by Lana Grayson
“He’d rather dissolve the company than reward disloyalty,” I said. “I won’t let that happen.”
Reed snorted. “I don’t care about the company.”
“I do,” I said.
Sarah tensed.
“I am not putting the company or money before you,” I hated that she even thought it. “But the Bennett Corporation is mine. I’ve worked my entire life to assume leadership, and I’m not going to endanger it, our money, our employees, anything if I’m not convinced you’ll be safe.” I paused. “And I’m not.”
Max frowned. “Why? If Dad’s dead, who would fuck with her?”
The four remaining members of a board I couldn’t control—and they’d show less restraint than my father. They wouldn’t care about acquiring Atwood Industries, but they’d do everything to ensure Sarah never gained a single share of the Bennett Corporation.
Sarah had only hope and impetuous courage to guide her. Revealing the board’s corruption would destroy both.
And God only knew what my brothers would do if they realized men they trusted their entire lives would murder them for refusing to aid my father.
“I understand Dad,” I said. “I’ve spent my life learning from him, studying him, mimicking him, and I’ve come to despise everything he expects of me. Every decision I’ve made was meant to make me a better man than him. I’ve ignored his lessons and attempted to manage this family and company the way I think it should be run.” I tapped my temple. “But I know how he thinks. He is always two steps ahead. He knows we would kill him if given the opportunity.”
“Then why wait?” Sarah said. “Why not just do it. You know what he tried to do to me! He’s a monster. He doesn’t deserve to live, not after what he’s put me through.”
I stood, buttoning my jacket. “And that’s why your plan won’t work.”
“Why?”
I brushed a hand over her cheek. She didn’t flinch away, despite the tightening of her jaw. She bit back a hundred insults to feel my touch. The desire would either safe her life or ruin her before I could help. “You want revenge. I can’t blame you. But you aren’t being rational. Vengeance isn’t clean. You’ll get hurt.”
“This isn’t about revenge,” she said. I insulted her. “This is about protecting me.”
“And I will.”
She didn’t believe me.
I didn’t believe me.
Sarah held my gaze only to rip out my heart. “The only way you can protect me is if you let me go.”
How many times would she force me to tighten the collar over her neck, trap her in my bed, or repeat the damning truth? She was mine. Forever.
“I can’t let you go.”
“No. You won’t let me go.”
“You are safer with me than you are alone in the world hiding from my father.”
She meant to be strong. Instead, her voice laced with hope. “Then come with me.”
It was a greater impossibility. Not with my role in the company, the expectations, the possibilities I had in play that would save us all without bloodshed.
“Enough, Sarah. I know you’re frustrated.”
“I’m not frustrated!” Her voice rose. Hamlet galloped to her side, bumping her hand before she wound herself up. The damn dog comforted her more than me or my brothers. “I can’t live like this anymore. I won’t slink around the estate because I’m afraid of a beating. I won’t be paraded like Darius’s long-lost daughter so he can humiliate me before his partners.”
It was far worse than humiliation, but I wasn’t ready to break her spirit just yet. It was easier for her to hate the Bennetts than to endure the betrayal of the outside world. At least I could protect her from that.
“Sarah.”
“He’s planning something. He wouldn’t offer to buy my research and bring me Hamlet and not lay a single finger on me if he didn’t have something planned.”
“Nick scared him off a bit,” Reed said. “He’s not going to try anything with you again.”
It didn’t comfort her.
Just the opposite.
“You don’t understand. I don’t care what Darius does to me…” Her eyes paled with dread and memory. “But what if he makes you guys hurt me? He’d have you beat me or starve me or…” Her words edged with the threat of panic. “We’re trapped, and as long as he’s alive, we’re never going to be free of his sadism.”
She coughed. Harsh. It did nothing. She couldn’t breathe, and, suddenly, neither could I.
The choking gasp frustrated her. She clawed at her neck as someone would swat away a fly, but this was no mere inconvenience. Reed moved quickly, helping me set her on the couch. Another cough.
