Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

Sissy

I closemy locker and sigh with happiness.

It has been one week since I started working as a blackjack dealer—and I’ve loved every second. Sure, there seems to be an inordinate amount of men flocking to my table, but Locke is forever standing behind me to keep them in check. The big engagement ring on my finger doesn’t hurt, either. Locke proposed to me in a beautiful restaurant overlooking the Strip yesterday and I almost launched myself across the table in an attempt to say yes and throw my arms around him at the same time.

A week ago, I thought I knew happiness, but ever since Locke and I worked out our issue, that feeling has increased tenfold and now I don’t walk. I float.

Faye sidles up next to me, stowing a bottle of body spray in her locker, before leaning against it to eyeball me. “Someone is glowing,” she says, a reluctant smile playing around the edges of her mouth. We got off to a bad start my first day of waitressing, but ever since I came back, we’ve started to build an unlikely friendship. I think I impressed her by coming back at all after the stir I caused on the casino floor. “Locke must be magic in the sack.”

I flush to the roots of my hair.

Magic is an understatement.

Now that he’s given himself the freedom to be the older, male authority—so to speak—in the bedroom, we race home from work with the need to be undressed and in bed together. Sometimes we don’t make it. I’ve been taken on the hood of two different cars in the parking garage, my butt squeaking up and back on the shiny exterior. And this afternoon, I got on my knees for him in the suite he keeps upstairs in case of emergencies, worshipping the delicious length of him until he poured himself down my throat.

It was my first time taking Daddy in my mouth and I plan on doing it again tonight.

He’s going to want me on my back or face down with my legs spread open, but I’ll pout until he lets me taste him. At least for a little while. I’m already addicted to his salty flavor.

“I’ll take that expression on your face as confirmation,” Faye snorts, shutting her locker and walking away shaking her head. “Oh!” she says, turning back around on a heel with a snap of her fingers. “I forgot to mention, there was a man here yesterday asking for you.”

My nose wrinkles. “A man?”

“Yeah. Older, sort of seemed…I don’t know. Out of place among the crowd?” My heart is beginning to pound wildly in my ribcage. “You’ve got a lot of admirers, you know? Locke has put his proverbial scent all over you and terrifies anyone who gets too close to his territory. But this guy obviously hasn’t gotten the message.”

“Right,” I manage to say, feeling winded. “Thank you for letting me know.”

“Sure thing.” She winks at me, heads for the locker room exit. “See you out there.”

“Okay,” I breathe, pressing a hand to my stomach in an attempt to stop it from flipping over and over. No way. Could it be? Has my father found me?

I’m suddenly very aware that I’m the only one in the usually bustling locker room.

The waitressing night shift is about the begin, but the day waitresses haven’t yet left the floor. It’s turnover time and there’s no sound, save the dripping of a leaky shower nozzle.

I’ve been so wrapped up in Locke and growing accustomed to my new life in Vegas that I’ve barely spared a worry that my father would come and find me. I’m a legal adult. Yes, he has made a practice out of controlling me my whole life, but searching for me? Dragging me home when I’m old enough to be out on my own? That would be kidnapping—

I’ve barely managed to finish the thought when a familiar, calloused hand claps over my mouth and I’m dragged toward the rear emergency exit, the metal door banging off the wall at being shoved open so hard. Horror is like quicksilver in my veins, shock stopping me from reacting right away and then it’s too late, I’m outside.

Being pulled toward the parked car he’s owned since I was a child.

No. Oh my God, please. No.

Locke.

I start to fight, kicking backward to strike his shins. It surprises him, because I’ve never fought back before, but I’m not letting him take me. Not letting him steal my newfound happiness. Not happening.

“You want to tango, bitch?” His hands close around my throat and tighten, cutting off my air passage, but I struggle mightily, refusing to give up.

At least until I feel the muzzle of a gun pressing to my temple.

