by Lindsey Hart
Except it wasn’t a dream any longer. It was real, and she’d made a promise. A promise she wasn’t sure if she could keep. There wasn’t any alternative. She couldn’t fail. She wouldn’t fail. Not if it meant hurting Thomas. That, she could never, ever do.
CHAPTER 3
Thomas
The burn of whisky was always sweeter after the first drink.
Thomas Porter never used to touch the stuff. He used to scoff at people who had a drink or two after a hard day or those who longed to find an ounce of solace at the bottom of a bottle. They were weak. Shameful. Unable to deal with the realities of life.
He used to believe that the reason certain people weren’t successful was because they were the ones holding themselves back. What a fucking joke.
He knew better now. After living through a year of hell that scarred him inside and out. He damn well knew better.
His home office was dark, the shades drawn against the overly warm Phoenix sunlight. It was early. Far too early to start drinking, but then again, he hadn’t slept. Couldn’t remember the last time he had. Sure, he lay in bed, sometimes during the appropriate hours of darkness, sometimes not. He lay there, alone, because he wanted to be. Alone and awake because if he slept then the dreams would come. No, the terrors. Not dreams. Never dreams.
The whisky splashed from the bottle into the crystal glass with a dull hiss. Thomas liked the sound. It was somehow lyrical, musical. His savior in a bottle.
He finally got it now; what everyone else saw in the stuff.
He realized, through a fog, that the bottle was half full. Or was it half empty? Who the fuck cares? It still meant the same thing. He’d still drunk half of it since he got up and fumbled his way to his office just past seven that morning.
He’d heard Evie get up and get dressed. She’d called to him, once. At least she still cared enough to do that. He’d left her alone. The way she wanted to be. He knew. He knew she didn’t love him. Couldn’t. He didn’t blame her. He couldn’t even love himself, the way he was now.
The feel of the flames came on suddenly, hot, wretchedly hot, licking their way up his leg first. Tearing at jeans that had fused with his skin before eating their way up his flesh, climbing higher and higher, the pain all-consuming.
Thomas dropped the glass, half raised to his mouth, as he cried out. It slipped from his hand, the whisky sloshing uselessly over his desk and the floor as the glass hit. It shattered on impact with the hard tile. The sound of breaking glass slammed him back into the present. The flames disappeared.
He brought his hands up and tugged uselessly at his hair. He’d cut it. Shaved the sides and left the top long. Went to the barber earlier that week. He thought doing something normal would make him normal. Instead, he’d faced exactly what he knew he would. The stares. The cold, hard stares of those around him. The barber, a middle-age balding man, staring incessantly at the whirled, twisted patterns of grafted, healed skin on his neck and cheek. He must have wondered just how deep those scars went, how much of his body they covered.
All of it. They covered all of him. Went beyond his skin into his mind and soul.
Thomas bent to inspect the shards of broken glass. He’d been sitting in his desk chair, a modern monstrosity that never really was very comfortable. Despite that, he’d spent the past hours in it. How many, he wasn’t even sure. It was so easy to lose track of time when you didn’t give a shit about it any longer.
He leaned forward and tipped out of the chair, landing unceremoniously on the floor in a pile of broken glass.
It bit into his skin. His face, his hands. He didn’t care. He enjoyed the sharp burst of pain. The fog in his brain made it nearly impossible to right himself. He tucked his hand under his chest, came into contact with more broken glass. More cuts. The pain from those tiny cuts didn’t matter. Not after half his body had been grafted with the skin of the dead. That’s what they did. Used skin from another person, a non-living person, to heal those who should have died but hadn’t.
He managed to get to his knees. His head swam, and he fell back against the desk. How much whisky did I drink? He didn’t know.
Through the soupy fog in his head, the swimming room and the whirling thoughts that never quite left him alone, Thomas stood. He groped his way through the room, gripping the wall to keep vertical. He made his way down the hall, into the large kitchen.
