Shared

by Lily Harlem

  “What the fuck is going on!” A deep voice suddenly filled the room.

  “Quinn!” I shouted, turning my sightless eyes toward the doorway.

  Instantly Jed’s hands were off me, the bed lightened and I sensed angry sharp movements over the carpet.

  “Who the hell are—?” Quinn’s voice was lost under a loud thwack. Flesh on flesh. Air was expelled sharply from someone’s lungs, I wasn’t sure whose.

  I let out a yelp of fear, no longer terrified for myself, but for Quinn. Another grunt and the connection of fists, a loud bang as bodies hit the floor. The bed shook, bumped into by tussling men.

  “You sick bastard.” Jed’s voice, harsh and breathless.

  “Son of a bitch!” Quinn growled.

  More loud bangs, thumps and whacks. I twisted my head trying to figure out what was going on, and then, then it all went quiet, too quiet.

  “Quinn? Quinn,” I gasped, trying unsuccessfully to sit upright.

  I heard Jed grunt and thought I heard Quinn moan. My heart fluttering, I pulled at the cuffs, rattling and shaking the headboard over and over and ramming my heels on the mattress in terror. I hated my blind, bound state.

  “Keep fucking still,” Jed was over me again. I could smell him and feel his disgusting body heat. He shoved at my head and ripped the blindfold off. “I don’t want nosy neighbors joining the party, so shut the hell up with all your banging.”

  It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dim light of the bedroom. After what felt like eternity I saw a rough-looking, unshaven Jed, wearing a red baseball cap and a black jacket. He was stooped over Quinn. I’d always seen Jed suited and booted and in this dishevelled state I soon understood how I’d not recognized him on a fleeting glance.

  My attention flew to Quinn. “Quinn,” I shouted desperately. “Oh god, Jed, what have you done?”

  Quinn lay completely still on the white carpet, his long limbs awkward and hideously motionless. There was a gash on his forehead angling through his brow and his lip was split and swelling.

  “He’d be fine if it wasn’t for you, Ariane, we’d all be fine if it wasn’t for you,” Jed said contemptuously as he wrapped the blindfold tight around Quinn’s wrists in several blood-stopping loops. “You’re the worst kind of girl, a tease, a stuck-up cow and a do-gooder.”

  Quinn let out a moan and I saw with utter relief his eyes peel open. Even if the left was swelling blue and purple, at least he was alive.

  My relief lasted a split second. Jed straightened and pulled a bottle green penknife from his pocket. “Sit still, lover boy,” he spat into Quinn’s face as he wielded it like a samurai sword an inch from his nose. “Sit still and watch me fuck your girl.”

  Quinn’s jaw clenched and he let out a primeval grunt of fury. He shoved forward to get up, but having his hands bound hindered him and Jed rammed his foot into Quinn’s chest and reeled him back to the floor.

  “Touch her and I swear I’ll hunt you down,” Quinn snarled up, spots of blood spitting from his mouth onto the paper-white carpet.

  “Yeah, like you could do that,” Jed said, glancing over to me with a terrifying glint of lust searing through his narrowed eyes.

  “If I have to spend the rest of my life searching for you I will. Touch her and you’re as good as dead.” Quinn went to get up again.

  Jed was back over him in a flash, the knife primed and flashing dangerously. This time he pressed it in the hollow of Quinn’s throat. “If you can’t sit still then I will…” He dropped the knife to Quinn’s bound hands. “I’ll take off the tips of each one of your fingers. Imagine that—super surgeon Quinn Gilbert no longer able to hold an instrument.” He let out a high-pitched cackle. “That would be so much more fun to bestow upon you than death, so much more satisfying—”

  “No, no!” I shouted. Seeing the blade at Quinn’s beautiful, talented, healing fingers was the sickest thing I’d ever witnessed. “Take me, take my fingers, take whatever you want, from me,” I cried. “Jed, please come here, leave Quinn, let me give you what you want.”

  Jed turned to me, his mouth curled in a cruel smile. “Mmm, tempting offer.”

  “No,” Quinn snarled. “Don’t say that, Ariane, and don’t go fucking near her, asshole. Your deal is with me not her. I’m the one that’s going to hunt down your sorry, mother fucking ass for all eternity.”