“Yeah, that’s right. Who’s in charge now?” He digs the metal into the side of my forehead. “Thought I’d just walk in here and demand you get your ass in the car, so I could bring you back home to work, like you were meant to do. To serve this family. But then I saw that big fella you’ve been rutting with. So I went and picked up a little ammunition.”

Tears cloud my vision. “I’ll run away again. I’ll keep running away again and again for the rest of my life. And that’s the best case scenario for you, because I pity what will happen to you if my future husband tracks you down.”

“Future husband,” he sneers, spitting on the ground. “He’s just making promises to get those legs to open sesame. Every man I’ve ever brought to the farm tried to buy you off me. They wanted to get you married and breeding as soon as you hit eighteen. At first I was annoyed over their weak flesh, but I came around to the idea. You’re my property, ain’t you? And you ran off before I could make a good deal.”

Shock renders me momentarily still. “You…you wanted to sell me?”

“No. I am going to sell you. Might get a little less cash for you now that you’ve tarnished yourself with that bull, but I’ll still come away with enough to live comfortably for the rest of my days.”

A wrench turns in my sternum. “Does my mother know?”

“She goes along with the decisions I make.” He continues dragging me backward toward the car, ignoring my cries to stop. “You could learn a thing or two from her, you unruly brat.”

“Stop!” I cling to the edge of the car, but he’s stronger and manages to push me into the back seat. “Please. Just let me live my life.”

He ignores me. “There’s a pen and paper down there in the footwell. You’re going to write your fiancé a letter breaking off the relationship, so he doesn’t come looking.” He points his gun at the diamond on my finger. “Give me that. We’ll leave it with the letter to make it convincing.”

“I’m not writing it.”

“Oh yes you will.” My father cocks the gun, murder in his eyes. He’s gone mad. Perhaps he wants to bring me back to Nebraska to make him money, but after scoring his pride, I think he’d be just as satisfied knowing I’m dead. Unable to shame him any further. Maybe he was always a little crazy and me running away pushed him over the edge. Whatever the reason, I can’t be positive he won’t pull the trigger. Better to placate him now and wait for an opportunity to run while we’re on the road back to Nebraska.

With tears rolling down my cheeks, I pick up the pen and paper, crying while I write the words he demands of me, verbatim. As soon as I sign the bottom of the page, I’m being knocked out with the blow from the butt of his gun, cutting off my scream and turning it into a choked whisper of Locke’s name.

* * *

Locke

When Sissy doesn’t emerge from the women’s lounge at the time we agreed upon, I know something is wrong right away. She’s never late. She knows I worry. And there is fire crackling in my bones that I haven’t experienced before. It’s not just panic, it’s the sense that I’ve missed something important. I’ve neglected to cover a base.

For one full extra minute, I stare at the door waiting for her to walk through with her bright, optimistic smile and that secret look in her eye. The one she only gives me. It says she’s counting the hours until she can be in my arms. Until she can be underneath me. Or kneeling in front of me, as she did earlier today, her innocent mouth sucking my cock so eagerly and reacting as if my come was nectar from the Gods. It was so mind-blowing, I got hard again immediately afterward and stayed stiff as nails until now.

Until now when she fails to walk out the door.

Finally, the entrance swings open, but someone I don’t recognize walks out—a waitress, according to her attire—gasping when she sees my expression, which is growing more and more panicked by the second. “Where is my fiancée?” I growl.

I don’t have to explain further. Everyone in this casino knows Sissy. There is only one employee who incited a riot by wearing a short skirt—and she’s mine.

The waitress glances back at the door, then at me. “I don’t know. I didn’t see her in there.”

“Is anyone else in there?”

“No, the shift change just ended. The night crew is out on the floor—”

I don’t wait for her to finish that sentence. I lunge through the door into the locker room, storming toward the final row where Sissy told me her locker is located. It’s closed. She’s not there. She’s not anywhere. I can smell her scent in the fucking air, but she is not in front of me and I’m—

There is an envelope sticking out of the bottom of her locker.

