Chapter 24
Goldie
“Not to sound mean, but your sister’s kind of—”
“An uppity ice queen?”
“Sure. Yeah. That’s definitely what I was going to say.” Not .
I felt positively Neanderthal-ish throughout dinner in one of Davis’s T-shirts and the leggings I changed into after we got home. Add to it the disdainful look Amanda couldn’t hide when I told her I’m not in school and don’t have any idea what I want to do career-wise—unlike Dolly, who is working toward earning her bachelor’s degree in Early Childhood Education. I felt about two feet tall as I scarfed down the barbecue chicken Davis cooked up on the grill while Amanda pushed the potato salad I made around her plate, never taking a bite.
Davis was the biggest Neanderthal of all, though, as the more clipped Amanda was with her accent, the longer Davis made his vowels, really drawing them out. I thought she was going to implode when he told her that we were planning on having at least eight babies but were open to the possibility of having more—a big hell no .
Davis snorts as he pulls me on top of him in the middle of the bed. “You’ll get used to her.”
“Do I have to?” I fake pout, but it breaks when I laugh.
“Brat.” Davis pops the side of my ass when I sit up to straddle his hips. He grabs my waist when I roll back and forth along his hard ridge beneath his plaid pajama pants, having kicked off my leggings before getting into bed.
“You know, their reactions were real interesting when you said I was going to stay home with our future kids.” I don’t know if it was a joke meant to tick his sister off—who had taken on this pensive quality when Vincent told us they weren’t planning on having children—but I hope not , I admit to myself, though I’m not eager to find out just yet.
“I noticed.”
“So was her reaction when Vincent tried holding her hand.” After dinner and putting Lily to bed, we sat out on the front porch with our drinks, Amanda and Vincent in the rocking chairs, while Davis and I took the swing. I sat with my legs across Davis’s lap while he rubbed my calves and slowly moved the swing back and forth. The conversation was stilted and interrupted by long bouts of silence between the siblings.
Davis grunts. “How about we stop talking about my sister while you’re riding my dick, yeah?”
I laugh and concede, getting Davis really worked up, grinding on him as I stroke his chest and belly, then tease the sensitive skin along his waistband as if I’m going to pull his pants down before I stop with an exaggerated yawn. I lean down, give him a peck on the lips, and then roll off of him onto my side, facing the wall. “Goodnight. Sleep tight.”
“What…Goldie?”
I yawn audibly and smack my lips as I burrow under the comforter. Davis tries to roll me over to face him, but I resist, scooting closer to the edge of the bed.
“Goldie.”
“Hmm?”
Davis tries to spoon me from behind, but I move away.
“Baby, seriously? What are you doing?”
“I’m going to sleep, duh.”
He sounds genuinely perplexed when he asks, “Why?”
I grin like a fiend, thankful he can’t see my expression in the dark when I say, “No sex until I get on birth control.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“‘Night, ‘night.”
Davis makes a frustrated huff, rolling away from me onto his back, muttering to himself, though he keeps one hand gripping my top thigh. I grin all the while until my eyes drift closed.
* * *
My eyes fly open when a heavy body rolls on top of mine, my belly flat on the mattress, my cheek smashed to the pillow. A man’s large hand covers my mouth, muffling my frightened yelp as the man snaps his hips back, dragging his thick cock out halfway, then drives into me. I arch my back, attempting to tilt my hips to accept him deeper with his next thrust.
“Ah, fuck, baby, you’re finally awake.”
My lashes flutter in the dark at the huskiness of Davis’s voice, my pussy pulsing with arousal. I have no idea how long he’s had his way with me in my sleep, but I love it, I love it, I—
“Going to make Daddy cum so hard with you moving your hips like that.”
I freeze.
Fuck .
I should have known.
I try to yank his hand away from my mouth, already cursing him out behind his palm. A stinging slap to the side of my ass makes me curse that much louder, and he flattens his hand over my lips.
Davis growls in my ear, “No use in fighting me now.” There’s a dark element to his chuckle afterward. “I’ve already cum inside you twice. This is just the first time I’ve gotten rough enough to wake you up.” He snaps his hips back and punches in all the way. “So you might as well enjoy it.”
I buck beneath him, managing to fight him off just enough to get my knees underneath me…so I can properly arch my back, perfecting the angle of my hips so that his next thrust will have me singing with pleasure.
Davis braces a hand next to my face and grips my hip with the other to hold me in place so that I don’t rock forward the next time he drives into me. “I knew it. Fucking knew you would react like this.”
