Sipping the bitter brew in his mug, he made a mental list of phone calls and arrangements needed. He had every intention of being on the other side of the country before dinner.
He trailed his fingers over the soft leather of the bench. “I’m going to find you, precious. And I’m going to bring you back home, where you belong.”
Then what? An annoying voice in the back of his pounding head scoffed. With a heavy sigh, he shook the disturbing question away. He’d figure out something. Details weren’t important, just finding her. Right now, he needed to pack for his flight. No, what he really needed was to see her beautiful face… feel her lush body warm in his arms… hear her sweet cries of pleasure resonating in his ears.
Goddamnit, no. He just needed to know that she was safe. End of story.
Tearing himself away from the bench, he marched in long strides toward his office. The sound of the front door opening stopped him dead in his tracks. It was far too early for guests to play or even for anyone to man the lobby.
A flutter of hope burst inside him as he raced to the staircase, taking the steps up two at a time. When he rounded the corner, there she was. Raine. Oh, thank god. She’d come home to him.
Barely cognizant of Liam hovering closer by her side, Hammer couldn’t miss the resounding waves of anger rolling off him. Fuck the bastard. Liam could be as pissed as he wanted. All that mattered now was that Raine had returned.
Hammer’s steps quickly ate up the ground between them. He couldn’t get to her fast enough, couldn’t touch her soon enough.
As he reached to pull her in his arms, Liam tucked Raine behind his back, his stance both protective and warning. The man’s eyes leveled him with a glare that was flat, cold.
“Move. You have no right to keep her from me.” Hammer skirted the other man and invaded Raine’s personal space, staring his way into her eyes. But, for once, he couldn’t read what she was thinking. What the fuck was happening here? He leaned down to cup her cheek.
“Don’t you fucking touch her,” Liam growled.
Hammer froze as he held Raine’s gaze. “I need to talk to you, precious. Come with me to my office where we can have a few minutes.” He glared at Liam. “In private.”
She bit her lip, then turned away from him to look up at Liam with a silent question in her eyes. It felt like someone had kicked him in the nuts when he realized she was asking Liam for permission to speak to him. Oh, fuck no!
How the hell had Liam tamed her in little more than twenty-four hours?
Hammer gulped in a stunned breath. This had to be some kind of fucked-up episode of The Twilight Zone.
Liam shook his head. Raine’s shoulders sagged with her sigh, but she nodded and cast her gaze to the floor.
“Motherfucker!” Hammer hissed as his heart clutched in shock and agony. “What did you do to her, you son of a bitch? Turn her into some kind of Stepford sub?”
“What you should have done!” Liam stepped in Hammer’s face and lowered his voice. “And if she is pregnant, you selfish prick, I swear by all that’s holy, they’ll need tweezers to find all the parts of your body.”
Liam’s threat pissed him off, but her soft face erased the hurt. Pregnant? The logical part of him recoiled, but his primal side? That chunk of his psyche wanted to celebrate. Raine was too softhearted to ever end a pregnancy, and the notion that there would be a part of her and him melded together always felt right, as if the natural order of the world were falling into place. God, wasn’t he a stupid bastard?
But if she was pregnant, he’d rip her from O’Neill’s arms faster than the man could blink.
“How the fuck could you treat her like that?” Liam went on. “There’s barely an inch of her body that isn’t bruised, inside and out.”
The stupid prick thought he’d abused Raine? Christ, Liam wouldn’t know the marks of passion if they raised up and bit the end of his cock off.
“So don’t be thinking for one minute that I’ll be leaving her unprotected and alone with you,” Liam continued. “Whatever you need to say, you’ll say in front of me or you won’t say it at all. Get it through your thick head, she’s mine. If you shit all over the code of conduct again, she’ll be leaving with me. Permanently.”
There was no fucking way on this green earth that Liam would take Raine away from him again.
“I didn’t give her anything she didn’t beg for,” Hammer snarled. “Over and over again.”
Raine’s jaw gaped open, and she sent him an imploring stare, one that begged him to stop throwing fuel on the fire.