I smiled as my clit throbbed and my inner muscles clenched around the coolness. “I’m going to come.” My orgasm was slow and hot, not at all overwhelming, but entirely beautiful. When I fell back on the bed, I was so in love with Dash McKing that the exit no longer mattered. I wondered if this had been his point, but then realized it couldn’t be. It was just a part of us. “That was wonderful.”
“Let’s switch it up.” The heat and the pulsing stopped. Soon, ice cooled my hot clit and instead of pulsing, it was vibrating up and down quickly and perfectly. The object inside of me slipped out, quickly replaced with one thicker. It was already heated, and the warmth melted inside of my wet wanting folds. Ice and fire kissed my clit and pussy, until I was breathlessly falling apart once more.
I could feel a puddle beneath me; my brain was fogged with lust and love. “I’m ruining your bed.”
“Good. Up.” I struggled, but eventually I lifted my hips enough for him to take the clit stimulator off of me and the heated object out of me. I was bare and trembling, eager for his cock, but, something much different probed me. Little sharp pinpricks began to walk across my labia. “Too much?”
I hissed in surprise and looked down to find a sort of sharp back massager in his fist. The little metal ends pushed into my oversensitive flesh, bringing it back to life. “Do you like it?”
His eyes met mine, dripping honey and heat. “I do.”
I reached down and gripped his fist, guiding his hand and massager all over my wet wanting pussy. “Then so do I.” Our eyes locked as I lost myself in him. I wanted him so badly, I bent to kiss his lips. The toys disappeared; I heard them hit the floor. He was on me before I could get my tongue into his mouth. His cock pressed into me roughly with no warning, but like everything with Dash, it had all been a warning. I just hadn’t known until he was showing me the clouds. His hips crashed into me, filling me painfully and deep. I held on as best I could, biting the mark I’d left as his thickness hit my g-spot over and over and over again. Lightning cracked behind my eyelids when my orgasm took hold of me. I could hear him growling, feel his kiss, but I was too lost in the overwhelming hunger he unleashed inside of me. The hungrier he made me, the more I wanted, and I had this fear he’d never fill me enough. But I would hold on as he tried, as he took my truths and loved them as much as I loved him.
I lay numbly in the puddle of our love, until he moved me closer to the pillows. My body quivered with aftershocks. I couldn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t do anything but admit that when this was over, I would permanently break wide open.
20.
There Was A Storm Coming
The smell of marshmallows greeted me when I finally opened my eyes.
It was followed by chocolate.
And finally, warm light from a fireplace glowed on the walls; the shadows danced where they couldn’t touch the darkness.
Dash sat up in bed with a bag of marshmallows between his legs and a mug of cocoa in his hand. His hair was damp, and when I checked, he was wearing a pair of black and yellow flannel pajama bottoms. I, on the other hand, was covered in sweat and sex, and completely naked; the sheet lay in a heap at the foot of the bed.
“You eat like a child.”
He popped a marshmallow into his mouth, eyes amused. “Do you always sleep so long after sex?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never really had sex … like … that before.” I couldn’t help the smile that touched my lips.
He looked unimpressed. “That’s because you were sleeping with lying manipulative men who didn’t appreciate all that you are.” With an intended flourish, he popped in another.
I opened my mouth expectantly, completely and utterly ignoring anything that had to do with me and appreciation. They never went together. He produced a marshmallow and dropped it softly between my parted lips. It was spongey and sweet, clearing the taste of sex from my mouth. He picked up a mug of cocoa that had been waiting on the floor, and handed it off to me. I kept it steady as I rose to join him with my back against the wall. The cocoa had cooled, but it was rich and chocolatey. For the first time in my entire life, I couldn’t complain. I was liquid from sex. I was sated from sex. I was raw and pliant from sex. I had chocolate and a fire. And most of all, I had Dash. It unsettled me.
Nothing was ever this good.
I peeked to find his eyes on me.
