by Lana Grayson
Maybe he meant to create an heir to steal my company.
Maybe he thought it was the only way to save me.
But I understood him now. Nicholas offered me because he liked it. He savored the power he held over his brothers—not only in his orders to take me, but in their borrowed indulgences.
Nicholas was proud to pull me from beneath them and return me to his bed under his authority. No matter what they did, his brothers were left with only the memory of my skin against theirs.
And Max played into his hands, either willingly or because he had no other choice.
Not that it mattered when he had a naked woman bound for his entertainment.
Max parted from me to retrieve an item I’d either love or hate. How cruel did he plan to be today?
“Jump rope.” He tucked the wooden handle under my chin. The rope tightened in his fists, the beaded, plastic kind I remembered from when I was a kid. “Hate these things.”
The last time I tangled in jump rope, I fell and chipped a baby tooth. Josiah and Mike thought it was hysterical.
“I’m not a fan either,” I said.
“It’s hard on my leg.” Max positioned behind me. “I do it anyway.”
“Why?”
“Gotta have pain to see improvement.”
That wasn’t it. I knew better.
“You mean, you punish yourself because you’re in pain,” I said.
The rope whistled through the air before it struck, and the dozens of beads connected with my back in a sharp, blinding crack.
I surged forward, but the restraints trapped me. I shrieked. Max loved the sound.
Served me right. I shouldn’t have pried into his head.
But that didn’t mean I’d stop.
“Easy, baby,” Max whispered. “We’re just getting started.”
“I can take it. Can you?”
“I told you not to tempt me.”
“Answer my question,” I said. “All this work, it’s not just exercise.”
The jump rope whipped as unforgiving as any belt. The snap of the beads scared me more than the sting, but I lurched forward as the rope sliced harsh against the tender flesh of my hips.
The bruises that faded would be replaced. My pale skin no longer freckled with the dusting of innocence, but flushed against the constant threat of punishment, humiliation, and sadism.
Max dug his fingers into the welts where the rope kissed. “Why else would I exercise? If you’re calling me vain…you might be right.”
“It’s not vanity.”
“You don’t think I look good?” He fisted my hair. “Baby, you just voluntarily offered your ass to get whipped. Don’t lie. You fucking love how strong I am.”
The lick of the jump rope couldn’t compare to the threat of his hands. Nothing stilled me as effectively as his grip over my neck. I warmed in ways I shouldn’t have warmed, but I stopped trying to understand why every raw sensation blended delight with confusion. Pain was just another form of lust.
I arched just to feel Max’s hardness. “Speak for yourself. You love how helpless I am.”
“What’s not to love? Arms bound. Back welted. Pussy fucking wet as sin.”
He hadn’t touched me, but only because there was no need. I felt the slickness on my thighs.
After my kidnapping, I became an entirely different woman from the little girl struggling to uphold the Atwood name. I was braver than I thought I could be, putting my body on the line to learn the dark secrets that revealed the limits between pleasure and pain, alliances and enemies, life and death.
I liked the new me.
But I didn’t trust how much she was willing to sacrifice.
“You like doing this to me,” I said. “You like causing another pain.”
Max struck me again. Harder. Almost vicious with the intent to earn my squeal. He didn’t scare me.
I twisted against the restraints. “You’re as much a masochist as I am.”
Another blow. Wasn’t enough to stop me.
“You punish yourself with all these exercises. The jump rope. The leg days.”
Max hesitated before the next hit. I thought he’d stop. He only aimed higher, lashing between my shoulder blades. I blinked tears, but the pain dissipated into a thousand shivers that centered too deep and too intense within me.
“You hate your injury, but not because it hurts you. You hate having to prove your worth to your family. You call yourself crippled, because you don’t know what else to be.”
Max swore. The rope beat quicker now. One, two, three painful strikes that instantly welted my back, my shoulders, and down to the curve of my hips. I gritted my teeth, but I didn’t hide it. Not my tears or the quick, searing, aching demand that coiled me in trembling anticipation for something more than unrepentant blows.
It was hard to talk, but he couldn’t silence me.
Even if he tried to.
“You became a monster and adopted the violence. You embraced pain because it was a part of you, and you could use it to make yourself useful to the family.” I tensed for the worst of the whipping. “You’re second-born, Max. That’s what really crippled you. Your injury just brought it to life.”
“I’d be careful if I were you.” I didn’t recognize his voice.
My breathing hitched with pain and adrenaline. “You don’t want to be part of the Bennett family, and you don’t want this life. You don’t want to fuck me. You’re doing it because you have to.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
I screamed over the last strike of the jump rope. It clattered to the ground. Max ripped the restraints off my wrists only to toss me face down over the exercise bench.
“I always want to fuck you, Sarah Atwood. I’ll send you back to Nick’s bed with more than fucking bruises on your skin.”
“You think you’ll get me pregnant?”
“Fucking hell, baby, I wouldn’t deserve it, but I’ll die trying.”
Max shoved my head low on the bench. His shorts tossed away, and the thickness between his legs pushed against my slit, threatening me with the sheer size of his raging cock.
