by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin
He broke our stare, his expression unchanged, and I exhaled in relief. Silence ensued, interrupted by the scrape of his fork against china, but it wasn’t the uncomfortable kind of disquiet that made every second feel like an eternity. My mind was numb. I hadn’t processed, and I wasn’t ready to do so.
“Why did you starve yourself?” he asked, jerking me to awareness.
I had no idea how to explain. I couldn’t explain, not without going into things I didn’t want to reveal, like how after the first inpatient treatment, I’d relapsed on purpose because being locked inside that facility had been the most peaceful three months I’d experienced in a long time. My treatment had kept Zach away. “I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
I scooped up a handful of potatoes. “It started after…” I began, raising my eyes to his, “after you went away.”
“Your eating disorder is my fault then?”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I was dealing with a lot of stuff and—”
“Save it, Alex. I’m sure you were really struggling in your daddy’s mansion, going out on the weekends with boyfriends and friends, loading up your closets with expensive clothes. Spare me the sob story, ’cause I’m not buying.”
“Why’d you ask then?” With a tilt of my head, I raised my brows.
“Don’t get smart with me. I thought you might actually tell the truth for once in your life.” He pushed back from the table. “Clear the table and load the dishwasher.” He swept a hand toward the messy floor. “And clean up this mess.”
Indignation rose, but I kept my mouth shut. Rising to my feet, I grabbed my plate from the floor and his from the table before making my way to the sink. I took my time scrubbing the few dishes from breakfast, and after I’d loaded them into the dishwasher, I slammed the door, turned around, and found him watching me. He was leaning against the counter, arms crossed and biceps bulging.
“I need a broom.”
He fetched one from a closet near the door leading to God knew where. Where the hell had he taken me? I saw nothing but trees, though the distinct hum of a highway gave me hope that help existed beyond all the thick foliage.
He shoved the broom into my hands, and our fingers brushed together—the kind of touch that lingered enough to make me shiver. I swallowed hard and swept up the mess, sensing him behind me the whole time. His warm palms settled on my hips, fingers curling around to my front. I swayed into his body.
“Can…can I ask you something, Rafe?”
“You can ask.”
“Have you…” My voice faltered, and I had to swallow hard in order to force the question out. “Have you had sex since getting out?”
He trembled. “No,” he groaned as he dipped a finger inside me, and I quaked at the thought that he hadn’t been with anyone in such a long time.
“Now it’s my turn to ask you something,” he said. “Just how badly do you want me to fuck you?”
A whimper escaped. It was no secret my body wanted him, had always wanted him. But me, the woman he’d kidnapped, she didn’t want him. That’s what I told myself, anyway.
“You wanted it back then too.” With a growl, he pushed me away. “I don’t want you like this.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I turned to face him, the broom handle keeping me upright.
“It means I don’t want you willing.” He knocked the broom to the floor and gripped my wrists. In the rays of the sun peeking through the skylight, my scars stood out as lines of abstract art on my forearms, sketched in blood by my inability to cope with stress. He pulled out my arms and put the marred skin on display.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Nothing,” I said, trying to pull away, but he wouldn’t let me.
“Who did this?”
“No one.”
He jerked me close, and his immovable hands framed my cheeks. “Who. Did. This?”
“I did.”
For the first time since he’d re-entered my life, he appeared speechless. His gaze scoured my face, as if looking for answers.
“Why?”
I shook my head, unable to speak, scared he’d see too much. But I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to look away. I wanted to bathe in the gentleness breaking through in that instant when I glimpsed the old Rafe.
He blinked and the moment shattered, his emotions going into lockdown. Without another word, he dragged me toward the cellar.
“Don’t put me back down there,” I pleaded.
He flung open the door and herded me down the stairs. I was shaking too much to fight. Back in the cage, he fastened shackles around my wrists and jerked my arms high, attaching the chain to a hook in the ceiling. “This should keep you out of trouble for a while.” He held my chin, fingers bruising my jaw. “Every time you rebel, this is where you’ll end up. Learn to obey me, and we’ll get along fine.”