  Tears welled in my eyes, tears of fear, tears of desperation. How could Quinn let that knife come back near him, near his precious hands. “Jed,” I pleaded. “Please, you know your problem is with me, let Quinn go.” I swallowed the sharp, acrid taste of bile as my blood ran cold. I knew what I must do. “Take me, take me wherever you want to go, I’ll come with you, but leave Quinn out of this.”

  “But where would we go, Ariane?” Jed came toward me. The knife glinted as he stepped through a shard of golden sunlight piercing the center of the room. “You’ve cost me everything, all the money I was stashing away, for us.” He paused and spun his red baseball cap backward, making him looking even crazier, even more thug-like. “Fuck, I can’t even leave the country, my head is on a warrant list at every port and airport.”

  “We’ll find a way,” I said, staring wide-eyed at the knife as it lowered toward my face. “I know we will, Jed, please.”

  “How, Ariane?” Jed sneered. Beads of sweat had formed over his top lip and dotted his brow, the dank scent of him enveloped me as he came closer. “You should have thought of all this before you grassed me up, Ariane, before you dobbed me in with the click of a mouse.” The left side of his lip curled as the flat side of the knife touched against my neck. I held my breath and waited for the cut, the sting, the ripping and slicing of flesh. My flesh.

  Jed lowered his head and bared his teeth. “There’s nowhere for me to go now except down, behind bars, so I may as well go satisfied.” He licked his lips and his eyes flashed.

  The tempo of my pulse tapped against the cool blade. My head began to spin as I kept my breath captured, too terrified even to breathe.

  “I think I’ll go down with one final fuck in my memory and take out as many bastards as I can.” Jed lifted the knife, looked over his shoulder and waved it at Quinn. “That means you by the way, smart arse.”

  Quinn’s head jerked backward. Something flashed through his eyes as he stared into mine, I didn’t know what. His brows lowered and he bit his bottom lip as if willing himself still. His hands clenched so tight in his binding his fingers were white and bloodless.

  “Right after I’ve done with your girl,” Jed sneered. “Wouldn’t want pain to distract you from seeing what a wonderful time she’s going to have with a real man.”

  I whimpered at the futileness of our situation and clamped my legs together. How had this happened? How had we allowed it to happen? Jed reached for the flies of his jeans, they were as dirty and stained as his fingernails. I screwed up my eyes, unable to look at his penis about to penetrate me, unable to look at Quinn, bound and battered on the floor.

  Then, with an almighty roar, the energy in the room turned upside down. I opened my eyes and saw Liam towering over me. With one huge thrust he flung Jed into the air. Quinn jumped up, an animalistic grunt escaping his lips as he lunged forward.

  But Jed was quick and leapt back to his feet, the knife swinging and flailing wildly in front of him. Quinn and Liam took hurried backward steps out of its way.

  “Liam!” I yelled, my heart soaring but also bursting with panic. “He’s got a knife.”

  “Yeah, I can see that, baby,” Liam said calmly and not taking his eyes off the blade.

  “Stay away from me,” Jed hollered, looking from Liam to Quinn and then back to Liam. “Stay the fuck away from me.” He jerked forward. Liam dodged to the left and spun around him. Quinn hopped to the side, his hands held in front of his chest.

  “Let’s talk about this,” Liam said, holding his palms up. “We can come to some sort of arrangement.”

  Jed’s eyes were darting as if wondering wh
at Liam and Quinn’s next move would be. “Yeah, right, you’re really going to let me walk out of here, like I said, I just want to take as many of you weirdos with me as I can.” His arm twitched left and right as his feet stuttered forward and back. He was like a boxer sussing up his opponent. “I don’t know what kinky stuff you three are up to, but Ariane isn’t big on sex so you both shouldn’t be wasting your time.” He snorted. “Or is that why she’s tied to the bed, only way you can fuck her?”

  I glanced at Quinn. I’d never seen another human being so angry, so furious. His face was tense and red, his jaw and fists clenched. He was a burning man. He shook and twisted his hands, trying desperately to remove the tight binding of the eye mask.

  And then it all happened in a blur. Jed lunged for Liam, going for the biggest guy with his hands free. The most immediate threat.

