Dirty Ties

by Pam Godwin

  She laughed. “No.”

  Sunlight reflected off her profile as she lowered her eyes to her bare feet, her dark blonde lashes resting against her cheek. “Then there’s the steadfast, reliable love. A solid foundation that withstands time and hardship. The kind you protect with your life.”

  The absent tilt of her lips told me more than her words did. This was how she loved him, and I didn’t know what to make of that.

  A lock of hair fell against her cheek, blocking my view of her expression. I leaned a shoulder against the window, facing her, and brushed the golden strands behind her ear.

  She closed her eyes and touched her brow to the glass. “The strongest love begins from a place of conflict. It’s a volatile journey of committing and fighting and recommitting, but the effort is resolute and evolves into something so consuming the heart aches just thinking about it.” Her chest rose and fell with the cadence of her voice. “A soul-deep fusion of two bodies where there is no room for emptiness.”

  Her longing was beautiful and poignant, one I felt in every painful beat of my heart, filling me with a possessive need to be the man who gave her that kind of happiness.

  Her gaze lingered on mine, a flush sweeping over her face, an embarrassed smile twitching her lips. She shrugged. “You asked.”

  We stared at each other for a quiet moment. No words or touching, but the atmosphere hummed with all the questions that hadn’t been answered.

  The messenger bag on the floor held proof that my intentions were earnest and very personal. It was time to show her everything I gave her parents, and her reaction would dictate how I would proceed from there.

  But I needed some questions answered first. “What are you doing with the information Hal Pinkerton sends you?”

  Her breathing quickened, and tension stiffened her posture. “What?”

  “You’re using the schematics to attend the underground races. What else are you doing with it?”

  She clenched her jaw. “How do you know about that?

  “I know a lot of things about Trenchant’s dirty ties. Answer the question, and I’ll tell you.”

  Her fists went to her hips. “Obviously I’m not reporting it in the papers or turning it over to the cops. I just like to watch.”

  Part of me believed she used to go to watch me. “Why is Trent logging onto the server where Jenna is retrieving the files?”

  Her eyes widened in frozen pools of blue, and seeing that loosened my shoulders with tremendous relief. Her shock wasn’t only authentic, it confirmed my suspicions. She was in the dark about Trent’s dealings. At least, with regard to the underground racing network.

  I walked the few steps to my messenger bag. Picking it up, I gestured to the chair. “Have a seat.”

  She sat, watching me with a cautious expression. I lowered into the chair perpendicular to hers and removed the folder from the bag. It was harsh, but I wouldn’t prepare her. I simply set the packet on her lap and studied her reaction with breathless concentration.

  As she read the first page with a dazed stare, I knew Trent hadn’t shared the details of my blackmail with her. Her hand shook through the next page. Several pages later, the blood drained from her face, her chest heaved, and her elbows pressed against her sides.

  Fraud, laundering, embezzlement, rape, murder. The papers trembling in her fingers were bloodied with the crimes of her family.

  As she flipped through the pages, I felt her pain as if it were my own. I felt her fist clenched against her stomach, the quiver in her chin, the droop of her shoulders. Aching to comfort her, I shifted forward and reached a hand toward her knee.

  She flinched. “No. Just…” Her voice cracked, her palm out, warding me off. “Don’t.”

  During that agonizing fragment of time, I saw the mother who taught me how to power through my childhood hurts. Who flew her bike over eighteen-wheelers and nearly died from a launch between two thirty-foot buildings. Who died instead from the evil that was hurting Kaci now.

  Her voice cut through the dark smudge of memory. “This is what you used to blackmail the board?”

  She didn’t have the orange confidential envelope I’d shown Trent. “Mostly, yes.”

  Head down, she stared at the folder in her lap. “But they denied it, right?”

  I wasn’t surprised by the hope in that question. Slowly, I reached for her face, and this time she didn’t cringe. I tilted up her chin so I could see her eyes. “They couldn’t. The truth is all there.”

