Claiming Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy Book 2)

by Nikki Wild

“Still fucked… At least I had some reading materials,” I say, gesturing to her studio. “I now know 1001 tricks to try in bed, how to be a boss bitch plus a few unhealthy ways to lose ten pounds in a week. Every day’s a school day.”

  “Ah, you found my secret stash of trash mags, huh? Guilty.” She brightens up. “Look, I need some way to unwind after this hectic single girl lifestyle I lead.”

  “Yeah, I bet.”

  She smiles at me and I smile back. Her mood seems different than it was yesterday. Comfortable… Happier… But still just a little nervous.

  And I feel something familiar welling up inside of me again.

  Desire.

  This girl has an effect on me.

  I follow her back inside and I watch her gather a few things from around the studio while Babeen squeezes his way between her legs.

  “So, how was your day aside from dragging my scrap metal out of a ditch?”

  “Weird. But…I have a surprise for you.”

  “I’m not sure my legs are ready for another one of your surprises,” I laugh, still sore from our hike.

  “Don’t worry, we’re not going far.”

  I extend my hand and she takes it. We exit out the ranch slider into the clearing of her back yard that looks out at a vast expanse of ocean-side cliffs and tundra.

  We breach a dense bush-line, curve around some big rocks until we are standing on an overhanging cliff. She pulls a big towel out of her backpack and lays it down on the dirt, laying out a small picnic as I watch.

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to keep me here Lucy,” I say, sitting down next to her, my knees aching.

  “I’m just trying to help,” she replies.

  “I do have to head off tomorrow. I’ve got to get my bike fixed, find my wallet, and figure out what the next step is for me. I can’t do that here… I’ve already overstayed my welcome.”

  “You’re no burden,” she says.

  “Yet.”

  “Never. Honestly, stay as long as you need. I enjoy your company.”

  “Lucy, I don’t wanna offend you in saying this. Why, goddammit, why do you want to keep me here so badly?”

  “I don’t.” She’s quick to answer. “I just want to make sure you’re fit enough to leave. What if you go back to Jethrow and realize it was a mistake? You’ll be alone.”

  “I want you to come with me.”

  “What?” she asks, choking on a bite of her sandwich.

  “Help me get my bike back to Jethrow. I’m remembering things. Names, faces. I know my club is back there and I know I can fix whatever the hell happened. I’ve got money there… I can pay you back for what you’ve done here.”

  “Landon, you know I’d do anything for you it’s just… I can’t go to Jethrow… I mean…” She cuts herself off and her eyes widen. I stare at her for a moment. She’s do anything for me? What in the hell was going on with this girl?

  “What about Mia?” she says, derailing my whole chain of thought.

  “I might have hit my head, but I do know one thing. I’m not with Mia. I don’t think I’ve ever been with her.”

  I pause as Lucy looks me over, her eyes clearly looking for some evidence that I might be lying to her… Thing is, I meant every damn word I just said. Body, heart, and soul.

  “I need to tell you something,” she says matter of factly, breaking her silence. “Because you’re leaving and it’s one of the last chances I’m going to get to tell you…”

  Chapter 12

  I tense up. The secret was right there on the tip of my tongue. I just had to breathe and the truth would be out there. I was going to tell Landon I knew him — know him — and pray he wouldn’t run. But I don’t do it. I can’t.

  What’s the point?

  What’s the point of any of this? Why am I trying to keep alive something we buried six years ago?

  I walk to the edge of the cliff. My stomach lurches when my foot slips gently in some loose soil. I regain my footing and stare down to the crashing waves thirty feet below me. Who would miss me if I fell? And by me, I don’t mean Lucy Rivers, the bullshit artisté. I mean Lucienne Rose Palermo, the real me, the girl I used to be. Landon wouldn’t. To him, I’m a crazy girl too keen on nursing a convict. Todd wouldn’t either. He’d say I’m manipulative… That I’m just a girl who led him on and gave nothing back. And Billie… Well, I’m not who she thinks I am anyway. Let her miss Lucy Rivers. Maybe Babeen would miss me, if only for a few weeks until he realizes the other neighbors would put food out for him too.

