Siren Unleashed [Texas Sirens 7] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (13 page)

“Frederici is barely nineteen. I refuse to call him Dad. Why do I even try with you?” Ben took a long breath. “Nat, I am so sorry about how this whole thing went down, but I meant what I said before. I like you. I want to see you again. You know, after.”

“He means after he figures out if he’s going to send you to prison,” Chase pointed out.

“Don’t you mean both of you? Aren’t you both working the case?” She’d have to deal with them both for weeks, months maybe. Every time she saw them, she would be reminded of just how much she’d fucked up. And they really needed to freaking let her go. She was rapidly becoming a well of emotion, and she didn’t want to blow up in front of them.

Chase’s face was that careful blank that had almost caused her to reject him. “We’re both working the case, but I assure you, you’re going to be fine. I’ll make sure of it. I’ll take care of you, Nat.”

“Damn it, Chase.” Ben frowned Chase’s direction.

Chase ignored his brother. “Now, why don’t you go take a shower, Natalie? It’s late. We should go to bed. We have a lot to do in the morning.”

Finally. She nearly sobbed at the idea of getting away from them. She started to walk past Chase, but he put a hand out. “What?”

He pointed behind her. “The shower is that way.” His face finally cracked, a sad little look coming over it. “I can’t let you go, sweetness. And you know why.”

He held her eyes, the sympathy there nearly bringing Nat to her knees from the humiliation. He briefly looked down at her thighs now covered with her skirt. He knew. “Gaby told you?”

His voice was a mere whisper. “I’m very observant. I noticed it when I spanked you. Just a couple of little lines and that one deep scar. You’re lucky to be alive. I want that story, sweetness.”

She shook her head. “I need to leave.”

“Then call your boss. I’m not leaving you alone tonight. You sought me out the first time for a reason. You needed something to get your mind off what you want to do. You’re an addict who was about to fall off the wagon and you were so, so smart to find a way to stay on it. You came looking for me again for the same reason. You would have stayed here with me. You would have clung to me and let me get you through this. Little brother over there fucked that very fine plan up. Let me help you. I know where you are, Nat. I’ve sat in your place and prayed to any fucking deity who would listen to just get me through the night. I won’t touch you. And I won’t let you hurt yourself. Consider me a really grumpy guardian angel.”

“I’ll be fine.” He was getting to her again. So was Ben with his kind eyes. Two men, mirror images. Angels. Ben was from heaven and Chase had fallen long before. She had to get out of here. She was getting horrifyingly maudlin. But he was right because she was on the edge again. And the last thing she wanted to do was to call Gaby and Cal. Chris would be with Mike and their baby by now. Everyone had a family. They didn’t need to babysit a fucked-up adult who should know better.

Chase shook his head. “No, sweetness. I don’t want to cage you, but it’s very apparent to me that you’ve been coddled enough. Go take your shower. We’ll be waiting for you when you get out.”

She opened her mouth to protest.

“Or I’ll call her now and Cal can watch over you. Those are your only options.”

Asshole
. She turned and walked into the shower, her hands shaking as she locked the door.

“You have fifteen minutes.” Chase’s voice was as loud as if there was no door between them. “If you aren’t out by then, I’ll break in.”

She walked to the shower, turning it to the hottest setting she possibly could. She turned and looked at herself in the mirror and decided to be honest. She’d decided long ago that she would always try to be honest with herself. It was the only way to stay sane. She might lie to everyone else, but when she was alone and everything was quiet, she could acknowledge truths better left unspoken.

She was grateful to him for not allowing her to leave because if she’d fallen off the wagon tonight, she was really sure the wagon would have stopped, put itself in reverse, and rolled right back over her again and again until she didn’t get up. She could spew bile at him until Tuesday, but here in her alone space, she could say what she wanted to say.

“Thank you.”

She would get through tonight. Tomorrow was another hell altogether.

* * * *

Ben watched Nat close the door and wondered if he shouldn’t be kicking it in already. He didn’t like that closed door between them, and he sure as fuck didn’t like the fact that he had no idea what Chase and Nat’s little conversation had meant. He was on the outside, and it made him edgy. “What were you talking about?”

Chase stared at the door, his face in that stubborn frown that let Ben know he was going to be difficult. He had that frown a lot. It was practically his fucking default expression. “Don’t worry about it.”

Ben was the reasonable half. He actually reminded himself of that quite a bit. It was like a mantra that ran through his head. It had since Ben had been old enough to realize that he couldn’t go wild because one of them had to be sensible, and it wasn’t going to be Chase. “I didn’t sleep with her to hurt you.”

But he kind of wanted to hurt him now. He kind of wanted to plow his fist through his brother’s face, but sometimes that went wrong. He’d punched Chase once because he was being a dickwad douchebag, and Ben had ended up with a migraine for two days.

He was cursed.

Chase just watched the door.

Ben decided to chance the freaking headache. He slapped at Chase’s arm. “Start talking or we’re going to throw down.”

Chase’s chest moved up and down in a long sigh. “I don’t think that will help her.”

“As far as I can tell, you’re not interested in helping her. You just want to fucking keep her away from me.” And that burned. “Do you even listen to yourself?”

“Don’t have to. You’ll always tell me when I say something stupid.”

“What is happening with Natalie? What did you mean about her not being alone tonight? I have every right to know.”

Chase turned, his features going mulish. “Because you fucked her when she thought you were me?”

“Again, didn’t know. And I’m really offended that you would get pissed off about this. It makes me think you had zero intention of sharing her when I always share with you. There have been years when you wouldn’t have gotten laid without me. You find someone as amazing as that woman and you decide to be a possessive asshole? Fine. You want to toss out thirty-five years of brotherhood, fine. But I’m still a part of this business, and you need to tell me what you know about the client.”

