Quentin (The Bourbon & Blood Series Book 4)

by Seraphina Donavan

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he’d said. But he did. He wanted to hurt her bad enough that she’d never want him again. That bridge had to be burned because he’d never have the strength just to walk away from her on his own.

  She’d turned then and walked back down the stairs, pausing on the one right above him so that they were eye to eye. “You might not want to, but you will… because you might not be a long term kind of person, but I am. And the fact that you’d assume I’m not tells me all I need to know.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  She’d looked so sad then, but also completely resolved. “It means that I know my place in this town. I know how people look down on me. I just let myself forget for a moment that you were one of them… so go on and go. I’ll be damned to hell and back before I try to stop you.”

  Standing there, watching her walk away from him, knowing that when she reached the top of those stairs the door would close and lock between them, he’d let it happen. He’d been the one thing he despised above all else, the one thing he’d lied to himself about for most of his life. He’d been a coward.

  Pulling himself back to the present and to the woman who sat beside him driving the car that he prized above almost anything else in the world, he said, “We should grab some food while we’re out. There’s nothing at the farm and I don’t want to cook.”

  She snorted. “You don’t cook.”

  “I do if it’s prepackaged and frozen. I know how to turn on the oven, Harlow.”

  “I’ll cook,” she said. “We’ll hit the FreshMarket before we get out of town. But you’re buying.”

  It wasn’t exactly an olive branch, but at least it wasn’t cold and uncomfortable silence. Eventually, they’d have to talk about it. Eventually he’d have to tell her that he ran like a scalded dog because she’d gotten so deep in him that it terrified him. It wasn’t a conversation he looked forward to, but more than that, he was terrified it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. So he turned his attention to another question that was bugging the shit out of him.

  “We’ve never talked about your ex… what is this really all about, Lowey?”

  She clammed up then. He could see it in the firm set of her jaw. She would acknowledge that he almost killed her following their divorce, but she never talked about the marriage itself, she never shared details. And he had to know.

  “Why did Joey Barnes come back and shoot up your bar?”

  “Because he’s an asshole,” she replied stiffly.

  “He’s an asshole on parole, and he knows that Silas can only do so much to protect him. Why take that risk, Lowey? What was in it for him?”

  “Why will you not leave this alone?” she asked. “Does it really matter why?”

  “Yes, it does. And if he’s doing this after the divorce, what the hell was the marriage like?”

  Eight

  Joey Barnes wasn’t a topic she cared to discuss ever. No one knew the extent of what he’d put her through, of what she’d allowed him to do to her because she was too embarrassed and too ashamed to ask for help. To admit those things to Quentin was more than she could bear, but she also knew it was necessary.

  “Tell me, Lowey. Or I’ll find out on my own.”

  “You know that the day the divorce decree was final he basically lost it. He came to the bar at closing time, waited until everyone had left and then came in and—.” She stopped, unable to say all the things he’d done to her. The torment of kneeling in front of him while he held a gun to her head, while he debated with her all the reasons he ought to kill her, or the reasons he should just, as he’d put it, fuck up her pretty face until no one would ever want her again.

  “I know enough about that,” he said. “But that wasn’t the only time, was it?”

  “No,” she admitted. “He started beating the hell out of me almost as soon as I married him… I was eighteen. Didn’t know any better. Married him and let him move me into the shithole that his family lives in. The black eyes, the twisted arms, the bruised ribs, the split lips… I stayed inside most of the time because it was easier just not to see people than to try and camouflage it or have to lie.”

  It was difficult to put into words but she knew she had try. “With him, it wasn’t that he was jealous. It was that he owned me—body and soul. If he wanted to hit me, he did. If he wanted to lock me up and starve me, he did. If he wanted sex and I didn’t feel inclined… well, that wasn’t really an option.”

  She watched him for a response, noting the tension in his jaw, his clenched fists. He didn’t say anything but she understood that. There was no appropriate response to what she’d just said to him.

  “How did you get out?”

  Lowey shrugged. “He thought he owned me, and it never occurred to him that I would turn him in for doing something illegal… I called Matt Shepherd, he put me in touch with someone from the DEA and they busted him while he was out of the house. He got three years, and I got out. While he was in prison, I filed for divorce and moved back in with my grandfather.”

  It sounded so simple when she said it. None of that took into account the terror, the fear that she’d lived with every moment of every day, waiting for him to get out, waiting for him to come for her. Then her grandfather had died, and she’d been alone. Completely and totally alone. And she couldn’t tell him that the very reason he’d appealed to her was because he would never want to own or possess her. The commitment phobia that had broken her heart had been one of his most appealing qualities.

  “So then he got out and then he came for you,” he replied.

  “Yeah. Within a week of his release, he was at the bar… but I’m not telling you about that night. I’ve relived it enough already and I’m not going back to do it again.” Maybe it was cowardly, but she was okay with that. If she told him the whole truth, he’d look at her differently. And she didn’t want his pity. Never that.

  Changing the tone of the conversation, she said, “It seriously pisses me off that he got more time for cooking meth than he did for trying to murder me.”

