by Pam Godwin
With a leg bent and an arm resting on his knee, he braced himself for the pain and let his mind travel back in time.
“When my dad died, the state sent me to live with my only living relatives. Jeff was an estranged uncle I’d never met. My dad never talked about him. Jeff lived out of an RV in Texas, and he had a son two years younger than me. Ford was his name.”
A hot ember formed in his throat, and he swallowed past it. Ricky laced his fingers around Tula’s, their gazes soft and watchful.
“Jeff had been a schoolteacher, and he taught me how to fish and build fires. He home-schooled Ford and me as we traveled from one campground to another throughout Texas. He waited two months—” His voice broke, and he tried again. “I was with him for two months before he raped me the first time. Then he did it again, every night, for the next four-hundred-and-twenty-six days.” A torrent of anguish welled up in his chest. “I couldn’t leave. He told me if I did, he would go to Ford to take care of his physical needs. His own fucking son. I believed him.”
The nightmare tore through him, shaking his shoulders. Instead of fighting it down, he breathed it out. “Ford was only twelve. He didn’t know what his dad did to me every night when he led me into the woods. Jeff kept it from him. I kept it from him. But Jeff got careless. He was drinking the night he sodomized me with the handle of a hammer.”
Tula cupped a hand over her mouth, her eyes soaked with tears. Ricky moved toward him.
“If you touch me right now…” He would break down. “Let me get through this.”
“Okay.” Ricky sat back and wrapped his arms around Tula.
“The hammer…” Martin inhaled, exhaled, and let the pain lance through him. “Ford watched it happen. He found us in the woods, and I’ll never forget his face. The damage to his young mind, the horror of seeing his father doing such a despicable thing… He ran off into the trees, and Jeff was too drunk to chase him. So he sent me. But I was injured, bleeding down my legs from what he’d done to me. I could barely walk. It took me all night and into the morning before I…”
His eyes burned, and his throat closed up. He covered his face with his hands and felt the tears dampening his cheeks.
“Martin…” Ricky’s voice fell over him, soothing. “You don’t have to finish.”
He needed to finish it, purge it from his mind. “I saw him on the railroad tracks not far from our campsite. He just laid his neck on the rail and let a train run over it. That’s how I found him. Without his head.” His guilt over that night cut him to the bone. “If I’d walked faster, searched harder, I could’ve stopped him.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I returned to the RV that morning. Jeff was passed out drunk in his bed. His leverage over me was gone. Ford was… He was gone. So I searched for that goddamn hammer, and when I found it, I beat Jeff’s skull in with it. Then I ran.”
Ricky’s arms came around him, and Tula crawled onto his lap. He let the tears fall as they held him. Then he forced out the rest.
“I was fifteen, homeless, and on the run. Over the next two years, I stuck to the border towns in Texas. Found odd jobs in the ghettos. I slept with women, but not often. My depraved urges started to scare me. Then I met a man.” He drew in a breath, lost in the memory. “He was sitting alone at a club I used to frequent, and he had a gruesome scar on his face.”
“Van,” Ricky breathed.
Tula shifted on Martin’s lap, confusion furrowing her brow as she glanced between them.
“I don’t know if it was the scar that got me. It was obvious someone had hurt him, and I thought maybe he’d been hurt by someone like Jeff. He was also the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen. I was instantly captivated. He bought me a drink, and we shot the shit. Then he asked me if I wanted to get out of there. I didn’t hesitate. We walked aimlessly along the dark, quiet streets. I felt comfortable with him. He was easy to talk to. I had never told anyone my story, but that night, I told Van. I told him everything, and he listened without judgment or pity. When I finished talking, he kissed me. And kissed me. The son of a bitch kissed me until I couldn’t think straight. I had never willingly had sex with a man, but that night, I willingly went home with Van Quiso. Only he didn’t take me to his bedroom. He chained me in his attic, beat me, and raped me for ten weeks.”
Ricky knew the rest of it, but Tula didn’t. So he talked through the series of events that led from Van’s sex trafficking operation to the creation of the Freedom Fighters and the mission that planted him and Ricky in Jaulaso.
By the time he finished, his eyes were dry, and his chest seemed lighter. The pain was still there, branded forever in the marrow of his bones. But it felt different. Duller. Softer. Maybe this was the beginning of catharsis. An opening for the poison to slowly escape.
Tula held him tight and gave him comforting words. As they settled on their sides, she prodded him for details about his sexual training, his relationships with his ex-captors, and the evidence the Freedom Fighters had compiled against Hector La Rocha over the years.
He and Ricky answered all her questions, and the three of them talked late into the night, sharing painful moments, happy stories, and everything in between.
Then she told them about the paternity test.
In a monotone voice, she explained what had happened in Hector’s room this morning—why she had gone there and everything Hector had told her. She’d learned he was her father moments before she’d walked in on Martin with his dick in his hand.
She’d come to him for comfort, and he’d treated her like a whore.
“I’m so fucking sorry.” He shifted her to face him and studied her expression.
