by Selena Kitt
“So can you tell me now?” Tilly prompted, squeezing his hand as they neared the car. “Or is it all still super-top-secret military stuff?”
“I can tell you now.” He smiled, leaning against the passenger side door of the Mustang, pulling her into the circle of his arms. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything!” she cried, tilting her face up and wrinkling her nose at him. “When did you get involved? What’s it all about?”
“The whole operation’s been in play for years,” he told her. “I got involved about three months ago. Just before my discharge. That’s when I came home to work at the club.”
“That’s why you came home!” she gasped. “I knew it.”
“No, baby.” He shook his head, eyes solemn. “I told you, I came back for you.”
“But you knew Erich was the ringleader?”
“No, actually.” Beast’s mouth pressed into a thin line for a moment. “When I started working at The Block, they wanted me to make connections. Find out who was working in the ring. Because it’s not the whole club—the club’s legitimate. So’s the training program. But they knew someone was using it as a cover.”
“But they didn’t know it was Erich?” She stared at him. “You didn’t know?”
“No.” He shook his head. “We were friends. We served together. I never suspected him. Not at first. I thought it was all going on under his nose.”
“When you told Frankie not to date him…” Tilly bit her lip. “Did you know then?”
“I was starting to suspect.” His brow knitted. “All the money he flashed around. Too many cars, expensive trips. I mean, the guy was making good money running the club—I’d seen the numbers—but not that good. So yeah, when I warned Frankie off him, I thought… maybe…”
“When did you know for sure?”
“For sure?” he repeated, frowning. “About three weeks ago. We got confirmation from our contacts in Slovenia. I was pretty sure, but that cinched it. That’s when I told Frankie she had to break up with him.”
“Yeah, she finally told me you told her to.” Tilly snorted and rolled her eyes. “I bet that didn’t go over well.”
“No,” he admitted ruefully. “She threw a beer bottle at my head. Among other things.”
“You could have just told her the truth. Or me!”
He shook his head again. “Couldn’t. I wanted to bring him down then—but the damned State Department got involved, and suddenly they wanted bigger fish than Erich.”
“So you let him think you… what, wanted in on it?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Told him my evil stepmother had disinherited me, and I needed the money. It was a good story. And it worked. It pretty much all went according to plan, until…”
“Until I got kidnapped.” Tilly put her arms around him with a sigh of apology. “Sorry I messed up your sting.”
“Actually, you were both supposed to be kidnapped.” Beast shrugged sheepishly when Tilly gaped at him. “I had it all set up. I had a friend—colleague, I guess—he was supposed to take you and Frankie down to The Bottom Floor and lock you in one of the rooms. The soundproof ones.”
“You were going to kidnap us?” she gasped.
“Yeah, so you wouldn’t get kidnapped,” he snapped. “By the real slave traders? But then everything fell apart. Your mother collapsed… and you were so torn up… and you got that call from Frankie, and I knew. My friend called and confirmed he hadn’t gotten to her in time—Erich already had her…”
“I’m surprised you didn’t have your friend come kidnap me anyway.” She snorted a laugh. “It would be just like you not to trust me to follow orders.”
“You didn’t follow orders,” he reminded her with raised eyebrows and she blushed. He lowered his mouth to her ear, whispering, “Bad girl.”
“So… wait… who is this friend?” Tilly asked, cocking her head at him. “Anyone I know?”
Beast hesitated. Cleared his throat. Then he confessed.
“Mark.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh my God! Mark knew? The whole time? Well if he was a friend of yours, then why did you get so freaked out when you saw me with him at The Block? Or when he took me out…?”
“Because you’re mine,” he growled, holding onto her tighter. “And I wouldn’t trust the Pope and you alone in a room, you little heartbreaker.”
She smiled at that, resting her cheek against his chest. Ambulances were starting to close up to take their patients back to the hospital.
“I actually did send Mark to the house—just to watch,” Beast confessed further. “But Erich got to you first.”
“Erich was one step ahead of you the whole way,” she teased, listening to the slow, steady beat of his heart against her ear.
“Until his last step,” he said softly, his voice cold, and she shivered. “Once I found out what he was doing, I knew I had to end it, one way or another.”
“So you did,” she whispered, feeling so proud of him she could have burst.
“Well, I wasn’t alone.” He chuckled. “Right now there are teams in multiple countries bringing in the other players involved in this particular sex slave ring. I wish I could say it made a big difference to the trade as a whole, but… I don’t think it does. At least, it makes a difference to these women and their families.”
He nodded as one of the ambulances rolled slowly by.
“It makes a big difference,” she told him, turning her teary eyes up to his. “To this woman and her family.”
He leaned in and lifted her to him so he could kiss her more fully on the mouth. .
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen,” she whispered when they parted, searching his dark eyes in the moonlight. “I promise, I won’t ever doubt you, or misbehave, ever again.”
