Page 10 of Need (Men of Inked Sinners #3)

LULU

I startle awake, my heart pounding uncontrollably in my bed as I sit up. Was I having a bad dream? No. Not that I remember, but something has me bolting upright out of the deepest sleep I’ve had in weeks.

Suddenly, a pounding on my front door has me sucking in a breath of air like I’m a goldfish out of water.

“Lulu, open the damn door!” my sister screams so loud, she has to be waking up the entire neighborhood.

“What the hell,” Oliver says at my side as he rubs his eyes, his sleep shot to shit by Zoey too.

“It’s my sister. Something has to be wrong.” I jump out of bed, finding something to wear. I grab whatever’s closest and yank it on, needing to get to Zoey as quickly as possible. “Go back to sleep. I’ve got her.”

My body trembles as I stalk down the hallway toward the front door, leaving Oliver in my bedroom.

“Coming!” I yell out, hoping she’ll stop making so much noise. I undo the locks and finally open the door.

Zoey is standing outside, mascara running down her face, eyes red and puffy, and her hair a mess.

I gasp as my eyes widen. “Oh my God. Get in here,” I tell her as the snow and ice rain down from the sky at a maddening pace from the storm.

She doesn’t move. She trembles as more tears start to stream down her face in a fresh wave. I reach out, grabbing her arms before I haul her into the foyer, wanting to get her warm and figure out what the hell has her so upset.

“What’s wrong, Zo?” I scan her body, looking for injuries, but it’s hard to see anything with her knee-length winter coat.

“He…” She wipes at her cheek with the back of her hand. “They…”

I bend down, helping her remove her fur-lined boots.

Whatever she needs to tell me isn’t going to take place in the foyer.

She needs to sit, and I have to find out everything that happened because Zoey doesn’t get upset with much, and she’s absolutely beside herself tonight.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen her like this in my entire life .

“Come on, sissy. Let’s get you warm,” I tell her, guiding her to the living room couch, not bothering to take her coat from her. “I need you to tell me what happened.”

Her bottom isn’t on the couch for three seconds when she blurts out, “Mark.”

My blood goes cold. Mark is a fuckwad she’s been seeing casually the last few months. They fool around and go to dinner, but neither of them has made any commitments to each other. My sister is fine with that. She doesn’t want to be tied down and thinks Mark is only a good-time kind of guy anyway.

But I’ve never liked him. When I look at him, I never see an ounce of kindness. He oozes self-absorbed asshole. And no matter how many times I’ve told Zoey that he gives me the icks, she hasn’t seen him the same way and has always reassured me that he was a decent enough guy.

“What did Mark do?” I do my best to keep my voice calm, but my insides are burning up. I already have visions of murder and mayhem, and all of them involve me putting an end to Mark if he hurt my sister. “Did he hit you?”

She shakes her head as her bottom lip trembles.

Reaching out, I take her hands in mine, rubbing my thumb across the delicate skin on the top. “Baby, what has you so worked up?”

The silence between us as I wait for her to answer seems to stretch on for an eternity .

“Tell me, Zo,” I beg as the panic inside me intensifies.

She drops her gaze as she opens her mouth and starts to speak, “We were fooling around, you know, and things were good. We had some wine…a lot of wine, actually.”

“Okay,” I say when she stops. “What else?”

“Mark likes to be adventurous in the bedroom.”

I pull in my lips, clamping them together so I don’t start losing my shit on her. She’s not the one who needs to hear the words. They’re all meant for Mark because I know the next words out of her mouth are going to send me into a spiral.

“Tonight, he tied me up and blindfolded me. I was okay with it, for the most part. Not completely, but I never had any reason to say no to him.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stand, and with every sentence, my fear only gets worse.

“Once I got over the initial panic of not being able to move or see, things seemed to be going well.”

I don’t ever want to think sex with another person seems to be “going well.” No one should be uncomfortable to the point where they’re panicked unless that is the emotion they are going for.

