by Marata Eros
Acquaintance.
I jerk my head into a stiff nod.
“A wonderful one,” he explains softly.
I give him a shy smile back, stripped of my normally buoyant personality and totally out of my element. “Thanks, Eugene.”
“You are most welcome, Miss King.”
“Kiki's fine.”
“As you wish.”
I hesitate then the hell with it. “You speak English very well.”
“I have been here many years. And English was required in school during my formative years.”
“That's great, we don't...”
“It is not common for Americans to endeavor to speak anything but English.”
It brings Thorn and Ax to mind. A thought occurs to me. “Does Chet understand German?”
“Of a sort. His understanding is rough but passable. I think his love for his mother's native tongue was lost when she passed.”
Oh. “How old was he?”
Eugene bows his head. “It might not be my story to tell—Kandace.”
I flush again. God, I'm a nosey thing. “Right, sorry.”
Eugene lifts his chin. “Do not be. Your interest shows care, and that is in short supply where Mr. Sinclair is concerned.”
I swallow the knot of my sadness for Chet in a bitter pill that settles in a horrible lump in my stomach.
Eugene and I stare at each other, weighted understanding tying us together.
He cares for Chet.
I care.
I startle when the doorbell rings.
Eugene's brows tug into a frown, and a cell phone I didn't notice he held falls into a slit in his lightweight coat. His free hand opens the door wide and Chloe stands there like a nightmarish apparition.
TEN
Chet
I balance my steering with my knee and swing my cell into my hand, swiping the screen and entering the code to release a text.
My cell is state of the art and allows me to give Eugene a unique identifying vibration
I read the message twice and almost go off the road.
Eugene: Miss King has arrived.
My fingers tingle as I turn around from heading toward her condo at the Millennium. I change my course in a tight circle and race back toward my estate in Redmond. Cars honk as I cut them off.
My fingers shake slightly as I tap out my response on the shoulder of the highway I just violated every law on. The hum of the powerful engine is a comforting white noise that sets my teeth to thrumming.
Me: I will arrive shortly. Then, Do not let Kandace leave, no matter what the circumstance.
Thank you.
I slap the cell into an unused cup holder and jam the shifter into first. Gravel spins out, pelleting nearby trees and the guard rail.
I don't answer the next text from Eugene. He probably replied with a you're most welcome.
I concentrate on barely driving within legal limits. All I want to do is break every law to get to Kandace.
*
K.
My heart drops into my stomach.
I can't believe the bitch is here. Like, couldn't I just talk to Chet and get everything resolved without his fiancée barging in?
My hate for her is larger than life until I see her face.
I didn't think I could scrape together any compassion for this twit, but her ashen skin gives me pause. I begin to move forward.
“Miss Vanderberg?” Eugene says in alarm.
Chloe pitches forward. I forget she's a ho bag and lurch forward. Eugene and I each catch an arm, and her eyelids flutter.
“What's going on?” I ask Eugene.
His surprise is obvious.
“I do not know.”
“Let's not speculate. Call 911,” I say, taking instant charge.
He makes the call, and I hold a girl I loathe, who's been in Chet's arms. I cradle her head and try to hate her.
I'm not a medic or anything, but her gray skin and shallow breathing can't be good.
Sirens wail in the distance and the irony of my situation of being here to see Chet while the fiancée shows strikes me as funny.
I laugh. Then I can't stop laughing.
Chet walks in to see me holding his fiancée with tears streaming down my face.
In a fit of consciousness, Chloe opens her eyes and stares into mine.
“Chet's baby...” she says softly then faints back again.
That sobers me right up. My tears of turmoil freeze and dry as I sit there on the cold marble floor.
Eugene looks at Chet, who in turn looks at me.
I gently lower Chloe's head to the floor, staring at her abdomen under all the bundled layers of her clothing.
I stagger to my feet and find my way outside like a blind woman.
The medics flood around me. Two ambulances pulse their red and blue lights, but I somehow reach my Fiat.
A strong hand whirls me around, and I stare at Chet in a daze. I fight throwing up, passing out, and the urge to beat the fucking tar out of him. Emotions press against the thin layer of skin covering my body, begging to explode.
Chet's face is grim, set like the granite that graces his ginormous house. He bends over, grabs me around my thighs, and hikes me over his shoulder in a classic firemen's hold.
He jogs back up the steps into his mansion, and my hands dangle as my eyes take in the medics working on Chloe.
“She's stabilizing,” one shouts to the other.
IVs uncoil like snakes from bags full of liquid, and I watch them disappear with her into an ambulance.
“How can you be so callous?” I whisper as my torso bounces against his back.
There's the girl he's supposedly marrying, with his bouncing baby inside her, and he's whisking me off like a caveman to God knows where.
“Put me down, Chet,” I say in a low voice and hit his back with a fist.
“No. Not until we talk.”
“Ha!” I yell. I can hear the sob in my voice. “I think Chloe's cleared up all the shit I ever need to know. And by the way,” I speak to the floor, “what if she's dying back there?”
He slams through a door. I see a bed upside down before he spins me from over his shoulder and slaps me on the soft surface.