My stomach gurgles ominously as I stoop down to pick it up, opening the sealed tab with a stab and rip of my finger. Her engagement ring slides out into my hand and the world stops existing around me. In a blinding flash, I’m in a cold, desolate place and ice has replaced my blood. My heart is in my mouth when I begin to read the letter, but it drops into my stomach almost immediately, then ceases to beat altogether.

Dear Locke,

I made a mistake leaving home.

The engagement is off.

Please don’t come after me.

Sissy

Istumble sideways and slam into the row of lockers, sliding down to the floor with the piece of paper clutched in my fist. She left me. She left me. Why?

How can I ask why?

I’m sixteen years her senior. She’s exquisite—and let’s face it, I’m heavy and hairy and grumpy. I tried to tell her in the beginning that she was too far out of my league, didn’t I? She must have finally realized it herself. Either that or…or she never got over the hurt I caused her by praying for God to forgive me for touching her. As if she was a sin.

Has she been hiding more pain from me than I realized?

I bash the back of my head against the locker once, twice, agony erupting inside of my chest. I read the letter once more time, searching for some hidden clue as to what I did to lose her, but there is nothing. There’s nothing. I tilt my head back and roar at the ceiling, scalding hot moisture rushing in behind my eyes.

Her voice comes back to me, dreamlike and echoing from yesterday. When we were standing on the balcony of the restaurant where I proposed to her.

I wish we had a thousand years to spend together.

She said those words to me with stars in her eyes—and I believed her.

Several seconds tick by, my heart slowly reviving itself.

I believed Sissy, because…she was telling the truth. She loves me. She is happy with me. How many times has she told me that?

How quickly I doubted her. How quickly I doubted myself.

Once again, I look down at the letter and notice the hasty scrawl where normally her handwriting is careful and feminine. Neat. The sheet of notebook paper has been ripped out without finesse. It’s unlike her in every way.

And she wouldn’t do this to me. She wouldn’t send me to hell by walking away, leaving me nothing but three measly lines. Which means…

Someone else made her write them.

Rage bubbles up inside of me and consumes every limb, every inch of my brain. I’m seeing bright red as I gain my footing and jog from the locker room, already whipping my phone out of my suit jacket pocket to call security. Ten minutes later, when the footage is pulled up, I come very close to destroying the room full of monitors. My bellow of denial nearly shatters them, the rage climbing to an almost unmanageable height. But I rope it in and I’m moving. I’m ordering the security cam operator to call the police and give them the license plate number of the car that abducted my fiancé. I’m running for the parking garage and peeling out in my own vehicle, a pulse beating like a drum in my head.

I don’t know who the man is in the video, but I have a good guess.

Sissy’s father.

He is the T I forgot to cross. He’s the base I didn’t cover.

And now he’s taken my angel away from me. Not only that, he pointed a gun at her. He struck her. Knocked her unconscious. I come very close to crashing my SUV into the parking garage wall at the memory of it. Who could cause harm to such a gentle creature? I don’t know. But he’s going to fucking pay for it.

Two turns later, my tires are squealing onto the strip and I’m hitting the gas in the direction of I-70, knowing that if this motherfucker is bringing Sissy back to Nebraska, they will have to travel east on the interstate. He has a twenty-seven-minute head start on me, but he probably isn’t driving like a bat out of hell. At least, he better not be with such precious cargo in the back seat. Is she hurt? Is she in pain?

I slam the steering wheel with my fist and shout an expletive, my foot laying down on the gas even harder. Once I’m on the interstate, it seems to take hours to find the old blue Chrysler. I’m starting to worry that he’s taken a different route when it comes into view up ahead, right there in the middle lane. I don’t allow myself to feel relief yet. Not yet. I don’t know what condition she’s in and I can’t feel anything but violent knowing she’s scared.

I’ve always been a peaceful man, a man of God. Right now, however, I wish for a weapon. Something besides my fists and wit, both of which seem inadequate right now. But that’s when heaven sends me help in the form of a traffic jam. The Chrysler slows to a stop in front of me, brake lights appearing all around, desert stretching on all sides.

