Chapter 11
2 years later
Gravel crunched beneath tires as the distinct roar of a motorcycle come barreling up the driveway toward me.
It was rare anyone came to the farm except Deck who drove his sweet black Audi with the tinted windows. It crept up the driveway so silently that I rarely noticed it. Actually, the car reminded me of Deck, mysterious, dangerous with a quiet calmness that awakened every nerve in the body. Deck had taken it upon himself to check up on me every so often ever since he and Matt had brought me back from Mexico. Georgie said it was his way, and I was “in the fold” now. Well, the fold could be a pain in the butt, and Georgie completely agreed as she’d been on Deck’s radar since he was honorably discharged from the JTF2. He’d started his own company called Unyielding Riot. I recently found out that Riot was Georgie’s brother’s call name in the JTF2.
Deck had been a huge help when I came back. He assisted with the police and FBI investigation and was with me when I had to tell them the story. Although, certain details were left out—like Sculpt’s identity. I never mentioned him; Deck’s doing and I guess mine too. Sculpt had gotten me out of there.
Deck being an ex JTF2 often worked with law enforcement on cases and therefore had some ‘friends’ which helped when I wanted nothing more than to stop talking about it. He kept the pressure off of me and dealt with most of the questions and answers. At the time, I couldn’t even recall most of what was said I was so numb to everything.
Stroking Havoc’s sleek, white neck, I felt the veins popping out under her skin. A quiver raced through her body, and she trembled. Clucking, I moved Havoc into a walk. Horses were prey animals, and when scared—they ran.
The bike’s roar closed in on us.
Havoc’s ears pricked forward and her muscles coiled like a spring.
I sunk deeper into the saddle, yet made certain I stayed relaxed. Clamping down tight on a fearful horse was like a mountain lion leaping on their back.
“Good girl, Havoc.” I urged her around so that we were facing the offending noise that still wasn’t slowing. The bike paused at the fork in the driveway, one way went to the main house, the other to the barn. It revved then came straight for the barn.
“Damn it.”
Havoc sucked in air to make a loud snorting sound.
I took my feet out of the stirrups to hop off, and at the same time the offending bike backfired.
Havoc exploded.
“Shit.” I looped my fingers in her mane as Havoc went up on her hind legs, pawing the air. My lower back hit hard against the back of the leather saddle as she came down on all fours. She took off in a mad gallop around the ring, her hind legs kicking out to the side and throwing my body off balance.
Havoc came to an abrupt halt, her nostrils flaring and sides heaving.
Then it happened.
The bike skidded to a stop in front of the barn, dust and gravel pebbles flew into the air hitting the aluminum barn wall and making a loud crackling sound like fireworks going off. Havoc’s ears went straight back, her spine arched, and both hind legs went straight up into the air as she squealed.
I careened over her head and landed smack on my ass. “Ughhh.”
I fell backward and lay in the dirt while I listened to Havoc bolt around the riding ring kicking up dust.
Undoing my chin strap, I flicked off my helmet and stared up at the ominous clouds. “What the hell.”
The gate clanged.
Footsteps.
I lay still contemplating what sort of pain I was going to cause the culprit. I’d spent months gaining Havoc’s trust and this would set me back weeks, if not months. The six other traumatized and abused rescue horses that had come with Havoc from the slaughter house had already been rehomed. I’d helped them gain their pride and confidence back, but Havoc was taking much longer. She was an alpha mare and pushing her would only make her rebel—the last reaction I wanted.
I figured another couple years of helping clients with “problem” horses—more like problem clients who didn’t understand their horses—and with the reselling of the abused horses to good homes I’d be able to buy my own farm. I loved living here with Kat, but I wanted my own place. I think in a way I needed it. I’d been latching onto Matt and Kat for too long, and I wanted a career and to be able to support myself.
The footsteps stopped beside me.
My eyes hit boots. Black leather with ankle mouldings—motorcycle boots that were hidden partially by faded jeans on a pair of long, lean legs.
My eyes went up and up then—
My world stopped.
Oh God, I’d worked so hard at burying the emotions, the pain, the hurt, and most of all the fear, and suddenly it was all back. Months of therapy obliterated.
I couldn’t breathe.
Trapped within tightened lungs, suffocating with the shattering, mind-blowing knowledge of who was right next to me. It was like I had never left.
Logan.
Oh. My. God.
No. It couldn’t be.
But it was.
Logan.
Then he crouched, inches away from me.
