by Shelly Bell
But now that she’d learned about the terrible things Keane had done, did she believe him?
Ryder gritted his teeth. “I doubt he’s ever loved anyone in his life. He believes because I’m his son that automatically means I belong to him. Like I have no will of my own and my sole reason for existing is to do whatever he tells me to do. If he had his way, I’d be just like him. A murderer without a conscience.”
“He’s wrong.” She climbed onto his lap and placed her palms on his cheeks. “You could never be anything like him.”
She pressed a soft kiss to his lips, her intention only to ease the anguished look in his eyes, but the moment their mouths connected, Ryder seized control and the kiss morphed from one of tender compassion to frenzied passion. He poured his desperation into her and she accepted it. Took everything he had to give and made it hers.
Holding her tight to his chest, he propelled her onto her back and braced himself over her. “How long do we have before Maddox wakes up?”
She quickly did the math in her head. “Maybe two hours?”
“I need you,” he said hoarsely.
“You have me. Whatever you need, I’m yours.”
It didn’t matter that they hadn’t been together long. Now that he’d trusted her with his most vulnerable thoughts, his darkest fears, she could admit the truth to herself.
She was totally and irrevocably in love with him.
She’d always be there for him.
Even after he broke her heart and left.
* * *
Jane believed him.
After years of trying to convince himself that his dream was only that—a dream—he’d finally admitted the truth out loud: He’d witnessed his father killing his mother.
But Jane had been wrong. Telling her about his recurrent nightmare hadn’t helped. Each word was like a bullet that ricocheted around inside of him, leaving an eviscerated mess behind.
With her generous spirit and tender heart, Jane alone had the power to heal him. In fact, it had already begun. Before her, he’d never wanted a family. Yet she and Maddox filled a void he hadn’t known he’d been missing. And now that he had them, he would never let them go.
The way she’d trusted him in the playroom and surrendered to him so completely had done as much for him as it had for her. He’d never expected to find serenity through Domination. But in breaking down Jane’s walls earlier tonight, he’d also broken down his own, walls he hadn’t even known existed.
He’d lied to her.
Dreama’s attack hadn’t triggered the nightmare, at least not directly.
It was knowing that it could have been Jane.
He wrapped his hand around his cock and slid it up and down her slit, getting himself nice and wet. Her eyes darkened with desire and she let out a little moan as he rubbed his cockhead in circles over her clit.
There were important words for him to tell her, important words that would change their lives forever, but tonight wasn’t the right time for them. Tonight he would have to settle for showing her.
“No restraints,” he said. “No toys. Just you and me. Let me make love to you.”
He wanted to fuck her bare, feel her tight heat gripping his cock, but as greedy as he’d admitted he was for her, it was something he refused to demand. One day when they both decided they were ready, he’d take her that way, over and over, with the intention of getting her pregnant with his child. He wasn’t going to miss out on watching her body change or hearing the baby’s heart beating for the first time. Not again.
At her nod of consent, he reached over to the nightstand and grabbed the condom off of it. He ripped open the package and unrolled it down his length, then with his hands behind her thighs, placed her legs around his waist.
He took his sweet time sliding into her, memorizing all the sights and sensations of the moment. She was so hot inside, he could feel it through the rubber. Wet, too, the sound of his dick moving farther into her mingling with their panting breaths. And she was so fucking tight, it was as if he were taking her virginity all over again.
When his cock glided over a certain spot, she moaned and dug her fingernails into the skin of his back.
He smiled at her responsiveness. She held nothing back during sex. Instead, she made it so damned easy to find what pleased her the most. And pleasing her…pleased him. There was power from making someone come, and when it was Jane, it took it to a whole other level. She arched her back and bit her lip, her reactions pure and innocent. Only she wasn’t so innocent, was she? And no one else would ever know that because it was all for him. No one else would ever get to take the gift of her virginity because he’d stolen it for himself. Twice.