  She leaned away from my touch. “Are you a cop?”

  I shook my head.

  Angling away, she stared into the sunrise, the back of her hand trembling against her brow and shielding the glare. “This is personal for you.”

  I hadn’t intended to tell her the true reason behind my blackmail, only to show her the evidence I’d given her family and evaluate her reaction. But nothing about Kaci Baskel fit into my plans. Despite all logic, I trusted her. “This is deeply personal.”

  Her beautiful face twisted in misery, her mouth flickering between a pained smile and a heartbreaking grimace. She was shocked, scared, haunted.

  Undeniably innocent.

  Which meant her definition of justice would strongly oppose mine. “We’re not going to the cops. Do you understand?”

  She dropped her hand and skewered me with a fierce glare. “No. I don’t think I do.”

  The lines of her face were delicate and exquisitely shaped, even as they sharpened with anger and horror.

  Maybe she hadn’t leapt to the conclusion that I intended to murder her family, but some part of her must’ve known it was a possibility, and I needed her to understand why.

  I reached in the bag and handed her the orange envelope.

  I lowered the papers with frozen fingers and woodenly returned them to the orange envelope. The pressure in my chest felt as if I were being held underwater, my body weighted down by the crimes of my family, the documents I’d just read, and the connections my mind was racing to put together.

  The envelope Logan had saved till last was the tipping point. Medical records, DNA tests, proof of parentage, all of it made me hyper-aware of the stillness in the man watching me.

  He wasn't a man I could easily look away from, but knowing now who he was, the thought of meeting his gaze made me anxious. Would he look different to me? Would I see traits I hadn’t noticed before? Features that reminded me of Trent or Collin?

  I gathered my nerves, clenched my shaking hands, and raised my head.

  He hadn’t moved from his chair, sitting at a right angle to mine, studying me with deep golden eyes, the emerald rings around the irises intensifying his stare. Lips compressed in a line, his jaw the definition of stern. “Ask your questions.”

  Jesus, where to start? All the horrible things my family had done made me question my safety, made me question everything. What if they were listening? Watching us right now? The hairs on my nape bristled with paranoia. “This isn’t the place to talk.”

  He glanced around the room and back to me. “There aren’t any bugs. I already checked. If you and I met outside this office, it would cause suspicion.”

  Given the way he’d pulled off his blackmail, I trusted he knew what he was doing. But he wasn’t making decisions based on my best interests. He'd lied to me from the first day we'd met. I shouldn’t trust a word that came out of his mouth. But the documents he showed me? Of course, I'd verify them myself, but I knew enough about my family to know it was all true. That was something I could trust.

  I flattened the envelope on my lap and flexed my fingers. “Your mother and Trent…” How did I ask this? He’d just given me proof that Trent had a history of rape, and I knew firsthand the kind of vile harassment my father-in-law was capable of. “Were they lovers?”

  “No.” The quiet fury in his voice chilled a path down my spine. “He met her in LA thirty-three years ago. I was born a year later.”

  Trent was already married then. I rubbed my temples, t
ried to massage away the rising tension. “Collin and I would’ve been four-years-old.”

  He nodded, his face tightening. “She died when I was thirteen.” He looked away, staring hard out the window with so much anger etched in his rugged profile. “She kept a diary. Always had it with her. Not once did she write about her interactions with Trent. But it included journals about her lovers.” He met my eyes. “My mother was a lesbian.”

  My chest caved in as I filled in the blanks. Then another thought, a recent memory with a different man, brushed the back of my mind. I’m very angry with my mother. She didn’t leave me by choice. Left me with nothing but this anger.

  Before I could examine that, he handed me another paper, a news article. I didn’t want to look at it, unsure how much more I could handle.

  When he gave an impatient nod at the clipping in my hand, I unfolded the tattered edges and read silently.

  The body of Motorcycle Hall of Fame’s Maura Flynt found in an Ohio hotel room.

  Hotel staff discovered her body on the bed, her throat cut, and a large butcher knife on the pillow. At the time staff arrived, the body was cold and had evidently been dead some time.

