by Kate Pearce
“Name-brand rags. Well, go ahead and have your eyeful.” She nudged the fabric aside so her breast was in full view.
It was a brazen, teasing thing to do, and totally out of character, but she wasn’t in the mood to be cautious and careful. She was in the mood to be provocative. Maybe she’d get some answers that way. Being nice sure as shit hadn’t worked.
He kept his stare on the ceiling. “You really don’t want to do this. Don’t make this harder for me.”
“Harder for you?” She put her back against the window and pulled her right knee up onto the seat. “Why, my dear man, I do apologize for inconveniencing you by walking past your vehicle and begging you to carry me away. My, how thoughtless of me, not considering the distress my company would cause you.”
He sighed. “It’s for your own good.” He brought his gaze down and turned to her, but kept his eyes focused above her neck.
Well, she’d see how long that lasted.
She moved across the aisle and planted one hand on each of his armrests. Insinuating her knees between his spread legs, she leaned in slowly and gave him a view she knew he wouldn’t resist.
His Adam’s apple bobbed with his labored swallow and his gaze flitted downward.
She heard his sharp exhale as she skimmed her lips along his jaw and stopped just short of his earlobe.
“That wild streak of yours is going to get you into trouble,” he said.
“Much worse than I’m already in?” She flicked her tongue at the fleshy drape of his ear and pulled it into the clamp of her teeth before he could react.
She released it on a gasp when his strong fingers dug into the meat of her ass, startling her upright.
And then she was on her knees with his hands on her shoulders, pushing her down.
“Much more,” he whispered. He raked his fingers through the back of her hair and pushed her down even more. “I thought I warned you well enough back in the SUV. Maybe I was too subtle.”
Her nose was so close to his crotch that she saw his cock’s twitch.
“This is me being nice, Tess,” he said, still whispering. He loosened his grip on her hair, and rubbed her scalp with tender strokes. “This is because we have history and you deserve some kindness.”
“This? What is the this you’re referring to?” She pressed her cheek against his thigh and closed her eyes. She breathed him in, and moaned wantonly. He was so warm and earthy. All male and uniquely Harvey. She skimmed up his thighs, pausing when her fingertips skimmed his cock, and he grabbed her hair again, adjusting her head so her face angled toward his.
As his thumbs grazed her jawline, she whimpered, and struggled to focus on him. She’d gone lightheaded, and didn’t think it was from the plane’s air pressure or the drug working its way out of her system.
“I wanted to give you a choice, Tess. If it were up to me, you’d be mine, but I didn’t want you to feel obligated.”
“Yours?” she rasped, curling her fingers into the bunched fabric at his crotch. “What are you talking about?” She fingered his fly, and he nudged her hand away.
He dragged the back of his hand down her cheek and settled his palm at her shoulder. “They’ll explain everything when we land.”
Annoyance filled in the spaces in her brain where lust had been, and the fog slowly cleared. What the fuck was going on with her? With them? She’d been out of sorts ever since she’d woken up. Had to be the drugs.
Drugs were bad. She’d never so much as walk through a cloud of secondhand weed smoke again if they were going to fuck her up like this.
She grabbed his shaft and squeezed hard, twisting for added agony.
He clutched at her wrist.
“Explain it to me now,” she said through clenched teeth. “No more bullshit.”
A bell-like ping sounded over the intercom, and a modulated, calming female voice announced, “Folks, we’re approaching the landing strip and will be setting down in just a couple of minutes. Weather’s great and we’re looking at smooth landing conditions, but just in case, take a seat and buckle up for me.”
The ping sounded again, and the intercom turned off.
Harvey’s breathing became ragged as Tess squeezed harder. “Unhand me,” he said.
“Or else what? You’ll spank me?”
She didn’t care about the footsteps coming closer to the front cabin or the fact the plane was dropping in altitude in what seemed like a precipitous rate.
