Caught By the Convicts by Jessa Kane

Chapter 7

Wendy

Power ticklesthe tips of my fingers. They flex around the bottle of lighter fluid.

I’m not a destructive person, but I can’t deny the pressure that climbs my throat at Klay’s suggestion. Burn it all down. And I realize all along that’s what I’ve wanted. This place is symbolic of the pain. The past. The fact that it remains standing has been an offense to me. A needle jabbing into my throat. When I drive somewhere, I intentionally avoid this remote section of town. It has power over me.

Klay is right. I might not be able to confront my father, as I’d hoped.

But is this the next best thing? Setting fire to the pain?

Will that give me closure?

There’s only one way to find out. Pressing my lips together, I unscrew the cap and set it on the table beside the book of matches, upending the bottle as I circle the room. Liquid hits the floor, leaving patterns as I walk. I leave a trail all the way to my hated bedroom, pouring a little extra on the door itself, so it can never be locked again, and I make my way back to Klay and Ruger who appear anxious to have let me out of their sight for mere seconds.

And oddly…that is what sends power rippling through me.

Not the lighter fluid. Not entirely.

It’s these two huge, intense, adoring men.

They’re here for me. They broke out of prison to find me. Claim me.

I’ve claimed them in the process, haven’t I?

There’s no use denying it. Not when I turn achy and flushed just being in the same room with them. Knowing they want to savage my body. Knowing that, by some stroke of a miracle, I’m the person binding them together. I’m their third. I was always destined to be the completion of their circle, whether any of us knew it or not.

That’s where my power to overcome the past is going to come from.

Now I have the strength of three, instead of one.

I drop the bottle of light fluid, lust crackling up my thighs. The need to feel that power. Harness it. Right here and now. I know how to replace the bad memories with good.

With them.

Klay and Ruger.

With my breath beginning to grow short, I strip off the dress I threw on before leaving my house, my nipples puckering at their sharp hisses of breath. “Make me forget,” I whisper, dragging my panties down to my ankles slowly and stepping out of them. In my heeled sandals, I glide to the kitchen table and place my palms flat on the surface. And with their ravenous male gazes devouring me, exhilaration climbs my spine. Anticipation. I’m so primed for touch that when a pair of hands grip my hips, I sob loudly, my feminine muscles contracting between my legs. “Yes.”

“You want it from behind?” Klay growls into my neck, yanking my butt back into his lap. “From who, baby? Your choice.”

“Both of you,” I breathe.

Klay’s muscles fill with tension.

There’s a click inside of me, however.

I’m the bond. The mortar that holds the three of us fast.

But my responsibility goes further. They’ve brought me here to purge my demons…but not until they do the same. Specifically Klay. Ruger has his share of heartache, but it’s largely been cured by his best friend already. He’s one step away from being complete, while Klay is a few emotional steps behind.

I turn around in Klay’s arms and cradle his rigid jaw in my hands. “My choice is both of you.” Leaning in, I kiss his mouth until he’s straining in his jeans, hoarse sounds coming from deep in his throat. “You’ll have me. And he’ll have you.”

Klay makes a ragged sound, halfway between a laugh and a cough. “That’s not possible. I don’t…Ruger and me…we’re not like that with each other.”

“No?” I reach out for Ruger and he appears beside us, his usual eager, conflicted self. There’s no doubt he’s overheard what’s been said, because he looks Klay in the eye fleetingly, then down at the ground. My heart swims with love for both of them in that moment. For Klay and all his complications and potential. For Ruger with his big, beautiful heart. With a sense of immense purpose I’ve never experienced in my life, I take Ruger’s hand and guide it down to Klay’s erection. “Rub him while we kiss.”

Klay makes a choked noise, his chest shuddering up and down when Ruger starts to massage him slowly, up and down, through the fly of his jeans.

“Say out loud that it feels good,” I whisper against Klay’s mouth.

“I can’t,” he pants.

“Why?”

“That’s…not who I’m supposed to me. I’m already a fucking thief.” He kisses me hard, almost angrily. “This one last domino falls and I’m…there’s no part of me that he’d approve of.”

Ruger’s hand stills a moment, before it resumes stroking Klay’s distended shaft. But now his mouth is open against Klay’s shoulder, as if dying to kiss his skin, but afraid of the repercussions. For my part, I feel as though I’ve just unlocked this man. I’ve just had the curtain pulled back and I know him. Know his heart. “Your father. He’s got a hold on you, same as mine does, but for different reasons.” I trace my tongue along the seam of his mouth. “Let it all go.”

“Easier said than done.”

“If you do it, so will I,” I say back—and that’s what gets him.

Klay wants me to be healed. Badly enough to trounce his own insecurities?

Yes.