I knelt before her and offered the inhaler as a tear stained her cheek.
Not fear.
Not shame.
Anger and confusion and a defensive hatred.
She scowled as I forced the medication in her hand. She refused.
“Don’t start,” I warned. I uncapped the inhaler and threatened to push it into her mouth. “We’re on your side.”
She tensed but reluctantly puffed. Reed kept her close, rubbing her back with a comforting hand. Max forced himself to kneel beside me, patting her knee. She tolerated us, taking her first clear breath of air with a frustrated gasp.
My brothers and I let out our held breaths too.
We hated the asthma as much as she, and for the same reason. The helplessness, the uncertainty. Every night she coughed in her sleep, and I woke, dreading the next time an attack stole her strength and she collapsed, helpless in my arms.
Christ. If it wasn’t my father or the board, it’d be her own body.
I cupped her pale cheek. “Are you okay?”
She was too weakened to lie. “It’s not right that he has this control. I hate not knowing what he’ll do to me.”
She was right. My pulse thudded with fury, adrenaline, and absolute sorrow.
I was supposed to love this woman. Instead she cowered before me in terror. Or rage. Both were too ugly of emotions for someone so beautiful, so strong.
I looked to my brothers. “She doesn’t feel safe.”
Max shrugged. “None of us do.”
True, but I could offer Sarah some protection, a little reassurance even in the darkness. Something she could use to give her strength.
“She needs to have a safe word.”
Reed snickered. Max didn’t.
“A safe word?” Max grunted. “Nick, nothing about this family is safe, sane, or consensual.”
“No, I like this idea,” Reed said. “If we all want to trust each other and pretend this family is halfway functional, she should have an escape.”
“Don’t you think Dad will get suspicious if she screams out a word and I stop beating her ass?”
Reed shrugged. “So she says the word, and you flip her over. Flog her stomach instead of her ass. Or shove her down and make her blow you instead.”
Sarah flinched. Her soft words were meant to call Hamlet to her side. A cover for her trembling hands.
“This will give her some control over what happens. If something overwhelms her, she should have an escape, even if we can’t stop it altogether.”
“You understand what we’re saying, baby?” Max asked.
“Yeah.” She pocketed the inhaler. “I guess.”
I loathed the thought of her so frightened or hurt that she’d scream for mercy, but if it helped her, calmed her even a little around my father, it was worth it. She let me take her hand.
“Listen to me, Sarah,” I said. “The phrase can’t raise suspicion. My father must not realize we’ve allied together.”
“Okay.”
“If you’re overwhelmed or frightened…” Only one phrase would delight my father as much as her pain. “You will scream out I hate you.”
She pushed me away. “I would never say that to you, Nick.”
A relief. “My father doesn’t know that. He expects it.”
“Dar
ius can rot in hell.” She stood and immediately coughed. I didn’t have to move. Max and Reed pushed her onto the couch. Max kept her still, Reed gave her his water.
We offered her comfort she didn’t want and options that did nothing to truly save her.
She’d fight me on the safe word if for no other reason than she’d hate to use it. She’d never voluntarily admit her fear or beg for mercy.
Was I so different?
Her takeover, led by the stock she inherited, was her real safe word. And a viable one, even if my gut told me trusting an Atwood, even my Sarah, would only end in ruin. But we had no other options. Sarah suffered an asthma attack simply thinking of my father.
I wasn’t going to risk her health because of my pride.
“Sarah.” I ignored the churning of my stomach as I made the promise. “I’ll sell you my stock.”
She puffed with excitement. I stopped her before she spoke.
“But it doesn’t happen now. For any of us.” I nodded to my brothers. “Call it a fail-safe. If we have no other options when the trust is awarded to her, then we’ll sell, and she’ll take control.”
“Nick, thank you!” She hugged me. “I promise. This will work.”