He didn’t prepare me, but the pain he caused was as much an aphrodisiac as Nicholas’s caramel voice or Reed’s loving tongue.
“You’re going to regret every fucking word.”
His cock impaled me in a single, brutal thrust, far harder than Nicholas ever took me and deeper than Reed had explored.
My whimper didn’t slow him. Max knew he didn’t hurt me. Despite the ropes and bindings, threats and tugged hair, the cock invading my core twisted fear into delight. He split through me, claiming my heat and dragging both us down into a world of shadow, sin, and pain.
I collapsed immediately, his weight crushing me with the forced stroke into my tightness. I shuddered through every frantic thrust of his cock. My breasts ground against the bench, and each slap of our sweat-soaked skin dizzied me with his ferocity.
“You aren’t doing this to protect me,” I gasped. “You’re trying to prove a point.”
“That I can knock you up?” Max arched me so he could seize my breast. He curled his cruel fingers over my nipple and squeezed for my squeal. “Yeah. That’s a pretty good point.”
“No. You’re still proving your worth. You’re not breeding me to save your family. You’ll come inside me so you can save yourself.”
His thrusts quickened, too hard and too fast and forcing my silence in the swelling heat. His grip punished me. He slammed my body against his hips, and every slice of his cock erupted a growing tension within me. The pressure ached more than any of his strikes against my bruised skin.
His hands trembled. I clutched his arms.
“You’re as trapped in this estate as I am, Maxwell Bennett.”
Max roared.
He thrusted as deeply as he could, and we crested together.
Not because we willed it, and not because we wanted it.
I came because I had won.
&nb
sp; He came because I understood.
My body rolled in violent shudders, crying out against the surge of warmth flooding my core. Max groaned, thrusting again and again, forcing me through intensity, pleasure, and pain. I collapsed against the bench with a whimper.
Max didn’t rest with me. He didn’t caress me, whisper sexy words, or hold me against his warmth like Nicholas. He ripped from my shaking body and escaped from the truth.
I’d said too much.
He tugged his shorts over his hard, raging, glistening cock. I didn’t move. After a minute, he rested a hand against my shoulder.
“You okay?”
The first gentle touch he ever offered me, and he accidentally pressed a painful welt.
“I’m good.”
He picked me up before I was ready and sat me on the edge of the bench. Nicholas usually kept me still, flat, and stuffed with his seed. Max didn’t care. He didn’t meet my gaze either.
Ashamed.
I should have comforted him.
I should have asked if he was okay. If I could somehow…help.
I might not have loved Max, but I cared for him. Greatly. Not like a lover, and certainly not a brother, but as someone I wanted to trust.
I touched his hand. He allowed it.
But, without the courage of lust, the barrier of pain, or the freedom of release, it didn’t feel right prying where I didn’t belong.
I licked my lip. It’d swelled where I’d bit to survive the whipping.
“I…have a plan to fix the takeover. We can still do it, but I need you to talk to Nick.” I sucked in a breath. “Will you please help me?”
“Baby, I was always going to help you.”
“Oh. Good then.”
“No, you don’t get it.”
Max stood before me, knocking my chin up to meet his gaze. The intensity hadn’t diminished, but a foreboding darkness shadowed his intentions.
Christ.
He was keeping secrets too.
“Sarah, I will always help you. You hear me? No matter what happens now or in the future. You ask, and I’ll come running. Even…if one day you hate me. Or fear me. It doesn’t matter. I will live my life to help you.”
I blushed. It wasn’t sincerity that possessed him, but sheer intensity, a desperate energy. I kissed his forehead. He didn’t pull away.
“Thank you,” I said. “I have the perfect solution to end all this insanity, but you’re going to have to convince your brother. Because, believe me…there is no way Nicholas Bennett will ever agree to my plan.”
If my father didn’t kill my brother first, I’d murder Max in a cold-blooded rage.
Sharp, crisscrossed welts marred Sarah’s back. The lines bruised her, whipped by the expert hand of someone who understood his strength but hadn’t wielded the restraint I expected.
That I trusted from him.
I tasted the fury—a vibrant copper that accompanied a new instinct, one that demanded curled fists and pain to relieve the frustration poisoning my judgment.
Violence wasn’t my solution.
But what solutions of mine had worked lately?
Sarah sat stiffly on the couch, edging away from the cushion. Reed peeked at her shoulders before she could chase him off.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “That’s from a rope?”
“A jump rope. It had those plastic beads on it…” Sarah blushed, the pink darkening to a red. “I’m fine. Really.”
I wouldn’t let her defend Max’s actions. “No, you aren’t.”
I promised to protect the delicate girl only to deliver her into the perversions of a savage. She argued with me, but I had no patience for her, not when I used all of my restraint to remind myself that my brother shared my blood, and; therefore, deserved a chance to explain before I personally disinherited him.
Max, of course, offered no apology. I expected as much.
“Should we…get her some ice?” Reed asked.
I saw red.
Max sighed. “I got carried away. It won’t happen again.”
Sarah groaned. “I’m fine.”
