Catching Hell (Complete Collection) Page 14

  I sucked in an uneven breath, realizing the situation was far more complicated than I’d realized. It wasn’t as simple as attraction for two people and having to choose which one he found more enticing. He still hauled the emotional baggage of guilt for not saving his wife from a virus that killed just about everyone who contracted it, transferring the burden and linking it to Kassandra. It was going to be a lot harder to get through to him than I’d thought.

  “You didn’t fail your wife. There was nothing you could do for Stephanie. None of us could do anything for the people we loved as we watched them die. I lost my entire family, and I know you did the same. We didn’t fail them. The only reason we might have to feel guilty is for surviving, which isn’t exactly a prize in this world.”

  He gave me a sad smile. “My brain knows that, but my heart doesn’t really agree. I can’t help how I feel, and I feel like I let down my wife. I have a second chance to protect someone who needs it, and I have to take that. I’m not interested in a relationship with her, but I can’t turn her out just because you don’t like her. We all have to learn to get along.”

  It was a lost cause. I could see that, at least for now. Unless or until she revealed the real her, he was completely snowed by the innocent victim routine. Apparently, I’d have to go straight to the source of sluttery if I wanted to fix this.

  I allowed myself to sink again Shane, capturing his mouth with mine. I’d missed him so much over the last few days, and he responded immediately. There wasn’t any hesitation or holding back on his part, which encouraged me. If he’d been thinking about Kassandra, even briefly, he never would have responded to me with such enthusiasm and naked hunger.

  Our clothes seemed to disappear in a flash, and I pushed him back onto his desk so I could climb on top of him, straddling his thighs. I bent over him, taking his mouth with mine, and kissed him with blatant hunger.

  As I did so, I realized I was taking charge. Maybe it made him uncomfortable, and perhaps he’d prefer if I were more submissive. I couldn’t imagine being that way in my everyday life, or deferring to him to make the hard decisions when all the decisions were tough these days, but I could definitely surrender in the bedroom—or on the desk, as the case happened to be at the moment.

  I melted against him again, leaned my head on his shoulder, and waited for him to take charge.

  He seemed to realize what I was doing, because his hands gripped my hips, and he brought me into alignment with his cock. He didn’t enter me though. First, he stroked my clit with his fingers, making sure I was wet enough to take him. When he sank into me, he continued strumming my clit, and I held still until he started moving. I let Shane set the pace and did my best to match it, not escalating. It was surprisingly easy to surrender and let him control this aspect. I wouldn’t want to do it all the time, but maybe I could show him moments of vulnerability that would make him happy and convince him I did need him.

  The truth was I absolutely did. I was getting more self-sufficient, and maybe I could even survive on my own if I had to, but I didn’t want to. I needed Shane to complete all the parts of my heart, just like Jamar and Han. I had to show him that by being open and vulnerable.

  Chapter Three

  I found Kassandra in the bunkroom, which she shared with Wesley since Han had taken over the office we used on nights I slept with him. He hadn’t yet shown a willingness to join Jamar and Shane in my bed at the same time, and I was respecting that. With the friction Kassandra had caused, there hadn’t been a whole lot of action happening in my bed with Jamar and Shane lately anyway. This afternoon had been the first time Shane and I had made love since that disastrous night the first week of Kassandra’s arrival.

  I cornered her near her bunk, and though she was taller than me, and probably outweighed me by thirty pounds, she cowered away. I tried to keep my tone firm, but not menacing. “I want you to stay away from my men.”

  She sneered at me despite her fear. “Your men? You don’t own any of them. If you weren’t such a super slut, you wouldn’t have any of them. You certainly wouldn’t have all of them. Besides, I just want Shane.”

  I stepped closer, one hand on Miranda, and the other on my knife in a menacing fashion. Perhaps my plan to be unemotional and stern wasn’t going to work. I might have to put a little fear into the bitch. “Too bad. You can’t have Shane, because Shane’s with me.”

