Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
You had me at ‘we’ll make it look like an accident.’
—Beau to Magnolia
MAGNOLIA
“Are you sure?”
I tapped him on the belly with my toe from where he was standing at the end of the bed.
I was still in bed, having not gotten up with him when he’d informed me he was about to go get some grocery shopping done for the winter storm that was set to hit tonight after he dropped Iris off at school and went to his own school to sign some paperwork for next year.
He’d planned on doing it tomorrow, having wanted to spend the day with me in bed being lazy.
But the winter storm had forced him to abandon that idea.
The winter storm was likely about to snow us in. At least for a day, if not two.
And since I didn’t know a damn thing about Montana and their winter storms, I chose to let him do his thing and tell me how it was going to go.
That meant that he was headed for supplies and running all his errands today.
But the way he made tomorrow sound, I was a little bit excited to be snowed in with him.
I didn’t think there’d be anything more beautiful than looking out Beau’s big front windows and seeing the mountains covered in snow.
Another thing he’d mentioned that he was doing was buying some moving boxes so that Merrill could box up some of our things while he was running said errands.
When I’d offered to go over there and do it myself, he’d said no.
I needed a day of rest, and Merrill had agreed.
Plus, she was still mad and freaked out over what had happened. She wanted me at home safe, just in case.
That was also why I was relegated to staying at home while he went to do the errands. He wanted me home safe, just in case.
I wasn’t sure what they thought was going to happen, but I’d acquiesced after making sure that he would grab all my favorite snowed-in snacks.
But, according to him, I was going to have to be careful, because Montana got snow a lot, and I would get myself in trouble if I ate nine thousand calories each time it snowed.
I’d only laughed, because he was right.
I was an athlete. It was ingrained in me, deep down in my very core, to eat somewhat healthy all the time. It probably would never go away.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t have a few really good cheat days here and there.
He caught my foot in his hand and massaged the arches, causing me to moan.
My free leg fell open, exposing my naked state to him.
His eyes caught the move and zeroed in on my pussy.
“Lookin’ a little wet there, darling.”
I shrugged. “I was watching you get dressed for the last ten minutes.”
He’d taken his sweet ass time when he saw me watching, teasing me in the most delicious of ways.
I’d never thought putting on clothes could be erotic, but my man had proved me wrong.
My phone beeped for the millionth time, and I rolled over to look at it, ready to smash it into the wall.
If the school didn’t also have this number, I might consider it.
My agent had called me four times, letting me know about all the news stations that wanted to host me. The team manager had also called to let me know that there would be a team interview at the White House, if all the team wanted to go.
This vibration was a text from Merrill.
Merrill:
Your vibrator drawer is overflowing. What on Earth?
I couldn’t help but smile.
Me:
I was trying to find the perfect match. One that reminded me of Beau.
Merrill:
Did you find it?
Me:
Nope. Nothing can compare to the real thing.
The sheet slid up over my ass, and before I could blink, I was being pulled down to the edge of the bed by my ankles.
“So you were trying to replace me, huh?” He came down on his fists on either side of my head, doing a sort of push-up to bring his mouth down against my ear.
Goose bumps trailed down my naked spine as he spoke against my skin.
“Nothing could replace you,” I admitted, pressing my butt up against him. “Nothing.”
He growled against my ear, causing my nipples to pebble despite being buried in the bed.
I heard his zipper lower, then he was pressing the heat of himself against my ass.
A low moan escaped my lips as he pushed slowly inside of me, filling me up from behind.
“Shhh,” he said. “We don’t want to wake her before we’re ready.”
God, no, I didn’t.
I needed him. I needed to finish. I needed him to fill me full of his seed.
“Hurry,” I pleaded.
He didn’t hurry.
He took his time, slowly filling me before pulling out just as slow.
My hands fisted in the sheets, and I had to hang on with desperation that would’ve surprised me before I’d met Beau.
Pre-Beau Magnolia had no clue what Beau would do to her carefully planned-out life.
“You feel tight this way,” he said. “Your feet not touching the floor. Helpless. Unable to do a single thing as I take you any way I want you.”
