Torrent (Condemned) (Volume 1) Read online

  Either way, it was too much drama, so I avoided town as much as possible, save for the weekly trip to the post office and my work at the vineyard. Despite the town gossip, people mostly left me alone. I imagined it was difficult to harass a guy on an island.

  As I sorted through a stack of mail, mostly bills and advertisements, someone uttered my name. Locking the P.O. Box, I swiveled my head in time to see a blonde whirl around and push the door open. She grabbed the hand of the kid at her side and ushered him outdoors, as if the place were about to burn to the ground.

  I folded my mail inside an advertisement for local businesses and glanced through the front window, catching the woman’s profile as she walked away. My heart almost stopped. I’d recognize that stubborn jaw anywhere. I rushed after her, the door closing with a thud upon my exit, and spotted her a few feet down the sidewalk. She opened the back door of a white BMW, and in hushed tones, hurried the kid to get inside and buckle up.

  “Nikki!”

  She lurched upright, and her deep, brown eyes met mine. Yeah, I remembered those eyes, especially how they bored into mine during sex. Nikki had never been the shy closed-eyes-during-sex kind of girl, and that had been the biggest turn-on.

  She slammed the door and rounded the hood to the driver’s side. “I heard you were back,” she said. “Seeing you caught me off guard. I shouldn’t have said your name.”

  I stuffed the mail into my back pocket and sauntered to her side. “Why the hell not?”

  With a sigh, she paused, one hand on the door handle. “C’mon, things didn’t end well. You made it clear you never wanted to see me again.”

  “Nik,” I said, voice suddenly wobbly as I slid a hand onto her shoulder. I had to touch her. After eight damn years, I needed to. “I didn’t want you waiting around for me.”

  She opened the door and wedged it between us. “Well, I didn’t wait around, so you have nothing to worry about.” She held out her left hand, and my eyes widened at the huge rock on her finger. “I’m getting married in a few weeks.”

  It was disconcerting to see how much things had changed while I was away. While time had all but stopped inside that prison, the world kept turning without me. “So I see,” I said, giving in to a weak instance of self-pity. I moved around the door and put one hand on the window and the other on the roof of the car. Her body stilled, but she had nowhere to go, and shit, just being this close to her brought everything back, all the summer nights we’d spent twisted in sheets, fan blowing hot air on bodies slick with sweat.

  “I didn’t realize you were back in town,” I said. “Figured you worked in some swanky office in downtown Portland by now. When did you come back?”

  “Last year, when Lyle asked me to marry him.”

  I quirked a brow. “Wait, you’re not talking about Lyle Lewis.”

  She nodded.

  I tried not to grit my teeth but failed. How the fuck had that asswipe gotten tangled with my ex? He’d followed her around like a horn dog all through high school, and that was only half of it. The guy had been the cruelest bully in town, and he’d hated me down to my toes for looking out for a few of the kids he’d abused on a daily basis. He’d also despised me because of my friendship with Nikki.

  “You know he’s the sheriff now, right?” she asked.

  Wonderful. She was marrying a fucking bully-turned-sheriff. If I didn’t get Alex under control soon, he might be slapping cuffs on me in the future, and I could only imagine the thrill he’d get at arresting me.

  “I guess congratulations are in order.” I tilted my head, one brow raised.

  “I guess so,” she said, her gaze veering to the backseat of the car. “I’ve really gotta go. It was good to see you again, Rafe.” Her voice softened, the same breathless quality I recalled from years ago. She slid into the driver’s seat, and that was when the kid in the back called her “Mom” and asked what they were having for dinner.

  I froze as it dawned on me. I'd been so focused on Nikki, part of me still thinking of her as the twenty-year-old girl I'd known, that I'd unconsciously written the kid off as a nephew, or perhaps a child of a friend.

  But he was hers.

  As she moved to pull the door shut, I shot out a hand and blocked her. Peeking into the backseat, I laid eyes on the kid for the first time. Really looked at him. Fuck. He was a spitting image of my childhood photos.

  “How old is he, Nikki?”

