by Sybil Bartel
“Sienna.”
My name rolled of his tongue like he was the only man ever meant to say it and it made my chest hurt. “I like you,” I blurted. “But this is hard, and I’m confused, and I thought I would understand a hundred, but I don’t. Not really. I don’t get why selling yourself for money was appealing, but what’s worse is that I just don’t see you doing it. I know you said not to bring up Alex, but he’s different. He’s all about the money. You can tell that. But you’re not like that. You didn’t even flinch when I said you were being sued for twenty-five million. It’s like you don’t even care about money.”
“I don’t.”
“Then why be an escort?”
“I told you.”
“Because more than your back is scarred? What does that mean? I don’t understand. And I want to understand because I don’t want to just walk out that door and never see you again.” I hated thinking it, let alone saying it, but I wasn’t stupid. Healthy, stable relationships didn’t start with two strangers having sex. Did they?
His nostrils flared and his jaw ticked and his tone went from zero to clipped in two seconds flat. “I’m not going to give you a number, and I’m not going to bitch about Afghanistan or getting wounded. You want a fucking pussy who cries on your lap, then you should get the fuck out.”
I bristled, but then I saw it. I wasn’t seeing the marine who’d taken down two football players who had fifty pounds on him. I was staring at a man who looked as unsure as I felt. So I ignored his tone and I ignored his words about leaving, and I focused on the one thing I thought would be my biggest obstacle. “I hardly think crying on my lap constitutes effective communication.”
“Don’t pull that pink suit bullshit work attitude with me. You know exactly what I’m saying.”
I stood my ground. “I want a number.”
“I didn’t fucking count.”
“Then how do you know it’s less than a hundred?”
He exhaled. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
I didn’t say anything.
His hands went to his hips. “You gonna wait me out?”
“If I have to. But I would prefer a straight answer so I can go shower.” I was testing him, same as he’d tested me in the elevator last night. I may have not had much experience with men, but I did know my limitations, and I couldn’t handle someone I couldn’t talk to.
He raised an eyebrow and the side of his mouth twitched. “You feeling dirty?”
The change in his tone from irritated to pure sex made me want to bite my lip, but I stood perfectly still. “If you must know, yes.”
“I like you dirty.” He smiled.
My knees wobbled. “I’m getting that.”
He grinned. “Still waiting me out?”
His smile, unfiltered and devastating, was incredible. But when he looked how he looked right now, like he wasn’t carrying the weight of world on his shoulders? Oh my God, I had no defense to protect my heart from him. “Yes.”
“Good. Go shower.”
Pretending my heart wasn’t wildly skipping and my stomach wasn’t fluttering, I raised an eyebrow. “Then you’ll tell me?”
He lowered his voice. “Then I’ll take you to bed.”
That tone, his intent stare, they were my undoing. “I’m not going to sleep with you,” I fibbed.
“Who says I’m letting you sleep?” He winked.
Faking it, I put a hand on my hip. “You’re lucky I don’t know your middle name.”
“Jacob.”
Was there anything that wasn’t sexy about this man? I fake sighed. “Fine, Jared Jacob Brandt. I’m going to shower. Then you’ll tell me what I want to know.”
Mischief lit up his amber-brown eyes. “Are you bossing me again?”
Oh God. I thought about saying no but the muscles in my core were suddenly throbbing. The memory of the heat of the sting on my backside was making me want to pull my pants down and beg him to spank me until I orgasmed. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
His eyes narrowed as his head tilted. “You know I can tell when you’re lying, right?”
“No, you can’t.” Back straight, expression locked, I didn’t have any tells. After years of experience with church ladies and then football players, I’d learned not to.
“Body language, Red.” He lightly slapped my backside. “Go shower.”
“I don’t have any—” I never got the rest of the sentence out.
Someone pounded on Jared’s front door. “Sienna!”
Jared’s face contorted with anger as his phone started ringing.
My stomach bottomed out. “It’s Dan.”