  “You have the black guy and the Mexican. You don’t need the only white guy.”

  I grimaced, literally tasting something foul in my mouth just from what her words revealed. It explained why she’d never made any attempt to flirt with Jamar or Han beyond when she needed to manipulate them to do something. “Have Wesley. He’s white.”

  She grimaced. “If he wasn’t good enough for you, he certainly isn’t good enough for me.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I have no intention of discussing your love life or lack of. I’m just telling you now to stay away from Shane, Jamar, and Han. They belong with me, and I won’t put up with you trying to steal them, any of them, away. You can still be kicked off the base.”

  She crossed her arms and glared at me, and there was an expression of confidence on her face I didn’t like one bit. “Shane would never allow that, and since this group existed before you came along, you don’t have any extra clout. You aren’t even a real soldier, so you can’t make a vote about who gets to stay.”

  Allowing my anger to get the better of me, I gripped my knife and pulled it from its sheath. “There’s one way to remove you from the base permanently. Let’s not let it get to that point, Kassandra. Keep your hands to yourself and stay away from my men.”

  Her eyes widened with genuine fear, and I must have been pretty convincing. Honestly, I was feeling kind of homicidal, so I’m sure that showed through in my expression. She took a step back, and I put the knife away.

  “You can’t keep him forever. He doesn’t belong to you.”

  I nodded, probably surprising her by agreeing. “You’re right. Shane doesn’t belong to me, and I don’t belong to him. We belong with each other, and that’s the difference. He wants to be with me and not you. Accept that gracefully.”

  Kassandra scowled at me. “I think you’re the one who needs to accept gracefully that Shane’s going to be mine. I want him, and I’m going to take him.”

  I turned away from her without replying, wishing I felt more confident about her inability to do so. After our discussion, I was certain Shane wasn’t actually attracted to her, but she’d probably picked up on his need to play the hero. If she played the role correctly, she could end up convincing him she needed him in order to survive.

  How much of his own happiness would he sacrifice to atone for his perceived failure to save his wife? I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to think about that. I just wanted to bury my head in the sand and pretend like things had gone back to normal. I could be an idiot as well as the rest of them when the occasion called for it.

  Jamar found me at the firing range, and he was clearly angry. I braced myself for another round of relationship drama as I flipped the safety and put Miranda in my holster. “What?”

  “Did you really threaten Kassandra with a knife? Did you tell her you were going to cut her heart out if she didn’t leave Shane alone?”

  So she’d gone tattling on me. I wasn’t shocked, but I wondered why she had picked Jamar instead of Shane. I’m sure there was a strategy to it, though I wasn’t grasping it at the moment. I shrugged. “Sort of. I didn’t threaten to cut her heart out. I just told her I’d make her disappear off the base if she didn’t leave my men alone.”

  He looked stunned, and I didn’t like his look of derision. “You can’t go around threatening people like that. She’s a vulnerable young woman, and you should have some sympathy.”

  “I’m done having sympathy for her. She wore out that spark of emotion the first day. She’s a snake.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Shane said more than once you were jealous, but I didn�
��t realize how jealous you were. It has to stop.”

  Anger was trying to surge to the forefront, but I really didn’t want to engage in another war today. “I’m done with it now that I’ve laid down the law for her. As long as she leaves me alone, including stops trying to sabotage my relationships, I’ll happily ignore her too.”

  He let out a sigh before nodding. “I understand how jealousy can get the best of you. The first few times I saw you with Shane, even though I was there too, I wanted to ram my fist into his face and claim you as mine. But we had agreed to share, and we did.” When I started to speak, he held up a hand. “Don’t worry, I get it. You haven’t agreed to share us with her, so I understand where the jealousy and insecurity comes from, but you don’t have to feel that way. We want you, not her.”

