by Malcom, Anne
Keltan’s look was even and kind. I appreciated it that he schooled it so it wasn’t full of pity. I knew the pity was there. In everyone. Of course these people pitied the woman who had her son kidnapped by an abusive ex, the woman who waitressed to make ends meet. The woman who now had nowhere to live and was at the mercy of a silent badass who’d carried her out of the fire and kissed her.
“Duke’s got experience with arson,” he explained, voice patient. Soft.
I looked to Duke, and despite the situation, I raised my brow, face teasing. “You a firebug in high school?” I asked, smile in my voice, if at least there wasn’t one on my face.
He smiled at me. “Somethin’ like that, babydoll.”
Lance stiffened behind him, I wasn’t sure if it was my teasing tone, Duke’s smile, or the ‘babydoll’, maybe a combination. Regardless, he had no right to be jealous if that’s what this was.
I definitely didn’t have a right to feel glad about his possible jealousy.
“Duke went in this morning, before the fire department came back,” Keltan continued. “Fire started in the kitchen, you burn candles in there?”
I shook my head.
“Leave the oven on?” Keltan probed.
I shook my head again.
“Front door was jammed shut,” Keltan continued. “Not obviously. Something that might’ve been missed.”
Shit. I remembered it. Not being able to open the door. How could I forget that feeling of naked panic at not having an escape from the fire?
I simply hadn’t thought on it.
Or I had forced myself not to think about it.
“Guessin’ he did it himself, or hired someone,” Keltan continued. “Wouldn’t have gone in the house. Either he knows the security system is tight, or he didn’t want the risk of bein’ caught inside, evidence tying him here. He was stupid enough to think that the town fire department wouldn’t look into it. But we are. He knows you’ve got people on you, ‘cause we made sure he knew. We know he’s a stupid fuck, ‘cause he took a woman like you, a kid like Nathan—two things he should treasure beyond all else—and he fucked that over. That’s beyond stupid. Then, he took your boy. Put his hands on you. More fuckin’ stupid. Colossal. He got bested by us. Realized you’re not as weak as he convinced himself you were. Realized you were stronger than him all along. We know someone started this on purpose. And unless you’ve got some secret life we don’t know about—impossible ‘cause we know everything—it was him.”
There was a lot said in that moment. There was information. A shitload of it. And there was respect. Keltan respected me. He was making that clear. In his badass, hot guy way. It wasn’t mushy in the slightest, but I had to bite back tears regardless.
“My ex-husband tried to burn me alive,” I whispered. “My ex-husband tried to burn my son alive,” my voice fractured on the last words.
Lance stepped forward, death glaring Duke as he tried to do the same. “Elena,” he said, voice as gentle as I’d ever heard it.
I ignored this. Because there was something else happening inside me. Something breaking. Something getting stronger, I wasn’t sure which. Maybe both.
I looked to Keltan. “You got a number for him?”
Keltan blinked. “Elena, I’m not sure that’s a good—”
“You got a number?” I repeated.
He nodded once.
“In your phone?”
Another nod.
I held out my hand, request clear enough so I didn’t need to speak. Good God, I was spending so much time around Lance, I was turning into him, with all these nonverbal, hard-faced demands.
I didn’t know what he’d gone through in his life, but it was sharp, puncturing, it had sanded him down so he was all sharp edges. Life had done enough to me so I might have been hard edges too, if it hadn’t given me things to make me soft. If it hadn’t given me Nathan. And my son almost frickin’ died. Because of a man who had tormented and abused me.
I was nothing but a sharp edge at this moment.
“Elena,” Lance said, now standing so close to me, the warmth of his body made my own flush. His scent assaulted me. Both of these things, in addition to that same harsh softness to his voice would have made soft Elena little more than his slave, but I was hard Elena so I was unfazed.
“As much as I appreciate the fact you stepping in and taking care of things your way or the proverbial highway being part of your DNA, being a mother is part of mine. My son almost died. So no one is taking care of shit right now that didn’t go through thirty hours of labor and suffer a broken tailbone birthing him into the world,” I hissed. “Give me the phone, Keltan.”
He gave me the phone.
I didn’t hesitate to press call on the contact aptly named, ‘Piece of Shit.’
As I put the phone to my ear, Lance’s entire body got even more wired than it had been before, and he’d been pretty darn tight faced previously.
Not my problem.
Not right now at least.
I had another problem.
One that answered the phone with far too much frickin’ cheer for someone that had just tried to kill his son.
“You’re done,” I hissed in greeting.
A beat of silence on the phone.
“What?” I spat. “Surprised that I’m calling you on the phone and not charred remains in a morgue somewhere?”
Lance flinched.
“Or that your five-year-old child isn’t lying on a metal slab beside me?” I continued.
Lance flinched again.
I kept going.
“Well, we survived, asshole,” I continued against the silence on the other end of the line.