He grinned, reaching around to grab her ass in his hands. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Tills.”
Chapter 20
Beast’s apartment was far closer than she expected it to be. She’d never seen it or even been given the address. Liv knew where it was—she’d slipped once and mentioned something about having stopped by there—but Tilly was kept in the dark, as usual. For her own good, of course, she thought bitterly, as they took the elevator up.
But he had no qualms about taking her there now.
No more secrets, she thought, as she peeled off her dirty, dank clothing, kicking them into the corner of the bathroom before stepping under the hottest shower spray she could handle. She had let Beast shower first, so steam still hung in the air. Tilly had been too distracted by his refrigerator, her stomach suddenly remembering it had needs, and she’d polished off some brie, two big handfuls of grapes, a small container of yogurt, and a little bit of leftover guacamole she’d just eaten with a spoon.
Now she scrubbed and scrubbed, using a body brush and Beast’s no-nonsense soap. Under normal circumstances, she would have been worried about how hard it would be on her skin, but now, she only wanted to be clean. And she felt as if she couldn’t get clean enough, after sleeping on the oily floor of that ship, in a room full of misery and tears and despair.
Tilly tried not to think about all the women who had been seized by this ring before it had been broken, those who hadn’t been saved—and hoped that everything was going according to plan around the world where others were being set free.
She had only narrowly missed being drenched in Erich’s blood.
Never mind her own.
Tilly tried to scrub it all away, washing her hair three times, then standing under the hot, needling spray, hoping it would slough off the remnants of this awful, awful day.
The bathroom door opened and Tilly gasped.
Fearfully, she peeked around the shower curtain, but it was only Beast.
“Oh my God, you know Psycho scared me to death,” she reminded him. “What were you thinking?”
“Sorry.” He shrugged, holding a peace offering. “I just wanted to make sure you had a fresh towel.”
; “Thank you,” she said, holding a trembling hand out for it, and then promptly burst into tears.
Beast didn’t say anything. He just held his arms out to her.
Tilly turned off the water and stumbled out of the shower onto the bath mat. She stood there and let him dry her off, tears running down her face. He wiped those, too, but they kept coming. Beast was shirtless—he’d just thrown on a pair of jeans after his shower—and he wrapped her naked body in the towel before sitting on the toilet and pulling her into his lap.
The towel he’d brought was big enough for him, so it dwarfed her.
Tilly looked at him, sniffing—her tears had dried now, but her emotions still ran high.
Beast nuzzled her neck, smiling, silently admiring her soft skin, and its dewy warmth from the shower. She ran a hand through his hair. It was growing out, no longer an official “buzz cut” and it was even still slightly damp to the touch. Leaning forward, she kissed his forehead, trying not to imagine either of them dead.
“I’m sorry about tonight,” he told her, his voice hoarse. “God, baby, if I’d lost you…”
“I know.” She used his oft-repeated phrase, feeling her lips trembling at the prospect.
“If you’d just trusted me, when I told you to stay home…” He frowned, cupping her chin in his hand and turning her head this way and that, looking at her neck. She’d taken the bandage off before the shower, and inspected the wound. They weren’t deep—just scratches, like a cat’s claws might make.
“Hey, you didn’t trust me either,” she reminded him, with a jerk of her head. “If you’d been honest with me about Erich, about what you were doing here, from the very beginning, I wouldn’t have gotten involved at the club at all. I never would have even told Frankie about it.”
He considered this, then sighed. “You know what, you’re right. I should have told you more.”
She raised her eyebrows at this admission, blinking in surprise. Had they been shunted into another, alternate universe, where Beast said words that were practically an admission of guilt?
“I was just being a cop,” he confessed. “It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you. I was just… I was trying to protect you.”
She nodded. He’d been trying to protect them all along, she realized. It had been clear to her, after discovering the secrets he’d been keeping, that his warning Frankie off Erich, and trying to keep Tilly away from The Block and The Bottom Floor and even Mark, had been Beast’s attempts at keeping her safe. Even when he’d agreed to train her as a submissive, he must have been thinking he could protect her from being earmarked as one of the women destined to be taken. Part of her wanted to ask how it worked, how Erich chose them, how he kept from being caught, but another part of her didn’t want to know. It was all too dreadful.
“Besides…” Beast pulled her closer against his chest. “If I’d told you, and you’d stayed away… then you wouldn’t have ended up as my sub.”
She looked at him, wondering. “You don’t regret it?”
“Hell no.” He shook his head. “I could never regret you, baby. I never have.”
“But you said...” She swallowed at the memory of him that night in the pool, when she’d asked him about that summer. Worst summer of my life. The words still cut deep.
“I say a lot of things I don’t mean,” he confessed softly. “Pay attention to what I do, not what I say. I came home to you, didn’t I?”
“Did you really come home for me?”
