Page 112 of Wanted

“How did you get away?” My voice dips lower and my arms convulse around Frankie’s back.

“Oh, Jude, I’m so sorry. The leash slipped out of my hand.” Frankie covers her face and collapses into my chest.

“The dogs attacked him. Bit him fucking hard, and the gun fired. I shoved Frankie and got hit with a graze, but there was so much blood and the dogs took off. We don’t know if they were hurt.”

Fuck. I came so close to losing her. And my brother. “Who?”

“We don’t know anything yet,” Jack says.

“Who?” I tighten my hold on Frankie and ask again.

“Ashe and Remy,” Jack answers. “Once the cops secured the scene, Cortney was allowed on the property. She found them and brought them to her clinic.”

I stoke my hand over Frankie’s hair. “Shh, baby. It’s okay.”

“Oh thank god, you’re here!” Cortney barrels into the room. She slams into my back, rocking both me and Frankie forward as she wraps us both in her arms. “I got here as fast as I could.”

“How are the dogs?” I ask, bracing against Frankie for the answer.

“They’re fine. Both of them. The blood on their fur belonged to that asshole. Neither of them had a scratch. I gave them extra big treats for their troubles.”

Frankie chokes on a ragged sob, and bucks against me. “Oh, thank god.”

“Did the cops pick him up?”

“I suspect he’s somewhere in this hospital before heading off to jail,” Jack answers. “From what I heard from Sutton, his injury was pretty serious.”

“Good.”

EPILOGUE

Two Months Later…

Jude

“Are you ready to attempt your imaginative exposure again?” Christian, my therapist, asks.

I lower my shoulders from my ears and let my body relax into the high-backed upholstered chair. My thumbs stroke along the navy blue fabric, tracing shapeless patterns. I wish Frankie was here. I imagine her sitting on my lap, her hair pressed against my cheek, close enough for the flowery scent to calm me. The weight of her grounding me here. The shape of her ass molded to my thighs. The way she feels while she’s riding me in bed before we start our day.

And now I’m hard.

“I think so.” I cough to clear the hoarseness from my voice. “Yes.”

“Good. I’m going to read the scenario we prepared, and I want you to sit through it. Allow the sensations to move through you without doing your compulsion.”

I nod once.

“Ready?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, let’s begin.” He opens his laptop to the document we wrote six weeks ago and begins to read.

The room is dark. Jack hides beneath his blankets, and I can hear the sound of his scared breaths. Sometimes when it’s late at night, I climb in with him, but the last time Dad found us together, he called me a bunch of horrible words as he hit me. Now Jack won’t let me comfort him until we’re both sure Dad’s asleep because he doesn’t want my punishment to be worse.

One.

A shadow moves beneath our bedroom door as footsteps thunder down the hall. The door flies open, and Dad’s angry face stares at me from the entry. I know what’s coming before he says a word. The resignation I’ve forced myself to feel slithers through my body and begins to block out the fear.

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