“I know who it is.” He picked up his phone. “Get in the bedroom.”
What? No. “I’m not hiding.”
He gave me a warning look. “You want to talk with this asshole, do it on your own time. But when he shows up on my doorstep, this is my call.” Turning away, he answered his phone. “How the fuck did he get past you?… I don’t give a shit if there’re ten of them. Do your fucking job!” He hung up and stalked toward the front door.
“Jared, wait.” Oh my God. I didn’t want him answering that door.
He didn’t even pause. He threw the door open. “Just give me a reason, you fucking asshole.”
His hair a mess, his chest heaving, his eyes black and purple, Dan looked over Jared’s shoulder. His frenzied gaze landed on me, and the second he took in my outfit, his face fell. “Sie, don’t do this.” He gripped the doorframe.
“She’s not doing shit,” Jared growled. “But I will if you don’t back the fuck up.”
I stepped forward.
As if he had eyes in the back of his head, Jared ground a command out in warning. “Not another step, Sienna.”
“I can fight my own battles.” I looked at Dan. “A lawsuit and blackmail? What’s happened to you?”
“Come on, Sie. Just talk to me. Just come with me and we’ll work this out.” He pleaded like a broken child. “You don’t have to do this. You told me you love me. You know I love you. You still have my ring. We both know what that means. Don’t betray us like this.”
Jared growled.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a twinge of sympathy for Dan. I knew what he was looking at. I knew what that kind of hurt felt like. But I only knew it because of him. I wasn’t betraying Dan. I was betraying the man with scars on his back who’d risked everything for me today. Inhaling, I did what I should’ve done the second Dan pounded on the door. I walked into Jared’s bedroom.
“Sie!” He called after her with his bullshit nickname.
About to lose my fucking restraint, I bit words out. “Leave while you can still fucking walk.” I wanted to kill him.
The asshole’s face contorted with anger and he dropped the pussy begging routine. “I was her first. I know who the fuck you are. You think she’s going to pick some unemployed, broke veteran over me? Go ahead.” He jabbed a finger at my chest. “Count your days with her. I already gave her a ring. She’s coming back to me.”
Enraged, I grabbed his wrist.
The stairwell door burst open and Tyler, Luna, and some other fuck in a Luna and Associates shirt rushed out.
“Brandt,” Luna snapped. “Cameras.”
My nostrils flaring, anger raging, I ground my teeth and tightened my hold.
Luna stepped up next to the fucking quarterback. “On second thought, go ahead, amigo.” His hand rested on his holstered gun.
“Yeah, go ahead,” the quarterback snarled. “See what happens when you get arrested and aren’t around to play house with her.”
He was her first? This fucking asshole was her first? Enraged, I couldn’t speak.
“Or?” Luna shrugged. “You can let him go. He’s already screwed himself.”
I let go.
“Days,” Ahlstrom taunted. Turning, he shoved Tyler in the chest.
Tyler stumbled back and held his arms out. “Boss?” he asked, as Ahlstrom stalked toward the stairwell.<
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“Stand down.” André tipped his chin at the cameras. “We got what we need.” He pressed the com on his earpiece. “Stairwell. Detain… copy.” He nodded at me. “We’ll get him. Cops are on the way.”
She had his goddamn ring. She’d said nothing when he’d told her he loved her. Nothing. She had his fucking ring.
I slammed my fist into the wall. The plaster crushed in and a picture crashed to the ground.
She came running out of the bedroom. “What happened?” Shocked green eyes took in the wall and my scraped knuckles. “Jared?” She stepped toward me.
“Don’t,” I barked.
She glanced at Luna and Tyler and her face pinked, exactly like her ass had under my hand.
Rage twisted my voice. “What did you give him?”
She crossed her arms over her braless tits. “What?”
“What did you give him?” I yelled.
“Brandt,” André warned.
