Page 20 of Three to Fall

I shoved off him and rolled my eyes, grabbing the bar of soap to start cleaning up. “If you’re hoping for an ‘I love you,’ you ain’t getting one.”

“Do I look like I need that from you?”

I grinned. “You look like you need my dick in your mouth, actually.”

He snorted. “Do I?”

“After I wash it. Of course.”

He shook his head, but his dick was already getting hard again. “You fucking wish. Get on your knees, Hawk.”

And fucked if I didn’t find myself down there in a heartbeat, his cock in my mouth, not knowing what this thing was between us but suddenly wanting to find out.

4

KARA

Iheld my daughter while she slept. Cried silently into her hair with a mixture of relief and adrenaline release, while silently thanking the two men in the room next door for bringing her back to me.

I smiled at the muffled sounds of their lovemaking in Hawk’s shower. The walls might have been thick here, but they weren’t magic.

They were done when Hayley Jade woke up from her nap, and she smiled sleepily at me, blinking her long lashes as she cleared her eyes.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded.

But I didn’t want her just agreeing with me because she’d been trained to be sweet and meek and mild. I wanted her to tell me how she really was.

“A really scary thing happened to you today. You don’t have to be okay.”

Her bottom lip trembled, and I gathered her up, holding her to my chest.

Josiah was never going to leave us alone. He was just going to keep coming back, trying again, finding new ways to get to me.

I’d thought not giving him a child was my biggest sin. But the real sin was in embarrassing him. My lack of a child, my disobedience, my failures, my leaving, all made him look weak.

If he had no control over a lowly woman, then how could he be God’s chosen one? How could he be the man to lead Ethereal Eden into His light?

He couldn’t. That’s what the other men would see, and Josiah knew it. Getting me back would be his only way to save face.

I knew all too well how smart he was. You didn’t get to be in his position by being unintelligent. Every move he’d ever made since the moment he’d first stepped foot on our land had been calculated.

Nothing had changed. I was wife number one and while Josiah was still a free man, there was no getting away from that.

I needed to go back. Give myself up. That plan hadn’t changed just because of what happened today. It couldn’t. If anything, it had only reinforced that I was right. I wouldn’t be the reason Hayley Jade couldn’t go to school. And I wouldn’t let Hawk and Hayden go there to kill him. It was too dangerous. They were already well and truly on the police radar. If Josiah suddenly turned up dead, they’d be the first suspects on the list.

All I’d ever wanted was a life of freedom. But I wouldn’t exchange my freedom for the two of them being locked behind bars. If I could go back, maybe I could find some evidence that Josiah had been responsible for Alice’s death. Getting him put behind bars was the only way I could ever see me being truly free and out of his clutches and the men I loved all being free.

Hayley Jade pulled away a couple of inches, and I let her wriggle back, respecting her need for personal space. I twisted onto my back on her single bed and gazed at the ceiling, listening to the now familiar sounds of the clubhouse outside, as all thedifferent people who lived here went about their lives. Ice or one of the other prospects had a Hoover going. Amber sang along with the radio. Queenie and Aloha laughed from the couches. Somewhere farther down the hall a baby cried, so I was pretty sure Bliss and War were here with Ridge.

They were all sounds I’d come to rely on. To enjoy. I wondered how on earth I was going to walk away from this place that had become my home.

Hayley Jade tapped my arm, and when I rolled over to my side, her big eyes watched me carefully. And then she tapped her thumb to her chin twice, the rest of her hand splayed open, fingers straight and spread apart.

I froze at the sign.

“Can you do that again?” I asked her quietly.