Brutally Beautiful

by Christine Zolendz

  “Kade…” she whispered against my lips.

  “I know I’m being so fucking selfish right now, but Sam, I fucking need you in my life. Stay here with me. I swear I will never let him hurt you again. I’ll help you get a job at the hospital here, we’ll…”

  “I‘m not a surgeon anymore, I can’t be; he made sure to take that away from me. You don’t know.” Her eyes filled will tears, but they didn’t spill. She held them in, I knew not to waste any more on him.

  “That will be $286.31,” the cashier yelled between us.

  Chapter 15

  I never thought about staying. My only clear realistic thoughts were getting away from where David knew I was; the very place where he sent someone to kill me. Sloppily, I might add. David usually did things methodically and cleverly, planned everything out perfectly. He must be getting desperate.

  Kade wanted to know all about David. Nothing could beat the insane, head bashing, crapslapping experience that was David. He had left enough marks on my flesh, but what he did to my insides was damage that was beyond repairable, and telling Kade wouldn’t change anything. If anything, it would get him angrier than he already was, and the man was a ticking time bomb. Detonating him would only get him hurt, really hurt. Me staying in this town would get him killed, because if David knew I had feelings for someone, it would be an invitation to annihilate him.

  Taking my purchases into his master bathroom, I sealed my lips shut. The last thing I wanted was to see Kade hurt, and the last thing I wanted was Kade in trouble, and honestly, the very last thing I wanted was to leave him. I would have loved to see where this thing between us was going, because I had never felt this drawn to a person before. However, I had no choice.

  With trembling fingers, I emptied my boxes of hair dye onto the counter and took a deep breath. I had never been a blonde before. Lifting my shirt over my arms and head, unclasping my bra and sliding off my jeans, I stayed in only underwear, not wanting to dye what little clothing I had left.

  “What’s the natural color of your hair?” Kade’s husky voice whispered from the door. He stood shirtless and clean-shaven, both hands resting on the top of the doorframe, pained eyes fixed on mine. Dropping his hands heavily to his sides, the pale yellow decorative globes above the mirror danced dark shadows over the tense flushed skin of his face. His body was hard and strained, muscles tightened and hummed just under his smooth ridged skin.

  “Dark reddish brown. Like copper,” I whispered.

  The soft bristle of the metallic teeth of his zipper took my gaze away from his eyes. Sliding his hand inside the unzipped denim, he slowly tugged out his thick erection, and stroked it.

  Warmth pooled low in my belly, twisting into an ache and heavy wet heat between my thighs. My mouth flooded with moisture as I watched his hands move and his expression darken.

  One thick hand clutched the base of his cock as the other slid along the top of his shaft, circled around the head and slid back down in slow deliberate strokes. I could hear his breathing change, almost thicken, as his eyes took me in and his body gave in to the sensations of his own hands.

  My God, he was glorious to look at.

  So glorious that my hands moved all on their own across my hips and right into the cotton fabric of my panties, trying to feed some of the ache. As soon as my fingers touched my damp flesh, I shuddered and lost myself in his slow even movements, matching them. What choices did I have, when the man standing before me touching himself, pleasuring himself at just the presence of me standing there? He was a fierce potent arousal.

  “Take them off. I want to watch,” he whispered hoarsely.

  Wet fingertips slipped under the waistband of my panties and slid them down my legs, then flicking them into Kade’s chest. My cheeks burned from his attention, but the rest of my body reveled in it, at how open and dirty it was. Pulling myself up onto the counter, I spread my knees wide and pressed my fingers into myself as he watched with eyes wide. Hearing the gasp and heaviness of his breathing, my thighs trembled with delicious anticipation and my hips began moving in a circular motion to meet the thrusts of my fingers.

  Kade groaned softly, lips twitched in the faintest of smiles, as he continued to rub himself in long, hard, sensual strokes.

  My free hand slid up my chest and captured a nipple in between my fingers, squeezing it tightly. Never in my life had I done this, never had I been so confident sexually, so sure. My own breaths struggled in my airways, speeding up with the surge of pleasure that my own fingers teased a delicious tension in between my legs and along the surface of the hardened flesh of my nipples.