“Yes. You are my home, Tilly.” He brought her face down to kiss her, taste her, claim her. As if she needed claiming—Tilly smiled at the thought—she’d been his all along. She wanted to ask him a thousand questions. Why he’d left—why he’d stayed away so long. What had changed, that brought him back to her?
But he didn’t stop kissing her, and then he was carrying her, out of the bathroom and into his bedroom. Everything smelled like him. The sheets, the pillows, even the towel she was wrapped in. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and put her on the floor and unwrapped her like a gift. The towel fell from her shoulders and she stood before him, naked, unashamed. Her body wasn’t perfect, but he loved it. She could tell, the way his hands moved over the creamy slopes of her shoulders, down her arms.
He lifted her hands, turning her wrists up and frowning. Then he kissed the marks there, as if he could take them away. His mouth moved up the inside of her forearm, pausing to lick her inner elbow. No part of her was off limits. His tongue probed her armpit and he breathed in her scent, before his mouth dipped to capture her achingly hard nipple.
“Are you okay?” he murmured, pressing her breasts together in his hands and brushing soft kisses against her cleavage.
“Yes,” she whispered, arching her back, telling him with her body that she consented, she wanted this, wanted him. This was the one thing she knew could wash away the trauma she’d experienced that day. There was no soap, no scrub brush tough enough for the job.
But Beast was.
He cinched her around the waist and pulled her onto the bed, rolling her beneath him. She ached all over, still. Especially her arms and shoulders. Beast had given her a pill when they got here, a painkiller, then urged her to eat, lest she throw it up. She was still sore, but less so. Maybe the pill was starting to work—or maybe it was his hands, massaging her shoulders and arms as he kissed her into oblivion, that served to distract her from the pain.
She wanted him, now, inside her, but he wouldn’t listen to her pleas. He rolled her to her belly, pushing her still wet mass of hair aside to kiss the back of her neck, then down, between her shoulder blades. His hands were big and warm and they touched her with an easy sort of knowing, warming her muscles, kneading her flesh until she was completely malleable. Tilly moaned into the sheet, breathing in his scent, drowning in him as he licked the dimples of her lower back, hands cupping and massaging the rounded globes of her ass. His big hands made her feel small.
She cried out when he parted her thighs, bringing her up to her knees on the bed, her flushed cheek still against the mattress.
He devoured her.
“Don’t come, baby,” he warned, before diving in, licking her back to belly, leaving no part of her unexplored with mouth or fingers.
Every nerve ending in her body came alive. Places she thought had gone numb forever, that she was sure she’d never feel again, began to spark, catch fire and burn. His fingers slid deep inside her, twisting, turning, coaxing. She shuddered and arched and cried out, but she didn’t come. Her clit throbbed, and he sucked at it, but just briefly. Not long enough to bring her to any sort of release.
Then he rolled her over onto her back, parted her legs, and gorged on her some more. The sight of his dark head moving between her thighs, hands gripping her ass to pull her against his mouth, her feet braced against his thickly muscled, inked shoulders, was nearly enough to send her flying.
“Beast,” she gasped, her body nearing its breaking point.
He didn’t stop, but his tongue slipped low, sliding into her, licking and tasting her from the inside out. Tilly’s hips came up off the bed, quivering thighs opening wider to give him deeper access. Just when she thought she couldn’t stand another moment of that, his tongue went lower still, probing the tight, puckered hole of her ass.
“Oh! God!” she cried out, head going back and forth, a silent no, but he spread her cheeks with his palms and destroyed her with his tongue, broke down any barriers she might have even been thinking about putting up against him.
She was his. Every single part of her belonged to this man.
Then Beast stood, wiping his glistening mouth with the back of his hand before unsnapping and unzipping his jeans. His gaze, heavy-lidded and hungry, raked her flesh. She couldn’t hide from him, hands thrown carelessly over her head, breasts full and heaving with her panting breath, knees parted, the soles of her feet kissing.
He dropped his jeans to the floor and knelt up between her legs, forcing her soft, quivering thighs open
with his thick, meaty ones. His cock rested against the curly red patch of hair above her cleft, the tip weeping pre-cum as if happy to see her, his piercing glinting in the dim light of the lamp. She bit her lip, glancing up from the ready staff between his legs, her eyes getting lost in the ridged terrain of his flesh.
His abdomen was hard, flexed, and her gaze followed the black lines of his tattoos, a flaming sun like a starburst circling his navel, a dragon beast under Tilly's right hand as she moved it over his ribs, a flock of birds under her left hand, in flight. Her fingertips brushed his nipples and Beast made a low noise at that. There was a beast between those little hard nubs, a ram's headed demon, with impressive horns that bled into the spider webs that decorated his upper shoulders and back. His arms, flexed as he palmed her knees, opening them, were crossed with skulls and crossbones, intricate, detailed line drawings she could have looked at forever.