“You’re adorable without your walls. Pink cheeked.” He came close and kissed my cheek. “Wanting.” He kissed my lips. “Mine.” He returned to his cocoa. “It’s snowing outside. I love the snow.”
I scrunched my nose. “I’ve always despised it. But then again, I didn’t grow up in Hyde Park.”
He snorted. “It was simply a ruse. The mansion, the housekeepers, the money, the wives, me—all of it was to keep my father’s pretense up. He didn’t mean a dime he spent on me. If anything, the more money he threw at me, the less chances I would show my face.”
“How many wives did he have?” I tried to fight through the calm around me to our sessions. I was aware of Dash’s mother, and his current wife, but not all the others.
“My father is my least favorite topic. You know that.”
“How many?” I softened my tone, used to his rage when it came to this topic.
“Five, my own mother included.” He set his mug down.
I stared at him. “That’s a lot of women in and out of your life.”
He grunted, always heartbreakingly immature when he thought of his mother. He regressed. He lashed out. He broke. “Do you blame them?”
“Yes, I blame them. You didn’t tell your mother to have a baby with a gang member. She left you with a monster.” She broke him long before Raynard did.
He stared straight, eyes dark amber. “I never told you that I found her.”
My heart dropped. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I looked for her when I was a teenager. Kenna said something, and I wanted to follow up.”
I blinked at him. Kenna? I’d heard the name before. I knew I had. Goosebumps broke across my flesh. Please, I thought. No more. “Who’s Kenna?”
“My half-sister. My father’s dirty little secret.”
“What did she say?” Dash must’ve mentioned her, even though inside I knew it wasn’t his voice I was remembering.
He wrapped up the marshmallows and dropped them onto the floor. “We have a mutual disgust for the other. She resents that my father claimed me, and I resent that he actually loved her. Her mother was one of the whores they control. Deidre, his current wife, can’t stand her, but she can’t do much other than bitch her ever loving ass off.”
Now that was a name I knew. Deidre McKing was either the luckiest woman in the world, or one of the unluckiest idiots in this nightmare. To wed a man who’d “lost” four wives before her, she either was willing to lose it all for nothing, or have nothing for it all. “She came into your life when you were …” I fought through my memory. “Fifteen?”
“Hmm. You remembered.”
“I remember everything you’ve ever said to me. My goodness. You were the only thing I looked forward to for twenty-three hours, Dash. How could I not remember?” When he remained silent, I looked at him, biting my lip in hopes it would stave off the heat in my body. “How could I ever forget you?”
He looked down suddenly. “Every woman before you has. And though I should have expected it, I didn’t see it coming until I came into your office and you looked at me like you didn’t know me. I knew you were different, and that you were treating me like all of the others was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to deal with.”
In a way what I had done to Dash was the same thing he had done to me. I had ignored our love, and he’d acted on it. Maybe the reasons I existed in this tower, weren’t because of the things he had done, but because of the things I hadn’t done. But that was also forgetting the hit out on me. And now him. There was our love, and then there was danger, and they weren’t the same thing, and neither of us could wra
p our heads, or hearts, around them both. My brain and emotions were in hyper drive. By the look on Dash’s face, he was barely breathing.
Talking about his mother and father always triggered him.
He sank into his covers and stared at his ceiling. “She was right.”
“Who?”
“Kenna.”
“Right about what?”
“We’re all children of whores. Debts. Pay offs. Punishments. None of us were conceived out of love, or even like.”
I frowned at the side of his handsome face. “What are you talking about?”
