The Reluctant Submissive: Courage to Change [The Men of Treasure Cove 14] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Rebecca Joyce

  “Smart.”

  “I thought so. So, now that we’re alone, would you like to tell me what in the hell is going on with you?”

  “What do you mean?” Sasha turned to him questioningly.

  “I’m talking about that poetic bullshit you spouted in front of Gabriel and Alexander. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you knew the woman they’re looking for. Sasha, please tell me you don’t know her.”

  When Sasha didn’t say anything, Tristan cursed and sat down. This wasn’t good. Sasha could be very cutthroat when he wanted, and if he coerced, seduced, or persuaded the Sextons’ sister in any way, the ramifications of that interlude, when it came out, could be disastrous. Besides, it was Gabriel and Alexander’s sister. Isn’t there some rule against sleeping with a mate’s sister? “Give me the details. If there is going to be damage control, I need to know.”

  “There won’t be.”

  “You don’t know that. What if she turns up and starts telling her brothers everything? What if Gabriel and Alex demand satisfaction? Or worse, she turns up pregnant?”

  “Impossible.”

  “No, it’s not!” Tristan roared. “I’ve been cleaning up your one-night stands for years, Sasha. I know you. You are a Lothario. You fuck them and leave them. In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never, not once kept a woman longer than twenty-four hours.”

  “I never slept with her,” Sasha whispered.

  Tristan mustn’t have heard him correctly. Because if he did, he was checking Sasha into a psychiatric suite immediately. “Could you repeat that?”

  “I never slept with her. I saw her at Gabriel’s mask last night. I asked Gabriel to introduce us, but he refused. Something about she wasn’t a submissive and all that shit. I knew he was lying, because just looking at her, she had submissive written all over her. I followed her for a while, watching as she interacted with the other partygoers, waiting to see her Dom show up, but Gabriel was right, she didn’t have a Dom. She wasn’t wearing a collar, a ring, or a band. When it looked as if she were getting ready to leave the party, I knew if I didn’t do something I’d miss my chance at meeting her. Well, she didn’t leave. She started wandering deeper into the dungeon and ended up in one of Gabriel’s infamous tunnels.”

  “Which tunnel?”

  “Tunnel two. Well, that’s where I found her. She was watching a scene. I watched for a while as she responded to the scene before her. I knew Gabriel was wrong about her. Just watching her as she looked beyond the glass, I knew she was a true submissive. Her body reacted, though she was fighting it. I couldn’t figure out why, until now. However, before she turned to leave, I may have made my presence known.”

  “You may have?” Tristan asked. “Either you did or you didn’t, Sasha.”

  “Fine, have it your way, I did.”

  “Did she see your face?”

  “No. It was too dark and I kept her in front of me the whole time.”

  “What exactly did you do to her?”

  Sasha smiled and simply said, “I awakened her.”

  This was just fucking great! Of all the women in the world, Sasha had to find and seduce the one woman who belonged to Gabriel and Alexander. It was bad enough her past dictated that she received their sympathy and support, but no! Sasha ignored all the fucking signs of a battered and abused woman and seduced her. Tristan knew Sasha’s methods of seduction. His friend was the master at it. Nothing, and Tristan knew, nothing would stop Sasha from acquiring his objective when he put his mind to it. The poor woman didn’t have a chance.

  Talk about a clusterfuck of epic proportions. They needed Gabriel’s club to acquire the remaining land. If Gabriel found out that Sasha touched his sister, the negotiations would be off. There would be no way for Tristan to fulfill his promise and that didn’t sit well with him.

  “Do you know where this woman is?” Tristan asked, trying to figure out the best way to stem off the impending doom that was before them. Because no matter how he looked at it, they were both screwed.

  “No. I left her there and disappeared.”

  “And she never saw your face?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” Tristan muttered. “That’s good. When we find her, and we will before the others do, you will keep your damn hands off her. Do you hear me, Sasha? You will not even look at the woman. I mean it. She is off limits. We will return her to her brothers as the conquering heroes. You will get Gabriel to agree to sell you his club, and I will get the land I need. We will finish what we set out to do in Montana and everyone will be happy.”