No. Fuck him. Fuck her. She gave that fucking piece of shit her virginity and told him she loved him? I was losing my fucking mind. I didn’t give a shit about virgins. I never wanted that responsibility. I fucked and I fucked hard. But Red with that fucking asshole? Wearing his ring? That wasn’t some sixteen-year-old back seat car fumbling. She’d fucking saved herself. She’d saved herself for him.
Her back straightened like she had her fucking suit on and she was talking to her goddamn boss. “I didn’t give him anything. You were standing right there.”
“How long where you with him?” I ground out. “How long ago did you date him?”
Confusion clouded her face. “For three months, a couple months ago, but I don’t see how that—”
“You’re twenty-fucking-four!” Rage engulfed me. She’d given herself to that asshole then hired Vega like she was some well-played piece of ass. I wasn’t furious, I was enraged. Enraged it wasn’t me taking her innocence. Enraged she’d slept with Vega, and diabolically pissed at the glaring truth Ahlstrom threw in my face. I was an un-fucking-employed hustler who couldn’t goddamn read. I’d never be good enough for her.
Unhinged, I barely looked at André. “Get her out of my place.”
“Copy that.” André nodded once.
“Jared!”
The sound of my name pleading from her lips sliced into me like a fucking knife, but I didn’t acknowledge her. I was already halfway to the kitchen. A second later, the bottle was in my hand and I was chugging.
I stood in the bedroom, not even remembering having walked there.
“Ma’am.” André maintained deliberate eye contact. “I’m going to need you to come with me.” Standing with his legs apart, one hand grasping the wrist on his opposite arm, he looked the way Jared had looked in Coach’s office.
My stomach churned. “What is he doing?”
“I’m taking responsibility for your safety now, ma’am.” He tipped his chin at my suitcase. “Please get your things.”
I got angry. Pound my fist into the wall, angry. “The hell you are.” I aimed for the door before I could think about what was left of my dignity.
André stepped in front of me. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
No, I wasn’t going to let him do this. “I’m going to speak to him, right now.” I tried to sidestep him, but he pivoted and full-blown panic set in. “Get out of my way!”
He inhaled, and for a moment, his military mask slipped and he looked at me with a look I knew so well, I wanted to vomit. “I’m sorry, ma’am, he’s chosen not to engage with you.”
Engage? Engage? Like I was some mission or objective or whatever the hell they called it in the Marines? “I’m not some object he can toss away. You tell him to come talk to me!” My world was crumbling faster than I could hold it together.
“This is a done deal, ma’am. Please hurry and get your things. I’d like to clear you of the premises before the police arrive.”
“The police?” Oh my God. “What happened between him and Dan?”
“Clothes, ma’am.”
“Tell me what happened!” My heart crushing a thousand times worse than it ever had with Dan, I couldn’t breathe.
“Everything’s under control, ma’am, but it’s time for you to leave.”
I sucked in a breath. Then another. This was my fault. I’d put myself here. How stupid had I been to trust him? To think for one minute that I was going to change who Jared was? After knowing him for hours? What did I think would happen? That’d we screw like rabbits as the sun set on a perfect little happy life? I wasn’t crazy, I was clinically insane. Worse, I was exactly what I never wanted to be. Pathetic.
Fighting tears, I snatched clothes out of the suitcase and my zippered toiletries bag I used for traveling that André must have taken from under my bathroom sink. I rushed back into the bathroom, feeling like every corner of my life had been violated. My heart, my pride, my privacy, my job, everything. Nothing was left untouched, and I had no one to blame except myself.
I brushed my hair. I covered my freckles with makeup. I did what I’d always done when my life fell apart around me. I put on a façade. The same one that I’d put on at my daddy’s funeral. The same one I wore to work the day after Dan broke my heart. But those times, my lip wasn’t quivering. Those times I had somewhere to be on a weekday morning. Those times, I didn’t know what it felt like to have brown eyes looking down at me like I was someone special.