  Liam shifted sideways and as Jed drew parallel Liam captured his arm and twisted it up his back. He whacked the flat of his hand against the nape of Jed’s neck, jerking him over, and with one sharp twist of his wrist the knife tumbled from Jed’s grip on a downward plunge through the air.

  Jed howled with fury and pain and immediately flung his neck backward to head-butt Liam. But Liam, unconcerned, swept his bare foot over the carpet and effortlessly took out both Jed’s legs.

  Jed hit down hard.

  An ear-splitting scream filled the room, which I soon realized was mine.

  Jed had landed down on his front with his limbs crumpled beneath him. But no sooner had his body hit down he rolled over, his mouth wide in shock and his eyes saucered in terror. A perfect, scarlet arc of blood spurted from his groin and touched the ceiling, one pulse, two pulses, three pulses. Each one splattered more and more red dots through the air and onto the walls.

  “Oh shit.” Quinn dropped down next Jed. “He’s gone right through his femoral.” His bound hands fumbled through the cut the knife had made in denim and the arcing blood stopped as suddenly as it had started.

  “Oh god,” I cried. “What’s happening, what does that mean?”

  “Pass me that shirt,” Quinn shouted nodding at Liam’s shirt, the one I’d worn earlier.

  “But I like that one,” Liam muttered, chucking it over to Quinn.

  “You’ve killed me,” Jed cried out, his hands competing with Quinn’s as Quinn stuffed the shirt down onto Jed’s hip and leaned his entire weight over it.

  “Keep the fuck still and I might just be bothered to save your sorry life,” Quinn growled.

  Jed’s face was getting paler by the second, there was a definite blue tinge to his lips. There seemed to be a hell of a lot of scarlet blood seeping onto the pale blue shirt.

  “Call an ambulance,” Quinn said, looking at Liam. “And the police.”

  “In a minute.” Liam’s face hovered over mine. “You okay, baby?”

  I nodded. “Yes, yes. I think so.”

  “Liam, a fucking ambulance,” Quinn shouted.

  “Let the bastard wait, who cares if he dies?” Liam reached for the small silver key on the bedside table and undid my cuffs. He lifted my arms over my aching shoulders and rubbed my wrists. The blood rushed to my fingertips and they tingled crazily as I sat myself upright.

  “I care if he dies,” said Quinn. “I took an oath, remember?”

  “Go, Liam,” I said, dragging the duvet up my trembling body. “Go make the call, I’m all right, really.”

  “Sure?” He frowned, making no move to leave.

  “Yes, quick, go.” I nodded at the door.

  Within minutes police and ambulance crews charged in. Our apartment didn’t feel like ours with strangers in uniforms swarming around. The shaking in my belly would just not stop. Every few minutes a cold chill swept through my body.

  The bedroom became a scene from a medical drama and the living room an interrogation office as we each relayed our stories to stern-looking officers—leaving out of course the naughty game Quinn and I’d been playing beforehand—although by the look shared between the two police officers they’d guessed what had been going on before Jed had found me tied and blindfolded.

  After they’d all left I sat on the balcony wearing jeans and a t-shirt and sipping a hot, strong coffee.

  “You look tired,” Liam said, wrapping a blanket around my shoulders.

  “Yes, I am.”

  He squeezed on the lounger next to me and enclosed me in his arms.

  “Tired and still in shock, I think,” I said as I rested one hand on his chest and felt his heart beating. I beat down a final shiver.

  “Well, you’ve been through a lot.” Quinn squatted down and rested his hand on my knee. “It’s not been an average Saturday.”

  “Not in my world,” I said as I looked at the cut slashing through his right eyebrow. The ambulance guys had wanted to take him to hospital for stitches, but Quinn had refused to leave me and they’d had to be content with sealing the gash with Steri-Strips.

  “Your world is our world,” Liam said, squeezing me all the tighter.

  “Don’t I know it,” I groaned. “I’m so sorry to have brought all this trouble to your doorstep, really I am. Your lives were quiet and uncomplicated until I arrived.”

  “Our lives were not complete until you arrived,” Quinn said, quietly taking my cup of coffee. “And remember it’s your doorstep now, you live here, with us.”

