18. Sam
SAM
Meeting at the ranch in twenty.
I stared at the cryptic message from Parker, wondering why the hell I was being summoned when I wasn’t even part of the family. Just days ago, I had been at the house, feeling so out of place that my skin itched with the need to run.
And yet, I was being called back there like it was my home and I had a responsibility to it.
As I pulled down the driveway, bouncing over the hard potholes that were frozen from the encroaching winter, I counted the number of vehicles lined up outside the main Parker household. This was more than a family gathering.
Something was going on, and based on recent events, I had a feeling it wasn’t good.
Stalking up to the house, I was greeted by Liam with nothing more than a chin nod. Behind him, Michael and Blake huddled together, whispering conspiratorially.
“What’s going on?”
“You’ll see,” Liam muttered as he led me into the living room.
They were all there. Liam, Michael, Jeff, Ben, Blake…but I had no idea why.
Ben stood, his large frame somehow more menacing than I’d ever seen him. The permanent scowl etched on his face was nothing like what I’d seen in the past. Yes, he was normally in a pissed-off mood due to the loss of the cattle on his ranch, but never as angry as this.
“I called you all here because things are getting out of hand, and we need to settle this before someone ends up dead,” Ben announced.
My eyes shifted to the others in the room. They all seemed to have some understanding of why we were here, but I had no fucking clue.
“Clara was poisoned. Tests confirmed that she had ingested Monkshood. Wolfbane.”
“What the hell is that?” Jeff asked.
“It’s a flower, but it’s poisonous if ingested,” Ben continued. “Clara doesn’t go out and pick flowers, and she definitely wouldn’t have eaten any.”
“Eat a deadly plant?” Jeff retorted. “Highly unlikely.”
Ben shot him a glare. “Until we know how she ingested it, I want every single item of food and drink removed from the house and tested. I think we can all guess who did this and why.”
He ground his teeth as he stared around the room. Someone had gone after his wife. The stakes were too high, and it seemed everyone here had something to lose.
Everyone but me.
“This is Austin. I know it in my gut,” he continued. “Until we find a way to get rid of that asshole, every one of you stay on guard. He’s coming after our family, and he’s coming hard.”
“Wait, shouldn’t Rob be here?” I asked, glancing around the room.
“He’s working on setting up additional security around the ranch,” Ben grunted. “He’s aware of the situation and is taking all the necessary precautions.”
Michael sighed, shoving his fingers through his hair. “I never thought I would say that Knight was right to install a killer robot in my house or machine guns in the eaves.”
“Now that we know Clara was poisoned, I want every scrap of food, every can of coffee, and all the contents from the fridge removed. You’d be wise to do the same in your houses. Until we figure out how she was poisoned, assume that anything you make at your house could have been tainted.”
Considering my house was on wheels and was constantly moved around, the likelihood of someone breaking in and poisoning something seemed greater than I cared to admit.
“How the hell are we going to test all the food?” Jeff asked. “We’re not set up for something like that, and we don’t have access to the equipment needed.”
Michael groaned as a shadow emerged from the back of the room. Introductions weren’t necessary. I’d met the scary fucker before, and I had hoped that would be the last time.
Knight emerged from the shadows with his wife in tow.
“Kate will be testing everything and helping us to figure out how Clara was poisoned,” Ben confirmed. “Sam, we need your house on wheels.”
“Sure,” I snorted, not all that sad about giving it up.
Jeff strode over, grinning as he slung an arm around my neck. “You can bunk with me, roomie. Well, not with me, but in my spare room.”
“Thrilling,” I muttered. I wasn’t sure what was worse. Sharing a house with Jeff or hearing Krista and Rob go at it constantly in the other room.
“I say we just take him out now,” Liam muttered.
“Let me be clear,” Ben’s voice boomed through the house. “No one is to touch Austin. Not yet. We need proof that he’s behind this. As much as I hate the fucker, if he were to go missing, we’d be the primary suspects. You know this, so don’t be stupid.”
“Who the fuck cares?” he snapped. “So they suspect us. He tried to kill Bailey. He nearly killed me. And now he almost killed Ma? Burn the fucker!”
“Knight, you want to help me out?” Ben asked.
He shrugged, leaning against the wall as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “I agree. Burn the fucker.”
