DuBois, Edith - Rugged Return [The Rugged Series 2) (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Edith DuBois

  The words weren’t new. She’d heard them hundreds of times. Every time Marina went into one of her fits, she heard them. But no matter what, every time those horrible things spilled from Marina’s mouth, the tears spilled from Michelle, and she couldn’t move. She stood still and couldn’t stop the words from tearing through her.

  “You’re jealous! You are jealous because I’m the talented one and the pretty one and you never had a boyfriend and you think it’s my fault. But it’s not. It’s yours. You’re a bitch, and nobody loves you. Do you hear me? Nobody loves you, Michelle!”

  The men had been trying to sedate her with words, but at this, Elias grasped Marina’s face. “Look at me, Marina. You’re hurting yourself.” Marina panted, staring hard at Michelle, her eyes full of fury. But Elias continued to speak to her in hushed tones, stroking her face and taking her attention away from Michelle. The tense lines of Marina’s face softened, and she looked at him. “That’s good,” he said. “We can’t risk losing this beautiful voice.” He touched her throat, and Michelle felt sick. “Shh,” he said, “that’s a good girl.” Marina took a deep, shuddering breath. “Good girl. I think we can relax our grip a little, Thomas.” Elias rubbed the hair that had fallen out of her face. Staring deep into his eyes, Marina nodded.

  When Thomas let go, however, she almost collapsed. Without hesitating, Thomas scooped her up in his arms.

  “Michelle?” Elias asked, his voice maintaining its even, soothing tone.

  “Yes?” she croaked out.

  “Would you help me find Marina’s room? I think she needs some rest.”

  Wordlessly, they all three moved up the stairs and into Marina’s room. Michelle watched from the doorway as the brothers tucked her beneath the covers, pulling the quilt up beneath her chin. Thomas ran his hand over the top of her head. “Now get some rest,” he whispered.

  Michelle turned stiffly away, walking down the stairs, not able to stomach another minute. She sat on the couch and waited.

  Soon after, she heard the brothers treading quietly down the stairs. She didn’t look up at them and was surprised when they sat on either side of her. Elias’s hand rested lightly above her knee, and Thomas smoothed her hair back from her face.

  “Are you all right?” he whispered, quiet and soft and gentle.

  Elias wiped at some moisture beneath her eyes.

  A soft kiss brushed against her cheekbone. It was Thomas, and Elias moved his hand along the inside of her leg. He leaned his face over her chest and kissed along her collarbone. Michelle’s body, her skin and her blood and her bones, everything was fire. She wanted nothing more than to return their kisses and to answer each caress with one of her own.

  But shame, thick and heavy, held her back, rendered her body and her muscles useless. She couldn’t face them, much less their kisses. “Please go,” she rasped.

  Their caresses stopped, but they didn’t take their hands away. “What is it?” Thomas asked.

  “I can’t…not after that. Please…I need…sleep…something. Please just leave.” She looked first at Thomas and then at Elias, into both sets of deep black eyes, silently pleading.

  Thomas opened his mouth to say something, but Elias put his hand on her cheek. “Okay.” Thomas glanced at his brother, confusion etched on his features, and Elias said, “For now. We’ll let you rest for now, but we’ll be back.” He pressed a kiss to her brow.

  Thomas held her face, tender concern filling his eyes. Then he touched a gentle kiss upon her lips. His thumb moved along her jawline. She felt her body lighting up, reacting to the warm pressure on her mouth, and she turned her face away. Squeezing her eyes tight, she felt him run his hand over her head and then a few moments later heard the front door open and quietly close.

  She stayed on the couch, sitting on the edge, back ramrod straight, for a long while. She couldn’t think about Marina’s fits, but she couldn’t ignore them either. She was supposed to be getting better. Savage Valley was supposed to take stress out of her life. But every day felt like a battle, felt like her sister slipped further and further into her despair, and Michelle was helpless to pull her away from it.

