Chapter 33
Istepped out of the restaurant, breathing in the sights and sounds of the city.
It was so different being in the city versus Cape Canyon.
In CC, the air was crisp with salt, the spaces wide open, and the people pretentious from too many years with too much money.
The city was loud and bustling and intense, a world away from my life now in Byron’s estate.
Being here felt like a strange kind of freedom.
And what I’d done last night with three out of four of my favorite guys had been a kind of freedom too.
Boston’s tastes had unlocked something inside me, and inside all of us.
There were no barriers now. No boundaries.
Everyone was free to ask for what they wanted, knowing that there was nothing off limits.
When we’d returned to the hotel, I’d showered and slipped into Dacre’s room. He’d asked about the sex club and I’d told him everything. Then my sweet artistic boy had played with my soft, pliant body work of art, fucking me in the way only Dacre could with his muscular body and talented fingers.
Opting for a more low-key form of entertainment after our weekend of debauchery, the guys and I had headed out for dinner at an upscale restaurant before we were headed home.
We’d had a great time, the five of us, Boston stirring up the other guys by being able to openly hold my hand or kiss my neck at the table.
Presley had tried it too but had been shut down by his brothers.
The restaurant may have been dimly lit, but I was all too aware of how close Pres and I had come to being exposed in that dimly lit nightclub only weeks ago.
I didn’t want to find myself or Pres on the end of Byron’s wrath again.
Boston and Dacre were just inside the vestibule at the front of the restaurant, talking in low voices to each other as they pulled on their coats to leave.
Presley had hit the bathroom before we got in the limo for the long ride home, and Sinclair had run into a work acquaintance who was talking his ear off about an investment.
He kept glancing my way though, eyes filled with the promise of all the dirty and delicious things he was going to do to me on the ride home.
I stepped outside to calm myself in the night air and take in the city one last time.
This weekend had been one of the best I’d ever had. I’d never felt so loved in my life. I’d been happy from the moment Sinclair, Dacre, and Presley had become a part of my world, but now that Boston had joined our ‘band of sexual deviants’ things felt complete.
A noise that sounded like a woman’s muffled scream sounded further down the sidewalk near an opening to an alleyway. I took three tentative steps away from the restaurant, glancing back to check that Dacre and Boston were just inside the door if I needed them.
“Is someone there?” I called out, not quite at the opening of the alley.
There was no answer.
Resigned to the fact I must have misheard, I went to move back towards the restaurant when arms closed around me from behind. I leaned into it, trying to decipher whether it was Dacre, Sin, Boston, or Presley.
But something was off.
These arms were hard and foreign.
I tried to turn to see the face of their owner, but instead I was hauled off my feet.
A scream built in my throat, and a hand fumbled over my mouth, muffling the sound before I could get it out.
I was backed towards the alley, and I thrashed against the arms holding me so tight I could barely breathe.
The hand slipped, just long enough for me to scream Dacre’s name.
In seconds, all four of the guys appeared further down the street.
Their various enraged expressions were the last thing I saw as I was hauled around the building into the dark alleyway.
Whoever was holding me swung me around, carrying me further into the darkness. A large shape loomed up ahead, and as we got closer, I could make out a dark grey maintenance van with the back doors flung open.
Hell no!
There was no way I was going willingly into the back of that thing. If they got me in there, I knew my chances of surviving whatever this was would drop dramatically.
I thrashed harder, trying to swing my legs so much we toppled to the ground, but the person holding me stayed upright, forcing me closer to the open van.
I screamed over and over, forcing them to keep a hand at my mouth so it couldn’t hold onto my body, but it didn’t make a difference.
The arm around my midsection had me in a vice grip.
We were five steps from the van doors when there was a commotion from behind us. Without warning, we toppled backwards, the person holding me landing on their back in the alleyway, and their arms finally loosened from around me.
Boston loomed over us, his eyes ablaze with rage. “Roll, Dempsey. Now.”
I didn’t hesitate, rolling to my right off the chest of the person and onto the dirty, wet pavement of the alleyway. The sound of a fist hitting flesh followed by grunts of pain echoed off the walls.
