His Brother's Wife

by Michelle Love

  My father gives me a look telling me to quiet down. Then he says, “Son, you did take his fiancée. Did you expect he would take that well? Did you think he wouldn’t want to talk to her? Did you think he wouldn’t make an attempt to get her back from you?”

  Great!

  “Dad, he hurt her.”

  Mom quickly interrupts, “She accepted it!”

  “You know, you two are why he’s the fuck up he is! No matter what he has ever done, you two never really tried to correct his actions. You just said that was how he was. His temper was bad, so I needed to watch out. You guys told me that when I was young and he’d beat the shit out of me. Just stay out of his way, you told me. And now that I’m telling you your oldest son beats women, all you have to say is she allowed it.” I turn around and run my hand over my face in complete exasperation.

  “Look, Reed, I’ll talk to him,” my father says. “I can make sure he knows that kind of thing is the wrong thing to do.”

  I turn back. “And you think that will work? The man is all grown up now, Dad. There’s no changing him. What I’d like from you both is a bit of backup. Tell Rod to leave me and Jenna alone.”

  Mom shakes her head. “As if he would listen to us.”

  “Just say it. He has no place to live. Tell him he can’t stay with you if he bothers her anymore.” I look back and forth at them and find my mother shaking her head.

  “No, Reed. He’s our son, and he’s been gone for years. I’m not about to tell him anything like that. I love Jenna. You know I do. But I won’t put out my son because of something she allowed him to do to her. I won’t do it!”

  “She’s right, Reed. We can’t toss him out. And you have to accept the consequences of your actions. You took your brother’s girl. That was always going to cost you. And Jenna, for that matter.” Dad looks right into my eyes. “What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking that I love her. I was going to come home the summer she graduated from high school and try to get a shot with her. I had eyes for her since she was fourteen and I first saw her when we were in high school.”

  Mom’s nose wrinkles as she says, “Why did you take so long to let her or anyone else know that? I mean, you had the same shot at her as your brother did. Only he actually moved on what he wanted. You sat back and missed your shot back then. And now I can see why he said those things about you being jealous when he asked Jenna to marry him. You were.”

  “I was angry, not jealous. I could see he wasn’t right for her. She was a good girl. I had my ideas about what he was doing to her. But when she told me what he did, it made me sick,” I say, as I hold my stomach because my whole family is making me sick right now.

  Mom tops it off as she says, “Yet she allowed him to do it, Reed. She may not be the woman you think she is. You might really think about that before you marry her. She has a dark side, just like your brother. She was a mess when he disappeared. You should’ve seen her. She waited for him to come back. When most women would’ve never taken him back, she was more than ready to. They have a history and a connection, and there’s not a thing you can do about that.”

  My father looks at me. “If they do get back together, I expect you to accept that.”

  “Fuck that shit! I will never accept that. I will fight to the end for her. I will never allow him or anyone else to hurt her again. And if that’s how you two feel, I don’t know if this is the kind of family I want to be a part of. Our kids don’t need grandparents with such hard hearts. So I guess this is goodbye.”

  I slam back into the house and out the front door, barely able to think with all the betrayal by my parents.

  As I get into my car, I pound the steering wheel with my fists. Then I look up, with a thought about destroying Rod’s bike.

  Only it’s not here, and neither is that little red car that bitch must have come in.

  And in that instant, fear runs through me and I hurry to get to Jenna.

  Please don’t let anything bad be happening to her!

  I press the gas pedal to the floor as I speed to the other side of our small town to get to the lodge. My heart is pounding after all my parents have said.

  What if Jenna really does want to talk to Rod, and she’s afraid to tell me that? Would I let her? Could I let her talk to him without me around, at the very least?

  And what if she does want to give him another chance? She did wait for him when he left. She did stay with him when he did those things to her.

  Maybe she does have a hidden dark side?

  Maybe she’s only telling me what she thinks I want to hear.

  But if that’s true, then why does it feel like magic when we touch? Or is that just me, and she’s telling me she feels it too but she’s lying about that?

  I’ve wanted her for so damn many years; it could be just me. Am I some kind of a fool? Am I about to lose the woman I love because she doesn’t really love me?

  Maybe she wanted me because I’m the next thing to Rod. Though we’re complete opposites, she could see me as the closest thing to Rod she could get.

  But she seemed so afraid of him. She talked so strongly about not wanting him or that life back.

  I round the corner and see the lodge. Neither the little red car nor his bike are there, so I feel relieved.

  I can’t wait to get Jenna and get the fuck out of this town!

  I leave the car and run inside to get her. She was sleeping when I left and probably still is. This is taking a toll on her, and I don’t plan on letting her in on the fact my parents are being so fucking casual about this.

  The door opens before I unlock it and I push it back to find the sheets and blanket are pulled off the bed. I look around and see the only thing gone is Mom’s nightgown that Jenna was wearing before we made love and I tossed it on the floor.

  “Jenna!” I shout.

  With no answer, I run to the bathroom, and she’s not there either. She would not leave this room only wearing that. Even her purse is here.

  I look around and remember her cell phone being on the nightstand. It’s gone.