  “I can’t promise you that, Tristan.”

  “Why the hell not!”

  “Because I want her.”

  “Then buy a damn puppy if you’re lonely! I don’t care if you get a damn litter. You will stay away from Violet Sexton and that’s final. We didn’t work this hard so you can go and fuck it all up because of one damn woman. I mean it, Sasha, no!”

  When Sasha ignored him and turned to look back out the window, Tristan threw his hands in the air. If he didn’t need Sasha to help him finish this venture, he would have washed his hands of him already. Tristan never really understood Sasha. The man always went his own way and did whatever he wanted. He never showed any kind of emotion, even when his sister was on death’s door. All he did was take over her life and did what he thought was best for Lisset. He never cared what anyone thought, and for that matter, Tristan wasn’t altogether sure that Sasha cared at all.

  Leaving the silent man to whatever he was thinking, Tristan got up and headed toward the back cabin. He needed a shower, but most of all, he needed to get the hell away from Sasha before he did something he would regret.

  Slamming the cabin door closed behind him, Tristan divested himself of his clothes and walked naked to the small bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

  Sasha wanted to beat the living shit out of himself. He was so fucking stupid, there were no words for his actions the previous night. He should have heeded Gabriel’s warning and just stayed away from the alluring woman, but did he do that…no. He just had to see her. He had to touch her, and dear God in heaven, did he. His actions were beyond contempt. He should be arrested and thrown in jail for what he did to her. Instead, he was going to get away from it scot-free. He was nothing more than the bastard Tristan described.

  All his life he’d done whatever it was he wanted. He never thought about the ramifications of his actions. He was greedy, deceitful, and a cunning bastard when the mood suited him. But he did feel. Dear God, did he ever feel.

  Unlike his friends, Sasha was never able to show his feelings. He didn’t know why, maybe it was because he was defective in some way, but it didn’t stop the fact that he did have feelings.

  His world turned upside down when he found his sister, and since then his whole life centered around her and getting her well again. Everything in his past faded away, and his sole focus was finding the son of a bitch who hurt Lisset. When he did, Sasha knew he was going to kill the man. But as time when by, Sasha realized that it wasn’t just the man who hurt Lisset that needed punishment, it was those who came before him. When he started looking into his sister's past, he wasn’t surprised to find out that she lived a boring normal life. A schoolteacher by profession, Lisset worked hard at her job molding the young minds of the future, but it was her nocturnal life that gave Sasha an insight into the world his sister craved. If he had known, he would have introduced her to gentlemen of worth, who knew what a treasure she was. Instead, his sister sought out Gabriel Sexton.

  It was that decision that led to the destruction of the one woman Sasha loved, above all the others. It was that decision that set him on his current path.

  Only now things were different.

  Sasha never intended to fall hard for the beautiful Violet Peters. She was just a means to an end that night. If he was going to be completely honest with himself, all he wanted her for was a quick roll in the hay, but that wasn’t what happened. Ins
tead, he saw something different in her. Violet wasn’t like all the other women he bedded in the past. She was his something more.

  That night, while he awakened his beautiful flower, she inadvertently did something to him. Something so profound, Sasha wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to recover. She awakened his heart. An organ he never believed in except for its internal function. Since leaving her, she invaded his every waking thought. He could still smell her scent on his fingers. He could still hear her soft gasps and moans of pleasure as he took what didn’t belong to him. She branded his soul with her acceptance and there was no going back. Regardless of what Tristan said, Sasha knew that if they found her before her brothers, there was no way he was going to be able to let her go. He wanted her, and nothing was going to stop him from getting her.

