Wicked Need (The Wicked Horse Series Book 3) (8 page)

I manage to turn my
face to the side so my cheek is resting over his heart and tell him,
“It
wasn’t all bad. All the guys at The Silo were really nice.”

He makes a sound
deep in his chest. I’m
not sure what it signifies, but his arms wrap around me tighter. “If
that fucker wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him for you,
Cat. I swear I would.”

I smile over his
declaration, but I know he doesn’t
mean it. I’m not worth killing someone over.

“Is there
anything else I need to know?” Rand asks without loosening his
hold on me.

“Isn’t
that enough to give me nightmares about Samuel?” I ask, sort of
tongue in cheek, but also as a means of perhaps avoiding one other
ugly truth I’m thinking might be best left untold.

Rand’s
silent for a moment, but then he says, “You trusted me with
something deeply personal, but I need it all, Cat. How can I chase
away your demons if I don’t know what they all are?”

My body goes utterly
still, and then a phenomenon happens to me that has never happened
before in my life.

My heart literally
fucking melts within my chest.

I blink my eyes hard
to chase away the sting of tears I feel forming over a man I barely
know who is telling me he’s
my champion. It’s unbelievable to me.

“Cat,”
Rand prompts me. “Anything else?”

Giving a cough, I
clear my throat and pull back so I can look him in the eye. I tell
him perhaps the worst of it. “His
oldest son, Kevin. He shared me with him quite a bit. Favorite son
and all.”

He doesn’t
say a word to me, but I can feel the fury vibrating off him. Rand’s
eyes turn practically red and his jaw locks so tight that the muscle
jumps violently. But because he has shown he cares for me, and
doesn’t want to make this more upsetting than it already is, he
keeps his silence and merely hugs me in commiseration.

A hug.

How novel.

How soothing.

I may not have much
experience with them, but I’m
finding they’re warm and secure, and I feel like I could sleep
without nightmares if Rand’s arms are around me.

Rand

It’s
barely seven in the morning. I don’t need to open the shop for
three hours, but I have important shit to do. I slip quietly out of
my apartment, leaving Cat sleeping in my bed. I hope she continues to
sleep for hours to come because I know she’s exhausted. Not
only did I completely wear her body out last night, but also after
she told me about that shit with her
motherfucking-dead-but-want-to-kill-him-again husband, we stayed up
and talked. Eventually, I settled us back down and pulled her close
to me. Her body fit against mine naturally, and it felt better than
right.

I may spend a lot of
time at a sex club, but I’m
not one of these guys with emotional barriers who uses no-strings sex
as a way to keep women at arm’s length. I’m an actual
snuggler to the core. I don’t care if it’s a one-night
stand or the love of your life. After sex, there’s nothing
better than spooning and drifting off to sleep.

So tucking Cat into
me felt natural. I didn’t
give it a second thought. I just held her tight and we talked until
she could get it all out.

Have to say, I
admire the fuck out of that girl. She didn’t
shed a tear even though I could hear in her voice how disgusting it
was for her to relay that stuff to me. She’s tough as nails and
it’s true what I said… she did what she had to do to
survive.

As she opened up
more to me, it practically killed me to hear her own self-loathing
for getting herself caught in Samuel’s
web. I asked her—because I had to or it would kill me not
knowing—why she stayed with him, and it boiled down to fear and
doubt. Samuel preyed upon the perfect woman for his sick plans. He
showed Cat how good it felt to live with the comforts we all take for
granted. A soft bed, a warm home. Food in her stomach. She told me
he’d often go weeks ignoring her, and during those times, her
life was fine. She lived it as she wanted, so she reasoned to herself
it was a penance she could handle.

I thought penance
was an interesting word for her to use, and I had to wonder why she
thought of herself as a sinner. Personally, I think she’s
an angel. And while she never came out and said it, I got the feeling
that Cat was fearful of Samuel. Not sure if he threatened her, or
implied he’d do something, but Cat had said something to the
effect of “for my safety, it was best to just toe the line”.

