11. Lena
Lena
Vale pulls out of me with a wet sound that should be embarrassing and somehow isn’t.
If anything, it makes everything worse.
My whole body jerks at the sensation, a small, helpless pulse of pleasure rippling through me even after everything, and I hate how sensitive I still am. My thighs are shaking. My skin feels too tight. My heart is hammering so hard it almost hurts.
What the hell?
I can barely breathe around the thought.
I just let them do that.
Not one man. Both of them.
I let them touch me, taste me, hold me against the wall and fuck me until I couldn’t think straight, and somewhere in the middle of it I stopped even pretending I wanted to resist.
My face burns.
My entire body burns.
Vale steps back like he’s just realized what he’s done. His breathing is rough, uneven, and there’s something almost stunned in his expression now, as if the reality of it is only catching up to him after the fact.
Havoc, of course, looks far less conflicted.
I don’t look at him. I can’t.
I’m too aware of everything. The dampness between my thighs. The soreness. The fact that I’m standing here completely naked in a strange room in the middle of nowhere with two dangerous men and no idea what that says about me except that my judgment has officially left the building.
Vale reaches for the hem of his shirt without a word and pulls it off over his head. The sight of him nearly short-circuits what little sanity I have left.
His body is lean and hard, marked in places I don’t let myself study too closely, and for one terrible second I forget I’m supposed to be horrified by all of this and just stare.
Then he steps forward and holds the shirt out to me.
A peace offering. Or a shield.
Maybe both.
I take it with hands that are not nearly as steady as I want them to be.
The fabric is warm from his body. I pull it over my head too quickly, almost tangling myself in it in my hurry to cover up. It hangs past my thighs, smelling like him, and somehow that only makes my heart pound harder.
I cross my arms over my chest, then uncross them, then give up and just stand there in his shirt, still trying to catch my breath.
No one says anything for a second.
The silence is awful. My pulse is still racing. My lips still feel kissed. My body still feels used in a way that should make me panic and, instead, mostly leaves me dazed.
I look at Vale first.
Then at Havoc.
Then away again.
“What,” I say, and my voice comes out thinner than I mean it to, “the actual hell was that?”
Havoc is the first one to recover.
Of course he is.
He leans back against the wall like he didn’t just help ruin my life in the hottest and most psychologically confusing way possible, wipes a hand over his mouth, and gives Vale a look that is way too satisfied.
“I wasn’t planning to take it that far,” he says, almost casually. Then he jerks his chin toward Vale. “But he was too wound up.”
My head snaps toward him.
Excuse me?
Havoc grins and slaps Vale hard across the back like they’re locker-room idiots instead of two men who just had me against a wall. Vale makes a rough sound and goes tense, not from the hit itself, but from where Havoc landed it.
I stare at them. At him. At the easy way he says it, like this was some kind of experiment. Like he just needed to push the right button and watch his friend break.
A hot wave of disbelief crashes over the lingering haze in my body.
He just wanted to rile Vale up?
That’s fucked up.
That’s deeply, profoundly, spectacularly fucked up.
I shake my head and take a step back, clutching Vale’s shirt tighter around myself.
“I can’t do this,” I say. My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to, but steadier too.
The panic, the embarrassment, the confusion, all of it starts hardening into something else.
I am done being the last person in the room to catch up.
“I can’t keep standing here while you two act like this is normal.” I look between them, breathing still uneven but finally under my control. “You want answers? Fine. I’ll tell you what I know.”
That gets their attention.
Havoc’s grin fades, not completely, but enough.
Vale still won’t quite meet my eyes.
I swallow once, forcing my mind back to the beginning, to the part that makes sense. Or used to. “It started at work,” I say. “My friends talked me into downloading a dating app. Kindred. I matched with a guy almost immediately.”
I look at the floor for a second, then back up. “His name was Ethan. At least, that’s what he said his name was. Ethan Caldwell.” I frown. “But when he introduced himself in person, I remember thinking I’d seen a different last name on the app. I told myself I must’ve read it wrong.”
Havoc and Vale exchange a look.
I keep going before they can interrupt. “He picked a place by the harbor. Fancy, quiet, barely anyone there. Too quiet, actually.” My fingers tighten in the borrowed shirt. “He was charming at first. A little too charming. Too polished. The kind of guy who looks expensive on purpose.”
I let out a breath. “He kept asking questions. About whether I had family. Whether anyone was expecting me home. If anyone would notice where I was.” My stomach twists now that I say it aloud.
“At the time I thought he was just bad at being normal. Now…” I shake my head.
“Now it sounds like he was checking whether I’d be easy to disappear. ”
Vale’s face changes at that. Not much. Just enough.
“I texted my friend Jess during the drive,” I add. “Told her his name. Told her we were going to the harbor. She tried to look him up.” I glance toward them. “She couldn’t find anything.”
Havoc’s jaw shifts.
I go on, faster now, because if I stop I might think too hard about any of this.
“He kept my glass full. I didn’t think much of it because the wine was good and I don’t drink much anyway.
But then I started feeling… off. Heavy. Slow.
Like the room had tilted half an inch and my body was the last thing to figure it out.
” I swallow. “I tried to leave. I remember standing up. I remember him catching my chair.”
The room feels colder.
“After that, it gets blurry. I remember his voice. I remember him leaning in. Then nothing.” I look at Havoc, then Vale. “The next thing I remember clearly is waking up tied to a chair in that basement with the three of you arguing over a dead body.”
Silence.
I fold my arms tighter over myself. “So there,” I say. “That’s everything. That’s all I know.”
I’m trying very hard not to think about what just happened.
That turns out to be impossible.
My whole body keeps betraying me in small, humiliating ways.
A shiver that won’t settle. A pulse that still races in strange places.