  Forcing herself to rise from the couch, her muscles stiff and resisting, she left a note for Aunt Agnes, explaining that they had both gone to bed early. She called Marina’s counselor and left a message, asking her to call back as soon as she got a chance. She looked into Marina’s room. Her sister had somehow crawled out of the covers and slept curled up with her knees to her chest on top of the blanket. Even in the dim light, Michelle could see her shivering.

  With a sigh, she walked into her sister’s room and nudged and prodded Marina until she had her back under the covers again and snuggling down into their warmth. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind Marina’s ear and kissed her on the temple.

  Then Michelle trudged to her room, crawled under her own covers, and closed her eyes.

  But she didn’t sleep. Not after one of Marina’s fits. She never could.

  Chapter Four

  “We should go back.” Elias had barely opened his car door before he heard Thomas speak from the other side of the garage. They hadn’t said anything to each other as they left Mrs. Bird’s house and the two Andrews sisters within, but Elias figured that meant Thomas had plenty of time to mull things over in his own car on the drive home.

  “Not tonight, Thomas,” he said, knowing his voice sounded tired. “Let’s give her some space. Most women prove apprehensive with our unconventional predilections, and now that we know she’s dealing with Marina’s issues, we should take this nice and easy.”

  “But you saw her face,” Thomas said. Elias shut his car door and headed for the house, following Thomas through. The garage was attached to the back side of the house, and they walked through a small hallway to the laundry room before passing into the kitchen. Thomas went straight to the fridge.

  “Yes, I saw her face, and I’m not likely to forget it anytime soon, either,” Elias answered. The image of those silent tears pouring down Michelle’s face as her sister screamed in that raspy, monster-like voice would be burned in Elias’s mind for a good long while, he had no doubt.

  Thomas pulled out a smoked ham, an almost empty container of mustard, and a block of cheese. “Sandwich?” he asked.

  Elias nodded. Thomas dumped the goods unceremoniously onto the island in the middle of their kitchen. “See? So now is the perfect time. We need to go over there, crawl into bed with her, and show her that we want to take care of her, that she needs to be taken care of. We’ll be there for her. Now is the best time to go to her and present her with the ol’ three-is-better-than-one routine.”

  “Speaking of three, where is Franklin?”

  “Probably brooding. Apparently Michelle canceled their date.”

  Elias got a carving knife to slice off some ham while Thomas spread mustard over four pieces of thick rye bread. “A date?”

  “So he didn’t mention it to you either?”

  “No.”

  “I swear it’s like talking to a brick wall.”

  “A brick wall with barbed wire and an armed guard and antipersonnel mines all around.”

  “Exactly.” Thomas slapped on the meat and cheese, covered each glorious mound with the second piece of bread, and then chomped down on his sandwich. He nudged the second sandwich toward Elias. As he chewed, he said, “But I did find him chopping wood when I got home earlier. Looked like he’d been at it for a while.”

  Elias grabbed up his sandwich and took a hearty bite, thinking about Franklin and Michelle, Michelle and Marina. Michelle, Michelle, Michelle. Damn, the woman was potent. She needed to get away from her sister. That much was clear. She’d been embarrassed, he thought, after her sister’s fit, too ashamed to respond to their touch. That wouldn’t work, not with him and not with his brothers. She needed to be able to trust them, with all her doubts, all her fears, and all her desires. He’d felt her heart beating against his lips as he kissed her collarbone, how it
had quickened at his touch and at his brother’s. She wanted them, but she was confused, and probably, at the moment, heartbroken.

  It must have hurt like hell to hear those words coming from her sister’s mouth.

  No, she needed a little time to lick her wounds, and then he and his brothers would move in. He’d show her that she could not and would not resist his touch. God, just to possess that sweet body of hers. When she spoke, it was in the softest of tones and always with a hint of a question, but every once in a while, she’d get this playful lilt to her voice and this flash of teasing fire in her honey-brown eyes. Her dark-brown tresses always seemed to be in a state of disarray, whether pulled back in a ponytail or dangling across her back in a wild bramble of curls. Her pink lips had the smallest of pouts, not nearly as pronounced as her sister’s, but there just the same. The thought of that little pout snugly fit over his cock had him choking down his sandwich.

