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I pull her into my hips, letting her see for herself just how hard my cock is as my hand slips up into her long, wavy dark-butter blonde strands of hair, holding her head so her gaze stays on me. “Do you see how hard you make me, Emery? This is all for you. It’ll only ever be for you. You’re not the only virgin in this house, baby.”
“Gage!” she gasps, her body trembling against mine a bit, the question in her eyes and I nod.
“With everything with my mother, seeing the men that came through her life, and the messed-up shit there before I was put into foster care, I couldn’t just fuck around like other guys my age. I went straight into the military because I knew it was the only way I’d make something of myself. I didn’t have the grades for college, but I could use my fists and shoot. There, I got to learn about computers, got to be part of a team that gathered intel, handled the hard shit, and I was good at it. It kept me busy, but even when I was at home, women didn’t interest me. That’s why David asked me to look after you,” I add, making her eyes widen in shock. “He knew if something happened to him, I’d do what was necessary to keep you safe, wouldn’t have women coming in and out of my life that would complain about me keeping an eye on you. If I hadn’t needed surgery before I could come back to the states, Harvey never would have managed to take you away, lock you up with those nuts.”
“The only thing I’ve wanted since I was fourteen was you,” Emery says, so softly I almost don’t think I heard her correctly, until I see the color in her cheeks and the look in her eyes. “David sent me some photos of his new unit. You were so handsome, a bit aloof, and I wanted to know everything about you. David told me what your mother did to you when you were little. He’d come home to visit, check on me. Had more photos of your unit and I asked about you, told him it looked like you needed a hug when he asked why I was curious. I think he did it because he could see I was developing a massive crush on you and thought it would dissuade me. Instead, it made me feel more connected to you, like you would understand me if we ever met.”
“Understand what, baby?” I ask, lifting her chin back towards me, my body flooding with more need hearing this sweet girl say she had a crush on me, let alone wanted to hug me learning about my past.
“Before Mom met Harvey…she dated a lot. My father died before I was born,” she adds and I nod, recalling David mentioning their father’s death when he was ten. “Our mom would take me with her on dates during the day when David was at school. Only, they weren’t really dates, but it wasn’t until I was probably thirteen that I realized that. I was probably about eight or nine when I learnt it wasn’t normal for someone to ‘date’ someone new every day but didn’t get the rest until later.”
“David never said anything,” I tell her, fury running through my veins at the thought of sweet little Emery being near that lifestyle.
“I don’t think he ever knew. He thought she was just using or dad’s life insurance policy to get by. I don’t know why she suddenly brought Harvey home, or how she had enough money to stop doing it, but I overheard her tell Harvey when I was about fifteen that they should get an updated policy on David. That with him going on missions and deployments that weren’t safe, they didn’t need to get caught with the cost of a funeral like she did with our dad. She told him his policy barely covered the burial and she wasn’t going to deal with that again.”
“Tell me you didn’t…”
Emery shakes her head, stopping my question, her eyes soft as she holds my gaze. “I was always in another room, but the sounds were a lot like the ones she and Harvey made, so it wasn’t hard to put it together when I was older.”
“Thank goodness you never saw anything, or I’d be likely to murder the bitch,” I growl, pulling her up against me entirely, as I bury my face in her hair.
“I felt the same when I heard about your mom, what she’d do to you when she went out,” Emery says, and I let out a low breath, not wanting to have to talk about it beyond this once.
“I was too little at the time to know that being locked in a closet wasn’t normal. I wasn’t quite as lucky because some of the closets you could see through and that’s not the kind of things a little kids should be seeing his mother do. The sex was bad enough, but the drugs…I definitely could have used a hug from little Emery when I was taken away from her and put into care after they found me in the closet when she and her client nearly died from od’ing. I swore if I had kids, they’d never go through things like that. That whoever I ended up with would know that shit’s not right, and I’d also be able to care for my family, so I kept my dick to myself.
“Kept to myself until I saw your picture this morning. There was no way in hell I was going to let something like that happen to you, let alone let another man touch what I knew was meant to be mine. My mother is nothing to me now other than a warning of what I don’t want. Your mother and Harvey won’t ever get near you again, I swear. None of those idiots from that cult will, no matter if you want to stay here with me or not,” I add, and the way her eyes light up, tells me she’s staying.
