. They say twins have a sixth sense about each other, like they can tell when the other is in trouble or sick or wounded even when they’re hundreds of miles apart. I make a mental note to ask them when they come back whether they’ve ever had an experience like that.
There’s so much I want to know about them. They fascinate me, the way their personalities seem to swing back and forth. That angry, dangerous side. The sweet, thoughtful, almost kind side they show me. The way they take their time with me, too, like the only thing that matters in the world is making me feel good. How lucky am I?
Breakfast is small, light. I don’t normally eat much, though I doubt either of the twins would believe that after some of the meals we’ve shared. They always seem to catch me either when I’m starved half to death or after they put me to work the night before. Either way, I usually have a pretty strong appetite when we eat together.
Today I settle on a slice of toast with a scrambled egg on top. I make sure to clean up after myself—it seems they like things a certain way. I wonder if they have a cleaning service come in to keep the place neat. It’s not easy to imagine either of them ever holding a dust rag or mop. The idea makes me laugh. I’d expect to see them with weapons, not cleaning supplies.
There’s nothing for me to do but indulge my curiosity, if only for a little bit. Just until they get home. I only want to be closer to them, that’s all. I want to know what makes them tick. I want to understand them. Which is why I go to Cash’s room and open the top drawer to his dresser in hopes of finding… what? I’m not sure.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
My heart stops for one brief, breathless moment as I spin in place and find Myles glaring at me. Myles, who already hates me. Myles, who must’ve crept into the house when I was too busy going through Cash’s socks to notice.
Myles, who looks like he’d gladly kill me and never give it a second thought.
His eyes are stormy as he takes one slow, menacing step toward me, then another. “Answer me, you lying bitch. What do you think you’re doing?”
“Hang on a second—”
“No lies!” It comes out like a gunshot, cracking through the air, making me jump. I might even have yelped a little, but it’s all a blur. I can hardly hear anything over the rushing of blood in my ears and the furious pounding of my heart.
“I’m not lying!” It sounds like a sob, and I guess it is. “I swear! I was—”
“Looking for information on my brothers! My family!” He slams the drawer shut hard enough to shove the dresser against the wall. The few bottles on top fall over, rolling across the floor. One of them breaks, and the smell of cologne threatens to choke me.
“I wasn’t! I don’t care about your family. I wanted to know more about them, is all.” I’m babbling, the words coming out so fast I doubt he can make sense of them. Not that I think he cares much about what I’m saying, though, since his expression hasn’t shifted a bit from when he first found me.
His head swings back and forth slowly. Menacingly. “I knew there was something wrong with you. Something off. I tried to tell them, and they didn’t want to hear it, and now here we are. My brothers are thinking with their dicks, but you can’t wrap me around your finger like that.”
“No, no!” I hit the bed finally and almost fall back across it but manage to steady myself, sliding along its length until I’m at the foot. There’s got to be something around here I could use to defend myself, right? My mind reaches, desperate, my memories of the apartment coming back in one flash after another until they overlap and stop making sense. I’m too frantic to think straight.
“You’re coming with me,” he snarls, crossing the room in a few long strides. I don’t have time to get around him before his arm shoots out and his steely fingers close around my wrist. I yelp in pain when he squeezes hard enough to grind my bones together.
“Please, don’t!” He yanks hard and drags me along with him. My feet slip on the cologne that spilled on the floor, and I go down hard, crying out again when my tailbone hits the unforgiving wood.
He pulls me to my feet, takes me by my shirt with his free hand, and hauls me up close to his face. His breath is hot and sour, and I struggle to get away from it, but it’s no use.
“You got under their skin already. They are attached, so I’m gonna have to do what’s best for them. What’s best for our family.”
The next thing I know, pain explodes across my awareness, and darkne
ss follows right behind.
14
Cash
“What the hell is this?” I turn in a circle, looking around at the four walls of the warehouse where Myles asked us to meet him for some emergency he wouldn’t give us any specifics on. “He doesn’t usually keep us waiting.”