The lingering soreness between my thighs.
The heat that comes and goes in waves every time I move the wrong way or breathe too deeply or catch the smell of Vale’s shirt around me.
I squeeze my legs together instinctively.
It doesn’t help. If anything, it makes me more aware.
God.
The worst part is not that it happened. The worst part is that I liked it. Not in some vague, abstract way I can lie to myself about later. Not in a way I can twist into confusion and file under trauma response and never examine too closely.
I was into it. All of it. The roughness. The hands. The mouths. The way Vale pinned me to the wall and fucked me like he’d been holding himself back too long and couldn’t anymore. The way Havoc pushed and teased and watched for every crack in my composure and smiled when he found one.
I was into all of it. Even the parts that should probably upset me more than they do.
Vale didn’t ask with words before he slid into me. He asked with his eyes, with the way he waited half a second and then took my silence and my hands on him and my legs around him as answer.
And I wanted him there. That’s the part I can’t get around.
I wanted him.
I wanted both of them.
Which feels like the kind of realization that should come with a professional evaluation and maybe a sedative.
I swallow hard, forcing myself back into the room before I float too far away inside my own head. “Okay,” I say, because if I don’t keep talking, I’m going to start replaying everything in detail and then I may never recover. “Your turn.”
Havoc arches a brow. “Our turn for what?”
I gesture vaguely between the two of them, and immediately regret it because it makes the shirt shift against my thighs and now I’m aware of my body all over again.
“For explaining why a man drugging me and tying me to a chair ended with the two of you acting like you knew what you were walking into.”
Vale’s gaze stays on me. Quiet. Heavy. A little too knowing for my comfort.
“What did this guy mean to you?” I ask.
“No,” Vale says. His voice stays even, but I can hear the frustration underneath it now that I’m actually listening for it. “We got orders to bring him in for questioning. That’s all.”
I frown. “Orders from who?”
Neither of them answers fast enough.
“Right,” I mutter. “Of course. Secret murder club. Forgot.”
Havoc huffs a laugh, but Vale keeps his eyes on me.
“We knew the location,” he says. “We knew the target. We knew he was involved in something he shouldn’t have been. We did not know you would be there.”
I shift my weight and immediately regret it because my body still feels too aware of itself, too alive under my skin. I squeeze my legs together again, trying to ignore the aftershocks that keep catching me off guard.
It doesn’t work.
I wanted more.
That realization hits me in a slow, crawling wave of shame and heat so intense I have to look away from both of them for a second.
Focus. Questions. Reality.
“So you found me by accident,” I say, forcing my voice into something steadier. “You were there for him, not me.”
“Yes,” Vale says.
That one word does more for me than any of their reassurances so far. Because it means this was not some elaborate setup. It means I wasn’t passed from one group of predators to another in some organized nightmare.
It means I just got very, very unlucky.
Which is not good. But it’s better.
I look back at him. “And now what?”
Vale’s expression closes down a little. “Now we figure out why he had you.”
I let out a quiet breath through my nose. “Love that. Really comforting.”
Havoc studies me for a second, then says, “He wanted something. Men like that always do.”
“Sure,” I say. “But I don’t think you need me here to figure out why.”
Neither of them says anything, so I keep going, because momentum feels useful and panic definitely doesn’t.
“He was obviously one of those men who keeps a secret basement and says things like trust me with his whole chest,” I say.
“A warehouse-romantic. A murder-date enthusiast. A woman-in-the-trunk connoisseur. Pick your nightmare.”
That actually makes Havoc pause and think.
Then he says, almost reluctantly, “You’re probably right.”
Relief flashes through me so fast it almost makes me dizzy.
There.
There it is. My way out.
If I can make them believe I’m harmless, if I can make myself small enough, compliant enough, nonthreatening enough, then maybe this ends with them opening the door and letting me leave. Maybe I can walk out of here, call Jess, shower for three days, and pretend none of this ever happened.
Not the kidnapping. Not the basement. And definitely not the sex.
I’m still furious about that, actually. Furious that Havoc used me like some kind of twisted way to get under Vale’s skin. Furious that I let it happen. Furious that my body enjoyed being part of whatever the hell that was.
But anger can wait.
If sex is what made them look at me like I’m soft, overwhelmed, manageable, then fine. I can use that. I’ll be the perfect, compliant victim. Not fighting. Not asking the dangerous questions. Not worth the trouble of keeping.
I can do that.
I lift my chin a little and aim for calm. “So if I’m not part of whatever creepy hostage scrapbook situation he had going on, then I’m just… collateral damage, right?”
Havoc doesn’t answer right away.
Vale has gone quiet beside him. Completely quiet. He isn’t looking at me now. He’s looking somewhere over my shoulder, jaw tight, expression giving away nothing. That silence says more than either of their words ever do.
I ignore it and keep my eyes on Havoc. “I mean, I’m not useful,” I say, making my voice lighter than I feel. “No secret enemies. No hidden inheritance. No mystery bloodline. I make coffee and overthink things. That’s the whole brand.”
Havoc watches me with a look I don’t trust for a second.
I keep going anyway. “So,” I say, with a small shrug, “if you’ve got your answer that he was just some deeply deranged woman-collector with a kidnapping hobby, then I can go. I’m practically harmless.”
The door slams open so hard it cracks against the wall.
I jump.
Havoc barely turns, but Vale’s head snaps up immediately.
Knox fills the doorway like he brought the tension in with him.
But he’s not just tense. He’s furious.
There’s a file in his hand, edges bent where he’s gripping it too hard, and his eyes lock on me so fast my stomach drops. “If you’re so harmless—what the hell,” he says, voice low and dangerous, “are you doing in the Brotherhood’s files?”