“Y’all abducted me, remember?” She wedged her outer hand in and grabbed his balls before he could stop her. “I was on my way home, minding my own business. I didn’t ask for this. Tell me now what’s going on here, or so help me God—”
The harpy with the tranqs leaned over Harvey’s seat back and cast Tess a withering look. “Nan’s not gonna be too happy if the first time she sees you is with you being hauled out of here unconscious over one of these guys’ shoulders, so I suggest you take your seat.”
“Lady, I couldn’t give a shit about your nan.”
“Oh, but you will, and if you’re lucky, she won’t psychically bulldoze you so you spend the next two weeks trying to recall whether you’re a person or a persimmon.”
“Have you been self-dosing with much better drugs than what you gave me?”
Harvey groaned. “Please, Tess. We’ll be on the ground in a couple of minutes. Everything will be clear before breakfast.”
There was a familiar earnestness in his voice Tess had known from long ago, and only because of that, she let go of him.
He didn’t wait for her to stand. He picked her up, turned her, gave her a hard swat on the rear that made her yip. Then he nudged her across the aisle.
He pushed her into her chair and fastened the buckle. Her ass smarted and face burned, but through her embarrassment, there was an odd sense of relief. She didn’t know relief of what, though.
He bent down to her level to whisper, “I know my place. Never doubt that. I’ll always defer to you because of your status, but let’s be clear on one thing.”
“Take your seat, Harvey,” the redheaded harpy barked.
Harvey ignored her. He kept his gaze locked on Tess’s and whispered, “The next time you grab my dick, you’d better be prepared for it, because I consider that an invitation. Trust me, sweetheart. You don’t know what you’re inviting.”
Oh, she had a good idea.
Her pussy throbbed and nipples tightened at his frank words, and she wanted very much to see her straight-laced friend dominating her in the way she needed.
She was tired of being the one in control all the time.
He fixed her shirt over her shoulder and straightened her neckline. “I suppose we’ll have to get you something more comfortable to wear when we land.”
She nodded, and he retreated to his seat.
He fastened his belt and the harpy behind him sank into her seat as well.
“We’re wired to like it rough, but the next time you want to instigate a bit of PDA,” she said, “don’t do it in front of your family. I’ll never be able to scrub my brain clean of it.”
Tess waited for Harvey to acknowledge the woman, but he just raised an eyebrow at Tess, waiting.
“What?”
“Your family, Tess.” He crooked his thumb to the folks seated behind them. “Not mine.”
This time when Tess’s cheeks burned hot, she pressed her forehead to the window and closed her eyes.
What the fuck?
3
Tess followed Harvey down the narrow staircase and into the cool night air.
Stars spangled a blue-black sky and the only sounds Tess could discern were ticking from the plane’s engines as they cooled and the thuds of their feet against the ground as they filed onto the tarmac.
She didn’t know what she expected to be waiting for her on the ground given the inauspicious start to the trip, but it wouldn’t have been a small, platinum-haired woman wearing a holey black D.A.R.E. shirt. Especially not one escorted by what seem
ed to be a living, breathing G.I. Joe doll—complete with camo gear and a big fucking gun. Tess was pretty sure that semi-automatic rifle wasn’t a toy.
“What in the hell…” she muttered and scanned the open desert behind them, then the tiny airport’s roof. No one else was around. “I’m pretty sure this is the way the Tantric Assassin graphic novel started. I’m going to be really freaked if a sniper’s bullet takes someone out. I wouldn’t mind inheriting a superpower or two, though.”
“You might get lucky with that last thing,” Harvey whispered as they came to a stop with the group.
“Really funny.”
The silver-haired woman twined her fingers in front of her belly and raised her chin to the new arrivals.
Harvey lowered his head briefly.
“How was the flight?” she asked airily. She rocked back on the heels of her—Air Jordans?—and kept her steely gaze locked on Harvey.
“Uneventful.”
The redheaded harpy cleared her throat.
“More or less,” he amended.
