Sebring by Kristen Ashley
“You gonna stay calm?” he asked.
It took a moment for what was happening to penetrate before I nodded.
He immediately moved his hand.
“Now I need you to come with me.”
The shadow disappeared from the bed and moved toward the door. As I watched, I saw weak light coming down the hall. In that light, as the dark line of Knight Sebring’s body came into better focus, I saw a petite blonde woman standing out in the hall.
I knew her. Vaguely, but she was in our world. She’d been on Knight’s team back in the day as well as running her own PI business. She’d moved from Denver years ago. Now she was back.
Sylvie Bissennette.
What was going on?
Knight disappeared through the door, but Sylvie remained in the hall, eyes to me, face inscrutable.
Whatever was going on, I had no choice but to face it.
I figured it was likely, with my warning the other night, the Sebring brothers were closing ranks.
I was a source of information.
I’d bought that by calling him. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I did.
Now I had to disabuse them of that notion.
On a sigh that I emitted to hide the hard beating of my heart I felt certain could actually be heard, I threw back the covers. With a glance at the clock, I saw it was nearly five in the morning. I was in a nightgown and I had company.
With this in mind, calmly, like I had all the time in the world, with Sylvie’s eyes on me, I went to my bathroom and grabbed my robe. Shrugging the taupe silk up my shoulders, I cinched the belt as I walked back through my bedroom toward the hall where Sylvie was still standing.
She said nothing and didn’t twitch, not even her expression, as I walked into the hall.
I saw light coming from the family room where my television was.
I headed that way.
It was good I made the trek bracing, even as my heart was racing, my skin tingling, my palms itching, for when I got to that room, it was filled with men.
Raid Miller, I knew.
Why he was there, I didn’t know, though I did know he was tight with the Sebrings.
To my shock, even if he’d disappeared from the world where I lived and had been gone for years, the hunter known as Ghost was also there.
As was, of course, Knight Sebring.
And one other man.
For my peace of mind (what there was of it), I was delighted (at the same time, I had to admit, crestfallen) that that man was not Nick.
He was a big bear of a man with blue eyes, brown hair and a frightening scar marring his otherwise overall masculine beauty. A scar that led into his hair causing a streak of white through the brown.
I entered the room feeling Sylvie move in behind me.
Two lamps were on, set dimmed. The curtains were closed, blocking even the little light from the lamps from shining out.
And my television was blue screen.
I stopped in the middle of the room, three feet behind the back of my couch, all eyes on me.
My attention was on Knight Sebring.
Handsome, very.
But not like Nick.
There was hard behind Knight’s eyes. Life lived that scarred him in a way that would never leave. He might give it to his girls, where it was safe to allow it to show, but right then there was no light in his eyes. Not like the pure blue light Nick could shine on me.
Light that, if it hadn’t been a lie, would have been beautiful.
“Can you explain what’s happening?” I asked Knight.
“Delivering a message,” he repeated what he’d said earlier.
Before I could ask for more information, he lifted his hand toward the TV, a hand that had my remote in it.
“You get the message, what’s next is up to you,” he finished just as music filled the room.
Chords on a piano playing over a ticking clock.
Something about that soothing sound, so contradictory to my current situation, made my eyes shift to the TV.
Playing on it was a video of someone driving down a road. The view was not of that someone, but out the car window.
It was a pretty road that had high, green grass swaying against the shoulder.
A voice I recognized started singing just as there was a cut in the tape and then we were still in a car but it was driving through a town. Obviously a small town. An old town. American flags waving on slants outside pretty little houses. Covered sidewalks in the town proper with hanging signs for storefront businesses. Window boxes. Tubs of flowers. Tended shrubs. Sparkling cars parked at slants leading to the sidewalks.
The tempo of the song changed and we were back on the road with the green grass undulating.
Hills in the background.
No.
Mountains.
Mountains.
I stopped breathing.
The tempo increased again and the car turned down a drive.
Unconsciously, I walked to the back of the couch.
I did this because I needed to.
I needed to curl my fingers on the back in order to stay standing.
The tempo changed again as the video cut and we were out of the car, walking. Walking up a path to a house.
A house…
A pretty little house, homey, rustic, lived-in, tucked amongst a forest of big green trees. A pretty little house painted barn red with white trim with big tubs of flowers, window boxes and tended shrubs at the front.
A house in the mountains.
The music built to a crescendo as we took a tour of the house. Its wood floors. Its kitchen with a big farm sink and lots of old appliances that needed to be updated (but I hoped they never were). Its bathroom with an old claw-footed tub.
My breath caught.
A cozy living room with an abstract painting over the fireplace, the predominant color of the painting an ocean of blue.
There were little bedrooms with not much in them.
And another bedroom with a big bed flanked by two nightstands that each held a lamp but only one had a picture frame.