“He told me the panic would heighten the sensations and that I should just lie there and feel. He said it was all about my pleasure tonight.”

I am a razor’s edge from losing my shit, but I somehow stop myself from reacting. Zoey doesn’t need to hear my criticism, even if it is pointed at Mark and not her.

Zoey sniffles, and the sound breaks my heart. My sister and I are thick as thieves. There isn’t a secret I have that she doesn’t know. We are each other’s best friends, and it has been that way since the day she was born.

“It was enjoyable at first, but it was hard for me to orgasm with my arms and legs tied to the corners of the bed. I’d never felt so naked in my entire life.”

My mind snags on the fact that she was splayed out, unable to move. All four limbs were secured to the bed. What an awful position to be in with someone you don’t completely trust.

“I can’t imagine, Zo.”

“You don’t want to,” she says with a soft voice that quavers. “Things were going okay until…”

I swallow down the bile that’s rising in my throat, getting higher with each word. I’ve never felt more murderous in my entire life than I do in this moment.

“Mark’s mouth was on me. He said he was going to force me to orgasm, but then I realized there were more than two hands on my body.

I thought it was his hands on my breasts because every sensation was so overwhelming.

But I felt his hand on my hip, and I knew there was more than just him in the bed with me. ”

When people say they see red, they sure as hell mean it. The amount of anger that burns inside me has flames of destruction flickering in my eyes.

“I’m going to fucking kill him.”

Zoey squeezes my hands. “I flipped out, twisting and screaming as much as I could until Mark and whoever the fuck else was there stopped touching me. It took a while, but he eventually untied me because he was worried his neighbors would hear me yelling. He told me I was overreacting and that I didn’t feel what I felt. ”

“Zo,” I whisper, my eyes filled with tears. “That’s horrible.”

“When he took off the blindfold, there was no one else in the room, Lou.”

“You felt what you felt.”

“I keep going over it in my head, and I know there were more than two hands on my body. I know it deep in my bones.”

The floor creaks, and I glance over my shoulder, finding Oliver filling the entrance to the living room.

Zoey stares at me with pleading eyes, the same ones she used to give me when we got in trouble and she didn’t want me to throw her under the bus.

“Who is he, and where does he live?” Oliver asks without wanting to know the details.

Zoey’s eyes slide to him before I glance over my shoulder to where he’s standing. “Mark lives a few blocks over. ”

“Address?” he asks, his fists already curled at his sides.

“He lives in Riverfront Towers.”

“Unit number?”

I stare back at my sister. “Tell him.”

“But…”

“Zoey, honey.” I hold her hands tightly, wishing I could take away all her memories of this awful night. “Tell Oliver. Let him handle Mark. Don’t protect him.”

“I don’t want Oliver to get in trouble,” she says to me.

Oliver’s already pulling on his boots. “Men like him deserve all the hurt that’s coming to them. Don’t worry about me, doll. What’s the unit?”

“Six-oh-seven,” my sister says, always saying “oh” instead of zero. “But I don’t think he’s alone.”

“I heard, and I’m about to find out that information for you and make sure Mark never even wants to lay eyes on you again.”

“Do you want to call the cops instead, Zo?” I ask, wanting her to have the option of what she wants to do.

She shakes her head. “I don’t want anyone to know.”

“No one will,” Oliver replies before I have a chance. He stalks toward me and kisses the top of my head. “You take care of her, and I’ll take care of him. ”

I peer up at him, searching his eyes for reassurance. “Be safe.”

“Sweetheart, Mark doesn’t stand a chance.”

And based on the size of Oliver, I know what he is saying is true. He is about to wipe the floor with Mark’s ass.

“Don’t kill him,” I tell him.

“I’ll leave him and whoever else is there breathing.”

“I don’t want you to end up in jail, Oli,” I reply.

“I won’t,” he promises before the front door opens, and he’s gone.

