Surrender (10 page)

Chapter Seven
teen

J
em got a hal
f hour of sleep at most, worked long after Key stumbled in and began his snoring on the couch.

He woke his brother sometime after noon.

“Get showered and dressed and meet me at the tat shop in twenty,” he told Key, who grunted. “Coffee and breakfast is on the stove. And I’m not your mama.”

“Thank fucking God for that,” Key muttered, and then continued to mutter, saying something along the lines of never drinking again as long as he fucking lived.

If Avery was staying with Gunner, it was for protection. Why Gunner had let her out on her own was a mystery. Unless Gunner was losing his touch.

Doubtful.

The door was locked but the alarm system was off. There was a big bodyguard who’d go down like a rock and some celebrity tween of the week lying on Gunner’s table.

Gunner’s back was to him, but he’d know Jem was in the shop in three, two, one . . .

Without turning around or stopping his work, he said, “I’m closed.”

“You need better locks.”

As many times as the men had met over the years, they never talked about the past. It was an unspoken agreement that had kept the men alive in each other’s presence for the past fifteen years.

The bodyguard was up in a second, and Gunner sighed and shut down the tat gun. “Dude, he’s cool. He’s just going to grab some coffee and wait for me. Quietly.”

Jem smiled his best crazy-assed smile at the bodyguard and hoped the guy was smart enough to stand down, because Jem could easily kill him without breaking a sweat.

Granted, so could Gunner.

It took another half an hour for Gunner to finish up with the tat on the young celebrity, then pose for the obligatory picture that would end up on Twitter and bring Gunner more business than he’d ever imagined or wanted.

For Gunner, tattooing was as sacred as anything. As sacred as that fucked-up reverse-karma thing he had going. Because if Gunner saved your life, he owed you a favor, not the other way around. Jem knew that growing up here was enough to give anyone more superstitions than they could count.

Finally, Gunner let the bodyguard with the stupid hidden gun, too many muscles and not enough range to be good for anything take the tween away. Punk. But the girl was cute and didn’t need much more than the scary-looking man to frighten people into giving her a clear path, and hell, Jem was long out of the hero business.

“Want that coffee Irish?” Gunner asked Jem without turning back around.

“Hair of the dog,” Jem agreed, and Gunner gave him a shot in the steaming mug and served himself the same. After a long moment of silence as Jem let the liquid burn his gullet, he said, “You know you’re housing a multiple murderer?”

“Her money’s good.”

“So’s her ass.”

“Wouldn’t know.”

“Losing your touch?”

“Ah, Jeremiah, you wish.” Gunner slugged down half the coffee. “I don’t need this shit today—what do you want, really?”

Brass tacks, that was what it always came down to between them. “Looking for someone. Dare O’Rourke.”

* * *

Avery tossed and
turned for most of the night, finally fell into a deeper sleep as morning came. When she woke, she heard voices downstairs. Gunner had obviously opened her door at some point in order to keep track of her.

She guessed she needed to be grateful that someone else was watching her back.

She moved toward the stairs to hear the voices—Gunner and another guy whose voice she didn’t recognize. Then she heard the door open, and Gunner said, “Key, long time no see. How long you been back?”

Key. Here, in Gunner’s shop. She went down the stairs and waited behind the curtain that separated the kitchenette area of the shop from the main room. Watched as Key shook Gunner’s hand.

“Been years,” Gunner was saying. “You two finally coming home?”

“For now,” Key said. “Jem and I came here looking for someone.”

“Yeah, Jem mentioned Dare,” Gunner said, and Avery’s stomach tightened.

There is no such thing as coincidences.

But Gunner was a pro. “I knew Darius. Haven’t seen his son.”

And God bless him, that was the truth. Now she wondered if Dare had avoided seeing Gunner purposely, and it was looking like the answer to that would be yes.

“I need to see him,” Key said.

“Why?” she demanded, pushing through the curtain. Key’s eyebrows rose, and he looked between her and Gunner. She wondered if his irritation was a mask for jealousy.

“Your new wife?” Key asked Gunner.

“A friend,” Gunner said. “She’s renting upstairs.”

“A friend who knows Dare?” Key asked, directing his question to Gunner but staring at her.