I lived for her touch, but I pushed her down, forcing her to listen. “We don’t move on it now.”
Her eyebrow rose. I wasn’t fighting her on this.
“We say nothing. We do nothing. No money exchanges, no contracts are written. The day you are awarded your trust is the day I give you my stock, but not a moment before, or I won’t be able to protect you.”
“Once I’m in control I won’t need to be protected anymore. We’ll win this, Nick.”
I wasn’t about to deny her hope.
But I was prepared to lose everything if Sarah Atwood’s vengeance extended beyond my father?
No.
But I didn’t have a choice.
I wanted to trust the woman I loved as badly as she wanted to trust me.
But we weren’t fools. We didn’t say it, but we felt it. In every breath, in every promise, in every kiss, we waited to see who would betray the other first.
And I knew it would be me.
7
Sarah
Reed rifled through the mini-fridge. He jiggled a bottle of water at me.
“No.” I snuggled into the leather chair with my blanket. Hamlet’s wagging tail beat at my feet. “I hate you.”
“O-kay.” He held up a small carton of orange juice. “This?”
“Nope. Hate you.”
He flashed a can of pineapple instead. “This?”
“Hate you.”
The dimple disappeared as he slammed the mini-fridge shut. He tossed me a soda and knocked the blanket over my head.
“Safe word doesn’t apply to beverage choices.”
Max grumbled from the DVD player. “Or the movie selection.”
I shrugged. “I’m just practicing.”
Nicholas ended his call. I smirked as he plucked me from my chair and settled me onto his lap.
“You want to practice using your safe word, Ms. Atwood?” His voice dripped sin like melting wax. Every drop stung me more than the last. “That can be arranged.”
Nothing good would come from his threat. Nicholas captured me, bound me, and held me as his hostage. I had no defenses against the warmth of his fingers or the spiced sharpness of his scent.
And he knew it.
Trusting him wasn’t my greatest weakness, it was the power I offered him, the submission he desired, and how easily my body responded to the simple closeness of resting in his arms.
Like any other lover.
Girlfriend.
Prisoner.
Heiress.
I liked the sound of that.
Nicholas’s phone chimed. I grabbed it before he did, flipping through the alert.
“Nick?” I flashed the screen at him. “Why does this app think you’re ovulating?”
Reed snickered. “So that’s what we’ve been doing wrong.”
I thumbed through the brightly colored program, decorated with daisies and pastel greens and more information about my body than I felt comfortable having in my own head, let alone someone else’s iPhone.
The happy little app dinged with the word the Bennetts loved more than any other.
Fertile.
Nicholas took his phone. He held me tighter against him, like he thought I’d try to leap away.
I debated it. The past couple days suddenly made much more sense. My step-brothers hadn’t touched me, not even Nicholas. Now I knew why. They were…saving up.
Oh, Christ. I should have been insulted. I should have lectured them or fought them or did something to shame them for their perversions.
But it was better to let them hope. They could track me on a calendar or hold me down to fuck day after day, but the Bennetts would never get their heir.
I wished I had the courage to reveal everything to Darius, and not just the infertility. The stock. Josmik. How I earned Reed and Max’s alliances and wedged myself within Nicholas’s heart. Darius tried to steal my family and its fortune, but he played his full hand and exhausted everything he could do to me.
I won.
And if Nicholas wanted to ravish me in nightly delights for a lost cause, all the better. His attentions shielded me from the nightmares and the insult of my kidnapping, abandonment of my company, and nights in a strange bed.
Not that Nicholas’s bed felt strange anymore—only returning to it with welts on my back and the touch of another man seemed bizarre.
Then again, Nicholas eagerly reminded me where I rightfully belonged. I did enjoy his lessons, even if they were programmed into an alert on his phone.
“What are you planning?” I bit my lip. “Should I be worried?”
His voice promised more than he revealed. “Just what do you think is about to happen, Ms. Atwood?”
I had a good imagination. I arched an eyebrow.