  Her body slumped, and with a loud sigh, she said, “Seven, and I know what you’re thinking. I was going to tell you. Swear to God I was, but now is not the time.” Her eyes pleaded with me. “Can we meet for dinner? In about an hour?”

  I couldn’t speak at first. I could have said so many things, but the truth hit me like a sledgehammer. Unless I was reading her wrong, or misunderstanding, she was telling me I had a son.

  “Rafe?”

  “An hour?” I asked, giving myself a mental shake.

  “Yeah, I’ll meet you at Doc’s Grill. You remember where that is, right?”

  “I remember.”

  She pulled the door shut, and this time I let her. I stood frozen in that spot long after she pulled away from the curb, the kid’s green eyes burning a hole in my mind. His curious eyes that reminded me so much of my own. Had he seen it too, or was he too young to pick up on the resemblance?

  Someone jostled me to awareness, and from the pinch of disproval on the woman’s face, she must have been in the “he should rot in prison” camp.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, then shook my head because I’d just apologized to a judgmental broad for simply standing in public. Fuck these people. I wandered down the main drag of the town until I reached the highway and stepped onto the shoulder. Checking my watch, I began walking to kill time before I met up with Nikki. The idea of that meeting sent my pulse racing. I wondered what he was like. Had he asked about me?

  Hell, I didn’t even know his name.

  Behind me, the sun dipped toward the horizon, and the shadow of the island emerged in the river up ahead. The private piece of land, situated on the Oregon side of the Columbia River, had been in my family for generations. My mother split when I was young, and my anger over her absence had slowly burned until it flared during my teens. Dad tried to stem my violent tendencies by enrolling me into martial arts classes. He’d thought if I learned to fight with respect and a code of ethics, it would curb my thirst to pound on people. It wasn’t like I’d gone around beating on everyone, just the idiots who deserved it, but he’d had the right idea. Those lessons had probably saved my ass.

  I wondered if my son—even thinking of him as mine set my head spinning—was angry over the gaping hole I should have filled all these years. Cars whizzed past, and for some strange reason, the hum of traffic settled my nerves. The island grew larger as the distance narrowed. I put the issue of fatherhood on the back burner and wondered how Alex was handling being locked up in the dark, her naked body shivering. I imagined her legs shaking, thought of how out-of-control she must feel, strung up on her toes and knowing she was at my mercy. My jeans grew unbearably tight.

  Such helplessness shouldn’t turn me on so fucking much, but it did. Always had. My dad’s efforts to teach me right from wrong hadn’t touched on sexual deviance.

  The mountains had turned to dusky blue against an orange backdrop by the time I turned around and retraced my steps back to town. Doc’s Grill, known for their unique dishes and secret sauces that couldn’t be duplicated anywhere else, was boisterous with activity. The restaurant had never suffered for business. That hadn’t changed in my absence, though so much about the town had, like the remodeled school, or how the post office no longer shared space with Cathy’s Quik-N-Go.

  I entered, nodded at the waitress, and told her I was there to meet someone. I found Nikki sitting by herself at a corner table, nursing a beer. Candles lit the wooden tables, giving an intimate feel to the place, though the peanut shells covering the floor spoke of the casual setting.

  I slid
into the chair across from her. “Sorry I’m late.” I’d lost track of time, plus, I’d needed several minutes to convince my dick to settle down. No way was I walking in to meet Nikki with a raging hard-on.

  “No problem. I was enjoying the quiet. William can be a handful, and I don’t get much ‘me’ time.”

  “William?”

  She dipped her head, and a curtain of blond hair obscured the left side of her face. “I named him after you.”

  William, my middle name. How was it possible I’d had a son all this time, one who shared my name even, yet I’d known nothing about him? Seven years of missed birthdays, milestones, laughter and tears.

  Thankfully, the waitress arrived to take our orders, and as Nikki asked about the daily specials, I took a few seconds to collect myself. I was a father. A dad. I had a kid. If I told myself that enough times, maybe it would sink in.