  “It more than pisses me off,” he said. “I promise you, Lowey, one way or another, he’s not getting near you again.”

  “Don’t make promises, Quentin. We both know that’s not your thing.”

  “I don’t make many promises, Lowey, but when I make them, I keep them. He’s never getting near you again. Count on it.”

  She sighed then. “He’s been in contact—even from jail. Usually through his brothers and his cousins. For the past year, ever since he went back to jail. They blame me… all of them.”

  “It stops today.”

  There was no point in telling him that she had her doubts. She’d accepted last year that when she died it would be at Joey Barns hands. But that didn’t mean she’d go down without a fight. Never again.

  ***

  Joseph Allen Barnes sipped his beer and watched the rather long in the tooth stripper sachay across the small stage and wrap her body around the pole. She might have been old, but she could sure ass hell move, he thought with a grin.

  Reaching into his pocket for a few singles, he waved them toward the stripper. He wondered what he could get her to do for the hundred dollar bill he had tucked into his wallet.

  After he’d tucked the bills into her g-string, she offered him a wave and a smile before sauntering back to the pole. His appreciation of the view she offered was interrupted by someone smacking the back of his head.

  “What the fuck did you do?”

  Joey looked back to see his cousin standing behind him. Tommy looked pissed.

  “What the hell did you do that for? I ain’t done nothing.”

  Tommy sat down and took the beer that Joey had been working on, draining the bottle. “Your mama called and says some dude came to the trailer looking for you. Claims to be a Darcy and says Lowey’s hooked up with one of ‘em.”

  Joey’s fists clenched at his sides. Fucking whore. “She’s my ex. None of my dam
n business who she hooks up with, now is it?”

  Tommy laughed. “Try that with somebody else, asswipe. I know what you did to her bar and I know you used my damn gun to do it. I found the empty box of shells!”

  Joey shrugged it off. Silas was taking care of it. “They can’t prove it.”

  “It’s the goddamn Darcys. They don’t have to prove it! Do I need to remind you about the kind of people you got us tangled up with? These Russians are bad dudes, Joey. Taking over distribution for them was your idea… yours and your damn cell mates. I shoulda known better than to listen to a fuck-up like you!”

  Joey shoved him then, sending the chair tipping backwards and Tommy sprawling on the floor. “Are you making money? Yeah, well then shut up! I hooked you into this deal… But I owe that bitch, and she fucking well owes me! She’s gonna pay. Whatever it takes!”

  Tommy had just made it to his feet when the bouncers wandered over, looming nearby. They weren’t too interested in guys beating the hell out of each other. That was less of a problem than when patrons went after the girls. Dusting himself off, Tommy shook his head. “You’re gonna get us both killed. We’ve got bigger shit to worry about than who your ex-wife is fucking!”

  “She sent me to prison!” Joey shouted. “You think I care whose dick she’s riding?”

  Tommy shook his head. “Stay focused, Joey. Stay focused or we’re both gonna wind up with a bullet in our heads!”

  “I’m not fucking this up, Tommy! We’re gonna get the drugs, we’re gonna get ‘em to the distributors, but when it’s done, that bitch will pay.”

  Tommy sat back and scrubbed his hands over his face. “This won’t end well.”

  Nine

  Back at the carriage house, Quentin held the door for Lowey. They hadn’t said much of anything after her confession. He was still trying to process it himself. The harsh realities she’d laid out for him were beyond what he’d imagined. Yes, he’d known Joey Barnes was an abusive dick. But knowing her, how strong she was and how little shit she took off anyone, he’d just never stopped to consider that it might have been more than an isolated incident.

  “Stop it,” she hissed.

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop looking at me like I’m some fragile little thing on the verge of breaking! I’m not. He did what he did and I got through it. End of story, Quentin.”

  He could hear the frustration in her voice. But what the hell was he supposed to do? She’d just admitted to him that she’d been put through every kind of torment imaginable by the sadistic fuck and that wasn’t supposed to have an effect on him? Maybe he wasn’t good at the whole commitment thing and maybe he would never be a good bet for the long haul, but that didn’t change his feelings for her. It sure as hell didn’t change the fact that he wanted to find Joey Barnes and rip the fucker’s spine out. “Doesn’t seem like the end to me,” he said. “Clearly it doesn’t seem like the end to him either or he wouldn’t be plotting his revenge!”

  “I’m not a damsel in distress and you’re sure as hell nobody’s white knight!”

  “Damn it, Lowey, why can’t you accept the fact that I’m here for you?”

  “For now,” she shot back. “And I don’t need temporary, Quentin. I’ll get a taxi to take me back to Fontaine. I’m not staying here with you anymore!” She turned away and stormed through the small guest house, headed for the bedroom where she’d left her things.

  “It doesn’t change the way I see you,” he said. It was an instinct more than anything that prompted him to say it, to recognize that she felt weakened, vulnerable, because of the things she’d admitted to him in the car. “I still think you’re a badass. And I think any man, woman or hell-spawned demon foolish enough to tangle with you deserves whatever they get… And I still want you. Because there’s nothing that you could say or do that will ever change that.”