  There was more, but the words blurred together, forming gruesome images that bled their way into my throat, my eyes, my heart.

  “I was there.” His voice rasped from a couple feet away, yet he sounded so distant, lost in a different time and place. “I watched it happen, hidden beneath the bed.”

  I couldn’t breathe as the words shaved away a layer of his coarse exterior, giving me a glimpse of the vulnerable boy in that hotel room. His shoulders curled forward, his chin tucking. It was a brief glimpse. He quickly straightened his spine, and the uncompromising set of his jaw returned.

  Part of me hated my weakness for him, but dammit, I didn’t want him to hide from me. I wanted to see him, the man who was so much more than a deceptive one-night stand. He’d been open about his reasons for betraying me, forcing me to look at the harsh reality without sugarcoating his role in it. But it was his regret for hurting me that weakened the wall between broken trust and second chances.

  Oh, I was still hurting, and that pain was magnified by the choices I had to make with regard to my family. But I put that aside and let the thump of my heart pull me forward.

  I set the documents on the floor, rose from the chair, and slid onto his lap. His arms folded around my waist with an intimacy that was familiar yet so different than our night together. It was an exchange of vulnerability, a difficult gift to give, but one that could make a person realize what it was they really needed.

  Sitting sideways on his lap, I pushed my hands through the gelled-up hair above his ears and tipped his head so I could see his face. “Keep going.”

  He looked at me with shock then licked his bottom lip as if he wanted to kiss me. His eyes shut, opened. “My mother told me once to take her diary and disappear if anything ever happened to her.” He traced a finger along my bicep, watching the movement with unfocused eyes. “So I did. Ended up on the streets in Chicago. Eventually got picked up and put in a boys’ home. I’d read her diary by then and knew I had to keep my identity a secret.”

  He was just a boy when he watched the slaughter of his mother. Forced into a nightmare of choices alone. God, I hurt with him, my breath tightening around the burn in my throat.

  To think Collin and I were raised by the hand responsible for his pain, yet we didn't suffer for anything except our parents love. Logan had to fight for everything. He put himself through MIT. Became the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Though he acquired the job—my job—through blackmail, he’d earned the qualifications required to lead. Really fucking amazing, actually.

  I lay my cheek on his shoulder, my arm around his chest, and listened to his rumbling voice as he detailed the contents of his mother’s diary, the leads she’d scraped together, and her plan to go after Trenchant.

  His hand moved to my leg as he talked, his thumb tracing the seam of my pants along my inner thigh. I bit down on my lip, trying and failing to ignore the flutter he produced inside me.

  He shifted deeper into the chair, pulling my side closer to his chest. “Trent didn’t know he had another son until I gave him that envelope five days ago. I have no idea if he shared the news with your family.”

  Collin would’ve told me if he knew. “Why did you tell him you’re his son? He has no loyalties to his family. No qualms about sending Collin to prison.”

  The natural arch of his right eyebrow twitched. “I presented myself as the bastard son who feels entitled to his father’s wealth and power. It was a motivation for my blackmail, one he relates to and therefore doesn’t question.”

  When our gazes met, I saw the real reason he was here. The deep, angry pain beneath the shadowy lines of his brow. The need for revenge possessed him, controlled his life, and drove him to succeed.

  If Trent sent Collin to prison or had him killed, how far would I go to get even? Just thinking about it made me see Logan’s anger in a new light. The sense of loss I’d felt over the past five days paled in comparison.

  He had no one through his childhood hardship. I had Collin through my five-day scorn.

  But I didn’t have Collin in the way Logan was looking at me now.

  He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering on my jaw. “I’ll never grow tired of looking at you.”

  My eyes threatened to close, so I locked my concentration on the tension in his thighs under mine, the steady breaths pushing past his lips, and the swallow crawling beneath his tie. When I glanced up, the desolation and longing in his eyes reflected my deepest ache.