As much as I hate his arrogance, I’m too close to climaxing to stop now. And if he’s telling the truth about already cumming inside me, then he’s right—there’s no use fighting… not that I wanted to, anyway.
“Fuck me, Daddy,” I beg. “I need to cum.”
And he does, digging his fingers into my hip as the bed itself rocks back and forth with the force of his thrusts, accidentally banging the headboard against the wall until he dials it back a little so Lily doesn’t wake up.
I twist and bury my face in my pillow as I moan, then scream out my orgasm, heat washing over me, my thighs trembling harder the longer I try to stay in position until Davis finds his release. As soon as he does, his body jerking on top of mine, I finally relax my legs and allow Davis to pin my body to the mattress with his cock still inside me. I’m high and floaty from my orgasm, drowsy with Davis’s body heat. I make a noise of protest, though, since I need to use the restroom.
As soon as I’m done and open the bathroom door, Davis is there, pushing his pants back down to pull his cock out while backing me up against the vanity after closing the door.
“Again?” I ask as if I’m annoyed when I’m anything but.
“Oh, I’m not through with you yet, baby.” Davis picks me up to set me on the edge of the counter with his hips between my thighs. “Got three hours until sunrise, and I plan on using every one of them.” He slants his lips over mine before slipping his hand under my shirt, finding my clit with the pad of his middle finger after slipping his hand under the waistband of my clean panties.
I swivel my hips and drop my head back against the mirror as he moves lower to drive two fingers in and out of me slowly. “Daddy, oh god, just like that,” I moan when he curls his fingers.
Davis stops abruptly and clutches his bare chest over his heart, a thunderbolt of pain piercing mine at the sound of the front door slamming shut. Davis whips open the bathroom door. The flood lights on the front exterior of the house are glaringly bright through the window, illuminating Lily’s empty crib and our open bedroom door. I scream my rage and grief.
Screeching tires reach our ears just as Davis yanks his pants up and runs into Vincent, who comes charging out of the spare bedroom with Amanda in her silky black pajama shorts and cami right behind him. Vincent yells, “What the fuck is going on?”
“Someone took our daughter!” Davis shouts, and I’ve never heard such devastation in a man’s voice before. He shoves Vincent out of the way with me right on his heels.
I slap the fucking useless, silent alarm pad by the front door, setting off the ear-piercing house alarm when I hit the red button, knowing the cops will immediately be notified. Somehow, someway, someone got past our new locks and alarm system, and I’d stake my life that Mrs. Fitzroy is behind it.
And she is going to fucking pay.
I rush back to the bedroom, screaming at Amanda and Vincent to get out of my way so I can grab our cell phones and yank open my nightstand drawer.
Amanda gasps, and Vincent shouts with panic, “Is that a fucking gun?” when I run back through the house and out the front door, counting the small blessing that it’s stopped raining.
I throw Davis’s phone at him through the Buick’s open window, and he reverses in a circle until he’s turned around on the lawn, flinging leaves and muddy grass behind his tires when he takes off like a slingshot down the driveway, turning right onto the wet road with squealing tires.
With no idea which way the kidnapper—or kidnappers —went with Lily, I climb into the Ford with my gun on the seat to my right. Just as I’ve got the truck turned around, Amanda climbs in on the passenger side.
“What are you doing?” I scream, my heart slamming into my ribs, though I’m already speeding down the driveway before she’s closed the door. Vincent is hoofing it on foot behind us, waving his arms and yelling something in the rear view mirror.
Amanda is eerily calm when she picks up my gun and asks, “Do you know how to use this?”
“Yes!”
“On a moving target?”
“Fuck!” I slam my hand repeatedly against the steering wheel after miraculously managing to keep the Ford on all four tires when I take a left too fast onto the road. “No.”
“I do.” She inspects the gun while I charge down the pitch black road with my high beams on, going as fast as I can without losing control of the truck. She answers my phone when it rings, putting it on speaker while I keep my head on a swivel for anything suspicious, like the car that used our driveway to make a U-turn.
Davis is yelling into the phone, and I can’t make sense of what he’s saying. But Amanda can. She calmly tells me, “Take a right at the fork.”
I nearly piss myself when I make the turn past the gas station on the corner, lit up by flickering neon signs, and pass two cop cruisers and a big ass SUV with their red and blue lights spinning atop their vehicles going the opposite direction. The two cruisers continue on, turning left toward our house, while the SUV makes a U-turn in the empty gas station parking lot, bouncing over the curb, and then pulls up fast on my tail.
