Their Virgin’s Secret, Masters of Menage, Book 2 (17 page)

Rafe’s handsome face turned down with what Jessa thought was disapproval. He waved a hand toward her, but spoke to Cole and Burke. “You will allow your precious gem to make such a decision unaided? Why is she not tied up? I have rope if you have need of it.”

“And a gag,” Kade offered. “It would be terrible to close that pretty mouth, but she looks quite capable of screaming.”

“I bite, too,” Jessa promised. Yeah, she could see why all these guys got along with the Lennox brothers.

“I am sure Cole has his own rope, and I would be shocked if he hadn’t gagged many a woman over the years,” Rafe offered.

Jessa shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, guys. I can’t leave the country or this man will come after my son. I’ll never have my life back until we deal with this bastard. I won’t leave. Now, I would like to know exactly what’s going on. Are we moving? Have we found out anything about where this Marco person is?”

Burke crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s my girl. And Rafe is right about Cole. He’s damn good with a knot. Now, what have you two found out?”

Kade straightened up, suddenly looking more professional. “First off, Cole called earlier about your phone, Jessa. We have confirmed that no one has turned on the tracking device. You should be safe. Now, about Delgado, we have uncovered a few things. We know that he has a private jet. The FAA shows the Delgado jet filed a flight request late last night for a small town outside Albuquerque. They landed. I don’t know where they went from there, but on a short flight, they wouldn’t have to file another request. But you should know that I also discovered Delgado owns several businesses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.”

Jessa’s heart rate tripled. “He’s here? In the same city as my son?”

Cole held a hand out. “Caleb is safe. Gavin is moving the whole family to his penthouse. They own a floor with a private elevator. They can shut the floor off from the rest of the building and lock down the stairwell, if need be. And if we get really worried about Caleb, Gavin promised to take him to Alaska. No one gets in and out of River Run without the whole town knowing it. It’s going to be okay.”

But Burke was frowning. “We have friends in Albuquerque. A couple of our old SEAL team members live out there. From Delgado’s perspective, it would be a good bet that we’d run there and potentially stash Jessa with them.”

Rafe’s fingers tapped along one of the briefcases he’d brought in. “Or it’s a ruse. When I hunt, it is good for the prey to believe you are in one place when you’re really in another. All I’m saying is you should be careful. It would be easy for him to drive here from Albuquerque or to change planes.”

“I covered our tracks,” Burke argued. “I haven’t used a credit card. The car can’t be traced back to us. He could have followed us from D.C. and figured out we flew to Dallas with Gavin James, but after that, he’d have no way of knowing where we are. Dallas is a big city.”

“Unless he has someone on the payroll at Black Oak,” Cole mused.

“I’ll talk to Gavin about that.” Burke frowned, but opened one of the briefcases and pulled out a new phone. He held it up to her. “We have about ten of these now. We’ll toss out the ones that came from our office, just in case one of the bastards gets to Hilary. We use one for a day or so, then we toss it. Stay here with Rafe and Kade for the moment. Cole is going to change the plates on the car. I’m going to scout the area. In a couple of hours, we’re going to leave here and head to Louisiana. We have a Cajun friend there, a real security pro, and a damn fine Dom. He has a place in the swamp. We’re going off the grid, sweetheart.”

“He has a lot of rope, too,” Cole drawled, selecting a new license plate from those Kade had carried in. In fact, the Middle-Eastern hotties had brought a veritable grab bag of items to help hide a person’s identity. After selecting one, Cole stared, his gaze heavy, somber—completely closed. “I know you’re afraid and angry, Jessa. Just let me get you through this. Then you don’t have to see me again.”

Well, he’d given up pretty easily. So maybe she’d never meant much to him. Hadn’t she wanted them to go away? Yes. So why did those words make her heart hurt?

Jessa swallowed down the anger and forced herself to shrug, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing that he’d bruised her feelings. “Perfect.”

Burke’s whole face shut down, and his shoulders squared. “Let’s go, brother. We need to leave tonight. Jessa, stay here. And for god’s sake, eat something. I know you don’t want to. Neither did I, but don’t hold us back because you can’t see past your own misery. We’ve already got one member of the team who seems intent on doing that. I don’t need another.”

Burke slammed out after his brother.

He was right. As terrible as food sounded to her turning stomach, she needed to stay strong so she could get back to her son. Caleb mattered to her. Cole and Burke didn’t. She had to keep telling herself that.

“So you’re Jessa.” Kade sat down in the chair at the room’s single table. It was a wobbly thing, but Kade made it seem almost elegant.

“I am.” She wished one of the twins would have stayed. Suddenly, she was brutally aware that she was alone in a motel room with two very virile strangers who shared their women and all she wore was a robe.

“We’ve been listening to those two moan about you for a solid year,” he explained. “Well, Burke moaned. Cole simply brooded more than usual.”

She picked up the last sandwich. Her stomach turned. “I thought they were in South America for the last year. Not the Middle East.”

Rafe stared at her. His easy charm seemed to be gone. “We’re not really the Middle East, at least according to our neighbors. They don’t like our…customs.” He shrugged. “We hardly care. The Lennox brothers
have
been in South America. Because of the rescue operation they undertook, we talked to them on a regular basis. You seem to be under the impression that those men have been throwing a party.”

Talk about accusations. At least the idea of a good argument made it seem easier to eat. She swallowed the first bite and reached for a bottled water. “I realize they were working.”

Kade leaned forward. “They risked their lives every single day. We hired them, so we feel a bit responsible for the situation they find themselves in. After all, they were looking for our cousin.”

“Alea.” She remembered the name they had given her and wondered about the woman. “Is she all right?”

Rafe sighed, a deep sound of regret that filled the room. “She is alive.”

