Devil's Bargain

by Natasha Knight

  But maybe it’s the anger in his words that makes him sound so harsh.

  The brother snorts and starts to say something, but the old man raises his hand to quiet him.

  “Now’s not the time, Declan. Your brother’s had a long journey.”

  The older man hasn’t taken his eyes off Hawk once. When he finally turns to me, when he steps toward me with a warm smile, I see a slight resemblance. It’s not as strong as it is between the brothers.

  “Miss,” he says, coming close enough to shake my hand. “I’m Benjamin. Hawk’s grandfather.”

  “Grandfather?”

  I meet Hawk’s gaze for one moment before returning my eyes to Benjamin.

  “I’m Melissa. Melissa Doe.” I wonder if it sounds strange when I say that. The Doe. It sounds strange to me. But maybe that’s because I’ve been using Chase for such a long time and I’m not exactly sure why I tell him my real name now.

  “A pleasure to meet you,” he says.

  Declan snorts and when I look at him, I find him watching me, his dark eyes unreadable.

  But then he shakes his head and turns on his heel to disappear into the house. The tension physically lifts from the room once he’s gone.

  “A bedroom’s been prepared—” Benjamin starts, but Hawk cuts him off.

  “I’ll be taking the master.”

  24

  Hawk

  Melissa is taking in every aspect of the house as I lead her through it. Her mouth is practically hanging open, but she doesn’t realize she’s seeing it at its worst.

  It’s strange to come back to the house in this state. I knew what I was doing over the last several years, but to see it in person is more difficult than I realized it would be. It’s run-down and old. Something that was once grand, reduced. Humbled.

  I guess that’s what I was trying to do to them. To my father. My step-mother. Declan.

  I shove that pang of remorse down deep and lead Melissa up the stone steps to the second floor and to my father’s rooms.

  Two maids are rushing in and out, carrying his things out.

  I push the heavy wooden door wide and gesture for Melissa to enter. She does, quickly scooting to the side to let another of the maids with an armful of clothing out.

  I don’t recognize the things she’s carrying but know they’re my fathers from the colors alone. Our colors. Strange the things you never forget.

  He was a proud man. I remember that about him. Proud of his heritage. Of this house. Of what our family name stood for.

  I was proud too. Proud to be the first-born son of Hawk MacLeod. Proud to carry the traditional name granted only to the first-born of the first-born.

  It meant something to me. Hell. It had meant everything to me.

  But that was before my mother died. Before my father married his mistress and made her lady of our house. Before he acknowledged Declan as his—my half-brother—born to him and his mistress just one year after my own birth while he was still married to my mother.

  I never learned if my mother knew. I hope she didn’t.

  Ann, his mistress, had such influence over my father, much more than my mother ever had. She was young and beautiful, and, pathetically, these things seemed to be all she needed to wrap my father around her little finger.

  For years, I didn’t know Declan was my half-brother. When my father married Ann, I was seven years old. Declan was six. It took him five more years to acknowledge that Declan was his by blood. I guess he was trying to give the impression of being respectful of his dead wife.

  By then, I’d come to dislike Ann. Even at twelve years old, I’d started to see through the façade and know the kind of woman she was. Everyone did. Everyone but my father.

  Greedy. Superficial. Spiteful. She loved money more than she loved my father or me or even her own son. Loved money more than she did this house. More than she ever understood what this family stood for.

  She succeeded in cutting me out of the will altogether. Succeeded in aiding her son to steal my inheritance out from under me.

  And my life’s mission since then has been vengeance and all around me is the stain of my success.

  I should be happy.

  I should be fucking jumping up and down with joy.

  “Just make the bed and get the hell out,” I snap at one of the maids, annoyed at all the movement, all the people.

  I have a headache. I’m fucking dead tired and I have to deal with Declan. I was hoping Benjamin would have gotten him out of the house before my return.

  “It’s made, sir. I had fresh sheets put on just yesterday,” one of them tells me.

  The Scottish accent has me enthralled for a moment. I haven’t heard it in so long. Haven’t spoken like this in so long.

  “Thank you,” I say more calmly.

  She nods and closes the door when she leaves.

  I turn to Melissa who appears awestruck in the large room with its thick stone walls and windows in deep alcoves, the glass encased in iron seeming from another time. She goes to the one on the farther end of the room, passing the large four-poster hand-carved bed, fingers trailing over the wood.

  I don’t think she realizes what the etchings are. People fucking. The marriage bed passed down from generation to generation, blessed to breed a large, healthy clan, the responsibility on the shoulders of the first-born son.

  Those times are past though. There is no more MacLeod clan.

  I ignore the sick feeling at the thought.

  Melissa looks out the window. I watch her take it in before shifting my gaze to see this landscape again for the first time in thirteen years. Almost half my lifetime.

  How have I forgotten how beautiful it is here? Even in the rain and mist. The water, the mountains, the cliffs. She hasn’t even seen what’s beyond those cliffs yet. Endless beauty. So wild and utterly different from the Vegas strip.

