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“We should go,” she whispered breathlessly.
“That’s the only thing keeping clothing on your body now, baby.”
Aggressive. But she’d known Thorn was from the moment he’d awakened her after tying her to Curtis’ bed. She shivered.
“Now,” said Cam from the doorway of the bedroom, where he took in the scene with watchful eyes, “We need to get you in the truck. And you need to tell us everything you know about Curtis.”
It was time.
/> And then…then she’d see how long they stayed.
* * * * *
Three minutes later, they were piled into the bench seat of Cam’s pick up, Brenna in the middle. Thorn’s cycle lay in the truck’s bed. Normally, he’d never surrender his bike for a ride with a cop in sleek black truck.
When the hell had staying beside Brenna and hearing her story become more important?
If he wanted his fifty thousand, he needed to hear whatever she knew about Curtis and his whereabouts, but Thorn feared his refusal to unglue himself from her side was more than that. And although he was hard as concrete for her, it wasn’t just sex. But defining it… Nope, he wasn’t going there.
“How do you know Curtis?” Cameron laid a gentle hand on her knee and squeezed as they drove away from Lawton’s cottage. “We need to know what we’re up against.”
She hesitated, pausing to glance at him then Cam. She swallowed. “He’s my father.”
Thorn’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d said she was a three-breasted alien from Jupiter.
Her gaze met his again then skittered away. She focused on her wringing hands in her lap. “I see you’re shocked.”
“I shouldn’t be, I suppose,” Cam said. “I knew you weren’t his mistress.”
“I never believed he’d let you stay at his place if you were just a friend of a friend,” Thorn added.
But daughter? Man…
“We aren’t close.” Brenna licked her lips. “In fact, I hadn’t seen him since my high-school graduation. Before that…he left me with my aunt when I was a baby.”
What the fuck? For all that his old man had been a lousy parent, he’d never dumped him on someone else’s doorstep. Nope, good old Ronald had kept him around for every lousy, squalor- and hunger-filled day, cementing in his head the fact that drugs were thicker than blood.
“He gave me away shortly after my mother died. He let my aunt and her husband adopt me, signed away all parental rights.” Her face flushed, and she frowned, fighting tears. “As an adult, I knew his abandonment had affected my ability to have a relationship. Until January, I was engaged. Great guy. But my…coldness made him feel like a failure, and he couldn’t accept that the failing was mine. So…”
“So you parted ways,” Cam finished.
She nodded.
“You couldn’t come because piece-of-shit Curtis ditched his responsibility.” Thorn told it like it was, and the anger over that fact made him want to pound the dirtbag’s face.
“Pretty much, yes.”
“And then your fiancé couldn’t hack it?”
“Yes.”
“Asshole,” Thorn muttered.
Cameron squeezed her knee again, then glided his hand up her thigh, up, up… Thorn thought of all the things that hand might do to Brenna and started to sweat.
“Something about being with us changed that.” Cam didn’t ask, just stated.
“With both of you near me, surrounding me, inside me…” She flushed. “I felt protected. The way you enveloped me, it was like I would never be alone again. You two filled me so full, it felt right.” She shrugged. “It was somehow easy to believe that I was worthy of your desire and that you’d just…I don’t know. Like you’d always be there for me. But I don’t expect anything,” she was quick to assure. “I know it was just the one night.”
For some reason, her words pissed Thorn off. Despite what he’d told Cam, he’d say when they were done, damn it.
Which made no sense. He hadn’t planned to stick around, and was still torn between keeping his distance and indulging the hunger for her sizzling in his veins and licking at his balls. Now… Thorn would walk away when the time came, he always did. But knowing he’d been instrumental in helping her accomplish something that had always eluded her, that he’d helped her to feel something she’d needed so badly… Well, it was heady. And he wasn’t sure how could just turn his back.
Why the fuck did she matter?
And why the hell did seeing Cam’s hand absently caressing her make him hard?
Thorn tore his gaze away from the two of them and glanced out the windshield, glancing at the side mirrors. The morning rush hour was beginning to pick up, so it was impossible to determine if they were being trailed by Marco’s heavies.
“How far away?” he asked. “We have to get out of sight quickly.”
Cam sent him a sharp nod, checking the side mirrors himself. “I don’t see that we’re being followed but it’s hard to tell. Too many cars… My place is close, the address secret, but if you have a better idea…”
“No. Fuck… Every criminal in creation knows how to find me. Your place works. We just need to get into hiding. Being out in the open is making me itchy.”
Brenna placed a calming touch on his arm. “Thank you.”
For what? He hadn’t done nearly enough to keep her safe, or she wouldn’t have been in any danger this morning. That little furrow between her brows said that she was…concerned about him. Worried, even. Amazing. She’d nearly been abducted this morning and she was calming him?
Sweet southern sugar with a hint of sass, that was Brenna. She melted like fine chocolate between him and Cam. She soothed like silk when she thought they were worried. This was a new female for him. She wasn’t here for the party or for the sex, the ride with a bad boy or a good time. Why was she here, beyond wanting to feel like a whole woman? Why trust them?
“You look so damn calm, baby,” he commented.
She sent him a soft smile. “You two are with me.”
As if that said it all. Already, after just a few hours, she trusted them. Wow. He’d never been anyone’s savior and would have bristled at the suggestion in the past. He had his own shit to deal with. But Brenna… She needed him for more than his dick or his ability to fuck her multiple times a night.
Did he have more to give? And what about Cam?
Thorn leaned around Brenna to find the detective calmly driving. A right turn off the main drag, a left turn onto a residential street. A direct glance from those all-seeing dark eyes right into his.
Cam was going to fight—not him for the right to be with Brenna, but to keep the three of them together. What the hell? A ménage was fun every so often but for more than a night? No, he had to be reading Cam’s expression wrong. Right?
With a glance out the mirrors and the back window as they wound through Cam’s neighborhood completely alone, it was clear that they’d shaken Marco’s thugs—for now.
Though Thorn knew better than to imagine that would last, that did leave them plenty of time to explore exactly what would happen next between him and Cam and Brenna.
* * * * *
Tread carefully. Cam repeated the words to himself more than once.
After pulling into his garage, he helped Brenna from his SUV and into the deserted confines of his house. She was skittish. Thorn followed them, downright jumpy.
The unexpected visit from Marco’s goons had shaken the big bounty hunter up way more than expected, and that gave Cam hope. If Thorn didn’t give a rat’s ass about Brenna, he would have celebrated the fact he’d had a fight on his hands. The fact his instinct had been to shield Brenna, then get out of the action and soothe her? Very interesting…
Cam himself wasn’t sure exactly why he was pursuing this…thing with Thorn and Brenna so hard. The sex had been off-the-charts amazing. He’d been elated to help Brenna with her orgasm problem. Everything about her turned him on, and he even liked her on the inside. The fact she was Curtis Lawton’s daughter threw a kink in the mess, but the issue wasn’t insurmountable.
The addition of Thorn was an interesting dynamic. They weren’t good friends. What shocked Cam over and over was how natural the three of them had felt together. How aroused he’d been just by
