Bound Temptations: Stories of Temptation and Submission (27 page)

“
No.” Drake shook his head.
“You won’t. Because there’s one thing I know about Kent that you
really wish I didn’t know—I know a name.”

Her lashes flickered. She
swallowed.

“
They
think she was
raped
. But she
likes
being hurt—you even hurt her and I have proof of it,” Gail
babbled, shaking her head, eyes glassy.

She already knew,
though.

Drake saw it on her
face.

“
Elaina Watson,” he said
quietly. “Aged thirteen. Kent, Kyle and I were fifteen—two years
ahead of her. I knew her brother, knew her folks. I know you paid
them not to talk about what he did to her. I know you put him in
counseling. And now we know it didn’t do any good.”

Gail
talked louder, as though she keep herself from hearing anything he
said. “They’ll look back at Kent’s
murder
now. And since they didn’t
charge her then, they can do it
now
.”

“
If you so
much as breathe a word to anybody, I’ll track Elaina down,” he
continued to speak as well, not raising his voice, because he knew
she heard him. He could see the terror in her eyes, on her face.
“I’ll ask her if she wants to speak about what he did to her. And
all it will take is
one
person, Gail. One person—and you know there is
one.”

Her lids flickered again,
and her voice cracked and finally, she went silent.

Drake
studied her closely and then he swore. “There’s more than one,
isn’t there? You
vicious
bitch.”

Turning
around, he jerked the chair out and sat down. “I’m wiping this
computer clean, I’m shutting down whatever feeds you’ve got, and
Gail, I’m warning you—do
not
fuck with me. If you do a thing against Tania,
you’ll be sorry, because I’ll drag Kent’s name through the mud.
And
yours
.”

“
You can’t do a thing to me,
bastard,” she growled.

There was
a heavy, ugly weight in his gut as he glanced back at her. “How
long have you known he had a thing for his brother’s wife, Gail?
Did you discover this room
before
he attacked her? Or after?”

She said nothing. But he saw
the answer.

“
If you’d warned her—hell,
if you had said a damn thing to me on any of the times I came by to
check on you after Kyle died? I could have done something, and you
know what? Kent would still be alive, because I damn well would
have kept him from touching her.”

Behind him, Gail started to
sob.

He tuned it out as he
started to dig around.

He’d been wrong, he realized
about five minutes into the job.

Kent wouldn’t be alive, even
if Gail had warned him.

Because Drake would have
killed him.

From what
he could tell, the bastard had cameras in just about every room of
Tania’s house—it looked like
three
in her bedroom and at least two in her
bathroom.

He thought he could kill it
remotely temporarily, but if Gail had any computer know-how—and it
was possible she might have some basic skills at least—the only way
to completely stop it was to find the cameras. He thought he had a
good idea of where they were, judging by the angle and
everything—

Tania walked across the
screen.

His heart turned
over.

He glanced at the clock in
the corner—almost nine. He hadn’t called her. He had to get over
there, tell her. Then get rid of the damn cameras—no. The cameras
first.

He took
care of the feeds first, then started checking the folders. They
were neatly organized by month, by year. Going back so many years.
The past year had been scarce, up until the past month. He opened
the folder and saw the stills of himself and Tania and he wanted to
scream. Wanted to smash the monitor to bits—that evil bitch had
been watching them. Calling Tania evil, calling her a whore, and
she’d been
spying
on them.

With his jaw clenched, he
deleted those.

“
You can delete them—it
won’t matter. I have them saved. I have the proof that she’s a
whore, a murderess,” Gail said, her voice wavering.

Yeah. He
imagined she did—at least proof in
her
mind
.

The next labeled folder made
his hand clench into a fist.

January
5
.

She’d saved it—her son’s
rape of her daughter-in-law and the bastard’s death.

“
Delete it if it makes you
feel better. But it won’t do any good.”

“
Oh, I’m deleting it,” he
muttered. And he did. That one, all of them. All the videos, the
pictures, emptied the recycling bin. And then, just because he
could—both of the twins had been computer freaks and Kyle had once
shown him how to force a crash—he crashed the hard
drive.

Pushing back from the desk,
he glanced around. There was a stack of CDs and DVDs. Again, neatly
labeled, corresponding to the folders. “Are these the so-called
evidence?”

She shrieked when he scooped
them up.

“
You
bastard
.”
She glared at him, like
he
was the one responsible for all of
this.

“
I’ve
spent the past two years feeling bad for you,” he said softly. “You
lost both of your boys. I know they were all you had after their
dad walked out. I hurt for you. But no more. You
let
that happen to her—you
knew what Kent was capable of and you did nothing to stop it.
Something you need to think about, and think hard—Tania just might
be able to hold you liable. A court might be able to. You knew he
had an unhealthy obsession. You did nothing, said nothing, and a
woman was raped.”

She opened
her mouth and Drake cut her off. “Shut the fuck up,” he bit off.
“You hear me? You
know
what he did and don’t tell me otherwise. You’re almost as
guilty as he was.”

Without saying anything
else, he shoved past her, the garbage can tucked into his arm,
carrying that damning evidence.

His heart was like ashes in
his chest.

He had to tell
her.

And there was nothing he
dreaded more.

Chapter Eight

It was a little after nine
when Drake knocked on the door.

She answered, smiling at
him. “Hey. I was starting to think I wouldn’t see you at all
today.” She leaned against him, lifting her face to his.

