Page 63 of Vengeful Rotten Casualties

“I’ll help you,” I tell her. “You’re not alone in this, Micki. You don’t need to bear it all on your own.”

It takes a beat to get the response that I want, but after a few heartbeats, she finally nods. “I know,” she whispers. “You’re right.” Her head reclines against my chest and she tips it back until she’s staring right up at me, into my fucking soul. “Thank you, Luc.”

“You don’t need to thank me for something I should be doing,” I tell her. “We’ll get rid of him and once he’s gone, we’ll go gether.” Micki blinks and inhales sharply. “You and me and our sister. We’ll be a new family.”

Her eyes continue staring up at me, growing increasingly red and bloodshot as tears fill them and leak down the sides of her face. I carefully brush each one away. “You’re not alone.” I whisper the words as I cup her chin in my hand and tip her head back further, leaning down until our lips brush against one another. Soft. As gentle and light as a butterfly’s wings.

I kiss her like I didn’t just rearrange her insides with my dick. Like we have all the time in the world and there’s nothing hovering on the edges of our lives, waiting and ready to take us down. When I pull back, Micki’s smile is as bright as the sunlight.

“You’re not the only one who’s offered to help,” she says as she sits up and turns to the side, pressing her arm into my chest as she hooks both of her feet over one of mine. The water rotates with her, slapping against my side. “Avalon said she’s more than willing to help me take my pound of flesh back.”

I stroke her hair back and arch a brow. “You’ve never quite explainedhowthat relationship happened,” I remind her. “You and Avalon… it seems almost too coincidental.”

“Maybe it is,” Micki admits. “I mean, I can’t say that I knew for sure she’d end up in Eastpoint, but I knew that Thomas was interested in the area of Plexton. He had me staying in some hotels for the first few months of my guardianship. It made me feel too much like a whore, though. Like what he said I was. And the debt kept growing. Everything he spent on me was being added. Nothing was free. When I noticed him sending more and more strange men to check out Plexton—because it was something Nicholas Carter also seemed interested in—I finally suggested he buy a property there.”

“You managed to convince him to let you move there?” It definitely doesn’t seem like something my father would come up with on his own.

She shrugs, her fingers playing with mine as she amuses herself silently with tracing the veins up my arms. I flex and make them bulge for a moment, earning a small smile from her. Fuck. I’d cut them open and bleed them dry for one of those smiles of hers.

“It wasn’t easy, but he was worried you’d manage to find me if he kept me in hotels. He was already planning on moving me, but he wanted more security. Thomas was still afraid that I might run away back then. He had someone staying with me for the first few months I moved there until he got the brilliant idea of hooking me up with an ankle monitor.”

I blink and lean back, tipping her chin up to force her to look at me. “You had an ankle monitor attached to you? Like a fucking criminal?”

Micki’s face is serene. “It didn’t last long,” she replies. “Clients didn’t like it. Thomas eventually found another way of making me stay in place.” She jerks her chin down and stares at her lap. Something dangerous slithers through my veins. Dread sinks into the pit of my stomach.

“What did he threaten you with?” I demand.

She shakes her head.

“Micki.” I grip her wrist, stopping her absent tracing. “Look at me. What did he threaten you with?” I try to think back … what else would he have used against her. Our sister? “Was it the girl?”

Micki shakes her head again. “I didn’t know about her until after my husband died,” she reminds me.

“Then what…” My words drift off as I realize. “Me?” Her head tips back and her lips press together. “Fuck. Itwasme, wasn’t it?” Hundreds of miles away. Years apart. Out of sight but never out of mind. She’d been protecting me more than she ever protected herself.

“Luc.” She turns fully, swinging her legs over my thighs and straddling me with her naked breasts crushed against my chest as she easily breaks my hold and wraps her arms around my neck. “It’s in the past. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Unconsciously my hands touch her hips, lingering on her skin as the gravity of what my discovery means. She’d never forgotten me. She didn’t leave me willingly. I’ve always been important to her. Pleasure and pain war inside of me, a bloody battle that I never knew could exist inside such a small space as the human heart. It drenches me in agony and loss.

“I could’ve done so much more,” I rasp. “I should’ve tried harder to find you. I should’ve…”

Her arms tighten. “Stop,” she whispers. “Don’t torture yourself with what could’ve been. There’s no point in looking back.”

She’s right. I know she is, but it’s still hard to assuage the guilt that consumes me in this moment. The self-loathing and hatred rise up and threaten to take me over. Micki leans back and her face appears before me as she grips my jaw.

“I’m here now, Luc,” she says, her lips right against mine. “And we’re going to make him pay for everything.That is our future. The past is irrelevant now.”

I swallow back the words I want to say. The apologies. The begging. I want her forgiveness, but as she stares down at me—the murky soil rich color of her eyes already tells me what her lips don’t. There’s no forgiveness for something she never blamed me for in the first place.

I can’t help it. My lips crush hers and my eyes snap shut as I yank her as hard as I can against me. She meets me, bite for bite. Her body gyrates against mine as I suck her tongue into my mouth and kiss her as if the world is burning down and the sole source of water is inside of her.

When we pull back, both of us are breathing hard and my cock prods against the lower curve of her belly. I groan and sink my head back down on her shoulder.

“Keep talking,” I urge. “Or I’m going to fuck you again, and you’re already too sore.”

“I’m not that sore…” She giggles when I release a growl at her words. “Fine, fine. You want to know more about me and Avalon?” She sits back and sighs, flipping around and scooting forward in the tub. I don’t hesitate. Ignoring my raging erection, I pull her back to my chest, letting her rest against me.

“There’s not much to tell you,” she says. “I didn’t know what Thomas was looking for in Plexton. I was there for a while before I met Avalon. She seemed just as lost and scared as me and I was bored.”

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