Surrender: Saving Setora Book 6 Read online

  “Well, when your men found them, did you find the house the poachers took me to?”

  “We did, but not for days after I’d brought your mother back here.”

  My heart started to sink. “Did you happen to see a little girl with them? A little girl with red hair?”

  He shook his head. “By the time we found that house, there was no one there except an old man who’d moved in with a slave as old as him. The traitors who’d been hiding slaves there had already left days before. We found them in another slave house in Prin. Why do you ask?”

  My mother listened, looking curious.

  “I…” How to explain? I didn’t know if Cherry would want him to know about her, but I had to say something. “When I left my mother and Dax the day they were taken, I was trying to help a little girl who’d been living in a house near us. I got her out, but, being a child then, I didn’t exactly think it through. We left without any food or water or anything. On our way back, that…that’s when the poachers found us.”

  My mother’s brows shot up. “So that’s why you left. I thought they took you from our house.”

  I nodded, feeling suddenly foolish. Guilt stabbed at me.

  “Not even seven years old, and you were already a hero.” Her eyes shined with pride and she took my hand.

  “I’m sorry,” Mayhem said softly. “We were just too late.”

  Unwilling to make him feel worse, I suppressed a sad sigh as I pieced things together in my mind. Those poachers must have taken Cherry to a new hideout where she’d ended up trapped for years before they’d sold her to that captain. Later, while in his clutches, the Legion had saved her and brought her to the Grotto, and to her grandfather, Dice. After everything she’d been through, and then to lose Crash…

  “I’m sorry to have put a damper on the evening, General. Mother.”

  “Don’t be.” My mother stroked my cheek.

  “D’s right. I only wish we had made it to that house sooner. I’m glad you made it out.”

  “You all right, Princess?” Pretty Boy asked when I went over to the couch he and Steel were sitting on.

  I plastered on a smile as he pulled me down into his lap and squeezed me close. “I am now, Master.” I laid my head on his shoulder, letting his strength and warmth wrap around me, chasing away the memories and the loss that cut at my heart.

  “You sure?” He tilted my chin up so that I had to meet his piercing blue gaze.

  “Yes, Master. I just have a lot on my mind. Seeing my mother after all this time. Knowing my brother is gone.”

  He nodded slowly and brushed my temple with his lips. He linked his hands together on my hip and rocked me. “I’m sorry about Dax,” he whispered.

  “I know you are, Master.” I cupped his cheek. “Thank you.”

  We sat companionably while the men talked, drank, and smoked Mayhem’s expensive cigars. I snuggled into Pretty Boy’s warmth and let myself forget about the past few days, letting myself just feel him.

  “You’ll have lots of time to spend with your mother until the doctor Mayhem’s waiting for shows up,” Steel said gently from beside us, touching me under the chin.

  “I know, Master.”

  His expression lightened as he looked at her, then at me. “You know, it’s kind of freaky, seeing how much you two look alike. It’s like looking at twins. You’re almost as similar as Sinister and Savage over there.” He nodded to the two blond one-time Brothers of Brimstone who were laughing and joking with T-Man. “‘Cept for the age gap. It’s gotta be weird, Petal. Is it weird?”

  “Not to me. To me she’s just my mother. But I guess I see why it would be strange for everyone else.”

  Twins were exceedingly rare, if not as rare as females. To most, looking at two identical people, like carbon copies, had to be odd.

  “Well, we’re lucky, in a way,” Steel said. “We get to see what you’ll look like twenty years from now.”

  I laughed and settled my head on Pretty Boy’s shoulder again. With these two, my troubles always seemed smaller and so far away.

  My Kai and my Steel.

  I let the special secret between Pretty Boy and me, the knowledge of his real name, seep into me, warming my heart, along with the love for him I still hid. That and Steel’s promise to marry me, however impossible it might be to follow through on.

  I might not feel like I understood Sheriff, but I felt connected to Pretty Boy and Steel, and to Hawk as well.