He brushed a hand down her
hair but didn’t smile back. “We need to talk,” he murmured, his
voice gruff and ragged. “But not here. Can we go to my
place?”

She blinked at him.
“Ah…yeah.” Lifting a hand, she laid it on his cheek. “Is everything
okay?”

In response, he caught her
hand, turned his mouth to it. “We’ll talk. Get your coat. Wait in
my car. I…I need a few minutes inside the house.”

Perplexed, Tania stared at
him. “Drake, what’s going on?”

“
Just wait in my car, okay?”
His dark blue eyes caught hers, held them. “Please.”

She
frowned, then slowly, she nodded. Her heart beat against her ribs,
hard and fast, and she wondered what in the hell was wrong.
Because
something
was wrong. Turning away, she grabbed her coat from the coat
tree. As she turned back, she saw Drake grab something from the
porch—a trashcan…?

What…?

But before she could ask, he
set the can just inside the door and guided her out to his car. It
was a sleekly rebuilt 1965 Ford Mustang, painted a gleaming black.
She studied his face as he opened the door for her, but his
expression revealed nothing. Nervous, she touched her fingers to
his lips. His gaze came to hers and he bent over, his hand curving
around the back of her neck, drawing her close for a
kiss.

It was slow and gentle,
soft—but she tasted something wild and edgy—dangerous in it. And
when he lifted his head, she glimpsed something dark and angry
behind the blue of his eyes. He smiled at her, but for some reason,
she didn’t feel very reassured.

Swallowing, she linked her
hands together and stared through the windshield as he shut the
door.

But as he turned and headed
for the house, she looked back, watching him.

There was fury in every line
of his body.

What was going
on?

With each small camera he
found, it only served to make him more and more furious.

There were twelve in
all—that he’d been able to find. He hoped that was all of them, but
he had a friend or two who did security work—he’d ask one of them
over in a day or two. They’d make sure everything had been
found.

He needed to calm down,
needed to cool down, needed to get his head together and do it
fast.

He’d use the drive to his
place—a thirty-minute drive to his house on the river—and maybe
he’d settle down. As he headed out the door, a faint ringing sound
hit his ears and he realized it was her cell phone. She’d left her
purse.

He snagged it, the trash can
that held all the DVDs, CDs, crumpled pictures and now, the
destroyed remains of the cameras. He’d have to do some repair work
on her house, too. A few of the cameras had been placed in things
like crown molding, so cleverly concealed and he hadn’t been able
to get them out without messing things up a little.

He grimaced now, wondering
if he was handling this right. He was operating on pure instinct,
though, pure fury—and while he was trying to focus on the instinct
and not the fury, he knew, in his gut, he couldn’t let Tania stay
in that house while the cameras could still be activated. It would
devastate her. The sooner they were shut down, the better. He
wasn’t making the wrong call there.

The rest…Hell. He didn’t
know.

The drive passed in
silence.

The tension weighed heavier
and heavier until Tania thought she might crack, but she didn’t say
anything, didn’t try to get him to talk.

Not yet.

She knew Drake.

He wouldn’t talk until he
was ready.

By the time they arrived at
his house, she was strung tight enough to snap, and the first thing
she did after he unlocked the door was head straight to his liquor
cabinet, pouring herself a rum and Coke. “You want one?”

“
No.” He came to stand
behind her, bracing his hands on the counter on either side of her
as he dipped his head low and pressed his lips to her shoulder.
“You know I’d never do a damn thing to hurt you, right? I’d cut off
an arm first.”

She took a sip of the drink
as she turned around, meeting his somber blue eyes. “I know that.
You don’t have it in you to really hurt a woman physically, Drake.”
She summoned up a smile for him, despite the dread she felt
curdling in her gut.

“
I’m not talking
physically,” he said gruffly, reaching up and cupping her cheek.
His thumb stroked over her lower lip. A harsh breath shuddered out
of him. “I meant it when I said I love you. I’ve loved you for
years. Part of me feels like I’ve always loved you—it almost killed
me when Kyle died, and not just because I lost my best friend, but
because of what I knew it would do to you. I can’t stand to know
you’re hurting. I can’t stand it—”

He pushed his hand into her
hair and fisted it as he pressed his brow to hers. “And fuck, what
I’m getting ready to do is going to hurt, baby. It’s going to hurt
bad.”

Her gut knotted. She licked
her lips and reached out, slid an arm around his waist. “You’re not
about to tell me you’re married or that you have to suddenly leave
town indefinitely—nothing stupid like that, right?”

“
No.” He laughed but there
was no humor in the sound. “Trust me, I only wish it was something
like that, because I could figure out a way around
that.”

He sighed
and cupped her face, pressed his lips to hers. “I thought
about
not
telling
you…and I realized that was taking your choice away. I couldn’t do
that, even knowing how much this is going to hurt. Fuck, I’m
sorry.”

He eased back and she stared
at him, torn between dread and confusion as he reached inside his
pocket and pulled out a crumpled picture. He worried it between his
fingers for a minute as he stared at her. “I got a call earlier,
not long after you called me to tell me you were going to have
drinks with Becky,” he said hoarsely. “It was from
Gail.”

The ache of dread grew,
turned to ice. Lowering her gaze to whatever picture he held, she
shook her head and backed away. “I don’t think I want to know,” she
said shakily.