“Do your worst, Nicholas Bennett. I’m not afraid of you.”
He brushed his lips against my neck, murmuring between heated breaths and gentle kisses. His voice rumbled everything secret inside of me.
“You aren’t meant to fear me. You were made to obey me.”
“I won’t do that either.”
“You will. And I won’t need restraints or whippings to earn your obedience.”
“What will you use?”
“Nothing.”
My stomach twisted, but I wasn’t sure if I welcomed the fluttering. “You’re confident.”
“You’ve already surrendered to me,” he said. “And I’ll prove it.”
“How?”
He nipped my neck as Max sunk into the chair next to us, entirely too close for such sensual talk. The screen flickered as the movie started. Nicholas curled his arms over me.
“No talking during the movie, Sarah. Bennett house rule.”
I couldn’t resist. “How would you stop me?”
Max answered for him. “We’ll find something to stuff in your mouth.”
I quieted, imagining the salty taste of his cock. The thought promised more fun than watching Batman for the second time in the month, but I traced an imaginary zipper over my lips. It disappointed Max. I smirked.
Nicholas threatened me with obedience, yet my step-brothers expected me to misbehave. What good was submission if they waited to see how I would inevitably challenge them?
Maybe I wouldn’t.
Just this once.
I cuddled against Nicholas’s chest, curling my fingers in the silken vest he wore under his jacket. Even at home, Nicholas preferred his slacks and dress shirt, refusing the casual shorts Reed wore or jeans like Max. It wasn’t the pajama party, sleeping bags, and popcorn I’d sneak into Josiah or Mike’s bedroom, but I could handle a quiet night under my step-brothers’ control.
I thought.
The movie began just as Nicholas’s hand twisted in the hem of my dress. He hesitated, as
if he expected me to bat away his touch so near his brothers.
But that wouldn’t be the obedient thing to do.
I wouldn’t hide, even if Reed and Max happened to see the flash of my thigh and the tracing of Nicholas’s fingers. They watched more than that before. They experienced it before.
Again and again.
One after the other.
In the wildest, most overwhelming night of my life.
My pulse fluttered, but I didn’t stop his hand. Nicholas’s voice rumbled against my ear.
“You know what phrase to practice saying, don’t you, Ms. Atwood? If you use it, I might take pity on you.”
Pity? It didn’t matter how many times I surrendered, I had no need for a Bennett’s pity.
“I’m stronger than you think.”
He hummed. “What did we say about talking during the movie?”
“But you—”
His kiss silenced me—a nibble that demanded, conquered, and quieted. He had no right to control me so thoroughly. The graze of his lips stole my protests. His wicked tongue flicked against mine. It was not an innocent touch.
His scent enthralled me. It bound me against him with the strength of chain and the gentle tickle of a feather. Spicy and masculine, sharp and clean, Nicholas was everything dark that lingered beyond the halo of a fantasy. He was once my warden, preventing my escape and responding to my every challenge with greater defiance. When I walked, he followed. When I fought, he overpowered me. When I angered, he responded in blind passion.
His kiss tempted me, revealing my inexperience. I understood nothing about my body, yet I eagerly submitted to the demands of a man more experienced. Far more powerful.
How was I supposed to resist Nicholas?
I had no reason not to believe him when he vowed to protect me.
But that was a harder submission that parting my lips and permitting the tingling victory of his tongue against mine.
I so easily loved the man, but my instincts warned me not to trust the Bennett.
He palmed my thigh. I curled against him. His fingers teased, but where he intended to touch, the wetness I couldn’t deny, hid between my crossed legs and the layers of my unspoken resistance.
I studied the hardened length of his jaw. Perfect. His countenance was forged for a lifetime of authority, the world of wealth, and nights of stolen passion. Each of my step-brothers possessed an unnatural appeal—Nicholas’s golden eyes and uncompromising grace, Max’s dangerous strength and thriving hunger, and Reed’s charming dimple and playboy simplicity.