His eyes narrowed.
“I said something to Jake,” she clarified. Pain sliced through her. “The night before Cassie was attacked.”
“Before he attacked Cassie,” Sloan corrected flatly.
“Right.” She swallowed the massive lump in her throat.
She wasn’t sure why she’d phrased it that way, as if an unseen, outside force had been the one to attack Cassie, when in reality that dark force had been Jake.
“He asked me if I was attracted to you, and I said yes.” Reese tightened her grip on Sloan’s hand. “I told him I wanted you and he lost it. He said he’d kill any man who touched me, that only he had the right to do that. He was so out of control that night. He fucked me harder than he’d ever done before.” Shame bubbled in her throat, causing her to turn away from Sloan’s serious eyes. “And I loved it.”
She jerked when he wrenched her face toward him so she had no choice but to look at him. “It’s okay to like it rough, sweetheart. It’s okay to like what he did to you.”
“But what he did to Cassie . . .” The lump in her throat grew impossibly bigger. “That wasn’t okay. God, Sloan, you should’ve heard the things he was screaming at her. How it was his right to touch whoever he wanted, to take whoever he wanted. Cassie was lying there on our bed, bleeding from all the places he’d beat her. Crying, begging for me to help her.”
“You did help her.”
“I helped her too late.” She bit her lip. “I drove him to that. I told him I wanted you, and he had to go and show me that I wasn’t allowed to touch another man, but that he was allowed to touch whoever he wanted even if it was against her will. I did that.”
“No, you didn’t,” Sloan said firmly, but then his resolve crumbled and a ragged breath shuddered out of his throat. “If anything, it was my fault.”
She blinked in surprise. “What are you talking about?”
“I said something to Jake too,” he confessed.
Her heartbeat took off in an erratic gallop. “You did?”
“After he laid his claim, I tried so hard to keep my feelings for you in check. But it wasn’t easy.” Guilt clung to his tone. “The more time I spent in this town, the more I admired you. And the more I admired you, the harder it was to keep my cock under control. I wanted you so badly I couldn’t stand to be around you.”
His voice, so deep and gruff and laced with regret, brought the sting of tears to her eyes.
“I managed to keep my dick in my pants. I managed to keep my mouth shut. But then . . .” He swallowed visibly. “Jake’s eye was beginning to wander.”
Reese’s teeth clamped onto her lower lip again. Yeah, she’d always suspected.
“So I asked him if there was room in the bedroom for one more. We’d shared women before, so it didn’t seem like an outrageous request at the time. But . . . Christ, he didn’t like that. He told me that he’d slit your throat before he let another man touch you.”
Her eyes widened.
“That’s when my allegiance shifted from Jake to you,” Sloan admitted. “From that day on, I was your man. When I got up in the morning, it was to make sure that your day ran smoothly. When I lay down at night, I would think about all the ways I needed to protect you so that you could protect everyone else. And most of all, I kept an eye on Jake.”
Reese blinked rapidly to try to stop the tears from spilling over. She’d always known Sloan was loyal to her, but . . . she hadn’t expected to hear this. Any of it.
“But it wasn’t a close enough eye,” he muttered darkly. “I didn’t see what he was doing. All those women he’d been with while he was fucking you weren’t willing bed mates. I should’ve known that, damn it. I should’ve known that the women in this town loved you. You, Reese, and they wouldn’t, not for a second, let Jake in their beds behind your back.”
When he touched her cheek again, Reese sagged into the warmth of his palm. The nausea grew stronger, swirling in her stomach. She’d known that Jake was getting out of control. She’d seen him forcing the women to serve him his food and drinks. Dishing out punishment for any minor transgression committed in the camp. He’d even set up a whipping pole in the town square, where men and women alike were belted for whatever crime he believed they’d committed.
But the rapes . . . taking the women and even some of the men against their will . . . that was a whole other level of savagery. He’d told them it was their duty to serve him, but even Jake must’ve known that what he was doing was wrong, otherwise he wouldn’t have sworn his people to secrecy. He told them it was their duty, but really it was his own twisted perversions, his own distorted ideas of what it meant to be a leader.
