Page 17 of How to Hack a Hellhound (Hellhounds of Paradise Falls #2)

Chapter 17

Quinton

I t was fascinating watching Liam work his magic on computers, and he managed to leave a message with the buyer stating that I was still alive. I’d even convinced him to tell them when I would next be at the club.

Liam hadn’t liked the plan, but I reasoned that the buyer must already know I was still alive. We were setting parameters this way, and we could have the rest of the pack come to the club and be on the lookout. I wanted to get the buyer, and setting myself up as bait seemed the only way to do it.

After a few hours, I headed upstairs to let Liam do some of the wet work. I loved threatening torture, but I really didn’t need to see it up close and personal. I texted Aiden to keep him updated and let him know all was well.

All I got in response from Aiden was a text message that said, Incoming .

What the hell did that mean? What was incoming?

Not a minute later there was a knock at the door. And yeah—I might’ve jumped a bit. The door swung open right after that, because apparently I hadn’t locked it behind me, and in walked Toby.

Alone.

“Hey!” he said, waving awkwardly.

Aw, fuck. I should’ve known I couldn’t avoid him. I sighed, asking, “What’s up?”

He laughed a little nervously, then he gestured at my neck. I put my hand up, thinking of Liam biting me. Yeah, I had a mark, and yeah, I hadn’t hidden it.

“So, um, like, you and Liam…” he trailed off.

For a guy who could talk about dismemberment and methods of death, he sure was shy when it came to sex.

“Yes, Liam and I had sex,” I said. I figured it was best to get it out of the way.

“Ohmygod! I knew it! I mean, he marked you and all, and are their tails not the best thing ever? And that knot! Holy fuck! I have never had better sex in all my life! I mean, thank god we’re mates and tied together permanently, because after that many orgasms riding his knot, I think I’ve been ruined for all other men! It’s fantastic, isn’t it?” Toby gushed.

Only I was confused as hell. Tails? Knots? Mates? Tied together for life?

Toby just kept gushing about Dexter’s knot hitting all the right spots and the magic of tails, and I nodded along. Eventually he wound down, and he must have realized I hadn’t responded much.

He laughed a little self-consciously. “Anyway, welcome to the pack, Q. We’ll have to get together a lot more!”

“Yeah. I gotta go check on Aiden, though,” I said.

“Oh, okay, yeah. Dexter just got back, so I was on my way to him, but I wanted to stop by.” Toby laughed again before he headed toward the door. He looked back at me to give that awkward little wave, almost tripped over the door threshold, caught himself, and then walked out, leaving the door open.

Tails? Knots? Mates? What the fuck? Liam hadn’t used a tail during sex. We hadn’t even had penetrative sex, for fuck’s sake, so I certainly hadn’t gotten to ride his knot, whatever the fuck that was. Yes, Toby thought that his bite meant something, but clearly it didn’t mean much, because I hadn’t gotten any of the special hellhound sex treatment.

I was working myself up into a good mad, and I walked out of the house, shutting the door behind me. By the time I made it to my place, I was steaming, and I might have come in a bit forcefully.

Aiden looked up at me. “Not a good interrogation?” he asked.

“Oh, no, it was a fine interrogation. Everything was just fantastic. Got lots of info. Set up a trap. Liam is doing his happy little torture thing. Everything is just great ,” I seethed.

Aiden raised an eyebrow at me. “Is it?” he asked. He got up and put the coffee pot on, even though it was late as hell, and he took out some kind of chocolate pie from the fridge.

“I mean, just because Toby and Dexter have this amazing sex with all sorts of things like tails and knots and mates and everything certainly doesn’t mean that Liam and I have that sort of connection,” I huffed. “Not that I even want that sort of connection. I am a free soul. I’m not tied down, and I don’t need anyone.”

Aiden set a slice of pie at the kitchen island with a fork, and I sat down and stabbed into it, taking a bite. I couldn’t help the groan—holy shit, it was delicious.

