by Dani Wyatt
Tears spring to her eyes and I feel like I’m dying and coming to life all at the same time.
“Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?” I look down to see a tear in the shoulder of the pajama shirt and a bit of blood soaked into the fabric. Red clouds my vision in that moment, and if he was within reach right now I’d snap his fucking neck for touching her.
I’m going to snap his fucking neck no matter what. It’s a just a matter of timing at this point.
“I’m okay.” Her answer is flat as she reaches over to touch her shoulder where my eyes are fixed. “I tried to escape, that’s all. Get out the window. But I got stuck, scratched myself. How did you find us?”
I take a second to be sure I want her to know, then decide to go ahead. “Your father. We found him. He filled us in on an awful lot of shit, baby.” I shake my head as I let that sink in. The shock and fear in her eyes cuts me.
“My father. He’s not my father.” Her voice is hard, and I realize she knows the truth as well.
“Yeah, I know. You okay?”
“Explains some things, I guess. Yeah, I’m okay. I hate to say it, but I don’t hate him. But I don’t love him either. Any of them. Is that awful? You think it’s awful. I hate all of this.” Her voice cracks and I feel her body shaking.
“Baby, I’m so sorry. This was my fault.”
She shifts in my lap, pushing up on her hands to sit up straight and there’s more tears.
“How is what they did to me your fault?” There’s a hint of anger in her voice.
“You’re safe now, baby. No one is going to hurt you.”
“They didn’t hurt me. You hurt me.” She counters, and my own anger turns to confusion.
“Babybear...” She knows. I know she knows. But there’s a part of me that hopes otherwise. Guilt rasps on my heart but I need to know what’s hurting her.
“You lied. You promised me, and you lied. You said you don’t hurt people. You promised what you did wasn’t illegal. I asked you straight up, more than once and you lied. Right to my face. How could you do that?” She pauses, her eyes dark, and adds, “What else are you lying about? Other women maybe? I’m not the only one, am I? Just your current toy. A girl in every port...I’m sorry, I know I wasn’t truthful either, but—” Her voice trails off and I see her own guilt in her eyes but it’s her hurt that is running the show now.
The little girl in her isn’t thinking straight and it’s okay. I’ll deal with her lack of truthfulness later, right now I need to calm my baby and get us moving forward again.
My brain spins. She’s right about the lies. I thought I could figure out a way out before I had to tell her. Some miracle I could conjure that would get me out of this life and not have to confess things to her that would hurt us. Ruin what I’d found that I’d never known was possible.
“Other women?” I shake my head. “Babybear, you are my only. No one has even pulled my eye since the day we met. That’s a promise.”
The irony of my words are not lost on her. She puts a hand over her mouth and closes her eyes. “Promise? Not sure that helps.” She answers, and I give her that.
“Baby, listen.” I take her face in my hands, forcing her to look at me. “I’m fucking sorry. So fucking sorry. But I couldn’t risk losing you. I thought I could fix this.” I look back toward the cabin and then to her. “Fix my life before I’d have to tell you. I wanted more than anything, more than ever before...I wanted to be the kind of man you would need. You, baby. I wanted to do it for you. But it was hard. I—”
“Hard?” She smacks back.
I grit my teeth, hating myself down into the core of my being. I try to come up with the right words that will fix this.
I have to fix this.
When nothing magical comes, I spill out the truth. “I hated my fucking life. I fucking hated it before you. You’re the only thing that’s made sense to me as far back as I can remember. This,” I point to her heart then back to mine, then again. “This connection. I didn’t know this was even possible. I didn’t know this existed.”
She lets out a long breath and my heart feels like it’s going to explode. I can’t lose her. She’s mine. I honestly believe I would die without her now.
“Without you, Babybear. Now, without you, I’d be adrift. You might as well put me face down in that swamp back there because I don’t care about any of it without you anymore. Nothing makes sense now if you aren’t here.”