Jake had been sick.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I really didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t,” Sloan assured her. “Neither did I. If I had, I would’ve put him down long before that, spared everyone all that pain and terror.”
“I don’t know if you could’ve done it by yourself. I don’t think I would’ve been able to,” she admitted. “You loved him.”
“Yeah, I loved him . . . until I hated him.”
A sad smile touched her lips. That was what it boiled down to, wasn’t it? They’d loved Jake until they’d hated him.
“Do you regret it?” Sloan asked in a hoarse voice. “Killing him?”
She shook her head. “Do you?”
He shook his head.
A humorless laugh slipped out of her mouth. “But it doesn’t feel like he’s dead, does it? We killed him three years ago, but he’s still here. A ghost in this town. Watching us. Judging us.”
“Then let him watch,” Sloan said fiercely. “Jake was my only family, he was my best friend, but he was not a good man. It wasn’t anything you or I did, sweetheart. He was sick and he got addicted to the power. You didn’t make him do what he did. Neither did I. So if he wants to be here with us?” Sloan gestured to the empty space around them. “Let him. Let him watch. But you and I? We’re not giving him another second’s thought.”
The heat in his eyes made it hard to breathe. She’d seen it when he’d kissed her, when he’d let Rylan suck him off. That kind of passion wasn’t supposed to be restrained. It should be allowed to flow free, and Reese found herself cursing Jake harder than she ever had, for keeping Sloan on a leash he didn’t belong on.
When he kissed her, she welcomed him with an eagerness that was almost embarrassing. His tongue slid into her mouth, and Reese gasped because he tasted like . . . Sloan. Like whiskey and man and something so heady it fogged up her mind.
She clung to his broad chest, digging her fingers into his pecs. When her thumbnail brushed his nipple through his shirt, he hissed out a breath. His big body was trembling, but she knew he wasn’t scared or nervous. He was fighting the same loss of control that she always fought.
“Sloan,” she started, but she had no idea what she wanted to say.
It didn’t matter. Sloan kissed her again, long and deep and drugging, making her dizzy with the hungry swirl of his tongue, the greedy clasp of his lips. He pushed her back onto the mattress and slid the top of her bra down. One breast popped free and instantly he had his mouth around it, sucking deep enough to make her cry out.
“Reese,” he groaned against her aching flesh. But he didn’t finish his sentence either. He simply flicked his tongue over her nipple while freeing her other breast.
God. Her entire body was on fire. Everything about him called to something hot and carnal inside her. His wicked tongue. His cropped hair sliding beneath her palm as she ran her fingers through it. His beard on the swell of her breast, scratching her sensitive skin. His impossibly hard cock pressing against her thigh.
She wanted to free it from his jeans, take him inside her mouth, inside her body. The need to have him was so overpowering it turned her into a crazed woman. Suddenly she was
clawing at his zipper, growling when it snagged halfway.
Sloan chuckled and reached down to help her out. “You want my cock?” he rasped.
Reese couldn’t even form the word yes. Raw, unchecked lust had clogged her throat, and all she could do was give him a desperate nod.
Anticipation swelled between her legs as he slowly dragged his zipper down. He reached inside and gripped what she was craving more than her next breath, but before he could release his erection, a knock sounded on the door.
They both hissed in displeasure.
“Reese, we need you.” It was Nash, who must have drawn the short straw again, because he always seemed to be the one interrupting them.
“What is it?” she ground out. She knew both Sloan and Nash could hear the throatiness of her voice, thick with desire.
“Uh . . . we need you,” Nash repeated, sounding like he’d rather be anywhere but outside her door at the moment.
Sloan’s expression flashed with annoyance as he hurled a question at the closed door. “You feel like telling us why? Or are you just gonna keep repeating yourself?”
There was a brief pause. “Bethany’s gone into labor.”