  I call it and find it goes straight to voicemail. So I leave a text, telling her to call me as soon as possible.

  Then it hits me that Rod may have come and taken her. So I run to the office and find an older woman sitting at the desk. “Hi!” I nearly shout as I come through the door. “Did you see a motorcycle come into this parking lot at all in the last hour?”

  She shakes her head. “No, sir.”

  “Did you see a little red car?”

  Her brow furrows as she thinks. Then she nods. “Yes. It was here for a few minutes, then it was gone.”

  “Did you see who was in it?”

  My heart is racing so hard, I feel like I might have a fucking heart attack.

  She shakes her head. “Sorry. Are you checking out today? I have a note here saying not to charge you and that you two are leaving today.”

  “I’m not sure yet. You see, my fiancée is missing from our room.”

  “Oh my goodness! What are you going to do?”

  I look at her and feel like crying.

  “I don’t know. Can you call the police for me and tell them to meet me at my room?” She nods, and I walk slowly out of the office and back to our room, praying Jenna is in there when I walk back in.

  But she isn’t, and I fall to the floor as I know he has her.

  I have to find her!

  Chapter 24

  JENNA

  The smell of the spare tire which I’m resting my head on, in the trunk of some little red car I’m crammed into, is making me sick. I was abducted from our room by some woman with a horrible red dye job, along with Rod, and three other big-ass men in motorcycle jackets, who put a gag in my mouth and tied me up. I’m trying to figure out how I’ll get out of this situation.

  The sound of a phone ringing fills my ears. Then I hear the woman talking. “Hey.”

  Then I hear Rod’s voice coming over the car’s speaker syste
m. “You there yet?”

  “No, ’bout three minutes away,” she answers.

  “I want her strung up in my room. Then leave her alone there until I come.”

  “Yes, Master,” she says.

  Chills run all through me as I hear her say the words he used to make me say. She is his new sub.

  So why does he want me too?

  The car lurches to a stop as it slips on gravel. I hear the engine go off and one car door open, then close, so I’m pretty sure the other three men went off with Rod.

  The crunching of gravel crushing beneath big boots comes toward the car and the trunk is opened. The daylight streams in, and I have to close my eyes.

  I only have on the nightgown I got from Reed’s mother last night, as that’s what Rod grabbed up and put on my naked body when they all came into the room and found me asleep and naked.

  Two huge bearded and tattooed men pull me out of the trunk, and one of them tosses me over his shoulder and takes me inside of a big metal building. I look around and see maybe twenty bikers sitting around the building that has a bunch of tables and chairs in it.

  It resembles a bar, and there’s dim lighting coming from beer signs that are hung on the walls. It smells like oil and gasoline, with a heavy cigarette background.

  All heads turn to look at me. Yet not one person asks a thing about why there’s a woman all bound up and gagged and being taken toward the back of the building. So I have no doubt I will not find a compassionate person in this bunch of misfits.

  I’m taken through some door and tossed on a small bed that reeks of booze and cigarettes. It makes me sick to think this is how Rod is living now.

  The redhead comes in as the two Neanderthals leave. She comes to me, and I am helpless to get away from her as not only my hands are bound with bungee cords, but my feet too.

  She closes the door and looks me over. “I don’t know why he’s so hung up on you. You’re way too vanilla for him.”

  I nod and she smiles, revealing a missing tooth just to the left of her front one. I mumble to try to get her to see I want to talk to her. But she looks away from me.

  “I guess you and me are going to be like some kind of sister-wives or some shit. Rod just sprang this on me last night. I had no idea we were coming to this tiny town for anything more than a road trip. Guess we were coming for you, Jenna Foster. The Jenna Foster that I am constantly compared to. You must’ve done things so great for the man who I belong to.”

  I shake my head and mumble again in an attempt to get her to at least set my mouth free. She looks at me with a lot of unanswered questions clouding her expression. Then she comes to me.

  Taking a knife out of her tight leather jeans pocket, she runs it up behind my head. The gag goes loose, and I spit it out. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t. I just want to hear you tell me I’ll be his number one woman. You can sit back and be quiet and stay the fuck out of my way and maybe we can co-exist with Rod.” She folds her arms in front of her and leans against the wall.

  “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be with him. I don’t know what he told you, but he left me. I wasn’t good enough for him, obviously, or he’d have taken me with him.”

  She looks me all over and makes a face that has it all squished up. “You look like a damn teacher or something with that drab little hairstyle you got going on. And why in the hell does a woman your age wear old lady nightgowns?”

  “This isn’t mine. I put it on last night when Rod caught me and his brother in the swimming pool naked. His mother gave it to me to cover myself. And I am going to be a school teacher. A kindergarten teacher, to be precise.”

  Her eyes go narrow. “Fucking fantastic! So my sister-wife is a normal, boring woman. That’s just going to work out so great! Not!”

  I try hard to think about what to say to get her to see it’s best to let me go. “Look, I need your help. What’s your name?”

  “Rod nicknamed me Sweet-thing.” Her smile tells me she’s very proud of the fact he gave her that name.

