Whatever the Cost (44 page)

Leah’s moans and grunts become more desperate and wrecked until she’s keening.

Then Jacen pulls off, moaning hungrily as he licks repeatedly up Leah’s cock, playing at the piercing fed through it, and then down over her drawn-up balls, over her sac. Leah curses and fists the bedding, shamelessly loving the luxury of having to submit to this and let Jacen draw out her pleasure torturously. When Jacen licks even further back, trailing the point of his tongue around the flared base of the plug, through lube and his own semen, Leah cries out in both surprise and lust, bucking futilely at the air. Luckily Jacen can’t hold out for long. Soon he’s swallowing Leah back down, sucking her with quick little pulls, speeding up the pace dramatically. His hand quests up Leah’s chest, playing at one of her pierced nipples. Tweaking it through the dress, he twists it until Leah snaps her hips, ready to come. Jacen eases back on her, taking only the head in his mouth, squeezing repeatedly up the shaft in a twisting motion as he tugs sharply on nipple pinched between his fingers.

Leah grunts sharply then curses, “
Fuck
!”

Leah floods Jacen’s mouth with come. He swallows it and wrings out more, moaning as his lover pulses and convulses beneath him, helpless—overwhelmed with pleasure.

Dizzy and dazed, Leah is only half-aware of Jacen letting her fall wet from his lips, licking her carefully clean. Then Leah is pulling Jacen up to lie with her.

“Hold me?”

Jacen, grunting an assent, sighs and wraps himself around Leah, never wanting to let go. But after only a few moments, he does just that.

“Sit up for a second,” Jacen instructs. “Just a little.”

“Why?”

But Jacen is focused, determined. He takes hold of the hem of the twisted silk dress and, reverently, guides it up and over Leah’s head. Then Jacen folds it, taking such care that it takes Leah’s breath away. The dress is set aside, on the chair by the bed, and Jacen says, “I’ll take it to be dry-cleaned later. Let me help you out of this,” he says, indicating the corset. “How do I...?”

“There’s laces, in the back.”

Jacen frowns with concentration and picks at the bow’s knot, loosening the ribbons and easing up the pressure on Leah’s bound ribs. He helps her get it over her head as well and smiles contentedly at his work when Leah takes a deep breath of relief and falls back down onto the bed.

“Better?”

“Much,” Leah grins shyly.

“I didn’t want it to get ruined. If you want to get cleaned up....”

“No. I just want you to hold me.”

Jacen stares at her, with rapture and naked devotion. “I love you, Leah.”

Leah smiles, then laughs, but it sounds thick with emotion and the tears threaten to return. It brings fresh concern to Jacen’s face, but Leah tells him, “I love you too. You don’t have
any
idea how much this meant to me. I mean it. Thank you.”

“For what? Loving you? Lee, that you gave me
this
, this part of you... that’s
everything
. It’s an honor to be your lover. All I want is to make you happy.”

Leah grabs Jacen, hugging him tightly. All of the knots that had been twisting up her heart, soul and spirit, like the unyielding ribbons binding the recently shed corset, for as long as she can remember, give way and, just like that, Leah/Liam is free—really and truly. “I am happy. You make me
so happy
.”

Soaring, unencumbered by masks or facades, Liam is lighter than air. Even so, the hard ground awaits, rushing up at them from beneath. Their happiness—his and Jacen’s—is not destined to last. Fate is waiting, with fangs and teeth, crouched and ready. They both sense it on some level, hidden in their hearts. It has always been a waiting game. Happiness, no matter how acute, is the fantasy, the silly dream, bought and paid for dearly. A fleeting excitement before the nightmare returns. But at least it’s a good one, worthy of sacrifice. Maybe that’s why they cling so tightly, while they can, before the mirage of safety fades at long last.

Like most terrible days, this one comes without warning. It begins suddenly, ripping those it ensnares away from their routines and lives, taking everything until it’s had its fill and is spent, its victims left in ruins, trying somehow to pick up the pieces.

After the lunch rush clears out at Barbara’s Bistro, the place is mostly deserted. Lily is kept busy with one table, ringed with six businessmen lost in heavy conversation as they discuss work over their meal. With the kitchen in order, Jacen comes out front to write the evening’s specials on the chalkboard behind the bar. When he’s halfway finished, deciding between green beans and asparagus for the vegetable sidedish, he sees a woman come to sit at the bar out of his peripheral vision.

“We’ll be with you in a moment,” he says distractedly, knowing that Joe is in the back, taking a small break from bartending duties. Since he doesn’t know the first thing about mixing drinks, Jacen decides to call Lily over once she’s done waiting on the table on the far end of the restaurant.

“Oh, take your time, Jacen,” a familiar voice—one from his nightmares—says with malicious sweetness. “I’ve waited this long. What’s a few more seconds?”

The chalk drops, shattering on the floor, as Jacen’s hands start to shake violently with merciless, stomach-churning panic. His back is to the stools, to
her
, and he almost runs, darting away into the kitchen and out the back, but he knows better. There is no more running from this, or her. Just like when he was bound to a wheelchair, his body destroyed from the car accident when he was in college, and the boogeyman came in the guise of his next door neighbor, he knew there was no getting away. There’s only one option: stay and fight, or die.