“I never said that,” she answered sweetly.

Key laughed, but it wasn’t free and easy the way it had been the night before. “Sometimes it’s what you don’t say. Got anything you want to tell me?”

“I’m hungover,” she said.

He simply looked away, and she swore she saw a look of disappointment on his face. What did he expect? All she’d done was kiss him.

For hours.

Kissing the same person for that long did something to her brain. Rewired it. She could still taste him, feel the weight of his body on hers.

There was something innately romantic about kissing and only kissing.

Nothing chaste about it. Such a seemingly innocent thing, but far more intimate than it seemed on the surface.

Part of her wanted to take it all back. “How do you know them?” she asked Gunner.

“Gunner and I moved in the same circles for years,” Jem answered instead.

“Jem is twenty pounds of crazy stuffed in a five-pound bag,” Gunner told her.

“And that’s different from you how?” she asked innocently.

“Wiseass,” he muttered, and Jem hooted, said, “I like her, Gunner.”

She noted that Key didn’t echo the sentiment, and that bothered her.

“Trust me—Jem’s in a whole different league,” Gunner said. “Want me to tell her about that time in Prague—”

“Just tell Dare we need to talk to him,” Jem interjected, putting a hand on Key’s shoulder, because Key was suddenly frozen, staring at her oddly. She took a step back, and Gunner pulled her behind him.

The look on Key’s face told her she was about to be used in the same way she and Dare had been told to use Grace.

“Hey, Key, I think it’s time to go—Gunner will call us with any updates on Dare,” Jem said, never taking his eyes off Avery.

“Come on, Avery—we’ll get some breakfast,” Gunner told her, and she finally tore her eyes from Key long enough for him and Jem to leave. “You should’ve stayed out of it. You managed to piss Key off.”

“He’s just upset I walked away from him last night.”

“Why did you?”

“Because I couldn’t exactly bring him back here, could I?”

Wrong answer, if Gunner’s murderous expression was any indication, but it quickly fell away, replaced by his imperturbable mask. “No,
chère
, that wouldn’t’ve been smart. Next time, fuck him in the bar’s bathroom and don’t get caught or let anyone take your picture. He ran it and found one instance still hanging around online about your recent infractions of the law.”

So that’s why Key had asked her if she had anything to say to him.

“Avery, you’ve got to stay out of shit like this,” Gunner continued.

“Why are they after my brother?” she demanded.

“I have no goddamned idea, but I don’t like any of this. I’m beginning to feel like we’re all being herded together.”

“By Powell?” The name slipped out, and she cursed herself, especially when Gunner’s glare was secondary to his hand grabbing her. He held her arm, pushed her against the wall much more gently than she’d thought he’d be capable of and still left her feeling threatened.

“You’re gonna tell me everything you know about Richard Powell—and if he’s why you’re here, God help us all.”

* * *

Key made it into
the alleyway before retching last night’s liquor and this morning’s breakfast. Jem yanked him up and moved him along, back into their car, and drove them toward the apartment they’d rented in the French Quarter. Didn’t say anything to him until they’d gotten up the stairs and he’d shoved Key into a cold shower.

Jem waited for him in the living room, pacing the small area like a goddamned caged lion and then decided to make his brother some toast to settle his stomach. He knew what Key had thought about in that room with Avery, and the worst part was, she knew it.

Taking her would make Dare pay for everything. And Key had begun to think of himself as a mean old bastard, moving along on the heels of vengeance, capable of anything.

He’d been wrong. He wasn’t Jem—not by a long shot. And thank fucking God for that.

When Key came out, he looked slightly green but calmer. Jem handed him a Coke and some toast, and Key sat at the table wearing a pair of shorts, trying to work the bread down. The sugar would help. So would turning on the AC full blast, which Jem did to keep Key from falling back to sleep.

The apartment was a nice two-bedroom that he’d paid for—and Key didn’t ask how. Key’s own savings was nil, since he’d paid for an outside lawyer to attempt to help with his defense.

He shouldn’t have bothered.

“You really think Avery’s related to Dare?” Jem asked Key.