“I wish I knew enough ugly words to spew at you, to call you, to make it very fucking known what a piece of garbage you are, but I don’t have enough time. I don’t want to waste any more oxygen on you than I already have. I just want to let you know, that before, I wasn’t out to destroy you. I just wanted you to leave me alone. Even though you beat me. Continuously. Even though you broke bones. Put me in the hospital. Made me lie about it. Made me think I deserved the shit beaten out of me. Somehow convinced me that it wasn’t rape when you forced yourself on me.”
Another flinch.
Not just Lance.
Every man in the room.
I noted this but didn’t let it stop me. A freight train wouldn’t stop me. This was a tirade that was seven years coming.
“Even though you did everything to show me you are rotten to the core and deserve every horrible thing that could happen to a human, I didn’t want that for you,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’d be happy to hear about you getting a fucking hangnail, but I didn’t care to be the one that made your life hell. I was too focused on making a good life for Nathan. Your son. The one you kidnapped for whatever warped reason that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with power. Image. I know for a fact that you don’t love that boy because monsters aren’t capable of that. You are a monster. And because you showed me just how deep that runs, I’m going to make it my personal mission to take you down.”
He laughed, cold and bitter down the phone, the first noise he’d made. “You can try, bitch.”
I smiled, even though he couldn’t see it through the phone, I was glad that I did it. Because the smile wasn’t for him. This phone call wasn’t even for him. This was all for me.
“Oh, I’m not going to try,” I said, injecting the smile into the voice that held not an inch of fear. “I’m going to do it. Because though you don’t, I love my son. I love him more than anything in this world. And you may have been able to do whatever you wished to me without consequences—in this life at least—but the second my son’s safety was threatened, I’m done. I’m making sure the very dangerous, talented, badass men standing around me right at this moment do everything in their considerable power to help me take you down.”
My eyes looked at the badass men, landing on one in particular.
“T
hey have real power, unlike the power you think you have,” I said into the phone, eyes on Lance. “Beating up women and trying to kill children isn’t power. It’s the ultimate kind of weakness. And I’ve just figured out that asking people like these muscly, badass types for help isn’t weak. It’s making sure I’m using every weapon at my disposal. Be warned, fuckstick, I’m arming up and I’m not stopping until you’re history.”
I didn’t wait for whatever venom he was about to spit, I hung up.
I focused on Keltan, who had been glaring pretty much throughout the entire phone call but was now grinning.
I handed him back his phone. “Thank you.” My voice was even now. Pleasant.
He took it, shaking his head slightly. “Muscly badass type?” he asked, tone teasing.
I shrugged feeling oddly calm. “I call it like I see it.”
“That you do, babe.”
“Out,” the single word was snarled from Lance’s mouth. With enough violence and danger that I jerked slightly and turned to look at him. He was not looking at me. He was scanning the room, obviously talking to the rest of the men.
Keltan didn’t seem at all threatened by the scary tone to Lance’s voice, in fact, his smile widened. Like way more.
Duke wasn’t exactly smiling, he looked to me with uncertainty, worry. I tried to give him a reassuring smile, but I wasn’t quite sure if his worry wasn’t well founded.
“I need to repeat myself?” Lance asked, quietly. He focused on Duke now, even more of a threat in his quiet tone.
Duke’s shoulders tightened and his face turned dangerous.
Shit.
I did not want a fight between these two. They would take out the whole block. Like frickin’ Iron Man and Captain America taking each other on.
“It’s okay,” I said to Duke, moving slightly between them.
Duke didn’t look to me immediately but instead held his stare with Lance, likely having some kind of nonverbal communication only badasses like the two of them could decipher.
“I’ll be right outside,” he said to me.
“No, you won’t,” Lance said.
Shit.
Something about that made my stomach drop with just the littlest bit of fear but the rest of me got turned the eff on.
Duke obviously wasn’t feeling that kind of way because his face got even scarier and I thought we were about to have a Greenstone version of Marvel’s Civil War right here in this unassuming living room.
But the moment passed without an epic battle as Duke stopped glaring and walked toward the door, not before stopping to squeeze my arm. “You need me, you let me know.”
There was no more scary glare, just the soft look he always had with me. I knew the offer was not to taunt Lance but more because he meant it and was just a good man. The arm squeeze might have been a little bit to piss off Lance, though, and from what I saw from the corner of my eye, it definitely worked.
I smiled at him and he smiled back, easily and warmly. Something the man behind me, close enough to press into the side of my arm.
Duke squeezed my arm gently once more before he walked out.
I admired his bravery for giving Lance his back in the state he was in. Then again, Lance wasn’t exactly someone that would strike someone when their back was turned. That was more of a Robert move.
Nothing happened after the door closed behind Duke. Not immediately.
My entire body wired, heart beating through my ribs, despite the fact it had been even as I was talking to the man who’d tried to kill me and my son.
I was having trouble trying to breathe evenly, despite the fact my breath had been steady minutes ago hearing Robert’s laugh.
I couldn’t stand here, feeling all that with Lance’s heat pressing into my arm, his presence pressing into my frickin’ soul.
So I turned. “Lance—”
I didn’t get anything else out, because this was when Lance pounced.
His hands went to either side of my face and he didn’t waste any time yanking my mouth to his. Immediately his tongue was inside, pillaging, taking control.