And that’s how he left me. Alone, cold, and in the dark, with my arms suspended above my head.
Chapter Six
Spawn
Rafe
Dante’s Pass, population 893, and half of them thought I was guilty as fuck. The place still felt like home, in spite of the busybodies who wanted to see me rot in jail until I was nothing but bones for what I’d done to that “poor girl.” They were the ones who sneered at my reputation as Rafe “The Choker” Mason from my fighting days. They were the ones who sensed something was off about me.
But others, mostly people who’d had connections to my family for decades, or people who’d known me in high school, they believed I was innocent. Unlike the crowd that condemned me, they saw past Alex’s lie. They knew me, or so they believed.
Either way, it was too much drama, so I avoided town as much as possible, save for the weekly trip to the post office and my work at the vineyard. Despite the town gossip, people mostly left me alone. I imagined it was difficult to harass a guy on an island.
As I sorted through a stack of mail, mostly bills and advertisements, someone uttered my name. Locking the P.O. Box, I swiveled my head in time to see a blonde whirl around and push the door open. She grabbed the hand of the kid at her side and ushered him outdoors, as if the place were about to burn to the ground.
I folded my mail inside an advertisement for local businesses and glanced through the front window, catching the woman’s profile as she walked away. My heart almost stopped. I’d recognize that stubborn jaw anywhere. I rushed after her, the door closing with a thud upon my exit, and spotted her a few feet down the sidewalk. She opened the back door of a white BMW, and in hushed tones, hurried the kid to get inside and buckle up.
“Nikki!”
She lurched upright, and her deep, brown eyes met mine. Yeah, I remembered those eyes, especially how they bored into mine during sex. Nikki had never been the shy closed-eyes-during-sex kind of girl, and that had been the biggest turn-on.
She slammed the door and rounded the hood to the driver’s side. “I heard you were back,” she said. “Seeing you caught me off guard. I shouldn’t have said your name.”
I stuffed the mail into my back pocket and sauntered to her side. “Why the hell not?”
With a sigh, she paused, one hand on the door handle. “C’mon, things didn’t end well. You made it clear you never wanted to see me again.”
“Nik,” I said, voice suddenly wobbly as I slid a hand onto her shoulder. I had to touch her. After eight damn years, I needed to. “I didn’t want you waiting around for me.”
She opened the door and wedged it between us. “Well, I didn’t wait around, so you have nothing to worry about.” She held out her left hand, and my eyes widened at the huge rock on her finger. “I’m getting married in a few weeks.”
It was disconcerting to see how much things had changed while I was away. While time had all but stopped inside that prison, the world kept turning without me. “So I see,” I said, giving in to a weak instance of self-pity. I moved around the door and put one hand on the window and the other
on the roof of the car. Her body stilled, but she had nowhere to go, and shit, just being this close to her brought everything back, all the summer nights we’d spent twisted in sheets, fan blowing hot air on bodies slick with sweat.
“I didn’t realize you were back in town,” I said. “Figured you worked in some swanky office in downtown Portland by now. When did you come back?”
“Last year, when Lyle asked me to marry him.”
I quirked a brow. “Wait, you’re not talking about Lyle Lewis.”
She nodded.
I tried not to grit my teeth but failed. How the fuck had that asswipe gotten tangled with my ex? He’d followed her around like a horn dog all through high school, and that was only half of it. The guy had been the cruelest bully in town, and he’d hated me down to my toes for looking out for a few of the kids he’d abused on a daily basis. He’d also despised me because of my friendship with Nikki.
“You know he’s the sheriff now, right?” she asked.
Wonderful. She was marrying a fucking bully-turned-sheriff. If I didn’t get Alex under control soon, he might be slapping cuffs on me in the future, and I could only imagine the thrill he’d get at arresting me.
