by Mari Carr
Weston had once imagined himself as the hero. Her hero.
“Rose, take three steps to your right.” That would put her out of the line of fire, and keep her in his field of vision.
Rose turned and took three precise steps to the right. Marek turned to watch her. His jaw clenched. “You shouldn’t speak to her that way.”
Weston came down another step, keeping the gun trained on Marek’s center body mass. Marek held his ground. Weston came down another step, tossed the bag of food off to the side so it wouldn’t be in the way. He wanted to maintain the distance between them. His bad leg and missing eye made him weak in hand to hand. Hence the gun.
“Take a step back, Mr. Lee.” Weston let his frustration and anger deepen his voice.
Rose made a soft sound of distress…
…and dropped to her knees.
Weston grimaced. Shit, he hadn’t meant for her to react like that, but it probably made sense. After all, she’d been in a devoted D/s relationship with his brother. Caden must have known how to touch her, master her, without scaring her the way he had. A lifetime of D/s probably made her sensitive to commands.
When he’d first run across information about Rose being a member of Las Palmas, an exclusive BDSM club in L.A., he’d been shocked, sure it was a mistake. But the evidence was all there. Rose was…had been…Caden’s submissive. Her introduction to the lifestyle had been horrific, but for his brother, she’d embraced it.
“Fine,” he muttered, irritated and a little heartsick. “Rose,” he commanded, deepening his voice. Elroy had called it “Dom voice” but in reality, the deep-voiced tone of command was taught and used by law enforcement and the military, too. “Stand up, come here.”
She started to rise, first positioning her feet so her toes were braced against the floor, then using only her leg muscles to rise. She wavered, as if she were having trouble maintaining her balance.
Marek raced over to her.
Weston cursed, sliding his finger from the trigger guard onto the trigger, but Marek had moved fast. He was too close to Rose for Weston to risk taking the shot.
Marek slid between them, presenting Weston with his back. He cupped Rose’s elbows and help her rise.
“Rose,” Marek’s voice was soft. Weston could barely hear him. “You don’t have to obey him. I want you to take a deep breath, and, when you’re ready, open your eyes. No one owns you. No one controls you.”
Weston’s hand started to shake with rage. Who the fuck did this guy think he was?
“Rose—”
Marek turned, took two massive, loping strides, and smashed into Weston.
It was a full-body tackle. Marek’s shoulder plowed into his chest. Weston’s back hit the wood railing of the stairs. It held for a moment, but then their combined weight buckled the old wooden structure. Weston felt himself start to fall. If he went down under Marek, he’d be in trouble. He twisted his upper body as he fell, taking the hit on his left shoulder with a teeth-rattling thud. Marek landed beside him, which gave him a fighting chance.
“Wesley.” Marek used his alias, then corrected himself. “Weston, I will not allow you to—”
Weston punched him in the solar plexus.
Marek must have seen it coming, because the muscles of his abdomen were tensed when Weston’s fist connected. Instead of knocking the wind out of the other man, Weston’s blow only cause a momentary pause before Marek recovered and rolled away, popping to his feet with a practiced motion that made Weston’s right knee say “Hahaha, yeah, I can’t do that.”
“Stop.” Rose’s voice was soft—it trembled a little. But something in her tone made him freeze. He rolled onto his back.
Rose held his gun, and her finger was on the trigger.
She pointed it at Marek’s chest. Weston clambered to his feet, grinned. Damn, his girl was as brave and badass as any of them.
Then she swung the gun to point it at him.
She ran away from you, dumbass. And she’s not the girl you fell in love with. A lifetime has passed since then.
The gun swung back to Marek, who raised his hands. When the muzzle pointed his way, Weston did the same.
“I could shoot both of you.” She inhaled and then exhaled slowly. The trembling vanished and the soft, formal, head-bent submissive posture melted away. “Bang. Bang. With both of you dead, I’d be free. No one would have any idea where I was.”
Marek cleared his throat. “Perhaps it would be better to discuss—”
“Discuss what? What are my options?” She stepped onto the first stair, toeing bits of broken railing off the step. They clattered against the floor. “I go with you,” the gun swiveled to Marek, “and Juliette has me interrogated and then quietly executed.”
She took another step up.
“I go with you—” The gun swung to Weston.
He stiffened and interrupted her. He didn’t want to know how she’d end that sentence. “And you get answers,” he told her. “We’ll take them down. Come with me, Rose.”
Rose shook her head, took another step. “Does it matter anymore? Tabby is safe.”
“We’ll avenge Caden.”
The gun started to tremble, and Weston was more than a little worried she’d pull the trigger by accident. “Avenge him? I went nuts when he was shot, but now I realize—what’s the point? He won’t be any less dead. Tabby’s safe. There’s no one left to protect.”
“Yourself,” Marek said quietly. “You need to protect yourself. Running won’t do that.”
Weston wished he could see Marek, but the other man was on his right.
“You think I don’t know that? I told you how many times I tried to run. They’ll find me eventually.” Rose took another two steps up, crouching slightly so she could still see them. She was more than halfway up the stairs at this point. If she bolted up, she might be able to make it to the top, and close and lock the door before either of them could catch her.
