by Sophie Oak
Ben huffed, his hand scrubbing through his hair in apparent frustration. “If you couldn’t handle that, how the fuck do you expect to survive in a hard-core underground club where Chase and I have to look like badass Doms? It was a test to see if you could handle it and you can’t.”
She’d fucked up. Brutally. Finally. She wasn’t ready for anything. She wasn’t ready for them. Not ready to help. Not ready to love. She’d gone right back to that nasty place she’d been in for years because now she realized she’d never left that cage. Her body was walking around, but everything that mattered about Natalie Buchanan was still trapped in a cage, and she couldn’t get out.
“Well, I can’t handle some prick pushing me around, so I guess Chase is done with me. He can’t handle a girl he can’t put on a leash.” Why did that shit keep coming out of her mouth? She didn’t mean it, but she couldn’t stop. She’d fucking failed. She hadn’t even thought to ask what he was doing. He’d been nothing but kind to her and she hadn’t thought to ask him why he was being a jerk. Hell, he’d told her he was testing her, and she’d just pushed on like she needed to find some boundary behind which the Dawson brothers could neatly be hidden away.
Then she wouldn’t have to come out of her cage.
Ben shook his head, his eyes narrowing in pain. “Fuck, I can feel him. Do you understand that? I can feel his fucking pain, and it’s like a damn knife in my heart. He might look like he doesn’t give a shit, but he is howling on the inside because he loves you.”
He couldn’t love her. She wasn’t lovable. She was too fat. She wasn’t obedient. She was a dumb bitch.
God, she could still hear him.
But now she could also hear another voice. Two, really. Sweet. She was so sweet. She was lovely and sweet like cotton candy.
“I’ll send Logan to drive you back. I can’t look at you anymore.” Ben closed his eyes as though trying not to cry. “He’ll still protect you, you know. I won’t have to ask. That’s what he meant by the op is still on. I’m going to call and get someone down here who can go undercover. We’ll end up spending thousands of dollars because neither one of us can stand the thought of you going to jail. You remember that when you go to sleep alone tonight. We would have loved you, Natalie.”
He stalked off but not in the same direction as his brother. He had his phone in hand, already dialing.
Nat put her hand over her mouth because all she wanted to do was scream.
“Do you want me to drive you home?”
She started, turning. Logan Green stood there. At some point he’d come back and likely he’d heard everything that had happened.
Home? She didn’t have a fucking home. She had a place where she slept and forced herself to eat, and where she struggled to not take a knife to her skin.
She wouldn’t. She would never do that again. She was past it because she’d met two men, and she didn’t need it anymore. It would be a betrayal of them.
Of course, she’d already betrayed them the minute she’d decided they were the same as the criminal who had nearly killed her.
“Don’t worry about it.” Logan stood still, not a muscle of his body moving. “You’re not ready. It’s no big deal. They’ll get over it. So will you.”
Would she? Her brain was still a little foggy. What was she doing? She needed to get out of here before Ben decided to come back and lecture her again. “I have to get my purse.”
It was in the guesthouse—where Chase had gone.
“You’re going to have to actually move if you want to get your purse.” Logan crossed his arms over his massive chest.
“Could you go get my purse?” She couldn’t leave without it. Her little apartment had been trashed. Ben and Chase had immediately gone out and bought her a few things she’d needed like a toothbrush and toiletries and some clothes. They had taken care of her.
“No. If you want it, go get it.” Logan stared at her, those green eyes unmoving.
Bastard. “I’ll get it later.”
She started to move toward the door, but Logan’s voice stopped her. “I want to know how long.”
She turned. Her head was a mire of misery, and she had an aching certainty that she was still making a mistake. “What do you mean?”
His eyes avoided hers. “How long has it been for you because you’re still twelve kinds of fucked up, and I want to know how long because I don’t know if I can stand it much longer. I want Georgia. Fuck, I want her so bad I can taste her. If I was the same guy I was a year ago, I would have charmed my way inside her by now.”
