WYLDER Read online

  Bastard.

  “Bug, I know you don’t want to hear any of this, and trust me, I didn’t want to hear it either. After I beat the shit out of that boy, and he just let me, I wasn’t very up to much more bullshit, but his mom and dad cornered me and finally got me to listen to his side of things.”

  I perk up a little at the thought of him beating the tar out of Wylder and then snarl at myself when a little kernel of concern tries to break through.

  “I don’t care, Dad, and don’t you dare expect me to. You’re supposed to be on my side. You were supposed to assassinate him in some huge military spook style operation with photos of his corpse, not listen to the idiot’s sob story,” I rage, getting really riled because I know if dad heard him out and he isn’t ready to snipe him, then I will, and dammit, I’m not ready!

  Daddy spreads his hands and gives me a smile for my bloodthirsty imagination, which makes me want to sob because I remember Wylder laughing about it and telling me not to give natural-born killers any bright ideas.

  “I will if you still want me to, after you listen. Deal?”

  I consider the offer. Seriously, I do, because if I have to feel stuff, then Dad can kill Wylder. Simple.

  “Fine, but don’t expect anything.”

  “I don’t. Just for you to listen without going nuts on me. Christ, you’re just like your mom with that wild temper. Leave it to you to fall in love with a man named Bear Wylder. Jesus, bug, just swear my grandbabies will have normal names.”

  I bare my teeth in answer, and he laughs when I snarl, letting him know how I feel about his poorly placed joke.

  “Okay, sorry. Okay. So, I went down there, pissed, you know me. I was seriously going to beat that boy to a pulp and drag him behind Jon’s car—”

  “You took Uncle Jon with you?” I gasp, sitting forward because this is awesome.

  “Yeah. But it wasn’t any fun, bug. Honestly, he just stood there and didn’t react at all. By the fourth punch, I just felt bad because he wasn’t even there anymore, ya know? It was tragic. Jon finally told me it was a waste, and I was leaving when his parents cornered us and forced me to listen. He told you about his sister, and that’s good, because it means that even then he wanted you to know another side of him.”

  “Oh, barf.”

  “It’s true. What he didn’t tell you was how bad things got after that. His dad started drinking heavily.”

  “I know this, Daddy.”

  “Did he tell you that he walked into his father’s home just as the bank was foreclosing on them and found him with a gun in his mouth?” he asks quietly, making me gasp and sit up straight in horror.

  Oh, poor Wylder! That must have been awful, and for Wylder, who loves his family like crazy, it must have shredded him.

  “Oh no.”

  “Yeah. Wylder found him that way and had to stop him. The old man was crying the whole time he told me what went down, and I swear to God, Danny, I don’t know if I was more angry with him or if I just pitied him. I wouldn’t survive losing you, bug. I just wouldn’t. Wylder was desperate, so desperate he made a vow to his father, and he hasn’t stopped going until he fulfilled it.”

  It makes sense, and I sort of suspected as much, but it still doesn’t help, and it doesn’t change what he did. I could have died. I almost did die, something I didn’t tell Daddy because nothing would have saved Wylder then. Nothing.

  “I am not surprised, Daddy, but—”

  “Alric told me that it was what kept him going, and as messed up as it sounds, I don’t think anything else could have done it. What they did to that girl…horrific, Danny. Alric took that vow, and after all this time, he knew he should have released Bear, but he didn’t. That man planned this all to the letter and then involved his buddies in ops. From there, it’s been an on-going operation to bring down more than one organization. They pulled in so many people the cops will be looking for jobs, bug.”

  His words make me pause. I could stay angry at Wylder, and yes, I could really hate him forever, but as with that defining moment when I opened that door and saw that girl, knew I was meant to be there to help her, I know, I think, Wylder was meant to do this, save people by bringing them all down.

  That helps me see things differently. It really does, but I can’t say that I’m ready to forgive him yet, if ever.

