None of them had been Del, and my dick knew it as well as I did.
With the shirt unbuttoned all the way, she pushed the fabric away from my chest. Staring down at my torso, she ran tentative fingers in a path from the light hair at my collarbone down to the happy trail below my belly button.
Gliding back up, she traced a circle around one of the scars on my stomach. Then the next, and then to the bullet-shaped scar on my shoulder. She bit her bottom lip briefly, then leaned forward and touched her mouth to the marks one by one. My abs rippled as her mouth hovered over the one on my lower abdomen. Just her breath was the sweetest torment.
She jolted off my lap at the sound of my perimeter alarm resounding through the cabin. “Fuck,” I cursed, flipping my laptop open and bringing up the feeds for my cameras. At the edge of the driveway, a group of men wearing all white hopped out of the front of the truck. Del stared at the screen, wringing her hands despite the pain it must have caused her wrist.
It wasn’t until the passenger door swung open and a middle-aged man climbed out that her body went still with terror. With dark hair and a freshly shaven face, he might have radiated charm if it wasn’t for the scowl on his face as he looked up the driveway. “Who is he?” I asked Del, not taking my eyes off the man as he started up the dirt path.
“Jonathan,” she mumbled, rising to her feet. She glanced around the space, eying the back door like she might bolt. “I can’t go back,” she whispered, clenching her eyes shut as if the thought was physically painful. I didn’t have a hard time believing it was, knowing what he’d do to her as punishment for running.
“Hey,” I said, standing and grasping her face in my hands. “I won’t let anybody hurt you. Just trust me.”
Panic filled her eyes, but she nodded against the urge to flee. “Okay,” she said hastily.
“Jonathan is the leader of the Children of Awe, yeah? Why would he come himself? Did you take anything with you that they’d want back?” I asked, needing all the information at my disposal before I dealt with him. I couldn’t negotiate with a man when I didn’t know the variables. She bit her lip, her face twisting, but she remained silent. “Del,” I warned.
“Jonathan came because he’s my husband,” she whispered, her voice laced with shame. “I’m his First Wife. The one he believes God blessed him with to provide him sons. He’ll see my leaving as an affront to God, Anderson.”
I stared at her for a moment as the pieces snapped into place. The signs had all been there. The subtle hints, but she’d never outright said that the Jonathan she spoke of as a messenger of God was the man who hurt her. “Jesus. Fuck.” The bastard had to be three times her age from what I’d seen in my research while she slept.
“Please, don’t let him—”
“Shh. Nobody’s going to take you away from me. Go upstairs to the loft. Stay out of sight. For now, we assume they don’t know you’re here. Go.” I told her, kissing her briefly and watching as she turned and fled up the stairs.
Watching the driveway feed, I tore the shirt off my shoulders. I wouldn’t have time to button it, and nothing looked more like I had a woman in my house than answering the door in an unbuttoned shirt. The knock on the door seemed to vibrate through the small cabin, and I waited a few moments before I made my way to it.
With a final glance up to the loft to make sure Del was out of sight, I drew in a deep breath to prepare myself for a conversation with the man who’d hurt her.
I wanted to strangle him. To watch the life bleed from his eyes and hear him scream the way I imagined Del had when he’d carved into her with his knife. Instead, I plastered a fake smile on my face and pulled the door open.
His scowl was gone, replaced by a smile filled with perfect teeth and a face that appeared younger than I knew he must be. Deep eyes stared back at me, sparkling as he tried to hide his glance around the inside of the cabin. “Can I help you?” I asked.
I resisted the urge to shudder when his eyes met mine fully, something so twisted and demented lurking in the depths of them that I knew instantly Del had every right to be afraid for her life. He would hurt her again. He would break her and mold her into an entirely new and obedient woman of his making. The thought of Del so shattered, only pieces of herself remaining hidden below the surface, made my fists clench at my side.
“I hope so,” he said, that grin going even wider as he studied me. “I seem to have lost my wife. We went for a romantic stroll in the woods a few days ago for some privacy, and we were separated. I haven’t seen her since, and I’m truly worried for her. The woods are a dangerous place, and I hate to think what might have happened to her.”
“I haven’t seen her,” I grunted, barely controlling my rage. The lying sack of shit probably could have sold the lie to most people, making them think his poor wife was lost in the woods and he was only a concerned husband instead of the abusive piece of shit he really was.
“How do you know? I haven’t told you what she looks like.”
“Do I look like I get many visitors?” I forced a chuckle. “Not up here. Especially not women. I haven’t seen a single woman since I went into town at the base weeks ago.”
“We found this in the woods just outside your fence,” he said with a patient sigh, holding up the scrap of white material we’d watched the others pull from the tree branch.
“Maybe she passed by, but I haven’t seen her. Have you checked the town? That’s where I’d go if I got lost,” I suggested.
“I have people scouring the town already, yes. No sign of her, I’m afraid.” He sighed again, tucking the fabric into the pocket of his linen pants.
“I hope she turns up safe,” I said, curling my fingers around the door to signal our conversation had ended.