There was so much to teach her, so many things to do to her, with her, and he couldn’t wait to begin.
Starting now.
Vanilla sex didn’t mean boring.
He shoved his hands under her ass and tilted her pelvis up, then jerked her legs apart. “Better hold on tight to me because the ride’s about to get a bit rocky,” he warned.
She smiled up at him. “I can take it.”
He couldn’t wait to prove her wrong. “We’ll see. Keep those legs up or I won’t let you come.”
The second she opened her mouth to respond, he dragged his cock back over that spot again, over and over, faster and faster, until her eyes rolled back and closed. Her abdomen trembled underneath him as she neared her first climax. Refusing to blow until she’d come at least twice, he fought against the tingle behind his balls signaling his own impending orgasm.
He didn’t have to wait long before she was rocked by climax number one.
Her core quivered around his dick, and she burrowed her face into his neck to muffle the sound of her cries. Again and again, her walls clamped down on him, each time making it more and more difficult to hold back.
“One,” he counted smugly, causing her to open her eyes.
For the next hour, he made love to her relentlessly. On her back. Her stomach. Her knees (his personal favorite). All the while, he had to think about baseball and politics to keep himself from coming. But he was rewarded greatly for his delayed gratification. Four orgasms and counting, Jane was a writhing, moaning, sticky mess.
“No more, Ryder,” she said, whimpering. He currently had her bent over the bed and was slamming into her from behind. “I can’t come again.”
“One more time.” He reached around to pluck her clit. “We’ll go over together this time.”
Slamming into her, he finally allowed himself to let go. Only a few thrusts later, when she pounded the mattress with her fist and said, “I’m coming,” did he close his eyes and bask in the sensation of her swollen pussy gripping around him.
Low in his belly, a storm grew out of control and his balls drew up tight to his body. White-hot ecstasy shot down his spine and up through his cock as spurt after spurt of come filled the condom.
Fuck, he couldn’t remember a time he’d climaxed so hard.
Both of them were slick with sweat.
He picked her up and carried her across his room to the bathroom. “Let’s take a quick shower before Maddox gets up.”
She curled her hand around the back of his head. “I could get used to this.”
His chest was bursting with unspoken emotion.
Now was the time. He couldn’t hold back any longer.
“Jane. I—”
Her cell phone rang, the noise freezing him in his tracks.
Their eyes met as they both realized there was something wrong. It was five o’clock in the morning.
Dreama.
TWENTY-THREE
The hospital was quiet in the early morning hours. Jane hadn’t seen a single doctor as she and Ryder took the elevator up to Dreama’s floor or walked down to her room. The silence made the sound of their footsteps on the linoleum sound much louder than normal. It was jarring. She felt as though she and Ryder were starring in some B horror movie and the psycho villain with the chainsaw
was about to attack.
Guess that wasn’t far off from the truth.
Only the psycho in this particular movie wielded a baseball bat.
After receiving the phone call from the hospital an hour ago that Dreama was awake and requesting to see her, Jane had jumped into the shower—alone—and quickly got dressed while Ryder gave Maddox a bottle. Ryder showered next and drove them in her car to the hospital. In his carrier, Maddox had already fallen back to sleep.
Once in the waiting room, she handed Maddox to Ryder and went over to speak to Dreama’s parents, who were sitting in the same chairs as last night. A few empty coffee cups and candy bar wrappers littered the small table beside Mr. Agosto.
“How is she?” Jane asked Mrs. Agosto, bending down to give her a hug. The Agostos appeared as if they’d managed to age a decade over a few hours. Their eyes were bloodshot and both of them were drawn, their wrinkles more apparent with their paler skin.
Jane didn’t want to imagine what they were going through.
“The doctor said she’s stable. Whatever the hell that means,” Mrs. Agosto muttered, sounding eerily like Dreama. “She woke up for a few minutes and asked for you, but she’s been unconscious ever since.”
“How did she take everything?”