Christ, how badly had we manipulated the girl that she’d defend the beast who bruised and tore her skin?
“Nick,” she said. “Really. I’ve been through worse.”
Not the reminder I needed.
Sarah unsuccessfully ordered Hamlet to sit. Reed hollered as the dog’s wagging tail pitched a glass onto the floor. Hamlet didn’t notice. He buried his head in her lap and jarred her against the couch.
She winced.
She hurt.
Max would feel the pain ten-fold.
If I didn’t kill him first.
Max and Reed weren’t discharged from the hospital yet.
I took my place beside my father at my mother’s grave. The minister dusted the coffin with dirt. My father embraced his silence, steadfast, as he shook hands with those paying their respects. I mimicked him, his stillness.
“You saved your brothers.” The minister patted my shoulder. “Without you, they would have perished in the crash. You are a hero, Nicholas.”
I didn’t feel like a hero. Heroes didn’t cry in the cramped funeral parlor bathroom and wash away their tears with sweet cherry scented soap. I smelled it over the flowers. I hoped my father didn’t.
“A special bond exists between brothers,” the minister said. “Nothing more profound in this world. They trust you with their lives, and yours with them. It is a love nothing can break, not even death.”
My father returned to the hospital after the funeral. He forbade the doctors from taking Max’s mangled leg and ordered them to sedate Reed when tore at his stitches after hearing of Mom’s death
He ordered me to stay and receive the condolences for my mother.
I refused.
Someone needed to comfort my brothers.
If only because it’s what Mom would have wanted.
I left Sarah with Max, and he repaid me with her pain. I didn’t let him avoid my gaze.
“You will not harm her again.”
Reed shouldn’t have said it. “Better Max than Dad.”
“This wasn’t a punishment.” I steadied the rage in my voice. “This was his own fun.”
“Nick, drop it.” Sarah sighed. “I said I’m fine.”
“How am I supposed to trust her with you?” I asked. Max stretched against the couch, arms behind his head as though pleased with his work. “You might have seriously hurt her.”
“I didn’t.”
“You have no restraint. No control.”
“She’s walking, isn’t she?”
“I asked you for help.” I loathed the implication. “I allow you to touch her because I hope to spare her pain, not cause it.”
“For Christ’s sake. A little whipping isn’t going to fuck with her. Not when we’re all trying to knock her up. She should be begging for a flogger instead.”
Sarah’s cheeks flushed as she stood. “Enough. I’m not sitting here while you guys measure your dicks to see who fucks me the right way.”
Reed grinned. “It’s me, isn’t it?”
She ignored him. “Nick, even if it were possible, I don’t like the thought of conceiving just to save my life.”
Neither did I, but it was better than my father murdering her because she inherited a secret trust. A majority of the board allied with him, and I hated that I could no longer judge the number of votes I had to take the company from him.
But what should have been my primary concern was lost in rage.
The woman I loved was hurt by a man I trusted.
And now, regardless of her pain, I’d take her to bed—not driven by jealousy, but because I needed to know that she was okay, unharmed, and safe. We lied far too easily to each other, but, in moments of passion and tangled in pleasure, everything was revealed.
Everything except the corruption which infested my board of directors. Sarah didn’t know how many men beyond our family demanded her rape and breeding. And
she wouldn’t learn. I loved her too much to ruin her with the evil of others.
And so I’d lie to keep her safe.
I’d lived an honorable life before I took Sarah Atwood, before she corrupted me with her perfection, broke me with her touch, and damned my soul with her love. If protecting her meant shredding every ounce of human decency left within me, I’d do it.
But I feared it still wouldn’t be enough.
“I have a plan.”
Sarah announced it to the room, but Max and Reed averted their gazes.
Shame…or maybe defeat. Either way it wasn’t an emotion a Bennett should have revealed. Sarah surged forward.
“I know how to fix the takeover. I know what we can do to ensure you get the votes to cast your father out of the corporation.”
“A plan?” I repeated.
“Just…hear me out, Nick. Before you say anything.”
So it’d be that kind of plan.
If it involved leather jackets, my motorcycle, and stealing her out of the country, it wouldn’t work. I already tried and dismissed it as an impossibility. My father would find her, but he wouldn’t waste money dragging her back. Not when a bullet and shallow grave would end our troubles.
But I obliged her. I settled into the wingback closest to the hearth. The last time I claimed a seat and watched her perform, my father ordered her to strip. She faced me with a courage I never expected, and I admired every ounce of her bravery.
I decided then to take it for my own.
And I did.
“Your takeover?” She broached the subject with caution. “It failed. Darius still has control of the Bennett Corporation, and he probably will retain it for some time.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I said.
Max dared to speak to me. “How complicated?”
More than he knew. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Well, I don’t want complicated anymore,” Sarah said. “Nick, I’m inheriting Josmik in about nine months.”
A magic number.
“Nothing can stop it, right?” She asked.
Not without killing her. I nodded.
“So why are you fighting my inheritance?”
Reed and Max didn’t listen to her pitch. They watched me, waited for my reaction. And then it made sense.