by Heather Long
Not that I cared.
There was about to be a lot more.
Except the blood was Jasper’s. We bled for each other. We didn’t make each other bleed.
“We can’t leave it like this,” Kellan said after the moment elongated painfully.
“That’s up to him,” I told him. “He’s been making a lot of calls lately, but this isn’t just his to make.”
“Since when do you think you get a say?” Jasper argued, pushing away from the desk and taking a couple of steps toward me.
“Because you weren’t the only one there,” I reminded him. It had been all of us. It had always been all of us. We’d been a family before we understood the word. “Now, I’m going to deal with the diamond and clean that shit up. Then you’re going to deal with that Arlington fuck, and we’re taking all the trash out.”
The longer we sat on him, the more of a threat there might be. The search for Dove had quieted, but it was a mistake to think it ended. Rumors and tabloids suggested she and Eric had run away together, but that story wouldn’t hold together long.
Not when two weeks earlier, they’d finally reported him missing. It hadn’t come from the dance company but Arlington’s family. Rumor held they’d hired a private investigator too. That meant there was every chance the search would narrow back to Braxton Harbor. If they started pushing, there was a chance it would put them on Kellan’s trail since he’d been her driver, or they’d start looking for crew local to the city.
All roads could lead back to us.
Neither man said anything as I stalked into the room. Arlington had been gagged and chained in his corner. The smell in here made my eyes water. I didn’t slow on my way over to the recruit. He hadn’t known anything other than they’d been told to dip their wicks here and get blooded.
All they’d seen when they saw Dove was a bit of fun. A bit of fun they’d have torn apart like wild dogs and then left on our doorstep.
Fuckers.
Jasper and Kellan had followed me inside but said nothing as I snapped the diamond’s neck. Arlington let out a series of screams as the other hit the floor. All three of us turned to look at him. Funnily enough, the last few weeks, it had been getting harder to make him scream. Jasper’s look when he focused on him was positively murderous, and Kellan’s wasn’t much better.
“Fine,” Jasper said after a moment. A single syllable. A harsh exhale.
But it was agreement. A knife found its way into his hand, and Kellan’s gun vanished. I had a knife, but I preferred my bare hands. The diamond could stay there on the floor. We converged on Arlington, and the blond behemoth struggled as if he could escape us before we got there. The whimpers spilling out from behind the gag were pathetic.
Fisting his hair, Jasper dragged his head back until he couldn’t look in any direction and not see us. The blade pressed right up against his throat. A drop of blood began to well up from the nick he’d pressed into the flesh
It reminded me for a second that Dove had dug her nails into Jasper’s neck. Anger flamed from slow burn to conflagration, but I kept my focus on the prick who’d fucking hurt her.
He’d had his hands on Dove.
He’d dragged her out of the theatre.
There had been real fear in her eyes.
Then he’d knocked her into the wall.
On my watch.
The anger kindling in me at Jasper and Arlington split a third way to point back at myself
It had been as much my fault that she’d gotten hurt in the first place. The idiot started to struggle, and his hand broke when I slammed it against the wall. Blood sprayed as the nick on his throat turned into a slice.
“I have a question,” Kellan said in an icy tone. “Just one.” Eyes rolling, Arlington shot a look to him. Pain and fear illuminated his face. “Tell me the truth. Don’t lie, ’cause I will know.”
Jasper and I said nothing. Of all of us, Kellan hadn’t taken that many turns at the fucker. If anything, Jasper had been hogging him.
“Maybe you’ll get out of here intact,” Kellan suggested, and I didn’t laugh. I didn’t even crack a smile.
If anything, Jasper’s expression was deader than mine felt. Arlington was only leaving here one way.
“Did you rape her?”
Panic turned Arlington’s eyes even wilder, and he made a noise of protest in his throat. But it wasn’t denial.
It was fear.
The blade in Jasper’s hand slammed into the man’s shoulder. Right into the meaty part. Blood sprayed my shirt, but I didn’t let him go.
“How many times?” I asked.
Because it had been the one question I hadn’t wanted to ask. The bruises on her were hard to deny. We’d all seen them.
Abuse.
Physical.
Mental.
Emotional.
Jasper twisted the knife. The ragged scream coming out of his throat wasn’t enough.
Not near enough.
“Don’t kill him yet,” Kellan said as he rolled up his sleeves.
“No,” I agreed. “First we cut off everything that ever touched her.”
“Then we kill him,” Jasper added.
At some point, he stopped screaming.
It was still way too soon in my opinion.
Just now…
Coming back to my room after dealing with Arlington, the last thing I’d expected was to find Dove there. All I’d wanted to do was erase every bad memory. I wanted that bastard’s blood off me before I touched her. Now that I had?
Fuck, I was never going to get enough.
I splashed water on my face. Of course, she didn’t want to act like any of this was real. She was still looking for a way out. A way away from us.
Goddammit.
I needed a shower, and I wanted to take it with her. A panicked sound from the bedroom had me spinning, and I pulled open the door to the bedroom in time for the door to my room to swing inward.