He nodded, but I didn’t think for a moment he believed my bullshit. “If you see her, tell her she’d best come home. I’ll be waiting.”
“I’ll be sure to let her know. If I see her.” I smiled tightly, closing the door. Del poked her head out, but I held up a finger to tell her to stay put. I wanted some distance between that fuck and my woman first.
Eight
Deliverance
Waiting for Anderson after his conversation with Jonathan felt like being torn into a hundred pieces and waiting to see if he’d bother to put me back together.
I’d never meant to keep my husband's identity a secret. I didn’t even think I had, really, but the shock on his Anderson’s face when I admitted the truth was painfully obvious.
Lies were a sin. Secrets were a sin.
All the sins I’d committed since leaving the community repeated in my head. The indoctrination of my upbringing stayed with me in a way I knew it would be years before I managed to rid myself of the haunting voice of my mother or the echo of Jonathan’s prayers in the Church every morning.
I just wanted it to stop.
I stood from the floor when Anderson finally appeared at the top of the stairs, his steps closing the gap between us quickly. “You somehow forgot to mention that your husband is the leader of the Children of Awe.”
“I told you he would never let me go,” I whispered back. “I didn’t think his name mattered.”
“There’s a big difference between one man being scorned and an entire community of lunatics thinking you’re destined to bring forth the next messenger of God, Del,” he snapped. I flinched back from the brutal bite to his words. Anderson had never been harsh with me, never shown me even a moment of anger.
He ran a hand through his hair, sighing out his frustration. “Come here,” he ordered.
I hurried forward immediately, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing tightly into his chest for comfort. I’d never known how perfect it could feel to be wrapped in a pair of strong arms.
To simply be held because someone loved me.
I’d never known what it was to be loved at all.
“I know this situation is difficult for you, but you’ve got to be honest with me for us to work. I don
’t know your past, and you don’t know mine. All we know is what we tell one another. I think in your little community, you got so used to people just knowing every detail of your life that you forgot how to talk about it,” he said against the top of my head.
“I don’t want to talk about it. My life there.” I paused, mulling over the words. “There were too many rules. Idleness is a sin, because it means you are wasting time you could spend serving God and the community. The need to be moving and working constantly kept us largely isolated, despite being together all the time.”
“How did you end up married to Jonathan?” he asked, his fists tightening against my spine.
“My mother told me he would take a new wife, and that there were rumors it would be me. My father is good friends with Jonathan, so I suspect they discussed the possibility of me. That same day Jonathan announced we would marry the next night.” Anderson guided me over to the bed, sitting down on the edge next to me. My fingers trailed circles over the bare skin of his arm, remembering the way his torso and the ridges there had felt under my hands. I wanted to explore him more.
I wanted to be with Anderson. The confliction in me was that part of the reason I wanted to be with him was only so I could choose. I could make a choice and give my body to someone who wasn’t Jonathan.
If sex with Anderson was a sin, then I never wanted to be righteous.
“That simple? He decides he wants you and you don’t get a say?” Anderson growled.
“Typically, my father would have to agree to the marriage,” I admitted. “But given who Jonathan is, nobody would ever think to deny him.”
“Even though he’s your father’s age.”
“Yes. To serve him is to serve God—”
“Do not talk to me about serving him. You will never touch him,” Anderson warned.
“I don’t want to touch him,” I assured him, even though it was made obvious by the fact that I ran. “You’re the only one I want.” I blushed, taking his hand off my bare thigh and moving it up my dress. Something about the fact that Anderson had talked to Jonathan with my touch on his skin, with my taste in his mouth and my sex on his fingers, fulfilled a dark urge I didn’t understand.
I wanted Anderson to take me. To claim me and make me his.
“Baby,” he warned. “We have to talk about this.”
“I don’t want to talk at all.” I smiled, heat warming my cheeks as he studied me. “I want to be yours.” Even if it may not last. I still had a future, an uncertain one at that, that called to me despite my growing affection for Anderson.
“You already are,” he murmured, returning my smile with a confident one of his own. Grasping the hem of my dress, he tugged it up and over my head. He stood us up only long enough to strip off my underwear, and then he laid me down in the center of the bed gently. My fingers went to the button of his jeans, freeing it and sliding down the zipper slowly.
He grinned at the tremble in them, the nerves I couldn’t control. Then he shoved the jeans down his thighs, corded with muscle, kicking them off his ankles less than gracefully.
His length hung heavy between us, seeming larger than I’d considered possible in all my considerations of what a man might look like when he took off his clothes. I knew the logistics of sex, but only just. Only enough to serve my husband one day.
He was too big to fit.
He smirked down at me, dropping his mouth to the space between my breasts and holding my eyes as he kissed me. I writhed beneath him, moaning his name when he drew one pebbled nipple into his mouth and sucked.
Fingers played between my legs, building me closer and closer to an explosion of the senses that I both wanted and dreaded. He pumped a finger inside me. Then a second. Stretching me while his thumb rubbed at the apex of me.