Our chests heave, and he wipes his mouth.
“I am not marrying Chloe.”
“What?”
“It was a means for my stepmother to get rid of you.”
I give a jerking nod. “Well, it worked. Fucking fantastic.”
Chet stares at me. His mouth opens, then he bites his lip, tears a hand through his hair, and I sit up on my elbows. Mad, confused, lustful... it all combines inside me like a bomb.
“I love you,” he says quietly. “And... I hate that I do.”
“Well, thanks for that!” I move to get off the bed, but his gaze pins me. It’s raw and unfiltered, and I see the truth in him. His self-loathing, his anguish over a confession I can tell he never thought he'd make.
His eyes drill mine. “If I don't fuck you in the next ten seconds, I'm going to lose my mind.”
I should get up and run from this crazy, volatile man. I search his expression, and what I see is so real, so visceral, I'm immobilized.
“Okay,” I whisper, mentally kicking my own ass.
He tosses off his shoes and tears at cufflinks that are attached crookedly before flinging them. They hit the hard marble floor and smack into the wall. Chet tears his button-down apart, and the buttons fly, one landing between my breasts.
Chet's eyes move to the hard disc and my breasts that flank it. “Get undressed or I'll tear your clothes off.”
God help me but those words hit my pussy like a lustful missile finding its target.
I whimper as he jerks my shirt over my head. My female parts swell in anticipation of what I know Chet will bring.
The material covers my eyes before it rips over my head, and I cry out when Chet is suddenly there.
His hands go to the waistband of my yoga pants an
d jerk them down. I fall forward, and he cups his arm around my ass, tipping me backward and rolling the pants to my ankles in a move so smooth, I gasp. My panties are torn off and only my bra remains.
I hear sirens and feel shame. It does nothing to dampen my desire. If anything, it grows sharper.
“Do you want this—me?” he asks.
I nod. He yanks my bra down, and my boobs painfully squeeze out of the constraint of ivory lace.
Chet lands on me, his elbows bordering either side of me to catch his weight, and in one move, he pierces my center, rocking deeply inside me.
We groan together. The fit is so tight, so perfect I can't move—don't want to. He stretches me painfully, and I gasp, pushing my hips to meet his rock-hard thrust.
More weight bears down and he grabs either side of my face with large hands. “Kandace,” he breathes against my neck.
His cock pulls out and pumps inside me again in a surge I feel to my toes. I moan, and he catches my lips, giving my mouth a gentle, full lick.
“You are my heaven,” Chet says so quietly I strain to hear him.
He spears me again, and I grind against him.
If there is such a thing as heaven, then Chet has become my angel. My dark angel.
Because there's no question about what this is.
I love him and he's professed love to me. But it's a dark love.
Chet plunges inside, over and over. Going to his knees, he lifts my hips and throws a pillow underneath my ass. His hands hold my hipbones like handles as he drives inside me.
His face is tender, and tears fall from my eyes at his open expression.
Because his body fucks me, but his gaze loves me. It's rolled together, his lust and his love. It's not mutually exclusive—it's who he is.
He wipes my tears with the pad of his thumb while his other hand drives hard against my clit in a slow circle.
My orgasm is suddenly there, crashing into me, through me. I cry out in a hoarse scream, and Chet's lips parts, his head tipping back. He leans forward, speeding his thrusts, then he slaps his hands beside my head, arching his back as he digs deep, his body frozen inside mine.
The moment is without time.
I don't think of how fucked up everything is.
The only thing is our carnal joining, driven my need and fueled by our love.
However dark, it's ours.
ELEVEN
C.
Kandace is quiet as we shower together. I've behaved abominably. Ignoring Chloe's emergent situation and targeting Kandace is only the start of my sins. I barely got out my true feelings before I fucked her.
But facing the firing squad will happen. I can see it in her eyes.
I want things clear between us. I also want to understand why she wouldn't just ask me if I was engaged to someone else. Somehow, in our time together, doubt has been a part of it from the beginning. All Clarice needed to say—or imply—was that I had something permanent going on with someone else and Kandace was gone.
Right into the arms of Ax.
Another burr in my side.
Kandace's hand sweeps to my cheek, and I hold it there. Our gazes lock, the heated water running through our joined hands in a hot stream.
Her voice breaks through my thoughts. “I want you—God, Sin—so bad. But I can't keep doing this.” Her eyes flick to the tumbled travertine tiles, her feet resting on the medallion that holds the drain. “I mean, Chloe—and don't get me wrong, she's a big-time bitch—was down for the count. Then you stroll in like God's gift to the universe, dump me over your shoulder, and nail me.”
I tilt her chin so I can look into her wide brown eyes. They take up almost every bit of the precious real estate of her face.
Her lips take up the rest.
I dip my head and softly kiss the fullness of them. Every part of her is edible. I cup my hand on her pussy.
She sucks in a sharp gasp. “Chet—Sin, stop.”
I put my forehead against hers, my hand sliding to her hip as the water patters around us in a soft spray. “I can't save Chloe. I'm not a medic. I can only save us.”
I don't need to force my emotions on this. They're at the surface, boiling through every barrier I've ever shoved in place for my own protection.