“No,” he breathes. It’s been so long—months—that he had begun to believe they were free. And now that dream is suddenly gone and he is in Hell.

“Yes,” Della says with a smile.

Liam. Oh god, Liam.

He turns on a heel.

“What the fuck do you want?” he hisses through gritted teeth.

At first she only smiles, triumphant and calm. “Right now I just kind of want to savor this. It’s pretty sweet.”

“Get out. Now. Get out.”

He’s shaking bodily now, his hands curled in fists, all of the blood drained from his face as a cold sweat breaks out over his skin. His phone is tucked into his jeans’ pocket, useless. He’s surrounded by other people, some that even care about him, but they are useless, too. A quick scan of the area shows him a black car parked out front, two huge bodyguards standing by its side. With guns. He can see the straps from their holsters, their jackets flipped back on one side in case they need to draw.

Fuck.

He stares at Della, continuing to make a mental map of his surroundings. Sensing Lily nearby, he momentarily fixates on her and can feel her standing there, watching him and knowing on a base level that something is wrong. He wills with all his might that she doesn’t say a word, that she leaves it alone.
If anything happens to her
, he thinks, with tears springing to his eyes.

Lily’s light, soft voice calls with concern, “Jacen?”

Trying to sound normal, knowing he doesn’t, biting his cheek to keep the tears inside, he says with forced easiness, “I’ve got this one. No worries.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah!”

Where is Joe? In the kitchen? In the back office? Outside?
He can’t remember. The shotgun is at the other end of the bar, and they’d stop him before he could get to it, anyway.

Eyes locked with Jacen, Della says quietly and slowly, “Good boy. This is a private conversation, isn’t it? And we don’t want anyone to get hurt. Do we?”

She lifts something from her lap and lays it on the bar, sliding it over to him.

He glances at it and away. Terror, vice-like, clamps around his heart and squeezes. Nauseous, slightly faint, the photograph on the bar’s top burned into his retinas, Jacen sinks into a deep and profound hopelessness.

It’s a picture of Liam checking the mail outside of their apartment building, dressed in the outfit he wore the day before.

Understanding Della’s threat, Jacen grasps frantically for a lifeline.

“What do you want,” he seethes, trying to keep it together a little longer, just to keep Lily from becoming too worried and getting involved in this. He could never forgive himself if she got hurt.

“You. You’re an asset of The Company and we intend to make our profits from you.”

“What does that mean? William...”

“Has no more value to us. He’s getting a little old,” she whispers conspiratorially. “A little worn and tired. His only value to us now is leverage. Because you, Jacen, you have plenty of good years left in you—about nine of them, if I’m correct. You’re strong, resilient, and you would do
anything
to keep him safe. Wouldn’t you?” She gives this a chance to really sink in, and reading the profoundness of Jacen’s fear, says, “So what we’re going to do now, is you are going to come with me and get in the car waiting right outside. Tell your little friend over there that there’s been an emergency if you have to. Then, well...then you have a job to do.”

“Now?”

“Right now.”

Blank, shrill, clawing horror fills his senses. He can’t think. He can’t think of any other choice than the one presented to him. So, trying to keep his voice even, but hearing the edge in it anyway, he calls, “Lily, I have to step out for a minute, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” she replies, confused.

“That’s a boy,” Della praises, tracking Jacen as he moves around the bar and joins her. Hooking a hand around his arm, she guides him out through the front entrance and over to the armed guards.

“Dad! Daddy!
Daddy
!”

Lily runs back through the kitchen, not knowing what’s going on, only that it doesn’t feel right. It feels wrong.
Very
wrong.

“Sweetheart, what is it,” Joe gasps, jogging out from the storeroom at the sound of her call, and the alarm in it. “Is everything okay?”

“No. I don’t know.” She tries to catch her breath, to find a way to explain. “Jacen just left. There was a woman and she showed him something and he looked... he looked really scared, Daddy. I’ve never seen anyone look so scared so fast.”

“What do you mean, he left?”

Joe runs past her, and Lily follows. He pushes out into the restaurant, scanning the room and then the street beyond.

“Jacen left with her, just now. They got in a black Lincoln with tinted windows and took off south,” she says, pointing. “But there were men. They looked scary. Dad, I think Jacen’s in trouble.”

Joe takes a precious second to read her face, to decipher the clues. “Government trouble?”

“No, not government. Something else. Something bad.”

“Shit,” Joe hisses. He darts behind the bar and grabs the shotgun, keeping it held low and out of sight. Pulling out his cell phone, he turns it on and selects the app that he asks his employees to log in their locations with, praying harder than he has in years that Jacen remembered to use it that day and has his own phone on him. On the tiny screen in his hand, pink dots pop up over a crudely drawn map of the surrounding area, with one slowly receding from the bistro. Exhaling his small relief, Joe asks, “Truck’s around back?”

“Yeah,” she says with wide eyes. “Daddy?”

“Keep a lid on things here. Get Frankie out from the kitchen to watch the house. Call the cops. I’m going after Jacen.”