“I don’t see why you wanting Georgia Dawson means we can’t leave.”
“Because I want her like hell on fire and I won’t touch that woman because I’m toxic on the inside, and I want to know how long this fucking thing lasts. How long before I feel like a whole person again? How long before I get to be me again? I have to know.” Logan’s voice came out in a tortured growl. “Because I just watched you throw away a whole lot. Chase is hard and he got soft for you. I don’t think he’ll ever open up again. That’s why I can’t touch that girl. I won’t hurt her the way you just crushed him.”
A little sob escaped. How long? He’d asked how long and she thought she knew the answer. Forever. She was irreparably broken, like a dish someone had brutally tossed to the floor and shattered into a thousand pieces. No one had thought to sweep her up and throw her away so she continued to cut up the people who came in contact with her.
How long?
Until she finally gave in and gave herself that final cut that allowed her to float away.
Or until she decided to not take it anymore. Not from a dead man. Not from herself. Logan asked how long before he got to be himself again.
“I don’t think we get to go back.” Nat wiped her eyes. She wasn’t sure what had happened to Logan, but the pain was etched in his eyes, in the lines of his face. Chase had told her he was young, barely twenty-five, but he seemed so much older as though agony had aged him before his time. “We can’t be the people we were before.”
But maybe she could find a new normal.
“I don’t like who I am now,” Logan said starkly.
Nat didn’t much like herself, either, and there was only one way to fix that. “I need to see him.”
Logan nodded. “Please do. Please show me you can change because I’m becoming certain that I can’t. I can play the happy guy on the outside, but I’m still screaming. It’s just no one hears me. I can’t let them.”
She understood. Logan wasn’t ready to share what happened. He hadn’t found someone to share that burden with. But Nat had. She just had to pray that she hadn’t ruined everything.
She loved them. She loved Chase and Ben. She needed them.
* * * *
Chase sat down at his computer and started running files, his fingers flying across the keys. Work. Work was what he needed. Calming, interesting work. Work had always been his refuge. Ever since he was a child, he would sink into a problem and let his mind roam free, logic and not emotion being his haven. Work had never ripped his heart straight out of his body and stomped on it with pretty little feet. Work had never made him feel idiotic and helpless.
He’d come across the yard to the guesthouse hoping he could get away from her, but he could still feel her eyes on him, accusing him of all manner of crime. The small space in the dining room of the guesthouse wasn’t far enough to run.
He’d pushed her hard, but how else could he convince her she couldn’t do this job? Taking her in with them would be a death sentence. The brown sedan had convinced him of that.
Someone at that club had put a tail on them. The minute they had pulled away, the brown car had slid out, like it didn’t mind that they knew it was following. It had been a warning to a smart man that they were watching. Ben and Chase could play their games, but the rules were harsh.
And then there was that wall of pictures. He’d noticed it as they were walking out, drugs stashed neatly away. The bartender
had been welcoming once they’d flashed a bunch of cash. They’d been given the dope they wanted and promised more pleasures once Cooder had checked them out. Then Chase had looked up and been assaulted by a pictorial history of Wispers, crap-ass rural strip club. It was a wall of pinned-up snapshots of drunk men partying with the girls of the club. The higher-up photos were Polaroids, and the ones closer to the bottom looked like they had been taken off phones and printed from a computer.
Chase hadn’t had time to study them all, but he’d looked at them while Ben was getting the car, carefully storing them away in his memory for later perusal. A few seconds were all he needed to memorize them and to know that something was off.
Yes, that was what he needed. He needed something to get his mind off the way Natalie had looked at him.
Unfortunately, his eidetic memory would have that vision stored away forever. Big green eyes wide with horror and anger as he’d pushed her past her limit. When he’d reached for her, she’d fought. He’d wanted to pull her close and beg her forgiveness and she’d clawed and scratched at him like he was trying to kill her.