“His old man would never let it go,” Michael sighed. “He’d come after us hard.”
“John Callahan has about as much credit in this town as a pigeon,” Jeff retorted. “No one would believe him.”
“We do not need the scrutiny of every law enforcement agency in the state!” Ben boomed, putting an end to that train of thought. “I will not have my entire fucking family under the microscope every minute of the day!”
“He tried to kill your wife,” Jeff said incredulously.
“I know goddamn well what he did!” Ben shouted, his whole body vibrating with rage unlike anything I’d ever seen from him before. “He has attacked my family repeatedly, and for that, he will not go unpunished. But we are not murderers.”
Michael chuffed, but otherwise kept his mouth shut.
The tension in the room was building to a breaking point, and I wondered how long it would be before all the brothers and Blake turned on their father and took out Austin before he had a chance to finish the job he started.
There was only so much a family could take, and with Knight here, the odds that Austin would just disappear were growing by the second.
“Let’s get to work clearing out the kitchen. Kate will give us instructions on how to get samples.” He glared at every single one of us. “We work the problem and find a way to take the fucker down. Is that clear?”
I wasn’t sure the brothers agreed, but they didn’t argue with their father. But by the look in Michael’s eyes, he was ready to kill the fucker now. I caught a silent communication between him and Knight, and then a single nod that signaled shit was about to go down.
Fuck, I never should have moved to this town.
“Let’s move!”
After finishing at the ranch, I should have just gone to Jeff’s to stay the night, but instead, I found myself worrying about Cassidy. If what Ben was saying was true—that Austin was involved in his wife getting sick—then what else was he capable of?
Cassidy shouldn’t be on his radar, and yet, he was at her house. He fucking destroyed an entire room, and that alone set me on edge.
Which was how I ended up where I was now, staring up at the ceiling in her bed, panting hard after I fucked her within an inch of my own goddamn life.
It all started with me staring through her window, just to make sure she was okay. I crept along the border of the house, checking every window was secure, but when I stopped at the side window to her bedroom, that’s when things got heated.
Shaking her ass to music I could barely hear, she folded her laundry and put it away, all the while completely unaware that someone was staring at her through the window.
I could be anyone. A predator. A teenager. And yet, she still had those shades drawn enough for anyone to get a glimpse of her tight body.
I ground my teeth as I watched her little ass wiggling in those indecently short shorts. And worse, she wasn’t wearing a bra, which meant those nipples I loved to suck on just as she came hard on my cock were bouncing around for anyone to see.
It shouldn’t have pissed me off so much. Hell, I wasn’t even supposed to be over here.
But I was.
And now that I saw her like this, so carefree, so full of life as she did something as simple as fold laundry, I needed to be in there. To feel her clamping down on my cock as I fucked her hard. To hear those breathy moans as I sucked on her nipples.
To feel her shatter in my arms.
“Fuck it.”
I pulled the key from my pocket that she had no idea I’d made when I was here on Thanksgiving. Was it wrong? Absolutely. Did I give a shit? Not even a little.
Which should have concerned me more than anything else going on in my life. This wasn’t like me. I wasn’t a stalker or even a little crazy. I respected women’s boundaries and demanded the same in return.
But there were no boundaries with this woman. She pushed all my buttons until I became some crazy version of the man I used to be. When I demanded everything from her, she pushed back, taunting me until I snapped.
It was really all her fault, and she only had herself to blame for what I was about to do.
I snorted to myself as I inserted the key in her front door. “That’s right, Sammy. Blame the woman for your insatiable cock.”
I slipped inside, quietly shutting the door behind me and latching it. There would be no going home tonight. I was staying here, even if she kicked me in the balls for breaking into her house.
The music was no longer playing, and not a light in the house was on. In the five minutes that I decided to sneak around to her front door, let myself in, and also check to be sure no one was watching, she had gone to bed.
Most likely in those skimpy shorts.
My cock hardened in my pants at the thought of crawling into bed behind her, wedging my cock between her ass cheeks, and fucking her hard.
Yes, this really was a problem.
But fuck if I cared right now.
After slipping quietly through the house, I tore off my shirt, tossing it in the corner.
Then shucked my pants, careful not to make any noise.
The woman was completely oblivious to the fact that there was another person in her house.