“Boss.” A voice from behind me interrupts and I turn to see George. “We need you.”
“I need a minute. I’ll be there.” He spins and heads back toward the cabin.
Ginger reaches out to flatten her hand over my heart before she speaks. “Promise me you won’t hurt anyone else. Promise me you’ll stop all this. I can’t live knowing you’re in danger.”
“Promise.” The word is out before I think it through, wanting to give her everything. Wanting to make this right at any cost. “And baby.” I hold the side of her head in my hand. “I am not playing tit for tat here, but why didn’t you tell me about your family? Why did you feel like you couldn’t trust me with that?”
I don’t use the words ‘lie to me’. She did, but right now I’m the one owning that word about what I’ve done. What concerns me is why she didn’t trust me enough with the family stuff.
My stuff? Shit, I couldn’t tell her. Yes, I was afraid I would lose her. There’s that. But worse, I couldn’t make her an accessory. That’s not something I could live with if things ever came to light with the cops.
She looks away and her cheek warms in my palm.
“It took everything I had to get away from them. I thought if I told you, you would want me to make amends or have contact and that scared the hell out of me. You’re the one that said you’d never turn your back on your family no matter what. Family was everything. You’d lost yours and anyone that wasn’t there for theirs was the worst sort of—”
“Hey.” I cut her off.
My heart breaks, knowing she listened to what I said about family while she had been forced to run from her own. The words I spoke must have cut her and given what I now know—how much disappointing me devastated her—I understand in one way, but in another it’s a weakness somehow on my part that she couldn’t come to me and explain.
I hold her eyes to mine for a long moment before finishing. “It’s okay, Babybear. I love you. I fucking love all of you. Even the imperfect parts, remember? We need to figure this out. Both of us. Why we lied for different reasons, but how we cannot do it again. Lies push us apart. But right now, I have to go take care of this business inside. I want you to stay here—”
“No.” She returns my cut off with her own. “I’m coming.”
My gut twists as I move her off my lap and sit her in the back seat next to me.
“You don’t want to do that.” I’m stern because I know what’s about to happen. At least to him. And she can’t be witness.
“Why not?” She glares back at me, pushing off from me and setting her feet firmly on the floor of the car.
“Because there are things I have to do.” I back myself out of the car and wave one of the guys over. “Make sure she stays here.” I order.
“You’re not making sure I’m staying anywhere.” She bolts out of the open door and before I can grab her arm she’s at a sprint to the cabin.
I’m right behind her but she’s already in the front door of the cabin, looking at the unfolding scene.
Calfus is strapped to a chair, duct tape wrapping completely around him: his legs, his mouth; and the grandmother is on the sofa with a gun to her head. It’s not a scene I want her to see.
“You want her out before you take care of him?” George nods toward the grandmother.
“Nobody is taking care of anybody.” Ginger shouts, turning to me and looking stone cold serious in her donkey pajamas. “Are you serious? You just promised me—”
“Change of plans.” I say to George.
“What?” he dr
aws his brow together. “He’s not leaving here breathing. That’s what you said and I happen to agree with it.”
Ginger spins, shooting me with daggers from her eyes then pointing a wagging finger at George.
“No killing anyone.” She stomps a foot. “I’m the one he took and I say no killing. That’s final.” She looks back and forth from me to George then back to me and adds, “No killing, Daddy, I mean.” Then at George again, “and Sir. No killing Daddy and Sir. I’m not joking.” She’s damn serious.
And fucking cute standing there in her donkey pajamas.
Given the gravity of the moment, it’s inappropriate, but I almost chuckle at the fire flamed words coming from my little girl.
I look at my friend and repeat, “I said change of plans.” I step to Ginger and she draws her brows together and crosses her arms over her chest. “Do you get that it’s my fucking job to protect you? Do you get that I failed and from now on every effort I made before will be magnified a hundred-fold? Do you get that keeping you safe sometimes means doing things I don’t like either?”