  Christ. I remember this. I remember all of it and that longing for the soil of my home. I’ve not felt it this acutely in too many years.

  I’ve not allowed myself to feel anything at all.

  “The Atlantic lies just beyond those cliffs. Climate’s very different than Las Vegas.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” she says, turning to me, then scanning the room, the antique furniture that’s been in my family for generations, the tattered rugs on the floor so necessary against the chill in these old stone estates.

  I walk into the second room, which should be a sitting room, but I see it’s been converted into a huge closet stuffed to the gills with dresses and shoes and bags, all brand names I recognize. All wholly unnecessary and impractical for the Scottish Highlands. Many not even worn with tags still attached.

  This is Ann’s work. Her pathetic legacy.

  I return to the main room, trying like hell to manage whatever the fuck is going on in my head and in my gut.

  “There’s a bathroom through here if you need it,” I say, opening the door to find they had updated the bathroom with modern luxuries.

  Melissa walks toward me. “Are you okay?”

  I look over her head, out at the sprawling hills and the lush green grass. The wind has cleared the sun of clouds for the moment and the light it casts is more beautiful than that of constant sunshine.

  But in the next instant, it’s dark again and rain pelts the windows.

  She touches her hand to my cheek. “Hawk?”

  I look down at her.

  She didn’t sleep last night, not much at least, but even so, she’s still beautiful. Las Vegas, and that first night, and the auction, and everything, all those things, it feels like a lifetime ago.

  She feels like a lifetime ago and I realize how much my own thoughts and feelings about her have changed. Have become something strange and foreign to me.

  I give a shake of my head.

  Now’s not the time for that. Now I need to deal with my family.

  But I need one thing from her first.

  I need to fuck her. To bu
ry myself in the familiar warmth of her.

  I walk her to the bed and there, turn her, hold her to me as I undo her jeans with one hand and slide my other hand up her sweater to cup her lace-clad breast. I shove her jeans half-down her hips and push her over the bed. Her panties are askew, and I push them down too. I gaze down at her ass, her perfect ass, as I undo my jeans and take myself out.

  Crouching down behind her, I spread her open and look at her, lick the length of her. Dip my tongue inside her and taste her wet cunt before standing, keeping her spread as I drive into her.

  She’s not ready and she struggles against me.

  “Be still,” I say, taking her wrists and spreading her arms wide, like she’s the Christ nailed to the cross that’s hanging over the bed. Like she’s the sacrifice.

  But she isn’t that.

  I am.

  I was.

  I lay my weight on her. Looking up at that thing when I fuck her, holding her down, her cunt slickening, wetting the passage for me. This is what I need. Her. To fuck her. To be inside her and feel her.

  This fucking, it’s like animals rutting. There’s nothing slow or sensual about it. It’s simple need. And soon I hear her breathing change, coming short and fast. So I fuck her harder and I don’t care if she comes, not right now. This is about something else.

  I need release.

  And being here, I need to stake my claim.

  When I’m just a thrust away, I pull out of her, fisting my cock as it throbs, and I come. I come all over their bed, their sheets, their pillows. I cover their bed in cum as Melissa watches.

  I know she doesn’t understand. Even as orgasm racks my body, I see her, and I know she does not understand.

  When I’m finished, I pull my jeans up, look at my work, then at her. I see the expression of shock on her face as if I’ve just defiled a fucking church altar.

  “You don’t know what they did to me,” I say harshly.

  She steps toward me. “I’m sure it’s a lot to take in, especially with your father’s—”

  I chuckle. It’s an ugly sound.

  “No, I’m not overwhelmed by emotion or sorrow for the loss of my father. I lost him long ago. If he was ever a father to me at all.” I check my watch, run a hand through my hair. “Go have a shower. I’ll have someone change the bed so you can sleep. I’ll come for you after I meet with Benjamin.” I don’t want her talking to Declan or anyone else.

  She reaches down to pull up her panties and jeans.

  “What’s going on with you?” she asks.

  I turn away, and everywhere I look, I see memories. Remembrances. Hell, I almost see him.

  And worse than seeing, I feel how much I’ve lost.

  Fuck.

  It’s not supposed to be like this. I’m not supposed to feel like this.

  “Hawk?”

  “I need to take care of some things. Talk to Benjamin. Understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “Get cleaned up. Shower. Take a nap. Whatever. But you’re not to leave this room until I come to get you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.” I walk to the door.

  “Hey!” She follows, grabs my arm. I turn and see on her face that she’s taken aback by what she sees on mine. It takes her a moment to continue. “Don’t take it out on me. I’m sorry your father died and that you had to come back here, but I am not your enemy. You brought me, remember?”

  I snort.

  She has no idea.

  “You’re tired, Melissa. Get some rest.” I open the door to leave, anxious to talk to Benjamin.

  “Tell me why you bothered to bring me if you’re just going to be a jerk to me. At least tell me that.”

  I stop, turn to her. “Do as I say. You know how you’ll be punished if you don’t.”

  Her face pales and her mouth opens, but she doesn’t say anything.

