Out of the Dark (The Brethren Series) (12 page)

The order confused her, and she blinked between him and Aaron, puzzled and frightened. She expected her delay to enrage Lamar, but instead, he smirked, then nodded once to indicate Aaron.

“Put your mouth on him,” he said again.

Still not understanding what Lamar expected, she did the only thing she could think of and leaned in to kiss Aaron.

“Not there,” Lamar said, stopping her within millimeters of Aaron’s mouth.

And Naima understood.

Although over the years, Lamar had violated her plenty of times, and in countless, humiliating ways, he
had never raped her. He’d never been able to achieve an erection, although to her horrified witness, he’d desperately tried. He’d use his hands, make her use her hands, force her to take him into her mouth—soft, flaccid and fat against her tongue, like a limp, lifeless eel or slug. No matter what he’d do—or what he’d make Naima do—his genitalia hadn’t responded.

Thus, when he said it again, gentle but persistent—“Put your mouth on him.”—
she’d understood what he wanted, what he was demanding of her. It wasn’t until she lowered herself to her knees in front of Aaron, however, that comprehension seemed to seep into his dazed mind. His breath abruptly stopped, his eyes widening.

“No,” he whispered, not to Lamar but to Naima. He looked panic-stricken, and squirmed against his bonds
, distraught. Looking toward Lamar, he pleaded, “Father…!”

“
Aaron,” she said, drawing his alarmed gaze. “It’s alright.”

She smiled,
trying to comfort and reassure him, just as he had so many times done for her. She tried not to think of Lamar sitting behind her, watching her with sick, patient glee. Whenever he’d forced her to perform sex acts on him, she’d been terrified and repulsed; with Aaron, however, she found herself seized with a remarkable and inexplicable sense of calm—and excitement. Her heart was racing, her breath fluttering beneath her breasts, and peculiar warmth seemed to have filled the pit of her stomach, spreading throughout her. She was trembling, not with fear, but rather with unexpected but eager anticipation.

W
hen she reached out, closing her fingers around the warm width of him, she felt a shudder race through Aaron form and her own excitement heightened at the realization that he liked it, that her touch felt good to him.

“Naima,” he breathed, then his voice dissolved into a breathless sort of moan a
s she slipped the very tip of him into her mouth. The ropes creaked above him as he again tugged against the bonds.

“More,” Lamar ordered, little more than a throaty purr.

Aaron groaned as she took him in more deeply, wrapping her lips around his hardening shaft and letting her tongue guide her way down. Behind her, Lamar continued to growl out commands, but she wasn’t listening; she’d blocked him from her mind. She concentrated on Aaron, listening as his breaths grew sharper and more insistent while she drew him in and out of her mouth. As his arousal grew, she took more of him in, until at last,she had to stop, because if she delved any further, she’d choke herself.

She could have told Aaron this—that
he’d climaxed in her mouth, and she’d been so surprised, she’d nearly gagged, because despite everything she’d been forced to learn from an early age from Lamar about sex, his own bodily failings had prevented her from discovering that part of the process until that moment. She’d felt strangely euphoric in the aftermath of what she’d done, curiously empowered and satisfied in her own right—it was the same sort of satisfaction she derived even to that day from dominating her sexual partners. For his part, Lamar must have enjoyed the show as well, because he’d demanded repeat performances almost nightly from that moment on.

She could have told Aaron this,
too, but she bit back the words. His eyes had widened enough with shock and dismay at the limited revelations of abuse she’d already shared. Shaking his head, he said in a soft, strained voice. “I…I don’t remember any of that.”

Hoisting her chin, her brows furrowed deeply, she glared at him, eye-to-eye.
“Tough shit.
I
do.”

A sudden, furious pounding on her front door
startled her, making her wheel clumsily around in frightened surprise. From outside on the stoop, she heard Elliott’s voice, sharp and urgent:
“Naima!”

