by Coralee June
Tame
Savannah Heirs
CoraLee June
Raven Kennedy
Copyright © 2019 by CoraLee June & Raven Kennedy
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the authors, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
For Mr. June and Mr. Kennedy, for their deep understanding and acceptance of our co-write wife relationship.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
Thank You For Reading
About the Author
About the Author
Prologue
Rachel
It smelled like nothing.
Like the absolute absence of scent.
After weeks and weeks of being held captive in a basement with a dozen other girls, a world with no smell was a shock to my senses. I was used to the smell of sweat and sex and piss. I was also used to the sound of screaming and groaning and whispered mutterings, but now there was no sound either except for a faint, constant beeping that had my head spinning. It reminded me of the dripping water in the basement I was forced to call home.
The lack of smell and the strange beeping sound yanked me out of my frozen state where I hovered between sleep and nothingness. I liked that place. It was quiet and safe, and I didn’t want to leave it yet. I knew that as soon as I did, my peace would be over. Inside of that dormancy, reality and memory couldn’t reach me. I was untouchable. But that damn smell of nothing...no sweat, no rusty blood and sewage, it was too jarring to ignore. Requiring more effort than it should have taken, I peeled open my eyes, my lids ripping apart like a licked envelope.
A bright light hit me like a sledgehammer. I had to blink several times for my eyes to adjust so I could see where I was. I looked around, trying to remember. The hospital room I was in was plain white. White tile, white walls, white bed. It was bright and clean and everything I wasn’t used to. I had cuffs on my legs that filled with air every couple of minutes, squeezing my legs before deflating again. I must have been lying in this bed for a while if they were worried about blood clots. I had oxygen stuffed up my nose and a clamp over my finger. I stared at my arms where they rested on either side of me, bandages covering the ugliness that marked me.
It took a second to remember why those marks were there, and my breathing hitched, but I stayed frozen on the bed. I was afraid that if I moved, the hunger would start—the craving that they forced on me. I didn’t dare lift a finger. The sooner you remembered the need, the sooner it fucked you.
I wasn’t ready to face the craving yet, so I focused on my other senses instead. I focused on the pain like it was a beacon. There was a soreness between my legs and an ache in my gut. A lingering hurt that reminded me of what else they had forced on me. But I didn’t want to think about that either, so I took stock of the rest of me.
My throat was dry. My skin was cracked. Dull hair was fanned out around me, and if I thought that counting the strands would’ve stopped the building need, I would have plucked every scrap of blonde hair from my head.
But the shakiness set in before I could stop it. I shook with little aftershocks that had nothing to do with shock and everything to do with the drug Johnny Jack’s gang had forced into my veins. The craving came to the forefront of my mind, capturing me with constant need. I hated it. I wanted it. It consumed my mind, and I found myself fidgeting with the itch. It was what they wanted. They kept us chasing the high so that we would be complacent. They made us want the drug more than we wanted to escape.
I squeezed my eyes against the burning that collected behind my lids. Alongside the craving, the memories came back like a rush of floodwater. But unlike the drugs, I didn’t want those. They pushed forward anyway though, assaulting me with every vile, conscious second of my captivity. My kidnapping, being ripped away from my father and branded with JJ’s initials, and then being shoved in a dank basement with the other girls who were already too far gone to offer any sense of comfort. Girls were sold and bought, the sex trade a continuous revolving door. But me? They kept me. I was Johnny Jack’s message to my father. I was his revenge. And even though JJ himself never touched me, he didn’t have to. He made sure I was thoroughly ruined within a week of my captivity. Pick made sure of it.
As soon as I saw Pick’s face in my head, my stomach turned with violent fear and hate. I barely managed to lean over the side of the bed before the vomit came spewing out of me. Acidic bile splashed onto the tile, offending the colorless floor.
I spit, trying to get the taste out of my mouth, before leaning back on the bed again. With a shaky hand, I tugged out the oxygen tube from my nostrils and wiped my mouth, taking slowing breaths as my ears blared with my pumping blood and the echoing sounds of my torment.
The hospital room was suddenly unbearably white—too bright for the dark things that kept playing in my mind. It made everything seem so much worse, and I found I couldn’t catch my breath. I ripped out my IV and stared at the wall as my too-loud memories took over. I was stuck in them, vulnerable under the hospital’s lights and forced to replay moments that I desperately wanted to shove into the dark corners of my mind. But just as I panicked that I’d be forced to see them under a spotlight forever, a shadow cut through my whited-out room, and I found myself able to breathe again.
