Bound Temptations: Stories of Temptation and Submission

by Shiloh Walker

  Gail clicked the mouse again and a video started to play.

  It was a punch in his gut to realize it was Tania and him—that first night at Tania’s place. Gail used the mouse to fast-forward it until she got to the place where Tania had gone down on him.

  He stood there, staring, with blood roaring in his ears and fury tearing through him.

  A private moment—and this bitch had watched.

  Slowly, he turned his head and stared at her.

  The minute their gazes connected, Gail stopped the video.

  “She’s a slut,” Gail snarled.

  Drake narrowed his eyes. “Because she has a sex life?”

  Gail hissed. “You call that a sex life?” She shook her head and looked around. “Look! She’s a whore—a slut. Kyle never would have engaged in anything so…so…wicked until he met her. Look!”

  She pointed at the walls and that was when Drake realized the picture serving as the computer’s background had only been the beginning. There were more. Hundreds more.

  Some of them were mundane—Tania at the store, shopping. Getting out of her car, although the camera lens zoomed in on things like her breasts or her crotch.

  But there were others—shit, that freak had somehow gotten photographs of her in the shower. Using the restroom. Changing her clothes. Cooking dinner. Sleeping.

  And having sex with Kyle. It was Kyle —Kyle had gotten a tattoo the same time Drake had gotten his. Kyle’s was a grinning, macabre skull, though, situated just below his left shoulder blade. In a number of the pictures, that tattoo was visible.

  “Kent stalked her, took private pictures of a man and wife, and you’ve got nerve to call her out,” Drake growled.

  “She seduced him. Sent him wicked pictures while he was gone,” Gail said, her voice rising, throbbing with self-righteous fury. “She drove him past the point of sanity and he couldn’t control himself. Then he comes home and she flaunts herself in front of him when she should have been in mourning.”

  “What wicked pictures? You want me to believe she sent him these pictures?” Drake demanded.

  “Of course not.” Gail reached into a drawer and pulled out a faded, worn letter, turning it over to him.

  He skimmed it. It was Kyle, sent to Kent while he was on vacation with Tania a few years earlier. They’d gone to Cancun. There were a few pictures—one with Tania in a bikini, Kyle hugging her from behind while they smiled at the camera. On the back of it, written in Tania’s bold, feminine script, it read, Hey, Kent… Wish you could have gone with us! Maybe next time.

  “Is this the wicked picture?” he asked, looking up at her.

  “Yes. The little whore.”

  Drake stared at her, reaching for words but unable to find anything. Finally, he said, “Well, at least I know where Kent got his crazy from.”

  Gail lifted a hand, but before she could slap him, he caught her wrist. “Don’t,” he warned. “I’ll make allowances for a woman who’s lost her sons, and I’ll make even more for a woman who obviously needs help. But if you think I’ll let you strike me…think again.”

  His gut rolled on him as he flung her hand down. He barely resisted the urge to wipe it on his jeans, as though she might contaminate him. He saw a small trash can on the floor and he bent over, grabbed it. Then, without looking at her for even a second, he stood and started to tear the pictures from the walls. Every last one—an invasion on Tania’s privacy, a stain on her life, on Kyle’s life. He didn’t know how Kent had gotten these, although he had a suspicion—in a second, he’d look to see if he was right. But first he had to get rid of these.

  “What are you doing?” Gail demanded, gasping.

  “What does it look like?” He crumpled them in his fist, one right after the other. He wanted to do more—wanted to shred them. Rip them apart—no. Burn them. Yeah, that was what he wanted and he just might do that, too. But first, get them off the wall so he didn’t have to see.

  “Getting rid of the evil won’t keep it from infecting you,” she said staunchly. “You feel it, don’t you? Her evil infecting you?”

  The only thing he felt was a grim, heavy disgust, something that clung to his skin, something that wouldn’t come clean no matter what he did. That and guilt, because for a few seconds, before his brain kicked in and he realized just what he was staring at, his body had responded as it always did when Tania was involved.

