Two Cowboys Next Door

by Jay S. Wilder

  Chapter 30 - Natalia

  After a good fourteen hours of going hungry, I didn’t care about the cards anymore. I’d slept through a majority of my confinement, and now I winced in the darkness waking up with a rumbling stomach. I knew they’d at least fed Liam. Though not much and hardly anything that would qualify as food, but was my punishment going to be more severe because I was one of them? I groaned and rolled onto my side on the stone floor. Maybe this was the part where I didn’t have any distraction, so I could consider what I’d done like a bad little girl. Which basically summed up how they treated us in the first place, so I shouldn’t be surprised with how they were handling the situation.

  I’d be damned if I thought about anything but Liam. Nothing else warranted my time or energy because he was the reason I was here in the first place. If I’d kept my stupid lust in check, none of this would have happened in the first place. I mentally kicked my ass. A picture of Liam’s face as he asked me to leave cementing my stupidity.

  A small part of me wanted to think that he’d sent me away once he’d gotten what he wanted from me. The petty part. The reality was what hurt. He’d had me, loved me, and left me because it was easier for both of us to do that than stand together against anyone who would tear us apart—which showed how much faith he had in our relationship in the first place.

  “Natalia…”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and ignored the voice suddenly in my head. So vivid I wanted to fall back asleep to make it go away because who knew how long I’d be shacked up in this cage—since I’d given them false information and I doubted Liam was on his way to trade anything to save me. I didn’t expect to be saved. He’d made it more than clear he wouldn’t stand up for me when it came down to it.

  “Are you awake?”

  “Go away,” I groaned. “Get out of my head.”

  “Natalia, I’m here. Will you open your eyes? Please?”

  “Stop. Talking.”

  “No, I won’t, damn it!”

  Resistance and fury echoed through my head, making my temples ache, and I sat up in the dark with a thick sense of being watched almost claustrophobic on my skin. I blinked glancing around as if I’d see anything helpful. There was rough breathing. I took a long inhale and shuddered from the heat that pressed against me. I had it so bad, I even smelled him now. Pathetic. The subtle scent of his cologne and something deeper, earthier with a tinge of damp clothes.

  I swallowed past the lump in my throat squeezing my eyes tight trying to wake myself up from whatever hunger dream had inspired me to think of him again. This was getting ridiculous. I needed to get a grip before they didn’t need to keep me under lock and key because I was too nuts even to know where I was. A subtle groan made my abdomen clench tight remembering that sound in my ear as I’d thrust over my one and only lover. Still, I didn’t see anything in the darkness but my stupid memories.

  “Natalia, I’m going to get you out of there. Are you okay? They didn’t…do anything? So help me, if they touched you…”

  Another trickle of power seized me around the waist and squeezed until my lungs almost stopped working. The force of his anger was staggering. His energy wrapped around me both keeping me centered, safe, and giving me a look into his soul. This was not a memory. It couldn’t be. Which meant…

  “Liam? Are you really here? What the hell is going on?”

  “It’s me. Just, give me a second.”

  I squinted through the complete darkness seeing nothing. Not even my hand in front of my face. Then suddenly the world got really, really bright as Liam shined his cell phone light into the cage and I winced back at the sudden energy change.

  “Ugh, careful where you point that thing.”

  “Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “Do we even need to have this conversation, Natalia? The one where I tell you I’m a horrible idiot of an asshole who panicked and I’m not worthy of you? I ask for your forgiveness, you give me a hugely hard time, ask how you can ever trust me again. I come up with some line about us always being partners because you were born to be mine, I was too stubborn to see it, and I let the idea of everything bad that could happen overtake everything good that might have come out of us being together. That I’ll never do it again. I’ll be an ass, sure, that’s unavoidable. But I’ll never leave you with any doubts about my feelings for you. Do we have to have that conversation? Can’t we skip it?”

  “Um, well, considering we just had it, and you played both parts nicely, I think we’re good.” I laughed, a little bewildered as I stared at the earnestness all over his face. “That stuff was a hell of lot of information to process. Do you mind if I have a second?”

  “Take your time. I have to argue for your release. I didn’t agree to anything until I saw you first, which I’m sure makes sense to you. I’ll be back, I promise. Take this.” He slid his phone through a small slot where presumably meals were supposed to be given to whoever was in the cage.

  “You’ll wait for me?” He looked down at the ground and then back at me where I held his phone.

  “Does it look like I have much of a choice? I’m in a cage, not Versailles.” I stared at the phone screen and back at him. “You do know you’ve got a lot more sucking up to do right? Being a white knight isn’t going to cut it.”

  “Point taken. If you get bored, the password is 4091, okay?”

  “Ooh, password exchanges. That’s pretty early in the relationship for that kind of trust, isn’t it?” I waggled my eyebrows at him, and he smirked, trying to hide the smile by rubbing his chin. “Face it, you can’t live without me, and you know it.”

  “Absolutely.” The earnestness in his voice nearly ripped my heart in half. “I know I’m not a monster; I’m a man. You helped me see that and the parts of me that were still me even after everything that happened to me. Without you, through this journey, I wouldn’t be whole. Granted, I’ll still make mistakes. But I promise to keep you in the loop when I make them, okay? You deserve that and so much more, Natalia. You and I are bigger than hate, bigger than revenge, bigger than anything negative I could ever think about in my future. You’re my light in the darkness, and I don’t plan on going back there again. You’ll wait for me here so I can do the same thing for you?”

  I nodded, unable to trust my voice as we stared at each other through several inches of steel, but only a few inches apart. He hesitated, put his hand on the steel bars, and then turned around going back up the stairs to make a deal with my extended kin. I’d known it was hard to be on the inside of a cage, but I guessed it was also hard to be in an emotional cage of your own making, like Liam. After his abduction, he’d had to learn to trust again—to trust himself.

