Sinful Southern Hero: 2 (15 page)

The three faces staring at Lucy gave her the strange urge to
giggle. They all looked as if they were waiting for her to pass out or lose her
mind. But it wasn’t going to happen, not now, now that she was in her safe
place.

“How do you know he’s here, then?” Jed asked.

“I’ve got a few of my guys keeping an eye out for him, just
in case. Never hurts to cover all the bases. Glad I did this time. Just got
news one of them saw Ross at Lucy’s apartment building.”

“Did he break in again?” Lucy asked, not worried but
curious.

“No. The contact I talked to while you were in here with
Abbey said Ross went straight to Brad’s apartment, knocked and was let inside
by Brad. Stayed for thirty minutes, then took off.”

Lucy stared, feeling nothing, reminding herself to blink
every few seconds.

“Isn’t Brad Rachel’s brother?” Abigail asked, stepping a bit
in front of Lucy as if to protect her from the answer.

“Yeah, babe. And I don’t know what Dalton’s doing with
Rachel but it can’t be what you’re thinking. He’s a good man.”

Abigail snorted, fists clenched at her sides. She looked
indignant enough to make up for Lucy’s lack of emotion.

“This is actually perfect,” Lucy said, her words cutting
through the tension in the room. Everyone looked at her as if she’d lost her
mind. Maybe she had. “Ross being here, I mean. If he’s here, I can go back to
Cincinnati and get inside the house.”

“Why the hell would you ever want to do that?” Abigail
asked.

“Because I know where I can find proof that I’m telling the
truth. I remembered something, something I’d blocked out.”

“That’s good,” Jed said. “What kind of proof?”

Her voice devoid of emotion, she told them. “Pictures. He
liked to take pictures of me after he hurt me. Sometimes while he hurt me. He
called them trophies.” Lucy grabbed the hem of her shirt in both hands and
slowly raised it to expose the circular burn scars on her stomach and chest. “He’d
hit me that day. It was the first time he’d hit me so hard I’d been knocked
unconscious. When I woke up, he had me tied to the bed, a camera on a tripod
set up in the corner of our bedroom, and he was straddling my hips, leaning
over me with a cigarette between his lips. I remember thinking it odd because
I’d never known him to be a smoker. Then he started this.”

Lucy ran a fingertip over one of the raised burn scars,
remember the smell of burnt flesh, the grating laugh of a monster. Despite her
numbed mind, her eyes welled with tears and she absently wiped them away with
the backs of her hands after dropping her shirt.

“He called it his artwork. Wanted to capture the moment so
he could enjoy it again later. He left me tied to the bed while he loaded the
pictures on his home computer and printed them out. He put them in a box on the
top shelf of our bedroom closet. I don’t know what else is in that box. I
wasn’t stupid enough to go snooping through his things and to be honest, I
didn’t want to know.”

“Oh, Lucy. I’m so sorry that happened to you.” Abigail
hugged her, sniffling back her own tears.

“I’m fine now. I’m glad I remembered. Now I can get the
proof I need.”

“No offense, but you don’t look fine. You look like you’re
in shock.” Dez studied her, his brows drawn in a fierce expression.

Without responding to Dez, Lucy continued talking. “With
Dalton…busy…and Ross here in Clifton, it’s the perfect time for me to go back
to the house.”

She held up a hand to stop the arguments forming on the lips
of the three other people inside the studio. “And, I’m going alone.”

“Like hell you are.”

“No fuckin’ way.”

“Dalton will cut off my balls if I let you leave without
protection.”

Lucy shook her head, in no mood for pleading or reasoning
with these people, even if she did consider them friends. “I’ve been a prisoner
long enough.” She pinned each of them in turn with a hard stare. “I won’t ever
be kept prisoner again, not by my psychotic ex, not by my fears and not by
well-meaning friends.”

“At least let us call Dalton,” Abigail begged.

Lucy swallowed hard, an image of Dalton entwined with a thin-bodied
woman sweeping through her mind. “As far as I’m concerned, Dalton made his
choice. Besides, this is something I need to do alone. Ross is here, I’ll be
safe. I don’t know what I’m going to find inside that box and I don’t want an
audience there with me.”

She walked toward the door and paused, waiting for Dez to
step to the side so she could exit. He ran a hand over his face, inner conflict
clear in his eyes as he stared her down. With a sigh, he stepped aside.