My heart rate tripled its speed, and the saliva in my mouth vanished as my past slapped me in the face. Emotions swarmed, attacking me from all directions.
I wanted to run and hide, maybe even cower. This was the man who caused me to hide a knife beneath my mattress for the last two years.
He looked different yet the same somehow. Harder—scarier, definitely. He had a scar running the length of his chin, the place where I used to run my finger across to trace his dimple.
“Mouse.”
I stiffened. No one had called me that since him. Hearing his voice ... him calling me that again—
“Emily.” His voice was barely a whisper, as if he had trouble saying my name.
Logan was still breathtaking, but now even more so, and it unsettled me that I thought that. His hair was a little longer, falling just below his ears in relaxed, soft waves, still messy and multilayered. The scruff on his face was new, and—This man had torn my heart out. God, he made me his sex slave.
Suddenly I was wishing Havoc would trample him, so I could run away.
Logan stood and reached out his hand. My eyes hit his right arm that was now covered in tattoos from his elbow up to beneath his T-shirt. He’d only had his left arm inked before.
Shuffling back on my ass, I scrambled to my feet. In my awkward rush I fell backward and tripped over my riding helmet.
He reached again for me.
“No. Don’t.” I held out my hands while I managed to gain my balance. Logan touching me again ... no. I couldn’t yet register that he was here, in front of me, after two years. Three things crossed my mind. Run like hell. Beat on him, or leap into his arms and kiss him.
I did none of the above.
Logan ignored me and took my arm and pulled me back toward him before I had the chance to escape. I landed with my palms resting on his chest and my gaze hitting his neck. His corded muscles contracted, and his Adam’s apple moved up then down as he swallowed.
Logan. I was in his arms. The guy who wrapped me up in his heart then destroyed it.
The guy I tried to forget. No, damn it, I did forget him. I lived every single day for two years without him. I lived. I suffered, and I breathed. Then I fought my way back and won.
Ironic that he was the one who ended up giving me the tools to repair from the very fear he had instilled in me.
His hand reached up to cup my cheek, and I turned my head away. Despite my lies to myself, I never forgot him.
“Mouse.”
A sob wrenched from my throat as he called me by my nickname.
I tried to wiggle out of his grasp, but his fingers dug into my arms. He wasn’t letting go, and despite Logan being leaner than when I knew him, he was strong as hell. My mind was reeling with fear, anger and despair. I had to get my shit together. I needed to. I didn’t get this far only to get torn apart again.
Pushing up against the wall of his chest I prepared myself for meeting his eyes and grit my teeth. “Don’t call me that.”
“Emily.” His voice was soft and gentle.
My instinct was to hurt him anyway I could. To push him to the ground and have Havoc stomp all over him with her hooves.
Maybe love couldn’t be forgotten. But maybe, just maybe it could be smothered by hate.
He ignored my steady push on his chest and stroked my hair like he used to do when I lay in his arms. “You hurt?”
“Like you give a shit.” I saw him flinch and was glad.
“Eme. Please.”
My stomach bottomed out. Jesus, it was that voice. That tone. It was like a punch to the gut. “Let me go, Logan.” I shouldn’t have said his real name; I knew it. Damn it, I remembered. Not the bad, but the warm protective man that sang to me. Who picked me up every morning to take me to work. Riding on his motorcycle, my arms around him, feeling so in love—
I pushed on his chest again and the instant he let me go, I immediately took three steps back.
Distance. I may be a little older and have developed backbone but the moment I laid eyes on him again, that began to break away, and I felt him.
“No. You have no right to be here.”
His eyes narrowed when I took another step back. “We need to talk.”
I heard Havoc begin to paw the ground; it was a loud pounding that matched my beating heart. The swarm of heat that shifted across my body was intoxicating. Logan had made me feel real before he betrayed me, and yes, after it was a different kind of real. A raw and eye-opening real of what a man could do to you.
There was nothing to say. I had no words for him, so instead of standing in front of him looking like a mute, I swung around and headed for Havoc.
I heard the footsteps in the dirt behind me just as I reached the white Andalusian. He tagged my hand and pulled me to a stop. “Let me explain, Eme.”
A tremor of fear shifted through me at his tone and the reaction made me angry. “You don’t get to do that. You let me go, remember. I’m free now and I don’t need anything from you. I’m not your f*cking sex slave to cram your cock into every night.”
“Jesus,” he growled. “Not once did I take you without your consent. And you know it.”
