Alyssa had attended parties at the Collier mansion several times a year after returning from Barcelona. For some reason, she was one of the few guests to receive invitations to every party Landra Collier threw, even before the widow had become Alyssa’s father’s lover.
The first invitation after her return had been for the second Winter Ball. Though she didn’t venture from the ballroom and she hadn’t stayed long, still,Alyssa had accepted the invitation.
Just being there had been hell that year.
It was hell now.
A part of her wanted, ached, to run and hide. She wanted to pull the blankets over her head and stay there until she could face the world without the pain that followed her every waking second. Until she could emerge whole. She hadn’t been whole for so long that she didn’t even remember what it felt like.
She definitely didn’t know what being whole felt like whenever she came to the Collier parties. She only drifted through the crowds, feeling Shane and Sebastian with such strength she’d not known if it was agony or comfort she’d felt. And she had no idea why she even cared. They’d torn her soul from her body. They’d taken everything, everything, from her and she’d had so little left to hold on to.
She’d felt them. As though they lingered just behind her, just out of sight, their warmth touching her, she had felt them each time she accepted Landra Collier’s invitations to her parties and balls.
It was because this was where she’d met them, she told herself. This was her first memory of them. Because of that, she would always feel them there. But it was the gardens she was drawn to, the gardens she’d always refused to make her way to.
She’d been a mess that first year. Not that she’d improved much with each visit to the Collier mansion. And despite Margot’s anger and disapproval, Alyssa had attended every social event Landra Collier sent her an invitation to.
Had she glimpsed either Shane or Sebastian, she would have had no choice but to leave. And no matter the temptation she had never returned to the darkened arbor. The memories were too painful and until tonight, until this particular ball, she’d sworn she could feel them pulling her to that darkened section of the shadowed gardens. Which made so very little sense. Why send her parents those pictures and their demands and still attempt to ambush her in the dark? It had been her silly imagination and hunger for them, she’d told herself. Nothing more.
That sense of being pulled there wasn’t present tonight, though. That second sense she’d been convinced she had of them in Barcelona had been no more than a fantasy. A girlish attempt to excuse her need for love, Margot had suggested regretfully. But still there were moments it tortured her.
Moving along the softly lit path she paused for a moment before looking behind her. She almost smiled at the sense of being followed. How paranoid she could be whenever she was here. Always imagining they were so close. Always certain she was being watched.
She was pathetic and weak, just as Harvey had once accused her of being. Too weak to get over whoever broke her heart, he’d sneered. Then somehow, he’d learned of her time in Barcelona and the fact that there had been two lovers rather than one who shared her bed. No one but her parents had known whom she’d shared those months with. She hadn’t even told Summer whom she had been with and the other woman was her dearest friend. One of only a few friends, actually.
Once Alyssa stepped cautiously along the path it didn’t take her too long to find the hidden, sheltered arbor where she’d first met Shane and Sebastian. How charming they had been. The Spanish goof and the South Texas cowboy. They’d stolen her heart that night, locked it up so tight that no one else could have penetrated it even if they had been willing to face Margot’s icy regard to attempt it. Not that any of the young men she’d known had been willing to face Margot. Her mother had been such a strong, forceful personality during her life that nearly everyone walked warily around her.
Coming to a stop outside the arbor, she stared at the stones beneath her feet for long moments. She was terrified to look inside. Knowing it was empty, knowing there was no one there but needing them to be there. Needing a closure that only facing them would ever bring her.
Lifting her head, she made herself peer into the shadowed shelter. And it was empty. Shadows lay thick inside it; the lights used for holiday parties were absent, the shadows thicker, heavier, than they had been years before. Ornamental trees and flowering shrubs surrounded it, increasing the darkness. Still, she had to force herself to step inside and walk to the now cold fireplace where she’d stood that first time.
Turning slightly, she faced the brightly upholstered padded bench that sat along one side. It was wide and appeared incredibly comfortable. Comfortable enough to lie back on, or to lie atop the hard, powerful body of a lover as another moved behind her.
She had to smother the whimper that threatened to escape as the jagged, ever-present pain swelled inside her. It was always waiting to strike. Always there, willing to ambush her at the most inopportune times. To remind her, to overwhelm her with memories she had no business allowing free.
