All of that seems like another life now, so long ago.
When I step out of the shower, I jump back a few inches, not expecting Sterling to be standing there, holding the towel out for me.
“Holy shit. You scared me.” My heart races as I look him over, standing there tall and stern. I have the shower curtain covering me, and although him seeing me partially naked should embarrass me, it doesn’t. I’m more embarrassed by what Kevin did to me—by what I feel I let him do to me—than anything.
Sterling’s gaze hardens as he looks me over, taking in the bruises covering the parts of my body he can see. “I’m going to kill this fucker for laying his hands on you. But I’m going to do far worse than that first. By the time I’m through with his ass he’ll be begging me to put him out of his misery.”
I close my eyes as he gestures me forward and wraps the towel around me. I don’t miss how he presses his face into my wet hair.
Having him so close gives me a feeling of peace and safety I haven’t felt in a while, but when his hands grip my waist and his body moves in close to mine, it gives me a whole other feeling I haven’t felt in a while.
This is crazy. I’m crazy for feeling these things in this moment.
“I’ve always wondered what it’d feel like to have you touch me . . .” I lean my head back, feeling his hard chest against it. “What your strong hands could do to my body. If they would hurt or feel good.”
I hear him swallow next to my ear. “How do they fucking feel right now?”
I swallow too, knowing that at any moment his hands will be gone and I’ll be left with the memory for the night. “Good. Safe.”
“That’s really fucking good.” He removes his hands from my waist and takes a step back. “Get dressed and I’ll come check on you in a bit. I made you something to eat.”
Once I’m dressed and back in Sterling’s room, I look over at the bedside table to see a mug of hot chocolate and a sandwich waiting for me.
I grab it and take a seat on his bed, placing the warm ceramic to my lips. I’m not hungry, but I know he’ll insist I eat something.
I sit here for long moments, finishing the hot chocolate and eating half of the sandwich. I instantly grow tired, the stress of the night and the three-hour drive hitting me hard, now that my stomach is filled with something warm and comforting . . . now that I feel safe.
My father doesn’t even know I’m back in town yet and if he knew I was here with a Locke brother, he’d send one of his squad cars to pick me up and lock me away just to keep me from Sterling.
I could’ve sent my father after Kevin. Could’ve let the law handle him, but after the way he hurt me and treated me like some kind of prisoner for the last few days, scared and helpless as he tortured me . . . spending a couple days behind bars won’t be enough.
He needs to feel what I felt. He needs to hurt and bleed as I did.
I want him to suffer at the hands of the one guy that I know will protect me. The one guy I wish I would’ve known how to protect when I had the chance.
The guy everyone calls the Savage Locke . . .
STERLING
I stand here for a second and just watch Wynter sleeping. She fell asleep about ten minutes ago, and although I’m furious, in a blood-boiling rage over that fucker hurting her, having her here calms me.
I walk over to her and place the blanket on her fragile little body. She’s gorgeous, even though she has bruises all over.
God, I’ll kill that fucker.
I lift my hand and run my finger along her arm, which hangs out from under the blanket. Her flesh is so smooth, so warm. God, I hate that this is happening with her, but she’ll be avenged.
No way in hell am I going to let some asshole hurt her and get away with it.
I force myself to leave her in the room sleeping, and shut the door. I stand here for a second, controlling my breathing, knowing I need to speak with my brothers.
I need to get shit sorted out and a plan made on how we are going to handle the motherfucker that hurt Wynter.
Even though the door is shut I turn and look at it, wanting to go back inside and just hold her and comfort her, letting her know she’s damn safe in my arms. My feelings for her have never lessened over the years.
In fact, having her here makes them heightened, makes them rise tenfold.
I head back downstairs and go outside to the bonfire. Aston and Kadence are the only ones not there, and I have to assume that they went inside, probably so he could fuck her.
I’m actually surprised to see Melissa still here, her chair now sitting close to Ace’s as if he pulled it there to talk to her while Kadence is gone.
Flexing my jaw, I walk over to Ace and sit down, my anger so fierce it’s like a living entity in me. Ace turns his attention from Melissa to me, but doesn’t say anything, and honestly it is probably because he knows better.
Talking about it right now is only going to piss me off more.
A few minutes later the front door opens and I lift my head to see Aston coming toward us. He sits down across from me, his expression guarded, serious.
“Kadence wants to talk to you inside,” he says to Melissa, while keeping his hard gaze on me. He waits until she disappears inside before speaking again. “So, what the fuck is going on?”
I don’t say a thing for long seconds, just stare at the fire, watching the flames dance and lick at the logs.
“Well, who are we going to go fuck up?” Ace asks.
I look at each of my brothers, knowing they have my back, knowing that they will kill and die for me.
I’d do the same for them.
“Wynter’s ex-boyfriend beat her.” I have to clench my jaw and curl my fingers into my palm or I’d go out and beat the first motherfucker to cross me.
The pain claims me, and I breathe out slowly. Just saying those words out loud makes me so damn pissed I want to go hunt the fucker down right now and slice his throat open.
“Motherfucker,” Ace says under his breath.
