Possession (The Plus One Chronicles) (11 page)

Was he sick? She started to twist around but stilled when she heard Sloane’s rough voice mumble something. His arm locked tighter around her, preventing her from turning. What did he say? Was he awake?

Sloane grunted and yanked Kat back, plastering her to his body.

Her chest constricted as adrenaline dumped into her system. Heart pounding, she shoved at his arm. It didn’t move. Trapped, she was trapped.

“Sara.”

That one clear word cut through her panic. Taking in air, she made herself calm. “A nightmare,” she whispered. All she had to do was wake him. “Sloane?”

He groaned, muttered more unintelligible sounds, but didn’t wake up.

It wasn’t working. Shards of panic scraped her nerves, making her want to thrash and struggle. But Sloane was caught in a nightmare, so he might fight back. That scared her badly enough that her voice locked.

Think. Don’t panic.

Sloane had told her what to do if she couldn’t speak when she was with him—tap out. He’d told her he was trained to react to that. Would it work when he was asleep too? Quickly, Kat tapped three times, hard, on his bulging forearm.

Sloane shifted behind her, rising up on his other arm. “Kat?”

It worked. Just like he’d said it would. Relieved, she relaxed and rolled to her back. Since her eyes had adjusted to the dark, she could make out the lines of his face. “You were having a nightmare.”

“Shit.” He dropped away from her, putting distance between them. “Go to sleep. You have to get up in a couple hours.”

They lay side by side, cocooned in the quiet night. Now that Sloane was awake, she could think. The only word she’d understood was Sara. “The nightmare was about your sister?”

The mattress shifted as Sloane tensed. “Yes.”

What could she do to help? He held himself apart from her, still and silent, his breathing brutally controlled.

Unable to bear it, she bumped her palm over the sheet, hit his bunched forearm and followed it down to his tightly fisted hand. She stroked her thumb over his distended knuckles. “Can I do anything to help?”

He pulled his hand away and slid out of the bed. “Go to sleep. I’m going to get some water.” He stalked out of her room.

Should she leave him alone? But how could she when she could feel his isolation and pain? She shoved the covers off, grabbed Sloane’s shirt and yanked it on. Not bothering to button it, she trudged down the hallway to her kitchen. Sloane wasn’t there, but rather he stood at the sliding glass door leading to her small patio. Soft moonlight poured over his wide, sculpted shoulders that narrowed to a tight waist. The globes of his naked ass were made for a woman’s hands to hold on to as he drove into her.

The tat on his right biceps shimmered, the flames around the S almost appearing real.

But what pulled Kat to him was the way he stood so still, naked and alone. As if it was all he knew, all he expected.

She started toward him.

“I found her.”

Kat clutched the back of the couch as the full implication sucked her breath from her lungs. He’d found Sara’s body. Oh my God, he’d found his murdered sister. Snatching her hand from the couch, she rushed to Sloane and folded her arms around him. Pressing her body to his back, she said softly, “Come back to bed. I won’t ask anything else.”

He wrapped a hand around her wrists. “Sara went to a foster home. I refused. I wasn’t a kid, and I was done with that shit. I crashed anywhere I could.”

She closed her eyes, leaning her face against his skin over too-taut muscles. What must that be like? Kat had no idea. She could move home tomorrow into her parents’ house. Oh sure, they judged her, and they’d try to control her, but they also loved her as best they could. They’d never let her
crash
somewhere. “How old were you?”

“Sixteen.”

How could his mother have let that happen? And Sara… The way Sloane acted, Kat was pretty sure she was younger than him. “How old was Sara?”

“Sixteen.”

Snapping her eyes open, Kat stared at her black big-screen mounted in the corner.
I don’t celebrate my birthday.
It all made sense now. “You were twins.”

“Four minutes apart. I’m the oldest.”

“Oh, Sloane.” She held him tighter, wishing she could absorb the pain. Marshall was eight years older than her, and losing him would cut her deeply. To lose the twin you’d shared a womb with? Celebrated every birthday with? It was unimaginable.

“Sara always made me a cake, or cupcakes, on our birthday. But that day, I got a chance to go see a fight. I was late getting to the foster home she was in.” He slapped a hand onto the window, leaning against it. “Too fucking late.”

The truth hit her like a slingshot to her chest. “Sara died on your birthday.” For Kat’s sixteenth birthday, she had a winter wonderland party in a ballroom and received a new car. Sloane got blindsided by finding the body of his raped and murdered sister.

“I had a present, a cheap-ass necklace I’d put around a stuffed dog’s neck. But I never got the chance to give it to her.”

Refusing to let go of Sloane, she wiped the tears rushing down her face with her shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“In a way it was. We couldn’t rely on Olivia; we only had each other. I thought a mixed martial arts event was more important than Sara on our birthday. If I’d shown up when I was supposed to, that motherfucker wouldn’t have touched her.”

“Who killed her? Why?” Kat couldn’t imagine.

“Lee Foster. He rented a room from the family she’d been placed in. Turned out later that child services didn’t know that, but there’s a lot of shit they don’t know or didn’t care about. Foster came in, found Sara alone. He probably tried something and she rebuffed him. But she was small, like our mother and… Fuck.”

Not knowing what else to do, she just held on and showed him that he wasn’t alone.

“Once he was caught, he swore he didn’t kill her. That they’d had consensual sex and he’d left only to come home after I found her. Said she was a little whore, would do anyone.” Fury vibrated in his voice.