“I want a shower,” Zoey says as soon as we’re alone. “I need to scrub my skin.”

“Whatever you want, sissy.”

She nearly throws herself at me, wrapping her arms tightly around my neck. “I love you,” she whispers against my hair.

“I love you too.”

“You have a good man there, Lu.”

“I think he’s a keeper,” I tell her, and my stomach flips the same way it did earlier when he got to my place, but for very different reasons.

Two hours pass, and I’m standing at the big window in the living room, staring at the street for any signs of Oliver. He texted me a half hour ago saying he was on his way back, but it’s been radio silence since then.

I’ve never been as relieved as I was to get his text. I had faith that Oliver could handle Mark and whoever else was there with him, but that didn’t mean a small part of me didn’t think the worst could happen even if the possibility was small.

The road glistens from the thick layer of ice that fell earlier in the night. The snow is coming down fast but has had no time to accumulate in one spot because the wind is whipping it everywhere except for where it has fallen.

Zoey passed out in the guest room an hour ago after a shower and three shots of tequila. She said it was the only way she’d be able to keep her eyes closed, and I didn’t have a problem with her getting hammered and passing out. It’s probably what I would’ve done in her situation, too.

My heart leaps as truck lights illuminate the virtual ice rink outside my house. He is here. He’s back. I nearly hold my breath as he parks and climbs out, studying his movements carefully to see if he is hurt.

But Oliver being Oliver, he hops down from his truck, his strides sure and strong with his head held high. He looks more like he ran to the corner store to grab some milk than just kicked two full-grown men’s asses after being awakened in the middle of the night.

I rush to the door as he gets closer to the house. I’m nearly vibrating off the floor with all the adrenaline running through my body. When his footsteps are closer, I open the door and soak him in .

His lip is bloodied, and one eye looks like it’s beginning to swell. “It’s done,” he says as he stalks inside, shivering as he steps inside the warm foyer.

“Are you okay?” I ask, taking his coat from him as soon as he starts to shrug it off.

“I’m good, but they aren’t.”

“There were two?” I ask, but I already knew there were. Zoey’s mind wasn’t playing tricks on her. We all knew it, but I had hoped there was a chance because it could’ve been less traumatizing in the long run.

“Yep. Mark and his brother. Sick, twisted fuckers,” Oliver says as he pulls off his boots and sets them to the side near the door.

Before he can stand fully upright, I fling myself at him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders. “Thank you,” I breathe into the cold skin at his neck. “Thank you.”

He’s quick to snake his arms around my body, holding me so tight I think nothing in the world could ever hurt me. “They’re going to be eating out of straws for a long time, sweetheart. I didn’t want to leave them alive, but I also knew I didn’t want to go to prison right now.”

“Right now?”

“Well, never. That’s Liam’s thing, not mine. But the need for me to stop them from breathing and doing that shit to another woman was so strong, I almost let it overtake me.”

“I don’t want you in prison either,” I tell him. “As much as I want that bastard dead, I don’t want it to be at the expense of your life.”

“We’re on the same page with that one.”

I peer up at him, wondering how I got so lucky to find him. “Thank you,” I say again, because once isn’t enough. I don’t know if there is enough time left in my short life to say it as much as he deserves.

His fingers find my chin as he cradles my face between his thumb and index finger. “No one hurts my girl or the ones she loves.”

My insides hum at the statement. No one besides my family has ever had my back like that. Not a single man I ever dated gave a rat’s ass about what happened to the people around me, and I hadn’t been sure I’d ever find someone who did.

“What’s yours is mine, and that makes their happiness and hurt mine too,” he says.

I could love this man. I am falling for him—and falling hard.

Who says things like that? No one I’ve ever known until Oliver entered my world.

Not because he beat up two people tonight because of what they did to my sister, but because he cares enough about my happiness and the safety of those I love that he’ll do anything to protect us and destroy anyone who does us harm.