“Good.” She turned to the man in the beanie hat, and seemed to study him silently for a long while. Too long.
They were practically frozen with only their eyelids moving as they blinked and their chests rising and falling from breaths.
“What are they doing?” Tess whispered to Harvey.
“Talking.”
“Should I make myself a tinfoil hat and join the conversation?”
“You’re welcome to try, but I should warn you that tinfoil went out of fashion fifty years ago.”
“Ha ha. If you can hear them, what are they talking about?”
“You,” the harpy said in a tart tone that set Tess’s teeth to grinding.
Tess balled her hands at her fists and turned on her. “Look, you cantankerous harridan—”
“Whoa!” the older man edged between them with his hands up. He looked more amused than angry, and Tess filed that reaction away for later along with that info about private planes and security. “Okay, we started off on the wrong foot, but you two are going to have to learn to get along and fast.”
Harpy rolled her eyes. “I’ll do my job, Pop.”
“I don’t doubt you will, but I’d like you to do it with as little antagonism as possible, do you understand me?”
Harpy sighed. “Pop…”
“Nadia, I asked if you understood me.”
“Perfectly.”
How perfect could her concession be if it was given through clenched teeth?
Joe turned to the woman in the raggedy T-shirt. “May I?”
Tess couldn’t tell if he had disrupted the “conversation” between beanie cap guy and D.A.R.E. shirt lady, but the woman nodded and made a be-my-guest gesture.
“Thank you, Mom.”
Tess made lines in the little family tree in her head. Nadia was Joe’s daughter. Joe was the older woman’s son. Three generations. So, apparently, Tess’s abduction was a family affair.
Joe took Tess’s hands in his.
Her natural instinct usually would have been to pull away—to shake off his uninvited touch—but he felt familiar to her. Him holding her hands didn’t stir feelings of discomfort, but instead an odd sort of connectivity, and she tightened her own grip around him. Safe, he made her feel safe.
The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened as his smile broadened. Maybe it was that smile that was familiar. The way the muscles on the left side of his mouth dominated it, the way the cheekbones beneath his red beard hollowed as he grinned.
It was familiar because it was her grin when she was nervous or shy.
She dropped his hands as if they were hot potatoes. What the hell was going on? This had to be some trick—an elaborate set-up. She tried to take a step back, but Harvey’s solid form was in the way.
“No one’s going to deceive you Tess,” he whispered as if he’d been reading her mind. “I meant what I said on the plane. This is your family.”
“You look so much like your mother,” Joe said. “I could hardly believe it when I saw you.”
The turmoil in her gut surged up her chest. She put her hand against her pounding heart and closed her eyes. Cutting off that sense always made thinking easier. “Listen. You all have to excuse me for being skeptical, but for all I know, this is some well-rehearsed ruse. To what end?” She shrugged. “I don’t know, and I really don’t know why Harvey’s tangled up in it. We weren’t on great terms the last time we saw each other.”
“Tess, you can trust me. You know that,” Harvey said.
Sighing, she opened her eyes. “Put yourself in my shoes.”
“I was in your shoes earlier this year.”
Joe pressed his hands to Tess’s shoulders and turned her to him. “You were both born here in New Mexico. It took us this long to find you and bring you home. Harvey remembered a little about us. We hoped you would, too. Things would be easier if you did.”
Harvey’s expression had gone solemn. “Tess was younger, so she probably has limited memories. I was four. I don’t remember anything from when I was two.”
Convenient story. Of course she wouldn’t remember anything from toddlerhood. “Pretty sure I read this in that graphic novel, too. Found orphans are kind of a trope. Let’s see if I can guess what’ll happen next.” She tapped her index finger to her chin. “Oh, I know! You’ll drop some bombshells about my parentage, tell me a lot of sad things, and I’ll break down only to rise like a phoenix from my own metaphorical ashes. That sound about right?”
Joe cringed and turned to his mother. “Mom, I don’t know how to do this.”