  The waitress, a young brunette on the short side, turned to me and did a double take. “I thought you looked familiar. You’re Rafe Mason. My boyfriend is a huge fan. He never believed you raped that girl.” She winked at me. “A lot of people around here don’t.”

  Unfortunately, a lot of people still did.

  I autographed a napkin for her and gave her my order. Once she left, thick silence fell over us.

  Time to rip off the Band-Aid. “You should’ve told me, Nik.”

  “What good would it have done?” She leaned back and crossed her arms. “You were locked up, and you weren’t getting out anytime soon. Besides, let’s not delude ourselves. We were never serious. Getting pregnant…it just happened. I can’t say it was a mistake because I wouldn’t have William, but we never meant for it to happen.”

  I picked up a spoon and swirled the ice chips in my water glass. “I actually thought I’d marry you someday.”

  She laughed. “C’mon, Rafe. We were kids back then.”

  And now we had a kid together. Neither of us spoke the words, though they hung in the air, as potent as the spices from the restaurant’s kitchen.

  “We both know someday wouldn’t have come,” she continued. “You had your whole career in front of you before…” She lowered her head, and I despised how she didn’t say the words.

  “Do you think I did it?”

  “I told you a long time ago I knew you wouldn’t do something like that.” The corner of her mouth curled. “You never needed to force yourself on anyone. You had women begging at your feet.”

  I tried not to squirm in my seat. Ironically, I had a naked woman, bound and locked up at that precise moment, just waiting for me to hold her down and fuck her hard. Nikki had no idea who I was. Who I’d become. She should have, though. She’d been the only woman who’d ever allowed me to get rough with her. I’d explored some of my baser urges with her, and she’d let me. She’d gotten off on it as much as I had. That’s why we’d worked. Our deep friendship had kept the drama to a minimum. We truly had been friends with benefits. Until I was arrested.

  And now, to find out my relationship with her had resulted in a kid…

  “What did you tell him about me?”

  “The truth. I’ve always wanted you to be part of his life. Eight years seemed like forever to you, but I knew you’d get out eventually.” She brushed her bangs from her eyes—eyes suddenly bright. “I didn’t want to make things worse for you in there, so I kept quiet about the pregnancy.”

  Ah, shit. I hated when chicks cried. Except for Alex. Her tears affected me differently. I craved them. “It’s water under the bridge. I’m here now, so let’s deal with this. You told him his dad went to prison?”

  She shook her head. “I told him you had to go away for a few years, but you’d come back when you could. He’s at that age now where vague answers aren’t cutting it anymore. He wants to meet his father, Rafe.”

  This was unbelievable, and bad fucking timing. I’d just committed a felony—for real this time—and I was about to compound felony upon felony. I couldn’t stop what I’d started, especially now. If I let Alex go, she’d run straight to the cops.

  What a fucking mess. I pushed back from the table and resisted the urge to grab at my collar. “I need some time.”

  “I understand.”

  “No, I don’t think you do. Nik…I’ve done things. Things I can’t undo. I’m not the same guy I was eight years ago.”

  “I realize that.”

  “No, you don’t.” Sighing, I ran a hand through my hair and pulled at the strands until my scalp burned. “You should’ve told me. You should’ve fucking told me.”

  I tossed a few bills onto the table to cover the dinner I wouldn’t eat, and then I rushed from the restaurant like the coward I was. But the question remained; if she had told me, would it have changed my mind about taking Alex?

  I wanted to die.

  I didn’t know how long he’d left me suspended, but it was messing with my head. I’d lost all sense of time and direction. My body was numb, almost weightless, except for the burn that circled my wrists. That pain didn’t go away, no matter how much I tried to block it out. At some point, I started counting...at some point I’d also given up. By the time 7,200 seconds passed, I was about to go out of my mind. The time after that was endless. My voice had gone hoarse long ago from screaming his name.

  He never came, and I began to panic. Maybe the past eight years had made him snap and tormenting me this way was his only source of relief. Images popped into my mind, scenarios of him beaten in prison, or worse. The helplessness he must have experienced, just as I was now. I tried to wrap my mind around eight years, but I could hardly wrap my mind around the few hours since he’d slammed the door shut, once again leaving me in darkness. A sick feeling formed in my gut.

