Operation Mustang [The Service Club 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) (15 page)

“Can’t take a chance on those bastards you’ve let between your legs finding us before I’ve had the chance to save you.”

Save her? A part of her mind latched onto the insanity of the comment even as the largest part of her thoughts realized he’d allowed himself to become distracted by his own babbling. She felt him shift, felt a precious inch of space move between them as he stepped back. His hand stayed on her mouth, but the one holding her wrists fell away.

Mustang flexed the muscles in her right leg. She took a deep breath, lifted her foot off the floor ready to strike back, and froze at the definite chill of metal that pressed into the center of her back.

“I’m going to let go of your mouth now. If you scream, I’ll shoot you. Don’t think I won’t, Hot Rod.”

“You said you don’t want to—”
Hurt me
, she was going to say, but the last of the words caught in her throat when what he’d called her registered. Only one man she’d ever known called her Hot Rod. Visions of a long-ago Christmas morning when she’d unwrapped a cherry-red Mustang Hot Wheel sprang from her memory.

They claim you were named after the breed of horse, but we all know they named you after the car. It’s a hot rod, just like you.

“Thomas.” She whipped her head around. Her gaze collided with a pair of wild, seemingly unseeing eyes. “What are you doing?” Utter disbelief raced through her fear. Laughter bubbled in her throat at the absurdity that this was Thomas, a man she’d grown up with, one she’d always viewed as a sort of surrogate brother.

“I’m saving you.”

Her own words came back to haunt her.
Maybe he thinks he’s protecting them.
She’d had no idea how close she’d been with that comment made in Lucky’s loft. As she stared at Thomas now, she knew she’d hit the nail on the proverbial head. This was the man who’d been terrorizing the women affiliated with the Service Club, and he truly believed what he was saying. The certainty in his voice, the hard set to his lips, the determination swirling with the wildness in his eyes, left her no doubt about that. He’d flipped. Some synapse in his mind had obviously misfired, leaving little of the man she thought she’d always known.

“Holding a gun to my back is not saving me.”

“It will. As long as I’ve got this gun on you, you won’t fight me.”

No, she wouldn’t, at least not until she could figure out how to fight him without getting shot. She realized he had a double advantage over her. He knew her. He knew how she thought and could likely anticipate the moves she’d make. She, on the other hand, might as well have been staring at a stranger. Never in her craziest imaginings had she ever thought Thomas was insane and certainly not to the point of holding a gun to her back.

“Thomas, I appreciate you trying to protect me,” she told him, forcing a calm she didn’t feel into her tone. Maybe if she could play on the years they’d grown up together, she could reach some sensible part of him, if he had even an ounce of sensibility left. “You’ve always been there for me. I’ve always known I could count on you.”

“I failed you.” The tears that glimmered in his eyes scared her more than the craziness she saw in his face, heard in his voice.

“You’ve never failed me.” She started to turn slowly, wanting to face him fully. If she could talk him down, somehow get through the madness twisting in his head, she could get the gun away from him, and then she’d stand a chance of escaping.

“Don’t turn around!” He stabbed the gun barrel harder into her back, stilling her movement.

Mustang closed her eyes briefly and counted to five. She needed to approach this situation calmly, coolly. Pushing him too far too fast was definitely not the way to go. She opened her eyes again. She kept her head turned with her gaze on him and the rest of her body still facing the closet.

“You’ve never failed me,” she said again.

“I did!” he spat.

“And I’m not in danger now.”
Except from you.

“Yes, you are. You’re a whore.”

Mustang gritted her teeth. Being called that by the men she loved was one thing, it actually turned her on, but being called that by a raving lunatic really pissed her off.

“You let them do this to you, and I didn’t do anything to stop it.” He shook his head. “It’s not too late, though. I can save you. I’m gonna save you. Now let’s go.” The fingers of his free hand closed on her upper arm, and he pulled her back. He steered her toward the closed bedroom door.