  “Wolf was there. The plan was that he’d go for you when the time was right, and according to Bear, he hedged his bets with some shank you had in your shoe?” he asks in bewilderment.

  I start laughing at that, at the ludicrousness of the situation. I laugh so long and hard I’m limp by the time Daddy lifts me up into his arms and gives me one of his tight hugs.

  It’s so fucking funny though. I can’t stop. He knew! He knew about that shank the whole time, and he didn’t say anything! No wonder he’d wait for me to get undressed before he came to my room. I bet that sadistic freak was tickled by the thought that I had a weapon and could kill him at any time.

  God, and how sick am I that I find it this amusing. And sweet.

  “Bug, you’re starting to scare me a little,” Daddy whines, making me shake harder.

  “He knew about that toothbrush?” I gasp.

  “Yeah,” he chuckles, shaking his head. “You did me proud with that thing, baby, and I am embarrassed to say I left you uneducated about the making of weapons. That’s okay though because, apparently, you found a man just like your old dad to teach you all the ways of war.”

  His delight is short lived when I scowl.

  “You’d never have left me alone with that toad.”

  “No, but then again, bug, as much as I love you, I don’t trust you to take a man down without my help. Or I didn’t. That was my mistake, but apparently, Bear sees your strength and trusted you to stay alive for him.”

  Oh dammit. Really? Now how am I supposed to stay mad when he says stuff like that?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Danny

  The sand squishes between my toes, and I breathe in deep as the surf washes over me, cooling my skin as the wind whips at me. I’m on the same beach, a beach I never thought I would see again.

  Yep, I am waiting, just as I planned, with Wolf, who promised to get his drunk-ass brother out of a bottle and get him down here. Honestly, the man is supposed to be some kind of big bad gangster, and he’s been drowning his sorrows for weeks.

  So I ignored all his calls and the one time he showed up at my door I called the cops. He deserved it, and I wasn’t ready. I am now. I spent a week after Daddy dropped by letting myself think, really think and feel everything, and at the end, I had this epiphany.

  Well, it was something. I don’t know what it was, since I still think I am a dumbass, but I came to a decision, and once made, it was made.

  See, I love Bear Wylder. It’s not smart, and it’s definitely not rational, but there you have it. I love the damn nasty criminal—who, by the way, is not a criminal, lying ass.

  And I want him. That’s all. But I have a few conditions. I need to know it all. Not what he wants to tell me because it suits him but everything from the beginning. Especially that part about how he was going to seduce me to use me against my dad and Uncle Jon.

  That part was unforgivable! Use me to hurt my daddy, will he? I have spare toothbrushes, so…

  I hear the crunch of sand behind me but stay facing the water. I can feel Wylder, physically, like a touch, and my whole body starts humming when he stops just behind me to my left and doesn’t move closer.

  “Don’t,” I say, stalling him when I feel his hand sweep over my back in a ghostly caress.

  I can’t let him touch me yet, not until I know I can forgive him and live with what happened. I think I can. God, I hope I can, but I’m not here all ready to throw myself at him and make love, not hate.

  I’m here to get answers, and maybe, just maybe, I have enough of Mom in me to love him again.

  I hear him breathe deeply, as if searching for strength, and then he moves up
onto the dry sand and sits, patiently waiting for me to be ready. I look at him when I turn because I need to see him and show him that I am not afraid.

  What I see shocks me. He’s lost weight, and his usually immaculate appearance is gone with a face full of stubble and dark circles beneath his eyes.

  “Oh, gross, Wylder. Really? You flew all this way to talk to me, and you couldn’t even put some effort into it?” I grouch, sitting down gingerly, careful to leave a good foot of space between us.

  My snark has him puffing out a chuckle, and I school my face when he rubs at his beard—it’s too long to be stubble, but I will throw him a bone since he looks so crappy.

  “I haven’t cared about all that much lately, baby. Shaving hasn’t exactly mattered when I feel as if I’ve lost my life.”

