by Jo Raven
He unlocked our room, stepped inside—and the moment I entered, he pushed me up against the wall and crushed our mouths together, kissing me silly.
He wasted no time pushing down my jeans and panties and wrapping my leg around his hip to fuck me with his fingers. Kissing me, stealing my breath as he twisted his fingers inside me expertly, stroking me hard until I came, moaning in his mouth.
Then he unzipped his pants, pulled out his rock-hard cock and fucked me right there, my head thumping against the wall, my body on fire as he threw me into another earth-shattering orgasm.
And then… then he pulled out of me and carried me to the bed where he started to undress. He shrugged off his leather jacket and unbuttoned his shirt, tearing it off his powerful shoulders.
It wasn’t the first time I saw his tattoos. For someone so loved by the tabloids, he managed never to get himself caught on camera bare-chested—although there is a photo of his muscular, naked back as he fucks a woman from more than a year back.
Lifting my hand to his chest, I touched his ink. Roses. Black roses twining over his stomach, over his pecs, thorns spreading on his side. Words, Latin probably, curling on his arms.
He pushed his pants down, and I was done for, because he’s beautiful down there, too—his muscular thighs covered in blond hairs, his narrow hips, and his large, flushed, pierced cock.
I’d touched his tattoos many times by then, I’d marveled at them but never found the courage to ask what they stood for.
But this time, long after he’d fucked me into a near-stupor, I did.
Sub rosa, he’d whispered in reply. Secrets hidden under the roses. Secrets I’ve never told anyone.
Never thought until now he kept his secrets from the men who are like his brothers, too. And that he told them to me.
Chapter Thirteen
Hawk
Storm is acting damn weird. He’s fucking pissed at something and keeps answering my questions about where we’re going and Raylin in monosyllables.
Well, fuck him. I’m way too fucked up to navigate around his PMS, so I just prop my head back against the backrest, tighten my hold around my girl and drift off.
And drop into blackness, a bottomless void. My weight vanishes, the pain vanishes, and I float like a feather on the surface of time.
Then, what feels like a second later, someone pats my shoulder.
Gently.
So gently I barely feel it. But it’s fucking insistent, fucking annoying, too, like a fly, and I finally surface to swat it away, mumbling a curse.
“Wakey, wakey,” a man’s voice says in my face, and I flinch back so hard I fall sideways on the seat, my heart hammering so hard against my ribs it threatens to break out.
“The fuck,” I breathe, close to panic, and claw at the leather.
The leather car seat. White leather, soft under my hand, and I’m in a car, and… Where the hell am I?
“Hawk. Get your ass out here,” the voice from before goes on, and it clicks, because I know it.
Rook. The third wheel of our little brotherhood.
Fuck.
“Roderick ‘Rook’ Carter,” I mutter, annoyed—mostly at myself and my little freak-out, that’s sure to get—
“Move back, Rook, goddammit. What do you think you’re doing? Didn’t I tell you to be careful with him?”
—Storm’s panties in a twist.
“I only patted his fucking shoulder,” Rook rumbles, unruffled. “Cool your jets.”
“You shouldn’t—”
“Nothing happened,” I croak, cutting them off and getting pissed because I’m so stiff I can barely move, and fuck, this is so uncool after all that’s gone down. “Lay off his back, Stormy boy.”
How can I ask for help without ruining my pride? Serious macho problems here, guys. While the boys continue their verbal sparring, I maneuver myself gingerly toward the open car door.
And freeze. “Layla? Where is she? Storm, where the fuck is Layla?”
Did I dream everything? Wasn’t she with me? Did something happen to her? Is she—?
“I’m right here,” she says, shouldering somehow my hulking friends aside and leaning into the car. “Give me your hand.”
Fuck, I was doing it again, about to go into full-blown panic. Jesus Christ.
I give her my hand, not sure what she wants to do with it and not caring—I’d give her anything she wants, I’m so relieved to see her.
She grips my hand in her tiny one and tugs. Trying to help me out. It makes me smile, and ow, my split lip opens again, and warm blood trickles down my chin and into my beard.
