At first.
His writer’s brain took over at some point. It spun a terrifying alternate version of the events. In this version, he raced down the driveway too late. When he ran into the yard, Tom was already dead and Alex was in the process of bashing Nevvie’s head in.
And when he fired, he hit Nevvie instead of Alex.
He jolted awake with a start, heart pounding, sweat pouring off him. Trembling, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat there with his head in his hands while he tried to slow his racing pulse.
I’m not getting back to sleep anytime soon. He stood, used the bathroom, then went outside to the RV to try to work. It was only 2:00 a.m.
As he stared at his laptop and tried to make sense of the words there, he wondered if perhaps Alex wasn’t getting the last laugh.
* * * *
Unfortunately, this became Tyler’s new routine. A week after the showdown, he’d yet to make it through the night without some sort of nightmare. He always gave up trying to sleep and went out to the RV to work. Sometimes in his dreams, Alex had already killed both of them, as well as the boys and Peggy and Andrew. Sometimes, his aim was off and he killed Nevvie instead of Alex.
And sometimes, Alex broke into the house in the middle of the night and Tyler awoke to find him standing over their bed, Nevvie and Tom already dead.
Nine days later, he’d been working nearly two hours in the RV when a knock on the door startled him.
“Yes?”
Peggy opened the door and stepped in carrying a cup of coffee. “I thought you might want this.” She set it on the table, which had become his desk.
“Thanks, Mom. I’m sorry. I didn’t wake you, did I?”
She sat across from him in the dinette. “No, I was already awake. I’ve heard you every night. Not sleeping well?”
He picked up the cup of coffee and took a sip before shaking his head.
“You know, maybe the detective was right. Maybe you should go talk to someone.”
“I don’t need to talk to anyone. I have my own kind of therapy.” He’d started working on another book, a gruesome, dark serial killer story full of murder and mayhem.
It was going quite well, surprisingly enough. He could now describe a gunshot victim with a veracity he’d never known he possessed.
“Only getting a couple hours of sleep a night isn’t healthy for you. I’m taking off my mom hat and putting on my nurse hat, here, Ty. You’re not a spring chicken anymore. You’ve had cardiac issues in the past. You’ve been under a lot of stress, between the storm and Nevvie being pregnant and now all that crap with that maniac. It’s time you take care of yourself, because this won’t get any better unless you do. And you’ve got twins on the way. If you think sleeping will be any easier once they get here, think again.”
“What am I supposed to say? Go to some bloody head shrink and tell them I’m not a damn bit sorry for what I did? That I don’t feel an ounce of regret over killing that fecking bastard? They’ll think I’m the barmy one.”
She leaned forward. “No, Ty,” she said gently. “You go and tell them the dreams you’ve been having about not being there in time to save them.”
He must have looked as gobsmacked as he felt, because she kindly laughed. “Do you think you’re the first man to dream about the ‘what ifs’ instead of the ‘what happeneds?’ You’re not, you know. Maybe your brain isn’t flagellating you over what you did, but it’s dang sure beating the crap out of you for what didn’t happen, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
She reached over and patted his hand. “I’m going back inside and try to go back to sleep for a while. I’m here to talk to, even if you don’t want to go talk to a counselor.”
She left. He sat back and stared at his laptop, where he’d been in the middle of writing a very bloody evisceration scene.
Then he looked at the business card, the one Platt had given him, that he’d laid on the table.
Chapter Nineteen
“Whoo hoo! Shake it, baby cakes!”
Nevvie and Karen exchanged startled looks and burst out laughing at Peggy, who was brandishing a dollar bill and waving it at the hard-bodied male dancer heading her way while she shouted more catcalls. He’d just stripped off the top half of his firefighter’s uniform and was working on his pants.
Nevvie leaned in close to Karen. “How much did she have to drink?”
“Nothing. She’s had iced tea all night. She’s sober.”
“Huh. Well, good for her.”