  Looking over to where Hawk sat with Sheriff, I smiled. He wasn’t drinking like the others, but he was puffing on a fat cigar. I wouldn’t have thought he’d ever been one to smoke cigars, and indeed, he puffed on it as though it was his first time, holding it between his thumb and forefinger.

  “You’re holding it wrong, you know,” Sheriff told him with a grin.

  “Oh, is there a right way to hold one of these?” Hawk’s eyes sparkled.

  “Yes, dammit.” Sheriff held up his, between his forefinger and middle finger. “You’re talking to an expert here. You don’t hold it like this, otherwise you look like an idiot.”

  Hawk smiled—a real, full-on smile, one so wide it looked out of place on him. He changed his hold on the cigar so that he copied Sheriff. “Better, General?” He winked at me.

  “Nope.” Sheriff laughed. “You still look like a fruitcake. Put it down before you hurt yourself.”

  Instead, Hawk took a puff and blew the smoke in Sheriff’s face.

  Watching Sheriff tease Hawk, the annoyance and distance I’d felt for him earlier melted, as it always did when I watched him behaving like this with his men. He was so relaxed, so at ease, it reminded me he was their friend as much as their leader. Seeing this side of him also drove home that there were two sides to him. One, the brutal taskmaster who saw me as his property and had to run his club with an iron fist, and the other, a man who took care of me and his club, both with his whole being.

  The Yantu were supposed to believe that a man had two sides to him, one, the emotional being, the other a man who had no emotions, who was cold as stone and faced death without flinching. This belief was so deeply ingrained in them that they even had a god-like representation of it, a two headed dragon called Gargathor. The dragon’s two faces represented the duality of man. Hawk was the one who believed in two people in every male, and yet to me, it seemed as though it was Sheriff who existed in such a duality. Only in him did I see that division so clearly. Only, I never knew which of the two I would see at any time. The notion left me feeling perpetually adrift where he was concerned, always without an anchor. I’d always feel as if I was so close to him, yet so far away.

  As I sat wrapped in Pretty Boy’s closeness, it suddenly hit me why I could give my heart to Hawk so freely even when he held so much of himself back, while I couldn’t do the same for Sheriff. It was because I knew why Hawk held back. That he chose to based on his faith. When Hawk withdrew, I could see it coming. I understood why, and I knew it wasn’t because of me. Sheriff ran so hot and cold, hot enough to scald one moment, wanting all of me, and then pulling away the next. I could rarely tell why. There was a certain predictability to Hawk’s shifts, and they felt necessary. Sheriff didn’t offer the same assurance.

  “Where are you, Princess?” Pretty Boy whispered into my hair, drawing my attention back to him.

  “Sorry, Master.” I decided not to ruin the moment with him. “I was just watching Sheriff teach Hawk how to smoke.” I nodded at them with a genuine laugh.

  “Are you getting tired, Petal?” Steel asked.

  “A little.” But I was also comfortable, and the idea of moving wasn’t something I wanted to entertain.

  “Well, don’t fall asleep on us, Princess.” Pretty Boy rubbed my shoulders. “We don’t want Julian to show up again.”

  I shuddered. “I won’t.”

  “I’ll take you to bed in a bit, Petal.”

  I nodded. Spend the night with Steel? I’d move anywhere he wanted for that.

  But the
fatigue passed, and we stuck around for a couple more hours. With the men, or at least Pretty Boy and Sheriff considerably drunk, we left the smoking room, Steel with his arm around me. My mother met us at the doors and Steel and Pretty Boy went on ahead without me.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, my dear.” My mother gave me one last hug. I swore that would never get old.

  “I’m so glad I found you, Mother.”

  “Me too, child. Me too. Now go catch up to those two before they come looking for you.”

  I left her with Mayhem and hurried after Pretty Boy and Steel, who were already headed toward Steel’s rooms.

  “Not so fast, sweetheart.” Sheriff snagged my arm before I could turn the corner after them. “I want a minute with you.”

  At the hunger in his voice, a confusing mix of excitement and dread made a tight fist in my belly. Why did the man always have to leave me feeling so unbalanced? Which side of him would I see now?