“Is what I told you not enough?”
Kandace looks at me, and tears spill onto her face, mingling with the water. Her sadness moves me.
“Don't cry, Kandace.”
She can't. Every tear she sheds is a scar on my heart.
“You say you love me.”
I cup her ass, pulling her against my erection. She smiles, shaking her head.
Her eyebrows lift. “Maybe you love my honeypot.”
“I love that as well.”
“Uh-huh.”
But she smiles and that's better than the grief I see.
“You also said that you hate it.”
I give a slow smile. “Not the honey.” I can't deny the contradiction, so I nod. “The love is horrifying. The sheer vulnerability doesn’t sit well with me.”
I shut off the tap and lead her out of my massive shower. I hand Kandace a towel, and she wraps her hair before slowly drying off her parts.
I watch.
My feelings are such a disaster there's no box to put them in. They're disorganized, chaotic. Real. And that is the really frightening realization.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks.
“I'm thinking about how I can't ever let you go.” Kandace's eyes widen.
“How I never want to see you with another man again,” I say. “How to rid myself of Chloe and still approximate a semblance of doing the right thing. And the most important thing of all…”
Her towel drops on the floor, and she is bare before me. Deliciously nude.
“What?” she whispers.
“Hearing that you feel the same way.”
I've never heard a silence as terrible as the one from Kandace. It consumes the space between us like a ravenous beast.
My heart thumps its sick beat and my breath holds like stone in my chest.
“Chloe said something about a baby. Your baby.”
The moment of truth. I exhale in a rush.
“Chloe, in collusion with Clarice, have admitted to a deception.”
Kandace walks closer, and I fight to maintain eye contact. A sweet torture. But I manage. I must. Her questions feel like a litmus test, and I'm not sure I'm up to passing.
“You've been fucking—her?”
I hear the lump in her throat, and I gather her against me.
“Yes, I fucked her along with a countless number of other shallow women.”
She tries to squirm out of my arms, her tears from my dirty truth soaking my shoulder.
I pull back and give her a shake. Her lip trembles as she looks up at me.
“I will never lie to you. I haven’t fucked anyone since I've been with you. And the best part of this is—I never wanted to.”
“Oh, Sin.” She tips her head back and searches my face. “You might love me, and you've said a lot—stuff I know's tough for you. But it doesn't take away that we're fucked up. And Chloe's pregnant. And you tried to beat up five guys at the Crawl.”
My guts churn, but I blurt the truth. “I'd do it again.”
Kandace vigorously nods, slapping her hand on a bare thigh. “I know, that's what I'm talking about. You can't just go and kick every man's ass who looks at me.”
I wag my finger in front of her face. My warning is clear. “He did far more than look at you. He had you pinned against that wall and was going to take it as far as he could, with or without your consent. Don't tell me I'm unaware of being male. I saw his intent. And”—my eyes nip at her—“I fully embrace my violent side.”
Kandace's chin trembles. “I'm aware.”
“Then why the fuck would you hang me up by my balls for protecting you?”
She flinches, and I stalk off. When I've cooled down, I pivot and look at her.
“No,” I say.
Who gives a fuck that we're naked?
Her lips pull up on one side. “You're a bossy sucker, Sin.”
“Yes”—I nod and stalk back to her—“yes, I am.”
She walks backward, her gorgeous bare ass hitting the wall.
I cage her with my arms. “I will never let anyone hurt you. It's not possible for me. If I got Chloe pregnant because she sabotaged my condom”—Kandace widens her eyes at that little revelation and I nod, going on—“I'll take care of the actual offspring. I'm never going to let an innocent child suffer because of the manipulations of others.”
“I know,” she says.
I straighten at something embedded in her tone.
“Know what?”
“I know what Clarice did to you.”
I don't move. My body is paralyzed. My skin crawls with invisible filth. This woman, the woman I love, knows that my stepmother and I have been intimate. Against my will.
What does that say about me as a man?
Now it's my turn to back away, and Kandace comes after me. “No, you don't, buster.” She backs me up against the opposite wall.
My head hits a painting, and it wobbles behind my head, threatening to fall. Kandace smacks my arm, and I growl.
“Don't get like this. Stay with me, Chet.”
“I am with no one else.”
So why does my body feel like a void, a husk that can never be filled?
Kandace taps her temple, and I shy from the compassion I see her expression. For me. “I have been raped. You have been raped. It makes a sick kind of sense that we work for each other.” Kandace sighs, tossing her damp curly hair behind her shoulder, and her breasts jiggle.
My eyes latch onto them like a starving man and she smiles. I cup her breasts, driving them together. It's so much easier to immerse myself in her instead of looking at the ghosts of my past.
“This has nothing to do with the criminal acts vested upon us as children.”
She shakes her head, her breaths coming faster from my touch. “It's part of it. The other part is just chemistry.”
I slide my hands, splaying my fingers, as they move underneath her arms and push her against the front of me, pinning my erection between us. I feel our heartbeats thudding together through the thin wall of our chests, and that warm feeling I have whenever Kandace is near expands painfully, like a bubble threatening to burst.