“Where are we going?” She stumbled forward two steps when he pushed her before catching her balance. She dug in her heels then, deciding he’d have to physically force her from the room. No way would she walk out on her own free will. Either way might prove to be suicide, but if she remained here, she still had a better chance of the Rylon brothers finding her than if she allowed Thomas to take her to some unknown location.

“Somewhere so we can talk.” He pushed her again—one step closer to the door, one step before she utilized every ounce of leg strength she possessed to plant herself firmly in her new spot.

“We can talk right here.”

“No. They’ll come looking for you soon. You won’t listen to me then. I’ve got to get you someplace alone, someplace where you’ll listen. It’s the only way I can save you.”

He tried to push her again, but her standing held firm. Her thin cotton robe didn’t offer any cushion to the barrel of the gun. It bit into her flesh, reminding her how easily he could pull the trigger, how quickly she could be dead if she said the wrong thing, made the wrong move.

“Lock the door,” she suggested, her mind working frantically even as she forced herself to remain calm. “They won’t be able to get in.” Her memory flashed back to the night they’d let themselves into her locked room. Thomas didn’t know about that, although it was obvious to her now that he’d been the one to come into her room later and untie her. “They’ll knock, and I’ll tell them to go away, that I’m still getting dressed.”

She sensed him hesitate and didn’t give him a nanosecond to reconsider. She kept talking. “Let’s work this out now, Thomas. You want to save me. I want to be where I feel safe. This is my room, my haven. I feel safe here.” She stopped, swallowed, and forced the next words through her dry lips. “I feel safe with you.”

“Why did you do it, Hot Rod?”

Mustang felt the gun at her back waver, heard the hitch in his voice and knew she’d won, at least for now. She dared to move, taking it slowly. She turned her head, saw that he’d taken a miniscule step back, and eased herself around to face him. He didn’t lower the gun, but he didn’t shoot her for turning around.

Baby steps, she told herself and took a deep breath. “What did I do?”

“You let them corrupt you. Why would you do that? You fought them. All your life, you pushed them away, showed them you were better than what they wanted to make of you. Then, all of sudden, you let them tie you up and
defile
you.”

“You came in here that night. You untied me and covered me up while I slept.” She suppressed the shiver of revulsion that sped down her spine at the idea of him seeing her naked, vulnerable, and still aching for a release at the hands of the men she loved.

He whirled around, paced several steps away, and jammed his free hand through his red locks. “I tried to take care of you, but I was too late.” He spun back to face her, the gun still trained steady on her chest. “You’d already let them in.”

“They didn’t hurt me, Thomas.” She moved slowly toward him, small and even steps before it clicked that she was moving farther from the door. She needed to be back stepping. She needed to be setting herself up to bolt out that door at the first opportunity. She stopped in the center of the bedroom floor. At least he wasn’t standing between her and her most obvious chance for escape. “Gunner, Diek, and Lucky would never do that.”

“How can you say that?” Tears spilled down his cheeks. “They did hurt you. I saw it! I saw what they did to you.”

“I wanted it,” she admitted simply, meeting his anger with a calmness that surprised even her. “I wanted them.”

“No!” He screamed the word, rocking back several steps as if she’d physically slapped him. He shook his head violently. “No, you didn’t. You couldn’t. That’s the whore talking. They brainwashed you, made you believe you wanted that.”

“Thomas, they love me. They—”

“That’s not love.” He stabbed the gun in the air toward her.

She hadn’t heard him cock it, but she saw it was locked and loaded and his finger rested shakily on the trigger. Somehow she had to calm him down. Whether or not he intended to shoot her, as angry as he was getting, he could easily pull the trigger by accident.

“Tying a woman up, putting weapons on her nipples, beating her, that’s not love. I saw, Hot Rod. They handcuffed you, spread your legs apart so you couldn’t move them and beat you with a cane.”