I’d sworn to myself that I never wanted to be that to anyone again. Losing Daddy broke me. The grief was missed hugs and Sunday dinners and no more crinkly smiles. It was knowing I was alone in this world.
But stepping into jeans that someone had carefully folded and put in a suitcase for me, this wasn’t that grief. This was crushing my chest. This was a kind of panic that made me want to run to arms I knew were out there. Arms that were out there but didn’t want to hold me. This wasn’t grief. This was desperation.
And I hated it.
A knock sounded on the door. “Ma’am? You ready?”
My shaking hands buttoned a silk blouse I used to love. “Yes.” I opened the door and my toiletries bag slipped from my hands. The mirror in my compact shattered on the marble and hair pins scattered.
“Don’t move.” A man I’d met in a parking lot a few hours ago plucked me off my feet, lifted me out of the bathroom and set me on the carpet as if he cared what happened to me. “Get some shoes.” He grabbed the T-Shirt I’d left on the counter then squatted and used it to clean up my mess.
I stared at the door.
I knew he was out there. I could feel him just like I could feel the memory of his hands all over my body.
“Chica,” André said quietly.
I was looking at a man with short, neatly cut brown hair and brown eyes, who was every bit as handsome as Jared, but my heart didn’t react.
André glanced at the door then inhaled. “He’s protecting you.”
“From what?”
“Himself.” He put my bag in my suitcase, zipped it shut then took the handle. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”
I didn’t want to go. I wanted to understand why he was shutting me out. I wanted to know what’d happened and I wanted to take back walking away before Dan left. I wanted a lot of things, but I was out of choices.
With a hand on my back, André led me down the hall and toward the front door, but when I saw him, I froze.
On the balcony, he stared at the ocean. The moon cast a million sparks of light across the rippled surface of the water, but it cast shadows across his scarred back. My throat burned, my eyes welled and I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me upset, but I was moving toward the balcony before my good sense could tell me to stop.
The slider door was open and the salt air blew lazily in like it didn’t know my life was in shambles. I didn’t step out on the balcony. My hand fisted and I pounded on the glass. Then I spit out the one thing I thought would hurt him most. “You’re a coward, Jared Jacob Brandt.”
The words broke my heart and the impact stung my hand, but Jared never looked up.
His scarred back to me, a tattoo covering his right bicep, he didn’t even flinch.
I had no dignity left, but I squared my shoulders anyway. Biting my tongue to keep from sobbing, I shoved past a shocked André and Tyler and walked out.
I jabbed at the elevator call button without a clue as to what I was doing. André’s hand closed over my shoulder, squeezed once, then he let go. I felt like I was falling.
I didn’t remember the ride down to the garage. I ignored the police cars pulling in and the media at the gate yelling my name. I didn’t know how Dan had gotten past all of them, and I didn’t care. I hated him. He’d said something to Jared, I was sure of it, but I told myself it didn’t matter. I told myself a man who was so easily swayed wasn’t a man worthy of me anyway.
André led me to a black SUV with tinted windows and put me in the front passenger seat before sliding behind the wheel. “I’m taking you to Luna and Associates.”
“I want to go home.”
“I have secure apartments for clients. You’ll be safe from the media there.”
“I’m not your client.” I hadn’t paid him five thousand dollars to sleep with me.
He spared me a glance. “Brandt is my brother.”
I looked out the window at the media snapping pictures as we drove past. “I didn’t know he had any brothers.”
“Not biologically. The Marines, ma’am.” He pulled onto the street and gunned the engine.
“What happened to him?”
“That’s something you’ll have to ask him.”
“I did. He said it was an IED.”
André nodded. “It was.”
“Where you there?”
“Not in the Humvee, no.”
I let it go because I couldn’t figure out why I was asking or what it mattered. “What happened to Dan?”
“Ahlstrom is being detained. What happens now is up to the police.”
I scoffed. “They’ll let him go.”
“Possibly.” He drove fast, but he commanded the large vehicle.
“If you take me to your office, then what?”