Oh, shit,
she thought, turning back to Aaron. To her surprise, he had vanished. She had no idea where he’d gone—only that he had to still be somewhere in the house, and very close at that—and didn’t have any time to worry about it, because Elliott pounded his fist at the door again.

“Hang on,” she called, and when she opened the door,
he practically plowed her over as he rushed past her and into the house.

“
Thank God you’re here!” he exclaimed. “Why aren’t you answering your phone? I’ve been trying to call you. Everyone has!”

“What?” Naima asked, at a complete lost. “Why?”

“Elliott, wait,” Kate said, following him inside. “Maybe she should sit down before you…”

“
He doubled back somehow, that son of a bitch,” Elliott said, cutting his wife off, his voice strained to the point of hoarseness. For the first time, Naima noticed his eyes were red-rimmed, as if he’d been crying. “I don’t know how but he did it. Oh, Jesus Christ, Naima, he got past all of us!”

Naima shook her head. “Who are you talking about?”

“Davenant, of course!” Elliott cried. “Who the fuck else?”

“Naima…” Kate draped her hand gently against Naima’s arm, drawing her bewildered gaze. “Michel’s dead.”

It felt as if all of the strength in Naima’s entire body abruptly drained down her legs, abandoning her to pool around her feet on the floor.
“What?”
she gasped.

“Davenant cut his throat!” Elliott ripped off his stocking cap and forked his fingers through his headful of disheveled, wayward curls. His eyes gleamed with bright new tears, and he uttered an anguished cry. “Goddammit, he killed Michel!”

CHAPTER NINE

Hiding in Naima’s bathroom hadn’t been Aaron’s first choice, but it had been the closest proximity to shelter he’d been able to find. Once in the bathroom, he’d had no recourse but to duck into the bathtub, an enormous, antique claw-footed type with a deep basin and a flimsy white nylon curtain suspended from a circular bar above it. The curtain was opaque, but not enough to keep him hidden, and he found himself forced to lie down in the tub, turned awkwardly onto his side at an uncomfortable angle—one that would also prove impractical, he knew, if he needed to scramble up quickly and defend himself.

He could hear the bearded hippie-looking guy who’d stormed into Naima’s house ranting and raving from the other room. Aaron hadn’t recognized him from any of the photographic dossiers Lamar had put together for him of Michel and his sons, but the Morin family resemblance had been too apparent to ignore. He couldn’t discern what was being said, but heard repeated references to his surname, Davenant, usually accompanied by
goddamn son of a bitch,
or
cowardly bastard
or
low-down piece of shit.

Aaron bristled at the repeated furious mentions.
You want to show someone how they clean a buck in the back country—isn’t that what you said earlier?
he thought with a scowl.
Give me a day to get my strength back up, you fuck, and hand me a knife—we’ll see who walks out of these woods with their internal organs still in place.

He heard the bathroom door squeak on its hinges at it opened, then a loud click as it swung shut. He froze, his entire body going rigid in the basin of the tub, his breath caught in an alarmed tangle in the back of his throat. Soft footsteps, hurried but light, fell against the tiled floor. Before he could open his mind and risk a quick scan, he heard Naima’s voice, little more than a hush: “Aaron?”

He didn’t know why he should feel so relieved that it was her, but nonetheless, he released the breath he’d been holding to that point in a low, long sigh. “Here.”

She drew the curtain back enough to peek in.
“I have to go,” she whispered.

Something was wrong. He could see it in her face. Her eyes were glassy and round, shell-shocked in appearance.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, trying to sit up—and why did he feel this inexplicable urge to reach for her, to touch her face, to offer her comfort?

She shook her head, turning to walk away. Then she paused, glancing back at him.
“Michel’s dead,” she said in a soft voice.

Oh, s
hit,
Aaron thought. Because that would complicate matters considerably. He’d shot Michel through the windshield of his SUV, but only because Michel had been actively trying to run him over. He’d been defending himself. Killing Michel had not been part of Lamar’s orders to Aaron; indeed, Lamar enjoyed the prospect of keeping his once-believed long-lost enemy alive for many years to come, and tormenting him all the while, killing his kith and kin one by one, starting with the boy, Tristan.

