Takeover: A Step-Brother Romance (The Legacy Series Book 1) (14 page)

“Why don’t you take a razor below the belt and then we’ll talk?” I said.

“If we’re being honest—”

“—I don’t want your honesty—”

“I’d take you however I could get you.”

His words wrapped me tighter than the robe, a heated promise. I tensed.

“I’d take you innocent with those beautiful pale curls, or I’d enjoy you completely bare, soft, and wanton. All that matters is that I’m the man who will ultimately taste you.”

“Rape me.”

“We’ll see.”

“Why did you side with Darius?”

He stood again. He might have thought I’d do the same, but my body locked. Pure adrenaline pumped my blood for me. I coughed again—unproductive and dry.

“My father expected me to side with him.”

I spat the word. “Coward.”

“In a few days’ time, you will be bred by your three step-brothers. Is a bit of nudity the worst thing you can imagine?”

Well, when he put it that way—it sounded just as bad.

“You challenged my father when you fled. Had you stayed where I ordered and done as I said, I might have convinced him you were already sufficiently punished. Instead, you defied me, angered him, and suffered the consequences.”

“Shaving my…” I gasped. “That’s a
consequence
?”

“No. My father beating you senseless would have been the consequence. Hopefully you learned how best to behave.”

“This is
not
my fault.”

“But it is,” he said. “You aren’t thinking in terms of concessions, only pride. Why fight him on every term when you are negotiating for something far more important?”

“My freedom?”

“Your life.”

“I’m not giving him any more victories over me. Once was enough.”

“You’re in his house, Ms. Atwood. You’re at his mercy.”

“He has no mercy.” My words clipped without air.

“Not for you. But, if he thinks he’s broken you, this might go easier.”

“Why would I give in?”

Nicholas brushed my cheek with his fingers, so gently I jerked as if he had struck me. But Nicholas would never hurt me. I understood that now. He had no cause to beat me, no obsession to watch me bleed.

He offered me a single escape, but it wasn’t freedom.

“Surrender, and when the time comes, I will be the only one to take you.”

I coughed again. The gasp didn’t return air. The thickness in my throat finally closed.

Then, the panic.

No matter how strong I believed I was, or how I once controlled it, or how much I understood about my body, my courage always disintegrated when I tripped over my first missed breath.

Nicholas knelt as my breath hitched—a quiet hiccup that made him chuckle. His smiled faded as I gripped his arm. I dug into his jacket. My nails tinted blue.

“Ms. Atwood, come with me. I’ll get you some water.”

I coughed. It caused only pain. Soundless agony bubbled in me.

“What’s wrong?” Nicholas demanded. He shouted for his brothers when I didn’t answer.

I clawed at my neck. The brief sip of air I managed did nothing. My head pounded. I fell forward, slapping my throat, my chest, trying to make him understand.

Reed rushed into the room first, diving to our side. “Sarah?”

Max limped after, watching from a distance. “What the hell’s wrong with her? Is she choking?”

Nicholas shook his head. He helped me onto my back. It didn’t help. My vision darkened, but the horrible coughing squeezed my chest. I pushed him away as much as I pulled him close, struggling against the pressure consuming me from the inside out.

Betraying me.

Destroying me.

Bennett wouldn’t need to hurt me. My Atwood blood cursed me from the day I was born.

“
Sarah
!” Nicholas cradled me against him. Not the first time he did it. Maybe the last. “Sarah?”

I had no choice. It was stupid of me to hide the illness. I stared into his dark, caramel eyes—a color too beautiful for the man he was. The one I thought he was? I forced the words out.

“As—asthma.” I beat my useless chest. “H—help me.”

Sarah Atwood collapsed in my arms.

It was the second time I cradled her limp body to my chest.

“What the fuck did she just say?” Reed hovered over her. “
Asthma
?”

I batted him away and lifted her from the floor. Was that why she was so small? So fragile?

The girl weighed nothing. I rested her on the parlor chaise. Her cuts reopened. Blood leeched from her arms, hands, and neck onto the white couch. A thin line dribbled along her perfect breasts.

Almost perfect. Perfection wouldn’t struggle and heave and choke to breathe.

Her lips turned blue, and her coughing rasped far too shallow to be effective. Her body lurched, but still she clung to me.

I had no idea what to do for her.

“Should we sit her up?” Reed knelt before her, trying to hold her still. He rushed to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of water. “Give her this.”

We padded pillows behind her. Sarah slumped and turned her head. The water dripped from her lips, blending with the crimson cuts on her neck.

“Jesus.” Max gritted his teeth. “You gotta call him, Nick.”

My father was the last person who needed to know our prisoner slowly suffocated. I nodded, though the decision churned my stomach. He wouldn’t care that she suffered.

Why didn’t I realize she had asthma?

We studied the Atwood stock and bonds, hired private investigators to trace her brothers’ activities, secured corporate allies and tucked them within her company. We knew everything about Atwood Industries and nothing about Sarah.

My father planned for us to bed and breed her. We purchased clothes for her, provided lotions and makeup, and prepared her room. But we neglected her most important amenity.

A rescue inhaler.

“Got a problem.” Max lowered his voice as he spoke into the phone. “The girl’s sick...Not sure....An asthma attack, I think.” He paused. “No, definitely not faking it.”

Max’s frustration mirrored my own. He ended the call. “He said to call Doctor Rimes.”

Absolutely not.

“Rimes is an hour away,” I said. “She doesn’t have that long.”

Reed flipped through his phone. “Dude, this is serious. Every one of these websites says to get her to a hospital.”

Max crossed his arms. “She’s not getting out of the house. Dad will carve her lungs out himself. He’s not risking her escaping.”

“Look at her!” Reed stood. “She can’t run away like this.”

