Clark, Rachel - Alicia's Awakening (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) by Rachel Clark

quickly and start rummaging through my suitcase. He’d sounded so angry on the phone that it hadn’t even occurred to me that it might be this kind of news. “Is there anything I can do?”
    He holds his arms open for me and I practically fly into his embrace. I saw the hesitation in his eyes when he silently asked for my hug, but I have no intention of letting him down. His arms are trembling when they close around me, holding me so close that I can barely breathe.
    “Will you come with me?”
    “Of course,” I say immediately. He pulls me tighter for a moment, and I hug him closer, not bothering to rein in the affection I feel for this man. Eventually, he helps me back onto my feet. I drag my clothes on in record time, ignore the fact that I have no makeup, and quickly twist my hair into a braid. I reach for my cell phone and purse as Doug reaches for my hand.
    We travel to the hospital in silence, but it’s the group of men we meet there that has me wondering what the hell is going on. They’re all dressed in jeans and T-shirts, so to an outsider they probably look like any other group of friends, but I recognize their common demeanor. I’ll bet my last dollar that they’re all Doms from the club.
    “How is she?” Doug asks the group as they approach.
    “Not good,” one man says with a quick glance in my direction. He seems surprised by my presence. “I overheard the doctors using words like ‘severe’ and ‘massive’ to describe her heart attack. They’re not saying much until her sister gets here, but it doesn’t sound very good.”
    “Do we know who she was with?”
    “We do,” the man says with a grim nod. Apparently, Doug knows who the man is referring to because his hand clenches harder around mine.
    “Her neck?” Doug asks clearly, though he sounds like he’s talking through clenched teeth.
    “Obvious.”
    I want to ask what’s going on. They seem to be talking in code and somehow blaming someone for a woman’s heart attack. But I don’t ask. I stand beside and slightly behind my Dom and try to give him my silent support.
    “Are the police involved?”
    “I’d say that’s about to become a yes,” the man says with a nod to a pair of uniformed officers approaching them.
    “Good,” my Dom says vehemently. The other man frowns but doesn’t comment on Doug’s obvious wish to have a man charged over a woman having a heart attack. Confused, I glance around the area and finally notice two women sitting not far from us. Both have been crying.
    As the first man moves to talk to the police officers, another takes his place.
    “She knew the risks,” he says in a soft voice.
    “So did he,” Doug says angrily. “It was his job to protect her, not kill her.”
    The other man shakes his head, not actually disagreeing with Doug’s assessment. The man guides us to the seats beside the two women. He lifts one of them up and then sits down with her on his lap. She quickly curls into his embrace as Doug urges me to take the seat beside the other woman and then sits beside me. I desperately want to crawl into his embrace, but I’m not sure right now that it would be welcomed. Whatever is going on here, it seems that Doug feels responsible.
    “This isn’t your fault,” the man says to Doug in a clear echo of my thoughts.
    “I trained her. Without me she would never be living this lifestyle.”
    “Bullshit,” the man says, glancing at me again as if wondering why I was actually there. “If you hadn’t trained her, it would have been someone else. You can’t take the blame for something you had no control over.”
    Doug doesn’t seem convinced, but he holds his jaw tightly like he wants to say more but doesn’t.
    We sit there silently for several minutes. I catch the occasional word or two from the quiet conversation between the first man and the police officers. It sounds like a friendly enough discussion, but the body language seems to say otherwise. Doug notices me tensing