  Then he was moving.

  A small gasp caught in my throat as he closed the distance between us, leaning the heat of his body against mine. The smell of him, the salty taste of his skin, and the warmth of his breath on my neck was pure sex, mixed with violent possessive need. Right there, then, that feeling should have terrified the hell out of me.

  “I’m not letting you go,” he croaked, quickening his strokes, pushing the head of his cock along the slickness of my fingers that continued to move deep inside my warmth.

  “No?” I asked breathlessly.

  “No, I’m not letting you go. Ever. Tell me you want to stay; tell me the truth,” he growled, stilling his strokes. The head of his cock pressed slowly into the smooth wet flesh alongside my fingers, teasing me, making my belly tighten with hunger. Desire, lust so thick and real, engulfed me, pressing its thirsty claws against my flesh, squeezing the sweat from my pores.

  The need crazed me. It was maddening, as frustration clawed between my thighs, my muscles aching for him to slam inside of me. “Yes! Kade, yes! I fucking love the way you touch me. I love the way you want to protect me, and my God, Kade the way you look at me. I love the way it’s starting to feel between us, and if I stayed, then YES. Falling in love with you, Kade Grayson, would be quick, easy and so fucking lethal for both of us. You can’t save me, Kade!”

  “You’re staying, because you could save me,” he growled with a jagged whispered breath, sliding the head of his cock up and down my lips, making the ache savagely painful.

  “He’s going to kill me!” I screamed, slicing through our hot heavy breaths with the serrated icy blade of reality.

  “No.” His fingers dug deep into my flesh painfully, hard steel eyes fixed on mine. “I am,” he hissed, as he thrust savagely into me, giving my body what it wept for.

  Chapter 16

  The accident was brutal, but it had to be. Only something so bloody and devastatingly violent could count as the finale of her life. I wanted to give her an elegant death, but I also needed it quick and untraceable, so my violent imagination was rendered useless. I sat on my knees at the side of the road, Jen and me crying as we watched Deputy George and Deputy Bobby carry out the body bag that held the woman I had just began falling in love with.

  Sickly blue lights rotated dimly in circles, reflecting their eerie deathly presence across the blacktop. Fiery colored road flares burned brightly, sputtering out their warning sparks of danger, leaving a strange chemical taste in my mouth. The scent of burnt metal, charred rubber and gasoline stung at my nose and eyes, making it easier for me to cry. Slick black streams of oil poured out from the main road and into a small ditch that held floating debris. A small lilac ribbon sailed on the surface, slowly spiraling in the thick current. She wore that same little bow the first time I laid eyes on her.

  I reached down to keep it as a souvenir. Thick congealed oil coated my fingertips.

  You could barely even tell what make of car it was or what color it had been, but you knew that Samantha Matthews was inside. I made sure of it.

  The frigid January air burrowed its way into my clothing, seeped through my flesh and sank heavily into my bones. Deeply breathing in a lungful of the icy air sobered my nervousness, and the tears stung like icicles biting at my cheeks. I felt not one shred of guilt for what I had done to her. There would never be any regret in my actions and reas
oning. I fought hard not to let her in, but she somehow soaked my soul with hers, leaving bruises and fingerprints, scars and open gaping holes that I knew would never heal. I would bleed her now.

  Everyone thinks that men are the stronger sex, that women are weaker, the uncontrollable emotional and defenseless of the two. It’s a fucking lie, isn’t it? The greatest lie of all mankind, because she gutted me, emptied me completely and I never even knew what had hit me. The only thing I knew was, I wasn’t letting anyone have her. No one would have her, no one but me. She burrowed under my skin, saturating my muscles and tendons, penetrating my blood cells and she became part of me.

  My life flashed forward. Like a blunt cut scene of some horror movie with no slow progression to its next images. I found myself sitting in the hospital waiting room, Jen by my side, pale with swollen eyes from a torrent of tears. A large handful of deputies stood like centurions by the entrance, waiting and watching.

