Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2), Sam Hall [leveled readers .TXT] 📗

wall, the water running over us, his mouth on my skin, his teeth at my neck, his hands gripping me tight as he rubbed against me, my back arched and I felt something I hadn’t felt since before that night.

Powerful.

I loved his need and desperation. I loved the frantic rake of his nails, the messy, irregular thrust of his cock against me, slipping over my skin. I liked hearing him fall apart, his breath ragged, right up until he spilled across me, hot and scalding. For a moment, we just hung there, sucking in oxygen in long shudders.

When I turned around, the water washed all trace of them away, but still, I had been anointed. With them, with what I was, what I had with them. What the interloper and this town had wanted to take away.

“Was the attack on me motivated by Dad’s death?” I asked when I was washed clean. “Or was it this they tried to destroy?”

Zack muscled forward, shaking his head before pressing his forehead to mine.

“Good thoughts, baby, but they’re for later. You need rest, time to heal. Hold onto them, love, let them percolate inside. But rest first.”

His words and their withdrawal made it all come crashing back in, the exhaustion, then pain. I nodded, wrapping an arm around his neck as he swept me up into his arms and then carried me out, back into the house and into our den.

I fell into a cocoon of sorts for the next few days, sleeping, curling up between them, taking my medication like a good little bunny, but I knew when I was healed. When I’d woken up, their heads popped up to look down at me with eyes shining like the moon, and I met every single one of them.

“Time to hunt?” Lorcan asked, his grin baring his razor-sharp teeth, and I just nodded. We scrambled out of the bed, then I walked downstairs with them at my back. I opened the door of my father’s office, looking at the doorframe, the shelves of books, the massive desk. When I picked up the landline phone receiver, I heard the stutter of beeps that told me that voicemail had been left. I entered the pin number, my birthday, and listened to the first one.

“Paige, I’m not sure when you’ll get this, but we’ve been refused entry to the hospital and the family estate! We were told you were hurt and needed to check that those bloody men were caring for you. Call me back as soon as you get this, please.”

The last bit was tacked on, a sudden softening of tone after Nance’s strident demands. The next call and the next and the next were all the same. I deleted those two without listening through to the end, and then I erased all of them as I heard Nance’s increasingly desperate tones.

“The first suspect was always Nance, wasn’t it?” I asked, feeling my gut fall through the floor.

“She makes the most sense,” Mason said. “We didn’t get any foreign scents inside the house, but there were none specific to your family other than their usual residual ones.”

“Give her what she wants,” I said, putting down the phone. “Bring her here, and only her.”

“We can—” he said, stepping forward, hands going to fists.

“No.” I shook my head. “I’ll do it.”

Chapter 4

“Nance is here like you asked.”

Mason stood at the front of my father’s desk, and I had to search my mind for reasons not to drag him on top of it and have my damn way with him. Because we were still finding our way back to each other. Because I needed to know if he was all the way in this time. Because to be frank, I needed some assurances he wouldn’t have yet another change of heart, but he seemed to sense at least part of what I was thinking.

I raked my eyes over those broad shoulders, the T-shirt, as always, stretched tight to make sure as much of his body was on display as possible, but he met my gaze with an equally smouldering look.

“Let her cool her heels for a while,” I said, a time old tradition for showing dominance Dad used to employ with pushy people. “Bring her in later today. I want some time to search through Dad’s office. I think we all need to get on that. Many hands and all that.” I glanced around the room. “This is where they were when they hit me approximately, and it makes sense that whatever they were after would be here.”

“You want everyone to help?” An eyebrow shot up at that, his mouth twisting in a smile. “I’ll call the guys in…”

I swallowed, realising just what that would be like in this room. It was relatively large for an office, often used as a space for meetings with his enforcers, but… I swallowed, fairly sure Dad wouldn’t have felt the thrill of excitement I felt at the idea of them all being in the same room. But that customary feeling, of guilt, of greed, of being the girl who had the most cake, came hot on its heels. I felt it when I nodded to Mason, when I told him to bring them in. I felt it when they all filed in, forming a loose ring around the desk. But I pushed past it when I got to my feet.

“So it’ll be tempting to drop trou and do a bit of naked investigating,” I said, getting a chorus of growls for my trouble, “but we need to try and work out what they wanted.”

“What if it was just you?” Zack said. “It could be one of your suitors trying to get to you.”

“They were looking for something. I heard the rustling around from the kitchen.” I looked out the office door, across the living area to where I could see the fridge. “If they just wanted me, they would’ve come straight for me. I wasn’t being super quiet, and I