“This is a mistake, Lucy. Let one of us go with you. Don’t
do this alone,” Dez called to her back as she moved through the hall to the
rear exit.

When she reached the back door of the building, she turned
to look back. Dez, Abigail and Jed all stood in the hallway with varying
expressions of anger and concern. “It’s time I stood up for myself. By myself.
I’ll make the drive and be back here before midnight.”

“Stay with us. You can’t stay in your apartment with Ross
hanging around and I doubt you’ll want to stay with Dalton. Stay with Jed and I
tonight, at least give us that much.”

Lucy thought for one silent moment, then gave a nod to
Abigail. “Okay. I’ll see you when I get back.”

Lucy pushed open the door, a hot wave of humid summer air
rushed to greet her as she stepped outside, feeling more like she was walking
through a dream than on sweltering blacktop.

Dalton pulled to a stop on the narrow paved parking lot in
front of the Victorian house that had been converted into a showroom and office
for Elegance Supplied
.
After shutting off the engine, he climbed down from
the cab and shoved the keys into his pocket, looking over the small parking
area with a frown. Harris’ pretentious BMW was nowhere in sight, Rachel’s
vehicle the only other car in the lot.

A sense of foreboding heated Dalton’s gut before racing up
his spine, the sensation like static shock with a bit of fire behind it. Being
alone with Rachel was not a good idea, instinctively he knew this.

With a sigh he resigned himself to the encounter and walked
to the showroom door. He’d promised himself to take things slow and easy with
Lucy and he reminded himself now of how satisfied he’d been with their rather
tame encounter that morning. Dalton no longer wanted Rachel but he wouldn’t
deny he’d previously found pleasure with her or desired to fuck with the same kind
of raw, dominant passion again. He might not want Rachel, but damn if her dark
sexuality wasn’t still a temptation.

Fucking pink Italian marble. A twenty-thousand dollar
mix-up, that’s why he was here. He needed to get this taken care of and get his
ass back to Lucy.

Finding the showroom empty, Dalton walked around the
customer service counter and through the hallway to the back where Harris and
Rachel’s offices were located.

“Rachel?” Dalton called, wondering what the hell was going
on. Hadn’t she told him Harris would be back by now?

“Back here!”

He turned a corner, following the sound of her voice,
thinking this must be what sailors experienced while following a Siren’s song
before being lured too close to shore and crashing upon the rocks.

“Where’s Harris?” he asked, nearing the open doorway to a
room he remembered Harris using for storage. Stepping inside, he swept his gaze
over the interior and felt his jaw harden when he spotted Rachel

She stood with her back to him, reaching for a small—no
doubt ridiculously expensive—vase on a tall shelf. She must have heard him
enter the room, his heavy work boots weren’t exactly silent on the gleaming
hardwood floors. Rachel’s strawberry-and-fresh-grass scent permeated the room
enough to make him wonder if she’d recently spritzed the place with her perfume
as if it were an air freshener.

However much he used to enjoy the unique scent, it wasn’t
the reason for his current hard-on. No, the current cause of his dick standing
at attention was the good three or four inches of smooth naked thigh showing
between the bottom hem of Rachel’s skirt and the lacy top of her black
thigh-high stockings. The skirt was either entirely inappropriate for work or she’d
simply hiked it up at the waist to shorten it for just this purpose. Her tall,
lithe body was stretched to perfection as she reached for the vase without
success.

Breathing heavily, Dalton failed to keep his gaze from
sliding down the visible straps of her garter belt to the lacy stockings and
down to a pair of black platform stilettos worthy of a high class escort. He
wanted to believe this scene was nothing more curious than the mishap of a
fashion blunder mixed with a genuine need to lay hands on a vase she still
hadn’t been able to grab—and no longer seemed to be trying all that hard to
acquire—instead of a staged seduction.

“Where’s Harris?” he repeated, his voice low and rough.

Rachel turned her head to look over her shoulder at him,
somehow managing to look up from under her lashes in the same coy manner she
used while sucking his cock. Her pink lips pushed out in a pout. “Is he not
back yet?” she asked with an innocence so false it cleared Dalton’s lust-muddled
brain for a few seconds.

Back to business. Back to Lucy. “I didn’t come here to play
games, Rachel. I need to speak to Harris, now.”

Undeterred, she turned back to the shelving unit and made a
weak attempt at snatching the vase. With another look over her shoulder, she
asked, “Can you help me get this down? I need it for the showroom.”