Sarah’s grip weakened. I knelt before her, helpless as her delicate blue eyes widened, teary, and dulled to the color of a rich ash.

Last time I held her this closely, it wasn’t terror that made her tremble.

It was rage.

Indignation.

Desire
.

But I didn’t see it then. The coughing. The walking. The weakness. The attack had lasted for a while, and she pushed herself beyond her strength.

She didn’t tell us she was sick. She hadn’t trusted us. And now, she was in trouble.

Unacceptable.

The girl was our captive, but she was the only woman—only person—I met who intimidated my father to violence. He loathed the Atwoods, but his hatred of Sarah bordered on personal obsession. She returned it, punch for punch, even when she could no longer defend herself.

She was the most remarkable woman I knew.

I tied her robe closed to calm her, though she was lovely, even in distress.

How beautiful would she be when we conquered her?

“Max, we’re taking the helicopter,” I said. “You fly. Reed, call the hospital. Tell them we’re on our way and give them our flight information.”

“Are you insane?” Max wove his fingers through his hair. “If she goes to a hospital, they won’t just treat her asthma. Not when Dad punted her down the stairs and rolled her in glass. They’ll ask questions. She’ll tell people she’s been kidnapped and fuck us over.”

 Reed offered the water again. She turned away. Gripped me harder.

“I’d rather explain a kidnapping than a murder.” Reed exhaled. “We don’t have a choice.”

Max swore. “We take her to the hospital, and Dad will kill her himself.”

“She won’t talk.” I cupped her chin. She choked and gasped, but she was still listening. “She knows if she tells anyone what’s happened to her, our father will hurt her mother. She’s not ready to lose the only family she has left.”

“We’re her family,” Reed snorted. “Technically.”

“And that’s why we’ll help her.” I lifted Sarah into my arms and ordered my brother to the helicopter. “I’ll make Dad understand.”

Sarah didn’t struggle. Either she understood I meant to help or she was in that much pain.

Or she was dying.

I wouldn’t tolerate innocent blood on my hands.

The girl wasn’t just a beautiful creature of fire and passion. She was an heir to a fortune and the key to the Bennetts acquiring a company that would preserve our name, wealth, and status for generations, despite the challenges facing us.

My motivations were selfish, vile, and cruel.

But that was business.

And losing our greatest asset to a secret illness wasn’t an option.

I was the better pilot, but I wasn’t releasing Sarah from my arms. Reed followed with bottles of water and warm compresses. She wheezed against my chest. I braced her for Max’s flight.

Reed shouted what I didn’t have the courage to ask.

“Is she conscious?” He fit a pair of sound-muffling headphones over her ears. They tumbled off until I held them against her. “Christ, Nick. She’s gonna die.”

Not if I prevented it.

Reed sunk into the seat, head in his hands. “This was fucked from the start.”

“Stop panicking.” Max shouted as he kicked the throttle and propelled the helicopter over the estate and to the east, toward the closest hospital in San Jose. Not necessarily the best, but we weren’t in a position to research any pulmonary specialists of Northern California. “We’ll be there in twenty. Keep her alive.”

Twenty minutes.

Sarah’s head lulled into my chest.

Did she even have twenty minutes?

I patted her cheek. She jerked away. Her frustration relieved me. At least she was still awake enough to realize a Bennett held her. Then again, she’d fight us until that last breath.

A shadow of blue faded over her lips. I felt her heart rate flutter, beating in terror and pain.

I was helpless while she was conscious, but I was terrified when she collapsed—when her chest ceased struggling and her body fell limp.

“Max!” I shouted. “Fucking land!”

The helicopter rumbled over the skyscrapers, and Reed stole the radio from Max. Swearing rarely earned landing clearance in private airfields, but the hospital made an exception. We touched down, and I leapt from the doors before we cut the engine. A handful of nurses and a concerned doctor waited for us at the roof access. I rushed Sarah inside.

“How old is she?” The stocky, balding doctor fitted a stethoscope over his ears.

“Twenty.”

“Asthma attack?”

Apparently. “Yes.”

“When did it begin?”

“Half an hour ago.”

“Emergency medications?”

Jesus Christ, if I knew all this information when we stole her from the cornfield, I wouldn’t have left her in the care of frantic nurses, shoving her onto a gurney while fitting an oxygen mask over her face.

“She had none to take.” It wasn’t a lie.

The doctor squeezed into the elevator with two nurses as a third prevented me from following. “What’s your relation to the patient?”

My turn to cough. “I’m her…brother.”

The nurse took my information and pointed to the stairwell. “To the waiting room, Mr. Bennett.”

I wasn’t leaving Sarah in the hands of strangers, not when I couldn’t trust a word from her lips.

Not when I feared abandoning her, frightened and alone in the hospital.

I pushed past the nurse to the elevator. Reed grasped my shoulder, preventing me from making a mistake.

“Come on,” he said. “Max is taking care of the helicopter. They warned we might get into trouble.”

Trouble?

Someone dared to question me for saving a life? 

And not just any life—a woman who belonged to us.

To me
.

Whether Sarah Atwood believed it or not, whether she consented to it, understood it, or even realized the full extent of our ownership of her, she was mine.

It might have horrified me a week ago, but that was before I found her. Held her.

Before I kissed her.

A single taste of her pouty, peppermint pink lips, and she sealed her own fate. Her innocence teased me, and her strength challenged me. No other woman ever excited me into such carnal instinct. Pinning her against the tree? Holding her against her will as I kissed her? Nearly exploding when her body warmed and pressed into mine and bared her own simmering desperation?

She was pure temptation—a mistake, a crime, a sin.

I nearly let her die.

The memory of her kiss shredded me, filling me with the horrible, spine-chilling rasp of her broken breaths.