Jaw tense, Mrs. Agosto glanced at her husband. “I don’t know. My pigheaded daughter refused to see us. Refused to see anyone.” She stood to her full five-foot frame. “Anyone but you.”
“What?” Shock blasted through Jane and her hands began to tremble. Ryder came over and put his arm around her waist, giving her support. “Why would she only want to see me?”
“Other than Isabella, you’re her best friend,” Mrs. Agosto said. “Sure, my daughter and I talk every day. We’re close. But there are things a girl doesn’t always want to tell her mother. And Isabella…she experienced her own tragedies. Dreama admires your strength…and your compassion. She might put on a good show, but inside, she’s still a scared little girl who hides under the bed whenever she hears an unfamiliar noise. I’m afraid…” Raising a hand to her mouth, Mrs. Agosto choked on a sob. “I’m afraid she won’t deal with this well. There are things she went through as a child…things we never mention…How many challenges should a person be given in one lifetime?”
Mr. Agosto took his wife into his arms, as she could no longer hold back the tears.
Jane saw the question in Ryder’s eyes. What had Mrs. Agosto meant when she said Dreama had gone through challenges? Her friend had never mentioned anything negative about her childhood other than having two overprotective parents.
She took Ryder’s hand and squeezed. “I’m going to go see her. Maddox should—”
“I’ve got Maddox.” Ryder jutted his chin toward the exit. “Go. Dreama needs you.”
On a nod, she let go of his hand and gave the Agostos a weak smile. The walk to Dreama’s room was like trudging through three feet of snow. Exhausting and hard. Her legs were so wobbly she could barely remain upright. But her friend needed her and she wouldn’t let her down. Especially now.
Jane’s pulse roared in her ears as she entered Dreama’s room, but a steady beeping automatically replaced it. Lying in the bed, Dreama looked better than she had the last time Jane had seen her.
But not by much.
Her battered face was swollen to twice its normal size and her skin was bruised to a grotesque purple. They’d set casts on both arms and both legs and effectively immobilized her by a pulley that elevated all four limbs above her torso. Several wires hooked her up to a monitor that spit out second-by-second information. As she quietly tugged a chair to Dreama’s bedside, Jane couldn’t help the tears from spilling. Dreama might be the one lying in that bed, but Jane had never felt so helpless.
She plucked a tissue from the box on the metal tray that served as Dreama’s nightstand and collapsed in the chair.
“Hey, Chickie,” Dreama croaked. She sounded as if she’d swallowed sandpaper. Her lids were open, but her eyes were so bruised, they were narrow slits.
Jane popped out of her chair. “You’re awake.”
“How long have I been here?”
Didn’t she remember waking up earlier?
“About eighteen hours,” Jane told her. “The hospital called me and said you’d asked for me. I just saw your parents. They’re really worried about you. I know they’d love to come visit you.”
“No,” her friend said firmly. “I don’t want to see them.”
Now wasn’t the time to push away the people who cared about her. Dreama was going to need everybody’s help to get through the next few months as she healed. “Dreama—”
“How bad is it?”
Jane’s heart skipped a beat. No. She didn’t want to be the one to tell her. “How bad is what, sweetie?”
“What did that sicko do to me?”
Glancing at the door, she shuffled from foot to foot. “Maybe I should have the doctor—”
“No. I don’t want to hear it from someone who just sees me as another number in his win column. I need to hear it from you.”
Jane would rather break her own arm than have to tell her the news. She retook her seat and moved her chair so that Dreama only had to turn her head to the side to see her.
God, with Dreama in traction, Jane couldn’t even hold her hand. What kind of comfort could she possibly provide?
If it were her lying in that bed, she would want the whole cruel truth up front. Just blatant facts with no false promises of quick healing. The road ahead of Dreama would be a rocky one. Yet Jane had no doubt that Dreama would soon have to endure people who would minimize and dismiss her injuries with platitudes like “it could have been worse.”
