I know I sound so bad right now, but if he’d made a play for Ben I’d be at home with my family right now while the police worked Wesley over and threw the book at him.
“Don’t look at me like that! You don’t understand any of this, you little bitch,” he grates, shoving me back into the seat before twisting and hitting the gas to get us moving again.
“What? What don’t I understand! You left your family without a second thought, and now you’ve not only kidnapped me from mine but you’ve hurt me!”
Lucian is so gonna kick your ass for hurting me!
The thought comes out of left field, but it’s so right it makes me smile. He may not love me, may not like me most days, but I’m his, and Lucian always takes care of what’s his.
When—not if but when he does find me…watch out, Wesley, because you’re in sooo much trouble.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you! I just wanted to talk to you…to get you to understand! But you ran before I could say anything,” he mutters, hitting the steering wheel with a huff. “You have to make him stop. Please, Ash, you have to make him leave me alone.”
What? What the hell is he talking about?
“I don’t know what the heck you’re talking about,” I hiss, scooting up and leaning into the seat.
This upright position makes my blood rush back to my deadened limbs, and shit! It hurts a lot.
“He told my wife.” He starts crying then, and I harden my heart against his quiet sobs. “He told her that I… She left me and took my boy. She took him away.”
He… I gasp out a wheezing breath and shake my head forcefully against the bitter tears wetting my eyes.
“You have a wife and kid?”
Everything else ceases to exist for me in that moment, everything but the bitter taste of loathing and resentment. He’s crying about losing a son, about losing his precious boy, when he’s had one all along. One he threw away like garbage. One who has spent three years coming to terms with losing a man I now see isn’t worth a lick of spit.
And then I see Lucian’s face. Lucian smiling at Ben as they romp in the pool. Lucian’s stern face when he corrects Ben’s grammar and chides him for being rude in my presence. Lucian’s pride when he introduces Ben as our kid.
The bitterness recedes beneath a swell of love so fierce I realize I’ve been fooling myself all along. I love him, and not that generic love I felt before, or have fooled myself into thinking I’ve feel lately, but that all-consuming feeling of belonging that scares me half to death.
Crap.
“Yeah. And she left and took him. Then your…husband,” he spits the word like a curse and looks back at me with contempt. “Took all the money. He’s ruined me.”
In this type of situation I would’ve asked a million questions to satisfy my curiosity. Not now, though. Now I’m just biding my time till my man comes to get me.
Strangely, I don’t give a shit what Wesley did in the past or what he feels. I don’t care anymore. And as far as answers, well, I’ll get them from Lucian when he comes.
My silence seems to have a less than calming effect on Wesley, though, and I cringe when he turns the car sharply and we start bouncing over an uneven dirt road leading into the woods.
Oh, crapsickles.
I hate the woods, have had nightmares about getting lost in them since the night I’d snuck downstairs and watched Friday the 13th by myself.
I can’t even go camping, thanks to my illogical fear of meeting Jason, the machete-wielding maniac who just doesn’t die.
“Uh, where are we going?”
I so do not wanna go into the woods with him. It had worked out for Meryl Streep and her band of simpletons, but as far as I can tell I’m in a boatload of trouble when this car stops moving, and even if I manage to get loose and run, well, I am so far from survival-ready I may as well just stay with dear old Dad and see what he has in store for me.
“You’ll see.”
Chapter Sixteen
Luc
I’m worried. Terrified, if I’m to be honest, because while I have a tracking chip in Ashley’s engagement ring—please, roll your eyes at a less stressful time—the blasted signal was lost an hour ago.
We have a general direction to start searching, but I have this terrible fear that she’s in a lot of trouble right now. Time…I’ve never been this furious at something so simple before in my life.
“Are ya gonna go fetch her now, Luc?” Ben asks for the hundredth time in the hour and forty-seven minutes since I’d almost lost all control of myself.