My eyes cut over, and there he was. My savior.
“You’re awake,” he said, somehow sounding both glad and disappointed. I vaguely remembered hearing his name when he pulled me from the wreckage of the car. Godfrey Taylor. Dark blonde hair and cold blue eyes. He stood there, staring at my sweaty face, his gaze calculating and disconcerting. But looking at him made all of the shitstorms inside my mind go away, so I latched on with both hands. He was beautiful in a frightening sort of way. The intense craving I felt to blow up a vein and get lost in the drugs again started to fade. The memories were still there, and the addiction still gnawing, but Godfrey was a demanding distraction.
I frowned at him. “What are you doing here?” I asked, my throat burning as the words bubbled their way out. He studied me for a moment from afar then strolled his way inside my room before leaning against the white wall beside my bed with one ankle propped over the other, and his arms crossed over his impressive chest. He looked like he didn’t have a care in the world, yet here I was dying at his feet.
“I’ve been here every day. Waiting for you to wake up.”
His admission shocked the hell out of me. I didn’t know him, but I knew of him. Savannah, Georgia, had its very own class of elites, and the golden boy of the infamous Heirs was definitely one of them. Aside from that, his father had some of the same “associates” that my own dad did.
The first time I saw Godfrey Taylor up close, he had just pulled me out of a burning car, and he was slapping my cheeks to get me to stop screaming. I had a shattered soul and glass in my mouth. I had burning veins and smoke-infused hair. But he pulled me from the wreckage, not knowing that I was more wrecked than that car.
“Why?” I asked again.
He pinned me with that intense, calculating gaze of his and shrugged. “You’re what she could’ve been,” he answered.
His words hit me like a punch, and I flinched back against the pillow. He was talking about another girl, of course. The one Johnny Jack and his men took that night, shoving her into the car with me. I didn’t know her either since they all went to the prep school, Smith Academy, while I didn’t have the pedigree for plaid skirts and million dollar gymnasiums. I went to public school, so our circles never crossed except for the rare times when our high school parties converged. I’d seen him maybe a handful of times, but we’d never spoken. He’d never even glanced my way before. And yet, he was there at one of the most pivotal moments of my life. He’d been the one to pull me out of that car and mark the end of my torment.
But as we studied each other now, I saw that he wasn’t some knight in shining armor. He wasn’t even really here for me. He was here to see what the other girl almost became. I wasn’t upset, but I was intrigued by the way he looked at me. Godfrey didn’t look at me with pity or even disgust, but with irritation. What he could possibly be irritated about, I had no idea, but I wanted to find out.
“Thank you,” I managed to say, breaking the silence between us.
He didn’t acknowledge my words at all. Instead, he said, “You close with Rocco?”
I snorted humorlessly as I subconsciously fidgeted. “My dad is the reason I’m here,” I snapped.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
His prying pissed me off, but I found myself answering anyway. “Yeah, we were close. Now? Now I don’t know what we are,” I admitted.
When his eyes darted down, I followed his gaze to where I was subconsciously picking at the bandages on my arm, I was picking at my skin, wishing it was a needle prodding me instead of my fingernails. The moment I started thinking about it again, I was burning from the veins out. I looked around the room, like a heroin-filled syringe would suddenly appear.
Godfrey must have noticed where my mind went, because I watched the change in him when he observed the track marks on my arms and the desperate sneer on my face. I watched his eyes go from measuring to contempt. It made me feel ashamed. But why did I give a shit what he thought about me? He didn’t know me. He didn’t know what I went through or how the drugs were my only relief. There were some things I couldn’t change, but that damn needle helped me forget, which was the only blessing I was offered down in that damn basement.
And yet, I didn’t want him to look at me like that.
“Don’t leave?”
My plea sounded like a question. I’d mastered the art of begging. For weeks, my day started with a demand. I demanded to be set free. I demanded to eat something other than protein bars and moldy bread. I demanded that they let me go and stop violating my broken body.
And every day ended with destruction. Begging didn’t do me any good, but I’d done it anyway. I’d begged, fought, reasoned, and relented. Every action and reaction was like a currency we traded, trying to come up with the right combination to buy back our lives. But it was never enough. Those men were desensitized to tears and screams and threats. They didn’t care that I was dying slowly on their lumpy mattress.
And just like the men who wouldn’t let me go, Godfrey sneered at my pathetic attempt at wanting something the world would inevitably deny me as my useless plea hovered in the air between us. “Usually I have my dick in someone’s mouth when they’re begging me to stay,” he said. Godfrey’s crass words were a jolt to my system. I scratched my arms. My skin felt feverish. My mind felt like a tunnel, but there was no light at the end of it.