18
Bethany looked terrible.
For a moment, Reese was tempted to spin on her heel and let someone else handle this, but she forced herself to stay put. The panting, red-faced woman thrashing on the bed was one of her people. She couldn’t turn away from someone she’d sworn to protect.
“She was walking home from the restaurant and suddenly bent over. Something like . . . piss, I guess, poured out of her and she started crying. We carried her up here and then . . .” Nash grimaced helplessly, making that face men wore when someone was hurting but they couldn’t do a damn thing to help them. “Then that started happening. We didn’t know what to do.”
He gave Reese a pleading look. Fix this, it said.
Reese glanced back at Bethany, whose body bowed off the bed from a wracking pain that left her visibly drained and weeping.
Sloan had followed Reese into the bedroom but backed away almost immediately, his normally stoic face full of horror. But at least he was still here. Travis and Beckett were hiding downstairs—hell, they may have even left, those cowards—and Nash was already inching away.
Bethany stared at the ceiling as tears streamed from the corners of her eyes. “I can’t do this,” she cried. “Where’s Arch? Why isn’t Arch here?”
Reese’s heart broke into a million pieces. Arch wasn’t here because he’d taken a bullet in his chest to protect Reese. Fuck. She shouldn’t even be here. She wanted to run out of the room behind Nash and take Sloan with her. Facing a thousand Enforcers seemed less terrifying than trying to bring a baby into the world without a lick of medical assistance.
“Reese?” Bethany’s plaintive sob echoed in the room.
“I’m here, honey.”
Sloan gave her a push forward.
Reese shot him a dirty look over her shoulder. Sure, send her over to the tormented woman.
“Is this right? Should I be feeling this?” Bethany struggled to raise up to her elbows, but fell back immediately because even that required too much effort.
Reese thought frantically back to all of her mother’s deliveries. Those events had been attended to by three doctors in white coats. They’d marched into Sylvia’s bedroom and came out hours later with a newborn. There was no sound, no cries of terror and anguish. By the time Reese was allowed to see her mother, sometimes an entire day later, Sylvia was glowing with happiness.
She carefully approached the bed. “Of course it’s normal,” she assured the sobbing woman. But she had no fucking idea what constituted “normal” during childbirth. “I think you should start to push soon?”
“Push? That’s it? That’s all you have for me?” Bethany demanded, and the force of her anger brought her upright.
“I . . .” Reese’s feet had taken her too close to the bed, and Bethany snatched at her wrist.
“I’ve got a watermelon in my stomach and you’re telling me to push it out my vagina! Where are the drugs? I need some drugs!”
Reese knew there had to be drugs for this sort of thing, but in all the pharmacies and clinics they’d raided over the years, nothing had ever been marked USE IN THE CASE OF BIRTHS. The proper meds were probably only stocked in the city hospital.
Shit, and they’d used the last of the painkillers on Kade, first on trying to save him and then to give him a mercy killing.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.” She tugged at the hold on her wrist, but Bethany’s grip was stronger than a steel vise. “I’m going to sit beside you, and you tell me where it hurts. I’ll rub while you push.”
Bethany, sweet, mild, wonderful Bethany, bared her teeth. “Where it fucking hurts? You’re asking me where it fu—”
The rest of that sentence was cut off by another long scream, accompanied by Bethany’s nails tunneling their way through Reese’s wrist. Holy hell did that hurt, but apparently it was nothing compared to what was going on inside of Bethany.
“Get Rylan,” Sloan said.
“Why?” Reese grumbled.
“He grew up on a farm. He told me he knows about delivering babies.”
“Get him. Get him. Get him,” Bethany scream-chanted.
Sloan rushed to the door and called for Nash. “We need Rylan. Now.” Another scream punctuated the air and the two burly men flinched. “Yesterday.”
Nash took off at a sprint.
“Good thing Arch is gone,” Bethany snarled, “’Cause I would’ve killed him for putting me through this.”