“I guess congratulations are in order.” I tilted my head, one brow raised.
“I guess so,” she said, her gaze veering to the backseat of the car. “I’ve really gotta go. It was good to see you again, Rafe.” Her voice softened, the same breathless quality I recalled from years ago. She slid into the driver’s seat, and that was when the kid in the back called her “Mom” and asked what they were having for dinner.
I froze as it dawned on me. I’d been so focused on Nikki, part of me still thinking of her as the twenty-year-old girl I’d known, that I’d unconsciously written the kid off as a nephew, or perhaps a child of a friend.
But he was hers.
As she moved to pull the door shut, I shot out a hand and blocked her. Peeking into the backseat, I laid eyes on the kid for the first time. Really looked at him. Fuck. He was a spitting image of my childhood photos.
“How old is he, Nikki?”
Her body slumped, and with a loud sigh, she said, “Seven, and I know what you’re thinking. I was going to tell you. Swear to God I was, but now is not the time.” Her eyes pleaded with me. “Can we meet for dinner? In about an hour?”
I couldn’t speak at first. I could have said so many things, but the truth hit me like a sledgehammer. Unless I was reading her wrong, or misunderstanding, she was telling me I had a son.
“Rafe?”
“An hour?” I asked, giving myself a mental shake.
“Yeah, I’ll meet you at Doc’s Grill. You remember where that is, right?”
“I remember.”
She pulled the door shut, and this time I let her. I stood frozen in that spot long after she pulled away from the curb, the kid’s green eyes burning a hole in my mind. His curious eyes that reminded me so much of my own. Had he seen it too, or was he too young to pick up on the resemblance?
Someone jostled me to awareness, and from the pinch of disproval on the woman’s face, she must have been in the “he should rot in prison” camp.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, then shook my head because I’d just apologized to a judgmental broad for simply standing in public. Fuck these people. I wandered down the main drag of the town until I reached the highway and stepped onto the shoulder. Checking my watch, I began walking to kill time before I met up with Nikki. The idea of that meeting sent my pulse racing. I wondered what he was like. Had he asked about me?
Hell, I didn’t even know his name.
Behind me, the sun dipped toward the horizon, and the shadow of the island emerged in the river up ahead. The private piece of land, situated on the Oregon side of the Columbia River, had been in my family for generations. My mother split when I was young, and my anger over her absence had slowly burned until it flared during my teens. Dad tried to stem my violent tendencies by enrolling me into martial arts classes. He’d thought if I learned to fight with respect and a code of ethics, it would curb my thirst to pound on people. It wasn’t like I’d gone around beating on everyone, just the idiots who deserved it, but he’d had the right idea. Those lessons had probably saved my ass.
I wondered if my son—even thinking of him as mine set my head spinning—was angry over the gaping hole I should have filled all these years. Cars whizzed past, and for some strange reason, the hum of traffic settled my nerves. The island grew larger as the distance narrowed. I put the issue of fatherhood on the back burner and wondered how Alex was handling being locked up in the dark, her naked body shivering. I imagined her legs shaking, thought of how out-of-control she must feel, strung up on her toes and knowing she was at my mercy. My jeans grew unbearably tight.
Such helplessness shouldn’t turn me on so fucking much, but it did. Always had. My dad’s efforts to teach me right from wrong hadn’t touched on sexual deviance.
The mountains had turned to dusky blue against an orange backdrop by the time I turned around and retraced my steps back to town. Doc’s Grill, known for their unique dishes and secret sauces that couldn’t be duplicated anywhere else, was boisterous with activity. The restaurant had never suffered for business. That hadn’t changed in my absence, though so much about the town had, like the remodeled school, or how the post office no longer shared space with Cathy’s Quik-N-Go.
