He moved to the window. At the open door of the roomy passenger van, she hesitated. There were five people in it, in addition to the driver. Since Daralyn had her head lowered, as if she were thinking, he got ready to go out there and give her reinforcement if she needed it.
Then she curled her fingers over the chain, the ring. Taking a deep breath, she gripped the rail and mounted the steps into the vehicle. When the door closed, she had settled gingerly into a seat next to a nerdy-looking guy staring at his phone.
The van pulled away, trundling out of the parking lot and accelerating once it was on the paved road.
He sat in an empty store, his heart aching, desire coursing through him. She’d been gone five seconds, but the Daralyn-sized empty space in the store had the density of a black hole.
Truth Number One. He wanted her, and he didn’t want to hold back on that any longer.
Truth Number Two. Maybe he was channeling some bizarre Fifty Shades thing that he’d absorbed by falling asleep to late night TV, but that didn’t fit. He wanted to say that kind of thing wasn’t him or her, but their reaction to one another during those odd moments said otherwise. And yeah, he’d looked at some of this stuff online, but he hoped like hell he’d stumbled on the wrong places, because he’d seen things he… Fuck, he didn’t even want those things in his head.
But some of it hadn’t repelled him. Just the opposite. That disturbed him more than the stuff that had.
That brought him to Truth Number Three. He needed to talk to Marcus. Because there was another reason Marcus’s words had taken up residence in his head. The online sites had helped Rory realize it, too.
Marcus wasn’t “just” Thomas’s husband.
Marcus and Thomas split their time between Marcus’s penthouse in New York City and a 1940s farmhouse they’d bought here. A few months back, Rory had come by to see Thomas. He’d used the ramp that Thomas and Marcus had included in the house updates right after they purchased it to access the porch.
Seeing the front door standing open behind the screen, Rory had pushed into the living room, calling out. Nothing. The house was empty. They weren’t in the nearby barn, where Thomas had his loft art studio and Marcus his home office, but the cars were under the port. Which meant they were likely on the back porch.
The door to that was open, allowing a cross breeze through the house. Because the adjacent windows were also open, he glimpsed Marcus and Thomas before they were aware of him.
Thomas was against the wooden porch railing, clutching it on either side of him in white knuckled hands. Marcus had him pressed up against it. His strong hand was wrapped around Thomas’s throat as his lips cruised over his cheek.
Rory started to retreat, fast, but before he did, he heard Thomas utter a single word.
Rory hadn’t needed to see Marcus’s face that day to know what expression it wore. The satisfied growl of response had told him.
The fevered look Thomas sent toward Marcus was one Rory wanted to see on Daralyn’s face. And that word… Rory had never heard it used by anyone in his world. Yet it had come back to him again and again since then. Only in his imaginings it came from Daralyn’s lips, said in the same way Thomas had said it to Marcus.
With desperate yearning, but also an absolute certainty that the person who owned that word could answer that yearning and desperation.
“Master.”
So yeah, he needed to talk to Marcus. No matter his aversion to learning more about his brother’s sex life than he really wanted to know, he wouldn’t dive deeper into uncharted territory with just a gut feeling. No way was he going to risk fucking with Daralyn’s head.
That said, he also didn’t want to treat her like china. He knew better than most not to assume someone was too fragile to handle something because of what they’d been through.
The way she’d teased him just now, about having other things to think about than that kiss? That had been damn close to flirting. Like she might one day feel safe enough to mouth off at him, the playful way a woman did when she felt safe with a man.
He wanted to kill her uncle and father for treating her the ways they had, but she’d been stronger than the both of them. He believed in her strength.
He was a man who wanted to treat Daralyn like a woman. She could tease, defy or confront him all she wanted. He’d never hurt her. He’d celebrate that confidence, even as he’d challenge it, in ways she might just crave. Maybe she needed that.
He had an unsettling feeling he sure as hell did.
Chapter Two
After he closed the store for the day, Rory decided to settle himself by doing his evening workout, a few miles on his bike on the Hickman Road loop. Then he transferred to his regular chair and headed for Thomas and Marcus’s place.
By road, they were a few miles away, but as the crow flew, it was a matter of crossing several fields. During the growing season, they offered sweet potato, watermelon or squash crops. When they were little, he and his siblings played with kids on those farms, so they’d worn down a regular path between the fields. Now there was a paved pedestrian and bike path, part of a county-wide greenway project funded by taxes.
As Rory left the path and crossed the road to Marcus and Thomas’s driveway, his gaze went to the guest house on their property. Daralyn’s house.
When Thomas and Marcus bought the Hill place, it had included a rambling farmhouse, a barn and an outbuilding, plus a few fenced acres. The outbuilding had been renovated into a guest house that included a bedroom, living area, kitchenette and bath, as well as a screened patio. All cozy-sized, the whole place about a thousand square feet.
They’d offered it to Daralyn, her first home on her own. In exchange, she cleaned Marcus and Thomas’s place and house-sat for them when they were in New York. Despite her protests, they also paid her for that work.
She loved the little house, and had decorated it to her tastes. Strings of white lights lit up the patio area, more noticeable with the sun going down. She’d bought up a bunch of dollar store hummingbird and flower solar lights, which provided a small rainbow starfield in the bed of pansies that fronted the porch. Shepherd’s hooks held chimes that danced over the flowers when the wind blew.
Thomas and Marcus encouraged her to stay in the main house during their New York absences, but she only used their kitchen on occasion, for the cooking that couldn’t be done in her kitchenette. The flat screen didn’t interest her. She’d watch short bursts of TV with Rory’s family, usually excusing herself partway through a program, and she had no interest in having a television herself. He’d never seen her make it through a full movie, even one she seemed to enjoy.
She preferred to read her books. Most nights, if he went by there on his bike ride, which he usually did, he’d see her on the patio. She’d be curled in a chair, reading, her head bent in concentration, her hair falling softly along her face. She still moved her lips when she read, because the words didn’t come easy or fast.
She always lifted her head when he came by, and would wave. He didn’t usually interrupt her, but he liked to confirm that she was all right.
It wasn’t about her physical safety. Crime wasn’t a big issue in their town. A little vandalism and petty theft were the extent of it. Or Mrs. Marten reporting her goat Molly missing again, although she was always found in someone’s garden.