Chapter 25
Emersyn
The door burst open in front of me, even as the bathroom door swung open behind me. With only the sheet to cover up, I swallowed the sound of panic as Kestrel filled the doorway. He stared at me for a second, relief flitting across his face, and his shoulders sagged before his gaze jerked toward Vaughn.
“She’s been in here all night?”
I barely heard the question over the wild hammer of my heart. There was some solace in it being Kestrel, but the fact I was naked and my face was on television, even as Kestrel stared at Vaughn with that unreadable expression, threatened to turn me inside out.
“Yeah,” Vaughn answered with the kind of certainty that should have made me excited. Like he was daring Kestrel to question it. “Problem?” It wasn’t cocky or smug, just unequivocal, as if the idea I’d be anywhere else would be ridiculous.
“Freddie was supposed to be watching her and he’s missing.”
“What?” I straightened. “He went to get food last night, but he didn’t come back…” Now that I thought about it. He really hadn’t come back. I’d thought maybe he got distracted.
“We’re going to need you,” Kestrel said to Vaughn, then he flicked a look to me. “You should probably stay in here for now.”
“I want to help,” I said before I slid off the bed. I almost lost the sheet.
“No,” Vaughn and Kestrel said in the same breath, and I glanced from one to the other.
“No?” I dropped the damn sheet because fighting with it was making me awkward. Kestrel’s eyebrows climbed, and Vaughn snagged something from behind him and then he tugged a shirt over my head.
Oh for fuck’s sake… I yanked my hair out of the way and stared at him. “Really? You’re naked.”
“He doesn’t care about my junk,” Vaughn told me flatly.
I rolled my eyes and turned toward Kestrel, who stared at me with a kind of burning intensity. The blue-green color of his eyes wasn’t visible in the half-light cast by the television. It took me a moment to reali
ze he’d even stepped all the way in and closed the door behind him. “The door was locked.”
Not that it had anything to do with anything.
“Freddie had to pick it to let us in here.”
Vaughn snorted behind me, and a drawer closed. The thump of wood on wood pulled my attention from Kestrel, and I glanced behind me to find Vaughn dragging on a pair of jeans over his naked ass. A shiver went up my spine as the denim covered the flex of muscle.
“I wanted to watch television,” I explained. This time, I didn’t look at the television. I’d been on it a minute ago, but it would probably be better if I wasn’t on it this time. If I was, let’s not draw attention to it. “I’d planned to go back downstairs—why am I explaining this? It’s not like you minded finding me in here.”
The curve of a hand wrapped around my nape, and I shifted my weight as Vaughn tugged me around to face him. “And you won’t hear me complaining, Dove. I snorted because Freddie knows better than to go sniffing around in our rooms. But he never could resist a locked door.”
“No one else seems to lock their doors,” I argued, intimately aware of how warm he was pressed right up against me and the fact we had an audience.
“We do when you’re behind them,” Kestrel answered for him. “And I have keys to everyone’s rooms. So does Vaughn.”
“And Jasper,” Vaughn added.
Oh.
A shiver raced over my skin, and I swore every nerve stood on point. Freddie. We needed to think about Freddie and not the way Kestrel’s gaze seemed to be licking over my skin. Even if I couldn’t see where he looked, I swore I could feel him. At the same time, Vaughn kept me pinned in place between the way his green eyes held me hostage and the soft wrap of his hand against my nape. I could move.
I could.
I just didn’t.
“What time did he let you in here?” Vaughn asked.
I frowned. I’d kind of lost track of time. “It was after Kestrel came to get Jasper. Freddie walked me up from the studio to my room, and I took a shower…”
They both growled.
Actually fucking growled.
“Are you for real right now?” I demanded first of Vaughn then of Kestrel.
“He better not have fucking watched you shower,” Kestrel snarled, and I groaned. Curling my toes, I ducked my head and pulled away from Vaughn. The magnetic hotness and all that beautiful and colorful muscle offered way too much distraction.
“You know what, if I want Freddie to watch me shower, he can watch me shower.”
And they growled again.
I threw my hands up. “Fuck off.” Surprise flitted across Kestrel’s face. “I mean it. You can fuck off with that attitude right to fucksville. My body. I’ll do with it what I want. No one tells me what I can or can’t do with it or who I can do it with.” If they thought kidnapping me gave them that right…
There was a beat of silence, and a second later, Vaughn snickered.
Fucking. Snickered.
I slammed my elbow into the wall of muscle and winced. He oofed. Probably more out of politeness and sympathy than because I did any damage. I rubbed my funny bone and glared over my shoulder at him. “It’s not funny.”
“No,” he agreed with me, all solemn and sexy. The fucker. All at once, my cunt clenched and I refused to react, no matter how tempting he was or the fact that he had more than one hickey on his neck from where I’d been kissing him.
Shit. I forced my gaze away and back to Kestrel.
“It’s fine, Sparrow. You’re right—you decide who gets to do what to your body,” Kestrel said with a straight face. “But not Freddie. We know where he’s been.”
Arms folded. “He also talks to me like a person and answers my questions.” Not all of them, but whatever. “And we’re wasting time when we could be looking for him.”
