His Every Desire

HISEVERY DESIRE

Shiloh Walker

An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

www.ellorascave.com

His Every Desire

ISBN # 1-4199-0393-4

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

His Every Desire Copyright© 2005 Shiloh Walker

Edited by Pamela Campbell

Cover art by Syneca

Electronic book Publication: October 2005

This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

Warning:

The following material contains graphic sexual content meant for mature readers. His Every Desire has been rated E–rotic by a minimum of three independent reviewers.

Ellora’s Cave Publishing offers three levels of Romantica™ reading entertainment: S (S-ensuous), E (E-rotic), and X (X-treme).

S-ensuous love scenes are explicit and leave nothing to the imagination.

E-rotic love scenes are explicit, leave nothing to the imagination, and are high in volume per the overall word count. In addition, some E-rated titles might contain fantasy material that some readers find objectionable, such as bondage, submission, same sex encounters, forced seductions, and so forth. E-rated titles are the most graphic titles we carry; it is common, for instance, for an author to use words such as “fucking”, “cock”, “pussy”, and such within their work of literature.

X-treme titles differ from E-rated titles only in plot premise and storyline execution. Unlike E-rated titles, stories designated with the letter X tend to contain controversial subject matter not for the faint of heart.

Dedication

I’d like to credit KB with the phrase…

Keep your friends close…and your enemies dead in the ground.

Trademarks Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

Browning: Browning Corporation Utah

Beretta: Baretta is Italian made

Jaguar: Jaguar Cars Limited

Taurus: Ford Motor Company

Armani: Giorgio Armani S.p.A. Corporation

Porsche: Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG Corporation

Benz: DaimlerChrysler AG Corporation

Prologue

The blood was everywhere. The thick metallic scent of it in the air, the darkening stains of it as it dried in puddles on the floor.

He was trapped in the dream again, a dream more than twenty years old, and he knew it. Knew that if he could just wake up, the dream would fall apart…until the next time.

But he couldn’t wake up. Walking through the hall of the condo, he felt trapped. Everything seemed smaller now—he was just a kid when he found her, and then everything had seemed so much larger—so large he felt lost.

Now he felt trapped, the walls closing in on him as he moved down the hallway.

She lay there, her pretty, dark blue eyes, just like his own, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling, her face a mask of blood and bruises. She was naked.

Twenty years ago, he’d stood there, staring at the battered, nude body of his sister, the scream forming in his throat as his young mind tried to make sense of what he was seeing.

With age, he could now make sense of it, although it didn’t lessen the fury or the pain any, not in the dream. Not when he was awake.

There had been blood on her thighs. Lots of it.

Dried blood on her arms, her belly, her legs, and numerous little cuts. Bruises on her legs, her arms, from where she’d been held down.

Twenty years ago, he had turned away, run away, as though maybe he could outrun it and maybe it wouldn’t be real.

She had whispered to him. He had heard her voice—it had terrified him and comforted him at the same time as she had murmured to him. Run. Run away, baby. Hide and don’t look back.

He had run. Fast and hard, furiously. There had been nights when her voice had come to him, waking him from a fitful sleep and he had started to run again. Time to go, baby. He’s looking for you again…

Finally, that had stopped. And he had stopped running and started planning.

In the dream though, he hadn’t run away. In the dream…

He moved to kneel at her side, took the blanket from the couch and covered her before he reached up and gently closed the sightless eyes.

And he whispered, “They will pay, Carly. Every last one of them. I won’t stop until I see it happen.”

It was the sound of his own voice, a hoarse whisper, as he murmured those words that woke him up.

Joel lay in bed, his gut churning from the aftereffects of the dream.

Twenty years later, three of the men who had raped his sister were dead. They had paid, just as he had promised Carly.

The temperature in the room dropped and Joel tugged the tangled sheet so that it covered him better. “Carly, some rest?”

She laughed. The laughter had sound, and he glanced around the room, wondering if she would appear this time. He saw just the faintest white glow hovering in the corner. “You were awake before I showed up, baby.”

A cool breeze seemed to drift toward him and the white glow came closer. “Let it go—Grainger doesn’t matter. Not to me. I’m past caring about him.”

Joel scowled. “If you didn’t care about him, you wouldn’t be here, would you?”

The glow solidified into an actual form and he felt a fist wrap around his heart as he saw her face. She was so damned pretty. So determined to get him away from the hellhole they had lived in with Mom.

“It’s not Vincent Grainger that’s keeping me here,” she murmured. “It’s you. Once I know you’re going to be okay—I’ll be fine.”

Joel smiled tightly. “I am okay.”

Carly just sighed. “Baby, you haven’t been okay a day in your life.”

He sighed, shoving a hand through his hair. “Look, I have to do this. You don’t understand that, but I have to. Once I deal with him, I’ll…I’ll do…”

His voice trailed off because he didn’t know what he was going to do.

Carly smiled at him. Reaching up, she touched her hand to his face. The ghostly touch felt cool against his cheek. He met her gaze as she said, “That’s just the problem, though. You don’t know what you’re going to do. You have to look for a life beyond this. I didn’t get a chance to live mine. Don’t waste yours on hatred, Brother.”

Then she faded away.

Joel closed his eyes.

