by HELEN HARDT
“You sweet talker, you.”
She laughed. “Hey. Go with it. You’re lucky they’re clotting up. Still, they need antibacterial ointment and bandages.” She looked at the bed. “You bled all over the white comforter.”
“Again. Don’t care.”
“Truthfully, neither do I.” She applied some ointment to the largest of the wounds and added a bandage. “The rest of these aren’t too bad. What were you thinking? Breaking a window with your fist and then sticking your whole arm in?”
“I was thinking if I didn’t get you inside this house and me inside of you I was going to fucking explode.”
She nodded. “I felt the same way. I felt really guilty about it too. We’re surrounded by people being held against their will and being abused in the most horrible ways. Plus, Juliet is fucked up and needs me. But all I wanted was you.”
“Don’t feel guilty. Juliet seems like she’s doing okay, and there’s nothing else we can do without backup right now. Not until our fathers decide to be truthful with us.”
What I didn’t say was that I was feeling guilty too. I’d left Talon alone with my father in that damned office. He was the one who’d suffered the most because of our father’s little business venture, and he didn’t have his woman here to comfort him as I did.
Guilt.
All three of us had harbored a ton of it over the years, probably Joe most of all. Part of me wished with all my heart that he was here with us, but part of me knew it was better that he wasn’t. Joe would have done what I hadn’t. He would have taken a fist to our father…and then another. Brad Steel would have fought back, but Joe would have won. He was younger, bigger, and stronger. Not that the asshole didn’t deserve it, but if we were going to figure this out, we needed him in one piece.
“Who do you think decorated this place?” Ruby asked. “When I was looking around for first aid supplies, I wandered into the kitchen and family room. They’re all white too. It’s freaky.”
“Hell if I know.” And I didn’t care.
“Just seems strange. All the white.” She sighed. “There. You’re all set. I’m no nurse, but I think I did a pretty good job.”
“Baby, you’re the only nurse I’ll ever need. You can be my naughty nurse.” I pulled her down to me and kissed her.
And I hardened once more.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ruby
His lips were so soft, so gentle with me now. We’d both gotten the urgency out of our systems, and now our lovemaking was tender and slow. He laid me back down on the bed and kissed my cheeks, my ears, my neck, sending shivers coursing through me. He swirled his tongue inside my ear, and goose bumps erupted on my skin. I tingled all over, and my core began to flutter.
How could I want him again? So soon? But wanting had never been an issue since I’d met Ryan Steel. I’d been in heat since I first laid eyes on him when I was an inexperienced virgin.
I had a lot of experience now, but there were still more things to share with this amazing man. I couldn’t get enough of his lips and tongue on my skin. He seemed determined to cover every inch, and I had no plans to stop him.
He did stop, though, for a moment, and he gazed into my eyes, his own burning. “You’re so beautiful, Ruby. Your dark hair is fanned out on that white pillow like a soft curtain. Your eyes are sparkling. You look so gorgeous, so thoroughly used.” He smiled.
Then he went back to work.
Lips on my shoulders, my chest, the globes of my breasts.
Tongue on my abdomen, in my navel, in the crease between my thigh and groin.
Then fingers…squeezing my nipples, twisting them. I gasped, squirming, my pussy wanting attention. But as he moved his lips downward, kissing my inner thighs and then my knees, his fingers left my nipples and trailed over my abdomen, and then he entwined them in the short hair of my bush.
My clit was throbbing, crying out for attention. Our combined musk wafted in the air, and I inhaled, letting it infuse my body.
Ryan traveled down my calves to my feet, kissing my toes, sucking them, tickling my instep with his tongue.
“Turn over, love,” he said.
I obeyed, and he began his way back up my body, his lips journeying over my heels, my calves, tickling the inside of my knees. Then up my thighs and between the cheeks of my ass.
I shuddered when he licked me there. So wrong yet so right.
“Spread your legs, Ruby,” he commanded.
I hadn’t disobeyed him yet, and I had no desire to begin now. I complied, and he spread the globes of my ass.
“So beautiful,” he said. “I’ll have you here one day. When you’re ready.” Then he gave one cheek a light slap.
I shivered. The dream… He’d slapped me in that creepy dream, and I’d liked it. Loved it…but then the dream had gone down a different path.
I erased the fractured images from my mind and tried to concentrate on how I was feeling now. I’d longed to be reunited with Ryan, and no way was some stupid dream going to spoil it.
He’d slapped me there once before, and my reaction had been ambivalent. It was now as well, but I couldn’t escape the fact that beneath my contradictory feelings was a heat from his hand that traveled to my clit.
He tongued my asshole, gently at first and then more forcibly, seeking entrance. “Relax,” he whispered.
I tried. I’d enjoyed this before, but this time he was jabbing harder.
“Better. Yeah, that’s better, baby. Let me in. Mmm.” The point of his tongue breached my rim. “So sweet.”
I buried my face in the white pillow and let him do what he was determined to do.
And God…it felt so fucking good.
I closed my eyes, drowning in the pleasure as he pushed in and out and then soothed me with long licks all the way down to my clit. Then he moved upward, kissing my back, trailing his lips along my spine until I quivered. Then up my neck to my head, where he kissed my hair and inhaled.