Sneaky fuck that he was, Aiden waited until my mouth was full before he calmly answered, “Well, I love you, Q, and I need you.”

The pie was suddenly like cement in my mouth. After a few tries, I swallowed. “Fuck, Aiden.”

“It’s ok. You don’t have to say it. I know you love me, too. And I know you love Liam.”

“Fuck, Aiden,” I said again, sniffling. And yeah, ok, maybe I was leaking a little bit.

“And Liam loves you, too. I can see it,” Aiden said, still looking at me.

“He does not,” I denied, and then I started crying even more.

“He does. He would do anything for you. He’s obsessed with you. He’d kill and torture people for you,” Aiden said.

“Yeah, but he likes doing that, so it doesn’t count,” I sniffed.

“He’d turn off the cameras for you. If you went and asked him right now he’d take every camera out of here. He’d hate it, but he’d do it for you,” Aiden insisted. “He puts up with me crawling into bed with you guys, for goodness sake. When you give him attitude I can practically see cartoon hearts floating around his head. He loves you and your snarky attitude. The way he looks at you… it’s magical.”

“Then why aren’t we having amazing sex with tails and knots and whatever the fuck else Toby was talking about?” I whined. “Oh my god, I’m pathetic.” I sniffed, grabbing a napkin and wiping my eyes. “This is why I don’t do this love shit.”

“I guess it’s too bad that both Liam and I do, then. Because we do love you, Q,” Aiden insisted with a little smirk.

“If you’re laughing at me, I will make you pay,” I said, blowing my nose into the napkin.

Aiden looked serious, and he leaned over the kitchen island, getting closer to me. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe you aren’t having wild and crazy sex because Liam loves you?”

“What the fuck, Aiden. That doesn’t even make any sense,” I argued. “If he loved me, he’d be fucking my brains out.”

“No, asshole, if he loved you, he’d let you go at your own pace. He’d let you take the lead. He’d care about you and your trauma, and he wouldn’t push you. And he wouldn’t let you push yourself, either. He wouldn’t let you use sex to escape your feelings.”

I huffed a breath out. “I don’t use sex to escape my feelings.”

Aiden just raised his eyebrows at me,

“And I don’t have trauma. Not like…” I cut myself off.

“Not like me?” Aiden finished quietly.

“Fuck, Aiden. I’m sorry. It’s just that I really didn’t go through anything. Nothing happened to me. I’m fine ,” I insisted.

Aiden looked away from me, his gaze on the far wall. “You know what the really fucked up thing was about being with my stalker for a year?”

I shook my head, afraid of what Aiden would tell me.

He looked at me. “It—sex—was awful, but eventually, it was also just… normal. It was like… I don’t know, going to the dentist or something. I didn’t enjoy it, but I just wanted to get it over with. There were times I would go down on him without him even asking, just to get it out of the way. And he was always sweet afterwards, nice to me, and it didn’t seem so bad to do that in exchange.”

“Aiden,” I murmured, and tears were leaking out of my eyes again.

“What I went through was awful, but eventually it was just… I don’t know… normal. It was my life, and I couldn’t always be in panic mode about it. And he wasn’t always around, so I watched a lot of television. I read a lot of books. I survived.” Aiden shrugged.

“And I’m so proud of you for that. And I would never compare what happened to me to what you went through. There is no comparison,” I said.

“But there is,” he said, looking at me. “At the time, I did what I needed to. I thought, ok, I’ll get through it, and it isn’t so bad, and I’ll be fine. And stuff happened, and I survived. But I couldn’t do it now. I couldn’t go back there again. I couldn’t get on my knees right now for some guy I loved, but I got on my knees for someone who kidnapped me and held me hostage, and I did it willingly.”

“You did it to survive,” I said.

“You did things to survive, too, Q. You blame yourself—I know you do. I know you thought about what would happen to you. I know you thought about what you were willing to give up of yourself to survive. I know because I thought that, too. We make bargains with ourselves. Ok, if I have to do this, it’ll be ok. I’ve done that before with some guy I barely knew, so this’ll be ok, right?