Presley and Sin reached me, hauling me off the ground and surrounding me with their warmth. The most intense sense of relief washed over me. They’d come for me. Again. Just like they always did.
Dacre went to the front of the van, ripping the driver’s door open and hauling out a scrawny looking guy who was barely twenty. He slammed the kid against the side of the van and pinned him there with an arm to the throat.
“Don’t make a fucking sound right now,” Dacre warned.
My attention snapped back to Boston and the man making a wet, throaty gurgling sound where he lay on the ground with Boss still looming over him.
The guy had a neck thicker than a honeyed ham, yet Boston held him by the shirt with one hand and was pummelling his fist into his face with the other like it was nothing.
“You’re lucky I don’t snap your fucking neck!” Boston roared.
“Ivers,” Sinclair’s voice sounded calm, but there was no mistaking the rage behind his eyes. His chest was pressed to my back, and I could feel his heart hammering against me. “We need information.”
Boston turned back to the guy. “Who sent you to take her?”
The guy groaned out a sound, spitting blood onto the alley but didn’t offer up anything. Boston slammed his fist into his face again and his head snapped to the right, lolling there. His face was already covered in blood that dripped from the end of his nose.
He still didn’t speak, so Boston hit him again.
I didn’t know if he even could speak at this point.
The kid Dacre had pinned to the van attempted to protest, and Boston slammed the guy he’d been holding to the ground so hard his head bounced against the pavement.
His head whipped around, and he stormed towards the kid.
He shoved Dacre aside like he wasn’t eighty-percent muscle, gripped the kid by the shirt with both fists and slammed him against the van.
Boston was like a hot and ragey Hulk right now, and I didn’t know whether to be horrified or horny.
“Someone better start fucking talking or I’ll bury you both so far in the ground no one will ever know you existed,” Boston snarled, slamming the kid against the van again.
He let go of his shirt with his right hand, and the kid looked relieved for a moment. Then Boston’s fist connected with his cheekbone, and he howled in pain.
“Stop,” I said in the darkness.
Dacre’s gaze collided with mine, and Presley and Sinclair pressed closer to me. But Boston was so lost to his fury, I don’t think he heard me. His fist connected with the kid’s face again, an awful wet noise filling my ears and making me cringe.
“Boston,” I said, stepping out of the safety of Sin and Pres.
I reached for him, my hand brushing his arm, and when his head snapped in my direction, I startled at the intensity thrumming through his giant body.
“You don’t need to do this,” I said, my thumb stroking his arm. “He doesn’t know anything. Or if he does, he isn’t going to tell you.”
His chest heaved up and down, up and down, up and down, with his rapid breathing. His gaze was locked on mine, but he wasn’t really seeing me.
The kid’s head lolled on his neck where Boston held him pinned to the van.
“Boston, let him go.” I ran my hand along his arm to his wrist. I stroked the inside of his wrist like he was a spooked horse I was trying to soothe. “You saved me. And now we need to go. I want to get the hell out of here. Let’s go home.”
He blinked at the word home, suddenly taking me in. His gaze ran over me from head to toe, checking that I was alive and uninjured. Then he loosened his grip and the kid slid to the ground.
I placed a hand on his chest. “I’m okay, you saved me.” I nodded. “You don’t need to kill him for me.”
He stared back at me, his brow pinching. “Fuck,” he muttered quietly. Then he pulled me against his chest, wrapping his arms around me. “Fuck.”
My arms closed around his waist. “Everyone’s okay.”
He ducked his head, nodding in agreement. Then he pressed a kiss to my hair. “I thought you were gone again. Like last time.”
I pulled back. “You guys stopped them, I’m not going to disappear on you again. Not if I can help it.”
His arms tightened around me.
Dacre cleared his throat. “We have to go. None of that was quiet and someone from these apartments is bound to have called the cops.” He motioned over our heads above the alleyway.
I went to move away, but Boston pulled me back to him, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and starting in the direction of the street.
Sin slapped a hand to Boston’s shoulder as he passed and my heart swelled at the contact.
Boston had reached me first. He’d stopped the guy from throwing me in the back of the van and taking me to god’s knows fucking where.
Sinclair was grateful for it. And so was I.
By the time we’d gotten home, I’d pulled myself together. We all had.