Emotional exhaustion weighed down her lashes and fanned lines from the corners of her eyes. Despite the events of the day, she looked devastatingly beautiful in the glow of the candlelight.
“How are you taking this?” Ricky curled around her back and kissed the top of her head.
“I don’t know. Hector has always been kind of a father figure to me, but after everything you told me about his disgusting operation…” Her voice cracked. “I’m sickened and confused, and I have no fucking clue what to do about it.”
“There’s been too much thrown at you today.” Martin scooted down, putting them at eye level. “You don’t need to do anything right now but sleep. Let us worry about what to do next.”
Her expression turned pensive for a handful of heartbeats. Then she tensed.
“You said you arranged your arrest.” She popped up on an elbow, her eyes wide and alert. “Does that mean you arranged your release?”
His heart stopped, and he met Ricky’s anxious gaze over her head. “Yes.”
“How long?” She looked between them, her fear palpable. “When do you leave?”
He clenched his hands. They didn’t have a solution for the one thing that mattered most.
Her safety.
Who would protect her after they left? Because they would be leaving her. There was no way to stop it.
They would hire the best lawyers, pull every connection they had, and fight like hell to shorten her sentence. But the likelihood of success was terrifyingly low.
Martin reached for her, holding her tight as he choked out the words. “We leave in forty-five days.”
CHAPTER 27
For the next two days, Tula sank into an ebb and flow of heartbreaking conversations, heated arguments, and quiet introspection. She had a lot to mentally and emotionally process, and Martin and Ricky were right there with her, holding her in bed, showering with her at night, and putting together meals from the stores of food they kept in their cell.
She only had forty-three days left with them.
Deep down, she’d suspected they would leave Jaulaso before her. She didn’t know how or why, but her heart had tried to keep its distance, expecting their departure.
Her heart had failed, though. They’d crashed right into it and woven themselves into the very essence of her existence. When it came time t
o sever those ties, it was going to hurt like hell.
They finished a dinner of canned chicken soup, and she lay curled up in Ricky’s muscular arms, staring at Martin’s back where he sat on the edge of the other bed.
Her quiet, tormented man had been more subdued than usual today.
The absolute hell he’d endured in his short twenty-four years had obliterated her anger with him. Her hurt feelings were nothing compared to the hurt he carried inside that powerful frame.
He’d cried several times over the past forty-eight hours, and she and Ricky had cried with him, holding tight to his trembling body. It was progress. He was finally talking about it, letting it out, openly and painfully.
The details of his life were difficult to hear, but she sensed the promise of healing in his voice, saw it in the clarity of his crystal green eyes. It would take time, years, to recover from his trauma, but he was moving in the right direction. He was trusting people to hold him through his pain and bear some of the burden.
He would always have Ricky for that, and maybe she would be there, too.
In three years.
Ricky mentioned trying to stay in prison with her by doing something asinine like attacking a prison guard or starting a riot to extend their sentences. She’d laid into him for even thinking it and quickly shut him up.
They wanted to help her shorten her sentence, but they couldn’t do that if they were locked up. Nor could they risk getting stuck in Jaulaso for life. She only had three years left. It wasn’t forever.
Maybe they would still want her when she was released. Perhaps they would be waiting for her at the gate the day she gained her freedom.
She fantasized about that moment, about starting a life with them outside of prison.
Her debt to Hector, however, was a lifetime sentence. Didn’t matter that they shared DNA. He’d told her on several occasions she would be expected to work for the cartel after her release.
Given Martin and Ricky’s resources and connections, perhaps they could help her escape Hector’s organization. If they let her, she would join their vigilante group and work with them to take down La Rocha Cartel.
Her loyalty to Hector had taken a hard hit. He’d sent Garra to rape her, kept his parentage from her for two years, and looked her right in the eyes and lied to her about his involvement in human trafficking. What else had he been dishonest about?
She didn’t trust him, but she still cared about him. Not just because he was her father, but because he’d always been kind to her, always protected her. She found herself clinging to the idea that he’d been dishonest with her because he wanted to protect her from the terrible things he did.
She talked through all of this with Martin and Ricky over the past couple of days. Together, they speculated and plotted, smiled and cried, argued this and agreed on that.
But at the end of the day, she was left with a crushing inevitability.
They were leaving.
“We can still focus on your mission,” she murmured into the silence.
“No,” they said in unison, firm and unbending.
“He’s kidnapping women and children.”
Children who would go through the same abuses Martin had suffered. Her stomach turned inside out every time she imagined it.
“We should’ve never involved you.” Ricky ran his nose through her hair. “Thinking about you in his room and rummaging through his belongings when he walked in… It makes me want to bend you over my knee and beat your fucking ass. But it’s our fault. We pushed you to investigate him and put our damn mission over your safety.”
“You didn’t know me when you arrived here. You couldn’t have predicted what would happen between us.”
“What’s happening between us?” He coasted a finger along her collarbone, teasing the neckline of her shirt.
“Sex. Really good sex.”
“It’s more than that, Tula. I need to hear you say it.”