“But it isn’t ok, because we don’t have a choice. And suddenly that act—whatever it is—it doesn’t feel like it’s ours anymore. It feels like it belongs to someone else. Like we belong to someone else. You weren’t raped, Q, and I know you think that means you don’t have trauma. But you do. You do because you made those deals with yourself. Because you knew what was going to happen, and you let yourself accept it, because you are a fucking survivor.”

I was crying steadily now, and Aiden reached out and took my hand in his. I couldn’t seem to stop the tears. I hadn’t been raped, and I had told myself that I was fine, because they hadn’t done the worst thing. I’d lived it in my mind, though. I’d thought about what I would do. How I would act. What I would give up to survive. Aiden was right about that. It wasn’t the same, I knew it wasn’t, because I had been spared and Aiden hadn’t. But yeah, maybe it had fucked me up a little.

“And sometimes when bad things happen to us, we blame ourselves. We think back on our actions, and we blame ourselves,” Aiden continued. “He used to come to the bar where I worked, and we used to chat. I flirted with him, Q. One night we even made out. So I blamed myself for what happened. I thought, if only I had ignored him. If only I hadn’t made out with him after my shift. And I will never make out with another random guy, because that memory is poison inside me.”

I wiped my eyes with my free hand, squeezing Aiden’s hand with my other hand. “I love you, Aiden. You’re brave and amazing, and you are the best fucking person I know.”

Aiden smirked, and I noticed his own eyes were a little teary. “That’s only because I’m pretty sure Liam isn’t actually a person.”

We both chuckled wetly at that, and Aiden came around to hug me. We stood like that, just hugging, for a few minutes.

Finally, I whispered, “I had sex with Marcus. A couple weeks before he kidnapped me.”

Aiden nodded his head against me.

“It was consensual and we used condoms, and… I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. I do blame myself, because I shouldn’t have trusted him. I feel sick now about all the random sex I had, because I was going to be sold for sex, and Marcus made no secret of that. He joked about it. Joked about what a fine piece of ass I was, and how he could attest to it with the buyers. He made me feel… dirty and cheap,” I admitted.

“You aren’t dirty and you aren’t cheap, and that’s why Liam hasn’t had sex with you. Because he values you. He tries to figure out what you need and then gives it to you. He loves you, Q. All you need to do is ask him, and he’ll tell you,” Aiden assured me.

I hugged him tighter. “How are you so fucking wise and well-balanced?” I asked.

“Lots of therapy,” Aiden joked. “ And I’m not that well-balanced. I talk to the guard dog sometimes,” he laughed.

“Hey, Kushiel talks to the trees, and he’s pretty cool,” I reassured him.

We both laughed at that, and then we ended up in a discussion wondering what the hell Kushiel might be. If the guys were hellhounds, then Cass and Kushiel were probably something weird too. We guessed wood nymph for Kushiel and witch for Cassius, but I had been wrong about Toby, so maybe hellhounds just liked quirky humans.

After all, they liked me. And they liked Toby.

Aiden and I ended up heading into my room and watching tv. I think neither of us wanted to be alone. If I took comfort from the fact that Liam could watch us through the cameras, well, that was my own weird thing. Since Liam didn’t seem to mind (and actually liked watching me), I was just going with it.

I guessed we were all quirky in our own ways, and I was just glad that our quirkiness matched up so well.

We must’ve both fallen asleep, because I woke up to the tv being shut off and Liam’s voice. “It’s just me. Scooch over. Don’t worry, I showered.”

I grumbled, because I was sleeping, but I scooched over to the center of the bed and pushed Aiden over closer to his side, which elicited a little grumbling from him. Liam climbed under the covers, wrapped me up in his arms, sniffed my hair (still weird), and kissed my forehead.

I thought about asking him if he loved me, but before I could think too much about it, my eyes were closing, and I figured any questions could wait until morning.