Bracing my other hand on the car door, I heave myself out by degrees, gritting my teeth against the pain of deeply bruised muscles gone cold and stiff.
The moment I’m out, Storm grabs my arm, slings it over his shoulders and marches me toward his chopper, Layla hanging on to my other side.
Oh good, I think vaguely as the world dips and darkens in my eyes, and my hurt leg folds under me, my knee giving out. I know where we’re going.
Good choice, Stormy boy.
***
We’re flying.
That’s my first thought as I resurface, recognizing the vibration and noise of the engine and helices. In Storm’s chopper.
Toward his newest and as yet secret acquisition.
Good choice.
Hey, I’ve had this same thought before. That was right before I—
“He’s awake,” Layla says, and I turn my head toward her, needing to see her. Just like in the basement, when she was my only ray of light.
Only one of my eyes opens, the other swollen shut. In my limited field of vision, she’s the most welcome sight ever. She smiles, and I relax. If she’s okay, everything’s okay, right?
“Your knee is swollen like a melon, man,” Storm says from somewhere in the vicinity of my feet, and I crane my neck to see him—because I’m lying flat on my back.
On the floor of the chopper.
“You didn’t fit on the seats lying down,” Storm says. “You’re too long.”
“The word you’re looking for is tall,” I inform him, but it comes out kinda garbled.
“You said they hit him on the head a lot, right?” Rook quips in, and I find him perched on one of the chopper seats, his hair longer, a week-old beard on his face, sipping at a Martini.
I reach for it unthinkingly. So damn thirsty.
“Actually, Hawk fell on his head repeatedly when he was a kid,” Storm says, turning to Layla. “Can’t you tell?”
“Water,” I whisper, and Layla—who’s been curled on her side beside me, I realize now—sits up and reaches for something.
She brings a glass to my lips, lifts my head, and I gulp it all down.
Fuck, yeah.
“Busted knee, busted ribs, and your jaw is… yeah, pretty busted, too.” Rook raises his Martini glass to punctuate his clever and needless enumeration of my problems.
“Nothing seems broken,” Storm says, ever the anxious one.
“Dude, tell that to my fucking ribs,” I grunt, think about getting up and decide against it. It’s nice here, on the carpeted floor. My body is grateful to be laid out flat for the fucking first time in God knows how many days.
“You got good info back there, bro.” Rook is still rumbling in a voice so low I barely hear him. “Cops were happy. The FBI is popping champagne corks as we speak.”
“Is it enough, though?” Storm mutters, and I only know because he’s leaning over me, and I’m looking at his face, reading his lips.
Damn, I need a new hearing aid, ASAP. Even lying inside Storm’s luxury chopper with my friends and my girl, I feel exposed and too damn vulnerable without it.
“What do you have in mind?” Rook gestures with his glass. “Have yourself kidnapped next? Maybe we could go in turns?”
“Nah, they’d figure it out.” Storm smirks. “Though Hawk here played them well.”
“Bullshit.” I try to roll on my side and groan
. “I thought I was the deaf one, not you. Didn’t you hear when I told you Layla saved my ass? They figured me out all right. That Sandivar guy didn’t trust me for one second.”
“Deaf?” Rook picks on that one bit and frowns. Of course he does. “Who’s deaf? Hawk, what the hell are you jabbering on about?”
Storm sends me a withering look. “Ask him yourself. Hawk here apparently forgot to inform us how bad his motorcycle accident was last month.”
“I was already partly deaf, okay? It just got a bit worse.” Fuck, why do we need to discuss this now? Even lying on my back with Layla next to me I feel woozy.
She leans over me, slender brows meeting over her eyes. “He looks too pale,” she says, stroking my cheek, and it feels so good I won’t even mention she’s talking about me as if I’m not here. “He needs food. And are you sure he doesn’t need a doctor?”
“I’m fine,” I mutter, grabbing her wrist and holding her bent over me. “Stay with me, Layla.”
