AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She bristled, the Domme battling against the submissive. “Thane—”
“I said, sit that ass down before I drag it over my lap and spank it red, Constance. I’m tired and I want this conversation out of the fucking way.” Stand your ground, Thane. Don’t let a pair of turbulent gray eyes throw you off track. “We’ve dodged this for ten days. Ten days of you sheltering in place, using the Domme as a deflector. No more.”
Connie sat on the opposite end of the couch, her eyes direct on his. She challenged him silently, pitting her dominance against his, but she didn’t understand how vehemently he felt about this. “It’s done, Thane. We’re both alive, we can move on and put it behind us.”
“No. Not once since Guthrie broke into the house have you asked me about him, about what in my past led us to that moment. You haven’t demanded to know what the fuck went on, or why it happened.” He sighed and shook his head. “The weeks we’ve been together have been short, Connie. It’s a blink of time, and we filled it full. But I kept a lot of my history from you, because I had to. You know I was military, that’s all I gave you.”
“It doesn’t matter what you were. I love the man you are now.”
Thane rubbed his forehead. “The man I am now is a better man than the one he came from. I enlisted when I was eighteen, sugar. Young, dumb, full of piss and vinegar, and determined to follow in my father’s footsteps. That changed, after a few months. I buckled down, I made friends, and the fluffy little dream of being like my father stopped being a dream. He died protecting lives—I made a career out of taking them.”
Connie’s expression grew wary. “I suppose that’s part of the job description.”
“My job description was handling an M107, picking off terrorists and bad guys one by one. I excelled in firearms training, and the army capitalized on those skills, training me to be one of the best in my field. It paid off, and I rose through the ranks. I was selected for greatness, a special project off the books.” God, he felt old. “My commander at that time—unbeknownst to me—was dealing drugs to soldiers, as was someone I considered to be my best friend.”
“Guthrie.”
“Yeah. We were tight, which makes it hurt more now I know what he was doing. He was the one who shot me the first time, and it turns out it wasn’t an accident. Commander Stevens wanted him off his dealing turf, and threw down an ultimatum of stop cashing in on Stevens’ territory or I’d pay the price in blood. For whatever reason, Guthrie decided to kill me himself, and did a shit job of it.”
Connie’s spine lost some of its rigidity. “He chose profit over his best friend.”
“Yeah. I’m struggling with the timeline of things, but Atticus has the files for me to look at so I can put it together. Guthrie served time in jail after he was dishonorably discharged—and false information from Stevens convinced him that I’d ratted him out. He served his time, and when he got out, he was gunning for me. I had no idea,” Thane murmured. “No fucking idea I had crosshairs on my back for so long. The accident that almost took my leg wasn’t an accident at all—Guthrie orchestrated it to take me out, and missed his mark. Asshole was smarter than I gave him credit for.”
He still couldn’t believe Guthrie had almost pulled it off. It was the kind of mission Thane would have planned for months—stalking his target, finding out what vehicle he drove, what flight he was taking, the roads he’d take home. Everything came down to timing, and it involved an extraordinary amount of patience—something Guthrie had lacked.
It also involved a lot of risks. Weather conditions, wind speed and direction, could knock a bullet a fraction of an inch off course. Unsteady hands, a poor quality sight, the slightest lapse in concentration could bring devastation raining down on everyone’s head, and essentially, that’s what Guthrie had done.
Two dead, Thane thought bitterly. Two innocents dead for a feud neither he nor they had been involved with.
“Guthrie shot the tire out on the semi. Maybe he just nicked the damn thing, I don’t know, because the cops put the accident down to a simple blowout. Maybe they just assumed the tire picked up a nail. Whatever the reason, their investigation was substandard.”
“Good God,” Connie whispered. “He really wanted you dead, didn’t he?”
“Looks like. I’m assuming he got locked up again, because there were no more attempts—that I know of—until that Sunday morning. The phone call at Avalon was Stevens, wanting me to take a job. Turns out, Guthrie had intel on him, and Stevens wanted him dead before he could spill it. Stevens told me about Guthrie because he needed leverage—I either killed Guthrie, or Guthrie killed me.”
“But it was only the next morning that he broke into the house.”
“I think Guthrie’s schedule was way ahead of anything Stevens anticipated. Hell, even once I was aware of the threat that morning, I didn’t think he’d already be in position, and that…” Grimacing, he leaned forward and snagged her hand, squeezing the chilled fingers gently. “I was unprepared, Connie. That’s on me. You wouldn’t be battered and bruised, if not for me bringing this shit to your doorstep.”
She lifted her free hand to her cheek, feathering it over the remnants of the swelling, the miscolored bruises she’d tried to conceal beneath a layer of makeup. “How can you blame yourself for something you knew nothing about?”
Oh, quite easily, he thought in disgust. “Because I didn’t know, Connie. Until that morning, I had no fucking idea Guthrie was gunning for—had been gunning—for me for years. If I’d had any wits about me—”
She snorted. Started to laugh, much to his consternation. “Jesus, Thane, you’re former military, not a psychic. From what you’ve told me, this started between one asshole and another over drugs of all things. They dragged you into it without you having any knowledge of the circumstances. It’s no more your fault than it is mine for—” She clammed herself up quickly, her lips pressing together until they turned white.
Here we go. “For what, sugar?”
She averted her eyes, and the mask slipped. For a long, devastating moment, the scared, traumatized submissive was clearly visible, and she broke the first link in his chain of control. “It doesn’t matter. There are other things to worry about, Thane. Bodie, Alicia, Jasp—”
“Stop. None of those things are in your control, Connie, and I’m sick of you crushing yourself under the weight of them. You are my priority, just as Bodie is Braun’s. Alicia is spreading her wings away from a life that reminds her of her past, which is what you need to do now. But you can’t do that until you’ve shed the extra pounds that don’t belong to you.” When she tried to yank her hand away, he gripped it tighter. “Tell me what you were going to say.”
“Jasper—”
Thane gave her his best stare. “Don’t play games with me, sugar.”
“I froze, okay? When that gun was aiming at me, I froze. There was blood all over me, your blood, and my brain was trying to process everything. But it couldn’t. It couldn’t understand what had just happened. Guthrie was talking to me, and I didn’t understand the words.” She inhaled shakily, her throat working as she tried to swallow. “Then all I could think was how you were on the floor, blood spreading around you, and no one would be coming, because they didn’t know they were needed. They didn’t know you were bleeding all over the floor, just like I didn’t know if you were dead or alive.”
Thane closed his eyes, wanting to kill Guthrie all over again. “Oh, Connie. I’m sorry.”
