Three years ago, Sam Rutledge left Texas after a falling out with his father. Now he’s back to help his sister make tough decisions and assist on the family ranch due to his parents ailing health. Before he reaches his childhood home, he’s involved in a serious car accident that alters the course of his life forever. Responsible for the future of his family’s business and reeling as he adapts to life as a paraplegic, Sam clings to the part of himself that always brought him peace—being a dominant.
Kit Boyce thought she’d seen the last of her first love. But there he was, lying on a hospital bed at Cottonwood Medical Center. It’s her job as a nurse to take care of him, but she needs to put her feelings aside to overcome the past, to be professional and make sure Sam has the best environment to heal in.
When the pull of unresolved feelings and raw passion brings these two together again, Sam takes the opportunity to ask Kit to help him rediscover who he is as a dominant. Will Kit and Sam work through the past and overcome the obstacles of the future for their love to survive?
This contemporary erotic romance is book two in the Unbound series. It follows Sam, Reyn’s best friend, from book one. It can be read as a standalone.
Three Years Later
Familiar landmarks rushed by, their faded edges blurring together the closer my BMW flew toward Dallas. On the heels of my father’s cancer diagnosis was my mother’s failing health and my sister’s need to get back to Seattle. She had a family waiting for her. Imagine that. It’s easier to deal with family when you don’t have to see them every day.
I fought the anger that threatened to cloud my vision as my speedometer crept toward one hundred miles per hour. My knuckles were pressed white against the wheel and my wrists shook. It was the worst fucking time for me to leave. Unbound, the adult kink club where I worked, was taking off again and rebuilding after Lacey had passed away last year in one of the private rooms. She was the manager, Reyn’s, fiancée, and her death had destroyed him, but he was back on his feet. He had fallen in love with a journalist he met last year who was investigating Lacey’s death, so he’d given most of his trainees to me, which meant that my list of clients was growing by the day. I was taking Chicago’s BDSM scene by storm and finally settling into my own skin. Gone was the anxiety of living in my family’s shadow. I was my own man. A little aimless, but I was figuring it out.
There was a reason I lived a thousand miles away.
Oklahoma was the most depressing damn state I’d ever seen. Miles of empty highway made the drive feel like a time warp. I knew I was moving, but only because the GPS told me. The scenery all looked the same. This entire state looked like it had been ravaged by one too many tornadoes. My Bluetooth phone rang, the sharp noise filling the car.
“Yes, Angie?” I answered, hearing my sister sigh in response.
“Are you almost here?” she asked.
“Twenty miles from the Texas border, should be another few hours,” I replied, trying to keep the edge out of my voice. It wasn’t her fault, not really. She had been with Mom and Dad for the past five weeks, probably putting up with more than I ever would. She had a life she wanted to get back to just as much as I did. Problem was, she couldn’t take care of her kids and our parents, so she had to go back to Seattle while I figured out what we were going to do.
“Okay, call me when you’re a few minutes away and I’ll open the gate,” she said.
“Did you look anymore at the links to the assisted living facilities I sent you?”
A door shut in the background and Angie’s voice dropped.
“Sam, you and I both know that getting either one of these two to leave the ranch isn’t possible. Are you planning on staying here to run it?” When I didn’t respond, she soldiered on. “Didn’t think so. I’m not even broaching that subject until you get here. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll look, but I can tell you now that Dad grumbles about going to the hospital for treatment and Mom loses more of her mind every day.” Angie’s voice became garbled and muted. Fuck, I’d made her cry. This was why we both hated these conversations. I got angry and Angie cried.
“All right, all right. We’ll talk when I get there. Once we get them both to bed, we’ll talk more about it.”
She sniffled. “Fine. See you in a bit.” The line went dead, the car once again filled with silence. Angie and I went back and forth on what to do with our parents every day. Originally, I was supposed to come help Mom move into assisted living, but once Angie got to Cottonwood and saw how much Mom would struggle to leave, she did a one-eighty and vowed to find a solution to keep her at the ranch. I disagreed.
Problem was, neither Angie nor I could stay here.
I stopped at a diner just outside of Dallas, a little over an hour from the ranch. The last thing I wanted to do was sit around our tiny table with mom’s failing mind and dad pretending he didn’t have cancer while Angie fussed over them. It was selfish, but my heart had long ago hardened to the reality of my family. Angie could handle things for one more night alone, and with any luck, mom would be on her way to an assisted living facility and dad would have a home nurse within a month. Dad might be battling a life-threatening disease, but he wasn’t giving up on the idea of his only son running the ranch that easily. When Angie first told me about his diagnosis, I asked her to text me a picture of the medical records. Sure enough, in black and white, the doctor confirmed that it was lung cancer, stage two, and immediate chemotherapy and hormone therapy was recommended.
The ranch was only fifteen minutes from Cottonwood, the closest town, but sometimes that felt like a lifetime, and takeout dinners would be few and far between. I scrolled through Angie’s and my texts, seeing photo updates from every appointment. The reality was that Dad wasn’t getting better, at least not yet. Mom either. They would both need around-the-clock care within a matter of weeks.
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