by Kate Stewart
Amber nodded.
“Then security is our only other option.”
Cedric and I spent the next hour picking through his list of capable bodyguards. Amber fell asleep on the couch while we sat at my dining room table.
He leaned over and whispered, “It’s not going to be enough. If he’s as crazed as you say and still getting high, a bullet might not be enough to stop him. He’s not just coming after Joseph.”
“I know.”
“How do you feel about this?”
I looked up to see Cedric’s eyes on me. “I’m nervous, of course. You should have seen him, Cedric.”
“I mean the baby.” Cedric brushed a finger over mine, and for a moment I saw the boy who taught me how to shoot a gun at his parents’ property, the one who tried to warn me away from Laz. The man who told me he loved me and offered to take me away from Dyer. Cedric would have been a good choice.
“I’m concentrating on too much to think about it. I left her there. This is my mess.”
“Bullshit, you can’t blame yourself.”
“But I do. And that won’t change. I should have fought to get her out of there sooner. This is on me. She couldn’t see past the drugs, and then when Joseph came, she was trapped.”
“So were you, and you found a way out.”
“She’s not like me,” I whispered.
“No, she’s not.” Cedric gripped my hand and held it.
“Help me protect her, Cedric. Please. I won’t ask anything else of you.”
Cedric moved to the seat next to mine. “You know I will. But I can offer you peace from this. There’s a fast solution.”
And there it was. An offer to rid Amber and me of our burden. I had no doubt Cedric could get it done and was as capable of Daniello. The skip of my heart told me I could never be the one to make that call, even though it would simplify everything.
Cedric read my hesitance. “You still love him.”
“No, no I don’t.” I pulled my hand away. “He almost killed me. I can’t love that monster.”
“It’s not the monster you love. It’s the memory.”
I thumbed the glass pipe and rolled it as the red flame produced sweet smoke. I inhaled deep and felt a quick release from the throb in my veins.
Release. Escape.
My phone lit up, and I turned it over before taking another hit. My skin began to crawl with adrenaline as the high built. My high was my home.
Amber: Met with the lawyer again. She thinks it will take another two months. But she says I’m doing everything right. We will get him back.
Trust. That’s what it all boiled down to.
My own mother refused to let me take Joseph this morning. She told me she didn’t recognize me anymore, that I looked nothing like her son. But she had stolen mine.
My. Fucking. Son.
And he was growing used to being without his mother and me.
Joseph made me nervous. I never told Amber that, but in a way, I was too afraid I’d fuck him up. I couldn’t be hands on with him. He was too pure, too much of a good thing. But leave it to a fucking Ellison woman to ruin the only good thing in my life.
He was all I had left. So, the question was, did I trust Amber?
I rubbed the scar on my leg that I knew was underneath my jeans. I’d spent years tracing its location with my fingertips. It was the evidence of her sister’s betrayal. Taylor thought that the years between us would give her a pass for what she did to me.
But everything I did back then was for her, to protect her, to help her and her sister escape that house.
Ungrateful bitch.
She was every inch of the woman I thought she’d grow into. Fierce, strong, and beautiful. And she was fucking some foreign piece of shit, who I knew wasn’t legitimate.
How the hell was he any better than me?
I would never forget the satisfaction of seeing her afraid of me that day at our spot. I wanted to kill her, but first I wanted to fuck her so hard it hurt. Hurt to the point she would never forget who her rightful owner was. She was meant to be mine. Always. We had promised each other.
“Laz, stop it!”
“Come on, you know you love it.” I smeared the sugar all over her lips as she fought me.
“Damn you, stop it.” Taylor pushed against my chest as I leaned in and began to lick up my mess from her face and neck.
We were at our spot, next to the pond. It was one of those days where the trees remained still even with the cool breeze beneath it and time lasted. Taylor brought strawberries and sugar for dipping, and I managed to get a bottle away from my mother’s house. It was the first time in months we’d been in the sun together. I’d smoked a foil before we left the hotel and Taylor made me promise it would be my only one for the day. I was hitting the bottle hard to fight the urge as I watched her take a dip in the pond. The itch subsided with each pass of drink through my lips, and every time she looked over at me and smiled, it was a reminder. I didn’t need anything but her. I loved her. I’d told her so many times lately, I feared she’d never say it back to me. She wanted me sober. That was her reason for keeping the same words to herself. My chest banged from the rattle of my heart as I feared I might never get those words to pass her lips. I was done denying my addiction, and she knew it too.
But Taylor was my air, the only thing that kept me going, the only thing I looked forward to. The drugs were distracting me, but getting clean meant creating a different plan, and we didn’t have time for a plan B. We were getting close to leaving Dyer and everything behind us.
She lay beneath me in the warm sun and fought for air as I smothered her with my kiss. I tasted her sweet tongue and pulled away as she looked up at me with eyes the color of jade stone.
“Laz.”
“Yeah, baby?”
I circled her mouth with my tongue, taking the sweetness off her face and then slowly dipped to nibble at her ear.
“Thank you.”
I peered down at her in confusion.
“For what?”
“For coming here, for being . . . you. I’ve missed you.”
“I’m always me.”