“We’ll find him, Dove,” Vaughn said almost quietly as he rested his hands on my hips. There was a hesitance in the touch. It took a moment for it to sink in that he was giving me the option of moving away. When I didn’t, he said, “Kel—give us a minute?”
Kel?
I frowned. “Kestrel’s not your name.”
“It is,” he told me. “Just one of them. The other is Kellan.”
Oh.
“Don’t take long,” he continued, flicking a look past me to Vaughn. “Jasper does not need to see her in here.”
“Where does he think she is?”
Kestrel sighed, then raked a hand through his hair. “Her room. I told him she was asleep and to leave her alone.” While he answered Vaughn, he looked at me. “I know we owe you a lot, Sparrow. And I also know we’re asking for a lot in telling you to trust us…but I need you to do that right now. Stay here. The only people coming through that door will be one of us, and anyone coming to look for you…” He hesitated. “Not that they are. But even if they were, they wouldn’t look in here.”
He’d just lied to me. I had no idea why I knew that, but it was there in that brief moment where his eyes cut away.
“Five minutes, Falcon.” Then he was gone.
The hands on my hips tightened, and Vaughn stepped closer to me. “This is not how I wanted to start our morning after…”
“It isn’t how we started our morning after,” I admitted and then sighed as I leaned back into him. I shouldn’t give in to the need, but when he wrapped an arm around my chest and hugged me, I closed my eyes. “We kind of had sex and, you know, aerobic sex at that.”
He chuckled softly. “We did.”
“And now Freddie is missing.”
“He’s probably fine,” Vaughn said in a careful tone. “But he shouldn’t have left the clubhouse without telling someone.”
“There are others,” I suggested. “Maybe he told one of them.”
“Maybe,” Vaughn agreed, but the doubt was clear in his tone. “Still, it’s not safe right now for any of us to be running alone. Too much shit going down.”
I frowned. “Those guys from the other night…”
“Yeah. Those guys from the other night.” He pressed his lips to the back of my head. “Thank you for last night and this morning.”
Warmth bloomed through me at the quiet words in that silky voice of his.
“I want you to stay in here,” he admitted. “But I can take you back to your room if you want.”
The television was in here. That meant there might be other stuff here too. I bit my lip. I didn’t want to use him or his trust. To be honest… “Are you sure I can’t help find Freddie?” I turned in his grip and tilted my head so I could meet his gaze. “He went to find me food.” And if I hadn’t gotten so distracted with Vaughn coming in, maybe I would have noticed he was missing sooner. Or they would have.
“I’m sure,” Vaughn told me, but instead of certainty, there was hesitancy in his answer. Sex never answered questions, even when it made empty promises of intimacy. I was no closer to understanding him than I was Jasper or any of the others who’d served as both jailers and companions the last few weeks.
I wanted to trust him.
Like I wanted to trust Kestrel or even Jasper.
The simple truth was I couldn’t.
“Dove, if you went with us, we’d spend all our time making sure you were okay when we should be looking for Freddie. And to be honest…this isn’t the world for you.” He traced a finger against my cheek. “Promise me you’ll stay here? Either in my room or yours?”
I studied him. Was he for real right now? “Why would you believe my promise?”
“I have my reasons.”
“You all have reasons.” I pulled back, and his hand fell away. I could almost sense the sadness in him, even after I turned back to his bed. “Reasons no one wants to share. Reasons why you took me.” I dropped to sit on the edge of the bed. Reasons like Jasper swearing they were going to protect me. That was all he wanted.
None of this made sense.
“Dove…”
“You should go,” I told him. �
��Hopefully, Freddie’s not in trouble. I’d hate it if something happened to him when he was doing something for me.”
“Whatever happened, I promise it’s not your fault.” He offered me a small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He snagged another shirt and then narrowed the distance between us. I should have expected the move, and yet when he pulled me up and then tilted his head as he claimed my lips, shock still rioted in my system.
Shock.
Want.
Need.
All of it twisting together. Almost as fast as the kiss began, it ended, and he stroked his thumb over my bottom lip. “I’ll bring food back if you’re hungry, but there’s also a small fridge over on the other side of the bed. It’s hidden under that sheet.” I glanced over my shoulder to where he pointed. “It looks like a nightstand, but there’s protein shakes, iced water, and some snacks in it.”
I traced my finger along the Celtic cross on his right pec and the leafy vines twined around it. “Be careful?”
“Always,” he promised, and this time, he really did smile. “Stay here? Get some more sleep? Eat? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Okay.” It was neither agreement nor disagreement. Not really. Call it splitting hairs, but it served as an acknowledgment on my part. He gave me one more look I couldn’t interpret before he stuffed his feet into his shoes, and then he was gone.
The light in the hallway made my eyes sting as the door opened, and I was blinking away spots as it closed behind him. The silence in the room seemed almost too thick, like it had a texture of its own. The news wasn’t on the television anymore. It was some early morning talk show. I lost all track of time in this windowless existence.
I debated just crawling back into bed and burying my face in the scent of Vaughn on the sheets and in the pillow. Hell, the scent of him clung to the shirt he’d pulled over my head. I could do that. I could crawl in like the obedient little prisoner and kidnap victim, or did I go see just how many of them had left?
