“Chase, kill him now.” Georgia had backed up but her heels dug into Jack Barnes’s beautiful hardwood floor, and she seemed unwilling to give the deputy another inch.
The deputy. Who had a job. And was coming out of his fucked-up period. Everyone had a fucked-up period. It was just a matter of time before life really messed up a person’s head. Logan had already faced it. Logan had been smart enough to reach out for help. Logan was almost on the other side.
He could totally pawn Georgia off on Logan. Damn straight. It was the perfect freaking plan. Logan wanted to fuck his sister? Well, Logan was the type who took his responsibilities seriously. Fucking a friend’s sister would be serious to Logan. Chase stared at Georgia with a critical eye. She was actually quite pretty. She had some nice curves on her.
“You make a lovely couple.”
Logan’s eyes went wide, and he shoved the bag at him. “Dude, don’t you even start that shit.”
“I said the same thing.” Kitten grinned up at him. “Sir is a good matchmaker.”
Kitten was quite liberal with the praise.
Logan glared down at Georgia. “If you pull one stunt here, I swear, I’ll have that ass over my knee. I don’t care what your brothers do. They left you in my care. You’re going to follow my rules, and if you ever lock me in a room again, your ass is going to be red.”
Georgia growled right back. It was kind of cute. “I locked you in the bathroom because you were an unreasonable prick. And what is your fascination with my backside? It’s a perfectly fine color. If you lay a hand on it, I will call the police.”
The police would probably forgive Logan after spending more than two minutes with Georgia. Chase had never seen a man willing to deal with Hurricane Georgia. Yeah. He was a good matchmaker. Especially since pawning Georgia off on Logan meant he could know she was safe.
A vision of a little girl with a sweet smile and cotton candy hair clouded his vision. He would fucking kill anyone who touched her.
Damn Nat. He needed to fuck her and then all this mushy shit would go away. Yeah. Once he’d been inside her, he would see she was just like other girls.
He was smart enough to call bullshit on himself. Nat was unlike anyone he’d ever met, and he was getting really fucking worried that she might be the one and she couldn’t stand the thought of taking a collar. He was far from stupid. She was deeply disturbed at the thought of a true D/s relationship, and he wouldn’t be able to accept less.
Ben could. Ben could make her happy. Ben could modify his needs.
Chase sometimes hated Ben.
Logan’s lips quirked up in what Chase liked to think of as an alpha smirk. He rather thought Logan wouldn’t have ever found his alpha male if the aforementioned trauma hadn’t happened. He likely would have remained a happy-go-lucky guy who would have eventually fallen for some pretty pussy and been content to be led around by his dick for the rest of his life. Now Logan had to deal with his hard self, the same self Chase had never had a choice but to acknowledge.
He’d been born a prick.
“Do you have my bag?” Impatient. He couldn’t even wait to see if he could throw his sister at an approved suitor. All he could think about was the fact that his little piece of sugar was waiting on him. Was waiting on his ropes and his flogger.
He wanted to shop for her. Suddenly his kit, painstakingly put together over a decade, didn’t seem worthy. He hadn’t been thinking of her. He’d been buying the best, but Nat needed what would work for her. He didn’t know if she liked deerskin falls on her floggers or cowhide. He didn’t know what kind of paddle made her sub faster. Did she like the sting of a flogger or a thud? Did her little nipples respond to alligator clamps or clover clamps?
It bugged the shit out of him that he didn’t know. It fucked with his head that someone out there might know what Nat needed.
Logan sighed a long breath and handed over a small, inauspicious leather bag. It held the whole of Chase’s kink collection. Deerskin flogger, cowhide flogger, four-foot whip, candles for wax play, knives, silk rope, jute rope, nipple clamps, paddles, canes, crops, nothing that meant a goddamn thing because they hadn’t been selected with her in mind, and it was all he had and he felt so fucking inadequate.
“Thanks.” What the fuck else could he say? He grabbed the bag. He didn’t have time to deal with his sister’s damage. Georgia was a pain in his ass. He loved her, but she created her own drama and she kind of loved it, so she was never really willing to let it go. “You guys are staying here tonight. Dinner is in two hours. Your room is on the second floor. Kitten, you and Georgia have to share. Second door on the left.”
Kitten pouted. “Can’t I stay with Master Logan? Kitten likes to cuddle.” Her face fell. “Sorry. I like to cuddle. It’s so hard to remember.”
It was hard for Kitten to remember to refer to herself in the first person rather than the third because she’d been deeply abused by a horrible man. Some submissives needed it. They loved to be simply a servant to their Dom, fulfilling their deep love for service. There was nothing wrong with it when it was a choice. Kitten hadn’t had a choice. She’d been a twenty-one-year-old girl when she’d been kidnapped and tortured into thinking she wasn’t a human being but a possession.
Nat rode a fine line. She needed the submission. It was a part of her soul, but she’d been brutalized into thinking it was bad. Was he the Dom to bring her back from the edge? Or would she just need Ben?
Logan put a hand on her shoulder. “Honey, you’re too sweet to just cuddle with. Don’t tempt a man.”
Kitten flushed, her body straightening with a pride she hadn’t had before. Yeah, Logan was becoming a good Dom. He was on his way to being a great one. “Thank you, Sir. But you’re right. Kitten—I need to wait for my Dom. I believe you have another sub to handle.”
“I’m going to find my room.” Georgia turned on her heels. “You better not follow me or I’ll lock you up somewhere again.”
“You better think about that, brat.” Logan followed Georgia up the stairs, carrying three bags on his broad shoulders.
Kitten looked up at him. “Do you think this is a good idea? Taking Nat into a situation like this?”
He sighed. It had been plaguing him for days. “I’m going to watch out for her.”
“I know. I worry that she’s not ready.”
So was he. “Well, we haven’t exactly figured out how to get invited to this club. We’ve spent time in every seedy bar on the highway and nothing yet. So we might not have to worry about it.”
There was a part of him that didn’t give a shit about finding who killed Stan Kirkman. The missing girls were another story.
Kitten turned to Chase, her face softening. “You could be very good for Nat.”
Chase rather preferred the cowering Kitten in that moment. “I don’t know about that.”
“She grew up in the lifestyle.” Kitten leaned back against the wall, her whole body relaxing. Chase had been her caregiver for months and months after she’d been rescued, but she’d never relaxed until now. For the first time in their long relationship, she was talking to him like a friend. “I didn’t. Finn and I grew up here. We were raised in a very small, conservative town. When I was taken, it was a rather surprising experience.”
“You were kidnapped.” Chase needed her to acknowledge the brutality of the crime against her. She always tried to soften it. “Not taken. Nat was kidnapped.”
Kitten nodded. “Yes. We were assaulted. Hawk was quite vicious. He had many slaves before me. I’ve often wondered what he did with them, but the evidence that they existed was there. Sometimes he would mess up and call me by another name. Then he would hurt me for his mistake. I’ve thought a lot about it lately. I think he was going to do something with Gretchen and perhaps Natalie. He said Gretchen was too old. Gretchen told me once she remembered two other slaves. Nat and I found pictures of them. I think he killed them. No one found them.”