  “You all right?” Thomas asked, ripping thoughts of the tantalizing Michelle from his mind.

  Another thought struck him, however, as he watched his younger brother take an overly large bite of his sandwich, tearing hungrily into the meat and ripping it away with a snarl. “Have some manners, Thomas.”

  His brother merely shrugged. “Bear’s gotta do what a bear’s gotta do, bro.”

  And that was just it. Even if they helped Michelle break free from the tight grip her sister held over her, there would still be one monolithic hurdle they’d need to overcome before Michelle could truly be theirs.

  They’d have to tell her about being bear-shifters.

  It was still too early to decide if they wanted to take that step, but there it was, floating lazily in the back of his mind in case he ever wanted to examine it with a more scrutinizing eye.

  “Thinking about what a bear’s gotta do,” Thomas said, sniffing around the pantry for another tidbit as he had already finished his sandwich, “have you heard anything from the Kinmans?”

  Elias let out a humorless laugh. “About what? NormCorp buying up property, NormCorp hiring thugs to set a fire at the Woodland Den, or NormCorp staging animal attacks around town?”

  “Take your pick,” Thomas answered with the same lack of humor. “If those little shits working for NormCorp show the smallest hint of a hide or a hair…” Thomas glowered darkly into the pantry.

  Elias felt the same wrath. Although they’d been unable to prove it, most of the bear-shifters and the lion-shifters agreed that the two goons hired by Ulyssess C. Norman, owner and founder of NormCorp in Denver, were responsible not only for setting fire to the Woodland Den at the last Honey Harvest Hoedown a few weeks ago, but also for lethally injecting some of the surrounding wildlife and then leaving their carcasses around town to sully the reputation of Savage Valley.

  The town’s slogan was plastered all over the place—No animal attacks since 1846!—and lately every time he saw it, the slogan served as a painful reminder that someone had deliberately tried to sabotage the reputation Savage Valley had worked so hard to build for itself. That didn’t sit well with Elias, nor with his brothers, nor with any of the shifters in Savage Valley. It was their duty. It was in their blood. They lived to protect Savage Valley.

  On top of all that, Elena Ward, now mate to the Kinman brothers, had been caught up in the goons’ scheming and been kidnapped and dumped into Brown Trout Lake. It was only by luck and the resourceful woman’s skill at holding her breath underwater that Elena had made it out of the lake. Elias would be furious if any woman of his had been put through such an ordeal. He knew the Kinmans were waiting for the NormCorp goons to show their faces again.

  They’d already called first dibs on tearing those pissants to bits.

  The phone rang, pulling Elias out of his vengeful thoughts.

  “Good evening. Ashley residence. Dr. Elias Ashley speaking.”

  “Dr. Ashley, I think you may want to come on down here.” The old, leathery voice of Letty Hargrove sounded from the other end of the line. She was the owner of Catdaddy’s, Savage Valley’s local honky-tonk.

  “Do I want to know, Letty?”

  “Well, seeing as your brother’s done passed out on my bar, I’d say yeah, you want to know.”

  “Damn it, Franklin,” he said under his breath. To Letty, he said, “All right. I’ll be there in a few.”

  “See ya then.”

  “Oh, Letty?”

  “Yes, Dr. Ashley?”

  “Nothing strange happened, did it?”

  Letty chuckled. “Oh, you’d certainly be the first to know if it had.” Elias heard the line click dead.

  He turned to Thomas. “Guess I’m running down to Letty’s place to pick up our delinquent younger brother.”

  “Want some help?” Although Elias knew Thomas would help him out in a heartbeat, he could see his brother still rummaging through the pantry and figured he could handle this one on his own.

  “You’ve got an early shift tomorrow, right?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Then I’ll be fine. Stay here. Get some rest. And I’ll see you later.”

  Thomas had discovered a jar of Nadeen’s Nuts and Honey and already had his hand digging into the jar. “You know what,” Thomas said, his face lighting up, “I definitely have some things I need to accomplish tonight. So you know, maybe you should stay and talk to Franklin, see if you can get him to spill his guts, let him get everything off his chest.”