Hatred had eaten away at him for so long—it was just a part of his life. He lived with it. Breathed it.

He couldn’t just shove this aside—not until it was all done.

The men who had killed his sister would die. Three of them were already dead in the ground, but there was at least one more—Vincent Grainger.

The bastard who had given the order. The bastard who had stood over her while his men raped her. Had them hold her down while he took his turn.

He’d made a mistake. Two of the men he’d killed early on, without learning if there were others. They’d been bragging about it, the dumb shits, talking about Carly and other men and women they’d killed, just because Grainger had decided he wanted it done.

The third one, though, Robert Ellingsworth, that one, Joel had questioned before he’d killed him. Not that it had done much good. Ellingsworth had been certain, to the very last second that Joel wouldn’t kill him, and he was more afraid of Grainger than he was of Joel, and he hadn’t talked.

Not when Joel had beat him bloody, not when he’d damn near twisted the bastard’s balls off.

Ellingsworth had been dead a little less than a year now, and Joel had run out of resources. It was time. Time to move in on Grainger.

Time to ruin him. And when the bastard understood how it was to feel helpless, caught, trapped, then Joel would kill him.

But first…first…there was something else.

Chapter One

“I want your wife.” Joel stared coolly at Vincent Grainger, showing no sign of the worry that he might to fuck this up.

But he couldn’t take it anymore. If he saw one more mark on her…

Grainger had shark’s eyes. Empty, expressionless pits of black in his face that had terrified more than one man. He was a man of average height, average weight—he worked out religiously, and the tailored Armani suits he wore covered a body that was lean and fit. There was nothing at all intimidating about the man…except those eyes.

There was no sign of life in them, no sign of a soul of any sorts. And it often seemed as though his eyes could see clear through a man.

Grainger stared at Joel, with those flat shark’s eyes as he said, “I beg your pardon?”

Joel laughed, a low, mirthless sound. “You heard me. You understand, too. You asked what it would take for me to become a…business acquaintance of yours, and I want your wife. Otherwise, I’ll take my business elsewhere.”

Vincent laughed. “No piece of ass is worth gambling a fortune on, Joel.”

A small smile crept across Joel’s face and he shrugged. “Well, since you like dick more anyway, you probably wouldn’t know. It’s not like she’s exactly your type. She can still be your little trophy wife—but I want her in my bed.”

Very few people knew Vincent’s Grainger’s secrets the way Joel did, and he knew damn near all of them, including the fact that the crime lord was homosexual. If it had been anyone else who had laid it on the line like that, Grainger probably would have killed him.

But they both knew Grainger was scared of Joel.

A lot of people were. And Joel did every damned thing he could to foster that fear.

He didn’t have the shark’s eyes, although his face was more often than not an expressionless mask, and he hadn’t ever invited a man to dinner and shot his guest in the forehead before going on to dine, the corpse bleeding on the table, as Grainger had.

But he had killed before, often enough, brutally enough, that none questioned his ability, and willingness to do it again.

“One of these days, Joel, you just might push me too far,” Grainger whispered, his lips barely moving as he spoke. A dull red flush of anger stained his cheeks and those normally flat black eyes glinted.

Joel grinned arrogantly. “Maybe. But not while I still have some things you really, really want. A few pieces of land, several building contracts. Among other things.”

The other man chuckled. “You know, it’s a damned good thing I like you.”

Actually, it was enough to make Joel sick. Not that he hadn’t been aiming for this for twenty years.

To see Grainger dead—that had been his goal since he had been all of twelve years old. For the past ten years, he had had been moving toward that goal with slow, but steady determination. Working his way first into Grainger’s notice…then gaining his trust.

He hadn’t just been biding his time though—Grainger wasn’t the only one Joel wanted dead. There had been three men, including Grainger, possibly four, he didn’t know for certain.

Three of them were already dead.

The only thing that had kept Grainger alive was Joel’s need to make sure he had all of them.

All of the men who had raped and killed his sister. Once he knew for certain, Grainger was dead.

Joel had lied, killed, cheated, and slept with the enemy, figuratively speaking, fucking his way through every last female around Grainger who could share the slightest bit of information. Killing some of the scum who stood in his way. Befriending the human garbage who flocked to the crime lord.

Lying—lying was a way of life for him now, and had been since he was twelve. He’d cheated and stolen most of the money he’d used to buy his first piece of land, a slice of beach that Grainger had been looking at. And when Grainger had sent a man to…convince Joel to sell, Joel had killed him.

The world wouldn’t mourn the men Joel had killed. Joel knew that. Joel, in his gut, knew that. Even if it did give him some uneasy moments, and even if it did sometimes bring him out of a restless sleep, his body soaked with sweat, his stomach roiling, the need to puke choking him.

He’d killed, and he’d kill again if that was what it took to get rid Grainger. It was every bit as ruthless as it sounded, Joel knew.

Grainger respected ruthlessness. It was one of the few things, other than money, the bastard did respect. And Joel had become damn near as ruthless as the man he wanted to kill.

Sometimes—only sometimes—he had a brief flicker of regret over what he had become. Over the things he had done.

Move in closer to Grainger, gain his trust, find out what he needed to know…and kill him.

His sins were myriad, never mind he had committed them in the name of revenge to reach his goal, and it was a damn understandable goal.