“I’ll do anything to protect my family,” he said, “and to me, Bryce, you are family.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Marjorie
Ruby and I sat with Jade on the deck after we’d shared a quick dinner of sandwiches. Talon was with the boys in the yard, playing with the dogs.
“He’s like a little kid himself with them,” Jade said. “Those boys have been so good for him.”
“He’s been good for them too,” I said. “Having a father with that level of understanding…” I didn’t need to finish. None of us wanted to say the words, but we all knew how special it was that Talon was now father to the two boys.
“It’s so great to see Dale come out of his shell more,” Ruby agreed.
Jade smiled and patted her belly, which now showed the tiniest baby bump. “I think they’ll be good big brothers.”
“Are you and Tal going to find out the sex?” I asked.
“I don’t know. We haven’t really talked about it. For a while, we were just hoping the pregnancy would continue. Now, with everything else that’s going on, we haven’t discussed it.”
“Are you hoping for one or the other?” Ruby asked.
“I suppose it would be nice to add a girl to the mix,” Jade replied, “but it doesn’t really matter. I just want a healthy, happy baby.”
My phone buzzed. I smiled. “It’s Bryce. Hey,” I said into the phone.
“Where are you?”
“Home. We just had a small dinner, and Jade, Ruby and I are chatting. Where are you?”
“On my way to you. Stay there. I have news.”
“So the rock belongs to Alex Booker,” Ruby said. “Cade Booker is trying to implicate everyone he has an issue with.”
I grabbed Bryce’s arm. “Have you checked in on Henry?”
He nodded. “He’s safe. I’ve got someone keeping watch.”
“Good.” I was eternally glad Bryce had someone keeping tabs on his son. If anything happened… God, I couldn’t go there.
“Why would he have an issue with Colin?” Jade asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Bryce said. “Believe it or not, I think it was jealousy.”
“Jealousy?” Talon said. “That’s nuts.”
“To us, yeah. But to Cade? Cade was the first person my father liked enough to pay money for. As far as we know, he didn’t pay money for anyone again until Colin.”
Ruby nodded. “Booker is finally beginning to make psychopathic sense.”
I said nothing. It made an eerie sort of sense to me as well, something I wasn’t altogether comfortable with.
“But Colin escaped from Tom,” Talon said.
“That doesn’t mean Cade didn’t know about him,” Ruby said.
Bryce had already given us the theory that he thought Tom had taken Cade as a sort of protégé.
“You think Cade thought he was being replaced?” I said.
“That’s what it sounds like to me.”
“Crazy shit,” Talon said, more to himself than to any of us. He looked to the yard, where the boys were playing with the dogs. Dale didn’t usually join in, but he did today. That made all of us happy, despite what else was going on.
“So the only question is,” I said, “how did Ted Morse find out about Cade?”
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” Bryce said. “Cade must have gone to Ted after he found out about my father paying for Colin.”
“So Cade and your father were continually in contact,” I said.
“That’s my guess.”
“Dale says the man at the playground was someone who watched at the compound. Not someone who hurt him, but watched him being hurt by others,” Ruby said. “How does that fit in?”
“I have no clue,” Bryce said. “I’m sure my father ‘trained’ Cade the way he himself had been trained. Maybe Cade couldn’t do it to others. Or maybe he was in training himself, watching first. I have no idea.”
“We need to find Cade,” Ruby said. “That’s the only way we’ll get the real story, and that’s only if he wants to tell us.”
The rest of us nodded.
“You realize he’s going to try to hit you or Joe,” Ruby said.
“We’ve got Melanie and the baby protected,” Bryce said.
“You do?” Bryce didn’t normally keep stuff like this from me. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Joe and I just got it done,” he said. But he didn’t look me in the eye.
There was something he wasn’t telling me, but I wouldn’t push it. Not yet. Not in front of my family.
But later.
Later, Bryce, you’re going to level with me.
You’re going to tell me everything.
Bryce went home, and after I’d helped Jade get the boys to bed, I headed to the guesthouse.
Bryce and I were going to have words.
I’d barely gotten through the door, though, when he grabbed me and crushed our mouths together.
No, talk first. We have to talk fir—
I opened for him in spite of myself. We were both so needy, so raw with emotion over everything.
I couldn’t fight it.
I didn’t want to fight it.
We kissed, hard and passionate, with a mixture of fervor and fury. Fury not at each other but at the situation. Fury because it was better than sadness and ache.
He ground his hard cock into my belly and deepened the kiss, our mouths fused together and our tongues dueling. I gave in to it, reveled in it.
We could talk later.
Now was the time to give to each other and take what we each needed in turn.
We kissed harder, harder, harder…until he finally pulled away and inhaled a gasping breath.
“Bedroom,” he grunted, and he pulled me along until we were ensconced in the master suite.
I expected his usual command to undress. Instead, he frantically pulled off his own clothes until he stood naked, his cock hard and ready, his gaze raking over me as I quickly disrobed as well.
“Need you,” he said gruffly.
“I’m here.”
“Get on your hands and knees,” he said. “I’m going to take you from behind. Like a damned animal.”
His words set me on fire, and I obeyed him without question. I was already soaking wet. I could feel it. Feel every quiver between my legs as I imagined him sinking his cock into me.
Soon, he was behind me, the bed shifting with his weight, his cock slapping the cheeks of my ass.
“I’m going to fuck you hard, baby. So hard. I need it. And I need you.”
I squealed sharply as he thrust into me.
I was ready. Wet and ready. But something was different this time. Was he more erect than normal? No, I’d looked at him. He was the same large size he always was.
No, it wasn’t his size. It was his attitude. Something was different.
He slapped the cheek of my ass when he pulled out and then thrust back in.
He’d slapped me once before, but not like this. This felt different.