  Fuck. I don’t mean that. Not after everything.

  “Melissa—”

  She clears her throat, shakes her head and when she looks at me, her eyes are different. Wounded.

  Crap.

  “You’re right. I am tired,” she says. “Tired of you and your secrecy. You accuse me of it and look at you.”

  I don’t have a comeback. She’s right.

  A moment later, she turns and disappears into the bathroom. I hear the lock turn.

  I look at the closed door, take a step toward it, but stop. I have to deal with my brother now.

  I walk out the door telling the maid along the way to change our bedding as I head down the stairs and into my father’s old study.

  My study now. Almost.

  Along the way, I’m looking at everything I pass, remembering everything, the paintings, the rugs, the feel of the stone walls and even their smell. God, I’d forgotten how Scotland smells. How this house smells.

  But I can’t think about all of that because if I do, it will overwhelm me, and I can’t let that happen.

  Not now.

  Not here.

  Not ever.

  25

  Hawk

  “Nice of you to join us,” Declan says.

  I ignore him.

  Benjamin is sitting behind my father’s antique desk and a man I don’t recognize is standing beside him pointing to something on a document. He’s introduced as Michael Smith, one of the attorneys of the estate.

  Declan watches me from his place at the far wall. He’s leaning against it and has the bottom of his right foot resting on it. His arms are crossed over his chest and he looks so different to how I remember him. Older than he is.

  I wonder how he sees me.

  Last time I saw him he was fifteen years old. Benjamin has sent photographs over they years, but I threw most away.

  When my father married his mother and he became my brother, I was excited about the idea. I liked Declan, we were close, even.

  But that was when I’d thought he was my stepbrother, not a half-brother. We were friends before that, too. When my mother was alive.

  But with my mother’s death, everything changed.

  And being back here, it brings back all those old memories. Those old betrayals.

  “How’s the master bedroom?” Declan asks.

  I look at him, eyes narrowing.

  “Fuck her in the laird’s bed yet?”

  I cross the room in three steps and grip him by the collar. He does the same to me, his grip as powerful as mine. If we fought, we’d be equally matched. Two Goliaths at war.

  “You will talk to me with respect.”

  He gives me a one-sided grin. “Your ears grow delicate, brother?”

  “I am not your brother and I will demolish you.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Look around you, Declan. I already have.”

  “No, you demolished him.”

  That renders me mute.

  “Stop it, both of you,” Benjamin orders. “Sit down.”

  “I tried to shield him from the truth of what you did, you know that? Of what you were doing to your own family.”

  “He wasn’t my family. He chose.”

  “Imagine that. I had to protect my father from his own son. His first-born.”

  His father.

  “Who was protecting him from your mother? I saw her closet overflowing with clothes they couldn’t afford. And look at this house. Look at the state of things.”

  “No matter what you want to believe, he loved her.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt of that. She made a fool of an old man. My question is did she ever love him? Love his name? Love his family?”

  “You chose to leave. Remember that.”

  “It wasn’t that simple and you know it,” I say, releasing him, shoving him backward. “But you know what? It doesn’t matter. I own fifty-one percent of the company and the estate is effectively bankrupt. You’ll sign the papers and the house will be mine in a matter of hours. I’ve won, brother. So fuck you.”

  “Ever hear the te
rm cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face? Not sure I’d call what you did winning.”

  “You can pack your things and get the hell out as soon as the papers are signed,” I say.

  He grins, adjusts the cuffs of his shirt, his attention to them as he replies. “You tell your nephew he’s got no home, then.”

  “You mean your bastard—”

  “Hawk!” Benjamin interjects.

  Fuck.

  I turn away, grit my teeth.

  “What in God’s name has come over you?” Benjamin asks.

  He’s right. The child is what? Four? He’s not to blame. Not to be hated.

  As if on cue, the door flies open and we all turn to find a boy—my nephew I know from first sight—charge inside. He’s got a toy train in his hand and runs directly to Declan who catches him and lifts him into the air.

  “I found it! I told you it was under the bed and no one would trip over it.”

  Declan cradles him, smiles at him in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile. It’s like his entire face softens.

  He takes the toy train from his son’s hand.

  The boy spots me from the corner of his eye, a stranger, and turns his full attention to me. His eyebrows furrow together and it’s like looking into a mirror when I see his blue and green eyes.

  But for all the innocence inside his, I know the opposite fills mine.

  “Who’s that?” he asks, pointing so his finger is inches from my face.

  Declan’s face hardens when he turns his gaze to mine. “That is your Uncle Hawk,” he says, setting the boy down. “Meet your nephew, brother. James Declan Scott.”

  James steps toward me and holds out his hand like a little gentleman.

  “How do you do?” he asks. “I didn’t think you were real.”

  God. Can I feel like more of an asshole?

  I crouch down, take the boy’s small hand in mine. “Nice to meet you, James. I can assure you I am very real.”

  “You don’t talk like us.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Do you fly hawks too?” he asks. “Like Grandpa? He said you did. He said you were good at it.”