Regardless, our talk
came around to The Silo again, and I gently prodded at her as to why
she continued to go there once Samuel died.
“You were free,” I told her. “Why come back to the
place he made you do those things?”
Where he got his fucking saggy nuts off—metaphorically speaking
since he couldn’t
get his little dick up—watching his wife get fucked over and
over again by multiple men.

Burns me the fuck
up. Don’t
get me wrong… a good gang bang when a woman is consenting and
receiving pleasure from the depravity of it all is awesome, but the
thought of Cat doing it and not enjoying it… not sure I can
handle that thought.

What she told me
about that left me unsettled. Not sure if I’m
supposed to feel good or bad about it, but it’s weighing on my
mind.

When I asked her why
she still came back after Samuel died, she was quiet a moment, and I
wondered if she was remembering back to a few nights after his death.
She was at The Silo and told Bridger that Samuel was dead. He, in
turn, let a select few of us know. We circled her protectively,
wondering what she wanted and how we could help ease her sadness. She
ended up choosing several men to fuck her—present company
excluded. This wasn’t
all that unusual, as there are, after all, many men from which she
could have picked.

At any rate, she
went into one of the rooms that housed a stockade Bridger had built.
After she was locked up tight, she took cock after cock with a
satisfied smile on her face. It was one of the hottest things I’d
seen and I thought she needed it to take her mind off her sadness.

Turns out…
she was celebrating, and she told me as much in answer to the
question I had posed.

“Because
sometimes I liked it,” she admitted in a soft voice.

I think she was
ashamed, so I validated her. “There’s a lot to like about
The Silo, babe,” I told her in a firm but gentle voice. “Sex
there can be exhilarating and beautiful. There’s nothing wrong
with what we do there.”

I felt the movement
of her nodding in agreement. “Many
times, I loved it… loved the rush and the feeling of being
wanted. I don’t fake my orgasms, so you know I’m turned
on by much of that stuff. But I also hated a lot of stuff.”

“I can
imagine,” I consoled.

“But if you
really want to know why I went back,” she continued. “It’s
because Samuel loved those gang bangs. His favorite thing was to
watch me take it over and over again with no ability to say no to any
of those men. He liked me stripped of control. But that night…
even though I was locked in the stockade, it was my choice to do
that. I chose which men fucked me, and then I said when it was over.
I had all the control. I hoped Samuel was rolling over in his grave,
looking up at me from the burning pits of hell when I called a stop
to it all.”

I was blown away by
those words, and haunted at the same time that something as simple as
being able to say “no”
could have such a big impact on a person’s self-worth and
security.

So again…
no clue how I feel about all this. Cat’s emphatically said that
her feelings about The Silo are complicated, and that’s a
fucking understatement. She’s loathed it and loved it, and I
get the feeling it’s in equal measures.

I did ask her
because my ego was bruised a bit, “Why
didn’t you choose me that night you were in the stockade?”

Cat didn’t
answer me directly, but in a roundabout way told me what I wanted to
hear. “Rand… I think Samuel ended up conditioning me to
be a woman who knows nothing but submission. I do as I’m told
because I’m afraid to do otherwise.”

I thought this was
an odd observation and wasn’t
sure how it applied to my question, but then she made it all clear.
“But with you, I never felt fear. Never felt I was in danger
from you. Always felt safe and no matter how dirty we got, I felt
cherished. I knew if I said “no” to you, you were a man
who would respect it immediately. I didn’t have anything to
prove to you or myself by bringing you in that room. It was about
confronting my fears and taking back control, and that’s not
something I’ve ever needed to do with you. It was unnecessary
to choose you that night.”

Yeah, those words
right there pretty much sealed my fucking fate. I was going to do
whatever I had to do to get Cat on her feet with a permanent smile on
her face, as well as the knowledge in her soul that she could do
whatever the fuck she wanted and no one was going to hold her back.

This is exactly why
I left her sleeping in my apartment and left for work almost three
hours before it started. Even though I live only a few blocks from
Westward Ink, I needed to drive out to The Wicked Horse and that was
an hour round trip.

After I start up my
Suburban and begin to navigate my way out of town, I dial Bridger up
on my phone. I know he’s
awake because he always gets up early despite the late hours he
keeps. I doubt if the dude sleeps more than a few hours per night. He
usually gets into his office at The Wicked Horse no later than eight
AM.