Her eyes widen. Her lips part on a gasp. Confusion clouds her gaze. I want her to stay with me now, and later, and…
“We’ll take care of him,” Storm says gruffly. “He’ll be back on his feet in no time. He’s got a tough hide, Hawk. Don’t you worry about him.”
“I worry about her,” I inform him, because she was sick, and spent time with me in that cold basement, and because I hurt her trying to convince her to leave, and I didn’t treat her right.
But we’re landing, and Storm gets up to talk to the pilot and strap himself in, so I close my eyes again and drift with her warmth pressed to my side.
***
Rook and Storm help me to the house, Layla following. Is it weird that I keep twisting my head around to make sure she’s there?
Storm has a strange gleam in his eye as he watches me, and Rook is grinning like he’s rehearsing for a toothpaste ad.
“What?” I grumble as we go up the steps and enter the warmth of the hall. “See anything funny?”
“Jamie fucking Fleming,” Storm says, “crushing on a girl for the first time in history.”
“Watch your mouth, youngster,” I gasp as they drag me off to what I assume is one of the bedrooms.
“You’re what, three months older than me?”
“Older being the only important word here.”
“Kids, shut the fuck up so we can get Hawkster here into the shower,” Rook says, the oldest of us three. “He stinks like an outhouse.”
“When have you ever seen the inside of an outhouse?” I shoot back, but I’m getting too tired to keep it up, and maybe the guys sense it because they carry me the rest of the way in silence.
I catch glimpses of mirror-covered walls and a huge king-size bed before we move into the en suite bathroom. It has a big shower and a sunken tub.
“A bath might be a better idea,” Storm says, hesitating at the door, his arm around my back the only thing keeping me up right now. “And he can eat something at the same time.”
“He’ll drown,” Rook grumbles.
“Not if someone is in the tub with him.”
“Not getting in the tub with you,” I grind out, because hell no, not even to save my goddamn life.
“Who said anything about me?” Storm says. “Layla, would you? You’d be saving water, too, saving the planet.”
“Jesus, Storm. Such bullshit.” Rook sounds pained. “Excuse my friend, princess.”
“It’s fine,” she says, appearing in front of me, her face filling my vision. “I’ll bathe with him—but only if you two promise to stay out.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Storm says solemnly, and I would punch him if I could. “What? God, it fucking sucks to be the youngest.”
***
A middle-aged housekeeper in a gray and white uniform, complete with frilly apron and a granny-bun, bustles inside while Storm and Rook seat me on a white bench running along one wall.
“Gentlemen,” she says briskly and starts filling the tub, then opens a hidden cupboard and takes out fluffy towels. “Anything else you might require?”
I glance in the direction of the bedroom where Layla went to undress and lick my dry lips, rubbing my hand over the tats on my chest.
Those damn roses.
“Dinner,” Storm says. “Any soup the chef has ready, and the grilled chicken. Not too much. Also juice, that tropical one Hawk likes, and water. I will see about the painkillers.”
It all sound good. To be perfectly honest, right now dry bread and water would sound amazing.
She bustles out, and I allow the guys to undress me, mostly because I’m too fucking gone and too achy to bend over and do it myself. Shoes, sock, pants, underwear, shirt, everything ends up in a stinky, bloodied pile on the gleaming, pristine floor.
“Motherfucker.” Rook shakes his head, staring at my torso. “Those are some damn nasty bruises. You went all smartass on their boss, didn’t you?”
Did I mention he knows me well?
“Come on, let’s get you into the tub.” Storm is all business again, and he drags me to my feet. I go down the three steps. It’s a Jacuzzi rather than a tub, with all the nozzles for the water built in, but they aren’t on, and the water is slightly too hot on my skin.
Feels good though, and as I slide down, sinking up to my chin in the water, I sigh in relief. Clouds of dirt immediately waft off me, from my skin, from my beard, from the ends of my hair.
“You’ll be okay here, buddy?” Storm kneels on the edge of the tub, wetting his pants and looking satisfied. “Layla will take good care of you.”