Taylor’s eyes filled. “I think you know that’s not true anymore.” Before that day, I’d only seen Taylor cry once. And the sight of it had damned near killed me the first time. She was the strongest girl I’d ever met. Her tears weren’t even for herself when she shared them with me. They were for her sister. Her mother had gotten rough on her with a broom handle and Taylor had taken it so hard she didn’t speak for days.
She had so much love for her little sister; it hurt to watch it all happen. My parents weren’t much better in the way of provision. I, more often than not, had to fend for myself, but I had it better in the way that I didn’t have to defend myself. They never once raised a hand to me.
I looked down at the girl who had stolen my heart and told her the words again to make myself clear because I had done a shit job of proving it.
“I love you.”
She paused. The words were so clearly returned in her eyes but still fell mute on her lips.
“Laz.”
“Tell me. Just tell me. I want to hear it.” She smiled and lifted to press her lips to mine. “You’re drunk.”
I lifted the bottle and brought it to her lips. Lifting to her elbows, she took a guarded drink and then coughed it down. “That’s awful, what is that?”
“Whiskey. We do live in the state of Tennessee.”
“Not forever.”
“No, baby, not forever,” I said, capping the bottle and laying it next to her. She had on a blue sundress and her fiery hair cascaded over her shoulder and onto the blanket I brought. Her lips were swollen from my kiss. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I wanted so much to take it further. Every touch, every slide of her tongue against mine brought me closer to being inside her. But I knew one day soon she’d ask, and though my dick was raging, my heart refused to press her. It was just a matter of time. And
we were getting creative enough to keep me satisfied. Still, I needed reassurance. I needed to know she was mine, though I felt it deep. “But when we leave, no matter where we land, no matter how far we end up away from this shithole, you belong to me.”
“Of course,” she promised as she snaked her arms around my neck and brought me down to her lips for a slow kiss. When I pulled away, I felt the static start as her breathing picked up.
“Promise me you belong to me, Taylor.”
“You know I do,” she replied breathlessly.
“I’m your always.”
Sincere eyes penetrated mine as she twisted us so she straddled me. “You know you are.”
She rubbed her panty-covered middle along my jean-covered cock and lifted a brow.
I grinned up at her. “You feelin’ playful?”
“I’m feeling something.” She lifted the bottle and took a hearty sip.
“Take it easy,” I warned before I gripped the bottle and capped it.
“I can handle it.”
Twenty minutes later, I held her hair as she sprayed the lawn with strawberries. When she recovered, we took a dip in the pond and then she slept it off in my arms. Her last mumbled words were “Always, Laz.”
But she broke that goddamned promise and me in the process.
Young or not, we’d lived through hell. She knew exactly what she was doing when she stole from me and left me bleeding in that motel room. She might as well have put that fucking bullet in my heart, or mercifully in my fucking head. At least then I would have to think about the life she lived without me.
But she left me. She left me to rot in the goddamn hotel room without a plan, without my air, without her.
And the fucked up part was the life I lived without her had everything to do with her. Taylor was in possession of the only link to my son. Amber was the way.
I tossed my pipe onto my dresser and began bagging product. Amber didn’t love me. I wasn’t fucking clueless to it, but she owed me. And I couldn’t help but think her texts were a way of keeping me at bay. Regardless, I would have my son, and Amber would just have to deal with being a casualty as his caregiver. I’d left her the job of raising him while I kept him safe.
I knew Amber had dreams of leaving Dyer like her sister, but no matter what, the Walker boys would come first. And if she so much as tried to stop it from happening, I would have a pile of red hair in my fist and crush her fucking skull into the other until she believed it.
But Amber wasn’t Taylor. She was loyal and had never given me any reason not to trust her. While Taylor saw me as a parasite, Amber saw me as her lord and savior. Something Taylor never had the fucking good sense to acknowledge. But I would make sure Taylor prayed to me one way or the other.
Amber would come back to Dyer.
I would have my son back.
And Taylor would pray, on her knees, right before I returned the favor and broke her.
I dreamed of Ray . . . again. For reasons I couldn’t understand, he’d been on my mind. It was half memory, half fiction, and wholly painful. I’d woken in a daze, feeling foolish for entertaining my wishful thinking when it came to Daniello. Too much wine, too much imagination. Still, the ache in my chest wasn’t imagined. The ache belonged to Daniello, and my need, my craving for his company, the weight in my stomach came from my memory of Ray and the day he returned home.
I was in my room reading the thirteenth novel on my tutor approved reading list. Ray had waltzed into my room like his absence didn’t make us strangers. I sat up on high alert with his aggressive stance in front of my bed.
He was dressed casually—dark jeans and a button down—something I wasn’t used to. His blue eyes sliced through me with contempt, and he reeked of alcohol.
“I don’t like it that you’re here.” Pure anger leaked from him as he glared at me with disgust.
I stood slowly and faced him head on. “We have a deal.”
“I’ll pay you for your absence.” I ignored the hurt and demanded an answer instead.
“What have I done?”
“Pack your things; you need to go. I’ll make arrangements for you.”
