by Zoey Marcel
The stillness was warm and arid and an orchestra of crickets said, “Fuck this. Twilight is close enough.”
Time seemed to stand still here. The memories he’d made in this house years ago echoed in his mind and probably in Greyson’s to this day.
He absorbed the picture in his hand that he’d kept in his wallet for years. It was a photo of better times, or so he imagined. He and his two brothers looked so happy in the picture. He’d say he was the best looking of the trio, but they were identical triplets, so there went that.
Danny he hated. He didn’t know if it was always so. He couldn’t remember anything before the one he’d sworn to leave unnamed had entered his life.
Then there was Josh. That brother was a first-class idiot, but he only annoyed him sometimes. Josh had been attracted to Melanie, but he’d never made the dangerous mistake of dating her like Danny had. Josh was better than Danny in every way. Danny had fucked up his own life because he had no common sense and needed to be put down.
Josh was screwed up through no fault of his own. He’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time. A place he still blamed himself for putting the poor cuss in to this day.
He didn’t feel guilty for framing the unlucky bastard for killing that woman. He’d had to do it to get Melanie’s attention and had needed someone to take the bullet for him. Josh had been dreadfully convenient and just drunk enough not to remember a murder he’d been framed for.
A cool breeze whispered through the tall grass and swept over his face. He might not be sorry for landing his brother’s stupid ass in jail, but what he unknowingly did to Josh twenty years ago still haunted him.
* * * *
Twenty years ago
They dragged him inside and shoved him forward to his knees. He couldn’t stop shaking and felt like he might throw up when he felt dark, spiteful eyes eating through his skull like acid.
“What’s this I hear about you running away again?” the burly thug asked him.
He shuddered. “I wasn’t trying to run away. I just took a different road to get back here.”
One of the men behind him snorted. “Right. That’s why you ran when we came to get you.”
The trembling got worse. “You said you’d let me go after I sold this last batch for you. You have to keep your word.”
His tattooed boss scoffed at this. “Do I?” He crossed his big arms, showcasing a disheartening level of strength. “See here’s the thing about that. I lied. You were warned not to try to get away and you keep not listening.”
The nausea worsened and he felt cold and weak. “I just want to go home.”
“Really? You left that shit hole years ago. What makes you think your life would be better if you went back?”
He swallowed. “I could meet a nice girl and start a family.”
The two brutes behind him snickered.
His boss glowered at him before smirking. “Ah, Sage, you’re always good for a laugh. We both know I’ve spoiled you for anyone else.”
He tasted bile. “I have a name.”
“You did, but it’s more personal when I call you something nobody else has ever called you. And you do have such pretty sage-green eyes.”
He closed his eyes and swallowed. “If I apologize for leaving, will you forgive me?”
“You mean instead of beating the shit out of you? No, but it’s sweet of you to want to apologize to me. After I punish you I’ll give you a chance to remind me why I keep you around. But first…” The brawny badass tossed a folder onto the floor near him. “My promises might be idle, but my threats never are.”
He opened the folder and nearly passed out when he saw pictures of his house, his parents, and both his brothers walking around the city. His head flew up and he gaped at the other man.
The leather-clad gangster stared him down hard. “And you thought I was lying when I said I knew where you lived before you came here. I know everything about you. I watched you for years.”
“Please don’t hurt them. Next time I run the stuff, I’ll come right back here. I promise.”
“I know you will, but apparently physical pain isn’t enough to break you. Let’s see if this works. I had one of my men sell your brother Josh some pretty strong stuff.”
“What?” Enraged, he started to get up, but the other man shoved him back down on his knees. “Josh would never do drugs.”
“Really? ’Cause he bought them. I guess curiosity got the best of him.”
“You son of a bitch, I’ll kill you!” He got up and lunged for the powerful bastard.
“That doesn’t sound like gratitude.” His boss slammed him up against the wall. “If you need someone to hate, try yourself. It’s your fault he’s been exposed to illicit substances.”
“No. It’s not my fault.” A hideous sense of remorse and pain tried to negate his words. “Josh is good and innocent.”
“He won’t be for long, and you’ll have to go through life knowing that he’s addicted because of you.”
Closing his eyes, the hatred quieted and tears fell. Not Josh.
Large fingers ran gently through his hair. “You’re so pretty when you cry. It’s like I told you, Sage, in a game of cat and mouse, the cat always wins. If you don’t let yourself become a monster, you’ll always be a victim.” The man’s hand turned dangerous and grabbed him by the nape, jerking him into another room. “And that’s just fine by me.”
* * * *
Present day
The sun sank lower on the horizon and his brother Danny stepped out onto the porch with him.
“Who the hell would want to live in this place?” Danny complained. “There’s nothing but grass and sky.”
“Some people like the solitude.”
“Not me. I prefer the city.”
His cadence dropped and turned shadowy. “The city has its drawbacks.”
“Sucks Josh is in jail. It’d be one hell of a party if he was here.”
