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Beck snorted. “Before O’Neill here, Gabriel was the only time Hammer was truly worried about losing you.”
And she’d let Gabriel down gently. She’d liked him well enough. The sex had been far better than with Zak. He’d been a decent guy. But she’d told him flat out that she was never going to love him.
She’d known that because he wasn’t Hammer.
“He was disappointed, not angry,” Raine argued. “Macen made sure my first two experiences were both one and done, so neither of them got terribly attached. Can we change the subject?”
Beck opened his mouth, but Liam held up a finger “Wait. Are you telling me that before you and I got together, you’d had sex twice in your entire life?”
Embarrassment burned her. She didn’t want to look at anyone now. She crossed her arms and closed her eyes. “Yes. Can we move on?”
“Oh, god.” Liam reached for her hand. “How did I not scare the hell out of you?”
His voice compelled her to look at him. She squeezed his hand back. “You did. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me.”
He looked stunned, and she could tell the exact moment he started thinking about the events of that weekend she’d first given herself to Liam, then Hammer. The weekend she had almost certainly gotten pregnant. Liam was realizing that she’d been so terribly innocent before he’d publicly claimed her virgin ass in the dungeon, before Hammer had thoroughly ravaged her that night, leaving nearly every inch of her body bitten, bruised, or marked.
“Oh, lass…” Liam looked ready to apologize or regret the way things happened. “Don’t say it.”
He sighed and dragged her plate in front of him before plucking her out of her chair and back into his lap. “If I’d known…”
“I wouldn’t change a thing. Drop it. Please.” She turned her attention to Beck. “Anyone else you can think of?”
She couldn’t help but catch River’s shocked expression. “Hammer kept men away from you? Really? He didn’t—”
“Dozens,” Beck broke in. “The standing edict was, you touch the princess, you lose your balls and your membership—in that order. He watched her just about every moment of every day.”
“Haven’t we beaten this dead horse? It wasn’t Zak. It wasn’t Gabriel. Besides, we also have to be thinking about who might have been around recently enough to have stolen that missing security footage. Someone who knew what had happened on those two dates. November third was public but...” Everyone in the dungeon had known about her punishment. If they hadn’t been there to see for themselves, they’d soon heard. But November fourth, her forbidden hours with Hammer… Almost no one had known about that. “If the witness is also the thief, that rules both of them out.”
Carrying a plastic bag of candy, Bryn bustled back in the kitchen with a frown. “She’s right, and the person who nicked the video is someone else entirely.”
“So we’ve got two people to look for?” Liam clenched his jaw. “Two needles in a bloody haystack?”
“Yes, son. Your witness is somehow obscured, hidden. But now that I’m thinking about it, I sense it’s a woman.”
Beck winced. “That actually narrows it down less. The number of women Hammer has pissed off over the years… I’m not sure I can count that high. Can you give us anything else?”
Bryn frowned. “She’s a blonde. In her mid to late thirties.”
The entire table groaned.
“The last eight years have pretty much been a parade of thirtysomething blondes.” Beck turned to her. “Until Raine.”
When she really thought about all the women Macen had slept with for years, it was a stab in the chest. No, they hadn’t been together then, but he’d known how she felt. “An endless parade.”
Seth nodded. “He did—I mean, he liked—a lot of blondes back in New York, too.”
God, could this conversation get any more painful?
Liam rubbed her back and whispered in her ear. “He loves you.”
Raine did her best to hang on to that.
Beck just shook his head. “Tell you what, Seth. You investigate everything north of the Ten. I’ll take everything south. We might track down all the blondes he nailed in the next…three to five years.”
“Can we stay on task?” Liam demanded. “Focus on club members from the early days.”
“The first one who pops to mind is Erika,” Beck said.
“I remember her. She’s the bitch who asked me if I was Hammer’s sister and dropped her panties in front of me just before he came into the room.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t claw her eyes out.” Liam cut a bite of the casserole and fed it to her.
Raine chewed and swallowed. “I wanted to. But I was only seventeen. She was just the first in a long line of women.”
Beck nodded. “Erika wanted marriage, and Hammer wasn’t interested. She didn’t last long. Why wait years to get revenge?”