  It was basically what Shane had said, and though I could have disputed his assumption that it was strictly jealousy motivating my reaction, I chose to take the peaceful route and lay against him instead. I hugged him before capturing his mouth, and he lifted me onto the platform. It was one of my favorite places to make love with Jamar, since it made us roughly the same height, and I impatiently shoved down my pants. I needed the connection with him. Our link hadn’t been as fragile as the one I’d had with Shane lately, but it was definitely frayed, and we needed to reinforce it before it managed to ravel and snap.

  He surged into me a moment later, and we fell into the familiar rhythms as we clung to each other. When he came, I laid my head against his chest and whispered the words I’d said to Shane earlier, “I love you, Jamar.”

  He let out a shuddering groan, and the words seemed to prolong his climax, triggering my own in the process. I was coming pretty hard myself when he said in what sounded like a gasping grunt, “Love you too, sugar.”

  Things felt right again, at least as right as they had since Kassandra’s arrival. I clung to him and to the hope that maybe the worst was behind us.

  Kassandra seemed to have taken my warning to heart, because she distanced herself from Shane somewhat over the next few days. She still flirted with him, but she didn’t go exclusively to him for help. She was turning to Wesley more often, and I was relieved to see them starting to form a bond. I hoped she’d taken my words at face value and saw my sincerity. I wasn’t actually prepared to murder her to get rid of her, but all bets were off if she tried going after my men again.

  Maybe she’d given up on Shane and turned to Wesley. That was my hope, and it seemed to be what had happened as they spent more and more of their time together. Once, I came across them making out in the hallway, and I gave Wesley a smile as I walked past. It was a dazzling one, and I could see his bemused look. He probably had no idea why I was so happy to find him making out with her. It was a sign of her moving on and away from Shane.

  Han still hadn’t joined us in the big bedroom, so I split my nights between Shane and Jamar and him. I wanted him with us, but I couldn’t rush him. It was already a big step for him having to share me with his two friends, and I had a greater appreciation for how hard it must be for them after having my own brush with insane jealousy.

  The difference was, they all knew each other, and they were all certain each of them cared for me and wanted to take care of me. With Kassandra, I knew her only motivation was taking care of herself, and she’d use anyone necessary to do that. I wanted to protect them from her claws as much as I wanted to keep them with me.

  Chapter Four

  As was often the case, things went to hell, and they went there quickly. We typically took at least one day off per week from runs or other duties, if they could be skipped. Today was our downtime. It was late afternoon, and I was busy studying how to raise chickens in an indoor environment. I’d read the same book several times, but I was trying to memorize everything and make mental notes. I planned to start looking for supplies and chickens on our next run, so I wanted to make sure I had all the necessities burned into my brain and didn’t have to fumble with a list. Taking a minute to look at a list could get me killed if there was somebody around with bad intentions.

  I was in the mess hall, and the sound of hysterical sobbing caught my attention. Shane and Jamar also looked up, and Wesley wandered in from the kitchen, where he’d been fixing lunch. We all stumbled to our feet when Kassandra rushed into the cafeteria. She was sobbing, clearly incapable of speech at the moment, but it was obvious she’d been attacked. Her face was bruised, her mouth was bloody, and there were visible finger marks around her neck.

  I reached for my gun, certain someone had invaded the base.

  She saw me reaching for Miranda and threw herself against Shane with a moan of complete terror. “Please don’t let her hurt me again. Hasn’t she done enough?”

  For a moment, I honestly thought she was talking about before, the one time I had pulled her hair to get her off Shane. As Shane and Jamar turned condemnatory expressions on me, I abruptly realized what she was claiming. “I didn’t touch her. I don’t know what happened, but I had nothing to do with it.”

  She managed to sob for another moment before speaking in a surprisingly clear voice. “She came up behind me and grabbed my throat. She was strangling me as hard as she could. If I hadn’t somehow managed to break free of her, she would’ve killed me right then. When I turned to face her, begging her to not to hurt me anymore, she punched me a couple of times in the face. When I fell down, she kicked me in the ribs.” To punctuate her fiction, she lifted her shirt and showed angry red marks on her ribs. “Then she kicked me in the head, and I lost consciousness. I just woke up a few minutes ago.”