Kat slipped beneath his arm braced against the window. The agony swimming in his gaze ripped her chest open. Dry eyes shadowed with fourteen years of grief, guilt and rage. Gripping his face in her palms, she didn’t care that he’d see her tears. “Foster murdered her, Sloane. Not you.”

“It was her birthday. She got excited about that shit. I was too tough to care, but Sara…” He rubbed a hand over his face. “She didn’t even know I’d saved up money and bought her that necklace and stuffed dog. She always wanted a damn dog. Because a dog would love her no matter what.”

“You loved her. You still love her. That counts. A lot.” It had to. But what about their mother? “Where was your mom? Didn’t she come to see Sara and you on your birthday?”

Sloane’s gaze drifted to the window. “Olivia’s boyfriend didn’t want teenage kids. That’s how it usually went. Whatever guy she shacked up with didn’t want us, and she’d dump us in foster care. Then when her latest Prince Charming turned out to be a toad, she’d take us back. It never ended, not until that night.”

Her heart ached for two lost children. But now she understood why her elitist overachieving parents hadn’t scared him off. He’d seen worse. So much worse.

Expected it, really. How could a man as generous as Sloane, a man who protected Kat from threats, think he couldn’t love?

Sloane leaned down, pressing his forehead to hers. “You’re crying.”

How could she not? “Yes.”

He wiped her tears with his thumb. “For Sara?”

Surrounded by the night and washed in moonlight, she didn’t have the ability to withhold or shade the truth. Didn’t want to. “For both of you.”

He stared at her, the desolation in his eyes competing with confusion. “Why me?” His voice sounded baffled. “I didn’t die.”

He had
suffered
. “I think part of you did,” she said softly. The part that trusted in love. Their mother had been some kind of serial dater of losers that she chose over her own children. Then Sara left him when she died. Oh sure, it was irrational, but Kat knew all about irrational fears, and she was willing to bet that deep down, Sloane didn’t want to love anyone else and have them leave him too.

Well, he loved Drake, his mentor. But Sloane probably didn’t look at it that way. And wasn’t Drake going to leave Sloane? So that only cemented his beliefs.

Sloane’s whole plus-one arrangements made a sad kind of sense now. He controlled the situation with a deal, not trusting emotion or fate.

It broke her heart. He deserved more. She caressed his jaw, trying to erase the stark loneliness etched into his features. “Come to bed. See if you can rest. You can sleep in after I go to work in the morning. I’ll leave you a key to lock up.”

His face softened, and he pulled her into his arms. “You’ll let me hold you?”

Kat pressed her cheek to his chest, feeling his heart’s slow, steady beat. His skin against hers created a low comforting hum, not sexual, but something much more powerful and vulnerable. Every breath they took together seemed to bind them tighter. “As long as you want.”

Chapter Eight

Kat sat in the passenger seat of her car. It was before five a.m., and Sloane looked insanely hot in a pair of workout shorts and a tank as he drove her Hyundai Santa Fe. He had no right to look that good on maybe three hours sleep, four tops. “You could have slept in and had Ethan pick you up at the condo later.”

“Not if Dr. Dickhead is back in town. I’m taking you to work, making sure you get inside and lock the door.”

Kat tensed. David was supposed to be back this weekend. Would he try to talk to her again, or leave her alone?

“I’ve put Ethan and John’s phone numbers in your cell.”

“When did you do that?” Grabbing her cell from her purse, she thumbed through the numbers. Yep, there was his driver, Ethan, and his friend, John Monroe.

“When you were in the bathroom.” He slid her a look. “Does it make a difference?”

That he was invading her life like a steamroller? “It’s my phone. I don’t go through your phone.”

His tat flexed over his biceps. “Did I say I went through your phone, Kitten?”

That soft voice just sharpened her anxiety. She was tired, and she was pissy, particularly since she was thinking about him leaving in the morning. No training with him. No sleeping with him. No fighting with him. No having intense, mind-blowing orgasms with him. No watching him come apart for her. It bugged her, and that sucked. But starting a fight with him wasn’t going to accomplish anything. “Why are you putting your friends’ numbers in my phone?”

“You have any trouble with Dickhead while I’m in South America, you call Ethan or John.”

That right there? Steamrolling her life. “We’re not doing this.” She snapped her head around to face the windshield and squeezed her fingers around the warm, silver travel mug cradled between her thighs. “I’m not going to depend on you. David is my problem. I will handle him.”

His silence flooded the car.

Kat refused to back down.

Clenching his fingers around the steering wheel, he said, “You’d rather I put a team of bodyguards on you?”

Incredulity blasted through her. “Are you trying to scare me or threaten me?”

He shot her a glare. “I’m going to be out of the damned country. You will be out of my reach. And right now, I’m not liking that shit. Not one bit. You got a dickhead ex—who I suspect has fucked with the wrong people and you already got caught up in that once. It is not happening again. It is not.” His teeth snapped together, and every muscle and tendon swelled to hulking menace.

The air whooshed from her lungs. A faint buzzing rattled her hearing. Not a panic attack, but shock. That sense of being thrown clean off a cliff and not knowing what was beneath her. “I—uh…” What?

“On top of that I’ve got reporters on my ass, spilling more potential misery into your life. So, baby, you can do this the easy way and tell me you’ll call Ethan or John if Dickhead or anyone bothers you, or I will put a team on you. Choose.”

She didn’t know what to do. Or say. Or think. “I could just call Diego or Kellen.”

“You can after you call Ethan or John. Your friends love you, but my friends are better trained. So you call both if you need to. Or you get protection.”