  “Catdaddy’s isn’t exactly my scene. You know that.”

  “But it’s Franklin. He’s your brother. You should make an exception for him. You know, have a beer and discuss your feelings.”

  “Someone sure is being pushy. What exactly do you have to accomplish?

  “Oh you know, stuff for work. I was thinking about how nice some peace and quiet would be around here.”

  Elias studied his brother for a moment, thinking he was probably missing something, but he didn’t want to leave Franklin alone for too long. Bear-shifter and alcohol didn’t mix.

  As he walked to the garage and crawled into his car, Elias had a feeling that once he found his younger brother and brought him home, a certain lady with dark curly hair and pink lips with the smallest of pouts would be at the bottom of all his brother’s drunken woes.

  Despite his annoyance, Elias couldn’t help feeling at least a little sympathetic.

  * * * *

  Michelle heard something, and in her groggy state of mind, it almost sounded the way she would imagine a small pebble or piece of gravel to sound as someone tossed it against her bedroom window. But that was silly. No one had ever thrown a pebble or a piece of gravel against her window. No man, no best friend, no ardent teenage flame, no one. And in fact, for the past five years, she hadn’t owned a bedroom window to throw a pebble against since she’d been traveling across the country in a tour bus and across the world in planes and taxis. She snuggled back into her covers, and her mind moved back to warding off the memories of Marina’s tirade from earlier in the evening.

  What the hell? she thought when she heard the small noise again.

  Feeling foolish, she snuck along the wall, hidden in the shadows, to surreptitiously peek out her window. She looked around, but no one stood on Aunt Agnes’s lawn. She was on the second floor, but the tree branches outside were too far to tap against the glass. She stepped more fully in front of the window, trying to see if anyone was out of her line of sight.

  She looked left and right but still saw no one. She was turning away, thinking herself ridiculous and fanciful, when a big hulking shape appeared in front of her.

  A scream stuck in her throat as she stumbled backward and tripped over a pair of shoes that she had left carelessly strewn across the floor. She scrambled back as the shape began jiggling her window, and she looked frantically around for a weapon.

  The shape at her window tapped on the glass and then waved at her. Michelle paused, thinking that probably wasn’t the normal behavior of a deranged serial killer on the loose. She
stepped closer, and the man moved his face closer.

  “Thomas,” she said aloud, relief flooding through her body. She quickly moved to the window and helped him open it. “How’d you get up here?” she asked as he pulled through one leg and then the other. She peered over the edge, seeing only the slightest of ledges.

  “Oh that. I climbed up.”

  Michelle studied the side of the house, confused. Her room was upstairs. The house had been constructed with unevenly stacked gray bricks, but even so, the most any of the bricks stuck out was a couple inches. Before she could question him further, he grabbed her and turned her around to face him.

  “Are you okay?” His big hand swept along the side of her face and cradled her cheek. The moonlight streaming in from her still-open window shone softly against the deep black of his eyes, giving his orbs a strange silver gleam.

  “Yes, I’m fine.” She could barely whisper the word. Her breath was coming in very short gasps all of a sudden. “No one’s ever snuck into my bedroom.” She smiled at the thought, feeling like a schoolgirl but not really caring, either.

  He shot a devilish grin down at her. “I can’t say that was my first window-sneaking endeavor.” His voice became lower, huskier. “But I can say that no one as beautiful as you has ever been waiting for me.”

  Oh, how she wanted him to fold her up in his arms. How she wanted to float to the bed and let him ride her pussy deep and hard, but the night’s events were fresh in her mind. She was mortified, and despite what her body wanted, her mind shied away. She felt herself stiffen in his arms and tried to pull out of them.

  “Don’t do that,” he said, his voice hard. Faster than her mind could process, he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her tight against his body, causing her breath to come out of her lungs with a gasp. She felt his cock pressing into her abdomen. It had been so long since she’d felt a man, hot and urgent with need, that the desire she now felt bubbling through her body had her arms clutching at him even as her mind warned her to stay calm.