  Any arousal had died a fast, ugly death, though, once he figured out just what was going on here.

  Kent hadn’t just woken up one morning and decided to go rape his sister-in-law.

  Judging by these pictures, so many of them involving Kyle, changes of hairstyles, seasons—the man had been watching her for years. Stalking her…for years. Hell, that trip to Cancun had been close to eight years ago. Kent had come home on leave that year, a few months later, if Drake remembered right.

  He turned to the next wall, ready to rip down those pictures, and Gail shoved in front of him. “You can’t just tear up my things this way.” She glared at him and went to snatch the garbage can from him.

  “Want to bet?” He reached past her, ignoring it as she tried to slap at his arms, tearing down as many of the pictures as he could.

  “These are mine—when Kent died, everything that was his became mine.”

  “And you call it filth. I’d think you’d be happy to have the filth out of your house,” Drake said, shooting her a look and then focusing back on the job at hand. Just looking at her made him angry—and edgy. That glint in her eyes—she wasn’t thinking clearly. Was she even sane?

  He’d managed to get most of the pictures down and then he turned, stared at the computer. There was only one damn way Kent could have gotten some of those pictures—only one. When he went to sit in the computer chair, Gail flung herself at him. “No!”

  Hands curled into claws, she swiped at his face.

  He caught one wrist, held it. “Don’t,” he said softly.

  “You will leave now. And leave everything behind.”

  “No.”

  “If you don’t, I…I…” Her eyes narrowed and she jerked her chin up. Her eyes, the same green eyes the Sinclair twins had shared, narrowed, and she gave him a malicious smile. “I’ll show some of the things I’ve got on that computer to the police. They’ll wonder if they shouldn’t investigate harder.”

  “No.” Drake shook his head. “You won’t. Because there’s one thing I know about Kent that you really wish I didn’t know—I know a name.”

  Her lashes flickered. She swallowed.

  “They think she was raped. But she likes being hurt—you even hurt her and I have proof of it,” Gail babbled, shaking her head, eyes glassy.

  She already knew, though.

  Drake saw it on her face.

  “Elaina Watson,” he said quietly. “Aged thirteen. Kent, Kyle and I were fifteen—two years ahead of her. I knew her brother, knew her folks. I know you paid them not to talk about what he did to her. I know you put him in counseling. And now we know it didn’t do any good.”

  Gail talked louder, as though she keep herself from hearing anything he said. “They’ll look back at Kent’s murder now. And since they didn’t charge her then, they can do it now.”

  “If you so much as breathe a word to anybody, I’ll track Elaina down,” he continued to speak as well, not raising his voice, because he knew she heard him. He could see the terror in her eyes, on her face. “I’ll ask her if she wants to speak about what he did to her. And all it will take is one person, Gail. One person—and you know there is one.”

  Her lids flickered again, and her voice cracked and finally, she went silent.

  Drake studied her closely and then he swore. “There’s more than one, isn’t there? You vicious bitch.”

  Turning around, he jerked the chair out and sat down. “I’m wiping this computer clean, I’m shutting down whatever feeds you’ve got, and Gail, I’m warning you—do not fuck with me. If you do a thing against Tania, you’ll be
sorry, because I’ll drag Kent’s name through the mud. And yours.”

  “You can’t do a thing to me, bastard,” she growled.

  There was a heavy, ugly weight in his gut as he glanced back at her. “How long have you known he had a thing for his brother’s wife, Gail? Did you discover this room before he attacked her? Or after?”

  She said nothing. But he saw the answer.

  “If you’d warned her—hell, if you had said a damn thing to me on any of the times I came by to check on you after Kyle died? I could have done something, and you know what? Kent would still be alive, because I damn well would have kept him from touching her.”

  Behind him, Gail started to sob.

  He tuned it out as he started to dig around.

  He’d been wrong, he realized about five minutes into the job.

  Kent wouldn’t be alive, even if Gail had warned him.

