I smiled around his length and licked the tiny slit with the tip of my tongue. He growled and lifted me, positioning me until I was knelt over his lap, my thighs on either side of his. He lowered me down onto him slowly. My back arched as pleasure forced my body to shiver in bliss. “Oh God,” he breathed as his chest stuttered. He closed his eyes as he allowed the ecstasy to take him.
Queen’s, Who Wants To Live Forever played in the background as we made love. The words took me along as I moved slowly on my lover. His eyes held mine as his hands held my shoulders and he kissed every single inch of skin on my chest, his lips pulling at my nipples occasionally as he let me take control. Sweat trickled from both of us as the flames from the fire heated our skin. I refused to move faster, taking him slowly but deeply. He allowed it, his face showing rapture the whole way through, a mirror image of my own.
My orgasm started in my toes and pulled every single muscle in my body on its way up to my brain. “I love you,” I cried out as paradise took me to heaven before my body did.
He roared and buried his face in my chest as he came violently inside me, his body jerking as he clung to me. I held him to me, inhaling his scent, consuming his touch, feeding from his emotion. I squeezed my eyes closed as another wave of pain caused my body to tense.
“Are you ready?”
His words were full of pain and despair. He swallowed and I watched the bob of his throat. “Yes.”
He knew it was coming, the pain. He sensed my need to leave pain free. He nodded slowly and bit his lip. He pulled me off his lap and lay me down in front of the fire. Time seemed to stop as he reached for a small box by the side of the fire. His eyes locked with mine, silently questioning but I nodded. “I’m ready.”
He closed his eyes and blew out an uneven breath then took the syringe from the box. He stared at it for a long time. “Daniel.”
He nodded and gulped before he ran his finger over a spot of skin on my arm. “How long will it take?” I asked when he inserted it into my arm and pressed the plunger.
“I… I don’t know.”
He was struggling to talk and I watched as his chest stuttered wildly. He placed the empty syringe on the table and manoeuvred his body until he was laid beside me.
The Moody Blues Nights In White Satin began to softly fill the air as we gazed at each other. Warmth trickled over me, a calmness that seemed to liquefy inside me. The music flowed peacefully as the depth to Daniel’s eyes held me and comforted me in my last moments.
“Promise me you’ll fall in love, Daniel.”
He nodded. He couldn’t speak as he watched life drain from me. Pain morphed into tranquillity, anguish calmed, bringing with it a sense of acceptance. The edges blurred as my heart slowed. My eyes closed as Daniel grabbed at my hand. “Mae…” he whispered. The Moody Blues sang out that they loved me as my Mother appeared, a tiny blue butterfly flickering in the light beside her. My breath caught as she stood smiling at me. She reached out for me and I slipped my hand into hers, the sweet gentleness of her wrapping me up and holding me tight to make the next journey.
“Mae…” I heard his urgent voice echo somewhere in my head as I stepped towards my mother.
“Mmm,” I murmured. It was all I could manage in my last moments.
“Mae… God damn it,” he cried as I felt his hands caress my face. “I love you. I love you, Mae Swift.”
I died with a smile. I died with the taste of Daniel’s tears on my lips. I died with a full heart. And I died with no regrets.
Life had given me what it needed to. It had eventually given me what I had craved. The love of a man I knew deep down inside was good and worthy of loving my daughter.
Life was cruel. But yet I had accepted its punishing taunts and that in itself had allowed me to gain the most treasured possession it could grant.
Peace.
Love.
Epilogue
‘And so it begins.’
Daniel
Two years later
I smiled when her soft voice tickled my ears. She scurried around and I squeezed my fingers around hers when she slipped her tiny hand into mine. “I think Mummy needs more of those yellow flowers, Daddy.”
I nodded and smiled at her. “The daffodils?”
She nodded firmly. “Yes, those ones.”
Her little voice cheerily sang the words to Somewhere over the Rainbow as her head bobbed happily and she weeded her Mother’s graveside.
“You sing like an angel, Annie.”
“Mummy would like my singing.”
“Mummy would love your singing. She would be very proud of you.”
She smiled up at me, her rosy cheeks bright with pride. “I think Mummy would be proud of you too, Daddy, cos’ you’re the best daddy in the world.”
Her little arms enveloped me and I lifted her up, her short chubby legs wrapping around my waist as she slid her arms around my neck and planted a wet kiss on my cheek.
She gasped loudly and giggled. “Look, Daddy, Holly’s back.”
I moved my gaze to Mae’s gravestone and smiled softly at the tiny blue butterfly that visited us regularly. “Good morning, lamb.”
It fluttered its wings and scurried across the top of the stone. “Why do you always call it, lamb, Daddy? Its name is Holly.”
I smiled softly, remembering. “It’s just Daddy being silly, honey.”
“Is it because our name is Shepherd and that butterfly is your lamb?”