She had to burn the memories out of her mind. She had to find a way to cauterize the wounds in her heart and soul that refused to allow her to heal. She couldn’t face them or she risked those pictures being released to the media as well as every porn site in existence.
Pictures of her between her two lovers. Explicit, erotic pictures of them penetrating her. Both of them penetrating her. One beneath her, the other behind her.
As she stood in front of the fireplace, her gaze focused on the brightly colored padded bench in front of her, Alyssa realized she was clenching the sapphire and diamond stones that hung from the gold chain around her neck. She held them like a talisman. As though they were all that held her from the sometimes overwhelming need to let loose the fury raging inside her.
She’d been certain the necklace was taken while she slept that last day in Barcelona when Shane and Sebastian had collected their other belongings. She had grieved for it, missed the weight of it with such desperation that it had been agony at times.
“Why?” The word was torn from the deepest part of her, ragged and filled with grief. Closing her eyes, she felt the bleak fear that she would never be free of one fantasy summer spent amid two men’s lies.
“Siren,” soft, aching, the whisper eased around her, light as air, as a familiar warmth enfolded her. “Sing for me, siren.”
Oh God. It was so real.
Like a dream come to life, Sebastian’s whisper at her ear, his warmth against her back.
Eyes closed, she swayed for a heartbeat, her knees weakening as the sensual, erotic needs rushed from the dark, hidden well she’d forced them to so long ago. His presence was so clear that the feel of his strong arms sliding around her, enfolding her, had her fearing she was finally succumbing to madness.
“I feel you, siren,” he breathed at her ear. “Your sweet song wrapping around me. Pulling me to you.”
Heated male lips brushed her neck, setting fire to every nerve ending in her body. Her breasts swelled, engorged nipples rasping against the snug fit of her gown. Between her thighs the folds there became drenched with need, her clit throbbing, coming to full, aching life. The complete lack of sexual need outside her dreams flared to life, the sensation of touch, of sound, had her fearing she was no longer able to separate fantasy from reality.
“How I’ve longed to touch you, to taste you again.” The brush of air against her neck, the softly accented sound of his voice, took fear to certainty.
“How sweet you taste,” Sebastian’s voice rumbled at her neck. “What I wouldn’t give to lay you down and taste all the sweet cream flowing from your pussy. Are you wet, siren? Are you ready for me to fill you?”
She’d been ready. God help her, she’d been ready for so long.
“I want to lay you down.” His teeth rasped along the sensitive tendon of her neck. “Push your gown to your hips and eat all that candy syrup spilling from you. And when you’re crying out, shaking from your orgasm, I’ll push my cock inside you.” His voice thickened. “Feel your tight little pussy milk me. Feel it, so hot and tight, clamping on my dick as you beg me to take you hard. To shove every inch inside you hard and deep.”
And she would.
She remembered the striking ecstatic pain of having him or Shane push inside her with those hard thrusts, forcing her inner flesh to stretch with fiery sensations that threatened to throw her immediately into orgasm.
Fighting to breathe, to hold back the whimpers she knew would destroy the fantasy, Alyssa waited in desperate anticipation to see what her imagination would come up with next. Clenching her thighs, Alyssa felt the soaked condition of the thin panties she wore. Her clit was more swollen, more sensitive, than it had ever been.
“Let me have you, siren,” he whispered, his fingers tugging the bodice of her gown over her breasts. When they captured the hard points of her nipples, calloused fingertips applied just enough pressure to drag her fully into the fantasy she’d slipped into.
Pleasure and pain erupted in the hard points he was pressing and rolling between his fingers. As the erotic dream fully enfolded her, Alyssa let her head fall back, feeling his shoulder cushion it as little moans of desperate, rising pleasure fell from her lips.
“You love the mix of pleasure and pain, don’t you, siren,” a whisper, so soft, so destructive. “That’s why you loved the feel of both of us at once. The higher your pleasure, the more you craved it. The feel of us pushing inside you, keeping you stretched and filled.”
She sank deeper into the fantasy, into the sensations rushing over her. His fingers tugging at her nipples, milking them firmly.