I don’t care what happens or if I end up going to jail for leading the cop on a high-speed chase. I’m not pulling this truck over until I find my baby.
Davis
Acid burns deep in my chest, eating away at muscle and bone, when I take a right at the first stop sign after pulling onto the road from my driveway. Following my gut instinct at its meaning, I turn the Buick around fast, the acid receding. I let it guide my way at each flashing red or yellow traffic light and stop sign.
Thank god for voice dialing because I can’t spare a second to look away from the wet, winding roads to call Wyatt, who says he’ll put the word out that my daughter is missing and we’re hunting down the bastard who took her.
Amanda answers the phone when I call Goldie next, just when I catch a glimpse of red brake lights up ahead that disappear out of view behind the dense trees lining the roads. When they make a left turn, the back end fishtails dangerously, making my stomach lurch. That’s the car. It has to be. Which means they’re driving erratically with my daughter in the car , putting her life at risk.
I’m going to kill them for this.
Goldie is cursing in the background, and as soon as Amanda tells me where they are, I know where they need to go to catch up to us. I drop the phone on my lap to bark out each direction as I clench the steering wheel with white-knuckled fists, following the brake lights.
I plead with the Buick’s old engine not to give out, praying for it to go faster as I slam the gas pedal to the floor, catching up to the suspicious gray sedan that had pulled up our driveway. I fucking knew it!
I follow the sedan turn by turn, cutting off Amanda to call Wyatt back to give him our location, hoping he can head the bastard off from his place. Fury erupts when I realize the car isn’t taking last-minute turns. The driver knows these roads and how to navigate them, which means someone from this area has betrayed us, someone Fitzroy could have paid off.
I keep pace, debating what the fuck I should do. My first thought is to pull a pit maneuver, but I’ll fucking die if I cause a crash that hurts my Lily Jo. Headlights up ahead race toward us, and just when my soul about leaves my body, thinking there’s going to be a head-on collision, the gray sedan turns off the road into a clearing when the tree line breaks, their back end bottoming out repeatedly until the bumper is hanging off, dragging behind them, as it speeds through the field with me right on their ass.
Wyatt’s lifted black truck heads the sedan off in front like I was hoping, his massive tires eating up the dirt and distance easier and faster than the car, making the driver steer diagonally to avoid a crash until Wyatt picks up a burst of speed, black smoke spilling from his exhaust in my headlights, to veer his truck sideways in front of the sedan, coming to a dead stop. The car slams on their brakes but can’t find the traction needed to stop in time to avoid T-boning Wyatt’s driver’s side door.
I swing the Buick perpendicular behind the kidnapper’s vehicle right before they put the sedan in reverse. They slam back into my passenger side, but the Buick holds long enough for me to bolt out of it and jump over my hood to wrench on the driver’s side door handle. And when it doesn’t give way, I punch the window over and over again near the edge where it’s the weakest, splitting and breaking my knuckles until the window cracks and finally gives way.
I don’t feel an ounce of pain, only animalistic rage and adrenaline when I reach through to grab the driver—a skinny male—around the neck and haul him backward through the window while he kicks and twists. Mrs. Fitzroy is in the passenger seat screeching obscenities louder than my Lily Jo crying from the car seat buckled in the back.
I want to go to my baby more than I want to live, but first, I have to kill this bastard who betrayed us, dressed in all black with a ski mask over his head. Make sure he can never take another child again.
He’s doing his best to fight me off, a wiry motherfucker with more strength than he should possess as he tries to punch up and back into my face. But the beast inside me that needs to protect my family at all costs is stronger, and the bastard’s glancing blows are nothing compared to what I’m going to do to him. I get my arm under his chin, crushing his windpipe in a headlock as I roar and drag him further away from the vehicle. He digs his heels into the ground and stops trying to punch me, instead clawing at my arm, gouging my fresh cuts.
High beams and flashing red and blue lights from the road behind my car nearly blind me as the truck at the front turns sharply into the clearing and almost flips. My momentary distraction costs me, and the guy elbows me hard twice in my gut, punching the air right out of my lungs, loosening my hold on him. He gets only two steps away before I tackle him to the ground. I sit on his back, get my arm around his neck again, and yank his head back like I’m trying to pop it off his shoulders.
Tonight, this traitor is going to die.