  Jen had identified what was left of the charred body and personal effects, and so had the deputies. Dental records were pulled, compared and determined that without a doubt, the driver of the car was indeed Samantha Matthews, age 32. The same exact person that went missing from New York City almost six months before under suspicious circumstances.

  Once the accident occurred, and after her identification was made, authorities had placed a call to her next of kin. We then waited for her estranged husband, Doctor David Stanton, and her father, Doctor Michael Matthews to arrive.

  And they did. They arrived in a flurry of demands, ego and rage. The deputies and our hospital staff did everything they could to ease the turmoil of the situation and prove the identification of the deceased.

  Through it all, I sat, still, with Jen on the right side of me, replaying the bittersweet images and sensations of the last time I had slipped myself inside my Samantha. Even though I had taken her away from him forever, kept her safe from him forever, my insides hummed with unimaginable violence towards him. Her death was simply not enough.

  From where I sat, fists clenched white around the arms of the chairs, muscles pulled tight holding me in place, and I could hear the shallow breaths he took. I could hear the brittle sounds of his voice saying her name and all I wanted, more than I had ever wanted anything before, was to witness every ounce of blood spill from his body. The needs of violence hummed through my veins, causing my blood to pound faster and shifted my heart up into my throat, and my soul into my mouth. My pulse throbbed savagely in my ears, blocking out his voice and flooding my mouth with saliva; I was literally salivating for his death. Foaming at the mouth like a rabid beast.

  His flat black eyes fixated on mine and claiming his territory, he asked Jen who I was and why the fuck I was there for his personal family tragedy.

  Blindly, Jen entwined her fingers with mine and placed a wet kiss on my lips, “This is Cory Thomas, my boyfriend,” she sobbed. “Whatever happened between you and Samantha is over, so go fuck off now and leave me the hell alone or I will tell everyone you beat the hell out of her and me before she left your sorry ass.”

  David’s brows furrowed and he turned his back on her, disregarding any other information she would give him. Brilliant, but it barely calmed my thirst to strangle his throat with my hands and feel his trachea crush under my fingertips. My fury blinded me with such an extreme corrosive feeling that my sight turned red, and all I could see was how much I wanted him dead too.

  As I stood up to kill him, Jen yanked me by the arm back down into my seat. My insides raged with vengeance until she elbowed me in the gut, “Let’s go make the arrangements for her body to be transported back to the city for her father.”

  “Really? Do I look like his bloody personal assistant? I rather make arrangements for those two sick fucks to get buried.”

  “Kade,” she sobbed into my shirt. “I can’t do this, please she was my best friend.”

  So we made the arrangements.

  We also attended her lavish funeral in Manhattan. Wall to wall socialites and the faculty of an entire hospital showed up. The most emotional part was the patients who had come to honor her memory. People she saved. I stayed for exactly eighteen minutes and left. It was too hard.

  It was too hard not to completely lose my shit.

  It was too hard not to kill David Stanton and that other bastard that she called a father.

  I waited in the car for Jen and Dylan with Samantha’s little ribbon clenched in my hand. I just sat there and people watched, wondering what sort of life Samantha Matthews had, living in the raw intensity of New York City. Yet, all I could focus on was wondering if I did the right thing. I wanted to fast forward to a time when I would have no doubts about my actions. This bloody mourning was making me doubt everything.

  My eyes blinked and it was March, two months since the accident. Two months since I had heard her voice; brushed my fingers along her smooth flesh or feasted my eyes on hers.

  Two whole months.

  Two whole months of therapy. I promised her therapy. Every fucking single day. It was torture, but how could I say no and go back on my word. Samantha Matthews had given her life to me, so the least I could do was give her some psychoanalysis.

  Deep psychoanalysis and nonstop writing for two months. Disgustingly enough, my first shower in a week was just taken and I think I lost at least twenty pounds.