“She had that same look . . . the one Dare had when I tried to rescue him. I can’t explain it, but it was like seein
g a ghost. I’d bet my life that she knows him. She’s staying with Gunner just when he shows up in town? What are the chances? He’s got no siblings listed, but that doesn’t mean anything. And if she hired Gunner, he’s not saying shit.”

Jem ran a hand through his hair “Don’t think about it.”

“I’m thinking.”

“Then let me do it.”

“You think I’ve gone soft.”

“I think you kissed her. You don’t have it in you to be cruel to a woman you’ve kissed, and there’s no shame in that.”

Jem didn’t know that Key felt shame all the damned time now—or maybe he did. “Can you?”

“Can I what?”

“Kiss and be cruel.”

“All the damned time,” Jem said without hesitation. “All the damned time.”

Chap
ter Eighteen

D
rug
s. Grace struggled against the feeling, tried to put her fingers down her throat to get the pills up, and then she recalled the tiny pinprick feeling on her upper arm.

An injection. There was no getting rid of the medicine until it wore off. She was helpless, a feeling she remembered all too well. A feeling she hated.

Was she tied? It didn’t appear so. She tried to call out to Dare before she was lost in the haze, but through her fever-addled brain she could feel the narcotics holding her down as effectively as bindings. And still she struggled because that’s what she’d vowed always to do. She was pretty sure she was still in Darius’s house with Dare, but her brain was misfiring, taking her to a time and place in the not-so-distant past when she’d been forced to lie still, and she had, because it made things less than enjoyable for the men who’d tortured her.

They liked it when she fought. As soon as she’d discovered that, she’d lain as still as the dead.

She screamed until she realized that excited them to the point of frenzy. They were sharks for her blood, her pain, her fears.

When she looked into their eyes, she saw darkness—no shine at all.

Would her eyes look as dead as theirs when this was all over? Would it be better that way?

“Cooperation is the name of the game, pretty girl,” the man taunted her, his hands tightening painfully around her wrists. The pain of him driving himself inside her should’ve felt far worse, but she’d stopped feeling it. Stopped feeling anything.

And that was survival at its finest.

“Then why don’t you give it to me harder?” she asked the man above her again, and for a second, it made him halt with uncertainty and stare down at her. She ground her pelvis up against his. “Go ahead—make me want it.”

She didn’t know if she’d begun to live or die that night, but she eventually made it out alive, scars and all.

Would she ever find a man she wouldn’t damage? One who wouldn’t damage her? She didn’t have the instincts to know anymore. She’d stopped trusting herself years ago.

When the man rolled off her, the familiar feeling of power shot through her, stronger than any orgasm. She wasn’t in that helpless place she’d flashed back to. She was in control. Older, but she didn’t think she was any wiser. She was simply alive.

For now, that had to be enough.

“Grace, it’s okay—you’re safe.” Dare’s voice. How many hours had passed? How many times had she cried out in her sleep?

What had she given away?

She opened her eyes to stare at him, and he repeated, “Grace, it’s me—you’re okay—you’re safe.”

“I’m never safe,” she managed, her fist slamming into his face with all the strength she had. It didn’t seem to faze him—he grabbed her wrist, not tightly, and stopped her from continuing her assault. “Who gave you permission to drug me?”

“It was an antibiotic—”

“And a painkiller.”

“Your temperature was close to 103. You were in screaming pain—literally. I couldn’t get you to stop thrashing around enough to get you into the bath. I figured you’d sleep through the worst of it.”

He bore scratches on his face, neck and arms to prove his story, she noted. She’d fought him. And it was a reasonable explanation, but she was long past being reasonable. Reasonable got you hurt. “You had no right to make decisions for me—any decisions.”

She pushed against him when he released her, and he relented. She didn’t know if it was guilt or something else, but she took advantage, fought like a banshee until she had nothing left.

“Better?” he asked, without a hint of irony.

She said, “Much,” between harsh breaths.

His lip was bleeding, his cheek bruised. Minimal damage on bot
h counts, but she still took satisfaction in it.

“Never. Again. Do you understand me . . . ? I don’t care about the pain. I need . . . to feel it.” Her voice rose with a desperate quality that she hated, but the only thing that mattered was that he not drug her.

“I’m sorry.”

“You took my dignity.”

“That wasn’t my intention. I know what that’s like,” he said, his drawl soft, seductive, even though she should feel nothing of the sort at the moment.