  “Are you coming, woman?” Pretty Boy called. “Oh.” He grinned when he saw Sheriff.

  “She’ll be along in a minute, you two.” He trapped my elbow in his grip and strode a little ways back down the hall.

  “Master, where—?”

  Before I could finish, he pushed me into an empty room. In seconds I was crushed between a wall and his frame.

  “Master—”

  “Shut your mouth, Setora.”

  His mouth claimed mine, hard and hot and brutal. There was no one in the hall that I could hear, but the door to the room stood open, and I knew at any moment someone could come along and see me pinned to the wall by the Dark Legion’s general who, once more, didn’t seem to care who saw us. I wanted to be angry at him, but my body didn’t seem to be listening. My knees buckled. Raw need and the thrill that we could be caught made my skin heat to a feverish pitch.

  Sheriff pried my lips apart with his, and his tongue darted in, sending spears of heat all the way to my toes. The kiss threatened to consume me, to scour away my whole world until there was only him.

  I was drowning in my own unrequited need.

  My knees grew weaker, and I tried to regain my footing. He must have thought I was trying to fight him, because he shoved his knee between my legs, pressing me harder against the wall.

  There was no fighting this man. He was as impenetrable as iron, as dark and untouchable as the shadow he could cast over my world without warning. With nothing else to do but surrender, and unsure I wanted to escape, I tilted my head to the side, letting him take what was his.

  Sheriff pinned my hands against the wall above my head. I whimpered, and his grip tightened until it almost hurt.

  Why did he always have to upend my world just when it was starting to make sense?

  When he finally broke the kiss, he dropped his lips to my neck and sucked hard. I gasped, squirming uselessly against him. His hands slid away from mine only to undo the lower string on my cadris top and shove the top up above my breasts. His palms squeezed them, making me needier.

  “You drive me mad, Little Spy. You know that, don’t you?”

  His hand slid upward, cupping my throat. Holding me in place, adding just enough pressure to remind me what he could do to me if he chose.

  Unsure what to say, I just closed my eyes and let him take this where he wanted.

  Sheriff pulled back and I opened my eyes, instantly lost in his dark gaze. His mouth drew close to mine, heating my lips without touching them while he rolled my nipples slowly between his fingers. I stared at him, desperately trying to grasp a hold on reality and the control that was suddenly so far out of my reach.

  “Master, why did you do that?” I moaned softly.

  “Do what?”

  “At the table. In front of everyone.”

  The twist of his lips was deliciously evil. “You haven’t figured it out, have you?”

  “Figured what out, Master?”

  He growled in my ear. “You want to know why I almost made you come in front of the whole room back there?” He slid his hand back around my throat. “Because. I want you all to myself. I don’t want you to love anyone else. I don’t want you to need to be anywhere else, or to see another future other than the one with me.”

  “I don’t understand. Master, you don’t want me to be with Pretty Boy or Steel or Hawk? I thought…I thought…”

  Something inside my heart threatened to shatter. He wouldn’t…

  “That’s not what I mean. I’m not talking about them. You belong to the Four.”

  “Then what are you trying to tell me?”

  He let out a long breath and it fanned my face with the faint scent of whiskey. I loved that scent on him.

  “It’s fucking stupid, I know. But I saw the way you were looking at your mother. The way you hold her. I heard you say you wished you could stay with her.”

  Possession dripped from his voice.

  I stared. “You’re jealous of my mother? Master, that’s ridiculous.”

  “I know. But it doesn’t change anything. I saw you wrapped up in her, like there was no one else. I know you haven’t given all of yourself to me. I saw you with her, and something inside me woke up. I’m like an animal with you, Setora, a selfish, greedy animal who wants you to see only me. Only the Grotto, only the Four. I see you falling in love with the idea of your old life, with her, and I want to lock you away and never let you out.”

  The words slammed home, violent and fierce and real, and tearing me in two. Half of me wanted to run, to hide from him, while the other half felt weak at the idea of his possessing me on such a level. That part wanted him to imprison me with his will alone. Hawk had said Sheriff wanted me to be his Old Lady, but Sheriff wasn’t talking about that. His words didn’t sound like the love Steel and I had. They sounded much darker, and yet, here in this moment, I couldn’t make myself care enough to escape even if he’d have let me.