He answers on the
second ring. “What’s
up?”

“On my way to
The Wicked Horse to see you,” I tell him without any lead in.
“Hope you got a few minutes before you get going for the day.”

“Not there,”
he responds in that gravelly voice that’s typical Bridger. “At
the Double J getting ready to help Woolf with some stuff.”

Not surprised.
Bridger and Woolf are best friends and while Woolf may no longer be
involved with The Wicked Horse or The Silo, those two are still thick
as thieves. Bridger’s
house actually sits on Double J property. As if the guy doesn’t
have enough to do as it is with running a nightclub and sex club, he
often helps Woolf out at the ranch.

Woolf is the CEO of
JennCo, a massive conglomerate comprised mostly of cattle and oil,
but it makes him one of the richest motherfuckers in the USA. You’d
never know it though by talking to him. Unassuming and unpretentious,
he’s just one of the guys so to speak. Hate that he’s no
longer involved in The Silo or Wicked Horse, as the gang doesn’t
get to see him enough as it is. But love does funny things to people
and he’s clearly happier keeping Callie happy, so good for him.

“I’ll be
there in half an hour,” I tell him, not asking if he minds me
taking up his time. I disconnect the phone and step on the gas once I
get out of town.

It ends up taking me
almost thirty-five minutes because of a minor traffic jam caused by
rubbernecking tourists. Dozens of cars pulled haphazardly off the
road, some with their ass ends still in the lane of travel. People
jumping out of their cars without a care that there’s
still traffic on this two-lane rural road that will flatten their
asses.

But that’s
part of living in Wyoming, and I slow to a crawl as I navigate my way
past travelers who are standing on the side of the road in a large
group. I recognize a park ranger’s truck and while we’re
technically outside of the Teton National Forest, they’ll
respond to dangerous wildlife calls. And I see immediately as I creep
by what the hubbub is about. About two hundred yards into a pasture
covered with sagebrush and dried grass, a grizzly bear is lying on
top of what is probably an antelope carcass. He’s massive and
appears to be gnawing on the neck of his kill. It’s the park
ranger’s duty to keep the tourists at a safe distance because
there’s always one moron in the group who wants to sidle closer
for a better picture opportunity. Once I make my way past the minor
traffic jam, I fight the temptation to speed to make up the lost
time. It’s not worth the cost of a ticket or the extra time
that would be lost if I’m stopped.

When I pull up to
the Double J office, I park in between Bridger’s
red Corvette and Woolf’s black Range Rover. Grabbing my phone
off the seat beside me, I get out of my truck without locking it up.
Nothing of value in there to steal and no one would anyway. That’s
not the way we do things in Wyoming.

I trot up the steps
and push open the door to the ranch office, which is actually an old
homestead on the ranch. I think it might have even belonged to
Woolf’s
grandpa or something.

The sounds of
Bridger and Woolf’s
voices pull me down the hall, and I find them both in Woolf’s
office. Woolf is sitting in his chair behind his desk, booted feet
propped up on the scarred, wooden top. Bridger sits in a large chair
done in cowhide on the opposite side and sips on a container of
coffee.

“Morning,
sunshine,” Woolf says with a big grin on his face.

“Good to see
you, man,” I say with a laugh as I take an identical chair next
to Bridger. He tips his chin up at me and grumbles, “What’s
so important you needed to see me first thing this morning?”

I know Bridger and
Woolf’s
time is valuable—far more than mine is, as all I have to do
today is run a tattoo shop—so I don’t beat around the
bush. “Cat’s in trouble and I need some advice. Maybe
some direction.”

“Who the fuck
is Cat?” Bridger says with his eyebrows furrowing in.

“Sorry,”
I say quickly. “Catherine.”

“Vaughn?”
Bridger asks for clarification.

“Lyons,”
I say automatically, and his eyebrows draw inward again.

“Who?”

Shaking my head, I
hold up a hand for him to let me speak and start again. “She
goes by Cat, her maiden name is Lyons, and she prefers to be known as
that. I found her sleeping in her car in the parking lot of The
Wicked Horse two nights ago and found out she’s homeless.”