Her tiny blue eyes regarded me. My heart swelled with so much love that it caused me to gasp. “A shepherd always cares for its lambs, Annie. It looks after them, nurtures them and hopes that they will flourish under the care and devotion he gives them. And he knows one day, when they have learnt to accept that love, that they will gain what they most crave.”
“And what do lambs crave?”
I smiled as I stroked a finger over the headstone and walked towards the car. “Just love, Annie. That’s all she ever wanted. Just love.”
The end
Turn the page for a sneak peak of
The Salvation of Daniel
Book 2 in the Blue Butterfly Series
The Salvation of Daniel
By D H Sidebottom
Mae had taught me many things; the ability to smile, that hope was a real ideal and most of all that I was worthy of love. Annie also showed me that. She showed me how to see the good things in life. How to sing with the birds every morning, how to laugh when flour and egg decorated the kitchen walls and how to feel the warmth of the sun every day.
She also proved that I could love with an engulfing force. And I did. I loved my daughter with every fibre of me and every raw nerve that had once only felt pain. My heart swelled with each of her cheeky smiles and every single sweet echo of her voice.
My daughter was very much her mother’s child. From the lustre of her ebony hair to her twinkling sky blue eyes and from the way her smile lifted my heart, to the way her stubborn side exasperated me.
I was strong in my beliefs. Determined to raise her the way her mother had wanted me to. But Annie, like Mae, found the funny side to life so effortlessly. She laughed easily and frequently, she delighted in simple things and braved each daily troubles optimistically.
And I followed her. She taught me how to live as I taught her how to grow.
And just as I relaxed into life as a father, my father found his way back into mine.
As did Connie, Mae’s dead sister.
Coming winter 2014
Coming this summer from
D h Sidebottom & R M James
Silent Truths
Book 2
In the Shadows of Sin Series
Nola
He is the wolf. I am the lamb.
Arrogant isn’t the right word for how I would describe Jude, conceited isn’t even close enough. But hatred is how I would describe my feelings towards him. I loathe him. Abhor and despise him. He makes me burn with rage.
I despise the way his teeth c
hew on that plump bottom lip of his. I hate the way his perfectly chaotic hair beckons for my fingers. I loathe the way he looks at me with those piercing blue eyes which I would gladly drown in, but not now, not today, not ever.
The path I have chosen will be not be changed, there will be no diversion, no fork in the road. I am promised to another and I keep my promises.
He’s too self-centred to focus with those striking blue eyes. He’s too overconfident to see what is under his nose. What threatens his very existence.
Me.
His shadow.
Jude
She is an angel. I am the devil.
Prickly, aloof are just some of the words I would use to describe ‘Irish’. Irritable doesn’t even touch the grouchy woman. But exasperated is how she makes me feel. She grinds. Aggravates and angers.
It infuriates me the way she slips her little pink tongue in and out of her tiny rose bud lips, like she taunting me with her knowing smirk. I am entranced, almost hypnotized, but it only fuels my rage. Her eyes sparkle like emeralds, jewels so precious and polished, just like her.
She is the only woman who I have ever thought could bring me to my knees. But it won’t happen, it can’t, because she is too pure and moralistic, everything I am not and never will be.
She’s far too superior to see the real me through those beautiful deep green eyes. She’s too cold to realise what lies silent within her.
But deep down I see her, the real her. The person she doesn’t want anyone else to see. What her darkness desires.
Me.
Her sin.
Cassandra
She is his dream. I am her worst nightmare.
He doesn’t see what’s under his nose. He disregards me, pushes me away. For her. For the whore with the deep green eyes.
She doesn’t deserve him. Doesn’t warrant his attention.
I hate her. She fills me with repugnance and rage. Creates a fury in me that physically burns. Morphs me into the devils slave.
He always said I would be his and no one else, so I waited. But no more. He’s mine, he promised. I am the only one who will accept him for what and who he is. He’s imperfect, broken, damaged, faulty, all the things I am. Which makes us perfect together. Two broken pieces which can be glued together to make a perfect whole.
He will always be mine. I will destroy her no matter what it takes.
And I see her. I know her. I know her secrets.
The secrets that will bury her.
Her past.
Bestselling Authors
Ker Dukey and D H Sidebottom
Bring you
A dark erotic thriller
FaCade
You meet someone.
You date.
You fall in love.
You marry.
The four simple rules of love….
Wrong!
I’m getting married but I’d never met him before now, never dated him, never fell in love. I have no access to the memories of the most magical time of anyone’s life.
My mind won’t allow me to evoke the past. I can’t remember those simple stages to lead me to the fourth.
I can’t comprehend why I would have ever wanted to marry someone like Dante. I should never have passed the first stage, although, I may have seen him through the eyes of the woman I once was, this me that lives, breathes here now, can’t understand how we made it to the next stage.