He closed his eyes and concentrated. The pictures. There was something about them. The sooner he figured the problem out, the better. The sooner he got Natalie off the hook for murder and safe from whoever did the deed, the sooner he could go back to Dallas, crawl into his nice little shell, and never come out again.
He would support Ben. The next time Ben found a woman he was interested in, Chase would be nice to her and take care of her so Ben could have the family he wanted. Chase would be fine being the second cock, only taken out for bedroom fun because it was far easier to deal with that humiliation than the horrible ache he felt in his gut now.
She would never have to know that he loved one woman and she was so far from him he could never have her. The one woman he wanted was the one who could never accept what he needed.
Concentrate. Why couldn’t he fucking concentrate? He could always concentrate. It was what he did. He could filter out everything else and focus even when the world was exploding around him. Several black ops teams and the CIA had tried to recruit him for his skills. He was cold and nothing ever got to him. He could memorize a battlefield and know its strengths and weaknesses in mere seconds. He could assassinate a man without a second thought.
One girl with pink hair and a shy smile blew all those talents right out of the water and now he was just like the rest of the men of the world, unable to think about anything but a woman.
She was his Delilah and somehow, without even sleeping with her, she’d cut all his powerful hair right off and left him weak and helpless.
“Hey, brother, are you all right?”
Chase kept his eyes closed. The last thing he needed was Ben’s sympathy—or worse, his anger. Ben was crazy about her, too. “I’m fine. I’m thinking.”
“Don’t you think we should talk?”
His brother always wanted to talk. Talk was overrated. Burying shit deep down until he no longer acknowledged the pain—that was what worked. “There’s nothing to talk about. She failed the test. We need someone else. I doubt they’ll let us in without a female. You know how clubs work.”
“I know how you work. Come on, Chase. We need to get down there. She got spooked. She’s going to leave.”
And that would be for the best. “Have Logan take her back. Can we get back to the case? Something was off about that club, and I can’t put my finger on it. I saw something. I just need to figure out what it was I saw. And we need to rerun the background checks on every single employee at that spa, including the suspect’s closest friends. Pay close attention to the other massage technicians. They would have had keys or had access to keys to the massage rooms.”
“Suspect, Chase? Really?”
He opened one eye. “I’m distancing. I suspect you should do the same.” A terrible thought hit him. “Unless you’re planning on pursuing her alone. She probably isn’t as mad at you. You might have a shot.”
His brother frowned. “I agreed with you. I agreed with Jack. You did exactly what you needed to do. You had to find out how she would react to strong control, to control that didn’t feel fair. We can’t walk in there and spend all our time tiptoeing around our submissive. Even if she could handle the two of us, how do we know how she’ll handle watching other subs with even tougher Doms? Now we know she would have likely gone commando on everyone, and we all would have been killed.”
“I know.”
Chase’s eyes flew open because that hadn’t been Ben. Natalie stood in the doorway to the dining area on the first floor of the guesthouse. She’d washed every bit of makeup off her face and looked fresh and so fucking young and fragile it hurt him to look at her.
It really hurt him. She’d hurt him. Not in a little tiny “hey, I don’t like you like that” way, but in a gut-wrenching “my world is fucking over without her” way. He’d never been in love before, and now he realized that might be a good thing. Love hurt.
“I’m not ready to go into something like that.” Her green eyes were wide as she shifted from one bare foot to the other. “I need more time. I need to work through it and it won’t go fast, but I want to be better.”
Ben walked straight up to her, pulling her into his arms. She went up on tiptoes and wrapped her arms around Ben. Her eyes closed as though she’d been afraid of her welcome.
So she’d figured out they weren’t really pricks. Well, Ben wasn’t. Ben would have come up with something else. Chase was the one who went straight for her weak spot.
She was his weak spot. Chase wasn’t sure he wanted a weak spot.
“Are we all right, baby?” Ben asked, putting his head to hers.