After a long silence, Jane made up her mind. Right now, Dreama didn’t need the compassionate, motherly Jane. She needed the detached and professional one. “The doctor confirmed there was no sign of sexual assault. But you have a lot of broken bones. Arms, legs, nose, cheeks, ribs. You had internal bleeding. They removed your spleen and fixed your kidney…”
Even wearing the persona of workplace Jane, she couldn’t get the next words out. She had to look away from Dreama to keep herself from falling apart.
“What are you not telling me?” Dreama asked, knowing Jane all too well. “Come on, Chickie. I’m a big girl. I can take it.”
Life wasn’t fair. Dreama had never said one way or another whether she wanted children, but now the choice had been taken away from her by a monster with a bat.
Jane took a cleansing breath and gave it to Dreama straight. “In order to stop the internal bleeding, they had to do a complete hysterectomy,” she said quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “I’m sorry.”
Dreama turned her head away and looked up at the ceiling. “It is what it is.”
They sat together in silence as Dreama processed her injuries and the way her life had been changed forever. Jane wished there was more she could do for her. Some way to comfort her. There was no part of Dreama’s body that wasn’t broken or bruised and because of that, there’d be no hugs in Dreama’s immediate future. The only option was to comfort her with words. And Jane couldn’t even do that for her.
“What happened, Dreama?” Jane asked softly, not even knowing if Dreama was still awake. “Do you know who did this?”
As if she’d been prepared for the question, Dreama turned her head back to Jane and immediately began speaking. “I was sleeping, and you know how deeply I sleep, especially when I’m sick. But I woke up with my heart pounding and a feeling like something was wrong. I heard a noise from the family room, and I knew, I just knew, it wasn’t you. Noises like that are never good. I can’t describe it except to say it was like I knew evil had entered our home.” Her eyes watered as she paused to take a breath.
“But I still hoped that I was having some sort of cold medicine–induced paranoia,” Dreama continued. “I grabbed a baseball bat from my closet. And when my door opened to a man wearing a face mask and gloves, I swung that bat
like I was Ty fucking Cobb. But he grabbed that bat out of my hands so quickly, I almost could’ve believed he’d expected it. I managed to run past him, but I wasn’t fast enough. He hit me from the back and I fell.” Her tears streamed down her face and her scratchy voice was full of pain.
Jane didn’t want to hear the rest. But she knew her friend needed to say it. And she owed it to Dreama to listen.
“I thought he’d leave, you know?” Dreama asked, more to herself than to Jane. “Most burglars would’ve run out of there. But he kept hitting me. Over and over, so hard I thought he’d break my spine. There was a ten-second reprieve when I thought, ‘He’s gone. It’s over.’ Then with his foot, he rolled me over and looked down at me.”
She started shaking as the monitor’s beeping got faster. “I’m a parole officer. Some of my parolees are rapists and murderers. But this guy…I swear his eyes belonged to the devil. He was getting off on it. And then he started swinging again. I wanted to lose consciousness so badly, but I couldn’t escape it. I thought, ‘I’m gonna die. It can’t get any worse.’ And then…he got on top of me. He was gonna rape me, Jane. And I would’ve preferred death to that.”
Oh God. Jane swallowed the rising bile burning her throat. The attack was even more brutal than she’d thought. How did someone recover from something like that?
Dreama should have asked for Isabella, not Jane. Isabella would have known the right words. The right way to comfort her. All Jane could do was sit there and try to not throw up. “What stopped him?”
“His phone rang and it seemed to snap him out of whatever frenzy he was in. He answered the phone and told whoever was on the other end that he hadn’t found the SD card. And then he left.”
Jane choked on the bile that had risen into her throat.
The attacker had been looking for the SD card.
He’d been there because of Jane.
Because she had the SD card. And the attacker knew it.
She had to tell Dreama the truth. That Jane had led the attacker straight to their doorstep.