Behind her, his erection pressed against the small of her back, the heat of it sinking through his slacks and past her gown.
“I’ll eat your pretty pussy later,” he groaned. “Bend over for me, siren. On the bench. Let me fuck you. Let me feel your pussy clenching on my dick until it feels like a vise I’ll never be free of.”
Releasing her nipples, he pushed her forward, a ghostly pressure against her shoulders until she braced her hands against the padded seat of the bench. Behind her, Sebastian lifted the yards of material before easing one knee to the seat as well and flowing the material of the dress along the side of it.
A second later the fragile lace panties were torn from her. Firm hands parted her thighs further.
The swift penetration of her vagina with the hard press of his tongue had her falling against the padded cushions at the back of the bench. There was no strength left inside her, only the desperate cries falling from her lips as his tongue pushed past the swollen, slick folds of her sex, licked, stroked, causing more of her juices to rush from her and meet his tongue.
“Fuck, so sweet,” he snarled, the sound so guttural it was nearly unrecognizable as his.
Then that wicked tongue slid back, licked its way to the forbidden entrance just below it, and rimmed it erotically. His tongue flicked over it, stroking and teasing as he drew the juices spilling from her back to lubricate that entrance with his fingers.
“Oh God!” The prayer tore from her at the swift penetration of her rear by two calloused, forceful fingers.
Pleasure and pain, just as he’d said. Fire and sharp fingers of lightning-infused pleasure striking through her as his fingers penetrated her rear entrance, the tight ring of tissue deeper inside flaring open against the firm thrust.
Pushing his fingers in, filling her, then retreating, he impaled her again, his hand turning, pushing his fingers deeper before withdrawing completly.
“Don’t stop.” She could barely breathe, barely keep her grip on the back frame of the bench to hold herself in place. She needed more, so much more.
It was the madness finally overtaking her, Alyssa told herself. Too many years without them, too much hunger—
“I can’t wait, siren,” he groaned, one hand gripping her hip tighter as she felt the engorged head of his cock part the swollen folds of her pussy and begin pushing forward. “I have to have you. Feel you around me, so slick and tight. So hot—”
The storm was beginning to spiral through her senses. Sensation and pleasure, all her senses opening, converging.
A hard thrust shattered what might have been left of reality. The heavy crest buried itself inside her, taking only a small part of her as her inner tissue clamped around it with convulsive ripples of pleasure and pain.
Sebastian paused abruptly, his hands clenching on her hips, groaning as her vagina clenched, rippled in tortured pleasure around the thick, flared crest.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered, desperate now.
Her fantasies had never made it this far. Never taken her to such an extreme point that she knew her orgasm hovered just within reach.
“I can’t stop.” A snarl of agonized need, Sebastian’s hunger, echoed around her, inside her. One hand gripped her hip with bruising strength as he began moving.
Surging hard, he buried yet more of his throbbing, iron-hard cock inside her, helpless cries falling from her lips as she pushed back into the thrust. The thumb of his other hand tucked between her buttocks, buried itself in her rear entrance and added to the blistering agony-ecstasy sensations. Thrusting hard inside her, he worked his cock with furious strokes. Stretching her, burning her inner flesh with each desperate impalement until he surged in to the hilt with a strangled groan.
Agony. Ecstasy. It all converged as he moved inside her, shafting her with stroke after furious stroke. Each impalement was iron-hard flames parting her with shocking, brilliant sensations of not just excessive pleasure but also heated pain. He rode her with a pace that blurred the borders between the two extremes until they disappeared entirely with the sudden, brilliant explosion of ecstasy.
Her body convulsed, jerking with helpless spasms as her vagina tightened and rippled around the heavy erection buried deep inside her. Both hands gripping her hands now, holding her tight to his body. The width of his cock seemed to expand. Hard, hot jets of semen erupted inside her, flinging her into another violent orgasm.
Even as the second explosion overtook her Alyssa was forced to admit …
This wasn’t a dream.
Not a fantasy or madness.
This was real.
* * *
What had she done?
Oh God, what had she done?
Alyssa could feel the dizzying nausea beginning to build inside her. Panic tightened her chest, making it hard to breathe, hard to swallow, as the realization of her weakness flooded her senses.