  Now it was my turn. The tables had turned in a big way, and we could both look in from the other side. I couldn’t say the view was better from in here, but it was certainly different. Would everything be the way it was before he made his stupid choice? It would take a

  while. But he seemed willing to work on it and with a possible deal so close, we had time. Which was something neither of us ever expected to have together.

  Chapter 31 - Liam

  Epilogue

  It was another typical day at the office, except for the document sitting in an envelope on my desk—the by-product of a deal between my attackers and Kick3 Sports. Everyone agreed to this, including me. The pricks who took me would lay low for a year or get the fuck out of town, and in return, Kick3 wouldn’t bring in the big guns and rain hell down on Natalia’s extended family.

  Part of the deal was they’d leave Natalia the hell out of it, and her family had to leave her alone. Rosalee had been good on her word, and after some deliberation, everyone was in agreement. What did they want with a liar and a traitor anyway?

  Once it was decided she could do what she wanted an immense amount of relief went through me, but also a little bit of fear. What the hell would we do, now that we were able to do whatever we wanted together without any repercussions? The idea of giving into my tr
ue feelings for someone who used to be an untrusted ally of my enemy made my head spin with all the ways love had changed me. She was everything I’d ever wanted—and nothing that I’d thought I’d needed.

  I quickly scanned my phone for any missed texts from Natalia, but there was nothing but a missed call from Derek. I’m sure he and his brother were dying to hear how our relationship had turned out. Or they just wanted to get together to talk about the realities of being a survivor. They’d been isolated until now. I could only imagine what they felt finding out about my secret and knowing they had someone to lean on now too.

  There was some rustling outside my office door. A few sparse whispers out in the hallway. I put down my phone wondering if there was something I needed to intervene in before Sandy got wrapped up in something messy. The door burst open, and I blinked dropping my phone on the desk.

  “I’m sorry, sir. She wouldn’t take no for an answer and insisted I let her in to see you. I tried to stop her…didn’t want it to be like last time…I’ll talk to that man…” Sandy looked down at the carpet, cheeks red, wringing her hands as Natalia walked over to my desk in a long trench coat and heels.

  “Hey there. I thought you could use a little break. It sounded like things were busy for you this morning,” Natalia swung one of the trench coat ties with a look in her eyes that made me instantly hard against the fly of my slacks. “Anything I can do to make it better?”

  Suddenly, I was thankful I’d been working weekends.

  “Do you want me to call security, Mr. Smith?”

  “No, thank you, Sandy. That won’t be necessary.”

  Clearly, my secretary thought Tanner had a hand in this one too. She’d never actually met Natalia before and dressed in her get up it was easy to mistake her as one of Tanner’s female friends presumably sent to cheer me up again. Only the smile that lit up my face must have convinced Sandy that it was okay. She promptly shut her mouth and closed the door with a small click leaving Natalia and me alone.

  When the intercom buzzed, I reluctantly dragged my gaze away from my mid-morning snack to punch the intercom button for Sandy.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll hold all calls and appointments until further notice, sir?”

  I let out a loud chuckle and thanked my secretary. After ending the call, I gave my full attention to the gorgeous—and now naked—woman walking toward my desk.

  “You get a lot of women coming in like this, don’t you?” A mischievous twinkle hid behind her eyes, and I knew she wasn’t entirely serious.

  “No, you’re only the second, as a matter of fact. The first one was Tanner’s doing, a little gift to get over you.”

  Natalia brushed her fingers gently down the side of my face with an expression that I hoped to see on her face every day for the rest of our lives. When she straddled me on the chair, I let out a big breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding and cupped the nape of her neck.

  “You were into me even back then, weren’t you?” Her fingers began undoing my buttons while her red lips curled into a secretive smile. “You can’t kick me, can you? I’m that good.”

  “Your ego isn’t going to get any smaller is it?” I pushed upward at the same time that I brought her down, and our lips met with a ferocious passion we’d left off with just that morning in her bed.

  “Not if we keep practicing.”

  “Touché.” I nibbled on her lower lip, and she sighed, small hands exploring beneath my shirt as they headed toward my waistband. “You know the last woman in this position didn’t get this far.”

  “So I should feel special?” She shot me a look narrowing her eyes with her lipstick smudged mouth in a half-smile. “Or what?”

  “You should feel loved.”

  “Mmm, I like the sound of that, Mr. Smith.”

  “I think you’ll like the feel of it even more.”

  I arched into her hand, and she bit her lower lip squeezing my cock as my other hand teased her pussy until she gasped, thrusting her hips forward looking for more friction.

  “I will never stop wanting you, Natalia. That will never change whether it’s like this,” I demonstrated by sliding a finger inside her clenching, wet heat with a series of thrusts that made her moan burying her head into my shoulder. “Or it’s simply someone to hear about my really bad day at work. I will always think of you. You will always come first. Not business, not money, and not politics…but this, this rawness we have between us. That’s our future.”

  Before she could respond, I lifted her up and tipped her back onto the desk. The papers on my desk slid off and flew around, scattering onto the floor with a bunch of other office supplies and the phone. It could all get trashed, for all I cared. I was more interested in exploring her nakedness.

  “None of it matters if I don’t have you.” I kissed the side of her neck and continued thrusting with my fingers, listening to her small moans as a sign to know when to switch up the tempo as my mouth went to her breast. “Now, where we this morning?”

  She arched off the table and moaned out a sigh.

  “That’s a start. But I think today’s goal will be to see how many times I can make you come right here on my desk.”

  The END

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