Sunlight streamed through the open blinds. He hated the fucking sunlight. He stumbled over to the window and managed to draw them half closed. He stumbled over to the kitchen table. His hands gripped the cool, hard edge of the glass top. He hated that fucking table. Hated the modern silver chairs that matched. Hated the entire god damn kitchen with its sleek metal backsplash, the white quartz countertops, the cold stainless-steel appliances.
The whole house had been for Evie. She’d picked it. She liked modern, new, shiny. The unlived, unloved feel.
It was like a metaphor for their entire relationship.
He didn’t love the house, but he stayed.
She didn’t love him, but she stayed.
This house that he hated had become more of a prison than a sanctuary. The woman he loved disappeared long before that accident, but she stuck with him out of obligation. Out of pity. Out of something. He clung to her because she was all he had left. No one else would want him now. Not like this. Not ever. He craved solitude, but he didn’t want to be truly alone.
The glass was cool under his fingertips. He realized it was his left hand on the table top. His right, the fingerprints melted off, wouldn’t have felt a thing.
The urge to shatter that table top, splinter it like the broken glass in his office, was so great it took all he had not to make a fist and attempt to smash it through the top. It probably would have held. The glass was thick. Impenetrable.
Thomas moved his hand away. His eyes focused on the bloody marks his cut hand had left behind. There were probably splinters of glass in his hand. It didn’t matter. Nothing truly did.
His vision cleared, as though the whisky decided to give up the ghost for the moment, and his eyes fixed on the glossy white cabinets.
Inside those pristine cabinets he detested so much were the dishes he hated. Dishes Eve loved. Square things. Heavy. Annoying as hell to wash and dry and put back.
Thomas fumbled his way over to the closet cabinet. He braced his hand on the countertop, satisfied at the smears of red he left on the shining white surface. He ripped open the cabinet and stared at the mounds of dishes stacked inside.
He reached in with a hand that was usually numb. The hand itself had feelings, but the fingertips were deadened. He produced one of the dinner plates. The square was offensive in itself. Who the hell designed something like this?
He drew back his arm. In his mind, he saw his car. Flipped over, on its roof. Gas leaking, leaking everywhere. The spark from somewhere unseen, the flames licking their way through the car, over to him. So very slowly, eating everything, devouring everything.
An inhuman cry of rage was torn from the deep recess of a throat always perpetually raw. Raw with sorrow. Impotent rage. Anger. Hopelessness.
He let the plate fly. Fly across the kitchen and smash into the fridge.
The fucking thing left a dent on impact. It dropped to the floor, still whole. Unharmed.
Thomas just lost it. Blackness closed in around the edges of his vision. The room swam, changed, morphed. Nothing was real. He felt nothing.
He was aware of the sounds of breaking glass, shattering dishes, cups, drawers pulled out and emptied onto the floor.
Then one sound. A voice, crystal, clear, melodic. The one sound that could pull him back from the brink of oblivion.
He opened his eyes.
There, standing across the kitchen, pink high heels surrounded by broken shards of plates, mugs, cups, was Evie.
Thomas slammed back into his body at the same time he felt his knees give out. He was falling. Falling hard. He hit the floor, broken glass biting in
to his knees. One good, one with the twisted, scarred skin he kept hidden and refused to look at.
He covered his face. Hid it in his arm because he couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t bear to see the judgment and the disappointment and the lack of love that had once shone so brightly.
When he felt her arms, so infinitely soft and warm, whole and perfect, slide around his shoulders, he trembled with shock and shame. He should have died that day. Died and spared them all of this, this constant no man’s land of non-existence.
End of Preview
Read More Here:
https://amzn.to/2GyOhC1
BURNING TOUCH
Available in the kindle store HERE
Luna James knew from the second the handsome, larger than life stranger walked through the door of her tattoo shop requesting a cover up, that he was trouble. Her brutal track record with men should have taught her to stay away from him but somehow, she just couldn’t manage to forget his haunted eyes or the burning feel of his skin beneath her fingertips.