A gruff, miserable sound escapes me when Sissy sits up in the back seat, pressing a hand to her head, clearly disoriented. Definitely in pain. My heart can’t stand the sight of it—and I can’t wait anymore. I throw my SUV into park and alight from the driver’s side, my mind going into some kind of survival mode. Her survival.

It all happens in the space of seconds, but they move in slow motion for me.

I rip open the back door of the Chrysler. “Sissy,” I bark, not allowing myself to look at her or risk losing focus. If I see blood on her head, I’ll probably go ballistic and I don’t need emotion right now. I need to remain calm. I need be effective. “Go get in my car, honey. Move.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see her do as I ask, whimpering my name as she bolts from the vehicle. “He has a gun, Locke!”

Without missing a beat, I wrench open the driver’s side door. It only takes a split second to register the slight resemblance to Sissy and confirm it’s her father. He’s already lifting his gun, but I’m ready for it. I catch his wrist in my hand and twist with all of my strength, snapping the bone and making him squeal like a baby. The gun lands down near his feet and I have it in my hands in seconds, cocked and pointing at a spot right between his eyes.

“Don’t shoot,” he begs, fear slackening his features. “Please.”

“Believe me when I say if there were no witnesses on this interstate, you would already be dead. I would drag your sorry carcass out into this desert and leave you for the buzzards to feast on. But the police would take me away from her. And no one, no fucking one is ever going to separate me from that girl.” I move in close, wedging the muzzle of the gun to the center of his forehead, my finger aching to pull the trigger. “Especially you, you weak, pathetic excuse for a man. Do you understand me? If you ever even think about coming within a thousand miles of Sissy again, I will leave pieces of you scattered all over Vegas. They’ll never put you together again. You don’t deserve to call yourself her father.” I flip the gun around and pistol whip him across the face, sending a spray of blood across the dashboard and two of his teeth in the back seat. “And every night for the rest of your life, when you’re lying in bed trying to fall asleep, remember she calls another man Daddy now. And I’m giving her the kind of care you never could.”

With that, I put his lights out, bringing the butt of the gun down on his temple one extra time in Sissy’s name. I reach across the man’s slumped body and put the car in park, then I slide the gun into my jacket and walk back to my SUV where Sissy is waiting. I’m barely inside the vehicle before she launches herself at me over the console, wrapping her arms around my neck and straddling me, shaking, sobbing into my neck.

“It’s okay, honey,” I rasp, overcome with love and relief so thick I can barely speak. “It’s over now. I’ve got you. Are you hurt? Did he fucking hurt you?”

“My head is sore, but I’m fine. I’m fine,” she says in a rush, her eyes wet. “I didn’t write that note—”

“I know. I know you didn’t. There was a moment of doubt, but I realized I know you better than that. I know us better.”

“I never doubted you for a second.” She rains kisses all over my face and I’ve never known deeper contentment in my life. “I knew you would come.”

“No one takes Sissy from Locke. No one takes the love of my life away from me,” I growl, plowing my fingers into her hair and looking over the bump on her forehead, adrenaline and protectiveness hardening my muscles, my abdomen. Coursing lower. “I should end his life for laying a hand on my angel.”

“I’d rather you stay with me, heal me. You’re the only one who can,” she breathes against my mouth, her fingers curling into the lapels of my shirt. The danger is finally catching up with me, making me anxious to be as close to her as possible, to absorb the fact that she’s alive and safe. And my body can only want one thing, her skin on mine, my inches inside of her as deeply as possible where I can feel her beating around me. At the stiffening of my cock, her eyelids grow heavy and she lets out a shaky breath, rocking on my lap with a moan, her pretty thighs already starting to tremble. “Can we skip work tonight?”

I reach into my jacket pocket and take out her engagement ring, sliding it back onto her finger where it belongs. “Whatever my future wife wants, she gets.”

“I want you,” she whispers. “Forever.”

“My Sissy.” My heart hammers uncontrollably. “Nothing could keep me away.”