“I want to be,” she whispered. “I want you to forgive me. I’m so sorry I said the things I did. I wasn’t talking to you two. Not really. I went to someplace bad. I know it sounds stupid, but it was like I was back there for a minute.”
Ben’s arms tightened. “It doesn’t sound stupid at all. Your therapist would probably kick our asses for doing that, but she would also agree that you had to see that you couldn’t go in.”
“Forgive me.” Her voice sounded small, plaintive.
Ben’s lips found hers. “Always. Now, I’m going to make some arrangements. We want to get this whole thing over with as soon as possible so we can concentrate on the good stuff. You need to fix him, Natalie. Please. Whatever he says, know he’s crazy about you. I know. I can feel it.”
Ben, his weasel, dick-crap-faced, turncoat-for-a-little-pussy brother, gave him a grave smile. It was his “don’t fuck this up” smile. He turned and walked out of the room. Chase heard the front door close.
“Do you want to go to dinner? I’ll sit at your feet. It might start making up for the whole Warrior Princess routine I went through. I have to apologize to Jack, too.” Nat stayed where she was, wary and on edge. Her eyes slid away from his.
He turned back to his computer. Ben might be ready to jump right back in, but he needed some time. He didn’t like the knowledge that one small woman could have so much fucking control over him. Ben could take care of her. Maybe in time, he could be the second dick.
Fuck, no. He couldn’t do that. Not with Natalie.
“I’m not really hungry anymore, Natalie. You can go. Ben will take care of you. I have some work to do.” He glanced back at his computer, unwilling to show her a moment of his emotions. It never did him any good. He was shit at expressing them. He was shit at handling them.
He had to face a few facts. He wasn’t built for the emotional crap. He was built to solve problems, and Natalie needed that, too. He’d thought for a minute in there that he could handle it, that she was the one, but he had to face facts about himself. Some men weren’t built for intimacy.
“He constantly told me how ugly I was.” Natalie moved closer, her hands together, wringing a little as she spoke. “It didn’t matter how hard I tried. I get that it wasn’t about me. He said that as a control mechanism,
to break me down. But I tried really hard this afternoon. I never wear makeup. I don’t bother. Today, I wanted to look pretty for you.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. And fuck. He was not going to give in. He was going back where he was comfortable—in his nice little shell. Screw happiness. He didn’t need this shit. God, he couldn’t leave her standing there. Despite every cell in his brain screaming at him to dismiss her, the words just came out. “You’re always beautiful, Natalie.”
“You make me feel that way.”
“I didn’t today.”
She sighed. “I understand why. Tell me something. Did you like it?”
He couldn’t look at her. The images on his computer screen didn’t make sense, though. They were watery. What the fuck was wrong with his eyes? “I didn’t. I like the way you look, Natalie. You’re my type. I didn’t like the dark hair on you, and I didn’t like not seeing the real color of your skin. Like I said, I have a type.”
Let her think it was just about looks.
She did that snorting thing that he would have found obnoxious on other women and he kind of loved with her. “Yeah, that must have been hard for you, Chase. No wonder you’re single. Pink hair. Pale skin. Tongue ring. Small breasts. Big old ass. You have very specific tastes.”
“I’m picky.”
“You are. You are the pickiest man I’ve ever met.” She moved beside him. She was right there, but he couldn’t reach out to her. “You’re also the kind of man who would risk what he wanted in order to protect it. Or her. I know you’re the kind of man who would stand there while a crazy woman punches him. Is your eye okay?”
She was seriously overestimating her own strength. “I barely felt it. It’s not something you should worry about.” His whole soul had ached as she’d hit and kicked out at a foe who was no longer alive. She’d fought so hard. And he’d been the one who represented everything that had gone wrong in her life. He would always be the hard-ass, the nasty Dom.
A hand touched his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
He moved the chair, getting out of her touch. He couldn’t stand it. He wanted her so fucking bad, and now he knew he couldn’t have her. “Don’t be, Natalie.”