  My latest books both received awards; the two books about that waitress Lainey Neveah. The ceremony was a black tie affair tied in with a charity event for our sheriff’s department and local hospital. I donated all the sales of the second book about Lainey to the charity. It was somewhere in the millions.

  I still counted the exits and people, my coping mechanism for being outside in the world, as I sat in my tuxedo on the head dais. I had reached number 211 when I noticed her. Number 212.

  Petite and curvy, dressed exquisitely in a simple black dress that fell gently off her shoulders to show the swell of her flawless ivory skin. Ginger colored hair pinned up in an elegant French twist, with one curled wisp that fell along the side of her face and down her slender neck.

  The deputy sauntered over to where I was standing, the beauty gliding like an apparition next to him, and I could look nowhere else. My obsession began to hum and hiss inside my heart, cracking and snapping off the thick sheets of ice.

  “Kade Grayson, I’d like you to meet Samantha Tucseedo. She’s a great fan of your work. She’s the new doc at the family clinic.”

  She took my breath away. Big, beautiful sage eyes and lips that I instantly wanted to sink into.

  “Hello, Mr. Grayson. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said. A slow sexy smile and a strong smooth handshake were offered to me. I took both greedily, holding onto her hand a bit too long. In fact, I didn’t let it go.

  The band had struck up a soft ballad a few moments before and I leaned in holding my mouth to her ear, “Dance with me.”

  Her smile was earth shattering.

  I pulled her to the dance floor and wrapped my arms around her more tightly than I should have. “You look so fucking beautiful, Sam.”

  “Take me somewhere, Kade.”

  “You certainly are pushy for someone who has just met me. How do you know you can trust me?” I teased.

  “I have scars on my heart from you, Kade Grayson.”

  My gaze lingered on her skin and on how the soft lights cast themselves over the fullness of her breasts in the dress she wore. I trailed my fingertips along the ridge of her collarbone and spread them out across the swells of flesh, gently rubbing the hollow of her neck with the tip of one finger.

  She was breathless when I wrapped my hands around her waist, pulled her across the dance floor and into one of the smaller back rooms. I lifted her up and sat her on the edge of a table, staring down at her. My hands slid up the skin of her thighs.

  “Didn’t your parents ever teach you not to go anywhere with strangers?”

  “Mmmm,” she moaned softly when my hands reached the hea
t of her inner thighs. “No, why, Mr. Grayson? What’s wrong with strangers?”

  The blush that crept slowly over her cheeks had my cock instantly twitching and throbbing to be inside her. “Strangers are bad. Bad things could happen,” I whispered in her ear. “They could take advantage of you, tie you up, use you for…”

  Her dress was pulled up and she wrapped her legs around my waist, pulling me closer with her legs, “That sounds promising…”

  “Fuck, Sam. You don’t have anything on under this dress?”

  Her lips smiled wickedly against mine.

  “Mmmm. You’re such a dirty girl,” I whispered.

  “Oh, Kade, you have absolutely no idea how dirty I can get.”

  I brushed my lips against the soft skin of her neck. My God, the smell of cinnamon and apples made my dick harder than it ever was. I wanted to sink my teeth into her.

  “What’s with the strange last name?” I asked, unzipping my pants and throwing my jacket onto the table behind her.

  Warm hands, hands I had only dreamt about touching me for the last two months, wrapped around my neck and pulled me in. “It’s my safe word,” she breathed against my mouth, gliding the heat of her body under mine.

  Fuuuucck.

  I slid inside her with a deliberately slow thrust, wanting to feel every inch of her that had been hidden from me for two long months. “God, Sam. You feel like heaven around my cock,” I whispered.

  “God, I’ve missed you. Thank you for killing me, Kade,” she whispered, moving her hips in circles.

  “Thank you for letting me, Sam,” I whispered back, feeling the first tremors of her muscles flutter around me.

  I knew she would feel like she would never be free of him. She would tell me again and again how she felt safe with the temporary witness protection the sheriff’s office offered, but I knew deep inside, she still feared he would show up behind her one day, and try to finish the job he started. She would always be looking over her shoulder.