by Lana Grayson
Oh no. I ignored my instinct to push from Reed and duck into the water. He had the same thought. But releasing wouldn’t prove anything.
What had Darius seen?
What did he assume?
Had he watched us laughing together? That wasn’t such a crime. Darius ordered me to spend time with my step-brothers. Hell, he knew I recovered from my asthma attack in Max’s theater under their careful supervision.
But I hadn’t laughed near them.
I hadn’t let them chase me, splash me, and strip me with such a victorious grin.
I hadn’t acted friendly with them.
How much of my alliance with Reed did we reveal?
“Reed, you must share your secret,” Darius said. “Sarah always gets so sullen with Nicholas, and she just screams bloody murder with Max.”
Reed stilled. “She got tired of fighting me.”
“Good.” The word grunted, like a satisfied lover taking his thrill. “I’m glad she’s obeying her brothers now. Like a proper sister.”
I hoped he’d leave. I should have expected his perversion.
“Sarah, there are better games for little girls and boys to play.”
I shuddered. Reed drifted us away from the edge of the pool.
“Dad, come on,” he said. “I got this under control.”
“Son, you should enjoy your time with your sister, but…” Darius shook his head. “I can’t risk endangering her. Not when she might be in a delicate state with all that seed swimming in her tummy.”
He wouldn’t have done this with Nicholas or Max. He treated Reed like a child because he hadn’t hurt me, he hadn’t wanted to hurt me. Darius didn’t trust his son to rape me, and for good reason. Without a threat against his life, Reed never would have tolerated Darius’s bullshit.
Except now?
I didn’t think we had a choice.
But Darius spoke of protecting me. That was new, but it didn’t mean I trusted it.
I’d endure a thousand of Darius’s tortures before I submitted to what he believed was a kindness.
Darius picked up a sun-warmed towel. “Come now, Sarah. Out of the water.”
My nails dug into Reed’s shoulders, nearly drawing blood. Darius lost his patience after my obstinate moment. His voice lowered.
“Now, Sarah, listen to your father. Out of the pool before Reed starts to play rougher.” He stared at his son. “I would hate to see him dunk you when it’s already so difficult for you to breathe.”
I wasn’t going under the water, not under his order, and not when I didn’t know if he’d let me up. For all I knew, catching me laughing with Reed was enough to damn me. The Josmik trust was already too much of a liability. I wasn’t giving him any opportunity to kill me.
And I wasn’t forcing Reed to hurt me. Not again. Even if I could handle it, I wouldn’t be responsible for breaking the spirit of my first friend in the Bennett Estate.
I slipped from Reed’s reluctant hands and shielded my bare chest. Hamlet barked as I emerged from the pool, cautiously picking my steps.
“Time to dry off, little one.”
I drew only as close as I needed, hiding my breasts under my arm. I held out a hand for the towel.
His lecherous grin prickled like needles over my skin. I wish I had drowned.
He patted his knee, spreading his legs for me to approach, entirely too close to the hardening bulge within his trousers.
He’d touch me.
My chest seized tight, locked with a choked breath of a profanity I longed to speak and the scream from my nightmares I desperately hid.
I could run. Dash to the house. But I knew how that ended, and so did Darius. This time, Nicholas and Max weren’t in the estate to stop him.
But I had Reed.
Reed wouldn’t let him rape me.
The memory of the pool cue slamming against my ribs haunted me with doubt. Reed hadn’t helped me then, but he couldn’t let it happen again.
I thought.
I hoped.
I honestly didn’t know, and that scared me more than anything Darius might have planned.
It was only a towel. I’d pretend it was just a towel.
My stomach heaved as I stepped within Darius’s embrace, tucked too closely to a body I still remembered pressed against mine. The towel rubbed over my back, and Darius hummed. Pleased.
He wrapped the material over me tight and tugged me near.
Trapped.
“There, there,” he said. “All safe and sound now. I know how rough my boys can be.”
They learned from the best.
The fluffy towel brushed over my arms in gentle, careful strokes that covered me in a layer of invisible grime. It wasn’t right. Not his touches. Not his apparent kindness.
He got off on incest, on hurting his daughter in either affectionate fantasy or his violent desire.
The towel bumbled over my curves. He tisked his tongue.
“Arms down, Sarah.”
No way.
I wasn’t exposing myself to him again. Not after what he did. Not after what he still planned to do.
Reed was too far away, and Nicholas…
I wasn’t about to think of Nicholas while his father groped my trembling body.
Darius gripped my arms, the force of his hands hidden within the seemingly gentle caress of the towel. I tensed. He pressed, hard.
“Don’t worry, my dear.” The smile was enough of an invasion. “If you can’t depend on your father, who can you trust?”
Good fucking question.
His grip would break my wrist. My arms crashed to my sides, and Darius peeked inside the towel. My breasts exposed for him, flushed pink with humiliation and dripping damning droplets of water from my tightening nipples.
He palmed the towel and shushed me with a lullaby threat.
The material kissed over my breasts. I expected him to hurt me. Instead, he dried my arms and shoulders, neck and chest, as though I were his child pulled from a bath.