  “Lucy?”

  Landon’s memory might never return. I kick some stones and watch as they splash into the ocean making so sound at all.

  “Careful there, sweetheart.”

  Landon’s memory might never return and I’ll be left alone with the secret; Left to bear the heavy load, left to be the only one questioned by cops should they reopen the case— Lonely Little Lucy.

  “Why did you come here?” I say to the old Landon, though I know he isn’t here anymore.

  “I still don’t remember, Lucy. When I do, you’ll be one of the first to know.”

  “Why here?” I insist to this familiar voice behind me, pretending it’s the dead talking. “Why Baddock National Fucking Park? This isn’t even the quickest way between places.”

  “Maybe I wanted to take the scenic route.”

  He’s laughing this off. I kick a bigger stone into the water this time and take another step closer to the cliff’s breach, teasing myself.

  “What if you came here for something important? What if you never remember?”

  “Lucy, calm down. Please step back from there.”

  “What if?”

  “I don’t know… Lucy, please come sit back down. I ain’t jumpin’ in after you this time. That water’s a little rough for me.”

  I look at Landon, full of unjustified rage.

  I want him to remember me! I need him to! I need him to remember what we share, our past, our love for each other, what we gave up or I’ll lose my mind or throw myself off the side of this goddamned cliff.

  I see red.

  “Lucy.”

  My eyes tunnel into feeling an anger towards him I’ve never known. My neck tightens, jaw clenched so hard it might fracture.

  “Why won’t you remember?!”

  He stands up and rests his hands on my shoulders. I slap them away. “You’ve got fucking head trauma you fucking idiot! Go to a fucking hospital! You may be ruining your life!”

  “W—Where is this coming…I’m going to be ok, Lucy! I can’t go to the hospital… I know I can’t…”

  “Why the hell not? Would you go to jail? What did you do, Landon?!”

  “I don’t fucking remember, okay!”

  “You’re an idiot!”

  “You’re insane!”

  And without warning, I land a sharp slap across his cheek. He huffs like an upset bull. I’d never think to harm him like that, ever. I reach out to ease the pain but he takes hold of my wrist.

  “The fuck is wrong with you?” he says. I realize the madness of this all to him— The madness that an almost stranger just hit him across the face.

  “You,” I say, exasperated. “You!”

  “You don’t know me!” The word strikes me like an emotional bullet— Sharp, shocking, cold and quick. It makes real what I’d hoped wasn’t true: Landon thinks I’m certified insane. I’ve failed to suppress my feelings for him.

  “Why can’t you remember?” I whimper.

  Landon stares at me a minute, his expression too soft to suggest complete anger and disgust. We stand in silence until he turns and makes his way back down the trail to my house. I curl over, falling to the ground to finally let out the screams and crying into the towels below me.

  I want to run away, to hide somewhere deep and dark where no one will find me, inside the cave behind the waterfall. I long to cease existing. I’m not crazy — I know that — but there’s no way Landon’s goi
ng to believe me after that little breakdown.

  Babeen appears when I’ve finally mustered the courage to head back inside.

  “Hi, fella,” I say. “He’s finally left us, huh?” I scratch at his ears and kneel down to meet him.

  Babeen meows.

  “No,” comes a deep voice. “I haven’t.”

  Landon is sitting shirtless on the kitchen counter. He looks distressed, his expression tense. I’m so embarrassed and self-aware that no appropriate words come to mind. All I mutter is a half-hearted ‘Oh’.

  I watch him sitting there, admiring the man he’s become. There’s no letting him go— Not again, not now. When he leaves and I’m unable to go with him, I’ll be torn apart. I’ll become a walking shell, void of a want to show affection to anyone but him. He’s an incurable disease upon me, a poison, one that leaked back into my stable life and forever tainted the waters.

  Landon slides off the counter and walks over to me, his height towering over mine. “You calm now?”

  “Yes.”