“You promised.” She isn’t giving an inch. “Figure out a different way. Protect me, don’t protect me. But if it means you are going to kill him, I don’t want this. Any of it.” She waves a hand in the air. “If this is going to be our life, I’ll leave now. You told me you’d changed, you wanted something better. You have to start now. You do this, I’m gone. You decide.”
I turn to George with venom in my voice. “Take both their phones and smash them. Take the car with the grandmother. Collect the dad and Hamish from wherever they’re holed up, head to their place and drop them both off. They can live, but if I ever see them again, make sure they know that can change.”
“You sure?” George shakes his head, concern in his eyes.
“Yep. Then after we’re gone, have some guys stay behind. Leave him here. Have them take the tape off and take anything he has on him. Leave him with the clothes on his back but leave him alive.” I look at Ginger, whose tight lips loosen with some level of approval in her eyes, then I address Calfus. “You’re on your own. If you have any brains, you’ll make sure I never see you again.”
“Wait.” Ginger comes to my side and tugs on my arm. “He has Romper and Geisha.”
For a moment I’m confused, then I ask, “Here?” I look out the window.
“No.” Ginger looks up at me. “He took them. They’re at some slaughterhouse.”
I shake my head, trying to put the pieces together, then pull my phone out of my pocket and pull up our security cameras from home.
“I think not.” I put the phone in front of Ginger’s face and see fire shoot from her eyes. “They are safe and sound. Fat and happy, just as I left them.”
“How?” She looks from me to Calfus, then back to me. “He showed me a picture of them in a cage. In the back of a pickup.”
I shrug, not sure what to say. “I don’t know, Babybear. But I will say, Photoshop can work wonders. Can you be sure it was actually Romper and Geisha?” I raise my eyebrows and see her swallow hard.
There’s both relief and anger in her eyes.
She licks her lips before turning to stare at Calfus. “You’re a horrible person, you know that?”
He stares back, nothing but satisfaction in his eyes.
“They’re fine, babygirl. And I have ten guys staked out there at home. Trust me, no one is getting to any of our babies. Including the cucumbers.”
S I X T E E N
Stas
“I NEED TO BE INSIDE you.” I grunt, pulling the car over after driving back down the dirt road toward the state park land we’d passed on our way to the cabin.
Since we left there, I’ve held her hand against my chest.
I told her about a thousand times how much I loved her and how things would be different.
She’s cried a bit about her dad. Well, both of them. Let out some conflicting emotions regarding the barrage of information that’s been dumped on her in the last day.
All in all, she’s taking it pretty fucking good and I’m proud as hell of her. I mean, it’s not every day you find out the guy who wants to kill your man is the father you didn’t know you had.
The irony of it all still baffles me, but in my business I know just how small the world can be. I also know I need to still figure out my way out of my former life and still keep us safe. That is a Rubik’s cube I’ve still to solve but I will.
Looking over at Ginger, she’s paler than usual but more beautiful than ever.
I can’t wait.
I need to have her wrapped around me in every way. I guide the car through the entrance of the state park and into an abandoned picnic area.
Putting the car into park, I exit my door without a word, moving to her door and opening it before pulling her gently out by the hand.
“In the back.” I open the back door and spin her in that direction, watching her magnificent ass as she crawls in without any protest. “God, I fucking love you.” I add as I climb in behind her, already freeing my pounding erection from my pants.
“I love you too, Daddybear. No matter what’s happened, that hasn’t changed.”
My heart slams around in my chest. That’s the first time she’s called me that since I got her from the cabin.
Her words prime my protective pump again and a thought of Calfus flashes in my mind. What Ginger doesn’t know is that setting him free is more than likely as much of a death sentence as my pulling the trigger myself.
Before I left, I gave George quiet instructions to put it out on the information exchange where Calfus was last seen. Nature will take its course from there and my hands don’t have to be smeared with the blood.