  Because Drake would have killed him.

  From what he could tell, the bastard had cameras in just about every room of Tania’s house—it looked like three in her bedroom and at least two in her bathroom.

  He thought he could kill it remotely temporarily, but if Gail had any computer know-how—and it was possible she might have some basic skills at least—the only way to completely stop it was to find the cameras. He thought he had a good idea of where they were, judging by the angle and everything—

  Tania walked across the screen.

  His heart turned over.

  He glanced at the clock in the corner—almost nine. He hadn’t called her. He had to get over there, tell her. Then get rid of the damn cameras—no. The cameras first.

  He took care of the feeds first, then started checking the folders. They were neatly organized by month, by year. Going back so many years. The past year had been scarce, up until the past month. He opened the folder and saw the stills of himself and Tania and he wanted to scream. Wanted to smash the monitor to bits—that evil bitch had been watching them. Calling Tania evil, calling her a whore, and she’d been spying on them.

  With his jaw clenched, he deleted those.

  “You can delete them—it won’t matter. I have them saved. I have the proof that she’s a whore, a murderess,” Gail said, her voice wavering.

  Yeah. He imagined she did—at least proof in her mind.

  The next labeled folder made his hand clench into a fist.

  January 5.

  She’d saved it—her son’s rape of her daughter-in-law and the bastard’s death.

  “Delete it if it makes you feel better. But it won’t do any good.”

  “Oh, I’m deleting it,” he muttered. And he did. That one, all of them. All the videos, the pictures, emptied the recycling bin. And then, just because he could—both of the twins had been computer freaks and Kyle had once shown him how to force a crash—he crashed the hard drive.

  Pushing back from the desk, he glanced around. There was a stack of CDs and DVDs. Again, neatly labeled, corresponding to the folders. “Are these the so-called evidence?”

  She shrieked when he scooped them up.

  “You bastard.” She glared at him, like he was the one responsible for all of this.

  “I’ve spent the past two years feeling bad for you,” he said softly. “You lost both of your boys. I know they were all you had after their dad walked out. I hurt for you. But no more. You let that happen to her—you knew what Kent was capable of and you did nothing to stop it. Something you need to think about, and think hard—Tania just might be able to hold you liable. A court might be able to. You knew he had an unhealthy obsession. You did nothing, said nothing, and a woman was raped.”

  She opened her mouth and Drake cut her off. “Shut the fuck up,” he bit off. “You hear me? You know what he did and don’t tell me otherwise. You’re almost as guilty as he was.”

  Without saying anything else, he shoved past her, the garbage can tucked into his arm, carrying that damning evidence.

  His heart was like ashes in his chest.

  He had to tell her.

  And there was nothing he dreaded more.

  Chapter Eight

  It was a little after nine when Drake knocked on the door.

  She answered, smiling at him. “Hey. I was starting to think I wouldn’t see you at all today.” She leaned against him, lifting her face to his.

  He brushed a hand down her hair but didn’t smile back. “We need to talk,” he murmured, his voice gruff and ragged. “But not here. Can we go to my place?”

  She blinked at him. “Ah…yeah.” Lifting a hand, she laid it on his cheek. “Is everything okay?”

  In response, he caught her hand, turned his mouth to it. “We’ll talk. Get your coat. Wait in my car. I…I need a few minutes inside the house.”

  Perplexed, Tania stared at him. “Drake, what’s going on?”

  “Just wait in my car, okay?” His dark blue eyes caught hers, held them. “Please.”

  She frowned, then slowly, she nodded. Her heart beat against her ribs, hard and fast, and she wondered what in the hell was wrong. Because something was wrong. Turning away, she grabbed her coat from the coat tree. As she turned back, she saw Drake grab something from the porch—a trashcan…?

  What…?

  But before she could ask, he set the can just inside the door and guided her out to his car. It was a sleekly rebuilt 1965 Ford Mustang, painted a gleaming black. She studied his face as he opened the door for her, but his expression revealed nothing. Nervous, she touched her fingers to his lips. His gaze came to hers and he bent over, his hand curving around the back of her neck, drawing her close for a kiss.

