Secret Pleasure Read online

  Two lovers. Not young men, either. These were men, nearly mature, clearly ages more experienced than her child.

  “My God!” Davis repeated, reading the letter again before looking up at Margot. “Alyssa would never initiate such a relationship.”

  No, Alyssa would not. Margot might not know the two men involved, but she would before much longer.

  “She’s due home in several hours.” Rage was vibrating through her. “I’ll know what happened and I’ll know who they are before the morning’s over.”

  To even suggest that Alyssa would initiate such a thing was preposterous. She doubted her daughter knew what a ménage was, let alone how to begin such an affair. But she would make damned certain her daughter understood that there would never be any contact with them again. Even better, once Margo learned their identities she’d make certain they felt her wrath.

  *

  The flight from Spain was uneventful. She hadn’t slept on the flight. Each time she closed her eyes she’d seen Shane and Sebastian the day they’d given her the necklace with the sapphire hanging between two beautiful diamonds. She hadn’t taken it off since they’d given it to her and made the promise that they were bound to her.

  They had broken that bond. Everything had been taken. All their possessions, their numbers from her phone and the text messages, and somehow, they’d taken the chain with its three gems from around her neck. In stealing the necklace, in stealing every memory she had of them, they had broken the promises they’d made.

  Stepping into the house as her father’s butler took care of getting her luggage from the car, she moved to his office, where he’d directed her.

  She just wanted to go to bed and go to sleep. She felt ravaged inside, broken in so many pieces that she had no idea how to deal with life now.

  Knocking on the office door, she stepped inside a second later and knew the day wasn’t quite over. As much as she wished she could block out the world, she would first have to deal with Margot.

  “You asked to see me when I returned?” Stepping to her father’s desk, she stood before him, determined to get through whatever awaited her now.

  Silence greeted her. For some reason her parents’ faces lost their expressions of fury. They simply stared back at her now as though uncertain what to say to her.

  Margot sighed heavily. “Oh, Alyssa, what have you let them do to you?”

  Alyssa didn’t think she’d ever heard such a tone of pain and regret in her mother’s voice, but that observation was quickly overshadowed by the implication of what she’d said.

  Her gaze locked with her mother’s pale one, and in it Alyssa saw a bitter anger that would have terrified her before she left for Spain.

  “How did you find out?” She stood before them, unashamed. She wasn’t ashamed, just so very, very tired and broken inside.

  Margot moved stiffly. Lifting the envelope from the desk as Alyssa watched her father jerk from his chair and pace to the other side of the office. Accepting it, she opened the envelope and pulled the contents free.

  She’d already been ravaged. Everything inside her was already broken, her heart and soul devastated by Shane and Sebastian’s betrayal. Only to face yet another blow.

  She did so stoically. She looked at each picture, wanting to see, to know the brutal truth of the lengths they were willing to go to in distancing themselves from her. When she read the note that accompanied the pictures, she sat down abruptly in the chair behind her.

  The strength in her knees abandoned her. The tears she swore she would hold back for the baby’s sake she lost temporary control of. Her breath hitched as they spilled from her eyes. Silent tears—the sobs had been silenced in Spain—several hitting the letter before she finished it.

  “Well then,” she whispered, and tucked the letter back into the envelope with the pictures. “I guess I didn’t see that coming.”

  She carefully folded the flap before rising to her feet and facing her parents.

  “They had no reason to worry,” she assured her parents. “Neither do you. There will be no attempt to contact them.”

  It was all she could do to stand before them. Why had Shane and Sebastian done this to her? What point was there in sending her parents such horrible photos or such threats?

  “Alyssa, what possessed you?” Margot’s voice was rough, the barely banked fury resonating in it. “Where was your common sense?”

  Where was her common sense?

  She shook her head wearily. “I’m so sorry, Mother,” she whispered painfully. “Sorrier than you could ever know. But I have no excuses—”

  “I didn’t ask for a fucking excuse, girl!” Margot snapped, her voice rising as she leaned forward, her hands braced on the desk. “I asked what happened to your common sense?”