The camera moved closer.
It was a silver frame. A silver frame with a picture in it that I knew was taken in Las Vegas. The picture of a couple nestled in a web of crystals.
The words to the song started beating into my brain.
The video faded to black.
But the picture immediately faded back.
A deck.
A view.
A dawn.
A man’s bare feet, ankles and legs in pajama bottoms propped up on the top railing.
I knew those feet.
The camera pulled back.
He also had on a long-sleeved thermal.
His back was to me.
His hair was thick, dark and clipped its usual short.
His ocean blue eyes were turned from me.
Tock, tock, tock…José Gonzalez was speaking to me.
But it was Nick Sebring communicating to me.
I watched Nick’s profile as he took a sip of coffee and dawn came over the soft-topped mountains that were not Rockies.
He turned and looked over his shoulder right at the camera.
I drowned in blue.
The screen went black.
In desperation to get it back, my gaze shot to Nick’s brother.
He had his on me and his mouth open to speak.
He closed it as he looked into my eyes.
Then he gifted me with a miracle.
In the expanse of a breath, I watched hard dissolve, scars heal and light shine.
“Hurry, honey,” he whispered.
I didn’t even take the time to nod.
I turned on my foot, my robe rippling out behind me, I ran to my bedroom.
I was hopping up and down, awkwardly pulling on a pair of slacks when Sylvie hit the door to my closet.
“Here to help, babe. What do you need me to pack?” she asked.
I spared her only a glance.
She was no longer looking inscrutable.
She was looking like she was fighting against laughing.
I nearly fell over, tangled in my pants.
I righted myself and answered, “Nothing here I want.”
“Nick’s ready for you, Olivia, but he’s a guy. Not sure he’s got your brand of shampoo down. And heads up, he’s never gonna have your brand of shampoo down. We bitches gotta take care of that shit. Hell, you in his life, the man will forget his brand of shampoo. That’ll be up to you too.”
“Right,” I whispered, tearing off my robe, on a mission and not fully processing her impromptu relationship lesson. “Then please, if you will, until I can get to the store wherever Nick is, I’ll need you to pack my shampoo.”
I turned to the rails and yanked off the first blouse my hand hit.
I heard her muffled chuckle as she walked out.
I finished getting dressed. I then dashed around my closet to get the bare essentials, tearing at hangers, opening drawers and not closing them, shoving things into the first piece of luggage I could grab—a carry-on.
A carry-on bag.
My heart started feeling funny.
I ran to the bathroom just in time for Sylvie to shove a variety of packed cosmetics bags in my lonely piece of luggage.
We moved out of the room, me fast, Sylvie behind me coming slower.
That’s when I smelled it.
Gasoline.
I stopped dead in my hallway when I saw him.
Ghost walking toward me, a filled body bag over his shoulder.
Now Ghost—his gaze glancing off me as he passed—his expression was inscrutable.
I sensed motion in the hall and looked down it to see Knight come toward me from the great room.
He approached, stopping in front of me.
“You died tonight, Livvie.”
I put a hand to the wall but didn’t tear my gaze from Knight.
Sebring.
He wasn’t making me free.
He was making me free.
“You,” I said softly, saying no more.
Knight got me.
“I’ll be good knowin’ my brother is happy.”
My heart kept feeling funny but I knew what the feeling was in my eyes.
Tears stinging.
For me to be free, we were disappearing. No roads could lead to us. Too dangerous.
I was getting Nick.
Nick was losing his family.
I couldn’t do that. Nick had worked hard at earning back his family.
“I can’t—” I began.
“You think I finally got him, and he finally got you, I’d let anyone keep me away?” he asked.
I swallowed.
That made me feel better.
Knight grinned at me and with that, he was almost as beautiful as his brother.
“You’ll lay low. We’ll sort shit. Then we’ll have a family reunion.”
Yes, that made me feel better.
I nodded.
“Not much time,” a man’s voice muttered and I saw the brown-headed, scarred guy moving down the hall from the back of the house.
He had a gasoline canister dangling from his fingers.
I looked back and caught it as Knight lifted his chin to the guy then grabbed my hand, reaching out to take my carry-on from Sylvie in his other.
He moved me toward the pool doors.
I looked back into a hall that now held Sylvie, Raid, Ghost and the scarred man.
“Thank you,” I called as Knight dragged me out the door.
“Don’t get bored senseless in the middle of fucking nowhere,” Sylvie called back as the door swung closed behind me.
That was not going to happen.
I felt my lips start curving.
Knight pulled me down the side of the pool until I started almost running to match him step for step, nearly surpassing him on our way to the back gate.
There was a Maserati in my alley. He helped me into the front seat, threw my bag in the trunk, got in beside me and took off like a shot down the alley.