  Oh boohoo.

  “What a copout! Do you think I felt great? No, I really do not, and yet look at me, Wylder. I look hot.”

  His lips twitch at the insult I deliver him, and I roll my eyes. Stay on point, Danny. Geez.

  “You’re stronger than I am, Danny. You always were, babe.”

  “That is true. But I am not here to listen to you kiss my ass. I’m here to get that explanation you tried to give me at three in the morning, drunk off your ass.”

  He winces, and I blush guiltily because Wolf told me he spent the night in a cell, sleeping it off. I don’t feel too guilty though, because I didn’t press charges. Check out the mercy, people.

  “I love you.”

  Oh, be still heart. No, really, you will not ruin his walking over coals for me by giving in too fast. Effort is required here.

  “Yeah, I heard you the first time. And that time I called the cops on you. And all the times you called my machine before I smashed it into tiny pieces. You owe me a machine, by the way.”

  “I love you. I’ll say it over and over again until you believe it, Daniella, because I could sit here and tell you how I never for one minute would have let you get hurt, that I made the best of what I had, that I regret it all, and yet all I have is that I love you. It’s the one thing I have to offer that may be enough, because if it isn’t, I got nothing else.”

  I feel my heart contract at those words, and yeah, I’m totally won over, but I need more, just a little, because it hurt. It hurt so much when he took me down in his house and threw my love back at me. It hurt every time we were together and he snuck out of my bed. It hurt when he wouldn’t let me love him.

  Most of all, it hurt that I had to come here and capitulate while he was drinking like a fish.

  “If you had told me everything, told me about your dad and your plans, I would have helped you with it all. I’d have gone in there and done whatever it took to help you.”

  My voice is just above a whisper, and I can’t look at him as the knowledge rolls over me. As I’ve already admitted, I don’t hate Wylder for what he did to get here. I’d have killed to help my father the way he did, and I’d have done it with no remorse.

  Knowing that, that I am as capable of those things as the worst in society, isn’t comforting. It scares me. But I accept it, and I accept Wylder, just not his methods with regards to me.

  He scared the hell out of me and hurt me enough that, for a brief moment, I would have given up because I felt hopeless. Bastard is lucky I’m too stubborn to die.

  He takes my hand, and I go to pull away, but he uses the momentum to roll us and ends up pinning me to the sand, his smirking face hovering close to mine.

  “I wouldn’t have let you. You’re pure and good and kind, even when you don’t want to be, and I never wanted any of this to touch you.”

  “That’s bull, and you know it! What about all those time you threatened to kill me or send me back where I came from? What about the whole ‘love is not real, just a weakness’ speech? Oh, and let’s not forget how I am just a sex object there for your pleasure! And I don’t even think I will ever forget when you taunted me about loving you. That was just cruel,” I hiss into his face, not struggling, because it would be a waste of breath.

  The man is way too big, and where he’s pressing against my sex, I’m feeling all kinds of good things. He looks down at me, the mischief going out of his eyes, and gives me a look that melts everything.

  “I needed you to hate me just in case things went wrong and Ariston got the drop on me. I didn’t want you mourning me, baby, not when I didn’t deserve a moment of your time. I don’t deserve you. I know it, and yet I can tell you, now that I have nothing to wake up for in the morning, I need you. I need you to give my life meaning, Danny. Because I love you, and without you, nothing matters.”

  I melt aaaaaall the way then and huff before leaning up to kiss him sweetly.

  “Don’t hurt me ever again, Bear Wylder. Not ever again.”

  “Never,” he swears, kissing me breathless right there in the sand with moonlight streaming over us. “It’s only pleasure from now on, and that’s a vow.”

  I sigh when he starts stripping me and scream my pleasure when he takes me not long after, his love and that vow making it all better for now.

  It won’t ever be just pleasure. It can’t be, because I am in love with a Wylder boy who will never be tamed.

