On the Edge of Love (Mama's Brood Book 1) (8 page)

He remembered her sad, uncertain smile. Remembered pressing his lips against her softer, fuller ones. Remembered the unyielding force of his desire igniting each time he touched her, the way she screamed his name as he took her again and again, always begging him for more, always holding him as he trembled from the force of his release.

All he’d had for years were his memories of her, of them, but soon, due to his diligence and dedication, they would create new memories. Better memories, because he was stronger, stronger than his father’s threats and stronger than his mother’s histrionic tears or her bemoaning the shame she would carry due to his relationship with Sabrina. Maxim knew he’d become the man Sabrina needed him to be.

“Are we close, Eddie?” Maxim asked his driver.

“Little more than a mile, sir.”

They were in an area no more than five miles away from the warehouse site. They were close.
She
was close.

“Right there,” Eddie called out a few minutes later. Directly ahead of them, on the dirt area along the right side of the road, was the truck the dead men had used. Eddie pulled the car to a stop five feet away. Reed exited the car and came around to open the door for Maxim. Eddie was already approaching the truck, his right hand reaching behind him, moving toward the gun Maxim knew rested there.

“Easy, Eddie. I don’t want her frightened any more than she already is.”

He knew he was putting Eddie in a precarious position. It was his duty to see to Maxim’s safety over all others. But that was before. Sabrina had come back to him. All care had to be taken to protect her. There would be family, friends, and enemies alike who would be all too happy to permanently erase her from his life. He would not allow it to happen. Not again.

As Eddie continued to approach the truck, Reed cautioned Maxim to stay behind the open door of the bulletproof car.

“Perhaps you should wait inside until Eddie gives the all clear, sir.”

“I’ll remain here. She won’t know who Eddie is. If she looks out and sees me, she’ll know she’s no longer in danger.”

“Yes, sir.”

Eddie knelt on the ground and checked the undercarriage of the truck. When he stood, the only face reflecting against the black-tinted windows of the truck was his own. Reaching for the door, Eddie pulled the handle, weapon drawn. Eddie leaned inside, searching the front and rear seats.

He ducked back out of the truck. “It’s empty.”

Maxim’s heart stuttered over the despair he felt as he strode forward. He opened the rear door as Reed walked to the front of the passenger side. There was blood within. Not large amounts, but it was there, and despite the reports about the state of her apartment, for the first time he felt fear for Sabrina’s safety. She could be hurt and dying. Dead. To lose her permanently after all this time… It was too much to think about.

“Sir,” Reed called to him.

Maxim stepped around the back door. Measured steps, controlled. He blinked and felt the anger and frustration as he pulled alongside Reed.

“You’ve found something?”

“Yes, sir,” Reed said, holding out a five-by-seven photo. It took Maxim a moment to realize he was looking at a photo of Sabrina. A bruised and bloody Sabrina lying unconscious on what he suspected was the floor of the warehouse he was supposed to have retrieved her from. It seemed impossible, but even beaten, her beauty was more compelling than he remembered.

But she could be dead based on the formless way her body was splayed out over the floor. She could also be alive and hiding in the surrounding rock formations, bushes, or trees.

“Let’s spread out and search the area, Reed,” he said as he shrugged out of his suit jacket.

Reed stopped him. “Turn it over, sir.”

Maxim frowned at him and turned the photo over. Four black words, written with bold penmanship, mocked him.
Look what I found.

In less than a millisecond, rage flared, consumed him, turned the steel in his blood molten, and cooled, making his will harder. He folded the photo and placed it in the interior pocket of his jacket, against his heart.

He walked back to the town car and slid inside.

Over the years he had become adept at helping people understand why it was an unwise idea to cross him. But people were people, and so the lessons would have to keep coming apparently.

“Call New York, Reed. Have my men brought over. Let’s find out if whoever took Sabrina knew all they’d be sacrificing when they made this unfortunate decision.”

Reed pulled out his phone, hit a button, and brought it to his ear. Maxim sank back into the leathered interior of the car.

“Derek, Mr. Kragen wants the team here in…” Reed looked to Maxim.

“Now.”