He glanced down at the picture in his hand. “Maybe he’s better off in jail.”
“I doubt it. He’s too much of a looker to last long in there.”
Pure rage filled him, propelled him to his feet, and sent his hand grabbing Danny by the throat. “You watch your fucking mouth! No one’s gonna touch him, not ever. I’ll fucking kill them if they do.”
“Shit. Calm down. Since when did you get so oversensitive?”
He let go of the idiot and then sat back down.
Danny shook his head and turned to gaze at the fading colors melting into the vast sky. “Well, I’ll give this place credit for one thing. They’ve got damned good sunsets.”
“They do.”
He drank in the details of the picture again. Never in his remembered life had he loved anyone. In the institution he’d overheard the so-called experts say that he was incapable of ever loving anyone. At times he believed them. There was just too much hatred and anger in him to leave any room for love and compassion.
He did feel something when he looked at Josh’s face in the photograph. Sad. Guilty. Friendship. They must have been close at one time, but those sweet memories of innocence were long gone. Destroyed by the ravages of trauma and whatever devices had been employed to make him forget his childhood and most of his teen years.
While Danny’s back was turned he touched his finger to his lips and then to Josh’s cheek in the picture. “I’m so sorry.”
Danny must have heard him whisper. “You say something?”
“Nah, just breathing.”
Josh was the only one he felt anything positive toward. The self-proclaimed experts were wrong. He must have loved his brother at one time before all the goodness had been stripped from him. Some said he had no empathy because he lacked the conscience that most people had.
But he must have felt something pure before, that thing they called empathy. He’d been crushed when he’d learned that Josh had been exposed to drugs…because of him. Years in captivity had been spent worrying about his brother and s
till more years feeling devastated at the destruction he’d seen in Josh as he watched from afar while Josh had thrown his life away. He’d wanted so badly to save him, but he couldn’t even save himself. He’d stayed away to protect his family after his escape when he’d learned they’d moved to a new place.
Those fuckers at the institution could call him schizophrenic and a psychopath all they wanted, but the truth was he’d done the only thing he knew to survive. He became the monster to keep from being the victim.
* * * *
It took a good two hours or more for Diego to fashion that spiderweb made of ropes. The rope was secured to a frame that was bracketed to the wall by chains. The web itself was made of ropes pulled taut with next to no give.
When he was ready he tied her to the web in the stable. The construction of the whole thing allowed her weight to be evenly distributed and she was bound tight to the web without touching the floor.
“I feel like a fly stuck in a real spiderweb, Sir,” Mellie told him.
Diego blew her a kiss as he tightened her binds. “A very sexy fly.”
“Thank you, Sir.” She smiled, feeling strangely relaxed despite her immobility. “Do the ranch hands always live on the O’Neils’ property?”
He shook his head, still focused on what he was doing. “No. I’m the only worker they have on at present. Greyson prefers to work his ass off instead of relying on other people—a mentality that sometimes seeps into other facets of his life.”
“Are you two close?”
He smiled, seeming mildly entertained by the question. “We’re pretty close, yes.”
“How long have you been with them?”
“Since I was a teenager.”
“You’ve been working for them for that long?”
“No. I was an orphan. They took me in and I offered to work for them. Greyson refers to me as his hired hand, but he knows as well as the rest of them that I’m family.”
She smiled at him when he looked at her. Diego was pure sin incarnate. His swarthy eyes had feeling in them at the moment as well as the usual sensuality they housed. He seemed fond of the O’Neils, Greyson in particular.
“I noticed Greyson seems nicer to you than he is with everyone else.”
Diego stiffened a little, but his mellow tone was at odds with his body’s reaction to her comment. “He knows he needs me.”
“Does he ever…has he ever shared, you know, like you and his brothers sometimes do?”
“Never with them, but he has with me, yes. We shared a slave for three years.”
A strong dose of jealousy arose from within her. Damn it, she didn’t want to be jealous. Of course Diego had a past. He was forty-one and she wasn’t an idiot. Still, she hated the idea that some other woman had gone further with him into BDSM than she had. He’d probably loved her, yet the woman wasn’t with him anymore. He’d let her go for whatever reason. He probably had a more adult view of love. Letting a woman go was likely easy for him when he could always obtain another with those killer looks and that suave charisma of his.
A wave of sadness came over her. She would be as replaceable to him if she ever had to leave for any reason. It shouldn’t bother her when she had Emmett’s, Hunter’s, and Jake’s affection, but it did.
“Now where is my little Melanie’s mind at?” Diego inquired.
Mellie gulped nervously at her own exposure. “That’s sweet you guys used to share a slave. You must care about each other an awful lot to be able to make such a big commitment to a woman without wanting to kill each other.”
Probably a lot like the kind of commitment Hunter, Jake, and Emmett had made to her. They loved her dearly and had no problem sharing her with one another.
“Greyson is my best friend,” Diego evaded.
“That’s neat that you both loved the same woman.”
