Billionaire Erotic Romance Boxed Set: 7 Steamy Full-Length Novels (85 page)

Sasha gasped, jerking her face away from the accelerant that stung her flesh. It quickly soaked into the remnants of her dress, into her bra, her panties, her skin. Behind her gag, she screamed. She screamed and screamed and screamed. But she never gave the monster the satisfaction of calling out Damien’s name. He chuckled as he threw the empty gas can behind him into the darkness.

“You’re screaming now. That’s beautiful to hear.” He came close to her.

To her horror, she saw his erection shoving against the front of his jeans.

Fuck that!

She’d rather burn than have him touch her. He leaned into her, his brown eyes sparkling with hints of gold as if he was truly enjoying himself. He came closer and closer, pressing into her, not caring that his own clothes got wet from the gasoline.

“You’re really going to be a hot little piece tonight after I’m through with you.”

He yanked at her panties, reached down to free himself at the same time. The sound of his zipper sprung her into desperate action.

“No!” Sasha screamed from behind her gag. She flung herself up, her head slamming into Barnes’s throat. He yelped and stumbled back, put off balance by trying to wrestle with her underwear and his at the same time. Sasha jumped up, sparing his startled face the barest of glances before she ran for the burned and gaping door of the barn. She heard his furious breathing behind her and ran harder, lengthening her strides to get away. But her foot caught on something. The cord to the lamp. She gasped as she fell, as the lamp fell too, the bulb shattering with the noise like a gunshot. A spark. She saw too late the large slat of wood on the ground. Something hard slammed into her head. And everything went dark.

~~~

Sasha thought she heard someone calling her name. A ragged and hoarse voice yelling her name over and over. Damien? But her head throbbed with pain, a starburst of hurt under her forehead. She couldn’t move. There was smoke everywhere. Bright and hungry flames licking at the roof above her. Or was it the wall? A cough burst from her throat, doubling her body on the ground. Her lungs felt like they were on fire. Someone cried out her name again. Then darkness sucked her in.

When she opened her eyes again, Damien’s face hovered hers. Blond hair sticking up everywhere. Soot on his cheeks and forehead, his blue eyes wide and frantic. He called her name, touching her face with shaking hands. From far off, she heard the sound of a fire truck. Or was it an ambulance? The stink of burning flesh was heavy in the air, mixing with the burning already in her lungs and nose. Pain vibrated in her head. Her eyes burned, tears from the fire dripping down the sides of her face and into her hair.

“Damien.” Her voice came out in a croak. She lifted a hand to his face that was streaked with....tears? “Oh, baby. It’s okay,” she rasped. “Everything is okay.”

He sobbed openly now, grabbed her hand and pressed it to his lips. “Thank God!”

The sound of the emergency trucks came closer, loud sirens whose screams echoed in the pounding of her head. Sasha squeezed her eyes tight.

Damien’s hand tightened on her shoulder. “Stay with me, baby! Stay with me!”

Her eyes fluttered open she looked up at him again. “I’m not going anywhere.”

~~~

The sounds of the hospital leaked into Sasha’s consciousness. The beeping of the monitors. The intercom paging different doctors and nurses. Footsteps walking past her room. She opened her eyes and saw the length of her body under a white sheet, her feet making small hills at the bottom of the bed, a chair nearby with an overnight bag sitting in its depths.

Then the sound of another person breathing came to her. Slowly, she turned her head. And caught her breath. Damien sat in the chair next to the bed, his knees sprawled wide as he slept.

His hair was disheveled and there were circles under his eyes. Several days’ worth of blond beard prickled his cheeks. The clothes he wore, a pale pink button-up shirt and faded jeans, were rumpled and twisted as if he’d slept in them. Her hand twitched at her side with the need to touch him. Instantly, his eyes flew open.

“Sasha.”

He was instantly at her side and sinking into the bed, his hands quickly grabbing hers.

“I’m tired of passing out,” she said, her voice a hoarse tremor.

A painful smile moved across his mouth. “I’m tired of it too.” He drew a deep breath, squeezed her hands. “I’m so glad you’re awake. You had me worried. You had all of us worried.”