And then he slid his cock into me gently.
I let out a soft moan.
I was sore from all the frantic fucking we’d done, and his entrance this time was oddly soothing, as though I was meant for this. We, together, were meant for it.
He made love to me slowly, sweetly, my walls hugging his cock every time he entered me. I felt so full, so complete. That emptiness I’d felt since I’d woken up in that room with Juliet was gone now.
Gone for good.
“So nice, baby,” he whispered against my neck, kissing it. “So perfect.”
He continued to pump in and out of me, and soon the familiar tingles in my clit emerged and I soared into climax. Every time was different yet the same. The feeling of two souls meeting and becoming one.
“That’s it, love. Come. Come for me. For us.” He thrust forcefully into me, his own orgasm erupting.
When his cock stopped pulsing, he withdrew and lay on his back. I turned to face him. His face and body were gleaming, his hair sticking to his neck. He’d never looked more magnificent.
“Three times in a little over an hour,” I said. “That’s got to be some kind of record.”
He chuckled. “I wanted you. Needed you. When I saw you… I was just so relieved that you were safe, and after talking to my father…” He sighed. “It’s all just too much to handle. Both he and Daphne have been alive all this time.”
“I know it’s a lot to digest. But you’ll get through it. You and your siblings are some of the strongest people I’ve ever met. Your sisters-in-law too. You’re all amazing.”
He opened his eyes and rolled onto his side so our gazes met. “And so is my wife-to-be.”
My skin prickled. He’d proposed in the heat of passion a few days ago, and I hadn’t answered. I wasn’t about to hold him to anything he shouted out during climax.
“You’re not saying anything,” he said.
Warmth crept up my neck and into my cheeks. “I’m not sure what to say.”
“‘Yes’ would be a good st
art.”
I smiled. “I want to say yes. But we haven’t known each other that long and—”
He covered my mouth with his fingers. “I was with Anna— Oh, God…Anna!” He sat up, pushing his damp hair off his forehead.
“What is it?”
“Anna. She’s here. They took her. She never went to Hawaii. I think the reason my father bought her ranch was… Oh my God.”
“Ryan. It’s okay. None of this is your fault.”
“If it hadn’t been for me… Shit, if it hadn’t been for me, Anna would still live on the little ranch next to ours. My mother wanted her away from me. That woman is pure evil!” He stood and paced around the bedroom, his feet imprinting the plush white carpeting.
I went to him, wanting to offer comfort but not knowing how. Anna was here? “You saw her?”
“Yeah. She was chained up with some other girls in the hallway of this place. A big building with rooms.”
“The dorms.”
“Yeah, like dorms. Wait…what?”
“They put me there my first night.”
He turned to me and gripped my shoulders. “What? Did they hurt you? Chain you?”
“No, no. I swear. Just put me in a room with a concrete floor to sleep off the drugs they gave me. Juliet was there.” Images flooded back to me, and tears welled in my eyes. “Two masked goons came in and raped her right in front of me.”
Ryan embraced me. Hard. “My God, I’m so sorry. But they didn’t touch you, did they? Swear to me that they didn’t.” His muscles were tense and rigid, as if they’d hardened into rock.
“No. They didn’t.” And the guilt I still felt from that was overwhelming.
“Ruby…don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not. I swear!”
“If you’re thinking you have to keep me out of trouble by lying—”
This time I placed my fingers over his mouth. “I’m not. It was terrible. I couldn’t help her. All I could do was watch. She didn’t even react.”
“I’m so sorry. We have to put a stop to this. We have to get Anna and Juliet and everyone else out of here.”
“Juliet is safe for now.”
“So are those two boys Talon insisted we rescue.”
“I can understand. I’m sure he saw himself in them.”
His features twisted into anguish. “But I couldn’t help Anna. She was locked up. I couldn’t get her away.”
“We’re going to get them all out. As soon as your father tells us what we’re dealing with. I swear it.” I touched his cheek.
He placed his warm hand over mine and lowered his head—
A cell phone rang.
He dropped his hand. “That’s me. Sorry.”
“Get it. It’s probably important.”
Ryan dug through the pockets of the black pants he’d been wearing and put the phone to his ear. “Tal, what’s going on?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ryan
“I talked to Joe,” Talon said over the phone. “He’s fit to be tied, but the good news is the Grand Junction PD has dropped their investigation of him for accessory to the murder of Larry Wade.”
“That’s good.” A load should have lifted off my shoulders, but so much weighed me down, I didn’t feel any lighter.
“So Dad chartered a plane. Joe and Marjorie arrive late tomorrow morning.”
Ire prickled my spine. “Marjorie is coming here? That’s insane.”
“That’s what I said, but Dad says he won’t talk unless we’re all here. He has assured us of her safety.”
“And you believe him?”
“No. I don’t believe a word that comes out of the bastard’s mouth. But we can’t keep this from our sister forever, and with the three of us here, no one will get near her.”
“Bringing her here is nuts.”
“Well…I think we can safely say Dad is nuts. As are both your mother and mine.”