“The Mk Gang isn’t like a street gang. Not just anyone can walk off the street and make rank, or climb the ladder, or sit beside the kingpin and his men. The prostitution ring is how they keep the blood going. They make deals, so to speak. That’s what I was, Kinley. Thirty-one years ago, my mother made a deal with Raynard to keep her from being killed. She’d seen something she shouldn’t. She gave him a baby boy, and he finally had someone to pass his name off too. My mother’s job was done when I was old enough to take the McKing name. But I was broken. I heard voices in my head, I saw shit in real life I couldn’t forget, I was always sad or mad, and I sometimes forgot who I was. I couldn’t sleep at night and I would get so anxious I’d puke. And my father knew. He knew I was defective, but he owned me. All of my money, my future—I had to do what he wanted, or I’d be killed. I couldn’t just walk away knowing what I knew. Which is why I despised Kenna. She was a whore’s child too, but he loved this whore, and took care of Kenna when she overdosed. He loved her the way he never loved me.”
The mug slid from my fingers.
“What the hell, Kinley?”
I looked down to find hot chocolate all over his sheets. Brown against black. He pushed me aside and leapt up, returning a moment later with a towel. They make deals, so to speak. “What if those women don’t know they made a deal?”
“What?” He scrubbed the towel over his sheets angrily.
“The women. Do they always know what they’re making a deal for?”
“I don’t know. Get up. There’s chocolate milk everywhere.” He grabbed my chin and forced my eyes on his. “Get up.”
I got numbly out of bed and stood there naked as he stripped the sheets quickly. The white mattress had gone unstained. He marched the soiled sheets into the bathroom and stomped out empty-handed, leaving me alone in his room.
Denny owned me.
Denny wanted me gone.
Dash returned with a package of gray and black sheets. He ripped them free and set to clothing his bed.
“What if they can’t collect?”
“Kinley!” he snapped, glaring at me as he struggled. “What does it matter? Unless you’ve made a deal with an MK member, then I wouldn’t—” He stopped, his hands stopped. His entire body stopped. And then he snapped. He jumped on his bed and ran over to me, grabbing my upper arms when he’d jumped off. “What the fuck did you do?”
I was falling. “I didn’t know.”
“WHAT DID YOU DO?”
I flinched away from him, covering my ears. “I didn’t know!”
“What didn’t you know?”
I tried to run away, but he grabbed me just inside his door. I screamed, fighting for it not to be true. He growled as he threw me over his shoulder, and then onto his new gray and black sheets. He pinned my arms by my head, and bored into me with those golden eyes as I shattered.
“What did you do?”
“You knew I was broke. You knew there was no way for me to had gotten that practice without getting a loan.”
He closed his eyes in pain. “Denny’s father gave you a loan.”
And Denny’s father had been caught walking into Raynard’s office.
“In exchange for what?”
“I don’t know. Denny just gave me the contract to sign. I signed it. The next day I had keys to my office. No money ever entered my hands. He was a lawyer. I just figured it was a loan. He took sixty-five percent of my income at the end of each month. I barley had enough to pay my bills. But that was it. I thought that was it.”
“So that’s why you were stuck. You were broke, but that wasn’t all. You were indebted.” He sounded stunned.
“And unable to conceive,” I breathed.
Sharp objects fell down around me, and it wasn’t until I tried to pull in a breath, that I realized it was my heart exploding. Dash and I stared into each other’s eyes. Pieces of this tower exploded with me. Gone were the walls, and in their place was a man that had unknowingly intercepted a darkness neither of us understood.
“I wasn’t supposed to know you,” he said, working through his thoughts as my own lay in shambles. “I wasn’t supposed get involved. I never should have known Kinley Hashawaye existed.”
“How did you?” Please not Dash.
He bored into me with those golden eyes, letting me know that he hadn’t trapped and betrayed me. Dash had never been the bad guy. It was an epiphany in a twisted downfall.
“My father owns that entire block. I have interest in the tech building. You know the one?”
Within my downfall, I recalled my suite, and all of the others in that complex. There were dozens. Dentists, optometry offices, clothing stores, insurance offices, travel agencies, nail salons, and a technological company on the end. I rarely looked over that far. My building was on the other end with a view of the park behind the complex, and five parking slots beneath the oak trees out front. It was the best building in the area. And I’d been given it by Trent McDonald.