The Morins would be gunning for him more furiously than ever, he realized in dismay, but that would be nothing compared to what Lamar would do once he found out.
Worst of all, though, was the realization of what Naima would think. He didn’t know why he should give a shit at all about the woman, or what she thought or felt, but for some reason, he did.

Naima was still talking
: “…somehow got into the clinic this morning after sunrise and slit his throat.”

“What?” Aaron blinked at her.
“What did you just say?”

“I said my cousin Elliott’s out there, and he told me they think you got past the search party in the woods somehow, that you doubled back and made it back to the clinic by sunrise today. They found
Michel dead shortly after that—his throat was slit.”

Aaron shook his head.
“I didn’t do that.”

“I know,” she replied.

“I was here with you,” he insisted.

“
I know. But they think you did it.” She cut a glance toward the bathroom door, clearly indicating not just the two people waiting beyond it, but the rest of her family as well. Then, with a frown, she leaned down over him in the tub. “Who else came with you to the mountains last night?”

“No one,” he said.

“You came here alone?” She looked doubtful at this.

“I go everywhere alone.” Wincing, he shifted his position, sitting up more. “I don’t need anyone’s help.”

“Could someone have followed you without you knowing it? Someone from your family? Someone Lamar sent?”

“Lamar doesn’t want your grandfather dead,” Aaron told her drily. “If he did, I would have
aimed better when I put a round through his windshield.”

He uttered a breathless gulp as she
collapsed the air around his neck, crushing his windpipe abruptly, completely. For a long moment—
too
goddamn long—she left him like that, watching him struggle, clawing at his throat, his face flushed and plum-colored, his eyes bulging as he gagged for breath.

“I would have killed you myself if you had,” she
snarled. “And I’ll kill you yet if I find out you had anything to do with this.”

She released his throat, and he slumped down into the tub, his chest heaving as he panted for air. He could have stopped her with even a mild psionic bolt if he’d simply
concentrate enough, but somehow couldn’t summon the resolve to fight back against her. “I didn’t kill him,” he panted instead. “I give you my word I don’t know anything about it.”

Again, he could see an emotional war going on behind her eyes. He could sense it, too, even without extending his telepathy far; her thoughts were racing, frantic, anguished
, like dark thunderheads collecting across the landscape of her mind.

“I give you my word,” he said again.

For a long moment, she simply glared at him, tears hovering on the edges of her lashes and threatening to cascade down her cheeks. Then she seethed: “Stay here.” Standing fully upright again, she snapped the shower curtain closed on him, and he watched her slim silhouette through the gauzy fabric as she walked away. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

***

It’s not possible,
Naima told herself. The idea that Michel was dead seemed so impossible to her, she’d been more likely to believe that Jesus Christ Himself had stopped by and asked to borrow the shitter.

As she drove toward the clinic with Elliott riding shotgun and Kate in the back seat, she just kept thinking this over and over:
It’s not possible. Not Michel. There’s no way.

Michel had come to assume dominance over his clan long before Naima had been born, and he’d held it ever since. He’d been the glue that had kept them all together despite the horrors of the fires in 181
5; he’d been the one to get them all resettled and safe and to have rebuilt their lost family fortune—often through his own blood, sweat and tears. He’d proven to be as brilliant a business man as he ever had a physician, and his investments in both the oil industry and more recently, in pharmaceutical research had insured that the entire Morin clan—more than a hundred and fifty all together, all scattered around the world—would be financially set for the rest of their lives, and for countless generations yet to come. He was the Morin clan’s patriarch; their most stalwart defender, the one they all turned to for comfort, guidance and wisdom. When he had picked the shores of Lake Tahoe, the veritable edge of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, as the place where the family compound would be built—a place where the clan could regroup as a whole, no matter where in the world they roamed—it had made bittersweet sense to Naima.