Chase strode to the bed and sat down as the shower came on.

Ben put a hand on the door to the bathroom where Natalie was.
Fuck
. The first woman he’d ever really felt a crackling connection to and she was not only an off-limits clients, but his brother was crazy about her and wanted her to himself. Hadn’t he given up enough for Chase? Why did he have to sacrifice this, too?

“If she has you, why would she need me?” Chase asked quietly.

Ben turned back. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Chase shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Did you not notice the scars on her thighs?”

He’d felt them, raised lines on her legs, but at the time he’d been more interested in getting his fingers inside her pussy than anything else. “So she was in an accident? I know a little about her history. Is it something that happened to her when she was held captive?”

Natalie, along with Kitten and the other woman, Gretchen, had been kidnapped by a man who used BDSM as assault and battery and rape. Kitten had been held for months, Gretchen for over a year. Natalie had only been with the man for a matter of a few months before she’d managed to maneuver him into a place where she’d used a knife and killed him. And good for Natalie. He’d read that file and even before he’d met her, he’d known she was a survivor. She’d been caught, held, tortured, and she hadn’t broken. She’d fought. She’d done what she had to.

Damn it
. Knowing who she was didn’t make him like her less. It made him want her more, and he’d kind of craved her before. Two seconds after he’d come, he’d been getting hard again just thinking about her riding his face, his tongue deep inside that sugar of hers.

Sugar. He hadn’t missed what Chase had called her. Sweetness. The word had played through his brain the whole time he’d been with Nat. Even before she’d walked his way, he’d looked at her and thought about how sweet she would be. Now he had to wonder how much of that had been his reaction and how much had been remnants of Chase.

And he had to wonder if it even fucking mattered since she’d made him feel so damn much.

“I don’t think she got those scars from him,” Chase explained. “She did that to herself.”

Ben stopped, the knowledge hitting him hard. He couldn’t imagine her sitting there hurting herself. “She’s a cutter?”

Chase’s eyes came up, flaring briefly. “She thinks she can get rid of the emotional pain by taking a little physical pain. Know anyone like that? Because I walk through a dungeon full of them every fucking night. We’re all fucked up, Ben. Well, most of us are.”

Yeah, he just might punch his brother. “Screw you, Chase. You think sharing an emotional state with you is easy? I assure you I’m totally fucked up. Constantly feeling what you feel is a goddamn curse. The best thing that’s happened to me lately is hooking up with that pink-haired slice of heaven, and now I get to spend the night wondering what was real and what was you, and I already decided that I don’t give a shit. I just want her.”

And if she was totally fucked up, then maybe he was the one who could help her. Chase was right about that. Ben had started his BDSM training long before Chase had gotten into the lifestyle.

He’d started on Ada.

Chase softened, his shoulders slumping. “God, don’t go there. Please.”

“It’s hard not to.”

“You didn’t really love her,” Chase said, leaning forward. “I think you fooled yourself into thinking you did. It was the first time we’d really been separated, and I think you kind of fell in love with that, too.”

The shower was going, steam seeping from under the door. Natalie liked it hot, it would appear. Ben leaned against the wall, the whole crapalicious day weighing him down. Chase was right. The Navy was the first time they’d been forced apart for more than a few hours. After BUD/S training, they were placed on two separate SEAL teams, and Chase had gone to Iraq and Ben to the ass end of Asia where he’d met his fellow team member, Leo Meyer. Leo had been the team’s sniper. Hanging out with Leo, learning from him, had been a huge turning point in Ben’s life.

“You can’t know that.” The last thing Ben wanted to do was think about Ada because thinking about the gorgeous translator always led to him thinking about her death. And the fact that he’d been in love with her and she’d been in love with Leo.

“I can. Look, I know you hate this whole freaky link thing between us, but it comes in handy from time to time. I know you didn’t love Ada because I never loved her.”

“You never freaking met her.” Ben felt an odd need to defend her.

Chase shrugged. “I didn’t have to. I felt that fucking bullet hit your shoulder during that raid in Kabul. I nearly passed out when you took that knife to your back. I would be asleep in Baghdad and wake up because I could feel how happy you were sitting around a campfire with your buddies, and I knew damn well one of the reasons you were so fucking happy was that you didn’t have to share them with me. I wasn’t around to screw everything up. Tell me I’m wrong.”

He wanted to tell his brother he was full of shit, but he wasn’t. There had been a deep freedom to those years with the SEALs that he hadn’t felt before or since. Just for a little while, he’d felt almost whole, like he didn’t need Chase to complete him. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

But he had. Even while Chase had felt his joy, Ben had caught the edges of Chase’s misery. Chase had hated everything about Iraq. He’d hated the death and the poverty he saw. He’d shrunk back into himself until his whole squad had given him the nickname “Wraith” because he almost never talked. Silent death. The Grim Reaper. Yeah, he knew how much Chase hated that shit.

“Doesn’t matter,” Chase said, blowing it all off. “But, Ben, in all that emotion, I never once heard her name whispering across my brain. Not once. You didn’t love her. You were in love with the idea of not having to share her with me.”

“That’s not true.” It couldn’t be because he’d wasted long passages of his life if it was.

“You can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me. Ashley Donaldson. Eleventh grade. You met her in math class. By the time I walked out of chemistry, I was crazy about her and I hadn’t met her.”

Ashley. Pretty. Tall. Blonde. And very flexible. Yeah, they’d done her in the back of an SUV. Thank god for high school gymnastics. She’d been their girlfriend for two years before she’d left for college.

“Laura Evans from college. I felt that shit from three miles away. Damn, that was a kinky girl. She didn’t even ask who I was when I showed up. She just looked me over, said, ‘Yes, twins,’ and pulled me inside. I think about her a lot, actually.” Chase got a little smile on his face.