  What had happened to it? What had happened to her heart and soul?

  “I don’t know,” she admitted softly. “I just don’t know.…”

  Turning from her parents, she moved slowly to the office door once again and left her parents standing, watching her, as she left the room. It took everything she had to walk through the house and climb the stairs to her bedroom. Every ounce of strength she possessed just to get to that last sanctuary she had to hide.

  Closing the door behind her, she made it to the bed, crawled in fully clothed, and pulled the comforter around her.

  Margot, being Margot, of course had to follow her. God, her mother was like a bulldog with a bone.

  Entering the bedroom, she stood at Alyssa’s bed for long moments before pulling the chair that sat next to the nightstand closer and sitting down heavily.

  “Alyssa…”

  “I won’t discuss it.” She couldn’t discuss it. She couldn’t let herself speak of it; she couldn’t let herself remove the shield she’d placed around the memories long enough to make sense of anything right now.

  “What did they do to you?” The faint horror in her mother’s tone did nothing to cover the rage. “What did you let them do to you, Alyssa?”

  She had let them cut her heart and soul from her body. She’d left both in Spain, searching endlessly, sobbing out in agony at the destruction the cousins had left in their wake.

  “I’ll be okay,” she promised, her hand lying on her stomach beneath the comforter, the child resting there her only certainty that she hadn’t imagined the months she’d spent in their arms. “I’m just so tired. I just need to sleep. Please, just let me sleep.” And she hoped when she awoke she’d learn it was all just a very, very bad dream.

  She’d awaken in their arms, their warmth surrounding her, their promise still suspended from a chain about her neck. Everything would be okay. It was just a very bad dream.

  “… just a very bad dream.”

  Margot heard the faint words as shock resounded through her entire system. The chill that swept over her shook her to the core and enraged her at the same time.

  This wasn’t her daughter. She looked like her, but she wasn’t the girl who had left for Spain three months before. And she wasn’t the daughter who had feared her mother’s wrath. There was no fear left in Alyssa. There was nothing left inside her. Not fear, not the dreams that always had filled her eyes, or the emotions she always had allowed to get the better of her.

  Bleak, ravaged pain was all she’d seen in her daughter’s eyes.

  And in that moment Margot knew a regret that sliced open her heart. This gentle, sensitive soul she’d never believed she knew how to love, had actually been the one person she truly loved, clear to her soul.

  7

  EIGHTEEN WEEKS LATER

  The pain was like nothing she had ever known in her life. It brought her from a deep sleep, from dreams of Barcelona, of the summer sun and Shane’s and Sebastian’s touch. Whispered promises, their voices gentle, filled with passion. From the dreams that wrapped around her and gave her what little comfort could be found in the knowledge of betrayal to the agonizing, brutal waves of pain tearing through her stomach.

>   “No. God. Please!” she cried out, dragging herself from the bed as she looked down, the deep, dark stain of blood covering the cotton shorts she wore and running down her legs in rivulets.

  “Momma!” Lurching for the door, the agonizing pain intensifying, Alyssa stumbled into the hall, sobs tearing from her chest as the pain and the realization of this final loss swept through her. “Oh God! Momma!”

  She had made it along the landing to the stairs, her parents’ suite just ahead when she collapsed, the next wave like a brutal punch to her abdomen, ripping through her with a force that sent her stumbling to the floor.

  Clutching her stomach, Alyssa prayed. Whispered, desperate prayers even as she felt that life she’d gone to such lengths to protect ease from her.

  She could hear her mother screaming, issuing orders with a desperation that barely registered as Alyssa felt herself being eased from the floor.

  I have you, baby. The whisper barely registered, the male voice comforting as pain resonated through every particle of her body.

  “Shane. Shane, help me,” she sobbed. “Please help me.”

  It’s okay, Alyssa. I have you.…

  “Find Sebastian,” she begged, staring up at him, her vision blurred, unable to see those beloved features. “Sebastian!”