“No, especially not when he uses the word emergency.” Kane checks the time. “It took us twenty minutes to drive here, and we’ve been waiting almost fifteen. Something’s gotta be wrong.”
“Are you sure we’re at the right place?”
“You tell me. You drove.”
“And you gave me the address.” I check the text he sent both of us. “No, this is where he wanted us to be.”
We exchange a look as the hair on the back of my neck rises. Something’s wrong for sure. I hope we didn’t wait too long before deciding to find out what it is.
“He’s not answering his phone.” Kane only pulls his cell from his ear long enough to try calling again. “It’s going straight to voicemail.”
“Son of a bitch.” I text Myles next, asking where he is. Not that I expect an immediate response judging from him not picking up a call from one of the people he asked to meet him, but still. It’s better than doing nothing and feeling like a helpless, useless piece of shit.
That’s when it hits me. “What about Payton?”
“What about her?”
“We left her alone. She’s been alone all this time. What if something happened?” I call her next and realize I’m holding my breath as I wait for an answer. If anything went wrong with her, I don’t know what I’d do. I’d have to kill the bastard who hurt her, but otherwise? How would I live the rest of my life—
“Hey.”
My eyes go wide at the sound of my brother’s voice coming from Payton’s phone. I glance at the screen to make sure I didn’t call Myles by mistake. No, I called her. “Why are you answering Payton’s phone?” I ask, looking at Kane. His posture changes, stiffens like he senses trouble the same as I do.
“I’m sorry about this. Really, I am. But this is for the best.”
“What’s for the best? Myles, what did you do?” Kane grabs my arm and grips tight. I know he can hear every word coming through the speaker.
“Family comes first.” With that, Myles ends the call. I’m left staring at my phone for what feels like forever, trying to make sense of what I just heard. Confusion trickles away, and another emotion takes center stage. One I haven’t felt in a long time… fear.
Kane jumps to action before I do. “We’ve gotta get to her. Now.” He pulls me along with him, and we run from the warehouse where I know Myles sent us to get us out of the apartment long enough to take her. She’s probably terrified. She might even think we left her there for him.
Kane gets behind the wheel. “We don’t know where we’re going,” I remind him as he peels away from the curb.
“Call Ace.”
Right. What’s the matter with me? It’s like my fucking mind went blank the second I realized Payton was in even a hint of danger. And from my own fucking brother. What’s this family first shit he’s talking about? Who does he think she is?
What does he think she’ll do to us?
Ace picks up the call on the second ring. “I knew you’d—”
I cut him off before he can finish his thought. “You have to stop, Myles.”
“Cash…”
“I’m serious. I’m here with Kane, and we’re leaving the spot Myles tricked us into coming to. He has Payton.” Then, my frantic brain catches up to the present moment, and I process what he was saying when he answered. “And you know he does. Fuck! You knew, didn’t you?”
“What?” Kane demands. “Give me the fucking phone.”
I settle for putting the call through to the car’s Bluetooth system so Ace can speak to both of us. “What are you playing at?” he demands. “What’s happening? What’s Myles trying to do?”
“Whatever it is, Ace, you’re the only one who can stop him from doing something stupid. She’s not a threat to us. All he had to do was come to us, and we would’ve told him that.”
Ace’s heavy sigh tells me he’s not on our side. Not completely. “He’s bringing her here. To the compound.” At this, Kane pulls a hard right to take us to the interstate.
“He told you that?” I ask.
“I told him to bring her here. He called me earlier and informed me of this mission he’s on, whatever it is. Said it had something to do with the girl who’s been staying with you guys. I convinced him not to go ahead with anything until he brought her here and explained things more clearly. It was the best I could do.”
I’ll kill him. I’ll kill my own brother if he makes her shed a single tear.
Ace takes my heavy breathing as all the answers he needs, I guess. “Remember, he’s still our brother,” he says. “Get here, and we’ll figure everything out together. I know he’s on his way, too.”