I didn’t think I had the ability to process something like this quite as quickly, but I responded. Immediately. With just as much ferocity as Lance was giving me. With all of the ferocity I’d refused to give Robert.
Everything that had happened this month, everything that had been piling up like sticks of dynamite.
Lance was the flame.
Frick, he was the flame and the dynamite.
He let out a growl at the back of this throat and his teeth grazed my lips. I responded to that growl, that small slice of pain in my lip. I responded in every way possible for a human woman to respond to something like that. And then all the impossible ones. My legs went around Lance’s hips without thought, only with pure carnal need. One of his hands went to my ass, pressing me against the hardness of his jeans.
This was my time to let out a growl of my own, that I was sure didn’t sound feminine or sexy. I didn’t care. I didn’t care that I’d just come from a shift at work, that my hair smelled like fries or that I couldn’t remember if I’d shaved my legs today, I didn’t care anything but creating the much-needed friction of my pussy against Lance’s denim-covered cock.
I got it. Oh, did I get it. It was very apparent that he had sufficient equipment to make sure I could get my friction. So I could get an orgasm in the next frickin’ twenty seconds if this kept going.
I was going to do everything in my power to make sure that this kept going, because I needed this. I needed him. It wasn’t until right now, seconds away from coming with all of our clothes on, that I realized just how much I needed Lance.
He obviously needed me too, if the sounds in response to my frenzied grinding were anything to go by.
The friction changed, just as my body was coiling up, preparing to orgasm purely from over the clothes grinding.
Then again, this was Lance, I was sure if he looked at me the right way, my womb would explode—in the good way, of course.
He was walking us somewhere. The bedroom, presumably. That was too far away.
I yanked my head back, my eyes met his. “I need your cock inside me. Now.” My voice was a husky rasp, unrecognizable.
Lance stopped walking immediately. His entire face turned. Eyes darkened until they were an abyss, welcoming me, owning me.
With only that second of beautiful hesitation, Lance moved. Not toward the bedroom, but down. My back hit the floor and I barely noticed it, because Lance immediately started undressing me. He did it fast. There was none of that kissing every part of my body that I read about countless heroes doing in romance novels I consumed sporadically.
Because Lance wasn’t a hero right now.
He wasn’t going to make love to me like a hero.
He was going to fuck like a villain.
I wanted the villain.
And that’s what I got.
Me, completely naked, my clothes in ruins around me, Lance, almost completely fully dressed, surging into me as soon as his cock was free from his jeans.
I came the second he settled himself inside me.
He did not stop. Did not slow down as I screamed with pleasure that melted my bones. No. He kept moving inside me. Brutally. His forehead pressed to mine, eyes open, holding mine captive in a silent command to not look away. It was the single most erotic thing in my life, having an orgasm that I’d never even known existed while staring at the eyes of a man who was unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
He didn’t say a word. Not through my first orgasm. Or my second.
Or his.
Not that I’d expected him to. This was a man who used silence as the most powerful weapon in his arsenal—well, one of them anyway—so it made complete sense he used it with sex too.
But I didn’t long for words from him. I didn’t need them. Not with him on top of me, inside me.
I didn’t need them when I ripped off the rest of his clothes and rode
him a few minutes later either.
We were saying everything that needed to be said without uttering a single word.
Chapter Twenty-One
“So, how was it?” Karen demanded.
I blinked at her. “What?”
“The sex.”
My body jerked in surprise. “What sex?”
She rolled her eyes. “The sex you’ve been having all night, by the looks of it.” She raised her brow as I opened my mouth to lie—badly—some more. “Honey, I know what a well-fucked woman looks like.”
She had me there.
“So,” she probed. “How was the sex?”
I didn’t talk about my sex life with Karen. Not because I was some kind of prude. But because, until this day, I had no sex life to speak of. Karen spoke plenty about her and Eliza. Enough to make up for my lack of sex talk.
I had planned on telling her about Lance, at some point. I’d only just stumbled out of the sex haze he’d put me in. No, that was a lie, I was still firmly in the sex haze, but I was now able to form words that weren’t ‘more,’ ‘harder’ or various profanities that I didn’t even know that I knew.
We had obviously stopped having sex on the living room floor yesterday, gotten dressed just in time for Nathan to come barreling through the door, talking about how football was his new favorite sport and he was going to be a football-playing superhero when he grew up.
I focused on Nathan for the rest of the evening. Or tried my very best. Because Lance tortured me the entire evening. The way he ran his finger over the bare skin of my shoulder as I was cooking us dinner. He kissed the back of my neck when Nathan was doing his homework.
His hand caressed my ass as I was doing the dishes.
Yeah, torture.
And the second Nathan was in bed, asleep, we were also in bed, definitely not asleep.
I didn’t even remember falling asleep.
I definitely remembered waking up, because it had been with Lance’s cock inside me.
Then, after cleaning me up—we hadn’t so much as had the pill conversation, other than Lance telling me he knew I was on it and that he was taking me bare, I obliged—kissing me lightly on the forehead, he left my bedroom because he knew that Nathan most likely would be coming in to wake me up.