  She was screaming their names, the pain ripping through her, knowledge tearing her mind apart even as she felt as though her body were being torn apart.

  She was losing their baby. The baby she’d fought to protect, whom she had married to protect. She couldn’t lose her last link to them. She couldn’t lose all she had left.

  “Please…” Darkness edged her vision, moved swiftly through her, stealing her strength, her ability to understand the agony tearing at her.

  But she felt them. For the first time in so long they were there, whispering through what was left of her soul.

  “I love you!” she cried, sobbing in desperation, reaching out for them with everything inside her. “Please, please don’t take him. Please.…”

  But she felt him leaving her. Felt the baby she’d wanted more than anything in the world leaving her, just as his fathers had left her. Easing away and taking the last of the girl she had been, ripping away the last of her dreams.

  “Shane, please…,” she whispered as consciousness eased from her. “Please don’t take him … please.…”

  Margot felt the tears falling from her own eyes as Davis’ bodyguard, an Army medic, worked to save Alyssa as the physician rushed into the bedroom.

  Stepping from the room, her hand covering her lips, silent sobs shaking her body, Margot fought the overwhelming rage, fought to keep the vow she’d made to her daughter. That she would never, for any reason, attempt to hurt the men who had fathered that baby. The men Alyssa still loved with what little was left of her ragged heart.

  How long she stood there she didn’t know. She couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t contain her own pain. When the doctor stepped from the bedroom, his expression was heavy with grief.

  “She miscarried,” he sighed heavily as Margot closed her eyes and felt Davis wrap his arms around her, drawing her to him. “She was about eighteen weeks along, Margot.” His voice thickened. “The baby…” He cleared his throat. “The nurse is cleaning him up. I’m sure Alyssa will need closure. I’d like to perform a few tests, though.”

  “What happened?” It was all she could do to speak, to ask the question she knew her daughter would ask.

  “I don’t know.” Dr. Brennan shook his head, his kindly eyes filled with distress. “I just don’t know, Margot.”

  Margot’s fingers clenched in Davis’ shirt, a ragged cry escaping her lips.

  “Margot, don’t let her ignore this loss,” Dr. Brennan advised her heavily. “Though to be honest, I don’t know if we’ll ever have Alyssa as she was, back.”

  Alyssa’s physician had cared for her since she was a baby. He knew her, had seen her through childhood illnesses and a young woman’s development. The girl he’d seen at the end of summer wasn’t the same girl who had come to him before she left.

  “How long before you’ll know what happened?” Davis asked, and in his voice Margot heard the grief and the love he’d already extended to his grandson.

  “A few days, no more,” the doctor promised. “Just a few days.”

  A few days.

  Alyssa was nearly five months along. Margot had felt her daughter’s child move as Alyssa held her hand to the slight mound of her stomach, felt its strength. And she’d seen hope in her daughter’s eyes that hadn’t been there the day she returned from Spain.

  And now, that life they had been so looking forward to, was gone.

  Alyssa wouldn’t have the child she so desperately needed to hold the pain at bay. Margot wouldn’t have the grandchild she’d found herself loving as she’d felt it moving beneath her palm.

  Alyssa had screamed for the bastards who had given her that child, Margot thought. Screamed, begged them not to take her baby. To help her. And there was nothing Margot could do to make them pay she thought as she pulled from Davis and moved into her daughter’s bedroom, to the grandchild she would never know, the child whose loss might be the final one that stole her child as well.

  God help her, how would Alyssa bear this?

  SPAIN

  The howl of enraged fury brought Lucien and Alberto racing through the house to the front room where Sebastian had been earlier.

  Like the howls of an animal, demented from pain, the sound echoed through the halls again as he heard his mother cry Sebastian’s name from upstairs.

  Running to the front room, they found him standing; how he was standing, as drunk as he was, Lucien didn’t know.

  “Sebastian.” Alberto gripped his shoulders, jerking him around before pulling back from his son in shock as Sebastian swung out at him with a powerful fist.

