Chapter Twenty-Five
WE DROVE HOME in silence, the necklace like a hot ember in my jeans pocket.
Tension ran through Philip’s body in thick, furious waves, radiating from him. His posture was relaxed enough, body leaned back, one leg slung over the other. He might have been a billionaire playboy coming home from a night of fast money and fast women. Only if you looked at his eyes would you see the banked rage over who had targeted him—who targeted my family to get to him.
We arrived back at the house just as dawn touched the horizon, spilling yellow over treetops and distant steeples. A thick fog made everything look hazy, like being a little drunk even if I hadn’t had a drink. I wasn’t sure whether it was tiredness or the stress of the past few days. We had spent the whole night chasing scary possibilities, nightmares, and I thought it was a metaphor for my entire time with Philip—a race toward some dark finish line.
Inside the safe house I crossed the cream marble floor to the far wall. Windows stretched from the ceiling to the floor, my reflection staring back at me. Only up close could I see the trees and city lights. They seemed small from where I stood, as if I looked into a curio cabinet of little figurines. This was how Philip must feel every day, as if we were small—as if I was small.
I watched Philip as he approached me, a shadow looming over the curio-cabinet city.
“Can I call my parents?” I asked softly.
“Of course,” the shadow said.
I hadn’t been sure of his answer. He knew better than to be offended, but at least his answer was resolute. There was a fine line between being helped and being held captive by a man like him.
He held out a simple black phone, and I took it. He remained standing in the living room, watching me. Not leaving, then.
No, not much difference at all.
“Tyler?” My mother. My adoptive mother, one who had never given me a necklace, one who had never really loved me—but she had also clothed me and fed me. She had helped me pick out a dress for my middle school dance.
“No, Mom. It’s me.”
“Oh, honey. They sent us a note.” Her voice cracked. “For ransom.”
My breath caught, and Philip’s gaze sharpened. “How much?” I asked.
“One million dollars.”
God, twice as much as last time. “Is that how much Dad owes them?”
“I don’t know,” she said, sobbing now. “He came back drunk two nights ago. And then last night, he didn’t come back at all. I don’t know where he is or if he’s e-even a-a-live.”
She broke down crying, and I clutched the phone, my eyes burning and my throat tight. My brother missing, now my father. Our family had ripped apart at the seams. And I had fallen into my own rabbit hole, one with mysterious creatures and everything upside down.
“Where’s the drop?” Philip murmured.
All business. Even in the midst of heartbreak, he was a rock—and I was grateful for it now. I asked my mother, and she told me the cross streets of a church deep in the city. Or at least it had once been a church with a large youth center. Budget declining donations meant the only kids nearby were selling drugs.
“St. Mary’s,” she said. “Sunday night. Midnight.”
“Two days,” I whispered to Philip. “At St. Mary’s.”
A strange expression flickered across his face, almost like worry. A second later, it was gone without a trace. Unease tightened my stomach. Nothing made Philip worry.
I spoke into the phone. “Have you called the cops?”
“They said they’d kill him if I do.” A pause, then a whisper of quiet despair, “What will we do?”
They didn’t have that kind of money. I had the faint hope that Philip could give it to me, but how could I ask him for that much? Not even my body was worth that much.
Fifty bucks a hole. Words I’d never forgotten. Philip might value me at more than that, but there was nothing about me worth a million dollars.
“I’ll go to the meeting,” I said quietly, ignoring the way Philip’s eyes narrowed.
My mother made a fretful sound. “Without the money? They could kill you.”
The words were hesitant but not a refusal. She wanted me to go. Someone had to. Someone had to show up empty-handed and possibly be hurt in retaliation. And I was the lesser daughter, the one who wasn’t really hers. “Are you sure you shouldn’t go to the cops?”
I doubted they would be able to help; even Luke hadn’t pushed the issue. He’d seemed to know we were up against something darker. God, even Philip looked wary—a strange expression on him.
“No,” she said softly. “They would only kill him faster.”
“I’ll call you after.” Hopefully I’d be alive to call.
She sounded tired now, world-weary. “Tell them we can sell the house. The cars. It won’t add up to a million dollars, but it’s everything we have. It will take time, that’s all.”
I hung up after heavy goodbyes, knowing it might be the last time I spoke to her, knowing she’d rather Tyler came back than me, caring about her despite that. And where was my father through all this? Drinking himself into a stupor, probably. Gambling even more.