  There was nothing I could say to soothe the beast in him, so I just melted into him, grasping at his shoulders, his back, his cut. “Take what you need from me, Master.”

  He chuckled, but it was a broken sound. “Always the fucking hero. Always trying to save me. I did what I did back there because I wanted you to know—to remember—you are mine, and you’re never getting away from us.”

  “I’ll never leave you, Master. You don’t have to worry about that. I’ve accepted my life with the Four. I want it.”

  A deep, almost irritated rumble left him, as if my assurance only stoked the fire. I didn’t pretend not to understand why. While promising devotion to his men, his club and him, I was stopping just short of telling him I was his, the way he wanted. I was letting him know I belonged to and cared for the Four, without saying I had feelings for him specifically.

  “Don’t play with me, Setora.” He undid my pants just as he had at the dinner table and slid his hand with a torturous slowness inside the front of them. I spread my legs without even considering my actions and his fingers delved between my legs, stroking my already slick sex. “You will give yourself to me. All of yourself. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “I told you, I can’t, Master.”

  His fingers touched my lips. “Yes. Yes, you can, and you will.”

  “Master.”

  His mouth covered mine, marauding, searing. I whimpered again, lost, left with nothing to do but put my head back and let myself be consumed by his kiss.

  Sheriff stroked my clit slowly, circling the aching bud with his fingers until it ached to the point of pain. His tongue lapped at my mouth, hot, hungry licks.

  My heart pounded in my ears, my whole body feverish with need. I rocked into his touch. He slid his fingers inside.

  When his lips left mine this time, he bit my ear.

  “Master…” I didn’t know if I was asking him to stop or to keep going until I came.

  He ignored me either way. Removing his fingers, he shoved his hands down the back of my pants, pushing the cloth to my hips.

  Was he going to fuck me, right here
in the hall? Disbelief, mortification, and wild excitement tore at me.

  But he didn’t. Instead, his fingers stroked my clit and then thrust inside me so deep and hard I nearly cried out for all to hear. I pushed at him, not because I didn’t want him, but because I was terrified my mother or Mayhem might be close enough to realize what was happening in here.

  “Master, someone will…some…”

  Sheriff’s other hand covered my mouth while he thrust his fingers in and out of me savagely. I did scream then, but the sound was muted by his palm. Somehow, the feel of him making me come right there, coupled with his hand cutting off any sound I made only drove me crazier. Even his cold, hard silence served as fuel to the fire, stoking my need for this brutal pirate who had all of me in his grip.

  I rocked my hips into his touch, my body surrendering with a will of its own. His fingers thrust harder, faster.

  I couldn’t tell if he was angry with me or if his roughness was just the beast he’d mentioned unleashing its need upon me. It was impossible to read him.

  My orgasm raced closer. I screamed into his palm and he pressed it harder to my mouth. His love, if it could be called that, was all jagged edges and cutting knives, always on the verge of slashing me to ribbons, even while it tried to save us both.

  An instant before I came, he slid his fingers out. He took his hand slowly off my mouth.

  The ruined orgasm drifted away, unspent, and I mourned its loss.

  “Master, what are you doing? Why did you stop?”

  He smirked at me, taking his time as he straightened my top and redid the string at the back. “Did you like that, Little Spy?”

  “Master, please.”

  He brushed my hair from my face, straightening it. “I’m hard as a steel spike right now, you know that?”

  His gaze didn’t match his words, almost warm and playful. He liked being hard, he’d told me that.

  “You’re a little twisted, Master.”

  “Just a little?” He swiped his thumb across my lips. “I’m not taking you to my room tonight, Setora. You have to stay with Steel or Hawk. Julian, you know.” His eyes danced.

  Oh, how I hated him. I dropped my head against the wall. I was happy to stay with either Hawk or Steel, but he needed to finish what he’d started.