After that initial roar of outrage…well, I have a son to think about, so calming down despite my feelings was hard, but here I am, calmly assuring my son while anger and terror blaze through me.
I hadn’t lied when he’d run down and seen the kitchen and that handprint. Instead I’d wrapped him in my arms and promised him that I was going to go get our girl and bring her home.
“We’re ready to move, sir,” Frank, my security man, says from my left.
“Give me a minute.”
When he nods and walks away I turn to Ben and get down on my haunches, meeting his stare head on. I find that he’s easier to deal with when you’re honest.
“Yes. I need you to stay here with my secretary and do what she tells you to. Eat whatever she gives you and stay calm. Ash will need you to be calm when she comes home. Okay?”
He nods, his lip trembling slightly before he firms it and stands up straighter.
“Yes, sir.”
The kiss I drop on his rumpled hair is all I allow myself before turning and marching out to the car, my mind already planning a hundred miles a minute as we pull away and leave the estate.
“You’d better know where my woman is, Frank.”
The hardened soldier turns black eyes on me and nods, keeping his own emotions under check as we race through the streets, trying to beat the sinking sun.
“I have an idea, sir. We’ll find her. I’ll find him.”
I smile despite myself and cast a sardonic look at Frank. The man is Ashley’s personal security and has taken her disappearance very personally indeed.
It’s my fault that Wesley had gotten to her at all; I’d pulled Frank off house duty to get to Ben faster than I could, and thanks to that monumental fuck up he’s not only pissed at himself or Wesley Munro. He’s furious with me.
Seems I’m not the only besotted fool panting around my wife.
I could almost pity Wesley when Frank manages to catch up with him because, if I were a betting man, I’d lay odds that Wesley won’t walk away from that meeting fully intact. If he survives at all.
It just depends on the condition Ash is in when we get to her. From the bloody hand print I’d say that arse is in for at least a kneecap and a few important bones.
“Here we are, sir. We lost the signal here.”
I look out of the window and squint at the landscape as evening settles, throwing everything into a shadowy darkness.
“Oh, fuck.”
Trees. Everywhere.
Ash hates the wilderness due to some strange fear of a serial killer that doesn’t even exist. I know it’s crazy, but the thought of my woman wandering the woods alone, terrified out of her barmy mind, makes me even more crazed than the sight of that handprint did.
“Find her fucking now,” I growl, feeling my muscles tense with every minute that ticks by. “She’s afraid of the woods, Frank. Our girl is terrified of these places. Especially at night.”
I see his almost expressionless face harden, maybe enough to match my own violent emotions before Harry comes to a stop, pointing out an almost hidden dirt road.
“You want me to keep going, boss?”
I want to crack a smile at that Bostonian tough guy accent but refrain when Frank leaves the car and jogs to the road. He comes back a minute later, smiling so savagely I feel an icy draft creep down my spine.
“Fresh tracks. Let’s go. We go in on foot.”
My two thousan
d dollar shoes protest violently as I vault out of the car and follow him at a dead run while he hisses commands into his phone, his pace never slowing as we crash through the tree line, keeping adjacent to the road.
“Sloan says there should be a cabin about two miles up ahead.”
I grunt in answer and keep going, sweating buckets despite the chill in the air.
Minutes, hours later, I crash into Frank’s back when he stops, his eyes scanning our surroundings. A derelict cabin stands up ahead, the place a dark hovel that makes no sound, no signs of life as we creep closer.
“It looks abandoned.”
Good. That motherfucker better hope he doesn’t have my woman stashed in that piece of shite lean-to. If he has…well, I can’t say for certain if I’ll be able to keep my civilized mien in the face of finding my baby in that filthy hole.
Ten minutes later and after a team of ten—men I hadn’t even known were there, they are so silent—sweep the cabin and the surrounding area, I almost wish Wesley had had the balls to put my woman in there.
“Empty. Fuck.”