  Instead of scolding me like I thought he’d do, like Todd would, Landon puts his rough hands to the curves of my neck and lifts my head to look up at him. My exhale catches. I can see the intensity of his stare and the fire in those hooded eyes. Landon is after blood or answers.

  I drop eye contact nervously. My chest heaves. He has a firm grip on me and tilts my head back up so my attention is exclusively with him. His thumb pulls down at my lower lip and he’s watching my mouth. My palms press flat to the muscles of his stomach and I feel him flinch.

  “I don’t understand,” he says. “I don’t fucking understand…”

  He presses his torso against mine.

  I swoon, my knees going weak as he controls a deep and powerful kiss, pressing his tongue through the threshold of my lips. I breathe sharply through my nose, my stomach now full of unsettled butterflies batting their wings to freedom. The kiss makes me want to fly away with them. I can smell him again, taste him, Landon. My Landon. He kisses the same way he always did: Desperately, passionately, controlling me just the way I like.

  His hands drag from my neck to pull through and tug at my hair, forcing me to reveal the soft skin of my neck to him. My nipples stiffen with his dominance. I give myself completely over to him. He tilts down to bury his face in the nook of my neck and places a delicate bite upon it. My skin’s ablaze. My blood pulses alive with an electricity, an explosive spark, I haven’t felt in years. I have never in all my life been kissed in the way he is kissing me now, backed by years of more fervor and technique compared to the days of us as awkward kids.

  My knees knock together as his aggression nearly makes me collapse. He hefts me up into his strong arms, holding me firmly against his body as he walks us over to the kitchen counter.

  With one hard sweep of his arm, he clears all the miscellaneous contents of my bench and sits me down on the edge. I’m kissing him back finally, my stunned paralysis wearing off as our tongues dance, darting and caressing but never staying long enough for either one of us to be able to predict the other’s next move. It’s like playing speed chess, and in this lustful haze, I have no idea which one of us is winning. All I know is that he’s the more aggressive player.

  Landon hikes my shorts down my thighs, revealing my goose-pimpled flesh. He moves his touch past my hips and links his fingers into my panties, his thumbs caressing the sheer lace at the front.

  “Do you want this, Lucy?” he says. My face flushes again.

  I lean forward to pull him between my legs and nod against his head.

  “So do I.” When the words ooze from Landon’s lips, I can’t hold myself back any longer. With trembling fingers, I lift my t-shirt over my head, then scoop my breasts out of the cups of my bra as we kiss again. They’re heavy in his hands. He tweaks my rosy pink nipples with his forefingers and thumbs, watching me writhe and shiver to his touch.

  I arch against him, rubbing myself on the crotch of he jeans as he strokes my hair, mouth agape, our pleasures building to soaring heights.

  “Fuck me,” I breath, unable to resist him not being inside of me.

  His lips meet my nipples and he tells me, “Say it again. Like you mean it.”

  “Fuck me, Landon,” I say through gritted teeth with my fingers tugging on his hair, my arousal now peaking.

  Landon lays me on my back and runs his hands over my curves, now fully on display as he removes my bra and discards it. I’m laid bare for him. He parts my thighs and I wrap them high around his back, inviting him to tease my slit and feel how much I want him.

  Landon groans, hiking down his pants quickly. He slips his tip into my wetness, easing it slowly back and forth out of me. It’s been so long since I’d felt this level of connection with anyone that I immediately tense, clenching down on his thick cock and making an even tighter fit for him to struggle into. He heaves back and forth while holding a gentle grip to my throat. That gesture alone suggests so much. The old him is in there somewhere, remembering what I enjoy. I turn my head to sink my teeth gently into his bicep at that knowledge. There’s hope for our connection.

  “Ohh, fuck,” he growls.

  He makes one long stroke into me and I throw my head back, reveling in how he fills me. I clench downward again as he bucks into me, his movements erratic and desperate. I wiggle and moan myself, unable to hold in my oncoming climax.

  “Holy shit!” I breath, now having to grip onto the sides of the counter for dear life as he pummels into me savagely, ravaging my hungry self for his own primal needs. “I’m gonna come, Landon. Let me come for you.”