I put the phone down beside me and looked up—and was startled to see Philip’s fierce expression, determination and something like possessiveness burning in his dark eyes.
“You’re not going,” he said softly, his words like iron.
“He’s my brother.” I ran a hand over my face, bone-deep tired, soul-deep tired of facing down evil—and losing. Always losing. “And we had a deal.”
“Our deal was that I’d give you the money. Not that I’d let you leave.”
My heart seized on those words: let you leave. “I had sex with you. That was the deal.”
A cruel smile. “Once? Twice? Were you keeping count, kitten? Do you have a ledger somewhere with the number of times I made you come?”
Much more than that. I had given him a down payment, in his own words. And I’d paid multiple installments, even if he had pleasured me during all of them. “There isn’t a choice. What good is the money if I can’t give it to them?”
“I’ll go.”
God, how I wanted to agree to that. Let him handle it, like I had when I was a teenager. But I was a grown woman now. This was my responsibility. “One look at you and they’ll know they’ve been found out. They’ll kill Tyler rather than expose themselves.”
He looked away, which meant I was right. “I swore I’d keep you safe. How the fuck can I let you meet someone who wants to kill me?”
I placed a hand on his arm, feeling the ripples of tension in his muscles. “You’re not letting me do anything. I’m doing this of my own free will.”
He shifted abruptly and stared out the dark window, his agitation filling the room like water, thick and heavy.
He wasn’t really turning away from me. He was turning away from closeness, from intimacy. From caring about someone who might end up hurt.
“I could lock you up,” he said, low enough that I barely heard him. “No one would ever be able to find you.”
My heart clenched. He wouldn’t… would he? The safe house was far out in the country. No one would hear me scream. No one would find me if he didn’t want them to.
Control. He fought any man that tried to hold control over him—whether they were other criminals or cops. Something dark tainted his past, something deep. And that experience would mean he knew what it was like to be made helpless, to be used and twisted and held down like had happened to me. How could he do it too?
“Don’t,” I said softly, my hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat. Don’t threaten me. Don’t fight this. Don’t push me away so that you can keep me safe, because it’s really you who’s scared.
“I want to,” he muttered. “It’s hell wanting you, needing you. This is hell.”
I pressed my cheek against him, feeling his shirt grow damp. “I don’t want to die, Philip. But this, sitting, waiting. Letting them scare me. Letting them control me. That isn’t living.”
He cupped my face in his large hand, holding me still for his dark gaze. The callused pad of his thumb rasped over my cheek. It felt more like a claim than a caress. “And what about me?”
He said that I had control over him. That isn’t living, I’d said.
“Do you wish you hadn’t come to me?” I asked.
His fingers tightened on my face, five points of pressure, of pain. He leaned close. “I should have come sooner. I should never have let you go back, all those years ago.”
My whisper came without thought, without warning. “I wanted you.”
Without a word he led me to the sofa—thick cream and white bars with a dark wood frame. Large hands touched my back and gently shoved. Soft cushions caught my knees as I fell. My hands grasped the square wooden backing as I held myself up.
He grasped my hips, his voice low. “This is what you get, understand? This is what I can give you. My hands on you, my mouth on you, my cock deep inside. This is all I can give you.”
Only sex. “Please.”
He made a low sound—abruptly cut off, as if he stopped himself. Of course he did. The control wasn’t only for me. It was for himself. He kept the whole world like that city out there: under glass, both protected and possessed.
His arm snaked around my waist. His other hand smoothed up my side and cupped my breast. I gasped at the sudden warmth of him, the surprising tenderness. It was as if our bodies had been made for each other, gears interlocking, space filled. I rocked my hips back and met the hardness of his body, hands reaching back, grasping for him: the breadth of his chest, the plane of his abs. The jutting cylinder of his cock.
That much couldn’t be controlled—desire.
He undid my jeans and pulled them down.
I shuddered as cool air brushed the bare skin of my ass, taunting me, exposing me. “God, kitten. Look at you. Every morning wood, every goddamn shower. This is what I imagined. And it wasn’t even close to how lovely you are, how fucking beautiful.”
My sex clenched at his words, muscles tightening around nothing. I wanted him inside me, hard and unforgiving—exactly how I had imagined him in bed and in the shower.
His hands brushed over the top curve of my ass and down the outsides of my thighs. I felt him kneel behind me, and squirmed at how close he must be—how much he must see of me. He leaned in, and I felt his breath warm against the lips of my sex.
“Fucking beautiful,” he muttered again.