  And that was the problem. If he took her, kept her as his, he would be no better than Gabriel and Alexander. Sasha tried for months to get Lisset to open up and tell him what really happened between her and his best friends, but his sister refused to talk. His only source of information was the dossier that his investigators found, and what he read didn’t put Gabriel and Alexander in the best of light. A tiny part of Sasha couldn’t believe that his two best friends could be so careless, so heartless to abandon his sister into the arms of an abuser. It wasn’t in their nature, but then Sasha realized that maybe they didn’t know. For a while, Sasha gave them the benefit of a doubt until he looked further into Gabriel’s past, and then the truth came out. Not only did they abandon Lisset, but they personally found the man who would hurt Lisset. For that alone, Sasha wanted to destroy them both.

  But knowing what his friends did and wanting revenge came to a halt when Gabriel informed him that the woman he seduced last night was none other than their very own sister. Sasha couldn’t do to her what Gabriel and Alexander did to Lisset. Yes, he was more than capable of doing it, and some tiny, miniscule part of him knew he could do it, but his little flower wouldn’t allow it. He couldn’t hurt her and exact the revenge he wanted without becoming the monster who hurt his sister.

  Taking out his phone, he sent off a text to Grey asking for a complete background check on one Violet Victoria Sexton AKA Violet Peters. The more information he had on the woman who held his heart, the better he would know where he stood. The story Gabriel and Alexander told him about Violet had him raging on the inside. All he wanted to do right now was find her and wrap her in cotton to protect her. After sending the text, he sent another one to the brothers, asking them to start looking for the missing woman. If anyone was going to find them, it was going to be Devlin and Damien Brothers.

  His phone started ringing, and Sasha sighed. He knew she would balk when she saw the text. The woman was more stubborn than his sister. “Yes, Grey?”

  “Mr. Merrick, I have made myself perfectly clear about my position. I will not find, locate, or gather information for your perverted delights. If you want information on this woman, have the brothers do it. My job is solely to see to your business needs and nothing else.”

  “I understand that, Grey, but the woman in question is in trouble. She needs to be found.”

  “Then hire a private investigator.”

  “I have. The Brothers are going to look for her.”

  “Then there isn’t anything more to discuss.”

  “Yes, there is. I need you to get her background.”

  “I will not. That is not part of my job description.”

  “Grey,” Sasha groaned, wanting to pull his hair out. His secretary was the most obstinate, infuriating woman he’d ever met. “Violet Peters isn’t a conquest. She isn’t a lover. She isn’t a fuck buddy. She is a woman who is in danger and needs help. The help that the Merrick Foundation gives aid to. So please just get me all the information you can on her, so I can help the Brothers find her.”

  Grey’s silence was deafening. Sasha knew that Grey was an avid supporter of the Merrick Foundation and a reigning chairperson. Grey’s devotion to the foundation was what made the Merrick Foundation a global entity. Without Grey’s help, most of the women the Merrick Foundation helped would probably be dead. Sasha needed help. “Please, Grey.”

  “I will find out what I can and email you the information.”

  “Thank you,” Sasha said as the line went dead.

  Tristan opened the bathroom door and walked into the cabin wearing only one towel low around his waist. Heading for the small dresser, he opened the top drawer and pulled out a pair of briefs and laid them on the bed. Walking toward the closet, he stopped and returned to the dresser, opening the second drawer and removing a pair of black socks. Dropping the towel on the floor, Tristan headed back to the closet and opened the doors.

  “Stay away from me!” a woman screamed, bolting from the closet as she pushed him backward toward the door. If he weren’t already holding on to the doorknob he would have fallen to the floor. Trying to understand what had just happened, Tristan watched as a blur of raven black hair moved swiftly past him.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” he muttered as if this nightmare of a day would ever end. He had just gotten rid of one crazy woman, and now he had another one. This was not his day and he was getting real tired of being labeled a son of a bitch. Who was this woman to insinuate that he even wanted her? He didn’t! All he wanted was his tuxedo!

  He really didn’t need this shit. He already had enough to contend with, but this took the cake. Rounding on the woman, Tristan tried to find her, but the little imp seemed to have disappeared. Oh, he knew it was virtually impossible. His plane was thirty thousand feet in the air, but the longer he looked, there was no sign of her. Frustrated and not in the mood for games, Tristan growled, “Come out.”