And damn it he’d just lumped himself in with Marek, as if they were on the same side.
Rose looked between them, and for a moment he thought he saw something on her face, a sort of surprised longing. Then she shook her head.
“But maybe, just maybe, I’ll be free for a little while.”
With that, Rose stood, her upper body disappearing out of sight. Her bare feet slapped against one step, then another.
Weston jumped forward, his shoulder bumping Marek’s as they raced for the stairs.
Rose gasped—and the sound of her footsteps stopped.
He and Marek both pulled up short. He could see her feet and ankles, watched as she once more did a slow pivot on the ball of one bare foot, wincing as she moved. Rose reversed direction and took a step down, moving slowly and deliberately. Her thighs, hips, and waist came into view. Her hands were empty. She no longer held the gun.
Behind her, a second figure was coming down, boots hitting each tread with a sure thump.
Rose’s chest, shoulders, and neck appeared. A thin, gleaming sword was pressed against her throat.
What the hell?
Weston and Marek retreated a few steps as Rose and her unknown assailant came down the stairs. Weston turned so he could see both the stairs and Marek. Marek looked calm and steady, facing the stairs head on, his eyes tracking the sword, but his knees were slightly bent, his weight shifted to one leg—he was poised to leap forward.
Marek caught Weston’s gaze. Weston took a deliberate step to the side, so he was at a right angle to Marek, and slightly closer to the stairs than the other man was. If Marek made a move on the unknown assailant, Weston was in a position to try to grab Rose and yank her out of harm’s way.
She took another step, and now he could see her face. Rose’s chin was tipped up, her eyes round with surprise. She didn’t look frightened, and Weston breathed out, calming himself. He didn’t think he’d be able to make smart decisions if she looked scared, or had been hurt.
He switched his attention to the man behind her. T
he sword across her neck was held away from her skin, and didn’t waver even as he took another step down, until he stood one stair up from Rose.
Weston saw the man’s face—and his shoulders slumped.
The man was blond, with slightly mussed hair and a day’s worth of blond beard. His eyes were golden brown. The hair, eyes, and slight tan—which no person who lived in England came by naturally— gave him an overall golden appearance, like a gritty Apollo.
Weston knew him.
Damn it all to hell.
The Masters’ Admiralty was here, and shit had officially hit the fan.
Chapter Ten
“Anderson,” said the man holding the sword.
Rose held very still, not wanting to accidentally slit her own throat. The man had been careful not to touch the blade to her skin.
It was turning into quite an interesting day. Kidnapped, botched escape attempt, botched rescue attempt, imprisoned in a basement, and now a second failed escape leading to being held at sword point.
She was starting to feel like the token female character in an action movie. It wasn’t a nice feeling.
Wes looked past her at the man. “Knight. Can I ask what you’re doing here?”
There was a pause, then she heard the man sigh. “For fuck sake, Anderson, you had one job.” The man’s accent had slipped a little, from crisp upper-class British to something a bit more guttural, so it came out, “Fuh fuhck sahk.”
“Give me a week and I’ll be out of your hair for good,” Wes promised.
“You don’t have a week, mate.” The man behind her moved a tiny amount, probably just shifting his weight. Whatever it was he’d done, Marek now switched his gaze from Weston to the newcomer. What had Wes called him? Knight.
“Mr. Lee,” Knight said. “I was sent here to find you and help you.”
Wes whirled on Marek. “You’re with the Admiralty?”
Marek shook his head. “No, I’m not.”
“Your family asked that we locate and aid you,” Knight said carefully.
Marek sighed. “My grandmother can be rather aggressive.”
Knight snorted.
Rose’s irritation started to bubble up. She forced it down. There was clearly a lot going on here she didn’t understand—most confusingly of which, both Wes and Marek seemed to know Knight. But Marek and Wes didn’t know each other. Or was that some elaborate lie?
“Where’d you get the gun, Wes?” Knight asked
“I’m going to plead the fifth.”
“And if we were in America you could do that. But we’re not.”
“Fair enough.”
“So where’d you get them?”
“I’m not going to answer that.”
“Damn it, Anderson. You were seen with a very large gun you should not possess. I can’t overlook that.”
Wes stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t help you anymore.”
“I never asked for your help,” Wes said with a bit of a growl in his voice.
“No, but you asked for protection, and that’s the same bloody thing.”
Marek put his hands on his hips in his Superman pose and looked at Wes. “You’re under the protection of the Admiralty?”
“Asylum,” Wes ground out. “They gave me asylum and protection.”
Rose tried, she really did, to stay silent, but she was damned sick and tired of this. She was tired, not the kind of tired that required sleep. The kind of tired where she felt like she needed a new life.
“Excuse me,” she said in a silky smooth voice. Both Wes and Marek looked a bit alarmed. Good. “I know it’s bad manners for the token damsel in distress slash pawn to speak, but I’m afraid my patience has run out.”
She turned around to face the man on the stairs. “Slit my throat or get out of my way.”
He was an attractive man, and the set of his shoulders and jaw lent him an air of command that, in another place and time, she might have had trouble ignoring. Gold eyes met hers. He moved the sword away from her neck, then slipped it into a sheath at his waist. Who the fuck carried a sword?