  Lowey whirled on him then, snatched the porcelain dish off the table and hurled it at his head. He ducked to the side and winced as pain stabbed his ribs.She was hurting, and he knew it, but that didn’t mean he’d just let her take potshots at him. In three strides, he reached her. Gripping her arms, he pressed her back against the wall. He wasn’t hurting her, but he’d be damned if he was going to let her hurt him.

  “I’m not the one you’re mad at,” he said.

  “Fuck you.”

  “If that’s an invitation—.”

  She screeched at him. It was all rage and fury and the years of pain that she’d tamped down, locked away and refused to ever deal with. He was all too familiar with it. But fighting her wouldn’t help and keeping her pinned against the wall indefinitely wasn’t really an option. So Quentin did the only thing he could think of. He kissed her and prayed like hell she wouldn’t bite his lip off.

  ***

  The kiss caught her off guard, not because it was unexpected. She’d lost count of the number of times they’d argued and then fallen on each other like rabid animals. But this was something else. The gentle press of his lips, the soft and sensual glide of his tongue, took her breath. But the tenderness in his touch cut through her. It touched that inner part of her that she kept locked away.

  Tears burned her eyes and she could feel the knot forming in her throat as she tried to fight them back. She failed miserably. The tears spilled over, streaming down her cheeks as her hands clenched in the fabric of his shirt, pushing him away and holding onto him desperately all at the same time.

  When he pulled back, staring down at her with such tenderness and such longing, it cut her to the quick. “Don’t do this to me,” Lowey implored.

  “What am I doing, baby?” Quentin asked her softly as he wound the fall of her hair around his hand.

  “Don’t make me need you when you’re never going to stay.”

  He didn’t say anything, but he dropped his head until his forehead rested against hers. His hands slipped lower, resting on her hips. They stood like that for the longest time, like two exhausted boxers in the in the last round. Bloodied, bruised and worn out, offering as much solace as punishment to one another.

  “No promises… I can’t tell you this is forever,” Quentin said. “But I can tell you that you mean more to me than any woman ever has. You’re in me, Lowey… down to the blood and bone.”

  She had longed to hear things like that from him, to have some inkling that she was more to him than just a good time—a convenient and willing woman to scratch an itch.

  “I can’t do this with you,” she said, aware of the note of desperation in her voice. She hoped he was too. Her sanity was dependent on him recognizing just how sincere she was. He had the power to hurt her in ways that Joey Barnes never had. Yes, he’d hit her. He’d tortured and tormented her physically, but he’d never broken her heart. Quentin Darcy could do that and far more easily than either of them had ever imagined.

  “It isn’t a choice, Lowey. This thing between us is inevitable.”

  It was all the warning she had. He moved suddenly, backing her against the wall, his hands delving into her hair. Then his lips were on hers.

  Being kissed by Quentin Darcy was unlike anything she’d ever known before. Pleasure flooded her, stimulating her senses—the taste of him on her tongue, the scent of him, the hard press of his body against hers.

  Then his hands were sliding over her, mapping the curves of her waist, her hips, before his palms settled heavily on the cheeks of her behind. He squeezed, kneading her flesh, and pressing against her so that she could feel just how much he wanted her.

  He was temptation personified and she was too weak to fight it. Giving in not just gracefully, but eagerly, she reached for his tie, loosening it and then tackling the buttons of his shirt. When the fabric parted, she slid her hands inside, tracing the hard ridges of muscle, the crisp hair that covered his chest. She scraped her nails lightly over the flat disk of his nipples and smiled as he hissed out a breath.

  “Witch,” he murmured against her lips.

  “I can stop if you wan
t me to,” she offered.

  “God, no,” he said. “Do it again.”

  She did and got the same response. How was it possible that stoking his desire only intensified her own?

  “Take me to bed,” she said. “Let’s just forget everything for a little while.”

  ***

  It took him a second to fully register what she’d said. Maybe it was the fact that none of the blood in his body was flowing to his brain or maybe it was the fact that he hadn’t expected her to relent. Whatever it was, he didn’t need to be asked twice.

  Carrying her to bed wasn’t an option, though he wished it was. For the first time in his life, he wanted to be the one making sweeping romantic gestures. He wanted to pick her up and carry her to bed, he wanted to surprise her with flowers, with her favorite meal, to take her out and show her off to the world, and to show her that she was worthy of that.

  But bruised ribs and the prospect of dropping her on the floor intruded on such notions. So, instead he pulled her to him, kissed her again, and walked her backwards toward the bedroom door. Luckily, the carriage house was small enough that nothing was too far away. Patience was in short supply.

  Once in the bedroom, he kicked the door closed behind them and reached for the hem of her sweater, tugging it up over her hips. She raised her arms and he pulled it over her head, exposing the lacy bra she wore beneath. God, he loved every lush curve, every inch of soft silken skin. If he wasn’t a total coward, he’d just admit that he loved her. But neither of them was ready for that. So instead, he’d just show her all the things he was too terrified to say out loud.

  With slow, deliberate movements, he freed the button of her jeans and then slid the zipper down one torturous inch at a time.

  “We’re going to be old before you get me naked,” she said with a sly smile.