I entered, nodded at the waitress, and told her I was there to meet someone. I found Nikki sitting by herself at a corner table, nursing a beer. Candles lit the wooden tables, giving an intimate feel to the place, though the peanut shells covering the floor spoke of the casual setting.
I slid into the chair across from her. “Sorry I’m late.” I’d lost track of time, plus, I’d needed several minutes to convince my dick to settle down. No way was I walking in to meet Nikki with a raging hard-on.
“No problem. I was enjoying the quiet. William can be a handful, and I don’t get much ‘me’ time.”
“William?”
She dipped her head, and a curtain of blond hair obscured the left side of her face. “I named him after you.”
William, my middle name. How was it possible I’d had a son all this time, one who shared my name even, yet I’d known nothing about him? Seven years of missed birthdays, milestones, laughter and tears.
Thankfully, the waitress arrived to take our orders, and as Nikki asked about the daily specials, I took a few seconds to collect myself. I was a father. A dad. I had a kid. If I told myself that enough times, maybe it would sink in.
The waitress, a young brunette on the short side, turned to me and did a double take. “I thought you looked familiar. You’re Rafe Mason. My boyfriend is a huge fan. He never believed you raped that girl.” She winked at me. “A lot of people around here don’t.”
Unfortunately, a lot of people still did.
I autographed a napkin for her and gave her my order. Once she left, thick silence fell over us.
Time to rip off the Band-Aid. “You should’ve told me, Nik.”
“What good would it have done?” She leaned back and crossed her arms. “You were locked up, and you weren’t getting out anytime soon. Besides, let’s not delude ourselves. We were never serious. Getting pregnant…it just happened. I can’t say it was a mistake because I wouldn’t have William, but we never meant for it to happen.”
I picked up a spoon and swirled the ice chips in my water glass. “I actually thought I’d marry you someday.”
She laughed. “C’mon, Rafe. We were kids back then.”
And now we had a kid together. Neither of us spoke the words, though they hung in the air, as potent as the spices from the restaurant’s kitchen.
“We both know someday wouldn’t have come,” she continued. “You had your whole career in front of you before…” She lowered her head, and I despised how she didn’t say the words.
“Do you think I did it?”
“I told you a long time ago I knew you wouldn
’t do something like that.” The corner of her mouth curled. “You never needed to force yourself on anyone. You had women begging at your feet.”
I tried not to squirm in my seat. Ironically, I had a naked woman, bound and locked up at that precise moment, just waiting for me to hold her down and fuck her hard. Nikki had no idea who I was. Who I’d become. She should have, though. She’d been the only woman who’d ever allowed me to get rough with her. I’d explored some of my baser urges with her, and she’d let me. She’d gotten off on it as much as I had. That’s why we’d worked. Our deep friendship had kept the drama to a minimum. We truly had been friends with benefits. Until I was arrested.
And now, to find out my relationship with her had resulted in a kid…
“What did you tell him about me?”
“The truth. I’ve always wanted you to be part of his life. Eight years seemed like forever to you, but I knew you’d get out eventually.” She brushed her bangs from her eyes—eyes suddenly bright. “I didn’t want to make things worse for you in there, so I kept quiet about the pregnancy.”
Ah, shit. I hated when chicks cried. Except for Alex. Her tears affected me differently. I craved them. “It’s water under the bridge. I’m here now, so let’s deal with this. You told him his dad went to prison?”
She shook her head. “I told him you had to go away for a few years, but you’d come back when you could. He’s at that age now where vague answers aren’t cutting it anymore. He wants to meet his father, Rafe.”
This was unbelievable, and bad fucking timing. I’d just committed a felony—for real this time—and I was about to compound felony upon felony. I couldn’t stop what I’d started, especially now. If I let Alex go, she’d run straight to the cops.
What a fucking mess. I pushed back from the table and resisted the urge to grab at my collar. “I need some time.”
“I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do. Nik…I’ve done things. Things I can’t undo. I’m not the same guy I was eight years ago.”
“I realize that.”