He was right.
With my feet not touching the floor, he was able to do whatever he wanted to do to me. The helplessness was exciting as hell.
“Beau,” I pleaded. “Please.”
He slammed into me hard, causing a cry to leave my lips.
“Shhh,” he repeated, placing his hand over mine. “She’ll wake up.”
I moaned as he repeated the thrust.
Hard but not fast.
Deep and filling.
Slow withdrawal.
It was the most erotic thing I’d ever experienced in my life.
With each thrust of his cock, his balls would slap against my clit, making me all but crave each thrust.
My hands were fisted so hard in the sheets that they were cramping, but I didn’t let go. Couldn’t. Not when he placed a knee in the bed for a little more stability and really started to thrust.
It was exactly what I needed, and I came within a few seconds of his changing pace.
I screamed into the mattress since I’d lost his hand, my vision going white as I squeezed my eyes tightly shut.
“Oh my god!” I cried out.
His hands fisted on my hips, and then he was pouring himself inside of me, his abdomen jerking with each jet of his cum.
“Beau!” Iris yelled. “It’s time for school!”
I buried my head into the mattress again as Beau said, “Fuck.”
He pulled out quickly, then slapped my ass before tucking himself back into his jeans.
“I’ll get her to school.” He chuckled. “Text me if you find anything else that you might need to eat.”
I turned my head to the side and watched him clean up in the bathroom. He stopped only long enough on his way out to kiss me soundly, then they were gone.
I lay there for a long time before getting up to clean myself up.
I was in the shower, rinsing the shampoo from my hair, when I heard a strange sound.
Wiping the suds out of my eyes, I opened them to find…
“Nice of you to finally pay attention.”
As I stared at him in shock, the rest of the shampoo washed out of my hair.
I was frozen in terror.
Naked, alone, and with no way to defend myself.
“Get out,” he said, rubbing his crotch. “Let’s talk about how you plan to fix this.”
I stared at Cain, only then realizing that there was something different about him.
He looked taller. A little less refined.
I turned the shower off and reached for my towel, but he knocked it out of my hands before I could wrap it around myself. I heard it drop to the floor, and my heart started to pound as I used my hands to cover myself as best as I could.
His eyes raked up the length of me. “Don’t know what my brother ever saw in Rose when he could’ve had you.”
Rose.
His brother.
“You’re not Cain?”
“Cain had an unfortunate tumble off the mountain,” he drawled. “Too cocky for his own good sometimes. I’m Able. Here to finish what he started.”
My insides clenched in fear.
“Didn’t realize that you were naked, though.” He grinned. “Great bonus.”
Disgust rolled through me. “I find it appalling that you would scare a woman this way.”
He grinned. “Want to know what I find appalling?”
I didn’t necessarily care.
But to stall what I saw as inevitable, seeing as he was rubbing his crotch as he talked to me, I asked, “What?”
“You hiding my brother’s kid from him,” he sneered. “That’s what I find appalling.”
“I didn’t hide anything from anyone,” I lied.
His brows rose. “No?”
He backed me into the corner, and my butt pressed against something metal behind me.
A towel rod. It was a metal rod that screwed on using an old piping system that they generally used in plumbing. I remembered admiring it while I was using the bathroom the other day, my gaze riveted to how it worked. Noting that it twisted on instead of attaching with screws.
I dropped my hand from my pubic area and lifted my knee while I reached behind me to see if I could get the metal rod free.
It didn’t give a single inch, but I didn’t give up trying.
The muscles in my hand protested as he continued to taunt me.
“You’re a liar.” He chuckled. “You don’t think that we’re aware of everything that happens to the people that we care about?”
I snorted. “Is that what you do? Care about your women?”
His grin was quick, there and gone so fast that it nearly gave me whiplash.
“It works for us,” he mused. “Now, tell me. Where is my wayward niece today?”
The rod gave, and I winced at the sound that it made when I twisted it.
Metal against metal.
Shit!
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “How did you know that I was here, anyway?”
“I’m more than just a pretty face.” He started to unzip his pants.