They were all at a local restaurant where April was friends with the manager. They’d rented the back room for the evening for Karen’s bachelorette party. Cheryl had arranged the three-part entertainment. Officer Nasty stood in the back of the room with Doctor Feelgood, awaiting their turns to strut their stuff once the frisky firefighter was done being molested by a room full of mostly middle-aged and married or involved women.
It was almost two months since “the incident” and a week until Karen’s wedding.
Kelly leaned in close to Nevvie. “Maybe Andrew better watch out,” she joked. The fireman was now down to his very well-filled red-sequined G-string. He stood in front of Peggy and did body rolls that made his oiled, ripped six-pack abs move in deliciously evil ways.
Nevvie fanned herself. “Screw that. If I wasn’t pregnant, I’d be up there dancing with him.”
They watched as Peggy tucked a dollar into his G-string. He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek before moving on to the next woman.
One cake, two hours, copious amounts of alcohol, a few hundred dollars in singles and fives, and three male strippers later, the party wound down and Karen had snagged Officer Nasty’s G-string as a souvenir. Peggy alone had tucked no less than thirty dollars in singles into the men’s costumes.
Nevvie let Kelly drive the three of them home even though she hadn’t had anything to drink. She hoped Tyler and Tom were still awake. Happily, she found them stretched out in bed and watching a movie on TV.
She stripped naked and crawled into bed with them. “Hi.”
“Hi, sugar,” Tom said. “You all right?” He wore an amused look.
“I’m fine,” she said as she settled between them.
Tyler rolled to face her. “Do I detect a bit of friskiness, love?”
“Maaaaybe,” she said. After watching the three male strippers strut their stuff, she’d left frisky in the dust hours earlier. Between the stripper show and her hormones, she was damn horny.
Tom also rolled to face her. He’d had surgery to fix his broken nose and the last of the bruises and scars from that had just faded. He slipped his hand between her legs. “Oh, she’s wet, all right,” he said.
“Ah,” Tyler said. “So our sweet pet wants a good fucking. Is that it?”
“Maaaaybe,” she said, grinning. Her baby belly wasn’t so big yet that she couldn’t enjoy herself. In a few months, she’d be so big she wouldn’t want either man to touch her and might consider castrating them herself.
“What did y’all do at that bridal shower to get you so wound up?” Tom playfully asked.
“You don’t want to know,” she said, moaning as his finger parted her labia and slipped inside her wet pussy.
“Don’t be so sure about that, baby girl,” Tom said. “Anything that’s got you this hot and bothered has my interest.”
“Oh, really?” Tyler asked. He also put his hand between her legs and started probing with his talented fingers. He homed in on her swollen clit and started rubbing. “Ah, you’re right, Thomas. She’s wet and ready for a good, hard fucking.”
“Duh,” Nevvie said, snickering.
Tom added a second finger to her pussy and began finger-fucking her. “Does our little slave want us to fuck her brains out?”
“Uh-huh!” Now that her morning sickness had completely gone, she was horny as hell nearly fifty percent of the day.
The other fifty percent she was atomically hormonal, and was glad Peggy had the guns loc
ked up so she couldn’t use them at her whim on her loving husbands.
“Oh, Thomas,” Tyler said. “I do believe we have a little slave ready and willing to be fucked senseless.”
“Uh-huh!”
Tyler slipped a hand into her hair, gently fisting it and using it as a convenient handhold to keep her in place while he kissed her. Kiss meaning he slipped his tongue into her mouth and fucked her with it, exploring and tasting and getting her even hornier than she’d been before she crawled into bed with them.
Tom pulled his fingers from her pussy and found her right breast. He played with her nipple, turning it into a rigid peak and making her clit throb as her pussy clenched with need.
She flexed her hips against Tyler. “Please!”
Tyler nipped her lower lip. “Your collar is at home, my sweet little slave, but I suppose you don’t need it to service your Masters, do you?”
“No, Sir!” she said.