Knowing it was going to be pure torture, she accepted to work her art on his naked body at nightfall.
But the night held more secrets and danger than maybe she was prepared for. And it did not help either to have sparks fly left and right with her every touch of his naked skin.
Preview
CHAPTER 1
“Check out the code H at the front.” Adrianna Thompson actually ran to the back. She poked her head in the private booth where Luna was finishing up a drawing for a client’s sleeve. The guy was scheduled to arrive in two hours and she hadn’t bothered to start the damn drawing until half an hour ago. She was definitely feeling the pressure and didn’t need to be distracted by the code system she shared with her best friend and business partner.
H was for hot, of course. B was for bitch, A for asshole, C for… well of course everyone could figure that out. It wasn’t a real hard system to decode. Luna couldn’t even remember when she and Adrianna started using it. Probably about a year after they opened. One day they were likely bored, waiting for clients to show up before they got far too popular and far too busy to worry about downtime.
Had that really been five years ago? It was hard to believe time passed so quickly.
“Are you coming or what?” Adrianna hissed under her breath.
Holy. Whoever is out there must be truly smoking to get her so worked up. “I have to finish up this drawing. Go on ahead without me.”
Adrianna’s pretty green eyes widened in shock, like she couldn’t believe she was getting a free pass to hot dude city. Maybe all the conversations they’d shared over the years didn’t quite register in that moment. Luna wasn’t interested. Now or ever. Well, pretty much ever. She didn’t want to wind up alone in some sick parody of a spinster, but she could certainly do without the drama she was so happy to have left behind the day she finally walked out on Jarod. Turns out that last black eye had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“Are you kidding me? You have to at least see him,” Adrianna pressed.
Luna refused to look up. She kept her attention glued to the koi and water she was currently producing. “Nope. I mean it, you have dibs. I’m way too booked anyway.”
“Gah!” It was truly what Adrianna muttered before she disappeared. The sound of her footfalls beating a fast pace down the short hall that led up to the front reception area was actually audible.
They were much heavier on their return trip. “What is it?” Luna didn’t look at Adrianna. Instead, her eyes strayed to the skull clock on the wall where it announced her appointment would be there before she finished her drawing. She turned back to it, trying desperately not to be distracted.
“He wants a cover up. Asked for you specifically.” Adrianna couldn’t have sounded more disappointed if she tried.
Luna’s head cranked up so sharply she nearly gave herself whiplash. Her pencil fell with a dull thud to her opened sketch book. “For fuck sakes,” she whispered under her breath. Of all the times someone needed to come in and demand her time.
“I’ll get rid of him if you want.” For some reason Adrianna’s statement sounded totally suggestive and Luna wondered just what it was the other woman intended to do to get said stranger out of there. Perhaps leave with him?
“No, it’s alright. I’ll go try and book him in. He probably won’t want to wait six months. No one does. That usually gets rid of them pretty fast.”
“I don’t understand you. This guy is hotter than sin. He’s hotter than sex. Why would you want to get rid of him?” Luna shot Adrianna a pointed look and her friend nodded sagely. “Oh. Right. I forgot you were off men and focused on work.”
“I don’t need another Jarod. Everyone is another Jarod at this point.”
“It’s been three years.”
Panic struck like a hard fist to Luna’s gut. She recalled that last night, the night she’d finally had the courage to get out of that house while she still could. Jarod had come home in the middle of the night after drinking with his buddies, like he did every weekend. He was a mean drunk. No, that word didn’t even begin to cover the sadistic bastard’s actions. He’d promised. No more drinking. No more violent show downs in the middle of the night. Of course, he fucking promised. He always promised.