  “Your trouble is our trouble.” Liam lifted my hand from his chest and pressed a kiss to my palm.

  “But it was so horrid, he was so horrid.” I pushed myself up and reached for Quinn’s bruised and swollen face. “He threatened you in the worst way imaginable, taking off your fingers so you couldn’t operate, save lives.”

  Quinn scowled, his brows dropped so low a deep groove carved above his nose and the Steri-Strips crinkled. “It wasn’t particularly pleasant what he was threatening you with either.”

  “I know, but I could have survived that, I could have gone on functioning after, you know….”

  Liam sucked in a breath, his body tensed against mine.

  “I would never, ever have let that happen,” Quinn said, his jaw clenched and a muscle flexed in his cheek. “But I’d heard Liam’s office door open about ten seconds before he appeared in the room. If I hadn’t known he was only a few steps away, Jed would have had no need for an ambulance. It would have been the funeral director pulling up outside. Oath or no oath, having my hands tied would have made no difference to what I was about to do to him.”

  “Yeah,” said Liam. “You did a good job of rattling the headboard, baby. I’d heard it earlier, smiled to myself and thought what a good time you two were having, but there was something about the way it was banging later, frantic almost, panicked, it made me come and see what was going on.”

  “I’m so glad you did.” I twisted and looked into Liam’s gorgeous blue eyes. “I’m so glad you two are on my side.” I pressed my lips to Liam’s mouth and then reached and touched Quinn’s poor spilt lip. “I love you both so much and I can’t imagine life without you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Eighteen months later

  The front door clicked open and shut. Quinn had got out of the habit of slamming it, which was just as well since Liam and Sophie were sound asleep on the sofa next to me.

  I looked at the Christmas tree’s reflection twinkling in the glass balcony doors and thought how pretty it was with the tiny wooden toys Hilary and Karl had sent as an early gift. Beneath sat piles of presents, mainly in pink, shiny paper, though there were a couple of small silver boxes with my name on. I was looking forward to opening them in the morning.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” Quinn whispered as he stepped into the living room. He tipped my chin and pressed a kiss to my lips. “Everyone all right?”

  I smiled and nodded as he reached down and pushed the tip of his thumb through Rebecca’s fluff of blonde hair. “We’re all fine,” I said. “How was the ward when you left?”

  “Half-empty.” He crossed his fingers. “Hopef
ully it means we’ll have an undisturbed first Christmas with the twins.”

  “Oh, that would be bliss,” I sighed.

  “I picked up these too,” Quinn said, dropping a pile of estate agent literature on the table. He’d been talking for several weeks about a house on the outskirts of Cardiff, somewhere with a garden. Liam and I were holding our breath to see if he really would move half an hour from the hospital. We couldn’t persuade him and we wouldn’t try, Quinn’s happiness depended upon him making the decision, not us.

  “I’ll have a look at them later,” I said, my attention going back down to Rebecca. She’d been latched onto my breast for well over forty minutes and I reckoned she was about done. Her sweet little sucking noises had reduced to token slurps and her eyes had been shut for over twenty minutes. I gently pulled her from my swollen, dark nipple and tucked my breast into my nursing bra.

  “She looks blissful,” Quinn said, scooping her from my arms. Her tiny rosebud mouth pursed at the movement and a drip of milk that sat at the very center of her bottom lip trickled onto her chin. “Perfectly full and content.” Quinn gently touched his finger to her chin to mop up the drip and then sat down next to me. “Those two been asleep long?” He nodded at Liam and Sophie.

  “About an hour.” I smiled. “They could sleep for Wales. I’ve never known anything like it.”

  “Sophie loves sleeping like that.”

  “Yes,” I said, “and I can’t blame her, listening to her dad’s heartbeats is one of my favorite things to do when I’m tired.” I reached up and touched the small silver scar going through Quinn’s brow. “Although sleep is not the only thing we can do in bed again.” I twitched my brows suggestively. “We’re officially allowed to indulge in one of our favorite pastimes.”

  Quinn’s eyes widened and his attention snapped to my face. “We will? We can?”

  “Yes, I saw my midwife this morning. Now the girls are eight weeks she said I’m good to go.”