“I want to hate you.” It was the drugs talking, taking her over. “I want to, but I can’t.”

“Good. Feeling’s mutual.” He wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand. “Get back to bed.”

“No.”

“Do it or I’ll put you there.”

“Try it.”

He did more than try—he hauled her over his shoulder and walked her, kicking and fighting but ultimately too worn-out to be effective. He dropped her on the bed, told her, “I won’t lock you in here unless you give me reason to.”

She charged him and he put her back on the bed. She pulled and they tumbled together.

She shouldn’t have wanted this. It must be the drugs making her hot, bothered. Clouding her judgment.

She’d never know which one of them made the first move, but they were kissing, even as their bodies fought against each other. She waited to feel the familiar surge of power at not feeling anything. Instead, the burst of heat nearly seared her.

It didn’t go away. She knew she’d surrender to it if things went further, and she couldn’t let that happen.

As if he knew, he pulled back and rolled off her, but, as she soon realized, only to grab handcuffs. He snapped one on her wrist, the other on his.

“Go to sleep,” he told her gruffly. She saw how aroused he was, and that at least pleased her, since she was equally so.

“No more drugs.”

“Just Tylenol and an antibiotic—take it.”

She inspected the pills and the bottles they came from and reluctantly took them. She needed to keep getting better. Stronger. This fight—all her battles—was far from over.

She did sleep, wasn’t sure for how long, but when she woke she noticed that he’d taken the cuffs off and he’d deserted the bed.

His scent was still everywhere, like he’d marked her in some way.

She was desperate for him, out of control, and the only consolation was that he seemed to feel the exact same way.

* * *

Dare heard
Grace stirring, brought her some water to drink but waited at the door of the room until she acknowledged him.

“Hey. Look, about before—”

“I’ll take the water,” was all she said. She took a long drink. “My fever’s coming back.”

“More antibiotics are on the way.”

“What’s going on, Dare?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I fucking have no idea. I’ve lost control of this. Of you.”

“You never had control of me. I don’t give that up,” s
he told him. “But with you . . . I want to.”

He sat on the bed next to her. “We’ll figure this out, okay? We’ll figure out a way to deal with Powell.”

“I’ll help you.”

“Grace—”

“I don’t know any other way but violence,” she told him. “At least I thought I didn’t. But when you kiss me, that all goes away. I’m trying to fight it, but I don’t want to anymore.”

He didn’t know if it was the painkillers helping her confession along or not, but he was grateful just the same.

“Just promise me that when I’m better, you’ll kiss me again,” she told him.

“That’s a promise I can damn well keep.” He paused. “Sometimes I feel like violence is all I know too.”

She turned his hand over and looked at the scar in his palm. Touched it gingerly. “I guess the bastard nearly killed both of us.”

“But we’re both still here.”

She stared up at him, her eyes still clouded with fever. “You can use me to draw Rip out.”

“That fever’s worse than I thought.”

“You’ve got to stop him, no matter what,” she murmured.

“I will. Don’t you worry about that, Grace. But it will be with you by my side, not by his. Are we clear on that? Because every damned thing has changed now.”

“Clear,” she told him. She put her head on her pillow and he tucked a towel under her and then wiped her forehead and shoulders and back and thighs with cool water. He did that until he heard the nearly nonexistent hum of the small Kodiak.

Gunner. Finally.

“Baby, it’s okay—you’re safe with me. You always were.” He patted her dry before she started shivering, knew the fever wouldn’t stay down for very long without stronger meds.

He covered her with a light sheet and waited, not wanting to leave her, knowing that Gunner could find his way to the house easily and disable the alarm.

About five minutes passed before he heard the light knock and the door opening.

“Dare, it’s us,” Gunner called.

“Back bedroom,” Dare called back, and then he heard the footsteps. Gunner came in first, followed by Avery, and while Gunner went right to Grace, Dare stood to see Avery.

“You okay?” he asked, and she nodded, looked around him to see Grace. “It’s a fever—nothing more.”

“I didn’t think you’d hurt her,” she said.

“I didn’t. I won’t.”

“Then what do we do?” she asked. He hadn’t figured that out yet, but he would.