We were three blocks away before I looked back.
The flames consuming the vast mansion that was so not me (even when I didn’t know what me was) were already dancing toward the sky.
“Valenzuela,” Knight stated.
I settled back in my seat and looked to him.
“Sorry?”
He looked at me out of the side of his eye quickly before returning his attention to the road.
“Benito Valenzuela murdering her sister’ll keep Georgia occupied while we take care of the rest of the business. Same time it does that, obviously it’ll keep her from thinkin’ she needs to look for you.”
They were framing Valenzuela.
I did not want to know and knew not to ask. Filled body bags. Gasoline. It was not for me to know. I knew this because, even if I asked, Nick would have made it so they didn’t tell me.
Still, I started, “Knight—”
He didn’t look out the side of his eye then, but glanced fully at me before he looked back to the street.
“No matter what you saw, no one got harmed in the making of that scenario, Livvie.” He jerked his head to indicate behind us. “That you can trust. Now you just gotta keep trusting and let Nick’s plan play out.”
I drew in a sharp breath.
This was Nick.
All Nick.
I closed my eyes.
When I opened them I knew two things.
One, I was smiling at the windshield.
And the other, I knew what was happening to my heart.
For the first time in my life, it felt light.
We did not go to DIA.
We went to a private airstrip and Knight and I got into a private jet.
We were taxiing not even five minutes after the doors were closed.
Wasting no time.
Nick was wasting no time getting me back to him.
I closed my eyes as we took off.
When we were climbing into the sky, I opened them, turning my head so I was looking out the window.
We were flying east.
We were flying into the dawn.
We were heading straight to the morning light.
I was going to Nick.
Another first in my thirty-one years of life.
I was going home.
* * * * *
Creed
Thirty Minutes Later
His wife’s back to the wall, her ass in his hands, his cock drilling inside her, the noises of them fucking filling their hotel room, Creed felt her move her hands so they framed his face.
He lifted it out of her neck and looked to his Sylvie.
At the look in her green eyes, he stopped moving, buried deep inside her.
“I love you,” she whispered.
Yeah.
Fuck yeah.
His Sylvie.
“Born to love me, baby, like I was born to love you,” he whispered back.
Her eyes got soft as they dropped to his mouth. He suspected his did too, as he dropped his mouth to hers.
Creed kissed her, moving her from the wall. Still inside her, he walked her to the bed and put them both into it.
There, they stopped fucking.
They finished making love.
His Sylvie had wanted four kids.
She wanted it, Creed gave it to her.
But that night, Creed gave her number five.
* * * * *
Raid
Thirty Minutes Later
Raid walked across the porch with its now-empty porch swing to the door, through it and into the farmhouse.
A light was on, shining dim from the living room to his left.
He walked that way and saw her there, on the flowered sofa, curled up in an afghan, head to the arm of the couch, asleep.
Waiting up for her man, she’d conked out.
Pregnant women, he’d learned (repeatedly) did that shit.
He had a hand lifted to pull her blonde hair away from her face even as her head turned and her big blue eyes opened.
Blinking, she focused on him.
“Hey,” she whispered. “It go okay?”
“Nothing sweeter,” he answered.
Her head slightly twitched as she lifted it up from the couch.
“Sorry?”
“Years, my two boys, my baby girl you got in you, countless hot fudge sundaes, all that you gave me, and there’s nothin’ sweeter.”
She was getting him, he knew it when he saw her face grow soft.
“Raiden.”
His name was hushed, reverent.
Fuck, but she loved him.
Nothing sweeter.
He bent to her, his mouth a breath away from hers, he murmured, “Nothin’ sweeter, honey, than the love you give to me.”
He watched from close as his wife’s eyes got wet.
“It went okay,” she said softly.
“Absolutely,” he replied.
He watched her shining pretty blue eyes smile.
Then he kissed her.
* * * * *
Deacon
An Hour and a Half Later
He wasn’t even to the steps of the porch before the front door opened and the dogs came bounding out.
He stopped and bent to his pups. Running his fingers through the soft fur of Boss Lady’s and Priest’s heads, he did it with his head tipped back, his eyes on his wife standing with her shoulder leaned against the jamb of the door, one arm out, holding the storm open. She had on one of his T-shirts, her dark hair was all over the place, her eyes tired, and she was so fucking beautiful, she looked ready for a photo shoot.
He felt his mouth curl up as he straightened. Clicking his tongue to call the dogs, they trotted beside him as he moved to the front steps and up them.
“Did you eat?” she asked before he even made it to her.
“Nope,” he answered.
She raised her eyes skyward.
His lips curled up farther.
She didn’t move from the door so he stopped in front of her. Boss Lady shoved into the house. Priest sat his ass down on the porch by his daddy.
Cassidy’s eyes moved over her husband’s face.