  My mouth was literally agape with shock. “I had nothing to do with this. I didn’t touch her. I’ve been reading my book all afternoon.”

  “Except when you went to the bathroom a few hours ago,” said Jamar, looking regretful as he uttered the words. “You were gone for a while.”

  “Yes, I was gone for a while, but that was because Han and I had a quickie. Ask him, and he’ll confirm for you that we were fucking in the shower room. That was the only place I went—to the shower room, where I saw Han, we had sex, and I came back here. I never even saw Kassandra today.” That wasn’t unusual. We tried to stay away from each other, only rarely meeting at mealtimes.

  “Where is Han?” asked Wesley, moving closer. I was surprised when he stood behind me, putting a comforting hand on my shoulder. It struck me as ironic the one man I wasn’t involved with had taken my side without question when the two men who supposedly loved me had been drawn into her tale of victimhood.

  “I haven’t seen him for most of the day,” said Shane. “I figured he was napping or taking advantage of some downtime.”

  He’d mentioned doing a perimeter check after he and I had finished our encounter in the shower room, and I figured that’s where he was now. It had been a couple of hours, but maybe he’d found something of interest. Maybe he was in trouble aboveground and needed help. “You should go look for him. What if he’s in trouble? He was talking about doing a perimeter check, and if no one’s seen him since, maybe he ran into bad people.”

  Kassandra clung to Shane in an eye-roll-worthy move. “Please don’t leave me alone with her. Can’t you see she’s just trying to get you away from me so she can finish the job? I think she thought I was dead, or I probably wouldn’t have woken up. She kicked me so hard in the head, and I’m still feeling dizzy.”

  With a dramatic sway, she collapsed against Shane. He caught her like the manipulated fool he was, carefully laying her on the table. Her eyes snapped open a moment later, and I smirked down at her. She clearly hadn’t expected him to put her down. She managed to sit up with surprising ease, considering she supposedly had a concussion. Someone had clearly done a number on her, but she wasn’t as hurt as she’d claimed. All the injuries were strategic, looking far worse than they’d actually be, and I started to put the pieces together. “She did it to herself so you’d think I did it. She’s trying to frame me so you’ll banish me.”

 
She flinched. “That’s not true. She’s manipulating you.”

  I laughed. “That’s rich coming from the queen of manipulation.”

  Jamar looked at her in an appraising fashion, but when he looked at me, his expression was sad. “Sugar, she couldn’t have done that herself. She might’ve been able to ram her face into a wall or something, but she couldn’t give herself bruises on her ribs that look like boots, and she sure couldn’t have strangled herself from behind.”

  “I didn’t do it,” I said rapidly, feeling my anxiety creeping up. I was starting to get a bad feeling about all this. With a stinking sensation, I contemplated the idea that Kassandra’s machination might actually work, and they might send me away. I didn’t think Han would allow it, but he wasn’t there to stop them.

  “There’s an easy way to prove it,” said Shane, his jaw tight. “Put your hands on her throat.”

  She gasped and reared away from me, scrambling off the table. “You can’t mean to let her finish it, Shane. I thought you cared about me?”

  He frowned out at her. “I do care about you. There’s no way she’s going to strangle you in front of us. I just want to see if her fingers match the marks on your throat.”

  After a moment, she nodded, looking stoic.

  I moved toward her eagerly, ready to disprove her accusations. I lifted my hands after I moved around behind her, putting them on her throat and trying to line them up roughly with the existing marks. My stomach churned when I realized they were almost a perfect match. Had I somehow slipped into a fugue state and attacked her? No, of course not. I knew she was still framing me, but I couldn’t figure out how she’d done it.