***
Ash
“Please, Jesus, don’t let him get me.”
Darkness. Everywhere. Surrounding me. Pushing down on me like a living blanket that suffocates me with every inhalation I can stutter through my constricted chest.
I want to cry and scream, rage against Wesley and his passive violence, but I can’t manage a sound as I crawl through the blackness enveloping me.
I’m trapped, stuck in the middle of nowhere, doomed to crawl through these trees all night, alone and so scared I feel my bladder cramp brutally.
He’d dragged me out of the car, literally, on my back for so long the skin on my shoulder blades is raw and suspiciously sticky. That hadn’t been the worst, though. No, he’d then proceeded to dump me in the middle of nowhere before ripping my engagement ring from my finger and running away, leaving me alone and bound, scrambling to retrace his steps as darkness fell.
That had been so long ago. At least he’d done me a solid by cutting the cable ties from around my ankles, but it’s not much use when I keep falling or running into trees I can barely see.
When a twig snaps somewhere to my left I freeze and hold my breath, whimpering, squinting into the darkness for the tell-tale glint of a machete.
Yeah, I know it’s ridiculous to be afraid of a fictional character, but it’s no use trying to tell myself it’s just make believe. In my mind he’s a living, breathing entity that’s silently stalking me through the pitch black woods surrounding me.
I crawl forward on my knees and elbows, breathing heavily as I try to find my way. It’s literally impossible to see my hands in front of my face, it’s so dark.
“Please, Jesus, don’t let me suffer here,” I beg, falling onto my face. “Please just give me a sliver of moonlight.”
It doesn’t happen because, of course, if there is any I can’t see it for the freaking thick canopy above me. When something furry scuttles across my bound hands, trailing a tail, I give up any pretense of calm and scream bloody murder, jumping to my feet and forward in a mad dash for any place but the area inhabited by that furry critter.
Now you know I’m crying hysterically and begging for help, miraculously not hitting any trees, when suddenly I hit a brick wall with muscular arms and tree trunks for legs.
“Nooo!”
Thrashing and kicking out at the monster rampaging through my head, I struggle to get away in the hopes of dashing for safety. The arms tighten instead and I act on instinct, sinking my teeth into what feels like a pectoral muscle and bite down as viciously as possible.
“Jesus, love, leave off, would you!”
What I feel in that moment is crushing relief and an aching recognition that steals every rational thought but the most basic of all. My man has come for me; he’s saving me from the monsters in the dark and the villains in my head.
He’s come for me, and I no longer have to keep myself together because his strong arms are here to hold me up and chase the demons away.
“Lucian?”
“It’s okay love. Shh, don’t cry, my darling, I have you,” he whispers, crushing me closer and stroking my hair as I fall apart and attempt to crawl right into his skin. “I have you, baby. Shh, don’t cry.”
Can you blame me for pushing closer and ceding the battle? Is it pathetically stupid to fall into his heat and give up the last vulnerable piece of the heart now pounding in my chest?
Maybe, but right at this moment I don’t give a damn. I’m safe and protected, and for the sake of not feeling so alone, I’m willing to give him everything I have just to see where it will take me.
Chapter Seventeen
Luc
I’ve never felt this happy and furious at the same time. The emotions are stronger than any I’ve ever experienced, and not because I’ve not felt these things before but because the intensity is far beyond anything I’ve known.
After seeing the empty, rotten bowels of that cabin I’d been ready to lose all sense of sanity. I’d looked into the darkness of the woods and felt my head spin with the desperation of a drowning man, when the shrill scream of my girl had lit the air, making the hair at my nape stand straight on end.
We’d all run toward that sound, ready to defend against any attack. Honestly, I’d been ready to rip her father apart with my bare hands before assessing the damage to her and getting her to the nearest hospital.
Thankfully what I’d stumbled upon was nothing worse than my frightened baby, running pell-mell in the inky darkness because some unseen animal had crawled over her skin.
