“Heather.” Cade caught her arm as she rushed past him. “What the hell happened?”
His face was lined with grief, with pain. In his eyes she saw the same shadows, bleak and dark, that filled Sam’s.
“He doesn’t need you,” she bit out, knowing what usually came after the nightmares, the lust and brittle pain of the three men forming, coming together, fighting to find ease in the body of their women. Together. Always together, as though in the sharing of the lust, they could ease the memories of the pain.
“You know better than that, Heather.” Marly stood in the bedroom doorway, watching as Heather faced off with the two brothers. “You’ve seen enough to realize what he does need.”
“No.” Her hand sliced through the air as she tore away from Cade. “He doesn’t need your protection. He’s not a child.”
“Dammit to fucking hell, you don’t know what you’re doing.” Cade’s voice was desperate, his expression taut, fierce as he watched her.
“Stop trying to protect him, Cade.” Heather faced off with the older man, seeing so much of Sam in him that her arousal only grew. She knew very damned well what they believed would ease the horror that gripped Sam. Knew what they wanted and how it would happen. But she would be damned if it would happen tonight. “Your protection of him is killing him, can’t you see that?” Her voice rose as she fought to make him understand. To make all of them understand. “You’re babying him, giving him what he needs to hide from whatever is ripping him apart. He has to face it, and he needs to face it now, before that fucking stalker gets any closer to him than he already has.”
Cade paled. She watched, surprised, suddenly terrified as he lost the color in his face and denial filled his expression.
“Listen to me.” He grabbed her arm again, hauling her close as he stared down at her, his gaze fierce, searing in its demand. “You don’t want this, Heather. You don’t want him to remember, do you understand me? Sam doesn’t fucking remember the details. He dreams of it, he knows it happened, but he doesn’t remember it, and by God I won’t let you force him to.”
Heather’s eyes widened as her own fury flamed. “What in the hell makes you think he can survive like this, Cade?” she yelled up at him, jerking back, tearing her arm from his grip. “How much longer do you think he can stand the poison that’s only growing in his mind? For God’s sake, surely you know better than to try to suppress those memories?”
But they hadn’t known better. She saw it on Cade and Brock’s faces, just as she saw the confusion on Marly and Sarah’s.
“My God,” she whispered. “You’ve encouraged it. All these years, you’ve helped him hide. Helped that monster to fester in his mind like a fucking cancer.”
Disbelief washed over her. She shook her head, backing away from them, terrified now that Sam faced something he would never survive. He had hidden from the pain for over a decade. Fought the memories, and the healing he needed to make sense of the life he lived now. That was why he always seemed so bitter, so unable to accept that Marly or Sarah could find pleasure in the embrace of the three men.
“What have you done?” She raised a hand to her forehead, shaking her head as she stared from Cade to Brock, then to Marly. “What have they done to him, Marly?”
Compassion and concern marked the other woman’s sleepy features.
“Whatever it was, Heather, it was done to protect him when he needed protection. I don’t doubt that.”
“Marly,” she whispered. “He had to tie me down. He had to restrain me to assure himself that he wouldn’t hurt me.” She was trembling with her anger, with her own pain. “He couldn’t even take me normally. He had to fuck my ass to assure himself that he controlled me, that he controlled himself. Is that fucking protection?”
She was trembling with the implications of what Sam faced now. Pain surged through her body, overwhelming her desire, overwhelming her senses. How had he born the pain she knew he had faced? How had he had ever stayed sane all these years, fighting the memories, fighting whatever truth lay within his memories? A truth slowly destroying him now.
“Sam won’t hurt you…” Brock shook his head. “We’ll find him…”
“The hell you will.” She gripped the gun in her hand tighter. “You go after him and I’ll shoot you myself.” Her throat felt raw from the emotion that seared it, roughened her voice and shook her body.
“Like hell.” Cade threw her a bitter look before his muscles tightened and he began to stalk to the stairs.
“I don’t think so.” Before he could stop her, before Heather was aware of her own intentions, she had stepped in front of him, bringing her body flush against his, the muzzle of her gun pressing hard and commanding beneath his jaw.
Heather didn’t know who was more surprised by the action, herself or the men. Cade stared down at her with arrogant fury, his eyes narrowed, his body tight and furious as Marly cried out behind him.
“You’re playing a very dangerous game,” he warned her darkly, his cock tightening against the flat plane of her stomach. “A very dangerous game, Heather.”
She snarled in his face. “He’s mine, Cade. All mine, and I’ll be goddamned if I’ll let you help him hide any longer. He’s of no fucking use to me handicapped emotionally. And he’s no use to you, either.”
His eyes narrowed. “Go after him then,” he challenged her roughly. “Go on, Heather. See if you can stand his pain. See if your heart can take what we’ve fought so hard to ease for him. And I promise you, the day will come when you’ll pay for holding a gun on me.”
The threat may have carried more weight if his cock wasn’t so thick and so hard against her abdomen. She tilted her lips in what she felt was a smile of savage mockery.
“You know, Marly,” Heather sneered contemptuously. “Only an August could have a hard-on with a gun pressed under his jaw. Take your lover and fuck him, before I have to kill him.”
She jumped back from him then, turning on her heel and rushing the short distance to the stairs. She was fed up with August men, August pride and August demons. To her back teeth she had had enough. Sam had done nothing but tease her past any woman’s limits of control for nearly two years now. Taking her to the edge, only to deny her the release she knew was waiting just moments away from wherever he stopped.
If she had to hold the fucking gun to his throat, he was going to fuck her and do it right. She was damned tired of his self-pity and his dark demons, and she was determined to force him past them. The brothers might see their protection as a form of easing the pain for Sam, but she saw differently. She saw the man fighting to survive, to make sense of his needs, his desires. A man who loved those around him, yet had no idea how to show it.