He shook his head. “You don’t want him to fuck her, Marly. You let him fuck Sarah, and I know it has to kill you.”
“It does?” She leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs casually as she watched him. “Sarah isn’t a threat to me, Sam. And neither is Heather. Do you think I don’t know what happened in the kitchen? That Cade didn’t tell me what happened after the fact?”
Sam shook his head. No, he knew she would have known.
“How do you share him?” he whispered. “You love him, Marly.”
“And you love Heather, Sam, but you would fuck me in a New York minute if Cade were here right now.”
He sighed. “I would fuck you without Cade, Marly, and you know it.”
“And when Cade saw me later, he would know.” She smiled with an edge of excitement. “He would know, and he would touch me, and he would love me, and he would show me all the ways that it brings him pleasure to know that I love you enough to give myself to you, Sam.”
It made no sense to him. None of it did. And now the stakes were so much higher. He loved Heather, loved her like nothing he had ever loved in his life, and he wanted to share her. He wanted to see her screaming in pleasure as his brothers took her. See the arousal, the joy, and know she had everything he had to give. His love, his brothers’ love, their protection and their caring. To know that no matter where he was, or what happened, Heather would be safe and loved.
But there was more to it, and he was only now realizing it. The bond that had started by that damned pond so long ago, was something too deep to deny, and yet too ethereal to explain.
He hunched forward, lowering his head as he stared at the whisky bottle between his feet.
“I love you all, Marly,” he whispered. “Heather holds my soul, but I love you and Sarah, too.” He frowned, fighting to understand, to make sense of it himself. “You weren’t raised like we were.” He raised his eyes slowly to meet her dark gaze. “And then the abuse… It makes us so different, Marly, and I’m terrified that one of you will be hurt, that we’re scarring your souls as much as ours were.”
Silence fell between them as he dropped his gaze before bringing the whisky to his mouth once again.
“Sam.” She stopped him, her small hand on his wrist as the other lifted the bottle from his grip. “I look at you, and I see parts of Cade and of Brock. And it’s the same for Sarah. But we see you as well. We see a man we’ve grown to love and to respect, one who places our safety and our pleasure above his own. There’s no jealousy and no anger, Sam. We’re family. A different kind of family, but a family.”
“So the family that fucks together, stays together?” he bit out, jerking to his feet as he paced to the arched opening that led out to the pool area. “God dammit, Marly…”
“No, Sam, a family that loves stays together. However they love, whether it’s a love acceptable to the world or not, it’s love that holds a family together. Love and respect and the commitment to it, Sam. You know that even better than I do. If you didn’t love and respect your brothers, then the three of you would have drifted apart years ago. You wouldn’t still be fighting to survive, nor would you be trying to make sense of whatever demons haunt you all. Love, Sam.”
She came up behind him, her arms going around his waist as she leaned against his back. Sam turned to her, enfolding her in his arms as he rested his cheek against the black silk of her hair.
“He saved us all,” Sam whispered. “Cade, Marly. He saved us, even though he doesn’t believe he did.”
“You saved each other, Sam,” she said gently, and he wondered how much of her statement was true.
“Sam?” Heather’s soft voice had him pulling back from Marly, looking over his shoulder as Heather watched them from the sliding glass door that led into the family room.
She didn’t look angry or jealous, she looked frightened. Terribly frightened.
“Heather.” He turned to her, knowing he had hurt her, knowing this day would come…
“Sam, the sheriff is here. We have trouble.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“You like fucking your brothers, August?” Mark Tate’s voice echoed through the room, courtesy of the small recorder Sheriff Martinez held in his hand. He sounded breathless, frightened. In the background you could vaguely hear another voice directing him. “You have two hours to show up at my place, or I send these pictures I have to every newspaper and law enforcement office in the country. Interesting p
ictures of a dead man.”
“You’re a dead man.” Sam heard his own voice, cold, hard, a promise of violence that he only vaguely remembered.
The sound of the phone disconnecting was loud in the room; those who stood listening were silent, held in shock.
“Oh God.” Marly’s whispered cry was echoed by Sarah’s as they stood in his brothers’ arms.
Heather stood beside him, but he couldn’t reach out to her, couldn’t look at her. He stared down at his hands and saw the blood. Rick and Tara stood somewhere behind the sheriff, witnesses to their shame.
He raised his head slowly, his body tensing in rage as he stared into the cold, hard gaze of a sheriff he had once counted as a friend.