Her fingers tightened in the cushion she rested against as Sebastian eased his still-hard cock from inside her with a groan, while she concentrated on just breathing.
When he straightened, she began to ease up herself, but he placed his hand on her back, holding her there. The feel of what she assumed was his handkerchief wiping the slick spill of her release and his semen from between her thighs had her eyes closing as rage seemed to pour through her.
“Sweet, sweet Alyssa,” he whispered, drawing back as he helped her to ease her leg from the bench and stand with her back to him. “As sweet and beautiful as my dreams. Hell, more so.”
Tugging the material of her gown back over her breasts, she felt them shaking, felt her entire body quivering from the inside out.
“As beautiful as your dreams,” she whispered, bitterness burning inside her, roiling in her stomach as she fought to keep from throwing up. “I didn’t bother you.”
She had to force that statement past her lips, force him to acknowledge that she had not broken the terms of their cruel demands.
Her father would be so angry, so disappointed in her yet again. And humiliated.
She could feel that humiliation beginning to burn inside her already.
“Bother me?” The derisive laugh that sounded behind her had her cringing. “Baby, you’ve bothered me every second of my life for eight years.”
Alyssa pressed her hands to her stomach, eight years of rage pushing aside humiliation and fear.
“Guilt, Sebastian?” She stared into the darkness, focused there. Turning, facing him, might break her as nothing else had yet.
“Guilt,” he agreed. “Regret.”
The admission caused her teeth to clench, her lips to pull back with the effort it took not to lose the control she was forcing over her ragged emotions.
She swung around, the rage blistering, searing. “What gives you the right to ambush me like this? To even attempt to come near me?” she sneered. “Need an excuse to punish me more than you already have?”
Her voice was thick as she realized her eyes were growing wet. Tears that had lain trapped inside her for years were now trying to make themselves known.
She would not cry for the cousins again, not after everything they’d taken from her. Not after everything she’d lost because of them.
“Now, siren, let’s be nice,” he whispered, his expression so drawn, so filled with such false misery, that she hated him for it. Hated him for the bleak pain he could project into his eyes, the lines at the sides of his lips and eyes that indicated he’d known far too many smiles.
Goofy. He’d always smiled, always laughed—
“I hate you!” The vehemence in her tone had shock resonating through Sebastian.
“Alyssa…” He moved to reach for her, to be certain he had to be imagining the shudders shaking her small frame.
“What, were you bored?” she sneered, contempt filling her voice, her expression, as her fingers formed fists at her sides. “The game far too unexciting, Sebastian? Did you think I’d willingly give you an excuse to shred me further than you already have?”
“Siren—” His expression tightened, hardening as he watched her in the dim light.
“I’m not your fucking siren!” Alyssa cried, rage contorting her expression, agony racing from her, slapping against his senses with such black, overwhelming pain Sebastian could only stare back at her in shock. “Sirens are fairy tales, Sebastian, just like summer love and promises made to stupid little girls. Well, this stupid little girl finally grew up and realized the difference. Sirens, summer love, empty promises, and happily-ever-afters are right up there with dragons and knights in shining armor. None of which exist. They never existed.”
God, how she’d been hurt. The insanity that had forced them from her had taken something so precious, so innocent, and bred such fury in its place. And now, for the first time since he’d held her two years before, he feared it couldn’t be fixed.
“Perhaps I never grew up,” he said softly. “Let me explain, Alyssa—”
“Explain?” She stared at him as though he’d lost his mind. “What possible explanation could you give?”
“It’s not what you believe—”
“Not what I believe?” She jerked back farther, as though his words were a whip slicing into her flesh. “How could it be anything but?”
She was staring at him as though she couldn’t believe he was actually there, actually speaking.
“Alyssa, please,” he said softly. “Let me explain, siren. I can fix it.”
“Fix it?” She stepped back, shaking her head as she watched him in disbelief. “Yes, Sebastian, fix it,” she suggested as though she knew he couldn’t. “Fix my walking into my parents’ home the day I flew back from Barcelona to face those fucking pictures and your threats.”
He froze. Everything inside him froze. Life, the blood in his veins, his very breath.