“You’re disgusting,” I replied in a huff, anger bleeding through me, giving me a glimpse into the person I was before.
He smiled. “Stoke up that fire, Rachel Nomar. It’s the only way you’ll survive,” he replied before pushing away from the wall and walking away.
I felt unreasonable panic with every step he took. I wasn’t ready for him to leave. Godfrey was an asshole, but he’d still saved me. My mind was twisted and vulnerable enough to think that he could keep saving me. My soul wanted a savior, but it was consistent with my luck that I was given a devil who wasn’t interested in protecting anyone.
“Will I see you again?” I asked before he could walk out the door.
“Probably not.”
“Why not?”
Godfrey sighed and turned back to look at me from the doorway. The expression on his face told me that my question annoyed him. “Because this meant nothing. I saved you because it was convenient for me. I stayed because I was curious. But now I see you’re just a druggie with daddy issues. There’s nothing special about you at all.”
He walked out without a backward glance, and at that moment, all of the noises inside of my head and the inky memories that plagued me—I was able to shove them all back. Even my veins couldn’t burn as much as my angry indignation did. Now, I was focused on something else instead. I was going to prove Godfrey Taylor wrong.
Chapter One
Godfrey
A person was only as strong as their need for validation. I liked to starve people of the reaction they craved. I kept them guessing and questioning themselves until they were nothing but bones and disappointment. Survival was fluid, and I had enough expectations on my back to know that if I didn’t break them, they’d break me.
I woke up with the need to flee. Dad had been breathing down my neck since the accident, and I needed out of Savannah for a bit. I knew I could never permanently escape the asshole, but I went to my second home—Jacksonville. Just a two hour drive, it was the closest place for pony races. Walking up to the pale blue stadium had my blood burning with the need to fatten my pocket. I had a bit of a reputation at the races. Like everything else in my life, I was known for winning. Some might even say luck just came naturally to me. Too bad I wasn’t lucky where it actually counted.
There was a crowd. I could feel their greedy eyes on me. Some of them even pushed and shoved from behind me to overhear what I’d say. The rat bastards wanted to know what bet I’d make. I used to be flattered by their faith in me, but now I just found myself getting annoyed for their lack of ingenuity.
“Come on, kid. I don’t have all day.”
I had to control my sneer. The man collecting bets looked like he ate gas station food for a living and hadn’t washed his comb-over since the eighties. He was obviously new here if he was speaking to me like that. The only reason I didn’t put him in his place right there and then was because it had been a while since I'd been here. Poker was my game of choice, but that didn't mean my reputation for winning at the races had dissolved. Sometimes I needed a break from analyzing people. Poker was all in the facial expressions and tells, but the pony races were nothing but beasts and breeding—just like Savannah, Georgia.
“Sixty on California Chrome,” I said while chewing the gum that had long since lost its flavor. Mama used to say I was born clenching my jaw, and my friend Scarlett kept an endless supply of gum in her purse to help with the tension headaches my involuntary habit caused. She was a thoughtful little thing. I didn’t deserve it.
“The minimum is a grand,” the man accepting bets said, rolling his eyes since he had no fucking clue who I was. Well, he’d learn s
oon. They always did.
“Did I fucking stutter? Sixty grand, asswipe.”
I slapped the stack of cash I stole from dear old dad’s safe on the worn counter. I’d been taking and replenishing for years, hiding my winnings in an offshore account that was building quite a bit of interest. Every dollar I won or made meant I was that much closer to being able to leave.
I knew if I asked, my friends would lend me the money, but I liked the risk. I loved being self-sufficient. And over time, the races became a drug of sorts. Dad was addicted to violence and blackmail. I was addicted to making money and the idea of getting the fuck out of here. We were more alike than I cared to admit.
All at once, everyone started making identical bets to mine. I almost laughed at how stupid they were. The world was full of followers, but I wasn’t a leader, I was just someone everyone thought they wanted to be. Grown men with oversized bellies and skinny wallets pushed and shoved past each other. One guy even brushed at my arm like some of my fortune could rub off on him. Pathetic fucker.
I strode off with my hands in my pockets, leaving the scene behind as I heard people muttering my name. I smirked at the look on the bookie’s face when he realized who I was. He was probably about to shit his pants now that he knew. I walked out and started making my way down the stairs, breathing in the air that smelled like shit and hay. I’d grown accustomed to it. I even associated it with freedom.