“Yeah, that about sums it up,” I say.
“Wynter’s old man know?” Aston asks.
I shake my head before responding. “I didn’t ask her and she didn’t tell me. But her coming here tells me that she probably didn’t let him know.”
I have a feeling she didn’t tell her father what happened. Him being involved with law enforcement would’ve probably made the situation even worse, drawing attention to her.
I know she probably didn’t want that.
No, she came to me because she knew I’d handle it old school, real dirty and brutal.
And I will. Hell, I’ll make the prick hurt so damn badly he’ll never be able to hurt another person again. He won’t even be breathing when I am done with him.
Ace hands me a beer and I pop the cap, chug half of it in one go, and stare at my bedroom window. She’s up there right now, sleeping in my bed, hurt, scared, but not broken.
I’ll make sure she is avenged, make sure she knows I’ll always protect her. For her I’d level the fucking world.
“So how do we go about getting to this asshole?” Aston asks, and I glance at him.
“She’ll tell me where he’s at, because that’s why she came here.” I look at Aston again, and then glance at Ace. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t regret coming here.”
My brothers grunt in agreement.
Blood will cover our hands, faces, the very ground beneath us. I’ll make sure he pays with his life. I’ll watch the life fade from his eyes.
I’ll be so fucking savage with him he’ll beg me for death, for a reprieve.
And all the while I’ll have a fucking grin on my face.
I take one last chug off the bottle in my hand before standing and tossing it into the flames. “I’m going upstairs in case she wakes up and needs me.”
“Got it, brother,” Aston says. “Let us know if there’s anything we can do to make her comfortable here.”
“Yeah,” Ace adds. “She
’s welcome here for as long as she likes. The closer she is, the better we can fucking protect her.”
“Appreciate it.” I turn to leave. “Good night, motherfuckers.”
When I get back upstairs, she’s still sleeping, lying there looking completely peaceful and at ease.
Good. I’m glad her being here can make her feel that way.
Grabbing the extra pillow, I take a seat in the chair beside the bed and get comfortable.
It’ll be hours before I’m able to fall asleep, but I’ll stay here anyway, making myself as available to her as possible.
I’m not fucking leaving this spot tonight.
WYNTER
I wake up in the middle of the night to see Sterling sleeping in the chair. He looks so uncomfortable. My first instinct is to want to make him comfortable, just as he was so quick to do for me.
I crawl to the edge of the bed and grab his hand, running my fingers over the light scars that cover them.
You can tell he uses his fists a lot more than the average man.
He opens his eyes as I tug on his hand, letting him know that I’m giving him permission to join me in his bed.
In fact, I’d feel better if he did: safer.
This isn’t about sex, isn’t about pleasure. This is about keeping him close and making both of us feel a little better about the world. Or maybe that’s just me.
“Are you sure?” he questions, his voice deep and full of sleep. “You’ve had a rough night. I want you to be comfortable.”
“Yes,” I whisper. “Please . . .”
The bed dips beside me the moment his knees hit the mattress, his body towering over mine as I look up at him, watching his heavy breathing.
But even though I don’t think this is about pleasure or sex, I can’t help how he makes me feel.
He makes me feel wanted, heated. He makes me feel pleasure after the traumatic event I just went through.
He’s hot. I can tell by the sweat that covers his neck and the part of his chest that is exposed by his shirt collar dipping low. I reach out and grab the bottom of his shirt, slowly pulling it up.
He sits tall, his body flexing as I pull it higher, my gaze taking in the scars that cover his tattooed chest. Scars I know were left there by his piece of shit parents.
I fucking hate it. Hate that I wasn’t there for him.
God, I shouldn’t feel this way . . . wanting him the way I do. This is fucked up, me being wet and needy. He helped me, didn’t try to make a move on me when I was so vulnerable. But here I am touching him . . . wanting him.
I toss his sweaty shirt aside and suck in a breath. I carefully run my fingertips over the marks that look as if they were left by many beatings from a belt buckle or something really hard.
My arousal instantly vanishes. I feel his pain as if it’s my own.
He allows me to do this for a few seconds, his eyes closed tightly as I touch him. Then he reaches for my hand and stops it from roaming over what I know are painful reminders of his past. “It happened many years ago. None of it matters now. They’re both six feet under.” With a small growl, he grabs my hips and lays back, pulling me down with him and into the safety of his strong arms. “Go back to sleep, Wynter. You need to rest.”
My heart beats wildly in my chest at the feeling of being surrounded by Sterling Locke. His hard, sweaty body—a weapon most people fear—is pressed against me, tucking my body into him as if to protect me from everything bad in the world.
And just like that, my arousal raises its head like a vicious beast.
The urge to touch him . . . to have him touch me overwhelms me, making it hard not to focus on his cock, which is hard as stone, pressed against my backside. He’s breathing so heavy, and those hot, humid pants hit my ear.
I almost think he’s about to say something when he just squeezes my hip and lets out a small, seemingly frustrated growl instead.
It has my entire body on fire with need, something inside of me feeling alive for the first time in years.
This is wrong, right? Me wanting this, needing it after all that happened?