Mustang’s head spun. Her gaze leapt from the gun to collide with his cold, furious eyes. Her own eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open as shock rendered her speechless. He’d watched that night in Lucky’s bedroom, too.
Dear God
.

“They gave you to those bastard cops, too. It’s not enough they have their own whore. I tried to save her, too, you know? I tried, but she was a bigger whore than I thought.”

“You did those things to Marissa? You set her store on fire? That was you on her front porch that night?”

Thomas scoffed and wiped his running nose with the back of his free hand. “Of course that wasn’t me on her porch. I paid some homeless sap to do that shit.”

“Why?” Baffled, Mustang stared at him, realizing he was far more dangerous than she’d given him credit for.

“For the same reason I tranquilized that colt out there. To scare you. To scare her. I wanted both of you to see the kind of treatment whores get. They lose things precious to them. Men use them, abuse them, treat them like property to be scarred and fucked. She should’ve realized. She should’ve listened. She was such a good girl. Richard tried. I know he did. He tried to keep her a good girl, but she’s wicked inside. She was beyond hope. But you’re not. I know you’re not.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Marissa or me. She loves Justin and Ben the same as I love Gunner, Diek, and Lucky.”

“You don’t love them. You can’t! They’ll hurt you more. They’ll kill you. They’ll make you think it’s what you want, make you think you’re a whore, and they’ll strangle you.” He steadied the gun on her and started closing the distance he’d put between them, causing her to step back. “I can’t let that happen. I won’t, Hot Rod. I won’t lose another woman I love that way.”

“Who did you lose, Thomas?” Mustang’s mind took a rapid race through time, back through their childhood and speeding forward to the here and now. He’d never had a girlfriend, never had a female in his life at all except for her mother.

“My mother! You know that. The old man doesn’t think I remember. He doesn’t think I know. But I do. I saw her. I saw what they did to her. They killed her!” He reached her in two quick strides, and she realized she had nowhere to go. If she backed up any more, she’d pin herself against the door. “I won’t let them do it to you. We’re leaving.” He caught her upper arm in a painfully tight grip and jerked her around.

Mustang relied on reflex and instinct more than thought, knowing it was now or never to put a stop to this madness. She threw her body into the turn, sweeping out with her right leg as her left hand went for the gun. She felt the heat of the bullet sail past her temple as they both went down.

“Think she’s ready yet?” Lucky ran his hand down Raven’s back, smoothing the horse’s hair before easing back to close the stable door.

“By
she
I’m guessing you mean Mustang and not Raven.” Gunner leaned a shoulder against the wall of the barn, a playful grin tilting the corner of his lips.

Lucky slid him a look out of the corner of his eye. “Duh.”

“It’s only been an hour.” Diek slung the saddle they’d just removed from Raven over the wall of the stable and muttered a curse when the move caused his shoulder obvious pain.

Lucky shifted his gaze to his oldest brother and lifted a questioning brow.

“Arm is giving me hell today. Nothing I can do about it but grin and bear it.” He forced a goofy grin that made Lucky chuckle and shake his head.

Nothing he could do about it except stop working it so hard, which was something Lucky knew his brother would never do. “How much time does the woman need?”

Gunner made a raspberry sound with his lips. “Mustang might be a tomboy, but she’s still a woman. I’m betting right now she’s just crawling out of that garden tub she’s got in that private bath of hers, probably covered in bubbles and reaching for bottles of lotions and creams with scents designed to drive us crazy.”

“We’re already crazy for standing around here yabbering when we could’ve been in that garden tub with her for the last friggin’ hour.” Lucky’s dick swelled at the images that came to his mind of Mustang at their mercy in a tub of warm soapy water.

“We still had work to do,” Diek reminded him. “And we’re not done yabbering yet.”

“We’re not?” Gunner asked.

“No, we’re not. This has been a helluva op, and I’m thinking it’s time we figure out how to wrap it up for a complete victory.”