I’d caught her up, speechless with relief and so thankful to have her slight weight against me again that my knees had weakened. My mistake, I think ruefully, rubbing at my chest where her little teeth had bitten.
The damn female had bitten me!
And damn me if I wasn’t proud of her for fighting like a feral animal.
“Her wrists and hands need some attention. Don’t think the gash on her eye needs stitches, but she’s gonna be sore when she wakes up for sure.”
I nod to Frank and pull her closer, inhaling the scent of her twig and leaf matted hair. We’d had to sedate her when we’d reached the car as fatigue and shock finally set in, so she now rests comfortably on my chest, her even exhalations and snores making my heart settle for the first time since I walked into the kitchen and seen the carnage.
“I’ve called the doctor. He should be waiting for us at home.”
I keep my tone and volume even, not wanting to disturb her rest any more than I have to. Rage and the need for violence still seethe beneath the surface of my skin, but there will be adequate time to seek an outlet for them after I tend to the needs of my woman.
“About that other matter.”
“No, we’ll discuss it when I’ve had her seen to and resting comfortably.”
Frank nods and stays silent for the rest of the journey, his unsettling eyes never straying from my light burden and the paleness of her skin. As I relax back and shift her closer to the crook of my neck, I close my eyes and plot my next course, laying it all out as methodically as my vengeance-filled mind will allow.
I have no use for those who oppose me, never have, so for Wesley Munro…well, let’s just say that as far as I’m concerned it’s become a personal affront to me that the man breathes the same air as my little family.
For daring to take what is mine I’d already decided to make him suffer. For hurting her, though, I have an altogether different set of standards. For this he will not only suffer but beg for mercy.
I will make him cry for every tiny scratch he put on her delicate skin, will make him scream for every shiver that wracked her body as I pulled her close and willed my heat into her frozen limbs.
Every mark and bruise that he has given her will be visited upon him two fold. By my own hand, and then… I may not kill him like I wish to, I’m no murderer, but I will ensure that he lives the rest of h
is miserable days regretting that he dared to hurt my Ashley.
My thoughts are brutal and hard and so far from the civilized man I show to the world, but as I pull her closer and stare out of the window I can’t find the will to give a damn.
Wesley Munro will hurt for hurting my family.
***
Ash
“Lucian, seriously, I’m totally fine. See? I can get out of bed without my limbs falling off. For God’s sake! Put me down, you ninny!”
I’m yelling, something that makes me feel shitty due to the fact that he’d saved me, but I can’t help it. It’s been three days since I’d woken in our bed, and the man has yet to let me so much as lift a fork to feed myself.
I love that he’s been so attentive and caring, and yeah, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to hamming it up a little just to have him fawning all over me a bit longer.
But even I can’t stay in bed this long and I freaking well say so, have said so continuously since yesterday, when the doctor came by to give me the all clear.
“You’ve been through an ordeal. You need your rest,” he snarls, sweeping me up only to lay me gently back on the bed I’ve come to hate.
“But Lucian—”
“No! You damn near had hypothermia, and you’ve had a massive shock. You need to give yourself time to heal,” he grinds out, pinning me to the bed with a hand over my heaving chest. “Really, love, I can’t tell you how awful you looked—”
“Gee, thanks. If you’re looking to get laid anytime soon, you should keep going. The flattery is almost killing me.”
His mouth kicks up in the first grin I’ve seen since waking, and I do what any hot-blooded female in my position would do when pinned beneath a man this dominantly sexy.
I stare open-mouthed and drink it all in with a long line of drool streaming down my chin.
“You’re twisting my words. Deliberately,” he chides, leaning down to plant a gentle kiss on the skin between my eyebrows. “You know I didn’t mean you looked ugly. You looked half insane with fright and cold.”
I snort and look away as a blush heats my cheeks.
LAWSON (A Standalone Billionaire Romance Novel) Page 63