“I’ve been ruminating over this for more than twenty years, Joey,” she said. “Even being who I am and with all the power at my disposal, I don’t have all the words for this.”
Tess waved at them. “Hi. Let’s start with the basics. Who are you? And what’s this power you speak of?” She made air quotes when saying “power.” After all, wasn’t New Mexico where all the kooks and conspiracy theorists lived?
Joe gave her shoulder a squeeze. She looked at him, and he tried to wear a smile for her. He was so nice. She hated herself for firing off all those bullets of sarcasm, but that had always been her protective mechanism. When she was so confused at what was happening around her, she could take people off guard with a little attitude, even when it wasn’t appropriate.
Maybe if she tried just a little harder to understand. No, to trust. Harvey had always looked out for her, and that would never change. The least she could do was not assume the worst.
She folded her arms across her chest and stared at Joe. She tried to see a lie in his expression, but she didn’t see any guile there. Just…pain?
That look took the wind out of her sails. She’d always been the kind of person who absorbed other peoples’ sadness as if it were her own, and that was yet another reason she valued her solitude.
Fuck.
“Your mother was the epitome of a brat,” he said. His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “From the day she was born, she gave me hell. She never stopped giving me hell, and she always smiled while she did it.”
His mother stepped forward and put a hand to Tess’s cheek. Before Tess could pull back, a stream of images she couldn’t turn off bombarded her brain. A redheaded woman and her dark-haired husband. One son, then two, and then a daughter, finally—one with dark hair like her father’s. Everyone held her. Her brothers. Her Uncle Joe. Her grandparents. Her father, and especially her mother. She’d fall asleep holding her as if she knew that putting her down meant losing her.
But, she had lost Tess. Then she died.
The images stopped and Tess opened her eyes to the group. “That wasn’t me. I don’t know what that was, but that wasn’t me,” she said softly and shook her head. A burn inched up her chest and her throat constricted around grief she shouldn’t have felt—not for a woman she’d been told abandoned her.
“It was you,” the older woman said. “You really don’t doubt th
at.”
Harvey pulled her in close and pressed her face against her chest. Rubbing her back, he whispered, “It’s okay to feel something. People expect you to.”
Another large hand added to the rub of her back. “I miss her terribly,” Joe said. “She was smart and funny and wise. She had a huge heart and an unquenchable enthusiasm about life, and she loved you so much. She would never have given you up, Contessa. None of us would have. You were stolen. You and others.”
“I… Wait.” Tess squeezed her eyes shut. Too many people. Too many words in too many voices. Too many thoughts and emotions, all at once, ping-ponging inside of her skull and refusing to settle down. So loud, so much discordance. She could take a punch like a champ, but this…
Tess didn’t have to wipe the tears away because Harvey’s shirt took them all. Solid as he was, though, his chest couldn’t muffle the sound of her wailing sob.
Harvey’s arms tightened around her, and he planted his lips against her hair. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Everything is going to seem more intense now that you’re here. You might feel like it’s going to break you, but it won’t. I promise.”
“This stinking runway isn’t the place to eulogize my daughter,” the older woman said. “Not even April would have found humor in this.”
All the connections settled into Tess in pieces.
April had been her mother. Joe was her uncle. The shrewish redhead, Nadia, her cousin. The woman in the D.A.R.E. shirt with the odd psychic gift was Tess’s grandmother. Sniffling, she pulled away from Harvey’s chest.
The older woman put a hand on either side of Tess’s face, but this time she didn’t pour thoughts or pictures into her. She just looked at her. She looked so tired—like she’d been awake for far too long and had seen too much. It wasn’t just the dark circles under her eyes, but every movement. Her posture was straight and elegant, but her hands had a slight shake, and her gait was stiff as if she feared her legs would fall out beneath her.
“You’re my grandmother,” Tess said. It sounded more like a question than a statement of fact, but Tess knew.