  When there was no response, he simply added harshly, “Now!”

  Still nothing. “For God sakes, woman, I am not going to hurt you,” he said, moving slowly around the cabin. As he rounded the bed, that was where he found her. Huddled into a ball, her back against the wall, her knees drawn up, scared to death. He couldn’t see her face, but her long raven hair fell around her like a cape, cloaking her from everything around her.

  Her little body shook with fear, and for some reason, the thought of scaring her even more didn’t sit well with him. He wasn’t the monster everyone made him out to be. He didn’t like the idea of frightening the woman even more, but every time he tried to step closer, her trembling increased. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said as softly as he could, moving around the bed.

  “I want to go home,” she said, her voice trembling.

  “I can help you with that,” Tristan whispered. “What is your name?”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “Well, sweetheart, I’m all you’ve got. I can’t help you without a name.”

  “Yes, you can. You can turn this plane around and take me home.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “Treasure Cove. I don’t know. I guess I don’t have a home.”

  This was just fucking great. He’d already made one detour back to that godforsaken place to drop off a wayward passenger and now it seemed he had another. This was literally not his day!

  “Well, I can’t turn the plane around, but when we land in New York, I can put you on another plane back to Montana.”

  “Where is the woman who was on the plane before me?”

  Tristan looked at the woman huddled on the floor, still unable to see her face, and cringed. She was working with that crazy lunatic. This was just perfect. Getting to his feet, Tristan marched over to the scared woman, grabbed her arm, and hauled her to her feet. “I don’t know what kind of game you bitches are pulling but I’ve had enough!” he said furiously, shaking her. “Do you hear me!”

  “Stop!” the woman screamed just as the cabin door flew open and banged against the wall. The sudden noise had Tristan turning, and the woman managed to break free of his grasp and run for the door. Only she didn’t get very far, as she ran into the arms of Sasha.

  �
�What the hell is going on in here?” Sasha roared as the small woman barreled into him.

  “Apparently I have another stowaway. This little bitch was with the other one. I want her bound and gagged until we land in New York, where the local police department will be taking her ass into custody. I’ve had it with the crazy people from that fucking town. The sooner I own it, the better!”

  “Well, you’re the one acting crazy. Look at you. You’re naked. You probably scared the poor woman to death. Put some clothes on, man. No one needs to see your shit,” Sasha ordered harshly, trying to soothe the woman in his arms.

  “Please help me.” Her timid voice permeated the small cabin, and Tristan watched as Sasha froze. In the next instant, Sasha slowly pulled the woman away from him. Pushing back her hair, his friend looked into her eyes and whispered, “Little flower?”

  Chapter Nine

  “I didn’t mean to scare her,” Tristan whispered thirty minutes later as he stood next to Sasha. They both were looking at the sleeping woman. Sasha couldn’t believe that she had literally fallen into his lap. She was here with him and Tristan on the way to New York. They still had an hour or two before they landed, and in that time, they needed to figure out what they were going to do. Sasha didn’t have to ask Tristan what he wanted. His best friend made his intentions perfectly clear earlier. The quicker Tristan sent her back to Gabriel, the happier he was going to be. The problem was, Sasha wasn’t that ready to relinquish his right to her. As far as he was concerned, she found him, and for this reason he was responsible for her.

  Watching her sleep was intimate. He couldn’t explain it. It felt as if he were unworthy of looking upon her, yet his desire for her prohibited him from turning away. He knew he should, but he couldn’t. There was something vulnerable about her. Something that demanded he protect her, even from himself if need be.

  “What do you want to do about her?”

  Sasha just looked at the man next to him, unsure how to answer that question. Oh, he knew what he wanted, but would he follow through with it was another question. The right thing would be to call Gabriel and Alexander and let them know that they found their missing sister, stowed away on the plane. However, Sasha couldn’t bring himself to do that. Instead, he just turned to look at the sleeping woman and sighed.