“Good girl,” Tom cooed in her ear. He pinched her right nipple, making her squirm with pleasure before his hand moved to her left and started giving it similar torment.
Tyler eased her onto her back and moved down the bed. He pushed her thighs apart. “I think I know what our little slave wants, Thomas,” he said, “but you’d better keep her quiet.”
“With pleasure,” Tom said. He sat up, then swung a leg over her. He settled over her face, his stiffening cock within reach of her lips. She opened her mouth and tried to flick her tongue over his slit, but he shifted out of reach. “Not yet, baby girl. Open.”
She did.
He pulled his cock out of the way and settled over her with his balls in her mouth. She eagerly laved her tongue over them, knowing he loved it, wanting to make him come.
Meanwhile, Tyler had nuzzled in between her thighs and spread her labia with his thumbs. When his sweet tongue swiped up her clit, she loudly moaned around Tom’s balls.
“Oh, fuck!” Tom said. “Do that again, Ty.”
Tyler did, garnering the same results and making Tom moan. Apparently unable to stand it any longer, he rose up and bumped her lips with his cock.
She eagerly opened her mouth and sucked him in. “That’s it, baby girl,” he whispered. “Do your magic.”
Between her thighs, Tyler not only used his tongue, but his fingers on her. He inserted three fingers inside her while his tongue did deliciously evil things to her clit.
Nevvie closed her eyes and let pleasure drown her. Her men knew exactly what to do to her body to melt her. Boring?
Never.
When Tyler changed the game and pressed a finger into her ass, she exploded. Her loud moans around Tom’s cock triggered his climax.
“Goddamn!” he grunted as she felt his hands hit the bed on either side of her head to brace himself. Hot jets of his cum squirted into her mouth. She swallowed, trying to keep up and barely managing it. After a minute, he rolled off her before he kissed her deeply.
“You are so good, baby girl,” he whispered before kissing her again.
Tyler propped himself up on his elbows. “Is our sweet little slave ready for a good, hard fucking?” he asked.
“Uh-huh!” That felt like a good answer. And syllabically, it was the only answer she could provide that made any sense.
Her men were particularly adept at short-circuiting her brain.
Tyler flipped her over onto her hands and knees. When he sank his cock into her wet pussy, she pressed her face against the mattress to muffle her happy moans. Tom reached under her and found her clit.
“Come hard for him, baby girl,” he rumbled in her ear.
She loved being fucked like this, feeling his cock slide deep inside her.
“I won’t last long, Thomas,” Tyler said. “Better work fast.”
Tom grabbed her hair with his other hand, fisting it and pulling her head back. “Look at me, baby girl.”
She did, even though all she wanted to do was melt into a gooey puddle between them.
“Come for us,” he whispered, the fingers of his other hand rolling her clit and driving her toward another orgasm. “Come hard.”
She stared up into his brown eyes, her entire world falling away between what the men were doing to her body. He leaned in and kissed her, forcing her lips apart and ravaging her with his mouth.
That did it. She felt the tremors start in her cunt. Tyler felt it, too, his moans matching hers. She couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. Tom swallowed her cries and relentlessly kept her coming until Tyler slammed his cock into her one last time, pulsing deep inside her.
Exhausted, she rolled onto her side so she could look at Tom. “Did that satisfy you?” he asked.
She smiled, cuddling with him as Tyler crawled in behind her. “Yep.”
Tyler kissed the back of her neck. “I still think we want to hear about the bridal shower.”
“No you don’t. Girls’ secret.”
The men exchanged a glance. “Yes, we do,” they said in unison.
She arched an eyebrow at Tom. “Did you ever accidentally walk in on your parents doing the nasty?”
He blushed. “No! What the hell does that question have to do with anything?”
“Trust me when I say Mom most likely tackled Andrew when we got home. And if she’s wound up, too, you know darn well you don’t want to hear about what we did.”
* * * *
Tyler lay there staring at the ceiling, long after Nevvie and Tom had fallen asleep. He wasn’t dreaming of the shooting every night anymore. Sometimes, he did. And when he did, they were doozies.