But I want to continue to feel this.
I don’t want to sleep, but I know I should. I’m both mentally and physically exhausted, drained from everything Kevin put me through over the last few days.
I’ve never been so damn scared in my life. When he dragged me down those stairs by my hair, I thought I would die. I was sure he’d beat me until there was nothing left, holding me in his arms until he knew I’d taken my last breath.
I’ll never forget the lies I told to keep myself safe while he kept me captive with him in the basement of our home. How I had to convince him of my love for him and that we’d be together forever.
He’d be fine for a little while. He’d calm down and believe the bullshit that was coming from my lips. Then out of nowhere he would freak out again and hit me, telling me he knew I’d leave him as soon as I left the house.
And I did.
I didn’t tell Sterling all of this, didn’t know where to start. Although I wanted to be honest, I also knew it would just upset him more.
And then I’d gotten free.
I had jumped in my car and headed back home to the town I had told myself I’d never return to. To the place my father always controlled me, giving me reason to want to get away as soon as possible . . . to feel free for the first time in my life.
But I knew I needed to get back to Sterling, because Kevin won’t stop. His love for me is sick; an obsession he can’t control.
Obsessions are dangerous and sometimes deadly.
I know that because that’s how my mother died. At the hands of my piece of shit father while he was drinking. He thinks I was too young to remember, but I’ll never forget that day. Not for as long as I live.
He denied to himself that it was his fault, covered it up with a lie that I think even he grew to believe himself, and if I had stayed with Kevin, I have no doubt, from the possessive look in his eyes, that Kevin would have done the same to me.
WYNTER
I try to go back to sleep, but as the heavy, deep and even breathing of Sterling almost lulls me to rest, all I can think about is my past.
I feel like I’ve fucked up so much in my life.
There is so much I wanted to do, wanted to see. The love I have in my heart is big, strong, and I almost wasted it on that piece of shit Kevin.
I sit up and bring the blanket around my body, this slight chill racing over me. Sterling shifts on the bed slightly, but he still seems asleep.
I stare at him for long seconds, wondering what he’s thinking, what he’s dreaming about.
Does he wonder about the life he could’ve had if he’d had a different childhood? Does he wonder where he would be right now if he’d left this town?
I stand and walk over to the bathroom, the blanket still wrapped tightly around me. I turn the light on and stare at myself in the mirror, the person looking back at me a reflection of what I’ve let myself become.
Dark messy hair is scattered around my face. My eyes look wide, the bags under them noticeable.
Taking a small breath, I drop the blanket and grab the hem of my shirt, pulling it up so my stomach is exposed. There are bruises along my pale flesh, a reminder of what Kevin did.
They’ll heal, the physical memory gone, but I’ll always remember. I’ll have that scar inside of me forever.
I don’t know how Sterling or the other brothers have gone through it, or lived their lives. They have gone through so much, worse than I have in these last three days, but they are still surviving.
Closing my eyes, I let the shirt drop back down and brace my hands on the counter, breathing out roughly. Can I actually go through with this? Can I actually have Sterling go find Kevin and hurt him the way he hurt me?
The more I think about it, the more dangerous—maybe even petty—it sounds. But there’s a part of me that wants revenge, wants Kevin to know that there are bigger, stronger people ou
t there who won’t let him hurt people, hurt women.
There’s a part of me that wants blood drawn, wants Kevin to feel what I felt.
“Are you okay?”
I glance over at Sterling, who is leaning against the doorframe. He’s still shirtless, his big arms crossed over his chest. His biceps are bulging, his tattoos on display. I stare at the scars, wanting to ask him about how he feels, but knowing better.
Sterling is not the type of man who will open up easily, if at all.
“Yeah, I’m okay.” It’s partially a lie, but the truth is I think I will be fine.
Even if I hadn’t come here and asked Sterling for help, this part of me, deep down, knows that I’ll get through this.
I have no choice but to survive.
STERLING
I let her walk past me and back to my bed. I can’t sleep, haven’t been able to once I was lying beside her. I listened to her sleep, listened to the steady breathing of her respirations.
She calms me, whether she ever knows that or not.
She sits on the edge of the bed and I move next to her. I reach out and stroke her back with my hand, wanting to comfort her, to fucking feel her.
“You don’t seem okay,” I say stiffly.
She shakes her head, but glances at me.
“I’m fine, just tired on the inside and out.” She smiles at me and it lights up my fucking life.
It’s the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve seen in a long damn time in this dark and fucked-up life I’ve been living.
“We’ll handle that motherfucker. Don’t worry. He won’t ever hurt you again.” I feel my anger start to rise again at the thought of that prick. “That’s a fucking promise I don’t intend to break, no matter what hell I have to face.”
She swallows, keeping her gaze down at her lap. “A part of me thinks maybe I’m selfish for coming here, for asking for you to help me. I hate that I’m doing this to you. Maybe I . . .”
“Don’t.” I pull her in for a hug, holding her close, keeping her against my chest. She smells like me, and that has the possessive side of me rising up like a violent fucking beast.
Savage Locke (Locke Brothers, 2) Page 2