He eyed the stepladder resting against the wall a few feet
from where Rachel was standing. She followed his eyes to the stepladder and
gave a husky feminine laugh. When he raised a brow, she told him, “With these
heels, I’d likely fall and break my neck. You’re tall, you can reach it.
Please?”

Figuring it was a simple enough task, he walked to the
shelf, not truly surprised when Rachel neglected to move out of his way so he
was forced to step into her, press his front to her back while he reached
overhead and retrieved the ugly orange-and-brown ceramic vase from its perch
upon the high shelf. As he brought the object down, intending to hand it to
Rachel, she pressed back against him, circling her hips against the erection
inside his jeans, which had begun to flag and was now gaining strength by the
second.

Rachel dropped her head back against his chest as a small
moan sounded from her throat. As soon as he’d sat the vase down on a lower
shelf, she grabbed his wrist, pulling until she’d positioned his palm against
her breast. His traitor of a hand offered the small mound of flesh a brief
squeeze before he could stop it.

Seeing this as a sign of acceptance, Rachel spun to face him
and went on tiptoe to take his mouth with her glossy lips. He grabbed her hips,
growling as he leaned into her and thrust his tongue into her mouth while
grinding his erection against her stomach.

Except…

This wasn’t right. The hips under his hands were bony
instead of softly curved. The scent in the air was redolent with citrus instead
of the sweet warmth of vanilla and sugar. The tongue in his mouth was too
uninhibited, too skilled. Fuck! This was a mistake.

He pulled back, surprised when she tried to follow instead
of accepting his shutdown. Physically setting her away from him, he shook his
head hard, whether he was telling himself or Rachel “no”, he wasn’t sure.
Didn’t make a difference, the answer was still the same.

Dalton felt sick, a bubbling mass of guilt and anger and
disappointment in himself weighed heavy in his stomach, spreading to encase his
heart and lungs when he imagined Lucy finding out about this. He’d have to tell
her, of that he had no doubt.

Standing there with another woman’s lip gloss slicking his
lips, her scent on his shirt and her body making his dick stand at attention,
was an odd time for a revelation of this sort, but it struck him sudden and
swift, just how much he loved Lucy and how he’d give anything, do anything, be
anything he needed to be in order to make her safe and happy. And he was a
goddamn asshole for carrying on with Rachel this way, even for a minute.

In a last-ditch effort it seemed, Rachel pushed two fingers
into her mouth, coating them with saliva. Dalton stood statue still while she
lowered those fingers to her inner thigh, drew them up toward her pussy while
pushing the hem of her skirt up and slipped her wet fingers inside the
transparent scrap of cloth covering her mound.

Unfortunately for the masturbating woman, her little show
wilted Dalton’s erection so fast he imagined it emitting a sound similar to the
air being let out of a helium balloon. Another revelation followed—Rachel was
topping from the bottom, and she had been, albeit very skillfully, for quite
some time. Dalton snorted in disgust, then took a long step backward, away from
Rachel.

“Stop.” Her hand paused at Dalton’s order. “Why, Rachel?”

She seemed to understand what he was asking. Slipping her
hand from her panties, she tugged her skirt into a position on her hips which
made the hem much more acceptable and covered her nearly to her knees. She
crossed her arms over her chest and her thin cheeks took on a flush of red they
hadn’t held even while she’d attempted to seduce him. “Because you’re mine.”
Her chin—
had her chin always been so pointy?
—tilted up with an air of
defiance.

Dalton almost laughed. “I was never yours. And you were
never mine. We had an agreement, which I ended. That’s all. End of story.”

She stepped closer, close enough to lay her hands—hands that
were too skinny now that he saw them in a new light—on his biceps. “I still
want you, so what’s the problem?”

“I guess the problem would be,
I
don’t want
you
.”

Dalton watched her blue eyes flash with a cold inner light
and felt her over-manicured nails dig into his arms. Then, more disturbing
somehow than the rest of it, a cruel smile curved her pink lips.

“It sure felt like you still want me.” She leaned in so her
lips brushed against the bare skin of his neck. “You were hard for me, Dalton.
Admit it.”

“You’re right.”

A triumphant expression flashed across Rachel’s face.

“My dick got excited at the sight of you. Old habits and all
that.” The triumphant expression on Rachel’s face flickered before he shut it
down for good. “I got hard the last time I was at a strip club too, didn’t mean
I was gonna fuck a stripper and I sure didn’t want to take one home to my meet
my mama.”