He’d pushed her anyway. Thrown her around the room like a ragdoll and beat her like he did every time he was liquored up. Except that time, it was one too many. There would be no apologizing in the morning. No amount of promises could fix the damage he did to her. He’d left her, in a heap on the floor. She remembered feeling pain. Everywhere. Finally, when she’d found the courage to get up and walk into the bathroom she looked at her bloodied nose, the black eye already forming, the split lip. The bruises on her body.
She’d walked out and hadn’t looked back. She’d saved up enough money by then, money Jarod could never get his hands on because she’d funneled it away through the business. He knew where she worked but luckily enough she had some clients who were tough mother fuckers and didn’t need to be paid to rough someone up. They’d warned Jarod and that had been the end of it. He always was a coward through and through.
Luna realized Adrianna was staring at her, waiting for an answer. She rose slowly, shaking off the bad memories like flicking a disgusting bug off her shoulder.
“I’m coming.” Luna followed Adrianna down the short hall, past the private rooms where they tattooed, out to the front of the shop. A large reception desk cordoned everything off from the back so people couldn’t just walk out back and disrupt business. The front of the shop was small, with most of the actions happening in the back. There was a plush couch out front for waiting with a coffee table and magazines. Nearly every inch of wall space was decorated with art, their own and fellow tattoo artists.
The man, if he could be called a man and not a mountain, turned slowly. He wore the trappings of a businessman, crisp pressed black slacks, a blue dress shirt, square toed expensive leather shoes, but Luna sensed right away he was no paper pusher.
Ice blue eyes, deep set into a shadowed brow, were far older than they should have been for a man who looked like he was entering his early thirties. His hair was blonde, the flaxen, wheat coloured kind that glistened when the sun hit it just right. There currently was no sun outside on the cloudy, windy day but Luna knew somehow that it would. The sides were buzzed short and the top was left long. On anyone else dressed that way it might have looked professional but on this guy, it looked military or gangster. He looked nothing like the average nine to fiver. For starters, he wouldn’t even fit behind a desk…
He stood a good six and a half feet tall. He was huge. Literally the largest man that Luna could ever remember seeing and she’d tattooed her share of giants. Perhaps his size had more to do with the cold glint in his eyes than his physical demeanour. He seemed too large for the room and she swallowed audibly, immediately nervous and on guard.
This guy was trouble. She didn’t know how she could tell b
ut it was kind of like some sixth sense similar to how some people could tell that her real name wasn’t Luna James. It was actually Stephanie. Only her mother called her that and her mother hardly ever bothered to call. Changing your name was kind of like changing your hair. After more than ten years of doing it, you kind of forgot what the real colour actually was.
“I heard you were looking for a cover up.” She didn’t mince words. Something about this stranger caused her body to react in a brutally visceral fashion that she didn’t appreciate one bit. She didn’t like the heat pooling in her belly or the way her nipples hardened under her black camisole. It was more than just noticing the guy’s appearance. Her body appreciated it. The sooner she turfed this guy, the better.
“Yes. Are you Luna James?”
“Well there are only two of us here. You already met Adrianna.” She wasn’t normally so rude but she didn’t like the way her palms were starting to sweat or the cramped feeling she had in her stomach. Her lungs were starting to compress in as well. Fuck.
“Everyone says you’re the best at what you do. I do need a cover up. I was wondering if you would be willing to do it.”
“I would have to take a look.” Damn it. Tell him to fucking leave. Tell him you’re booked. Tell him that your fucking shop is burning around you. Tell him anything in the world but yes. “What is it exactly that you want covered up?” Instead of eyeing the guy up, Luna’s gaze fell to her hands, which trembled slightly on the top of the large reception desk. One purple rose adorned her left hand and one red topped the right. When she finally glanced up she expected to find his eyes on her but strangely enough he was eyeing the front door as though considering escape.
She found herself wishing he wanted something covered up that involved stripping off a few of those layers of expensive looking clothing. She gave herself a mental shake. Wake the hell up. Guys like him, whether he’s dressed nicely or sporting leather and chains, mean vibrant nights, fumbling interludes and years of regret.