I looked around the large bedroom I’d grown used to isolating myself in and started mentally packing a list of things that belonged to me. And then I realize not a single thing did. It had all come from Ray. Even the clothes on my body. I tore off my shirt and threw it down at his feet.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Leaving the way I came. I don’t want a damn thing from you.” I pushed my shorts down and then my panties. I moved toward the whitewashed dresser that held the clothes I came with and was caught by the wrist.
“You can take everything, Taylor.”
“Go to hell.”
Ray’s chest heaved as he looked me over. The awareness of his touch betrayed my body. I had spent a month remembering the look in his eyes, his mouth. I refused to regret what we’d done. I’d been a willing participant, the instigator.
He released me, and I ripped open my dresser, my back to my captor. I didn’t want him to see the tear he was causing with his rejection.
“It wasn’t right.” His words were a whisper.
“No, this isn’t right. This, what you’re doing to me now, isn’t right.”
“You’re a baby.”
I turned to him, vulnerable, bared. “I’m eighteen. I’m an adult, and I’m not sorry. I agreed to all of this. I started it. I knew what I was doing. You were saving me. You are supposed to teach me how to do this, Ray. I still need you. Please don’t throw me away. I can’t go back. I don’t want to go back. You said—”
His eyes trailed down my body. “I changed my mind.”
“You want to change your mind, but you haven’t. You want me. I can see it in your eyes despite your lying lips. Well, I’m right here. I want this. I want you. I want you to teach me. I want to be your legacy.” I took a step forward. “Ray—”
“Don’t.” He closed his eyes and shook his head at the floor. “Jesus Christ, don’t.”
I took another step and then another until we were chest to chest. He opened his eyes when he felt my fingers unclasp the buttons of his pants.
“Stop,” he hissed. I ignored him and resumed my workings until I freed his rock-hard cock from his briefs. He opened his eyes and glared down at me. I gripped him hard. “I’m going to give you what you paid for, and you’re going to give me what you promised.” I did what I thought felt right and pulled at his cock like Laz taught me. Ray gripped the back of my head as I stroked him.
“I want this, Ray.”
I moved in and kissed his jaw. His posture was stone, his breathing labored. “Show me how to please you,” I whispered between kisses along his neck.
I gripped his hand and brought it to my middle. Ray snapped. A hungry mouth landed on my shoulder as he spread me with angry fingers and plunged two in my wet center.
His touch was deep and seductive. I moaned as his fingers fucked me and pulled a sharp gasp from within. He ripped his lips away from my neck.
“Goddamn you.”
He gripped me hard and pulled me up to straddle him before he walked us to the bed. We landed in a heap, tasting, touching, both needy for the other. I wanted to feel the way I had months ago, but I hated his hesitance, his disgust. He twisted my head and spent minutes on my neck before his kiss trailed down my body.
“Ray.” It was a breathy whisper. He moved away from me and pulled off his shirt. Completely bared to me, he looked down at the bed, and I spread my legs wide. He cursed again as he rejoined me, his hands snaked underneath my back and moved up to grip my shoulders. The tip of his cock nudged me before he pressed all the way in. We both moaned out at the feel as he hovered above me. I moved and twisted at the slight discomfort, and he stilled me with his mouth on mine. It felt so natural, so right. Ray moved inside of me, hard and punishing as I wrapped my legs around him and gripped his head. We got lost in our hunger, our anger, until he spent
himself. Gasping for air, we lay in a naked pile on my bed. His heavy breath covered my chest as my heart hammered against his.
Maybe it was wrong in the eyes of others. But I saw it differently. He was a lonely man. A sordid king of a cold castle and I was a lost girl who desperately needed the promise of a future and the safety of his kingdom. Everything about my future depended on the whims of the angry king.
“Taylor, line one.”
I was just about to fire Ross when she chimed in, “It’s the attorney, Ms. Adler.”
“Taylor Ellison.”
“Hi, Ms. Ellison. I just wanted to let you know that we’ve managed to secure a date in Dyer with the family court. Things are progressing faster that I’d expected, but this is a good sign.”
“When?”
“Six weeks. Chances are, with Amber’s established residence, your reputation, and financial situation, not to mention Mr. Walker’s record, we should have little issue bringing Joseph across state lines.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll keep you updated. I’ve already spoken with Amber.”
I sat back in my chair and sighed. I had six weeks to prepare for all hell breaking loose. If I didn’t go back with Amber, I risked the safety of both her and Joseph. There was no way we would make it over the Tennessee state line with Joseph. Amber was announced and walked through my door minutes later. She had a healthy glow, and the expression on her face was purely joyful.
“Six weeks! Can you believe it? I’ve upped my meetings to six a week, and it’s paying off.”
“That’s great, really,” I said absently, my head somewhere between hope and dread. Amber paused at my door. “I thought you’d be happy about that.”
“I am. Really, Amber.”
“It’s Laz.” She sighed. “You’re still angry.”
“Not at all.” I met her timid gaze across the space. “But I think we should bring Cedric with us and hire more security. Does Laz know there is a court date?”
“I haven’t told him. But the minute we get back, he will know.”
“Keep it quiet for now. But update him on your other progress and meetings.”
