He didn’t answer her. He couldn’t answer her. He wanted to scream, to howl out in fury at the injustice of what he faced. He couldn’t do either. He glanced out the open stable door, remembering his need to smell freedom. It wasn’t worth the possible sacrifice. His stubborn determination had sentenced his brothers to hell; he wouldn’t allow the same thing to happen to Heather.
He shook his head wearily as he unsaddled his mount. Poor Rusty. He patted the roan’s rump. The
stallion had been itching to run, just as Sam had.
“Sam?” Her soft voice questioned him.
“I won’t endanger you.” He tossed the saddle and blanket atop the saddle rail and led the horse back to its stall.
She sighed impatiently behind him. “Sam, you can’t go out alone. You know that. Did you forget what happened the last time you did that?”
His fists clenched as he locked the stall door.
“Yeah, Heather,” he bit out, turning to her slowly. “Something real f**king easy to forget…”
The scene surged through his mind, but it wasn’t Tate, it was Marcelle. Blood colored his vision as violence surged through his body for one hard, long second. He could feel his muscles tightening, his fists clenching as though to defend himself against the fury of a memory that never fully revealed itself.
“I’m sorry, Sam.” She dismounted, her face pale, her eyes wounded as she watched him. “I’ll find someone else to ride with you…”
He stopped her. Before he realized it he had gripped her arm, pulling her around until he had her pressed against the stall divider, her slender wrists shackled by his hands and stretched above her head. He stared down at her, breathing roughly, rage and desire burning through his body in equal measure.
“You don’t understand,” he growled roughly. “Listen to me, Heather. For God’s sake, for my sake, listen to me. Stay the f**k away from me. Please. I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want to be the cause of your pain.”
She wiggled against him, her h*ps pressing closer, her stomach cushioning the hard-on raging behind the material of his jeans. He fought for his control, his muscles tensing, bunching as she watched him from those knowing, though innocent, eyes.
“How much longer are you going to wallow in self-pity, Sam?” she finally asked him, and the very gentleness of her voice was like acid on an already burning wound. “How much longer will you let him destroy your life?”
He stared down at her unblinking, fighting the overwhelming anger that made him want to hurt, to control.
“As long as it takes, Heather, for the smell of blood and se**n mixing to get out of my f**king head,” he finally bit out. “Take that away, baby, and then we’ll talk about it.”
He threw himself away from her, knowing if he didn’t he might never be able to later. Her eyes were swimming with tears, her face pale with stress and pain as she watched him, and he couldn’t bear it.
Couldn’t bear looking into her eyes, knowing she saw him for who he was, for what he was. Knowing that in one careless moment, in one passion dazed encounter, he could place her at the mercy of a madman once again.
He whipped his hat from his head as the fingers of his other hand pushed violently through his hair. There was nothing he hated worse than this feeling raising inside him. The burning anger and pain. The shame. It
never failed to trigger the need to connect, to ease the aching emptiness inside his soul. The need to touch, taste and hear the screams of pleasure. But it wasn’t Marly’s or Sarah’s he needed to hear. It was Heather’s.
Chapter Sixteen
“Cade, he’s headed back in,” Heather spoke into her comm. link as Sam stalked back to the ranch house. It worried her, the intensity in his blue-gray eyes, the fury that tightened his body.
Anger was riding him hard and it was easy to see that the coming eruption could be more than any of them wanted to face. For all his joviality, the bleak dark core she glimpsed in his soul seemed all the more dangerous.
“Thanks, Heather. We’ll take care of him.” His voice was darkly brooding, anger and concern mixing in a haunting brew that tore at her heart. Three men, each scarred in different ways and fighting for survival.
It terrified her, wondering if they would be able to fight their way clear of this one.
And it hurt her. She knew how such episodes ended. The blistering heat of the female cries as the August brothers joined in an orgy of sexual intensity with them. Though Sam didn’t seem to be taking part as often as he had in the past, she knew he had at least taken part in that damned limo. The danger surrounding them only increased the edge of lust that glittered in the men’s eyes on a constant basis.
They were highly sexed, and more than a little dominate. And though Sam seemed more playful than forceful, she could see the core of that dark sexuality becoming more apparent. The closer the danger came, the more that edge seemed to intensify.
The stalker shadowing their every move was getting closer. Several attempts had been made to breach the house. Each one had gone unnoticed by any of the investigators until long after it had been too late to catch sight of him. The bastard knew the ranch too well to suit any of them.
She clicked the link back to the open channel, listening with only distant attention to the chatter between the investigators as she unsaddled her horse and led him back to the stall. She stroked the animal’s long face, staring into the quiet brown eyes as sadness filled her.
“He’s getting worse.” Brock stepped into the stables, his eyes so like Sam’s, were quiet, sad, as Heather clipped the stall door closed and turned to him.
Heather watched as he moved deeper into the cool, shadowed interior. He watched her closely, his eyes contemplative, the way he held his body suggesting that he was a man on a mission that he wasn’t entirely certain of.
“We can’t allow him to go riding off by himself, Brock.” Heather shook her head, knowing Sam needed the solitude of the open land to help still the demons raging inside him. A solitude that could be fatal now.
She remembered before, when they were called out the first time to protect Marly. Sam had often slipped from the house, hiking or riding several miles away to a sheltering, tree-shaded pond where he would often sit and just stare into the water. He hadn’t been able to do that lately, and being confined seemed to only spur his temper.
“I agree with you on that, Heather,” he sighed roughly, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans as he watched her with a questioning expression. “I’m not asking anyone to allow it.”