  An ache that he’d exploited to get what he wanted. A bitter thought whispered through my head. I could seduce him, use him for my own pleasure, and toss him away. Right now, I was the one with the power to hurt.

  But I didn’t want to add to the heartache in those molten-gold eyes. I’d rather challenge him. Tease him just enough then stand back and watch him burn. And maybe, just maybe, his burning need for me would turn into the fight he promised.

  I shifted my body to straddle his lap. His mouth opened immediately, reaching to take mine. I gripped his face, held my parted lips an inch from his, and gloried in the push and shove of our clashing breaths. His lips were so close they heated mine, but our mouths didn’t touch.

  The longer I held that tenuous inch between us, the harder our breaths pumped, neither of us relinquishing eye contact. His fingers dug into my hips, my muscles wincing from the punishment. But another sensation rolled through my body, an intoxicating heat, chasing away the cold emptiness that lived inside me.

  He pushed his face against the hold of my hands, trying to close that final inch. I leaned back when he shoved forward, a back and forth battle of open mouths and wet exhales, his desperation to kiss me a heady aphrodisiac. His body surrounded me with an invigorating warmth of energy, his chest so fucking hard I wanted to strip his suit and tie and worship the rough-hewn sculpture of his muscles.

  But I waited, made him wait, our breaths shallow and noisy as I drew it out, teasing him mercilessly. His cock stiffened against my inner thigh, the clutch of his hands on my hips unbearable. As he tried to lick my lips, his eyes filled with a storm of emotions, and at the forefront was wild, feral need.

  When his pelvis bucked beneath me, rocking me closer, I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold him off. I angled my head, smiled and, when his gorgeous eyes flashed, relaxed my grip on his face.

  He fell on me, his mouth hot and wet as it devoured mine, his tongue whipping past my teeth with an urgency that had my fingers twisting in his hair, yanking him away, and pulling him closer.

  Nothing about our attraction was reserved or tame. He was fire, and I was the fuel. We were angry and wanton, passionate and aching. Explosive.

  And cruel.

  I dropped my hands to his chest and pushed, breaking the kiss and gasping for air. “I don’t trust you.”

&nbs
p; His jaw clenched, his eyes fiery flames of determination. He nodded once. Then he was on me, his tongue thrusting violently past my lips, desperately fighting for me, for us. He dragged my hips tight against his, the steel length of his arousal grinding along my piercing. Electric sparks shot through my clit, coaxing my inner walls to clench hungrily.

  This was the man from the nightclub, the one who stole my breath with a mysterious glare, who set my insides on fire with a touch, and who fucked with his mouth and took what he wanted.

  I wanted to bite him, slap him, punch him again. More than that, I wanted to make him mine. I wanted his anger, his ferocity, his pain. To claim every part of him, fuse it with all of me, and make us a singular whole.

  I pulled back to look at him, but before I could catch my breath, he swooped in and stole it again with his hands on my jaw and his mouth sealed to mine. Mirroring his hold, I cupped his face, my thighs squeezing his waist. He kissed me tirelessly, tongues sparring, lips mashed together, deep-reaching and wickedly raw.

  My chest heaved against his, our hearts pounding with the rush of our breaths. A curling pressure swelled between my legs, and I jerked my hips, savoring the grind of his cock, wanting more. God, I wanted him.

  As his hands slid from my jaw to my neck, his mouth relaxed and a tender kiss flowed from the urgency. He took his time, his lips softening against mine, his tongue exploring with gentle licks. It was heated and thrumming with desire but also deeper, more expressive. Far more intense than any kiss that had come before it.

  The path of his fingers dipped along the lines of my throat, across my collarbones, and around the curves of my breasts over the short-sleeve sweater. I slid my hips forward, thrusting my chest against his hand, my lips burning from the heat of his mouth.

  I was breathless when he stopped kissing me. He leaned back, shoulders relaxed despite the heave of his chest. His hands slid to my waist, his thighs separating beneath my ass, his hard cock pressing against the throb between my legs.