  “Rub yourself for me,” he commands as he slings both my calves over his shoulders. I wail at the new sensation. He hilts so deep inside of me that my eyes roll to the back of my head. “Rub your clit, Lucy.”

  I reach down and spread myself open, rubbing her for him as he requests. He sighs in approval and slows his thrusts. I can feel his shaft fattening, swelling with each pass. The wet friction on my clit verges on unbearable, and I squirm all over him, whimpering and whining as I reach my orgasm. I struggle to hold in my cries of sincere, deep pleasure as I tumble off the precipice of rapture.

  “Come for me, Lucy,” Landon orders as he studies my contorted look.

  I breach my pinnacle.

  “Oh, God,” I whine. “Shit.”

  My soft walls pulse around his cock. I flail a moment, my abs tightening to sit and hold Landon close to me. He’s unrelenting. He stays inside me and lifts me from the counter. He isn’t gentle now as he bucks into me, his hips slapping against the back of my thighs.

  My hands link around the back of his neck and I watch him in my sweet reverie as his eyes clench closed. His cock gives way inside me and he starts to fill me.

  We embrace as though we want to become one entity. Landon’s arms encircle my torso entirely and I sink my nose into the nook of his collarbone. I’m safe. I’m whole. They are feelings, long, lost and forgotten feelings so elusive that I’m scared they’ll immediately evaporate as soon as I let him go.

  When he finally pulls away, he helps me regain my footing, still shivering from the magnitude of the orgasm he gave me.

  He holds me in close to his body, resting his chin atop my head and places delicate kisses upon it. I make sure to make the most of this moment. I inhale his sweet, familiar odor and kiss his bare flesh. My butterflies haven’t let up. Landon, even in a state of amnesia, makes me feel so alive, so safe, so feminine, so beautiful, so wanted…

  “What are you doing to me?” I hear him say from above me.

  I wish I knew.

  Chapter 13

  The next morning, I sit at my easel in his t-shirt, suddenly realizing what to add to the girl in the painting.

  Landon is out in the backyard analyzing the full extent of the damage to his bike. There’s a smile on my face I can’t hide no matter how hard I’ve tried. He’s got one too.

  There’s a quieter part of my mind disgusted that I didn’t tell him
everything… But I’m ignoring it.

  My brush strokes glide and weave along the edges of the girl in my painting. Today’s palette is filled with muted pastels. They leap and dance around her and I add some light reflections into her otherwise sullen gaze. She has awoken.

  I spin around with a smile and walk over to my radio. The dust is a sign of its use. I don’t remember the last time I had music on in here. Whichever genre of music station we received out here tended to bore me quickly. But I dial the tuner to the local Top 40 station and some cheesy boy band starts crooning through the speakers.

  My immediate reaction is to change it. So I don’t.

  The girl in my painting…What else does she need? I step left to right with the rhythm and try invoke my muse. My paintbrush is weaving through the air. I’m happy. This must be how happy feels. It’s been so long since I’ve felt it. My heart is alive. I’m alive.

  A tilt of the head.

  Perhaps she needs some brighter flowers…

  A wreath…

  Lillies…

  Babeen approaches me. “What do you think, Babeen?” I shout over the music. “What do we think of adding some flowers? Too clichè.”

  Meow.

  Stepping back to the easel, I sketch out the bloom that will sprout from the girl’s exposed ribcage. My butt’s swaying left and right as I do it. I’m dancing. I don’t dance at all let alone when I paint. But it’s fun. I swipe small streaks of pale pink atop the brown below it. The tones compliment each other perfectly.

  “Luce!” Landon yells over to me from the doorway.

  “Yeah?” I don’t turn around to look back to him. All I want to do is keep dancing and painting. I want to hold onto this feeling, longing to exist in this moment forever if it were possible.

  He mumbles something back to me. “What was that?” I say back. “Can’t hear you. Music’s too loud!”

  “Lucy!” he shouts again.

  I turn over my shoulder with a smile as he walks to the radio. The grease from his hands stain the dial. There’s new silence. I’m brought back down to earth.