Her heart hurt when a tiny spasm went through it. God, it sucked. Sure Diego had bedded other women in the past before her, but a terrible pain set up camp in her heart at the thought of him having loved another woman.
His dark eyes flickered up to hers, knowing and serious. “I didn’t say I loved her. I didn’t love any of the women in my past.”
Relief was quickly trampled by discouragement. “So you’ve never been in love?”
She almost worded it the way her brain computed it. He’s over forty and never been in love? Does that mean he’s not capable of love and true intimacy?
That seemed almost as bad as her original fear.
His eyes danced with mischief. “I didn’t say that either.”
Not exactly an open book, was he?
“How many slaves has Greyson had?” If she cared at all it was only as a means of getting around to the person she was really curious about.
“Just the one he shared with me. The other women were subs or strictly vanilla.”
“Oh, that’s interesting.”
Crap! I wasn’t supposed to say that aloud. It sounds so fake. Be casual. The older ones are always so much smarter…I think.
“How many slaves have you had?” When he didn’t answer right away, she lathered on more nonchalance. “Just out of curiosity.”
Diego came back around the frame from where he’d been checking the ropes. “Just out of curiosity?”
Crap, he knows.
She probably seemed so young and desperate to him.
“I have no objection to answering your questions, but at our next session I will require you to answer questions for me about your past.”
She felt small and uncertain. Opening up to anyone about certain parts of her past would be extremely difficult, but if it got him to open up to her about his past, then it would be worth it.
Melanie nodded.
He gave her an appreciative smile. “I’ve had two slaves, the one I shared with Greyson for a few years and the one I had to myself back in my youth.”
“It’s okay if you loved them. I don’t mind. I understand.” She tried to sound upbeat, but she was hurting inside.
Diego cradled her jaw gently, but his eyes were stern. “I told you I never loved any of the women in my past. I will not swear an oath to win your faith. You either trust me at my word or you don’t. I will be disappointed if you don’t, but I will not plead for your belief.”
His response stunned her. She supposed it should piss her off or make her feel rejected, but there was something in his uncompromising stance and devil-may-care attitude she found addicting. The best part of his sentence was the reaffirmation that none of the bitches, er, women in his past had touched him deep enough to saturate his soul.
“I believe you, Sir.”
He didn’t thank her, merely kissed her on the forehead for being a good girl. Apparently he was who he was and made no apologies for it, not even to her. His confidence and unwillingness to change made her wet and jittery.
“Most of the women were either submissives or vanilla.” Diego started texting someone on his cell phone while he spoke to her. “I’m aware that you had two boyfriends before us. Next time I take you to the club you will tell me about them, particularly the first one that you never speak of.”
Her eyes fell. “Yes, Sir.”
Talk about her first boyfriend? That just wasn’t done. Nobody needed to hear about that lunatic. The poor shattered man. To this day she wished she could have done more for him.
Diego put his cell phone back in his pocket and stood back to admire his work. “You look gorgeous, Melanie. What do you think?”
“Thank you, Sir. I like this bondage web better than the one you used the other day, no offense. It’s just more comfortable this way.”
He smiled. “I know. That’s why I chose it. This web design is one of my favorites. I love how helpless you are both front and back to my will. You know you’re going to be fucked, don’t you?”
She let out an exaggerated gasp that bordered on hyperventilation. “Are you joking, Sir?”
His eyes narrowed at her bratty grin, but his lip
s quirked into a crooked smile at the flirty wink and the kiss she blew at him.
“We could always make it a flogging instead.” Diego glanced over his shoulder when he likely heard the footsteps approaching that she did. “Dolce, I want you to be a good submissive and don’t talk while I’m gone. You can cry out in passion if you must, but no talking. Understand?”
She nodded.
“Good. Try to relax if he touches you.”
Her eyes bugged out and she debated whether or not to break the no-talking rule and demand answers. Who the hell was coming into the barn to touch her? Why shouldn’t she be relaxed if it was only an O’Neil?
When the barn door opened and the man walked in she understood why.
Oh, that O’Neil.
Greyson blinked back his astonishment as he approached. “What did you need to see me about?”
Diego’s expression had sly written all over it—the cunning devil. “I spent well over two hours making that web and tying her to it. I need to go relieve my bladder, but someone has to watch my little Melanie to make sure she doesn’t panic or hurt herself.”
Greyson seemed uncomfortable. “I can get one of my brothers.”
Diego shook his head and placed his hand on Greyson’s shoulder. “It has to be you. I need a good Dom to watch her.”
Greyson glared at him.
Diego headed toward the door. “She is not allowed to speak while I’m gone, but feel free to keep her on edge for me.”
Mellie was mortified. She couldn’t talk to protest.
Diego left and Greyson shifted on his feet awkwardly. At least she wasn’t the only one who found this embarrassing. She doubted it could get any more uncomfortable between them.
Greyson finally lifted his eyes to her face from where he stood, still seeming uneasy. “So…you’re just hanging there, huh?”
