Page 50 of Heart of a Devil

I lift her up, trying not to notice the way her perfect breasts brush against me. The last thing she needs is another guy manhandling her. I place her down gently in the water, and she sighs as the warm liquid soothes her body. Her curls cascade down, floating around her shoulders, and my gut clenches in fury when I see a bare patch where he pulled her hair out. That alone is enough to make me want to go back in there and finish the job she started.

Her hand reaches for mine, and I perch on the edge of the tub and take it. She smiles up at me, starting to look human again. “I know what you’re thinking,” she says quietly.

“Oh, do you now? Mind reader, are you?”

“I don’t need to be telepathic. I only need to know you. You’re worried about looking at my tits in case you get an inappropriate hard-on, and you’re so angry with Torres you’re considering ripping his arm off and beating him to death with it.”

I glance at her bubble-coated nipples. “Guilty as charged, ma’am. Though I hadn’t considered the arm thing—that’s a nice touch. Do you think you might be up for telling me what happened?”

She passes me a cloth and the bottle of soap. “Wash me, please, Seb?”

Fuck. Between her nakedness and the pleading look in those big brown eyes, I’m really not doing well on the inappropriate hard-on front. But I lather up the cloth and tenderly begin with her face. Her cut lip starts bleeding again when I clean it, and she winces slightly when I dab at the sore spot on her scalp. “The bastard,” she says. “He dragged me by my hair.”

My fury is squatting inside me like a boulder in my stomach, and I have no idea if I’m going to be able to stop myself from killing him. I’m imagining all the long, painful deaths I couldimpose on the fucker when she speaks again, pulling my hand down to her chest. “Wash all of me, Seb. Please. Wash him away and make me feel clean again.”

Groaning, I trail the washcloth down to her tits, watching the soapy water trail between them like a river in a valley. She breathes deeply, her eyelids fluttering as I move to her already-stiff nipples. I softly stroke them, massaging the supple skin of her breasts until she purrs like a kitten. “Oh. Thelma and Louise like that.”

I smile at the nicknames and continue to lavish gentle attention on them. She moans, and the water splashes over the side of the tub as she parts her legs. Complete trust and absolute yearning shine in her eyes as she gazes up at me.

“It’s all right, sweetheart. I know what you need.” I move my hand beneath the water and stroke the flesh between her thighs, finding her swollen bud. There’s no torture this time, no making her beg, no sweet and sexy dance. It’s just me, giving her the release she needs. Washing him away and making her feel clean again. Her orgasm is a drawn-out and delicate thing, her body shuddering as it flows through her, her eyes shut and a long, deep moan sighing out from her lips.

When it’s over, she leans back against the rim of the tub and smiles up at me. “Thank you. I needed… I needed to feel like me again. And I needed to feel your hands on me instead of his.”

I lean down to kiss the top of her head. “My hands are always available for you, sweetheart. So, what happened? If you feel up to talking about it, that is.”

She nods and briefly disappears beneath the bubbles. When she emerges, she looks like a mermaid, her dark hair sleek against her tan skin.

“I didn’t get to tell you earlier, but that meeting I had, with Samantha’s client? Well, it wasn’t what it seemed to be. Torres had hacked his file and threatened his kids. He made him delivera file of photos. I was already upset by the time I got to your place, and then… Then we had a fight.”

“We did, baby, and under different circumstances we’d be about to have another one. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me straight away?”

“Don’t be angry, please, Seb. I don’t think I can take that right now. I’m sorry, I should have told you. But you were with Max, and you’d been baking, and you were in your happy place, you know? I intended to wait until he went home and then I was going to tell you. Things kind of got away from me, though, and I headed back here. He was waiting by the elevator. He grabbed me, dragged me inside. Did something to the cameras.”

I take a deep breath and rub my face. Fuck. I need to rein it in. This isn’t the time or place to go ballistic. She doesn’t need shouty Seb right now. “All right, it’s okay. It’s not your fault. What… What did he do to you?”

“He talked. A lot. He was in on it all, the stuff with my uncle when I was younger. He saw the photos, knew what they did. They used to drug me to make me sleep, Seb, and then they… did things to me. Took my clothes off, posed me for photos. Then his dad went home and shared them with his eleven-year-old son like it was some kind of special treat. The sick fucker.” She smacks her fist down on the water, splashing me. It’s good to see some of her fire returning.

Naked and glorious, she stands up and climbs out of the bath. With her body wrapped in a towel, she rubs her hair dry and stares at herself in the mirror. Everything she sees there will heal—the lip will scab over, the hair will grow back, the bruises will fade. It’s what’s inside I’m more worried about. She catches me staring and meets my eyes in the mirror.

“He didn’t rape me,” she says simply, her voice firm now. “He tried, but I was lucky. He underestimated me, didn’t keep a close enough eye on me. I managed to grab the pepper spraywhile he was faking the cameras, and I kept it hidden until he was distracted. He threatened Sam and Max to control me, and I made him think I was going along with what he wanted. I waited until he was busy looking at my tits and trying to get his dick out of his pants, and I went for it. After that, it was a bit of a mess. He fought, but I guess I fought harder. I was so pissed. It was like… like all the anger, all the pain—it all poured out of me, you know? Like I reached back through the years and gathered it all up and used it. You saw how it ended.”

I am in awe of her in so many ways. Torres is a big man, and he came prepared. He always intended to hurt her, but she took that chance away from him. She stole his power, and now he’s the twat tied to a chair.

I sweep her into my arms and hold her tight, sighing into her damp hair and inhaling her scent. “Fuck, Lauren. I was so scared when I got here. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”

She slides her hands around my waist and kisses my neck. “I know. I feel the same. I knew that you’d be here at some point. That you’d come for me.” She blows out a breath. “Now, I’m going to get dressed, and I suppose the question is—what do we do next?”

Chapter

Twenty-Seven

LAUREN

Itear off the tape that’s covering his mouth, and he squeals as it pulls away some of his scruff. His eyes are still red and watery, and he’s in desperate need of a trip to the dentist, but Seb is right—he’s very much alive.

“My rhino of a boyfriend wants to kill you, Diego,” I say, pulling up a chair and sitting opposite him. The baton I used to beat him with is on the ground, the kitchen knife I stabbed him with not far away. I’m going to need a special kind of cleaner to get the stains out of the rug. It’s not a pretty sight, but I can’t bring myself to regret what I did. It was me or him, and I owe him nothing.

He glares at me, still managing to sneer despite his precarious situation. He might technically be smarter than his father, but he still reminds me of him. Now, though, I’m not scared. Rafe, Carlos, all of them? They’re pathetic, cowardly bullies, picking on the weak and the vulnerable to make themselves feel like big, strong men. Truly strong men defend the weak; they don’t exploit them. They don’t need to abuse others to make themselves feel good.

---