The metal gave way just as he dropped his pants to the floor, exposing himself.
He reached for me, and I reacted on instinct, swinging the metal pipe at his head with a viciousness that I hoped would knock him out.
It didn’t.
Not on the first swing.
But on the fourth, as he was lying on the floor? That one did.
I knocked him out cold, his pants still wrapped around his ankles from where he was about to hurt me in a way that I couldn’t think about yet.
He hit the floor with a solid thud, his face smashing into the toilet when he hit.
I hurdled myself over him, picked up my phone, and dialed Beau.
He answered on the second ring. “You find something else you wanted?”
“Beau…”
Fifteen minutes later, I was dressed fully and waiting for Beau by the front door.
Beau came through the door like an avenging angel and saw the man tied to the toilet in the hallway seconds later.
He saw the man’s pants still around his ankles—because there was no way that I was getting close enough to them to pull them up—and all but flew toward him.
As he did, something green was knocked off the counter to my right, and I saw the pliers that I’d left in my coat pocket. The band spreading pliers that I’d held for Holly after she’d banded the goats to rid them of their balls in the future.
I’d accidentally come home with them that day, leaving them on the shelf next to the bathroom vanity.
The little green bands that’d been in the unsealed package scattered across the floor, and I saw the moment that Beau made note of them.
His grin was evil as he snatched the pliers and the first band he saw, one that happened to be on the tiled floor next to his feet.
I held my mouth closed as he stretched that band as far as he could go and…
Yep, he put that band around Cain’s brother’s balls and let go.
The scream that left his mouth was damn hilarious. He sounded like a wounded goat as he screamed.
Beau left him there after checking to make sure that he was secure, then walked to me and caught me around the shoulders, pulling me into his side.
The door behind us burst open, and Black was there, taking in the scene.
Thirty minutes later, Able McDuff was on the way to the police station, despite him complaining that his balls hurt.
Everyone chalked it up to being kicked in the balls.
Hopefully they’d find out too late that he wasn’t just spouting nonsense. He really had his nuts banded. And it would be too late for him to ever use them again.
Needless to say, when it was time to get Iris from school, I was forced to go with Beau. I also went to the store with him and got way more junk food than he would have had he gone by himself.
But I was emotional and eating my feelings.
It wasn’t until later that night, as we lay in bed watching the snow fall, that Beau admitted, “That was the worst moment of my life. Hearing that you’d been violated that way.”
Just as he said that, his phone rang.
Since it was Black, he picked it up. “Yeah?”
“Good news and bad news,” he said. “Good news, Able McDuff lost his nuts. Took him to the ER, and they were fucked up. Also good news, he was charged with breaking and entering, attempted rape, as well as false reporting for what he did in Texas. He won’t be getting out anytime soon.”
“And the bad?” Black asked, his chest rumbling underneath where my face rested against his chest.
“The John Doe that we couldn’t identify was Cain McDuff. He’s not doing good. Lost a leg, an arm, and is in a coma. Doctors don’t think he’ll be cognitively ‘there.’ At least, that was what I heard the doctors say to the father when I was letting him know about his other son.”
“And what about Mr. McDuff Senior?”
“Headed home. He told the doctors he only came because he was at a ski resort in Vail and thought he’d run by on his way home.”
Beau chuckled, causing his chest to bounce beneath my face.
I bit him lightly, and his hands fisted in my hair.
“Is it over?” I asked once he hung up.
“We’ll keep an eye on the patriarch of the McDuff family. But it sure looks like it.”
I melted into him. “Thank God.”
He hugged me tight. “I don’t ever want to be scared like that again.”
Me, neither.
“The rest of our life is going to go exactly how we want it to, Beau,” I promised. “You’ll see.”
And I was right.
I got everything I always dreamed of. The only thing missing was my big sister.
But she lived on in my heart and in Iris.
Every day that she grew, I got glimpses of who my sister once was when she was happy and whole.
It may not be what I expected out of our life, but Beau was able to make our lives into something worth living.
One flying fact, dad joke, or act of service at a time.