“What are you—” Then he swiped his tongue along my seam, and I rocked up. “Philip.”
He pushed me forward again, and I caught myself on the cushions. “Stay where I put you.”
My body trembled, fighting the desire to hide myself, fighting the desire to push my hips backward and beg for more. In the end I managed to press my forehead to my fist and squeeze my eyes shut—staying where he put me. Barely. “Can’t.”
“If you move, I’ll stop.”
Oh shit.
Then he pressed his mouth against me—and this was no kiss. Not even a lick. This was an invasion of his tongue, thrusting hard into my channel. My whole body clenched tight with the strain of staying still, my thighs trembling. I was still bent over the sofa, but he pushed me lower, and my arms dropped from the back of the seats to the cushions below.
“You taste so fucking good,” he said, his voice rough. “How could I stop now? How could I let you go now that I know how you taste?”
He curled his tongue around my clit in an evil caress, driving me closer to the edge. One hand held my hip steady; with the other he pushed two fingers inside me.
“I’m coming,” I whispered, face pressed tight to my arms, fighting it, losing.
A sharp slap against my hip pulled me back. “Not until I tell you to.”
I moaned a protest, and he just laughed—but it was unsteady, as if he felt the same thrill inside him that I did, the sensation of finally having something I had always wanted, the rush to feel everything I had dreamed about before it was snatched away again.
The sound of a zipper ripped through the air. I wanted to see him, touch him. Taste him the way he had tasted me. But I knew I could only take what he gave me, only stay where he put me.
Something blunt and hot nudged my sex. “Mine,” he whispered darkly.
No condom.
And maybe I wouldn’t have noticed if we had been in that alley at night or even the shadowed backseat of his SUV. It would have all seemed perfectly surreal, completely surreal—like a dream, the edges blurred and dark.
Except the moonlight streamed in from tall windows and spongy carpet squeezed between my toes and the silky fabric felt as smooth as water underneath my hands. This was all too real, too luxurious and lush to have come from my imagination. I wasn’t made for this world, so sharp and bright, built from Philip’s cold heart and iron will. My body was too soft, my skin too thin. And I could lose too much.
“Wait,” I said hoarsely.
He sounded like his teeth were clenched. “You have five seconds to give me a good reason why I should—and then I’ll be so deep in you, you won’t be able to think anymore.”
“Protection,” I burst out. “We need protection.”
There was a pause. A softly spoken curse.
And then he did something that made me burn. Hips thrust forward. His cock pressed inside me, slowly, inexorably. Hands spanning my waist held me still.
“What are you doing? Philip!”
“No, kitten,” he said low. “You don’t get to decide. Not where and not how. Not even this. If I want to fuck you until you’re full of my seed, you can’t stop me. Can you?”
A note of challenge edged his voice, as if he wanted me to fight him—but he was right about one thing. He was so deep inside me, I couldn’t think. Couldn’t think about the right words to make him understand. Couldn’t think about all the implications of this act. Couldn’t think of anything except being full of him, his thick cock pulsing against my walls. My body spasmed in response, a question that was answered when he pulled back and thrust in again—no mercy. No time to grow used to him. My body was forced to stretch around him.
A faint panic thrummed underneath my arousal, muted beneath the sensations of his body in mine. “Wait. We shouldn’t… You don’t want…”
Another slap against my hip, and I yelped. “Don’t tell me what I want,” he said roughly. “I wanted you from the moment I saw you asleep in my house, like a fucking present Shelly had brought me.”
I made a rough sound of denial.
“You think that’s fucked up?” he asked, pulling out and thrusting back in again. “Because it only made me hotter to think about you like that, that she’d picked you out just for me. That I could do anything I wanted to you, because you were already mine.”
Tension coiled deep inside, past hurts colliding with cruel pleasure. “Why wait then?”
With another man I would have known the answer. I’d been underage then. A broken little girl. But Philip didn’t have morals like other people. If he wanted something, he took it.
“I don’t know,” he said, his breath turning short, labored. “Sometimes I thought I would let you go. Sometimes I wondered if that’s what it meant to care about someone, letting them go.”
But he was deep inside me now, his cock pressing farther and faster on every thrust.
His hand fisted in my hair and pulled me up so that my back was flush against his chest, neck exposed to the room as he tilted my head to the side. He spoke against my neck, pressing openmouthed kisses down the line and across my shoulder. “I couldn’t leave you alone, though. Couldn’t stop watching you, couldn’t stop touching my cock and imagining you sucking it.”