I’m not sure, without memories, how I know that this voice inside me, telling me I would never have chosen him, speaks some truth, I just know. He’s controlling, arrogant, callous and violent, and utterly hell bent on humiliating and degrading me – Like watching me falter, watching me struggle to comply and be the woman he asked to marry, powers him- as though he wants to break me piece by piece. Fibre by fibre. Until all that’s here is the shell he created from a soul that I once owned.
Now my memories are slowly returning. And they show me a completely different side to meeting him. Our dates, falling in love. The Dante haunting me in the shadows of my mind is loving, gentle and utterly enamoured with me, nothing like the man with me now.
And this is what taunts me. My tender lover turned into a debauched, cruel sadist who is determined to consume my life, destroy my mind and murder my spirit.
I am, Star, and just like with some stars in the sky, the light you see is an echo, a façade.
I am already gone
I am a no one.
Especially to him. To him I am the dark in his desires, the corrupt in his depravity.
The sin in his immorality.
Summer 2014
Summer 2014
Ker Dukey
Best Selling Amazon Author
Empathy
Blake:
I am a brother
I am a police detective
I am a contract killer
I don’t want to love
I don’t want to feel
I don’t want … EMPATHY.
They say some people are born with decreased activity in the front central lobe causing them a deficiency in empathy. Maybe that’s true about me but whether I was born this way or created in a moment of evil, empathy was something I didn’t possess until her green eyes met mine in the mirror and I couldn’t take her life.
I didn’t want to feel, didn’t want this woman in my life complicating how I lived but she was there at every turn. Sent to haunt me for my sins. Her light so bright she provoked a shadow from everyone she touched. When a job turns bad quickly altering my life forever I’m forced to feel. When nothing is making sense I’m forced to face truths I never would recover from. When life drowns you in its cruelty you don’t know which way the current will drag you or who you’ll become once you re-surface.
Melody:
I was a daughter
I was a student
I was a victim
Did I have his love?
Did I make him feel?
Did I have his empathy?
When the actions of a soulless killer forces sorrow into my veins I never dreamed the man healing my wounds would be the one to leave the worst scar. His love would scar my soul. Scars are permanent; I will never feel the relief from them. Will I learn to live with them, remember why I have them and learn never to let him close enough to inflict more? Will I eventually cover them… like tattoos coating them with new memories, new love and new starts? I didn’t know these answers because the pain was too suffocating, the only thing I knew was they will always be under the surface lingering. He had scars too, from his sins. There is nothing that can cover them, they were too deep, too ugly, too dark and they marked us both forever.
Teaser from Empathy
I burst through the doors, the rain immediately beating against my skin, the cold droplets soaking me through but not cleansing the pain away.
Loneliness is suffocating me. I miss them so much I can barely breathe. There was no leads but they were releasing the bodies to us so they could be buried. My heart hurts so much. How can people survive loss like this?
The laughter of a couple running to find shelter is so deafening, I want to scream at them to notice they have each other, they’re happy and completely oblivious to the person dying right in front of them. I’m here, can you see me…? On the inside I’m screaming save me from the depths of this empty void but on the out my pain is clearly transparent because no way people could ignore the death of a soul happening right in front of them. Right?
A shiver rocks through my body making my whole body vibrate. I stand there drenched, my clothes sticking to my skin, but I can’t move. The beat from the downpour tap dancing over the ground is keeping me from picturing them, it’s grounding me to this moment, the drops hitting the surface, bouncing off, expanding, swallowing, drowning everything beneath it.
“Puya?” Blake, barely visible through the torrent, calls to me.
What is he doing standing there in the rain? I can feel his intensity shift the air around us. My heart begins
to beat hard, reminding me it could feel more than just the pain. He affected me in a way that confused and excited me all in the same moment.
His strides eat up the ground between us. “Why do you call me that?” I murmur, not sure if I’m dreaming him the way my mind has been in a constant fog lately. I wouldn’t be shocked if I suddenly awoke in my dorm alone.
Droplets formed, pebbling over the smooth planes of his face and in his heavy soaked hair before running a path down his beautiful features, trickles clung from his dark, long eyelashes. He reached out to me, capturing my wrist, the pad of his thumb stroking over my small tattoo there. “Do you want to die?”
The laugh rippled through me. What a question. I thought I had died. I was living between the two realms. His eyes bore into mine, my laugh turned quickly into a sob, my hands trying to cover my face from his probing stare. My legs were weak, I was going to fall in a heap right in front of him, all my scars on display for him to recoil from.
Who could deal with someone grieving, losing themselves, drowning in the current of sorrow right in front of them, getting them caught in the wake of my despair? Strong arms came around me, lifting me into a bridal hold. I couldn’t look up at him. I reached my arms around his neck and burrowed my face into the crook there. I needed someone to catch my tears, wipe them away and just hold me, let me know I was still here.
The Decimation of Mae (The Blue Butterfly) Page 21