“At least yours isn’t a psycho.” I sighed and closed my eyes. “I’m sorry, Tal. You’ve been through so much more than—”
“For fuck’s sake, Ryan, this doesn’t always have to be about me! I’m so sick of you tiptoeing around me. You’re entitled to your own pain. Own it, for God’s sake.”
“I just meant—”
“You just meant that anything that has happened to you can’t possibly be as bad as what happened to me. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it is. But what happened happened. I’ve had to own it. It’s time for you to own your own pain. Finding out you have a different mother than the rest of us couldn’t have been easy. None of us think it was. So stop feeling guilty for wanting to own your pain. It doesn’t lessen mine for you to keep belittling yours. I’m your brother, for God’s sake. I feel it with you.”
I had no words. Talon was so wise. He always had been, despite trying to push everyone away for so long. Joe was strength and Talon was wisdom. Where did that leave me? For now, I’d give my brother what he seemed to need and want. “All right, Tal. I get it.”
“Good. Because I have more news, and it’s not good.”
Chills raked over me as I prepared for the worst. “What is it?”
“Raj is missing.”
* * *
“Hey, he came highly recommended.” I gripped the edge of the table where I sat with my father and my brother over breakfast. Ruby was having breakfast with Juliet and the boys on the deck. Talon and I were eating with our father in the formal dining room, where no one on the deck could see us or hear us.
My father shook his head.
“I hear what you’re not saying,” I said. “You think we made a mistake hiring him. Well, you weren’t around to advise us, Dad. You were supposedly ashes in the earth.”
“I’m not in any position to give either of you advice.”
“You can say that again,” I said.
Talon was eerily quiet.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“Something was never right about him,” Talon said. “Someone on that yacht tampered with my oxygen tank or regulator.”
“We don’t know that for sure. It could have been a malfunction.” Though I couldn’t fault my brother’s observation. I addressed my father. “What were we supposed to do? Leave him when we got to this place? He was all we had.”
“No one’s criticizing,” Talon said.
“Bullshit.” I pointed to our father. “He is.”
“I’m not.”
“Tell me why you took Anna. I saw her there. Did you know that? She was chained up in a hallway like a prisoner, and I couldn’t help her. How do you think that makes me feel?”
“I know how it makes you feel. You watch something horrible happening, and you’re powerless to stop it. I’ve felt it every single day since high school.”
“How could you have funded these people?” Talon asked.
What was more important was what Talon hadn’t asked yet. The question we both wanted the answer to. Why had he allowed Wendy to have Talon abducted? Surely he could have stopped it.
“I made some mistakes,” he said. “Some grave mistakes.”
“Sell it somewhere else,” I replied. “I, for one, am not buying it.”
“Look,” he said, “I’m not flying your brother and sister here so you can believe me, much less forgive me. But I’m going to tell you the truth. You all deserve that much. Besides, there’s something else you need to know.”
“What’s that?”
He cleared his throat. “I’m dying.”
Chapter Thirty
Ruby
Juliet and I sat on the deck with Marabel and the two little boys Talon and Ryan had rescued. They had showered and were dressed in T-shirts and sweatpants that were a little too big on their skinny frames. Marabel had fed them a light meal. Too much too soon, and they’d get sick. They hadn’t told us their names yet, but the puppies were bringing out a few smiles in them. They were handsome boys, both blond with green eyes. Probably brothers. The younger boy spoke a little. I hadn’t hea
rd the older one utter a sound yet.
I tried not to worry, even though Ryan had told me that the private detective they had arrived with had disappeared. I wasn’t sure how anyone could disappear from this strange Steel compound. We were fenced in by twenty-foot concrete walls. He’d be found soon.
Juliet was improving. In twenty-four hours, she had regained some color to her cheeks and was shivering a little less. Her appetite had improved as well. She’d eaten two whole eggs this morning, though she still skipped the orange juice.
We expected Joe and Marj anytime now. They were coming straight here, so Marjorie wouldn’t be subjected to the dorms or any other heinous things.
The older boy was petting the puppy Juliet had named Bo. He was a little less rambunctious than Ernie and Beauty, and he allowed the boy to hold him and stroke him without wriggling away.
I’d heard of pet therapy, and now I was a true believer. Bo was helping this boy. I walked over to where he sat on the deck with the puppy.
“He’s cute, isn’t he?”
The boy didn’t answer.
“Can you tell me your name?”
Nothing.
“My name’s Ruby, and that puppy’s name is Bo.”
Still no answer. If only Melanie were here. She’d know how to talk to these kids.
“If you can tell me your name, we can call your parents. I’m sure they’ll want to know where you are.”
Again, nothing.
So I sat with him, just let him feel my presence. Sometimes that was all I could do. Made me feel pretty useless.
A few minutes later, Ryan came to the door. “Joe and Marj have arrived. They’ll be here in about fifteen minutes.”
I stood. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I told the boy. “Stay here with Marabel and the others, okay?”
He didn’t respond, but he did give me a slight nod of his head. I smiled at him and secretly jumped up and down in my mind. I’d gotten through to him. This was the first time he’d responded in any way to any of us.