I shake the thoughts away as I reach up and take her glasses off and set them on the seat beside us. Then I tug at her pajama bottoms.
“Off. All the way off. And put that pussy on my cock.” My inner caveman needs to claim her hard and fast. Sometimes that’s what I need and it’s my babygirl’s job to acquiesce. Sometimes I need what I need and right now it’s not flowery love making that’s pounding around inside me.
“Yes, Daddybear.”
Her immediate agreement and compliance only makes me harder and more in love with her. How that’s possible I don’t know but it seems I’m learning love has no limits. It seems to grow infinitely when it comes to her.
“Goodgirl.” I grunt out as I watch her shift and struggle to strip her pants off in the confines of the backseat. I stroke myself while I watch her, and her eyes light to mine when she’s finally free of the fabric. “Shirt too,” I order, wanting to see all of what’s mine.
With haste she does as I order and she’s soon naked in front of me.
When she climbs onto my lap I hold my full length out and watch her cunt slowly suck me in, the wet heat drawing a pained groan from deep inside my chest.
“Oh, baby.” I reach up and grab a handful of her hair, pulling her face down to me. “You’re so wet. Naughty girl. You like being my naughty little girl, don’t you? Like fucking your Daddy in the backseat of a car.”
“Yes, Daddy.” She answers in a breathy huff as I grip her hips and shove myself upward into her tight cunt.
This is what I needed. To be fully seated inside of her, letting her know who she belongs to.
“Put your tit in my mouth.” I order, working her hips back and forth on my cock, letting her body adjust to having me as deep as she can take.
Her cervix presses on the tip of my cock and I think about what I wouldn’t give to know I’m growing inside her right now. She feeds her hard peak to my lips and with another grunt I pull her body forward and suck her nipple deep into my mouth.
Toying with the hardened peak, I watch her eyes flutter and her hands grab onto my shoulders. My gentle lips and tongue are soon replaced with teeth, biting down until I hear her yelp, a sound which sends blood rushing to my cock. I’m so hard right now I could cut glass. Her pussy is slick and warm, surrounding me, mak
ing me feel like a fucking king.
“I’m so sorry.” She looks down and I see such sadness in her eyes. Something I never want to see again.
“Baby.” I set her free from my teeth and exchange them for my hand. “It’s over. I’m sorry too. We’re both going to screw up, you know that? That’s what relationships are. They’re good times, but they’re also screw ups, learning, moving on, hurting sometimes, doing better. It’s going to happen. This time, the price was higher than usual, but listen to me.” I pause, making sure her eyes are connected to mine. “Do you love me?”
“More than anything. More than I even understand.”
“Then we’re good. This connection we have, Babybear, I don’t understand it either. But I know in my soul we are meant to be together. We will fuck up, we will learn, we will figure it out and always be together, okay?”
She nods, and I feel her body caress me from the inside.
“That’s my best girl. I need you. I don’t just want you. And I need every part of you. Do you get that? Not just this,” I nod my head up and down at her naked body and a smile creeps to her lips. “All of you. The girl, the woman, the lover, the friend, the gardener...the pain in my ass.” I smile and softly thrust upward, making her mouth part in a small ‘oh’, her eyes starting to drift. “But right now?” I run a hand down from her shoulder to her elbow, bringing her back to me. “I need to fuck you. And you need to fuck me back. Fuck your Daddy, babygirl. Fuck him.”
Her pussy clenches around me as I grab her hands and pull them to my chest, flattening them there before taking control of her hips.
She goes off, moving up and down, back and forth and her face is more beautiful than even a moment ago as I see desire for me there.
I work my cock in and out in a fury as her own movements cause her to raise up and crash down to meet my strokes. Her legs open wider and wider, giving me access to her until I’m slamming her limits.
Every thought now is centered on cumming deep inside her, on putting myself there in a way that cannot be undone. In a way that will bind her to me forever.