“She was…” Finally warm and relaxed, I hunt for the words. “You should’ve seen her, dude. She never once believed I was the bad guy, not even when I fucking told her I was. Not even when she heard me tell Sandivar I was taking his deal. She believed in me, and she fought for me. She’s… fierce.”
Storm grins. “Well, well. Not just crushing on her, are you? This sounds like more.”
“Fuck you,” I say without heat and lean my head back again. “She was kinda sick, too, from the stress and everything. She said it was hard for her, seeing me getting beaten up all the time. No girl should ever have to witness anything like that, but she never changed her mind about staying and helping me get out.”
Storm nods, his face serious again. “I’m damn glad, man. Glad you survived your moronic plan. You’re never doing anything like this again, are we clear?”
“Shouldn’t you be with your girl, junior?”
“She’s here. You’ll see her later.” Storm gets up, rakes a hand through his wild hair. “And then we’ll talk.”
I bet we will. So much we need to plan.
So of course the only thing filling up my mind from end to end is Layla and the fact she’s going to take a bath with me, gorgeously naked and up close and personal.
Of course.
Chapter Fourteen
Layla
I’m nervous.
Ridiculous, I know. Nervous about taking a bath with Hawk, the guy I’ve been having wild sex with for months and months. The guy I had sex with only yesterday. The guy I’m supposed to take care of in the bath so he won’t drown on his own.
But lots has changed in the last couple of days, at least for me. I’m not the same girl I was before the nightmare at the warehouse.
My feelings for Hawk are not the same. They are burning me from the inside out; they are eating up my heart.
Because I gave my heart to him, and he obviously doesn’t want it.
Touching him isn’t the same anymore. Every touch, every sensation has taken on new meaning for me. It pierces me through and through, it changes me.
And it hurts me because for him obviously nothing had changed. Oh, I saved him. He likes me. He’s proud of me. But it’s just sex to him. We’re just friends with benefits. Nothing has changed.
Of course nothing has changed—only now he doesn’t need to worry about knocking me up and having to do something about it. Not that he ever had any
long-term plans for me.
I mean, who am I anyway? Just a girl he saved one horrible night from humiliation and kept fucking ever since.
Deliciously fucking, true, dirtily fucking, oh God, but that doesn’t change the fundamental truth of the shallowness of our relationship.
Yet, when I open the bedroom door and stand there, looking at him where he’s slumped inside the sunken tub, his beautiful body bared, the dark tattoos of roses climbing his chest like a briar, the thorns leaving bloody trails… I don’t know if I can accept it.
Accept we’re back where we started. Ignore my feelings for him.
It doesn’t matter. He needs my help—just like he did in the warehouse. Those brutal friends of his would probably hurt him worse if they tried to help him clean himself, and frankly the thought of another woman helping him makes me stomach roil.
Help him. Make sure he’s okay. And then see what to do next. We’re in hiding right now, and I don’t even want to think about where we go from here.
Besides, I’m dead on my feet, and I stink. I also need to clean up, and eat, and rest.
“Layla?” he rasps, lifting his head, gazing at me. His eyes are heavy-lidded. He looks drowsy.
Better get in there with him.
So ignoring the way my blood heats up at his steady gaze, at the glimpse of his strong, tall body laid out in all its bare glory in the clear water, I step away from the door and walk toward the tub.
As sacrifices go, it’s okay. This isn’t a hardship, not by any stretch, and yet… And yet my heart will let me know the price later.
***
He’s watching me. He doesn’t move a muscle, but his eyes glimmer under his pale lashes as I step into the warm water. I’m going slowly, slightly light-headed and afraid to slip, and his gaze glides over my curves like a hot caress.
I shiver, like every time when he’s around, my body responding to his without conscious thought—my breasts aching for his touch, a throb starting between my legs as I ease myself into the water.
That’s normal, I remind myself. It’s been like this from the start. It has nothing to do with any newly discovered, unreciprocated feelings. Feelings I need to get rid of.