He pointed to the small table under the window that was just about completely covered with flowers, baskets of candy, teddy bears, and balloons with “get well soon” written on them. Sasha felt warmed by sight.

“Nothing to worry about.” She smiled weakly. “I was just taking a little nap.” A cough shook her frame, curled her up in the bed. When the fit was over, she lay back against the pillows, gratefully accepting the glass of water Damien held out to her. She sipped from the glass, swallowing past a throat that felt raw and bruised from the fire. The fire. Anthony Barnes. Damien.

The last few moments of her time in the barn flashed through her mind. Anthony Barnes ripping at her clothes. The smell of gasoline soaked into her skin. Running through the barn and falling, hitting her head. Then Damien appearing like an angel to her rescue. Sasha swallowed hard. Hands grasping at Damien’s.

“Thank you for coming for me,” she said. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was so worried.”

“I had to find you,” he said.

She turned her head on the pillow, breathing easier now. “Tell me what happened.”

Damien looked at her. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“Please. Tell me.”

He took a deep breath, and then began to speak.

Damien had been waiting for Sasha to come over to his place for dinner when he got the call from Barnes. The phone call had been short but had changed everything in his life in those short minutes. After that call, he realized just what was important in his life, and how important it was that he protect the people he loved. No matter what the cost, even if it was to his pride.

After Barnes disconnected the call, Damien immediately contacted the police. He was frantic on the phone with them, telling them what a dangerous man Anthony Barnes was and that they had to track him down right away.

Their calm acceptance of the situation had infuriated him. The 911 operator, a man with a rough voice like an old soldier, had seemed to read Damien’s mind.

“Don’t do anything foolish, son. We’ll take care of this, we’re the professionals here.”

But he hadn’t been able to turn off his instincts, his worry, and his desperation to solve the urgent mystery of where his woman was being kept. From everything Barnes had said over the phone, his constant references to the past and to burning, Damien thought he had a pretty good idea where the man had taken Sasha.

He jumped in his car and drove the short distance to the stables, leapt from his car without turning off the engine and sprinted for the old barn. But by the time he got the barn, it was already on fire. Again. For a moment, seeing the old barn in flames had frozen him on the spot. All he could see in his mind’s eye was the first fire, the one that had claimed his father’s life and ruined his own life in so many ways. Damien grabbed his phone to call 911. He was in the middle of telling them what was going on when he thought he heard a shout, Barnes’s voice inside the burning building.

Damien dropped the phone and ran into the barn, splintering apart the brittle doors with a kick of his booted foot. There was smoke everywhere. Inside the barn was like a vision from his own personal hell. Fire climbing the walls and shooting up through the roof. He remembered his father’s body when they had pulled it from the fire over ten years ago.

No. He wouldn’t go through that again. He couldn’t take these losses from Anthony Barnes and keep his sanity. Damien rushed deeper into the barn calling out Sasha’s name.

Not too far from the doors, he almost tripped over her. She was passed out. Her dress ripped nearly down the middle, her face sooty with smoke. The fire was dangerously close to her, its hungry tongue licking the bottom of one of her shoes. His heart thudded like a warrior drum in his chest.

Damien grabbed her and lifted her into his arms, preparing to run out of the barn with her protectively shielded against his chest. But Anthony Barnes appeared, screaming at him; running toward him from the other side of the barn, a human fireball. The smell of his burning flesh was terrifying. Galvanized by his fear for Sasha, Damien dove out of the way, his body curled protectively around the unconscious Sasha.

Propelled by his own momentum and the incredible heat from the fire, Barnes fell past Damien and Sasha and tumbled down the hillside, still screaming. Damien didn’t waste a moment grabbing up Sasha and getting the two of them out of the burning barn. By the time the ambulance and fire trucks arrived, Barnes was dead. Sasha had regained consciousness for a few minutes only to fall back under. Damien had been terrified for her.

“But I’m okay,” Sasha said softly from her hospital bed.