Love was a landslide of sorrow and dread, swallowing her chest in the ruin of its unavoidable end. “It hurts. My heart knows you’re leaving, and it’s trying to protect itself. Please don’t make me say it.”
“Okay.” He pulled her close and rested his forehead against hers. “Fuck, I hate this. It’s fucking killing me.”
She couldn’t bear the pain in his voice. So she steered the conversation back on topic. “I was your best option to get those locations from Hector. It was a brilliant plan, really. Seduce the woman he’s closest to and win her over with the best orgasms of her life.”
“The best in her life?”
“Don’t get cocky.” She cupped the side of his face, holding his gaze. “I could talk to Garra—”
“No.”
“We haven’t tried that angle. I wouldn’t be obvious about it.”
“I said no.”
“I could eavesdrop on his conversations with Simone. If they know the details of the operation—”
“Fuck no.” Ricky gripped her chin, forcing her to meet his glare. “The mission is forfeit. We’re going to lay low, keep our asses in this cell, and let our time go by. Just like this. Together. Then, after Martin and I are released, we’re going to get you out of here.”
Hector ruled over the city and the prison. If he couldn’t get himself released, Martin and Ricky wouldn’t be able to do shit for her. But she didn’t refute him.
It was the best plan they had.
She wanted every second she had left with them to be in this bed. She wanted their kisses, their hungry breaths, their bodies moving inside her and each other, shaking and groaning in pleasure.
Amid the revelations of the past two days, there had been no sex and no discussions about the sex between Martin and Ricky.
They needed to talk about it. Or better yet, they just needed to do it.
As often as possible.
Because in forty-three days, they wouldn’t just be taking her broken heart with them. They would be taking away the only pleasure she’d ever had inside these walls.
Her attention drifted to the silent man sitting on the other bed. With his back to her and his feet on the floor, he braced an elbow on his knee and held his face with a hand. He cried that way sometimes.
Two days ago, the dam broke inside him, drowning him in a ten-year flood that needed to run its course.
But right now, his relaxed posture and steady breaths told her he was deep in thought, not grief.
She shared a look with Ricky and pressed a hand against his shirtless chest, silently asking him to stay. Then she crawled across the beds and knelt behind Martin.
He wore only his briefs and didn’t move as she rested her mouth on his shoulder and her fingers on his nape.
She remained in that position for a long time, breathing with him and indulging in the potency of his presence.
“Want to talk?” She ghosted her lips along his neck and inhaled deeply, savoring his masculine scent.
“No.”
“Want to fight?”
He grunted. “No.”
“Want to make love?”
His head slowly lifted and turned in her direction. His mouth parted, and the tip of his tongue wet the corner.
“I want to know what you feel like inside me.” She kissed his strong jaw. “I want to see what your face looks like when you’re buried inside Ricky.”
“You want my filth in your pussy?” His voice was stony, laden with antagonism.
“At least forty-three times.”
“And your ass?” He folded his arms around her and dragged her onto his lap to straddle him.
“Yes.” She found Ricky’s hooded eyes over Martin’s shoulder.
Martin gave her a troubled look and touched their foreheads together. “We only have forty-three days.”
“Spend them inside me.” She brushed her lips against his, drawing a groan from his chest.
When she pulled back, he chased her, capturing her mouth in a starved kiss. His hands went to her hair and slid do
wn her back, pulling her closer as he worked their tongues into a delicious tangle.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” He trapped her arms behind her and ground her body onto his hard cock. “I’m fucked up.”
“Aren’t we all? We’re fucked-up people living fucked-up lives with no access to medication or therapy. But we have one another.”
His soft laughter filled her mouth.
She breathed in the sexy sound and held it in her chest. “I’m keeping that.”
“What?” he rumbled against her lips.
“Your laughter. I’m collecting all your happy moments, just so you know.”
“They’re yours.” He glanced back at Ricky. “And his.”
“Promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“When you get out of here, don’t push him away. No matter how hard it gets or how many setbacks you have. Let him make you happy.”
“Tula.” His expression hardened. “We’re going to get you—”
“Promise me.”
His gaze shifted to Ricky and held. “I promise.”
“You love him.”
“Yes.” He tucked a finger under her chin, lifting it. “And you. I love you.”
A heavy pang hit her heart, and oh, God, the wonderful wretchedness of it. This harsh, deliciously damaged man was worried he’d hurt her with his cruelty. But it was his love that would leave the deepest scar.
He wanted her now, but would he love her in three years? Would she even be the same person by the time she walked out of here?
She couldn’t predict the future, but the present was directly in front of her. This moment, right now, was within reach, and she grabbed onto it with both hands.
Their mouths came together. Their chests collided, and they fell onto the mattress in a rolling grind of bodies.
His weight pressed down on top of her, and his kisses turned ravenous. He stripped her of her clothing, and she shoved down his briefs. Then they were naked, skin to skin, heart to heart, staring into each other’s eyes.
“Ricky,” he said gruffly without looking away.
“Here.” Ricky pressed a condom into Martin’s hand. “Slow and easy. If it gets dark in your head, I’ll pull you back.”