“Ma’am, I’m sorry to have threatened you. It was necessary in order for me to control and assess the situation.”
“It appears you won’t be slitting my throat, so get out of my way.” Rose put her foot between his on the step, her knee between his legs. It wouldn’t take much for her to lift her knee into his balls, which would drop him straight down.
Knight stared down at her, apparently unconcerned by her planned ball crushing. Maybe he thought she wouldn’t do it?
“Move, Mr. Knight.” She said it quietly, in that same smooth, almost beguiling voice.
A line formed between his eyebrows. “Ma’am, I need you to take a step back. Once I’ve finished assessing the situation, I will release you if that’s the appro—”
Rose kneed him in the balls.
He shifted his hips at the last minute, so the inside of his thigh took the brunt of the blow, but her knee still slid up, jamming into his genitals.
Behind her, Wes and Marek both sucked in air through their teeth.
As Knight bent forward, Rose shoved his waist, pushing him to the side. He would have tumbled off the steps if one hand hadn’t come up, bracing against the stairwell opening above them. She didn’t wait for him to recover, but stepped over the stair he was on, sliding past his body and racing up the stairs.
Knight turned and caught one of the trailing tatters that had at one point been the lower half of her pants. She teetered on the edge of a step, but managed to grab one of the stairs above with both hands, kicking at his hand with one foot. His other hand started to close around her ankle, and Rose yanked her knee forward. Her pants ripped and cool air washed over her thigh.
“Don’t touch her,” Wes snarled.
The grip on her pants released and she raced up the last few stairs. Rose slammed the door closed and turned the key in the lock before yanking the key out. It wouldn’t take them long to get through, not with Knight’s sword, never mind the gun she’d briefly possessed.
She raced for the front door. Marek’s car was there. She skidded on the gravel, pain in her feet making her toes curl and calf muscles throb.
Rose tore at the door handle and jumped into the driver’s seat, which turned out to be the front passenger seat. She cursed and scrambled over the armrest to the driver’s seat. The key, with the large plastic tag indicative of a rental car, was in the ignition.
Rose jammed her banged-up foot on the clutch, threw it into reverse, and turned the key.
Gravel spat up from under her tires as she forced the car in a tight circle, the gears grinding as she sloppily changed from reverse to first. She got it pointed down that long gravel drive. The view from the top of the hill was glorious—the moon and stars startlingly bright. She hadn’t stopped to savor it before, but now, with one foot on the brake, the other on the clutch, she looked out over those low rolling hills, painted silver by the moon.
Places like this were as foreign to her as the dark side of the moon. This was a place where families lived for generations, or where people from London came to retire. It wasn’t a place without secrets—everywhere and everyone had secrets—but it was a place where those secrets weren’t demons, eating away at a person’s insides, killing them a little more with each day, with each breath they took.
She’d told Marek and Wes that she could run and be happy for a while. Eventually someone—the Andersons, Juliette and Devon, or Marek—would find her. But if she ran now, she’d have a bit of freedom. Maybe only weeks, but maybe a year or more.
She could go…where?
Do what?
Rose felt empty inside, as if she were an egg that had its inside blown out, leaving only the terribly vulnerable, thin shell.
Since that night when she was a teenage, her life had been about protecting Tabby, subversively thwarting the Andersons and the other purists, and her fucked-up relationship with Caden.
<
br /> Tabby was safe. Caden was dead. Wes was poised to take down the purists.
She wasn’t free, she was purposeless.
Looking out over the rolling green countryside, Rose realized she had no idea where she’d go if she did run, and running would be hard bordering on impossible. She didn’t even have shoes, let alone ID or money.
She could do it. Over the years, she and Caden had learned quite a few less than reputable skills, and she wasn’t a half bad cat burglar.
She could do it.
But why?
Rose looked down the hill, then at the gearshift. For a moment, she considered putting it in neutral and just letting the car go. The car would pick up enough momentum on the downhill driveway to cause some sort of catastrophic collision. Maybe everyone would think it was an accident.
She slammed her foot on the parking brake and rested her head on the steering wheel. Strangely, despite how utterly fucked up her life was, Rose wasn’t suicidal.
The key was cold against her fingers when she turned it, shutting the car off. Rose leaned back from the steering wheel, taking one last look at the view laid out before her in the silvery light of the moon.
She opened the car door.
Marek and Wes waited five feet away. She’d known someone was there, had felt the pressure of their attention.
“Rose?” Marek asked.
“I’m not going to run.”
“I’m sorry,” Wes said.
“I don’t think I can walk across this gravel barefoot one more time.”
Marek and Weston both stepped forward. Marek put a hand on Wes’s shoulder. “I’m going to carry her.”
“Like hell you are.”
“I think, before you lay your hands on her again, there are some things the two of you need to discuss.”
Weston looked from Marek to Rose and back again. “What are you talking about?”
Marek slipped past Weston and crouched beside the open door. “May I carry you?”
“Yes,” Rose whispered, and for some stupid reason she felt a tad bit embarrassed, or maybe shy.