“She was brutalized.” Kade threaded his hands together as though steeling himself. “She hid her ties to our family because she wanted a normal life. She is a beautiful girl both inside and out. Our little cousin was always a rebel.”

“Sometimes I think she left Bezakistan because there weren’t enough down-trodden people for her to help.” Rafe paced as he talked. “She wanted to save the world. The world showed her that it doesn’t want to be saved.”

“That’s not true,” Kade argued.

Rafe shook his head, a tiny, somewhat brutal gesture. Jessa would have bet this was a well-worn argument.

Kade nodded his brother’s way. “Forgive him. He’s still angry. I am as well, but I know that Alea will eventually come out of this. She will live again. Her mind and her heart will heal. But only because Burke and Cole Lennox saved her.” He massaged the place between his eyebrows as though trying to soothe away his frown. “She refused a security detail when she went away to school. She isn’t in line for the throne, so we didn’t think she’d truly be in any danger. She disappeared six months into her school year. They took her because they thought she had no family and the whoremongers needed a woman of Middle-Eastern descent. The brothel Ricardo Delgado sold her to liked to keep a variety of women for their clientele.”

There went her appetite again. The idea of a young woman being sold made her shudder. Her heart went out to the woman. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“She was drugged. All of the girls were fed a steady diet of chemical crap.” Rafe bit the words out like bullets. “She begged for the drugs for weeks after she came home. She was down to skin and bones, but all she wanted was another hit. That’s just one of the many things they did to her. She still has terrible nightmares…”

“When Burke and Cole found her,” Kade continued, his voice going hard for the first time, “she was being held with fifteen other women. It pleases me to lie awake at night and think about everything your men did to the bastards who held those girls against their will. Their descriptions were pleasingly detailed. I have a vivid picture in my head.”

“I can’t imagine what Alea went through.” She shivered despite the robe, feeling so terrible for the young woman. Even after she’d been saved, it was obvious Alea still had a hard road ahead of her. Delgado had ruined many lives, and now his son seemed determined to keep up the family business.

“No, you can’t,” Kade replied. “I wouldn’t want you to. But I am asking you to take into consideration that their work was vital to us and the families of the other girls they rescued. Yes, they sacrificed. But Burke and Cole also saved lives.”

Jessa stiffened her spine. “Of course their work was important. I don’t disagree. And I would have understood the truth. But the fact is, they lied to me.”

“Would you have understood? Really?” Rafe asked, his tone slightly arrogant, as if he’d already determined the answer to the question.

So they had judged her. “I would have done my very best. Maybe it sounds selfish to you, but I wanted to be important, too.”

“They believed you had been claimed by another man,” Rafe said.

“Something that could have been cleared up if they had given me a real name or had called me even once.” She felt tears threatening. God, she didn’t want to feel this aching, gaping hole in her chest. She wanted to feel nothing at all for them. “If I had known what they were doing, I would have sat up at night praying for them. I would have loved them, but they didn’t give me the chance. They didn’t trust me enough.”

Rafe’s eyes softened slightly. “Men are sometimes not the smartest of creatures. We make decisions that we think are best to protect those we love. And sometimes, we make mistakes. It doesn’t mean we don’t know our hearts. If they have told you they love you, then they mean this.”

“They are good men. The best I know,” Kade said softly. “They are rough at times, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have tenderness for you, for your son. It would be a shame if that son never knew his fathers.”

She glared at Kade. That just wasn’t fair. She was just supposed to forgive Burke and Cole the instant they walked back into her life? They had cost her a terrible year of heartache and pain, and never given her a choice. “The funny thing is, if they had asked me to take the risk and go to South America with them, I would have. Or I would have stayed here and waited, as tough as it would have been. I would have done whatever they asked. But they didn’t give me a choice.”

Yes, she was probably being stubborn, but the more she thought about it, the angrier she got. Of course they were heroes; there was no question about it. But did that mean she was just supposed to take them back without a qualm? What happened the next time they had a “mission” they believed in? Would they leave her behind for months or more at a time with no communications? Would they decide that their son was safer without them and simply walk out again, this time for good? They wouldn’t simply be leaving her behind. They’d be breaking Caleb’s heart, too.

No. She didn’t think she could risk that. She wasn’t sure she was ready to trust them again.

And that made her brutally angry because she wanted to. She wanted to throw herself in their arms and beg them to love her, never leave her again. Though they had left her pregnant and alone, she still dreamed of them. She still woke up calling out their names.

She swiped angry tears away. She wasn’t listening to her stupid heart this time. She couldn’t afford to. She wasn’t a child anymore. Now she was a mother.

Rafe straightened his coat. “I’m sorry if I overstepped my bounds. I merely hoped to give you something to think about. Know that if you need anything at all, we will help you.”

Kade stood. “Indeed. All you need to do is call.”

“You don’t know me. Why would you do that?” These men confounded her. They were obviously powerful, yet they seemed to genuinely care about Cole and Burke, who were basically employees. They were royal, in line for a kingdom, yet they were risking their lives to help others out.

“The royal family of Bezakistan owes the Lennox brothers a debt for saving one of our family. Actually, two, since Cole also saved my brother, Talib,” Kade explained. “When I asked how we should repay them, do you know what your men asked for?”

Rafe shook his head. “My brother would have given them millions. Anything they wanted.”

More tears. Would they ever stop? “I know they didn’t ask for money.”

They wouldn’t. They would want to be paid for the job, but not for saving a life. She knew that deep in her soul.

Rafe regarded her seriously. “You know them better than you think. They asked us to bankroll the rest of their operation, though they did not take pay for themselves. They wanted to save as many women as they could. Seven women have been reunited with their families. And another three families at least no longer have to wonder what happened to their daughter or sisters.”