  Sebastian went to his knees, his lips pulled back from his teeth as his head tipped back and another of those enraged howls of complete agony tore from his lips.

  “Sebastian.” Tabitha was racing for him, ignoring her husband as he tried to stop her, going to her knees in front of her younger son and gripping his face in desperate hands. “Sebastian. What is wrong? Tell me, now! Sebastian!”

  Making it to his feet, he stumbled from her and fell into a table, his arm swiping out and throwing the lamp, the antique picture frames, to the floor.

  “I’ll never forgive you!” Turning on them, his eyes so black they were like the pits of hell, burning with rage. “Never.” Going to his knees again, he stayed there, shaking his head, his breathing ragged. “Alyssa…,” her name whispered from his lips. “Siren—”

  Toppling to the floor, he passed out, the weeks of drinking, of raging, catching up with him until there was no fight left within him.

  Slowly, Tabitha crawled to her son, her arms going around him, her sobs destroying Lucien.

  “Find out what happened to the girl,” his father ordered, his voice heavy with fear. “Now, Lucien. Find out what happened to her.”

  Across the room Tabitha held her unconscious son to her, sobbing, whispering his name, crying the tears Sebastian couldn’t shed for the woman he couldn’t have.

  TEXAS

  Trying to find Shane was an exercise in futility in most cases, Murphy knew, but when his brother had torn from the house, screaming the girl’s name, his mother had sent Murphy to stop him. As drunk as the younger Connor was, breaking the terms of the blackmail could be easily done.

  The sound of his voice when he’d slammed from the house, the broken, hollow rage, had been terrifying. The fact that he was actually able to start the Viper parked in the driveway and race from the house sent horror racing through Murphy.

  The months-long drunk Shane and Sebastian had been on to keep themselves from Alyssa had appeared to be working but it couldn’t continue. Until she stopped dying inside, Shane had explained, his voice slurred, when Murphy had raged at him. Just until he couldn’t feel her dyi
ng inside.

  Murphy’s Viper sat waiting, parked next to where Shane’s had sat. Jumping in it, he raced after his brother, certain he’d never catch up with him. When he did, the sight of the vehicle lying on its top, tires spinning, filled him with such gut-wrenching fear he swore he felt his strength bleeding from his body.

  Until he saw his brother crawling from the wreckage. Stumbling to his feet, he was screaming something, and kicked the car only to fall to his knees when his booted foot connected with it.

  Sliding to a stop, Murphy jumped from the car and raced to his brother, the sight of the blood on his face, his torn shirt, spurring him to ensure the damage wasn’t life threatening.

  “Shane, damn it, stand the fuck down,” he snarled.

  “I’m not one of your fucking soldiers.” Shane rounded on him, animalistic rage pulling his expression into a snarl and roughening his voice with deadly fury. “Get her back!”

  He was suddenly in Murphy’s face, his fingers fisted in the shirt Murphy wore as he stared at his brother in shock.

  “What?”

  “Get her back!” Shane screamed, the grief on his face a terrible thing for Murphy to see. “Damn all of you. Damn you.” He sank to his knees, staring at his hands, shaking his head slowly. “Damn all of you. Just get her back.”

  He couldn’t feel her anymore. Her screams had echoed in his head, begging him to help her, only to be silenced just as quickly. And with the silence came the complete absence of her. That fragile connection Sebastian had called her siren song was just gone. Her song completely silent.

  And he couldn’t bear it. How was he supposed to live without that?

  When he’d learned she’d married he’d nearly killed the bastard who had married her. He still wanted to kill … her husband and whoever had dared to separate him and Sebastian from her. Whoever had dared.

  Lifting his head, he focused blearily on his brother.

  “I’ll kill him,” he snarled. “Whoever did this. I’ll kill him.”

  “Find him and I’ll help you.” Kneeling in front of him, Murphy placed his hand on his brother’s shoulder, the vow all he had to give the baby brother he so treasured. “Find him, Shane, and I swear to you, I’ll help you.”