Because I was dating his son, I thought.
Because Denny and I were in love, I thought.
Because he’d saved me when I had nothing, I thought.
“As I was leaving after a meeting, I saw the steel sign marking the property. I read it over for no reason, waiting for an opening in traffic. On the very top was Kinley Hashawaye, Cognitive therapist. Suite 105. I’d been struggling immensely. I’d struggled with myself for years about going back to therapy. Just taking meds Brogan and Fillan could score wasn’t helping anymore. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t see a therapist, not now. Not when I was older, more well known. I’d be marked. But my world was falling apart, and I found myself backing up and searching for your suite. When I came in, there was a woman at the waiting desk. She smiled at me. I asked if Miss Hashawaye took cash. I didn’t want to use a credit card that could be tracked. She said ‘Of course, Miss Hashawaye isn’t your typical therapist. She works with you, not against you.’ Then she pointed at something. It was your picture. Your gorgeous stunning picture. Your blonde hair was parted, and swept to the right. Your eyes were so blue, so eager. I wanted to rip the picture off the wall and run away with it. I settled on making an appointment. But I wasn’t supposed to be there. I wasn’t supposed to ever know you existed. I expected you to be like all of the other therapists. Inattentive, money hungry, and of no help. But you were nothing like them.”
He released the hold on my arms. I didn’t move. He collapsed on his back beside me.
“His entire family pressured me to get pregnant. From day one it was all about the baby. I just wanted a career. I wanted to finally have my career. All they wanted was a baby.”
“Maybe Denny’s father made a deal a long time ago,” he grunted indignantly.
“Or you’ve been out of the family for so long you have no idea who’s really running it.”
“Or that.” He grabbed my hand where it lay at my side. “Then what?”
I closed my eyes against the tears. “When I couldn’t get pregnant, Denny pulled away immediately. The abuse had gone from lover’s spats, to … abuse. He hated me. But I was indebted. I owed him and his father way too much money to walk away, and I loved him. He’d taken a woman who barely had enough air in her lungs to breathe, and gave her so much to gasp for. But I was stuck, and he pulled my leash so hard I couldn’t breathe. I wanted my career. I wanted it so badly.” And then I said the only truth that had ever mattered. I
t was true before this tower, and I thought it always would be. “You saved me, Dash.”
We were suddenly in a bedroom, with a fireplace, and there was gold, and no more lies, but there was darkness, and there was a storm coming, and all of this that I had fought would shatter, and we would shatter too.
“I’m not done yet.”
21.
No One Else Will
I didn’t mention that in order for there to be success, there had to be failure.
So far, he hadn’t failed yet.
And that he might, made it suddenly even more difficult to breathe. “We have to get out of here.”
“Not yet.”
“When then?” I demanded. “When they’re knocking on our door asking for a cup of sugar?”
He got out of bed and scooped up the food and empty mugs. “The threat of them isn’t any stronger than it was before we realized why your pathetic ex involved me. That bastard,” he growled, leaving me alone once again.
Dash was doing it again. It wasn’t shocking that Denny had involved Dash. The tapes of us together were a way out and he took it. What was making me sure I’d never take a breath that didn’t burn again was how easily I fell into his trap. I fought through my broken pieces to our beginning. That couldn’t have all been a lie. Could it? Or had there been a leash on me the moment I let Denny buy my coffee. He’d had to have known I was gullible. He’d had to have known my price.
That’s all?
Glaring, I scampered, naked, out of his room and into the living room. The light outside was gray and sterile. Snow. I paused and wrapped my arms around myself as I went over to peer down. The entire city of Chicago was blanketed in a layer of thick angelic powder. It looked beautiful. So white and crisp, snow stuck to the tops of skyscrapers and the buildings blow. The sky was bright and new, clear of the smog and filth the city produced. The road hadn’t been cleared, and no one existed.
A Beautiful Nightmare: A Novel Page 19