Yes. Very slowly, he inhales and exhales, looking my square in the eye. Letting me share all of his anguish. And then he looks over at Ruger, granting him some of that pain as well. So we can help him carry it. Then Klay does something that I couldn’t have expected, but increases my love and affection for him tenfold.

He leans over and captures Ruger’s mouth.

Ruger’s eyes fly open in shock, then drift shut, his lips opening against Klay’s. The men break away with a growl, then dive back together, the kiss’s intensity skyrocketing. Ruger’s fingers tug downward on Klay’s zipper, freeing his sex and pumping his hand up and down the hard, bare flesh eagerly, bringing droplets of precome to the head. While continuing to kiss After kissing Ruger one more time with unleashed hunger, Klay spins me around, pressing me face down over the table.

“That make you wet, baby?” Klay rasps, delivering a rough spank across my upturned bottom. And it’s a good thing that, oh God yes, watching them kiss turned my flesh damp and pliant, because Klay isn’t gentle when he enters me. I scream. I scream at the fullness, the ownership, the sense of homecoming. “You want me to admit I’ve fantasized about…”

Klay’s voice trails off.

“What?” I breathe.

“Him sucking my cock in the prison showers? I know he wants to. He fucking stares at it and thinks I don’t notice him dripping come down his leg,” Klay grinds out, his voice barely audible. “Is that what you want to hear, Wendy?”

“Yes,” I whimper, receiving several hard thrusts in response.

The table skids across the floor of the kitchen, taking us with it, and it wedges against the far wall, right in front of a dirty window. A window overlooking the overgrown side yard and also affords me a hazy view of what’s happening behind me.

“Can I, Klay?” Ruger asks, thickly. “Your…ass?”

In answer, Klay bends low over my back, pinning me down with his chest. Presenting himself to Ruger with eyes squeezed shut, flared nostrils and a heaving chest. “Be rough. Our woman is the only soft we need. Our fuck is hard, understand? Man to man.”

“Man to man,” Ruger repeats, looming behind Klay, forehead glistening with sweat.

Big and wild.

Finally set free. Given permission.

He fumbles with the zipper of his pants. “I’d have sucked your dick for you in the showers, Klay,” he groans, his hand rifling up and down his stiffness, neck muscles straining. “I’d have sucked it in front of everyone.”

Klay pumps into me, frenzied, groaning over the admission. “Don’t worry, you’ll be sucking it all the goddamn time. If kissing you makes her pussy this slippery, I can’t even imagine how wet it’ll make her to watch my cock disappear down your throat.” Klay grips the back of my hair, hauling my head up. “You perfect little treasure. You sweet fucking angel. Look what you’ve done—” He breaks off on a loud shout and I know, I know Ruger has thrust home inside of him, sure as Klay is inside of me. “Jesus. Jesus.”

Ruger’s labored breaths fill the kitchen. “Feels so good,” he slurs.

“Move,” Klay rasps after a moment, letting go of my hair in favor of wrapping a hand around my throat. “Help me fuck her. Her little thighs are already shaking.”

He’s right. They are.

Acknowledging how close I am somehow pushes me even nearer to the edge. I watch in the window as these two giant men press together, joining forces to ride me violently. I’m screaming myself hoarse, the table cracking against the wall over and over again, Klay’s stomach slapping wetly every time it meets my buttocks. My nails have dug grooves into the kitchen table, my nerve endings racing to gather in that one spot. That one spot between my thighs that tingles with overwhelming arousal. How could it not when I’m watching Ruger pump, slack-jawed, into Klay while Klay struggles to finish me before ejaculating. His face is etched in a combination of agony and pleasure. Both of their faces are—and so is mine. Because this is life. This is our life. We’ve found our home.

And I’ve found my power.

This is the equivalent of setting my helpless past on fire. I’ll never be helpless again and I didn’t need matches to believe it. I just needed these two men.

These two men I love.

My orgasm starts to crest and I tilt my hips, whining their names. “Harder, harder.”

Their twin growls fill the room and then I get a hard slam, both of them powering forward at once and holding, holding as all three of us climax at the same time, our bodies shaking through the ultimate release that could only happen with us all together. Like this. Without shame or holding back. Just full acceptance of our needs.

“Ruger,” I whimper, my intimate muscles flexing around Klay’s hardness. “Klay.”

“We’re here, Wendy,” Ruger grunts, his hand riding up Klay’s spine, fingers twining in his friend’s hair as he works his hips, letting out the remainder of his seed.

“Yes,” Klay says, struggling to inhale and exhale, his mouth unruly on my neck. “We’re here. We’ll always be here. You are ours.”

“Ours,” Ruger growls. “Forever.”

“We’re each other’s,” I whisper, falling replete to the table.

A moment later, I’m swept up into Klay’s arms. He turns and I’m cradled between the two men, awe written on their features. They take turns kissing my forehead and mouth, then—after a small hesitation—doing the same with each other.