He’d gone to speak with the department’s psychologist, Dr. Kenning. In addition to working with law enforcement, she had a private practice. He liked that she didn’t try to get him to see the events from any one point of view. That she didn’t assign blame, or try to make him hold himself blameless.
She let him talk, and asked pointed questions based on his own observations.
And she didn’t try to force medication on him, either.
The next afternoon, after a mostly sleepless and dreamless night, was his tenth appointment.
“How’s the book coming, Tyler?”
He shrugged. He’d written plenty of gory, violent scenes, but the overall plot had escaped him. “I’ve had better progress.”
“How are the dreams?”
He let out a sigh. “I still have them. Not every night.”
“That’s progress.”
“It’s damned annoying.”
“Have you told your partners about them?”
“They know I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He smiled. “But that is my answer.”
“I’m curious why you won’t confide in them about your dreams?”
He studied his fingers. It was a question he’d asked himself. “I don’t know,” he softly said. “I suppose I don’t want to burden them. I don’t want them to feel guilty for me having nightmares.” Nevvie and Tom had both been incredibly supportive about him deciding to talk to the doctor. And neither of them had asked him about the topics of discussion, respecting his privacy.
“I know I’ve suggested this before, but maybe it’s time to tell them.”
After his time was up, he sat in his car outside her office and thought about it. Maybe it was time to shed his self-imposed cloak of stoicism.
When he returned home, Nevvie and the boys were asleep taking naps, but Tom was sitting on the porch swing reading a book with Harley beside him.
Tom laid the book aside when Tyler walked up. “Hey, buddy.” He gave him a kiss. “How’d it go?”
Tyler moved Harley so he could sit next to Tom. “She once again made a suggestion that I can no longer find excuses to avoid.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve been having bad dreams.”
Tom hooked an arm around his shoulders and pulled him down so he was lying in Tom’s lap. “Duh.”
“Beg pardon?”
&
nbsp; Tom let out a snort. “What, you think Nevvie and I don’t notice you getting out of bed in the middle of the night?”
Dumfounded, Tyler stared up into his handsome brown eyes. “You’ve known?”
“Sure. Doesn’t take an evil genius to connect the dots. Even a brain-damaged asshole like me can figure it out.” He grinned.
“Does Nevvie know?”
“Again, duh. We figured when you were ready to talk to us about it, you would.” Tom stroked Tyler’s hair. “For someone as smart as you are, sometimes you’re as thick as a brick shithouse. You know that?” He grinned again.
Tyler let out a laugh. “You do have a colorful way of sweet-talking me, my love.”
“Yeah, well, you’re the wordsmith in the family. I’m the architect. If you really want me to wax poetic, I’ll need a set of blueprints to look over.”
Tyler laced his fingers through Tom’s and softly told him of the dreams. Tom’s expression of good humor faded. When Tyler finished, Tom looked positively grim.
“Ty,” he softly said, “why didn’t you talk to us? You know we’re here for you.”
“I didn’t want to thrust my burdens on your shoulders.”
Tom squeezed his hand. “We love you. That means that we’re in this together. All of us. You keep thinking you’ve got the market cornered on big shoulders, and you don’t.”
“Do you think I should tell Nevvie?”
“Good grief, duh. Maybe if you tell her, oh, I don’t know, Dr. Kenning might be right that the dreams could ease up when you quit holding shit in.”
Later that afternoon, after the boys awoke from their naps, Tom and Andrew took them down to the pond to teach them to fish. Tyler curled up on the couch with Nevvie and told her what he’d told Tom.
When he finished, she smacked him on the shoulder. Startled, he rubbed it. “Ow! Love, what was that for?”
“For you being such a pigheaded jerk, that’s why.” She grabbed him and kissed him. “I thought we went through this a few months ago in Yellowstone. Quit keeping stuff to yourself.”
Love Slave for Two: Reckoning [Love Slave for Two 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 17