“You…” Her mouth opened and closed like an indignant fish. “I’m
not… I’m nothing like those women!”

Dalton narrowed his eyes, giving her the kind of mean look
he’d never before unleashed on a woman. “You sure? ’Cause you sure as hell just
put on one hell of a show for a man you’re not in any kind of relationship
with.”

“You’re an asshole!”

“What if your boss would have walked in? Or is Harris used
to that performance?” Dalton rubbed his chin, pretending to consider. “Maybe
it’s part of your paycheck. Are lap dances extra?”

He wasn’t sure why he was being so rude, other than he’d
begun to dislike Rachel with an alarming intensity and he wanted to lash out at
someone and assuage some of his guilt for touching her.

“Harris isn’t coming in today. He’s out of the state. It was
perfectly safe.”

Dalton turned and started toward the door. Fucking hell.
Waste of time, time he could have spent with Lucy. Now he still had the tile
problem and he’d added a dose of betrayal to the mix. Fucking fantastic.

Behind him, Rachel called out, “She’s married, you know? Bet
the chubby nutcase didn’t tell you that, did she?”

Dalton froze mid-step, one boot raised above the floor, feeling
an icy fear slither through him at her words. Without turning, he demanded, “Who
told you she’s married?”

A haughty laugh echoed through the room. “Her
husband
.
Last time I went to visit my brother Lucy’s husband was there looking for her.
Apparently, she’s unstable. You should be careful you don’t fall off that high
horse you’re sitting on, screwing a married lady and a mental patient at that.”

He spun to face her. “When was this? When was he here?”

The anger on his face must have registered because she
stammered, “Last…last night. Why?”

“Stay away from Ross. He’s a dangerous man. I’m only gonna
say this once and then I hope to God I never have to speak to you again. Lucy
isn’t crazy and she isn’t married. Ross is her
ex
-husband. The psychotic
bastard beat her nearly to death on more than one occasion. Is he still in
town?”

“I don’t know,” she said, looking smaller now with her arms
wrapped around herself.

Dalton spun and rushed for his truck, hoping to hell nothing
had happened to Lucy while he’d been away. When he reached his truck he barely
had the door open before he swung his body into the cab. His phone, which he’d
tossed on the dashboard, vibrated like an angry bee. His heart sank when he
looked at the screen. Six missed calls. Four from Hart’s Ink, two from Dez.

One unread text message from Dez. “Get your ass back here.
Lucy’s gone.”

* * * * *

Lucy gripped the steering wheel with fingers white from the
strain. As she had walked from Hart’s Ink toward her apartment where her car
was parked, she’d almost hoped Ross would be there waiting for her when she
retrieved the car. Sure, it was broad daylight but that had never stopped him
before. If he’d been there, at least the constant worrying and waiting would be
over. The worst would have happened and she could then either move on with her
life or…

Stopped at a light, she squeezed her eyes shut for a second
to dispel the visual that’d popped into her mind of her mangled, lifeless body,
which was a far more probable outcome of another encounter with Ross than a few
stitches and another new town. No, the situation was far past that point now.
Lucy was sure he’d try to kill her this time.

The light turned green and she pressed the gas, easing onto
the main road which led to the interstate, thinking dying might not be such a
bad deal.

The thought shocked her, stabbed through the cottony yet
tough as steel wall she’d built around her mind, striking her inside her safe
place like nothing else ever had. A tear trickled a wet path down her cheek.

Lucy didn’t want to die. What was she thinking? What was she
doing hiding inside her mind, shutting off her emotions like she was still a
captive in Ross’s household and it was the only way to survive? Shutting down,
locking away her feelings, was only giving the bastard one more level of
control over her life and she refused to give him anything more than he’d
already taken.

No.

Her mind felt fuzzy, as if she’d been drugged and was trying
to climb her way out of the fog. She pulled to the side of the road and parked,
ignoring the few cars speeding past. Opening the clip on her key chain, she
removed her old house key. It seemed appropriate for what she needed.

Using the sharp, jagged edge of the key, she pressed hard on
tender flesh of her inner arm and pulled the cold metal across her skin. She
sucked in a breath at the sudden rush of pain, using the sensation to further
dissipate the cotton in her mind. She repositioned the key for a fresh swipe,
pressing just hard enough to abrade the tissue and leave a bright-red welt but
not hard enough to cause any actual damage.