  “K. Sweet-thing, I need your help. If you could find it in your heart to just let me go, then I’ll disappear, and you can have your life with Rod,” I make sure to sound like I’m pleading with her.

  But it does no good as her face is hard as a rock and she shakes her head. “He’d string me up and beat me nonstop for three or more hours if I did that. If you know the man like he claims you do, then you know I can’t do that. And I’m not a girl who goes around doing good deeds, anyway.”

  “Yeah, you don’t look real helpful,” I find myself saying out loud, though I had no intention of doing that.

  “Look, bitch!” She comes closer to me, shaking the knife near my face. “If it wasn’t for Rod and how he is about you then I would cut your ass up right now. But he will kill me if I harm a hair on your head. He told me that himself. But I won’t let you get away with talking about me at all.”

  “Sorry. That was way out of line, Sweet-thing. It’s just that I really need to get out of here before he gets here. Once he does, I know he’ll make damn sure I don’t.”

  “You got that right,” she says, then grabs an open, half-drunk beer off the small table in the little room.

  I throw up a little in my mouth as she takes the rest of it in one long drink. She burps and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, then sets the empty brown bottle back down.

  “I know you’re not liking this, Sweet-thing. And you have to realize that you will really hate it when you have to share Rod, if you get a chance to at all. He and I had a really hot connection. He’s going to want to have sex with me a lot. We used to have sex three and four times a day. It’s been over two years since he’s touched me. I’m sure he’s not going to come out of this room for days once he gets here,” I say, and watch her face fall.

  “Fuck!” she says, then looks around the room. “The bed’s too small for the three of us. He’ll probably make me sleep out in the bar. Fuck! Why did he have to find your ass?”

  “Let me go and you won’t have any problems. If you don’t, you will lose him to me. I can promise you that. He’ll make you a slave to both of us. I know he will. I don’t want to see that happen to you.” I watch her as she slides her back down the wall and lands on her ass.

  She puts her face in her hands and shakes her head. “I know that too. But if I let you go …”

  I interrupt her. “If you let my legs free and reposition the bungee cord holding my hands together, then hang me on that hook, I can see it’s low enough that I can use my feet to climb up the wall. I can get off the hook all on my own and escape. It won’t be your fault at all.”

  “That’ll never work,” she says, as she keeps her head in her hands.

  “It will. I heard him tell you to string me up. He told you to leave me in here alone after that. If you give me the heads up about a back door or window, then that would make it easier for me too. You know how things are going to work out if he gets me. I’m like his favorite toy and if I have to live with him then I will become all he wants. I did before. It helped me to be punished less and treated better. I know how to work the man now. It won’t take me anytime at all to have him eating out of the palm of my hand.”

  She moves back up the wall until she’s standing. “There’s a back door. When you walk out of this room turn to the right and stay close to the wall and no one will see you. The door is behind a wall. You’ll have to only open it as far as you have to, to get out. It will let in some light, and somebody might notice that.”

  “Is there any way you feel like telling me what direction will get me back to town?” I ask, and hope like crazy she wants to be a little more helpful.

  “If you can get to the front of the bar without being seen, that’s the quickest way. But chances are that if you’re walking up that road, Rod will be coming down it. If any of the gang sees a woman walking down the road in a nightgown, chances are they will grab you and bring you right back here,” she says
, then nods her head. “Yeah, you better just run out the back and keep going that direction. You’ll come upon some house, I’m sure. Eventually, anyway.”

  The woman pulls my cell phone out of her pocket and sets it on the table. Then she comes and takes the cord off my ankles, then releases the cord around my wrists. “Thank you,” I say, as I shake my hands and wiggle my feet to get the blood flowing back into them.

  “Take these with you. I don’t want him finding them and putting two and two together. I’m going to tell him I had you bound up and strung up and have no idea how you got free. He didn’t see me take your phone. So he won’t know about that.” She looks into my face and seems to be searching it. “How’d you take it when he left you like that?”

  “Very badly. But I thank the Lord every single day that he did. I got myself back. And I don’t want to give myself back to him ever again. Not ever!” I look into her eyes and see the lost look she has, very much the way I looked when I was with him.

  “Good luck,” she says, then turns away from me. “You’re going to need it.” Then she walks out of the small room and I get up, grab my cell phone, and peek out the door.

  I find it dark, and no one is looking my way, so I slip out the door and stay close to the wall. Slinking against the wall I spot the door she told me about and, once I get to it, I slip out it and start hauling ass like I have never run before.

  It’s just desert out here. Cactus and hot sand are all I see, and my bare feet are already burning. I keep running and look at my cell phone and see there’s no service.

  Of course there isn’t; that would be too fucking easy!

  Far away, I can hear the sound of motorcycles coming down the road and somehow increase my speed, as I have a feeling it’s Rod. When he finds me not in his room waiting for him to pour on the punishment for daring to leave his ass, he’s sure to come out that back door and come looking for me.

  So I keep running, and it occurs to me that my footprints are left in the sandy soil, but there’s not a damn thing I can do about that. I just pray all those years of his cigarette smoking will have him not being able to run for as long as I can.