“The length of time you need to gather, equip, and get to the jet, then subtract three hours. Yes, Derek, it does mean have your asses on the plane within the hour. Yeah. See you soon.” Reed disconnected.

“What do you want me to do with the truck, sir?” Eddie called out.

The truck his Sabrina had bled in, suffered in. The only intact evidence linking Sabrina’s abductors to the men from the warehouse. “Take it up high and drive it over a cliff. And Eddie, I need that truck to burn.”

“Yes, sir.”

Reed slipped back into the car, this time in the driver’s seat as Eddie retrieved a canister and flare from the trunk of the town car, then returned to the truck, somehow securing the items toward the back of the undercarriage, near the tank. Eddie quickly drove the truck up the hill, Reed trailing a safe distance behind him. When Eddie stopped the truck, Reed drove up farther, passing him, and made a U-turn. Maxim watched as Eddie sped down the hill, braked, and swerved, jumping out of the car as it went over and into the deserted ravine. The explosion was sublime.

Once he was back in the driver’s seat of the town car, Eddie drove down the hill toward the main road that would lead them back to the freeway. Noticing how overcast the sky had become, Maxim realized how much of its vitality the day had lost.

“What happens from here, sir?” Reed asked.

They would return to the St. Regis, where he’d go back to his suite alone and meditate on the photo in his pocket until his team arrived. Then they would make plans to extract Sabrina and rain vengeance upon the person or persons who’d dared to take her.

* * * *

She felt so good.

This
is what peace feels like, she reminded herself. The few times she had experienced it, she’d had to name it. It is real, she thought as she snuggled deep. It was warm, and it was quiet, and it was as compelling as a rainforest coming alive with the first rays of morning’s light. It made her believe everything could be right with her, with the world. This feeling was so rare she wanted to hold on to it. Wanted to pretend her sister wasn’t dead, her infant niece had been born alive seven years ago and was a thriving child, that her mother was clean and dancing in the kitchen of their old apartment with a cigarette hanging out the side of her mouth like she did when Sabrina and her sister, Sam, were girls.

Tears welled behind her closed eyelids. Her mother was dead, her sister was dead, her niece had never taken her first breath, and she was alone. She exhaled as the feeling of peace slipped away. It was a weak emotion that always retreated too soon, too fragile to stand against bitter memories and a lifetime of soul-numbing experiences.

She shifted, pressing her cheek against the cushion of warmth beneath her, letting her legs splay open. She wasn’t able to hold on to peace, but she would hold on to this warmth just a little longer.

A band of steel hardness settled across her lower back, locking her body against the cushion beneath her.

“Don’t worry; not letting you go.” The words rumbled through her, pushing her completely from the nebula of semisleep to alarmed wakefulness.

She lifted her head and opened her eyes to eerie gray ones. “Zeus.” Oh, hell. He was the last person she wanted to wake up in bed with. Flattening her hands against the muscles of his chest, she straightened her arms until their upper bodies were no longer touching.

He frowned up at her. “Lie back down.”

“Why are you lying beneath me, Zeus?”

He shrugged, closing those molten gray eyes. “I wanted to be in you. I’m in your bed because it’s where I need to be to get what I want. Plus, you’re the one that crawled on top of me in the middle of the night.”

Her behavior while asleep wasn’t the issue; his being in bed with her was. “It’s so simple, huh? You have a need, and you just do whatever you want to satisfy it.”

“Yep.”

She lowered her upper body and rested her chin against his chest, the warmth of him more compelling than her concern over having him beneath her. “Sometimes other people have needs too. You can’t just disregard that.”

“Yes, I really can. Not responsible for what other people need or don’t need. That’s their job. I take care of me. That’s my job.”

Well, she couldn’t really fault his reasoning. She’d lived most of her life thinking the same way. When she’d left Ernesto’s abuse and run to her sister in Louisiana, Sabrina had begun to shift, to realize life was better with someone you loved in it, but then Sam committed suicide and Sabrina had vowed she’d never allow another person to hurt her just by loving them.

Life, in the form of her neighbor Randy, had made a mockery of that vow once she’d moved to Oakland. Randy had determined she would come to love him, and despite his habitually sorry choice in boyfriends, eventually, she had. Then she’d found a job where she actually liked the people she worked with, and she’d accepted that she couldn’t disregard others as she’d learned to do growing up. Zeus obviously hadn’t learned those same lessons.