Kane jams his finger against the console display, ending the call. “He’d better fucking hope he hasn’t hurt her. I swear to God, Cash.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me.” I can’t do anything but stare out the windshield, though I’m not seeing anything in front of me. All I can see is Payton. Smiling, laughing. Wounded, afraid. Crying. Writhing in ecstasy. I grip the door handle and squeeze until it hurts, but that doesn’t help center my thoughts any. I doubt anything could.
It feels like forever but can’t be more than twenty minutes before we roll through the familiar gates, past the familiar men who guard the compound. When we reach the house, I see Myles’s car in front, like he couldn’t be bothered to pull off to the side of the roundabout the way we normally do to make room for other cars pulling through. Such a small little thing, but it has my anger only surging.
It’s not only his car waiting out there, either. I recognize Archer’s and Knox’s, too. So everybody’s come home to witness whatever the hell Myles thinks he’s about to do.
We practically run inside, where Ace seems to have been waiting in the foyer. “It’s okay, take a breath,” he insists, palms out like he means no harm. Like he’s trying to talk us down or something. Well, that’s what he’s doing since we’re both poised to explode.
“Where is she?” Kane growls. “Tell us. If you don’t have anything to do with him taking her, we don’t have a problem with you.”
“He did what he thought was right.” Ace looks at me. “I believe that, and I need you to believe it, too.”
“I’ll believe what I want to believe, thanks very much. Where did he take her?” I look around like she’s hiding in the corner or something. It’s ridiculous how panicked I am, and I know it. But there’s no helping it, either.
I need her. She doesn’t deserve whatever it is Myles did to her.
“We promised to protect her, swore she’d be safe with us, and then he takes her, probably scarring her shitless.”
It’s obvious Ace sees no point in reasoning with us anymore. “The basement.” He sighs, defeated. “She’s down there with everybody else.” I guess that means our brothers. Great, he might have them on his side already. I run for the stairs and pound down them with every footstep echoing her name in my head.
Kane reaches me, and we both stand in mute horror for a second at the sight of Payton. Tied to a chair in what used to serve as our rec room when we were kids. With tears rolling down her cheeks, soaking into the red gag around her mouth. Not as red as the thin line of blood trailing down the side of her neck, though.
That’s what does it. It’s what sends me flying across the room, ready to kill Myles for this. Knox and Archer catch me before I can reach him, then Ace grabs Kane. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“You’re saying that to us?” I point to Payton. “You’re telling us not to do anything stupid when Myles—”
“Myles did what he thought was right for the entire family. Not just for himself.” Ace shakes Kane a little. “Get what I’m saying?”
“It’s not just that, and you know it.” Myles sounds just as furious as Kane and me for some reason. The fucker has the nerve to sound like he’s the one who’s been wounded here. If it wouldn’t potentially get Payton in trouble, I’d take another lunge at him, and this time nobody would stop me.
“What is it, then? Why don’t you tell us why you tied this, what? Five-foot-tall girl to a chair like she’s any kind of threat to us?” I look at the rest of my brothers in disgust since they let this happen. “What kind of men are you, standing around while something like this is right in front of you?”
“I’ll fucking kill all of you.” Kane hits them one by one with a murderous glare. “Every one of you for what you did here today. You’ll die for this.”
“Enough of the bullshit, all of you.” Ace folds his arms and stands between Payton and us. “I was willing to let it go, you two having a girl over there for an extended time. But you know we can’t let outsiders get that close to us without us knowing who they are. We all have to be in on it. We don’t make these decisions on our own. She knows too much about us, and we don’t know the first damn thing about her. I’m as concerned as Myles is to tell you the truth. So start talking. Who is she? Why is she living with you?”
He steps aside like he wants us to look at her while giving him the explanation he wants. Like she’s incentive for us to tell the truth—or if the truth is a no-go, to tell a convincing lie.
I don’t have to lie. “She’s a girl who needed our help when a guy who tried to rape her jumped in front of her car because he didn’t want her to get away from him. The reason she’s with us is we wanted to protect her and make sure she didn’t take the rap for that prick’s disappearance.