  That’s okay, because I’ve had tame and nice. Now, it’s time for naughty and absolutely wild.

  BOOK TWO

  Chapter One

  Lori

  My name is Lorianna Staneslovsky. I have no one. I was born in a trailer out in Texas to a mother who had no care in the world for anyone but herself and a father whose first love was and always will be the bottle. I have one younger sister, named Ulianna, and one brother, named Len, who I have not seen in about six years.

  I left home just before I turned eighteen and danced in a strip club for two years before I got my real estate license and started my life as a real-life adult.

  I never tell people that, because it doesn’t go down well with most folks, but it saved me from hunger and homelessness. Dancing was a good job most nights, my only real problem being those patrons who assumed that I was a hooker just because I took my top off.

  I am not nor have I ever been a woman of loose morals. I went to Sunday school every Sunday as a kid and never missed church even when I was dancing.

  I’ve got morals, so what does it say about me now that I hate a man so much I want him dead?

  Wolf Wylder is everything I ever wanted in a guy, the ideal, and yet I now despise him because he broke my heart into tiny little pieces and left me alone and bleeding in the gutter.

  Three months ago, I was clubbing with my friends, living a good life, when I was drugged and taken by a man named Noni. I woke up, naked and freezing, in a little cell in a warehouse on the docks.

  At first I was terrified. What woman wouldn’t be terrified? But then they brought in another woman, Danny, and then I was just mad because it hit home that I wasn’t the only woman there, that we were all taken. Sex slave trafficking.

  It was so cold in there I thought I was going to go crazy from the pain in my body. I think…I think I did go a little crazy, and then Danny woke up, and she was so scared that I forced myself to calm down.

  She needed me. For the first time in my life, someone needed me, and I formed a bond with her in those moments as we huddled together for heat, skin to skin.

  We didn’t escape, like people do in the movies. We weren’t that lucky. No, the door was opened when Danny freaked out because I passed out and would have died from hypothermia.

  And then hell really began for me. I’m a strong woman, a woman used to struggling to survive and fighting for what I want. I can deal with fighting and hurting and clawing my way out of a pit. What killed me was that we were given to men named Wolf and Bear Wylder, gangsters, madmen, our saviors, because Danny recently confessed to me that Wolf and Bear didn’t have to take us when Noni offered us as gifts.

  The truth is that Wolf could have left me there to be sold to some fat sheik or a South American brothel where I w
ould have died. So, yeah, I am grateful. Mostly.

  Bear took Danny to his home in New Orleans, and Wolf took me to his parents’ home just a few miles away. It was a massive plantation-style place near the river, and if I hadn’t been so freaking scared and angry, I would have loved it.

  The place was huge and classy but still a home. Never my home though, I think, swiping angrily at a tear as it tracks down my cheek and hammers home just how messed up I still am months later.

  It will never be my home, and the truth is that I wanted it to be. Once I stopped being scared and accepted Wolf’s reassurances that he wouldn’t hurt me, I was in this floaty space where I was happy.

  Who wouldn’t be, ya know? I got to live in a nice place and have sex with a man hot enough to singe my privates with just one look. And his parents were great!

  They were kind and loving and treated me with so much affection that I couldn’t for the life of me understand why my own parents were such assholes my whole life. I finally had something I had never had, people who seemed to care about me.

  But I couldn’t keep it, and sometimes I hate myself for not being good enough to hang on to them.

  I lean back on the sofa as Roseanne screams at the top of her lungs and stare at the ceiling as I have been doing for weeks. I haven’t stopped living since I got home. On the contrary, I haven’t ever been better at my job.

  The heartache was horrible, but I channeled it into pulling my life back together and proving that I can live, and live well, without Wolf Wylder. So, I have. I go to work six days a week and kick ass.

  I sell homes, lower-scale starter homes that don’t get me huge commissions but keep me in a steady paycheck, and I have been kicking ass on the rental properties Glen put me on when I demanded more work to keep me busy.