“Where am I?” she asked, settling her head back on his shoulder and closing her eyes, too lazy and uninterested to look through the shadows and make out the details of the room they were in. Warmth had the potential to be a destructive addiction, she determined. It made you not care for much more than basking in it. Even when it radiated from an obviously unstable man.

“We’re on the residential level of Mama’s House. Second level down. About nine bedrooms down here.”

“This place is huge. Is this your room? ”

“Ours.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Yours. There’s a connecting door. My room’s on the other side.”

“Huh.” She breathed out, drifting off again. He was so damned warm. The peace that had scuttled out of reach before crept back like an abused animal that didn’t know if it would trust her again.

Zeus’s hand moved along her spine, fingers stroking the expanse of her back and shoulders.
This
was perfection. She had gone a lifetime without ever having experienced anything like it. Not just warmth. Not just peace. Her bones were evaporating under his touch. Her muscles were like liquid, her legs still stretched out along the outsides of his thighs, absorbing his strength and heat.

His hands slipped down, kneading the flesh of her ass, causing heat to pool between her thighs. The hardness of his erection strained against her core.

“Up,” she murmured.

“Humh?”

“Hands back up.”

He groaned, a rumbling vibration beneath her.

“You sound like some boy being told he has to walk his baby sister to ballet class and carry her tutu. It’s sad.”

“It is sad. Do you know how much I want to be inside you?”

She rolled her eyes beneath her closed lids.

“Just try to restrain yourself.”

“Restraint is all you’ve seen from me.”

She snorted. “Obviously we have different definitions of the word.”

“You people just don’t know how controlled I’ve been.” He growled, pushing his hips up against her, his penis rubbing a spot near her navel that made her inner walls swell and throb. Her fingers sank into his shoulder muscles as she fought to control the sharp arousal that was causing the peace to forsake her for these more intense sensations.

“I’m not having sex with you,” she stated, a partial admonishment to herself.

He relaxed beneath her, sighing deeply. She liked the feel of being lifted and lowered as he inhaled and exhaled.

“Go back to sleep,” he ordered. “I’m tired of talking to you.”

Against all good sense, she did.

Sabrina woke to sound. A persistent knock, a shower running. She lifted her head. The room was deep in shadow, the only light coming from the half-open bathroom door to her left and a small night-light near the bedroom door. There were no windows in this room, but of course there wouldn’t be with the room being buried in the earth.

She sat up, relieved to see she was still wearing clothes. She moved her hips experimentally. Her body confirmed she hadn’t been violated while she slept. She wasn’t disappointed. But, that sex-starved part of her mind whispered, he would’ve given you release. When was the last time a man gave you sexual pleasure? It’s amazing, she thought, sitting up and leaning back against the headboard, knees drawn to her chest. Zeus really did have some restraint. All the insanity he’d oozed had made her believe he wasn’t capable of it.

She didn’t trust anyone else with her well-being. Hell, she barely trusted herself when it came to men, but Zeus hadn’t harmed her. He’d actually done the near impossible and aroused her. When he’d pressed into… She flung back the comforter and sheet and launched herself from the bed as if it was responsible for her crazy thoughts, her body’s arousal.

She opened the door to Mama balancing a tray as she prepared to knock again.

“I hope you’re not vegetarian,” she said, her face tense.

“No, the amount of meat I consume doesn’t allow me to call myself a vegetarian.”

“Oh, thank God,” Mama exclaimed, shoulders sagging in relief. “Not that there’s anything wrong with vegetarianism, but with this brood, I wouldn’t put it past them to carve me up and roast me alive if I tried to make a meal that didn’t include at least two kinds of meat.”

“Here, let me take that,” Sabrina said, reaching for the tray that held two plates, each filled with scrambled eggs, a chopped avocado-tomato mix, bacon, a thick slice of ham, wheat toast, and two bowls of steaming grits with a whole layer of melted butter floating on top. Silverware, napkins, salt, and pepper sat next to small glasses of orange juice.