  It was slow and gentle, soft—but she tasted something wild and edgy—dangerous in it. And when he lifted his head, she glimpsed something dark and angry behind the blue of his eyes. He smiled at her, but for some reason, she didn’t feel very reassured.

  Swallowing, she linked her hands together and stared through the windshield as he shut the door.

  But as he turned and headed for the house, she looked back, watching him.

  There was fury in every line of his body.

  What was going on?

  With each small camera he found, it only served to make him more and more furious.

  There were twelve in all—that he’d been able to find. He hoped that was all of them, but he had a friend or two who did security work—he’d ask one of them over in a day or two. They’d make sure everything had been found.

  He needed to calm down, needed to cool down, needed to get his head together and do it fast.

  He’d use the drive to his place—a thirty-minute drive to his house on the river—and maybe he’d settle down. As he headed out the door, a faint ringing sound hit his ears and he realized it was her cell phone. She’d left her purse.

  He snagged it, the trash can that held all the DVDs, CDs, crumpled pictures and now, the destroyed remains of the cameras. He’d have to do some repair work on her house, too. A few of the cameras had been placed in things like crown molding, so cleverly concealed and he hadn’t been able to get them out without messing things up a little.

  He grimaced now, wondering if he was handling this right. He was operating on pure instinct, though, pure fury—and while he was trying to focus on the instinct and not the fury, he knew, in his gut, he couldn’t let Tania stay in that house while the cameras could still be activated. It would devastate her. The sooner they were shut down, the better. He wasn’t making the wrong call there.

  The rest…Hell. He didn’t know.

  The drive passed in silence.

  The tension weighed heavier and heavier until Tania thought she might crack, but she didn’t say anything, didn’t try to get him to talk.

  Not yet.

  She knew Drake.

  He wouldn’t talk until he was ready.

  By the time they arrived at his house, she was strung tight enough to snap, and the first thing she did after he unlocked the door was head straight to his liquor cabinet, pouring herself a rum
and Coke. “You want one?”

  “No.” He came to stand behind her, bracing his hands on the counter on either side of her as he dipped his head low and pressed his lips to her shoulder. “You know I’d never do a damn thing to hurt you, right? I’d cut off an arm first.”

  She took a sip of the drink as she turned around, meeting his somber blue eyes. “I know that. You don’t have it in you to really hurt a woman physically, Drake.” She summoned up a smile for him, despite the dread she felt curdling in her gut.

  “I’m not talking physically,” he said gruffly, reaching up and cupping her cheek. His thumb stroked over her lower lip. A harsh breath shuddered out of him. “I meant it when I said I love you. I’ve loved you for years. Part of me feels like I’ve always loved you—it almost killed me when Kyle died, and not just because I lost my best friend, but because of what I knew it would do to you. I can’t stand to know you’re hurting. I can’t stand it—”

  He pushed his hand into her hair and fisted it as he pressed his brow to hers. “And fuck, what I’m getting ready to do is going to hurt, baby. It’s going to hurt bad.”

  Her gut knotted. She licked her lips and reached out, slid an arm around his waist. “You’re not about to tell me you’re married or that you have to suddenly leave town indefinitely—nothing stupid like that, right?”

  “No.” He laughed but there was no humor in the sound. “Trust me, I only wish it was something like that, because I could figure out a way around that.”

  He sighed and cupped her face, pressed his lips to hers. “I thought about not telling you…and I realized that was taking your choice away. I couldn’t do that, even knowing how much this is going to hurt. Fuck, I’m sorry.”

  He eased back and she stared at him, torn between dread and confusion as he reached inside his pocket and pulled out a crumpled picture. He worried it between his fingers for a minute as he stared at her. “I got a call earlier, not long after you called me to tell me you were going to have drinks with Becky,” he said hoarsely. “It was from Gail.”