“That’s because if I didn’t, the consequences were worse.” Okay, I was lying, because I was mad and hurt and yes, I was a little scared too. I had no clue why Sculpt was here, and the thought of going back ... no, I’d never go back.
His voice was quiet, “I never beat you, Emily. I tried to protect you.”
“Is that how you live with yourself? No, you just took away my choices. You watched while other people beat me. You bled my self-esteem. Damn it, you tore my f*cking heart out.”
“I got you out when I could.”
“Yeah, in pieces.”
Logan never moved a muscle. Blazing, heated anger shot from his dark, chocolate eyes. “Emily.” Logan paused, as he waited for me to look at him. “I’ve lived two years without you. I’m not doing it any longer. We are going to talk.”
“What?” My heart was pounding so fast I felt I would soon go into cardiac arrest.
“The compound is destroyed.”
My breath hitched as I immediately thought of all those girls. “The girls?”
“Most got out.”
“Most?” What did that mean?
“Raul is dead.”
“So you came to find me to tell me that? That your ruthless, piece-of-shit f*cking father is dead? I don’t care. I’ve moved on.”
“Have you?”
I paused, and it was a mistake, because he noticed. “You need to leave.”
He moved in, and I saw the intent on his face, the way his brows lowered, how his eyes turned dark. I knew what he was going to do, but before I could turn he grabbed me by the shoulders. “I let you go once, because I had to. Now I don’t.”
I started trembling with anger and fear stirred in my belly. There was an uncertainty if he was going to grab me and carry me away and I’d never be found again.
My trust in Logan had snapped, and it couldn’t be reconnected. “Yeah well, tell that to the police when I call them and have you arrested. They know what happened to me.” But they didn’t know Logan was involved. Maybe that was a mistake. I reached into my back pocket then realized I didn’t have my phone.
“Mouse.” Logan’s hand went to the nape of my neck, and his fingers caressed my skin causing disturbing goose bumps to rise. No. I didn’t want my body to react to him. “You need to understand what went down and to hear it from me.”
That pissed me off. He wanted me to understand? No. Nothing could ever make me understand. “I live every single day with what you did to me.”
So much pain had risen to the surface, because he dared to come here. It hurt. He hurt. The memories hurt. I knew escape was my only answer before I fell back into a place I swore I wouldn’t go again.
“Christ.” Logan ran his hand through his bedroom hair, and the locks fell easily back in place. “I did it to protect you.”
“So I needed to be whipped for protection? And tortured? Oh and let’s not forget that time in the courtyard when I had a gun pressed to my temple by your father and you walked away. And the humiliation of being publically ... f*cked.”
Logan stepped closer, and I felt his breath on my skin, his smell wafting into me just as I remembered it. “I never took you against your will. Ever.”
He was right, he never did. Even when he f*cked me in the dining hall he’d asked me. We did it to appease Raul and from making the situation any worse.
I felt like stomping like a fifteen-year-old when I was twenty-two. Instead I casually took the few steps to reach Havoc and picked up her lead. I started to walk Havoc from the ring when Logan called out. “Emily.” I kept walking. "I’m sorry it had to happen that way.”
My hand on the latch of the gate dropped. “You don’t get to say that.” I turned, fury encompassing me like I was lit on fire. I dropped the lead and strode over to him glaring, unflinching as he stared right back at me. “You don’t get to say you’re sorry, Sculpt.”
He remained stoic and solid, and I was furious that he could be so calm and put together while I was falling apart inside.
“Emily.” His arms came around me in one heated embrace, and the loss I felt the last two years, the devastation, the loneliness, it was smothered by the weight of him. The tightening in my chest hurt so bad I wondered if my ribs were poking into my lungs. Breathing became unbearable as the distinct memories of this man hit like a tidal wave. My fingers curled into his T-shirt, and I felt the hardness of his chest, the way it contoured over taut skin, remembered how his tattoos rippled when he moved. I remembered, and it pissed me off that it was so clear.
“Let me repair this.”
His whispered words hit me, and I swallowed the sob threatening to escape and embarrass me. I was stronger now. I’d survived him and his father. And I’d survive this too.
I pulled back, instantly feeling the crushing despair descend on me. Why? Why did he come back? “You made me fear you. You made me fear myself. You locked me inside myself so deep that it took me months to break free again. Repair? You think you can repair that?” I huffed. “I think you should be looking at yourself and repairing your f*cked up head before you offer to repair someone else.”
I turned and walked away, staring straight ahead, ignoring the heat I felt blazing into my back. And I knew what it was from—Logan.