“Fix it, ’Bastian,” she breathed with mocking gentleness. “Fix having someone kill our baby.” Her voice broke. “Fix that, you son of a bitch. Bring my baby back to me, Sebastian, and then I might, might be able to look at you without hating the fact that you even draw breath. Fix those pictures you sent my parents. Fix stealing every text, every picture of us on my phone.… Fix destroying every memory and scarring my soul until just living hurts,” she cried with such agony … And despair rocked his soul. Their baby …
She turned, running from the arbor, running from him. He heard a broken, dry sob and as though on autopilot raced from the arbor to find her struggling to get back to her feet. She’d fallen on the stones. Her gown pooled around her; her hair had fallen from one carefully placed pin along her shoulder.
Gently, Sebastian eased her back to her feet. When she would have jerked from him, he restrained her, the growl that left his chest holding her in place more effectively, though, as he repaired the hair that had fallen.
He was living in a nightmare.
He could see her pale face, her gray eyes dry of tears but the horror and bitter, furious agony trapped inside her filling her gaze instead.
Their baby?
Someone had killed their baby?
“I hate you,” she snarled again.
Sebastian shook his head. “I didn’t know—”
“Liar!” The agonized accusation was like a slap in the face. “You knew. You knew because I left you that damned test before I left Barcelona. Don’t you dare lie to me.”
Fists clenched, shattered agony and rage burning in her eyes, she swung away from him. Rather than running from him, this time she moved at a fast walk, another of those horrifying dry sobs slashing at his soul as he watched her go.
Their baby? Someone had killed their baby?
The shock that surged through him as she’d thrown those words at him was like nothing he’d ever known. Rage pounded at the shield encasing him, agony was exploding through what was left of his soul, but the calm that descended over him was unrelenting. It pushed aside emotion. Pain, rage, love, hate, it was all pushed aside as he followed after Alyssa, memories of the past eight years crowding through his mind.
Over four months after she’d returned home he’d awakened from a drunken stupor, her pain sobering him in an instant, her horror reaching out to him, strangling him with the agony he could sense her experiencing. Not just the emotional pain but also physical pain. In Texas, Shane had wrecked the powerful sports car he’d stumbled into, trying to race for her after days of attempting to drink enough liquor to make him pass out.
They’d known … But they hadn’t known she was pregnant. She said she left the test for them to find. Whoever had stolen their belongings from her would pay for that one. They had wiped the pictures from her phone, erased the texts.
That was okay; Sebastian had them all. They’d be returned soon.
Until then, he would have answers. Answers that only Alyssa could provide.
Because she’d also said he’d sent pictures and threats. That her parents had received them just before she’d returned home. They had abided by the conditions a blackmailer had set out, but Gregory must have hedged his bets, and his blackmail, by doing the same to the Hampstead family.
They wouldn’t know it was over, Sebastian thought, and for some reason the CIA hadn’t found another overseas account for him. They’d find it, though, he swore as he stepped into the ballroom, tracking Alyssa, stalking her in her attempted escape from him.
There was no escaping him. There was no running; there was no denying the bonds that had linked him and Shane with her for eight agonizing years.
“Sebastian, hold up.” Khalid made the mistake of attempting to stop him. The other man’s hand gripped his shoulder, his dark eyes filled with concern.
Before the half-Saudi could counter the move Sebastian had pushed him to the other side of a thick, heavy column, his arm slamming into Khalid’s throat, pressing in tight as dark eyes just stared back at him, narrowed and assessing.
“One more time,” Sebastian said softly. “Stand between me and that woman, one more time, and by all that’s holy, Khalid, I will kill you. Do you understand me?”
The rage pounding through him, the violence welling from some primitive, previously unknown source, was like a sickness invading every cell of his brain, his body.
Khalid stared back at him, eyes narrowed, his expression thoughtful now when it should be filled with the awareness of death settling over him.
“Understand me?” he asked again, increasing the pressure.
“For now.” Khalid didn’t sound as though he were strangling, but Sebastian knew that breathing wouldn’t be comfortable.
Releasing Khalid, Sebastian slid around the column and moved to catch up with Alyssa. She wasn’t going anywhere. Too much lay between them. Too many questions, too much pain, and far too many fucking secrets.