Again, Reese’s mind turned toward her mother. Had Sylvia endured this agony for each baby? And her reward had been to lose them? No wonder she went mad. No wonder she killed herself.
Bethany endured two more rounds of intense birthing pains, each one seemingly more horrible than the last, before Rylan finally—blessedly—showed up.
He stepped over the threshold, clapped his hands together and started barking out orders.
“Clean hot water. Three bottles of whiskey.”
“Three of them?” Sloan asked warily.
“Two to disinfect my hands and one for you two to share so you don’t pass out.” Rylan turned to Bethany. “Did your water break?”
Her head jerked in a nod.
Rylan nodded back. “Good. That means the baby will be ready to come out soon.” He patted the end of the mattress. “You two help her down here so her legs dangle off.”
Reese and Sloan jumped up and did as Rylan asked. He knelt between Bethany’s legs, took a long look, and then had Bethany lie back. He placed his hands on her belly, pushing harder than Reese thought was safe or necessary, but Bethany’s cry was almost one of relief.
“Feels good. Head’s down. All you gotta do is push. Might be easier if you stand up.”
“Are you crazy?” Reese exclaimed. “She can’t sit up by herself. What if the baby falls? What if—”
Rylan shrugged, cutting off her litany of bad outcomes. “Things fall. I’ll catch it.”
Bethany struggled to sit up. “Help me up.”
Reese settled on Bethany’s right side, while a pale-faced Sloan took up position on the left. As the young woman hung between them, they all stared at Rylan, who remained kneeling.
“Pretend like you’re taking the biggest dump ever,” he said with a grin.
“You’re an awful midwife,” Reese accused.
He didn’t even bother to respond. Bethany bore down, screaming and holding onto Reese and Sloan as if she were trying to withstand hurricane-level winds. Bethany was a tiny woman, but her grip rivaled the strength of ten men. Reese genuinely feared her hand might come off.
Rylan, however, was the picture of calm. He encouraged Bethany, telling her that she was doing a good
job. That everything was going to be fine. That this was all normal. He alternated between rubbing her back and then her belly before returning to his knees again.
He didn’t let up, hour after hour, speaking until he was hoarse. It was a side of Rylan that Reese had never seen. A side that Jake had never possessed. And under Rylan’s steady eyes and calm voice, Reese finally found her footing.
A quick glance at Sloan revealed that he was responding to it too. Rylan was soothing all of them. The man with a ready smile and a propensity for snarky wisecracks was coaxing them into a calm that Reese would have sworn couldn’t exist in this room.
This Rylan was a revelation, and the fissure that Sloan had created inside of her earlier opened even wider.
* * *
Bethany was a wreck. A vein had burst in her right eye, turning the white of her eyeball completely red. Her hair was drenched in sweat and she was flushed like a lobster from head to foot.
She hadn’t ever looked more beautiful.
Both Rylan and Sloan stared at her with awe and a newly formed devotion.
Reese . . . well, she couldn’t take her eyes off the baby.
Rylan had caught the infant, as he’d promised he would, with his whiskey-cleaned hands. He’d tied off the umbilical cord, urged Bethany to make one last push to rid her body of the afterbirth, and then handed the baby to Reese so he and Sloan could clean up the bed and get Bethany situated. Sloan had cradled Bethany while Rylan stripped the bed of its sweat-stained sheets. Someone produced clean ones and then Bethany was placed back onto the mattress, exhausted and sleepy.
Reese knew she should give the baby to his mother, but she didn’t want to. She was in love with Bethany’s baby. She wanted to run off with Bethany’s baby. Wanted to climb into the helicopter and take off. She’d find one of those islands Tamara was always talking about and get lost with this newborn.
She stared into his blue eyes and ran a hand over the tuft of red hair that he’d obviously inherited from his father. A wrinkled hand clutched at her breast as his tiny mouth opened and closed, looking for something to latch on to. Reese lifted the baby to her nose and breathed in the scent of life.