Then again, she was wearing some kind of eye mask, and she had some soft music playing on the device by her bed.
Creeping around to the other side, I tugged up the covers and let myself in, noting immediately how she stiffened and her breathing halted.
Stupidly, I thought she would know immediately who I was just from my touch, which is why it surprised the hell out of me when she let out a yell and swung around, slamming her fist into my face, nearly knocking me off the bed.
“Cass—” I shouted, but it was already too late. She was on her knees, her lamp in her hands as she wielded it over her head. She swung hard, only to be stopped by the length of the cord.
As she screamed and tugged, the damn plug was stuck in the outlet behind her nightstand, spoiling her attempts to bash my head in.
Just as a smile spread over my face at the difficulty of her position, she changed tactics and charged, leaping across the bed and tackling me to the ground.
Her eye mask was only partially tugged up, so when she swung, I wasn’t even sure if she knew it was me.
“Cass—”
Her right hook slammed into my jaw at full force. My head snapped to the side just before she pounced, lifting her foot and slamming it into my side.
“Oof,” I grunted, grabbing her foot before she could kick me again. “Cassidy!” I shouted this time, halting her before she could do some real damage.
She tugged the mask all the way off her head, squinting down at me in the dark. “Sam?”
“Guilty as charged,” I muttered.
If I expected gushing or some small concern for the state I was in, I was mistaken. Instead, anger settled in the air like a heavy smoke. She stomped across the room, flicking on the overhead light as she glared down at me.
“What the hell are you doing in my house? And how did you get in? And why are you here?” she shouted.
I wasn’t sure that now was the time to tell her that I made a copy of her key. Somehow, I figured that would only get me another foot to the stomach.
“You left your door unlocked.”
Her eyes narrowed dangerously at me. “I know for a fact that I locked all my doors. Try again.”
Shoving up on one elbow, I allowed my eyes to drag over the woman’s body, taking in every curve along the way.
“Hey! My eyes are up here, and if you want to live to see tomorrow, you’ll focus on them instead of my legs!”
That wasn’t at all what I was staring at, but I wasn’t about to mention that to her. Shoving to my feet, I straightened my shirt, trying to buy some time to come up with something to say that didn’t make me sound like a creep.
“How did you get into my house?” she seethed.
There was nothing for it. Coming clean was the only way to make this right. “I had a key made.”
Her eyes widened, nearly exploding at my confession. Okay, maybe honesty wasn’t always the best policy. “You what?”
“After what happened with Austin, I wanted to make sure that I could get to you if I needed to.”
“After what happened with Austin,” she repeated.
“He threatened you!”
“He threatened me?”
“He tore your house apart!”
“He tore my house apart,” she repeated as if she was trying to make sense of what I was saying.
Which wasn’t working. Everything I told her was logical. “Is there a reason you’re just repeating what I’m saying?”
A huff of laughter left her lips, but surprisingly, she didn’t seem in a very humorous mood.
“Oh, I’m just trying to understand how your interpretation of events allows you to violate my rights, my property, and my life!
I’m wondering why a man like you, who is most definitely not my boyfriend, has any right to walk into my house and let himself into my bed! ”
My eyes narrowed at her comment.
Not her boyfriend? Most definitely not.
But doesn’t have a right to be here? Oh, there were some issues with that statement for sure.
Stalking toward her, I clenched my jaw, trying not to let the possessive words slip from my lips. I clung to my sanity, reminding myself that while she was right on some level, she was still mine in every way that mattered.
“Is that so?” The words came out with such a rumble that even I questioned my sanity.
Her nostrils flaring, she thrust her hands on her hips, making a point to stand tall in my presence. “My plug is probably ruined on my lamp. All because you broke into my house and tried to creep into my bed.”
“Your lamp is ruined because you tried to use it as a weapon. Maybe you should get a baseball bat,” I said, taking another step toward her.
“Maybe you should get the hell out of my house before I call the police.”
I chuckled at that. “Oh, baby. I have plenty of time to do whatever the hell I want with you before they show up.”
Her eyes widened, her pupils dilated, and then I pounced.
Now, twenty minutes later, I laid on her bed, panting hard as she sprawled across my chest.
It wasn’t exactly the way I saw the night going.
Then again, it was better than looking in at her through the window.