“Yes, you are.” Damien swallowed loudly. “When I saw you in that barn, I swore to myself I would never let you go again.” His voice was deep with emotion. “You mean so much to me. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost you.”

Sasha felt tears start in her eyes. She touched his stubbled cheek, lightly kissed his mouth. Damien drew back, his eyes searching deeply into hers.

“Will you marry me, Sasha?”

Sasha gasped softly. A flash of happiness surged through her; but she shook her head at him, smiling weakly. He’d almost lost her in a fire nearly the same way that his father had died. He was speaking from vulnerability, from his fear. That wasn’t any way to start a life together. At least it didn’t seem that way to her.

“A hospital room is not the proper place to ask me something like that,” she murmured, keeping the smile on her face. “Not to mention your mind is in a crazy place right now. Wait until I’m on my feet again. If you’re still feeling like this after a few weeks, ask me again.”

Damien stared at her in astonishment, eyes wide, mouth falling open. With that look on his face, his hair messy and in need of a cut, his unplanned beard, he looked so unlike his usual sure and confident self. She clapped a hand over her mouth and laughed.

He scowled at her, but only nodded, dropping his head down so his ear pressed against her heart through the hospital gown while his earthy, masculine smell soothed Sasha’s senses. They lay quietly together, and simply breathed.

Epilogue

Iron Fist took to the practice track like a champion. Sasha patted the gray gelding’s neck, murmuring congratulatory nonsense as she rode him at a trot toward the trainer who waited by the low, white fence. The trainer, Emilio Vasquez was filling in for Linc who was taking the day off. The thin, dark haired man nodded as she dismounted.

“He’s looking good,” he said. Unlike Linc, who preferred pen and paper, Emilio made all his notes on an iPad. He made a notation on the tablet then slipped it into the pouch slung over his shoulder.

“He is,” Sasha agreed with the trainer’s assessment. “I’m sure he’ll be ready for the next Breeders Cup.”

Emilio took Iron Fist’s reigns. “We’ll see,” he said.

“Linc and—”

The arrival of one of the interns down the dirt path leading from the stables stopped the rest of what Sasha was going to say. “Ms. Cormick!”

“Yes?” She turned to look at the slender brown girl, her hair pulled back in two Afro puffs.

“Mr. Taylor wants to see you right away.”

Sasha’s heart flew into her throat. “Is everything okay?”

“I don’t know.” The intern shrugged. “He just said to come right away. He’s on the back porch of the main house.”

“Okay.” She turned to Emilio. “I’ll be right back.”

“Of course, take as long as you need.”

The words were barely out of his mouth before Sasha stroke quickly down the path in the direction the intern had gone. She hoped nothing was wrong. There should be nothing wrong. In the three weeks since she’d been out of the hospital, she’d recovered almost completely from her kidnapping and smoke inhalation. The bruises were gone. Except for the occasional cough, she had recovered from that night as if it had never been. Even the nightmares had come and gone, due to the nights she spent in Damien’s sheltering arms. Things were so good in her life, so good between them that she had a vague terror of waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something to appear out of the blue and snatch her new-found happiness away.

On a good day, it would take her almost twenty minutes to walk to the house from the stables, but she ran, making it there in barely fifteen minutes. The back porch of the large house was barely used. At times, Damien would sit out there with a glass of whiskey and recover from his day. Sometimes, it functioned as part of the setup for a lawn party. Sasha had recently discovered that it was a comfortable place to spend a late Saturday afternoon, a place where she could sit on the bench swing with her love and talk about everything, anything, and nothing.

As she turned the corner of the large stone house, Sasha saw that there were at least a dozen people on the wide porch. It looked like a party. She noticed with surprise that there were people there she knew. Michelle, a couple of the other jockeys, and Linc, who was supposed to be taking the day off. Then there was Damien’s mother, who she’d met almost two weeks before. Mrs. Taylor sat in the porch swing sipping lemonade as she talked with a man her age. Everyone had a drink in their hand as they chatted with each other. An impromptu afternoon gathering, she assumed since Damien hadn’t told her about it. Her racing heart slowed down. Nothing was wrong. She smiled in relief. Nothing was wrong.