“Why would I leave the only man I’ve ever wanted? Leave what I can see for our future, as long as you want it too, don’t mind that I have nothing…not even a birth certificate to confirm my name,” she says, and I drop a kiss onto her lips, before getting the soup so it doesn’t boil over.
I ladle it into two bowls, getting the crackers and some cheese I sliced for quick snacks while I work from the fridge, and settle it on the island for her to enjoy. She hums happily after the first spoonful of the soup, and I join her on a stool, smiling as she flushes a bit. “You like?”
“It’s amazing. Better than what we had, and it was completely homemade.”
“This is too,” I admit, nodding at her surprise. “I usually spend Saturdays or Sundays doing meal prep for the week, or month, if I’ve just been to the store. I work from home and usually get caught up in things and forget mealtimes. So I make things I can just toss into the oven, warm on top of the stove, or microwave quickly when my body starts screaming at me. I had plenty of MREs while in the army so no way was I going to buy cardboard crap to fill the freezer with when I could just as easily make up some meals ahead of time.”
“I guess that’s something I can help with now,” Emery says, making my brow lift a bit at her smile. “Making sure you eat normally. I have nothing against having easy meals ready to go. Actually, it sounds a lot better than spending all day every day in the kitchen like I have been the last year and a half.”
“You were working in the kitchen there…that’s why you said maybe you could find a bakery?” I guess, feeling better about that if so than it meaning she simply wants a job, because I don’t know how easy it’ll be to be away from her all day.
“Yeah, I’ve been in charge of making breads and rolls and biscuits for the last year and a half. Before that, they had me working outside to ‘help’ me lose weight,” she adds, pulling a grumble from my throat because like fuck she needs to lose weight. “They figured doing heavy work in the gardens and fields where they have things like corn and potatoes planted, I’d work it off. They didn’t think I’d use every opportunity possible to try and find a single spot where I could escape instead. So, they moved me inside to the kitchen. I didn’t mind making bread, I just didn’t want to be there doing it. I hoped to find a bakery somewhere that would hire me if I escaped where I could pretty much hide. Especially since I don’t have a real high school diploma and no id,” she says with a sigh, and I drop a kiss onto her lips, knowing I can help with that.
Chapter 6
Emery
Gage’s eyes flow over me, his smile filling me more than the food possibly could. Not that the food isn’t amazing. It is and makes me want to know everything about Gage I possibly can. Foremost though has to be learning his incredible body. I think I might explode if I don’t, especially after telling him the one thing I’ve never told David about our mother.
“Like I told you, baby, if you really want to get a job, that’s fine. I’ll deal with it somehow,” Gage says, and a smile works its way onto my lips. “If it’s money you’re worried about, don’t be. I’m not the only one with money.”
“What does that mean?” I ask entirely confused.
“About a year before that last deployment, David asked me if I would do something for him,” Gage explains, surprising me more. “He had me meet him at an attorney’s office, and there, he let me know that he was setting up a trust. If anything happened to him before you were twenty-five, he wanted me to be executor over it. So him asking me to keep an eye on you when everything happened wasn’t a shock, wasn’t a hard decision for me to make, baby. I’d already agreed to look after the trust and you on a monetary level, and knowing that he didn’t like or trust Harvey, made me want to know you were safe on a personal level as well.”
“David left something for me?’ I’m not surprised my brother would do something like that for me, not with his offer to let me come stay with him when I finished school, but that there was anything to leave.
“His entire estate was left to you in the trust. He’d asked me to help him with some investments when he got his pay raise and joined our unit. The other guys were asking him what he was going to blow his first new paycheck on, and he said he had everything he needed at the moment. A couple of them joked that they didn’t need another Gage in the group that refused to go to the bars with them, and so he asked me what they meant when we were heading out a couple days later. I let him know that I didn’t see a point in blowing through every penny I earned as soon as I got it, that I’d invested a lot of it for when I retired from the military or a family. That’s when he asked me for some help setting things up for him.”
“You’ve been looking after it since then for me?” I ask, fighting against the rush of tears knowing that I wasn’t completely forgotten. Someone out there was thinking about me, concerned about me, this whole time.