  God, he must really hate me. My actions, born of cowardice and shame, had labeled him a rapist. In that moment, as I stood on tiptoes in a most punishing way, I hated myself more than he did. I deserved this.

  The turn of a knob ricocheted, ringing through my ears, and a sliver of light beamed toward me an instant before it was extinguished. Impossibly, the blackness became even more suffocating. I heard him coming near, though he barely made a sound.

  His touch landed on my shoulder, and I wondered how he found me so easily. His fingers were warm and soft, starkly different from the chill I couldn’t escape. My teeth chattered as his caress fluttered across my breasts, and my moan rent the air like a sword, tearing the quiet in two.

  Clothing swished, and his arm brushed mine as he moved to stand behind me. His breath hit my ear before his words did. “All those years I was in prison, did you even think of me once?”

  Twisting my aching wrists, I shuffled my feet, but my limbs refused to stop quaking. “Please let me down.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “I wrote you letters,” I blurted, then drew in a quick breath. In the wee hours of the morning when sleep eluded me, I’d bared my soul to him on paper. All the guilt I’d carried, how I felt about him. I’d also laid out every last detail of the secrets I kept locked away.

  “I never got any letters.”

  “I never sent them.” Why had I opened my mouth about the letters? If he ever found them…oh God.

  “Then why write them?”

  “Because I…”

  “Spit it out, Alex.”

  “I missed you.”

  “You missed me?” He fisted my hair. “You do realize how ridiculous that sounds, right? You sent me away.”

  “I know.” I grimaced as his tug on my hair increased.

  “What part of me did you miss? The guy you couldn’t resist gawking at, or the guy who actually gave a shit about you?”

  Past tense. He didn’t care about me anymore. I couldn’t blame him, but the knowledge hurt something fierce, threatened to chew a hole in my heart. “I just missed you, Rafe.”

  “Did you write about all the dirty things you wished I’d do to you?”

  “No.”

  “Liar,” he murmured into my ear. “Tell m
e about your fantasies.”

  I tried shaking my head, mortified, but his fist in my hair immobilized me.

  “If you don’t start talking, you’re staying down here until morning.” His hand dropped, and I sensed him retreating.

  “Don’t go!” I cried. “I’ll tell you.”

  “I know you will. You haven’t changed. I knew eight years ago I could probably do anything I wanted, but I knew better.”

  “And now?” I asked, hesitance creeping into my tone.

  “Now I’m black on the inside. I just don’t give a fuck anymore.”

  “I don’t believe that. I still remember who you are, even if you don’t.”

  “Would the man you remember have strung you up on your toes?”

  Definitely not.

  “Didn’t think so,” he said, as if he’d heard my thoughts. “So talk. Tell me all of your dirty secrets.”

  Oh God. The way he breathed those words into my ear was enough to unravel me. “I’ve thought about you making love to me.”

  “Do I seem like a making-love kind of guy?”

  “No.” He seemed like a fuck-you-until-you-split-in-two kind of guy. The kind of guy who’d bring new meaning to the word passionate.

  “C’mon, Alex. Last chance to spill before I walk through that door alone.”

  “I’ve thought about you going down on me.”

  He rimmed my earlobe with his tongue, invoking a jittery sigh. “Did you get yourself off thinking about my tongue on your pussy?” He closed a hand around my throat, arched my neck, and darted his tongue inside my ear in an erotic demonstration of what he could do with his hot mouth on other areas of my body.

  “You’re an ass,” I said, though the breathless quality of my voice took the sting out of the words.

  “I want to fuck yours.”

  I couldn’t help but tremble. The idea wasn’t pleasant, but at the same time, the thought of Rafe sliding inside my tight, forbidden hole…there was something tantalizing about it.

  His harsh laughter brought me back to the here and now. “Fuck, you’re getting hot thinking about it, aren’t you?”