When he drew his hand away, I sucked in a ragged gasp. I’d been so close, but the smile in his eyes was knowing. “You come when I’m inside you this time,” he murmured, pressing his lips to mine briefly.
The pressure of him touched my core, sliding through the outside of me where I was swollen and needy for him. With a final study of my face, he reached between us, rubbing the tip of himself along me briefly.
Then he guided himself inside me. My breath hitched, feeling every inch of him as he rocked his hips and pushed through tender and tight tissue slowly. Wrapping a hand around the back of my neck, he tilted my head up to look in my eyes and shoved through the barrier inside me.
Burning quickly pinched at my insides, but he soothed it with the sweet murmur of his voice and the hazel of his eyes on mine. Rocking in and out in short pulses of his hips, he took what I gave inch by inch until nothing existed but him. But the place where we connected and the feeling of fullness that settled over me. “Anderson,” I whispered.
“I know, Baby. I feel it too.” He took my hands in his, lacing his fingers with mine and pinning them to the bed as he thrust in and out in a steadier rhythm. He kissed me, emotion tangling me into a mess of contradictions. My body heated, and the feel of him inside me so completely sent me spiraling towards the edge like he’d done the day before. “That feeling is love, Del. Because you love me too. You just have to admit it to yourself,” he whispered, with his lips at my ear. He released my hands, sliding one down my body until he grasped the back of my thigh and shoved my leg high and wide.
His thrusts turned to pounding, taking me with deep rolls of his hips that made me cry out. My breasts shook with the force of each one, and I rolled my head to the side. “Nobody else will ever give you this,” he growled. “Nobody but me will make you feel this way.”
“Anderson,” I whimpered, reaching out for him. The fear of me leaving him showed in every etched line on his perfect face. He took my hand, using it to flip me over to my stomach.
His hands at my hips drew me up to my hands and knees, and then he surged back inside with a sharp snap of his hips. “Oh, God!” One hand buried in my hair, tangling it around his fist and drawing me up until my back pressed against his chest. Until his face buried in my neck and he nipped the delicate skin there.
He let my hair loose finally, wrapping that hand around the front of my throat and pressing down. He gave me no reprieve from the frantic energy of his thrusts. From the pounding of him inside me. The other hand moved between my thighs, touching the place where he battered into me and wrapping his fingers around himself. “So fucking tight, Baby. So fucking mine.”
“Please,” I begged as the heel of his palm ground against that spot at the top of me that drove me mad.
“Tell me you love me,” he growled into my neck, biting the spot between my neck and my shoulder roughly. “Tell me or I’ll fuck you until you do.”
So this was what fuck meant.
“I can’t,” I pleaded.
“You will.” Fingers moved through me, spreading me open as he made his way to that bundle of nerves and rubbed them more directly. “Because I love you, Baby. I won’t accept anything less from you.”
He kept at it, fucking and circling the bundle like he had all day, but the grunts of his exertion grew with each passing moment. It thrilled me to know that even as he tormented me, it was torture for him too.
That he took solace in my body as much as I found myself in his. I wasn’t a Child of Mount Awe when he put his hands on me. I was a woman set aflame by a man who loved her irrationally. Inexplicably.
“I love you,” I whimpered finally, conceding to his insane demands. Part of me wished I could taste a lie on my tongue, that I’d know they weren’t true. But I suspected they were the truest words I’d ever spoken.
And all the more terrifying for it.
The hand at my throat turned my head, then he was devouring my lips in a kiss that stripped away all semblance of who I’d been before.
He erased Deliverance with his kiss and claimed Del as his.
His woman. His life.
His everything.
He swallowed my cry as I spasmed around him, light flooding my se
nses. His own roar erupted behind me, echoing through the cabin and making the walls vibrate as heat flooded me.
My breath came in ragged gasps as vision returned. Anderson eased me down onto the bed, curling up behind me and never breaking our connection.
He stayed locked inside me longer than it took for me to fall asleep.
Nine
Anderson
The axe came down on the log, splitting it in half with ease. Sweat trickled down my spine, the afternoon sun beating down on me. I hoped Del wasn’t a light sleeper under normal circumstances, given my inability to sleep past five in the morning. Too many years in the military meant early wake up was as much a part of me as the scars on my body.
As well as the ones on my soul from all the friends lost.
Another thunk of wood splitting, another vent of my rage at the prospect of losing Del. She was everything I could have ever dreamed of having for myself and then some.
She loved me. Sexually manipulated into the confession or not, I felt the weight of it in my soul. The truth of it.
If only I could make her sit still long enough for her wrist to heal and for her body to recover from everything she’d put it through in her escape. Not to mention the beating she’d taken before she fled. As if summoned, she poked her head out the back door cautiously. Drowning in my flannel shirt, she looked even smaller for the way it went to the middle of her thighs. She crossed her arms over her chest, looking uncomfortable. As if she’d done something wrong by wearing my shirt, when the reality was I’d set that shirt aside and never wash it if I didn’t have the real, live woman waiting for me.
We had a lifetime of her waking up and putting on my shirts ahead of us.
Deliver Me from Evil (The Men of Mount Awe Book 1) Page 5