The next thrust came in a different angle, hitting a place inside me that had me crying out. A gush of wetness heated his cock, a drop sliding down my leg.
“Then you were in danger again, your fuckhead of a father putting you both in danger. Your brother gone. You would have been next. And I thought, good fucking riddance.”
His hands tightened—one on my hip and one in my hair. It was the only warning I had before he slammed into me, his cock a blunt weapon against that tender place inside me—I sobbed his name. “Philip, wait. Wait. It’s too much.”
“Except that’s a lie,” he continued in a low voice. “I didn’t want to care, but I went straight there anyway. Got fucked up on the way—and that’s what I should be focused on. Who the fuck would send someone to jump me? If I’d been thinking straight, I could’ve kept him alive, forced him to talk.” He was angry now, furious. “But I was too fucking worried about you, so I snapped his neck and showed up at your door.”
Oh God. He’d killed someone that night, because of me. I’d known it, but it was different now that his hands were on my bare flesh, hands that had killed. Hands that had defended me in the most ancient, undeniable way. I shivered.
“That’s right,” he said, almost approving. His cock pulled all the way out, just the tip notched inside me, before slamming back in. I cried out again, and another gush of wetness coated his cock. “That’s who you’re letting inside your body. That’s who’s going to come inside you.”
Not that. This was risky enough, but if he came inside me… “Wait.”
I pulled uselessly at the muscled arms holding me in place, but my hands slipped on his sweaty skin. I couldn’t move him, couldn’t stop him.
“Let me down,” I begged. “I’ll take you in my mouth. I’ll suck you.”
“No,” he said, clenching tighter. “This. I’m going to pour my seed into you, and then I’m going to drape you over that fucking couch so it gets to the right place. And when your belly is round with my child, you won’t ever think about leaving me again.”
Even as my sex tightened, my heart chilled. Oh God. He was insane. And cold as ice. I knew it, I should have known it, but I couldn’t have imagined this. I couldn’t have imagined he would even want this, but here he was, holding me still while he pumped faster, the jerky movements signaling his impending climax.
I pulled away, a last-second bid for freedom—and only got as far as the sofa, cushions under my knees, hands grasping the back ridge of the sofa. He followed me down, legs between mine, pumping up into me with more leverage and force than before.
My whole body strained forward, only to be slammed back against him.
“Take it,” he muttered harshly.
“You’re not thinking straight,” I cried. “You can’t—”
“I thought too fucking much about you. I’m done thinking.”
His body stiffened, and he made a choked sound. His cock flexed. Then a spurt of hot come hit the soft place inside me, and my mouth opened on a cry of betrayal. No.
It was too late. The climax rolled over me, triggered by the very thing I didn’t want. Pleasure turned my vision to black, and I sobbed my denial and gratitude all at once. My sex clenched around his cock as the waves of orgasm ran through my body, and he grunted in masculine appreciation.
Spasms racked me as I came down from the high. My hands were clenched tight on the back of the sofa, my breasts pressed against the silky fabric. I panted, my mind dazed.
“That’s right,” he said, his voice languid, thick with lingering orgasm. He slid a hand down my stomach to where his body was still joined to mine. Callused fingers slid through slick, sensitive skin. I jerked at the touch.
He circled my clit with lazy motions. That was all it took. A few turns of his fingers and I was rocking against him, mindless, on the edge again.
“That’s right,” he said again. “You feel my come. I know you do. Keep it inside you, kitten. This will help.”
No. It was so wrong, but maybe I was wrong, because his words pushed me over the edge. I came again, this one tight and hard, rocking against his hand as I rode out the razor’s edge climax—that climax that would keep his come inside me. My inner walls clenched, and I imagined his seed traveling deep, rooting there.
A mewling sound filled the air, and I realized it was me.
I shook my ahead against the illicit desire in my gut. Tears tracked down my cheeks.
“I told you I’d pay the ransom,” he said. “But we do it my way. Understand? You follow orders, kitten. Just like you do when I’m fucking you.”
I shivered at the force in his voice, the sensual threat. “Yes.”
Eventually he took me to his bedroom, where heavy curtains blocked out the daylight. We slept to make up for the night we had lost and to prepare for the trials to come. I didn’t know how many times he took me, hands moving me, arranging my body to accept his.
He didn’t even wake me. Instead he slid rough fingers between folds already wet and brought me to orgasm in my sleep. I hovered in the space between dreams and darkness, pleasure and pain.