That made it so much worse.
“Sarah, you’ll never dry off if you’re wearing those bottoms.”
The towel laced with razors and every drop of the water sharpened the blades.
Reed swore from the pool. Nothing he could do now. Nothing anyone could do.
Darius saw me naked before. What was left for him to discover or me to hide?
I feared him, but I wouldn’t let him see it.
I slipped the bottoms from my body and dropped them on his knee if only to watch a ring of dampness spread over his trousers.
I braced for a slap.
Darius didn’t react. It scared me more than his violence.
“Good girl.”
The towel lowered, slipping down to cover my exposed behind. He bundled it in his hands and, with a delicate swiftness, he rubbed over my belly.
Low. Gently. Lovingly. As though he thought I was pregnant.
The towel swiped, catching over my hips. I didn’t move as his deviancy buried the material in my slit.
Once.
Twice.
Three times was too many for an innocent drying.
I didn’t let him see me flinch, but it didn’t matter. He made his point.
His attention turned clinical as he finished with my legs before tightening the terrycloth over my shoulders. He stood, forcing me to look up.
“All dry. Doesn’t that feel better?”
I didn’t answer.
“No pouting. You can play with your brother later. Understand, we have to be careful with you, Sarah, just in case you’re carrying a little Bennett in your belly.”
I didn’t blink. “And if I’m not?”
“Let’s think positively, my dear.”
“I’m not an optimistic person.”
Darius’s gaze traced over the curves hidden beneath the towel once more. “I am, Sarah. And I have no doubt you’ll give us what we want. Nothing is denied to a Bennett.”
“Prepare to be disappoi
nted.”
I braced again for a slap.
He did nothing.
Darius had never once exacted any restraint with me, especially when I threatened his livelihood and future. He shook his head.
“You’ll see,” he said. “Fight us if you must, but, within the year? I will have a dutiful daughter, a new company, and a grandchild uniting our families.”
“You will have nothing but ruin. I guarantee it.”
“Enough, Sarah. I won’t have you hysterical. It’s dangerous to baby.”
A dozen expletives filtered in my mind, and a dozen more urges to gloat, to reveal the negative pregnancy test, to dash his hopes and exclaim the truth about Josmik and my infertility.
“You have no idea what danger is,” I said. “If you did, you never would have let me roam free.”
“It’s true.” Darius brushed his hand along my cheek. Pushing him away would have only dropped the towel and revealed my nudity. “I do spoil you, my dear. Forgive me, but having a new daughter is such a…” His gaze lingered to my hidden curves. “…Simple delight.”
Reed hopped from the pool. Darius’s voice hardened.
“Fuck her again.” He didn’t even look at me. “I don’t care if she is fertile or not, make sure she understands her place in this family.”
He left us alone, but turned halfway to the house.
“And, for Christ’s sake, son, don’t take her in the pool. Fuck her for conception, not your kicks.”
I bundled inside the towel as Darius stalked to the mansion. I breathed easier only once Reed gathered me, hiding me within the cabana, hidden from the estate’s windows.
I collapsed on the chaise before the shudders rolled over me. Reed knelt at my feet. The green in his eyes darkened like heavy storm clouds. He angered, but it wouldn’t help. My soft and gentle Reed was worth more than all the bullets and blood in the world.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You okay?”
My stomach betrayed me. I swallowed bile. “He touched me.”
“I know. I couldn’t—I didn’t know what to do.”
“Don’t tell Nick.”
Reed grimaced. “Sarah—”
“He’ll just freak if he knows Darius got…close again.”
“I would have stopped him if he…”
“I know.”
Reed drove his fingers through his wet hair. The drops didn’t bother him. They caressed his strength, highlighting the muscles and power that were useless against anything within the goddamned estate. He swore, pushing from the ground with a grunt.
“This can’t happen anymore,” he said. “I’m done.”
“Done?”
Reed grabbed his phone, swiping a few times before typing something with such force he nearly cracked the device in two. He paced, checking the time and counting days on his fingers.
“We’ll charter a plane,” he said.
“We’ll…” I blinked. “Wait, what?”
“The night of the gala will be chaotic enough. We can slip out after. Take the plane, stay in Mexico for the day, then fly out from there.”
“Fly?”
“I’ll pull money before we go, and we’ll stop somewhere so you can access your accounts. Then we vanish. Go to Belize or Thailand or somewhere. We’ll find a nice resort.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m getting you out of here, Sarah.” Reed’s voice hardened. “Like I should have done at the beginning of this nightmare.”
My chest ached—a quick relief and a dreaded terror all wrapped into the same choked breath.
“Are you serious?”
“This isn’t going to stop. It’s only gonna get worse. He’s going to kill me unless he watches me rape you to a bloody pulp. And, Sarah, I swear, I will not hurt you.”
“Don’t make promises, Reed.”
“I’ll make all the goddamned promises I want. I’m getting you out of here.”
“Reed, we can’t.”
“Yes, we can. We’ll do it quick. No one will know.”
I grabbed his hand, surprised he trembled more than me. “Think about what you’re saying.”