“Is it crazy that I already love you…” I say quietly, my chest packed with emotion. “Both of you? I love…this. I love us. It feels like we are exactly what was supposed to happen.”

Ruger makes a sound. “You’re not crazy, Wendy. I love you, too.” He swallows hard. “Both of you.”

Klay holds me closer. Tighter. “I love you,” he says, feeling packed into every word. It takes him a couple of extra ticks to look at Ruger, his throat working in patters. “Both. Both of you.”

Ruger jolts, looking shocked.

At least until Klay gives him a slow grin and Ruger melts further into our circle, pressing tightly to my side, happiness transforming him from anxious to complete. I can barely breathe around the joy spreading in my chest. At watching these men grow. Knowing I’m theirs and they are mine. “Wherever you’re going, I’m going with you.” The very idea of being without these two men fills me with astronomical fear. So much that I sit up suddenly, ordering without words for them to cram in tight around me. Anchor me. “I won’t let the police find you and lock you up again. I can’t.”

“That won’t happen,” Klay murmurs fervently into my hair, calming my pulse slightly. “Nothing is going to keep us from you. Not ever.”

“I might have something to say about that,” says a familiar voice. “That child there is my property and it’s about damn time she comes home to earn her keep.”

My father is standing in the doorway, his signature sneer twisting his features.

The lining of my stomach turns to acid, my knees beginning to tremble like they did when I was a little girl. I have an embarrassing impulse to run as fast as possible to my old room and hide under the bed. But then I remember I’m not a kid anymore. I’m a grown woman with a new life. A job and a home…and two men who love me. Need me. Have opened themselves up to me and tried to cure me of my fear in the process.

Both of them have fixed their clothing and are now bristling, preparing for a fight. Possibly even ready to kill my father. And they could—easily. Especially when my safety is at stake. I can see that. A moment ago, they were my tender lovers, but right now, they are hardened and dangerous. Eyes glittering, jaws full of tension. An eerie calm has settled over Klay while Ruger wears a mask of fury, just waiting for the word so he can attack.

It’s when I’m looking at them that I realize…they have cured me.

Or rather, encouraged me to cure myself.

I’m not running anywhere as long as these two are by my side.

I’m a woman capable of turning three lost souls into an unlikely threesome. I’m the glue these two men need and they’re mine. I now have the power of three instead of one inside of me and that strong bond can’t be broken by my father’s hate or thirst for control. In fact, as I look at his sagging jowls and hunched frame, the very idea is laughable.

“Klay,” Ruger says. “As soon as I’ve got him out of the doorway, bring her outside and I’ll handle the rest.”

“Sound plan, mate,” Klay responds without missing a beat. “Do be careful. A man like that doesn’t issue a challenge unless he has a weapon hidden somewhere.”

Ruger grunts and starts forward, but I stop him with a hand on his elbow. “No.”

My lovers turn to me with raised eyebrows.

“I don’t need him…handled. I’m not afraid of him anymore.” I laugh a little incredulously to myself, then sober, putting some steel in my spine. “It’s a far worse punishment to let him live, anyway. Let’s go home.”

“I’d really like to kill him, Wendy,” Ruger rasps, nostrils flaring.

I smooth my hand up Ruger’s spine and his eyelids droop, stiffness draining from his muscles. “You’re not a killer anymore.” I lean over and kiss Klay, lightly. A tease of lips. “And they don’t decide our actions ever again,” I whisper, referring not only to my father, but Klay’s.

Klay blinks several times to camouflage the emotion in his blue eyes, but it’s there and eventually he stops trying to hide it. I reward him with a smile and take hold of the hands of both men, walking as one unit toward the door.

When we’ve almost reached where my father is standing, his bravado begins to crumble. He knows it’s over. He has nothing and no one to control or terrorize anymore. And in that panic, he produces a butcher knife from the inside of his dirty jacket, the steel glinting in the moonlight. My skin turns clammy and cold. One again, the fear threatens to rear its ugly head, but I force myself to calm down. Instead of running or letting Ruger attempt to disarm my father, I simply reach back and pick up the matches left behind on the kitchen table.

I strike one and throw it down on the twirling pattern of lighter fluid—and I watch the flames zip off down the hallway like I used to do.

“What—no! I have nowhere else to go!” My father drops the knife and looks around frantically for a way to put out the fire. Of course, there is none, so he strips off his shirt and tries to pat out the flames. But it’s already too late.

The last time I see my father is when we’re driving away and I watch his silhouette among the flames, looking like the devil himself, still trying to quell the fire.

And when I hear the roof cave in with a sickening crash, I don’t bother looking back.

I simply allow Ruger to pull me into his lap. I meet Klay’s reassuring eyes in the rearview mirror and I know that with the past in ashes, we’re going to build a beautiful future.