“You don’t know what he’ll do to you,” Reed said. “Christ, I don’t know all of what he’ll do to you. If you aren’t pregnant—”
“—I’m not—”
“Then we’re all gonna get fucked. But I can get us out of here.” He forced the gentleness into his words, but the dimple still reassured me. “We only gotta run for a year. We’ll go party around the world. Live it up like two billionaires should, right? Have some fun. See the sights. Be together.”
My heart ached for him. My handsome, good Reed.
He was a man I could have fallen for, had things been different.
Had I not needed a friend.
Had I not given myself to Nicholas.
“Reed.” My heart broke as I whispered the truth. “I’m sorry. But I’m not in love with you.”
“I’m not asking you to love me, I’m asking you to let me save you.” He kissed my hand. “Sarah, I told you before. I can be a friend or I can be your brother. Right now? I don’t care what you think of me so long as you let me help you. I can’t protect you if we’re in his shadow. But if we get out? I will make sure you’re safe.”
I believed him.
Reed was the only Bennett who made any goddamned sense, and yet I was still the one forcing him to hurt me. I was the one rejecting the only sane idea anyone had in the past three months.
I looked away. “I can’t.”
“Why the fuck not?”
If I didn’t speak it, my tears would have revealed it. “Nick.”
“Christ. He can take care of himself.”
“So can I.”
“Not now. Not in this. Not from him. God only knows what my father is planning.”
Whatever it was, it wasn’t divinely inspired. I shook my head.
“I will protect my company and family,” I said. “But if I’m going to protect myself, I have to end this my way. Darius hurt me. I’m going to hurt him too.”
“You can’t.”
“I will. I’ll take everything he has, everything he built, and I will burn it to the ground.”
“You won’t be able to stop him,” Reed said. “Whatever you plan to do, whatever power you think you have? It’ll destroy you. You’re too good for all…this.”
“But I can end him!”
“And my motorcycle can get us to San Jose in forty minutes. We’d be out of here before anyone knew we were gone.”
“What about Nick?”
Reed collapsed on the chaise, wrapping an arm over me. He pulled me close.
I swallowed. “Do you trust Nick?”
“Do you?”
I wished I hadn’t asked myself that question every minute of every day since they first kidnapped me. Despite every pounding instinct in my mind, I nodded.
“I have to.”
“Now you sound like a Bennett. Blindly following the one with the most to gain.”
“He also has the most to lose. The fortune. The company.”
“You.”
I shrugged. “It’s a risk we all have to take.”
“My father will never leave you alive if he thinks the corporation is in danger.”
I bit my lip, sneaking a peak at him. “It already is.”
“You told Nick you’d give it back.”
“I know.”
Reed hesitated. “Did you tell him the truth?”
I tightened the towel over my shoulders, hiding my disgusted and terrified shiver.
I was violated again by a man who deserved every hell I could inflict on him.
No way was I leaving the estate. The instant I ran was the instant Darius learned everything—the trust, the plans, the alliances with my step-brothers and how foolishly I fell for his heir. They’d have to reveal my infertility. And then?
My step-brothers would be in danger. My mother killed. And my future?
A heart-beat from fortune or pain. We had a plan. We just had to see it through.
And Nick?
“Nick will just have to trust me.”
I seized Sarah before she descended the stairs, hauling her into my arms and cupping a hand over her mouth.
And I hated how desperately she clawed at my grip.
To get away?
To hold me closer?
Probably both.
I kicked the door open to her room and shoved her inside. My hand wrapped too tightly over her stomach, but she ceased her struggling.
“You have to listen to me.”
I hadn’t released her.
Christ, I didn’t think I ever would.
Not after what was going to happen.
Not when I knew she would never come back to my arms.
“Sarah,” I said. “Don’t say a word. Don’t fight. Just…listen.”
Sarah rarely listened, even when it might have benefited her, even when it might have spared her pain or torment. Her bravery was more important to her than her safety.
But it wasn’t to me.
And in this? Once she realized what would happen today? What waited for her downstairs?
She’d have to be brave, and she’d have to behave. I could promise her the world, but hiding her secrets and keeping her safe were two challenges determined to crash head-on. Her survival depended on her complete and total submission.
I tried to protect her. I thought of locking her in my suite and taking her to my office, never out of my sight. In my fear, I took her night after night, even when the only benefit was pledging my devotion to her. She wouldn’t conceive, but at least we promised our love in the darkness.
A love I knew I was losing.
I owned her heart on borrowed time. And I would break it if only to ensure it continued beating.
I’d thought I’d have everything. Both empires. My fortune. Sarah at my side.
I was supposed to be the future of the family. Instead, I threatened our very stability. The empire didn’t unravel—it collapsed. I was only beginning to collect the pieces large enough to fit it back together.
I silenced Sarah’s questions with a greedy, selfish kiss. I savored the innocence that controlled my every thought, decision, and regretted mistake.
“Do you trust me?” I whispered.
She hesitated.
In every aspect of my life, I wielded absolute authority, and the one person I expected to submit knew better than to surrender completely.