Confess (Sin City Salvation #1)

by A. Zavarelli

  She padded across the floor and sat down in the corner, crossing her legs and leaning back against the wall. “This might be weird to say, but I bet you’d make a good dad.”

  I turned away from her and tried to focus on Emmanuel’s case files, but the truth was, I couldn’t. I stared at them for two minutes before she spoke again.

  “Why do you hate kids anyway?”

  My foot beat a furious rhythm against the soft floor beneath my desk. “I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do.” She snorted. “Case in point, your work barbecue? You were really rude to that little boy who came up to show you his toy gun. You didn’t even acknowledge him. And then at the shelter, I saw you do the same thing. It’s like you can’t even stand to look at them.”

  My head fell forward with a breath that collapsed my chest, and I closed my eyes. She was right, and if I was going to teach Gypsy anything about life, then I had to be honest with her too.

  “That’s because I can’t,” I admitted.

  I met her eyes, and she almost looked afraid to ask, but in the end, Gypsy was always brave. “Why?”

  My throat was painfully tight as I forced the words out. “I don’t hate children, but it’s difficult for me to interact with them. It reminds me of what I lost when I was a father.”

  “Was?” Gypsy whispered.

  “Yes.” A sour taste filled my mouth as I acknowledged the truth. “My son Dawson was three when he died.”

  Silence stretched between us, and I appreciated that Gypsy gave that to me. The conversation was far from over but taking it in manageable steps made it easier. I knew she had a soft spot in her heart for children, so this would be difficult for her too.

  “Will you tell me about him?” she asked in a muted voice.

  I leaned back in my chair and stared up at the ceiling, allowing my eyes to fall shut as a blurry image of his face came to mind. I often struggled between episodes of wishing to remember him vividly and trying to block it out altogether. Either way, it didn’t help. There would only ever be pain when I thought of him.

  “It’s difficult to tell you all the things I would like to because he was taken from me when he was very small.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and choked down the acid burning my throat. “But he loved pancakes. And puppies. He was very good with animals, and I always thought we would choose a dog together when he was a little older.”

  I didn’t know what else to say about him. It was difficult for me to remember much about that time in my life, and I never talked about him anymore. I never shared anything about him because it made it feel like maybe I had imagined it all if I didn’t. But I knew Gypsy wouldn’t be able to leave it alone, and she didn’t.

  “What happened to him, Lucian?”

  Her question was only fair, given what I knew about her. But it wasn’t easy to divulge the most difficult part of my life. The chapter where I’d turned from a boy to a man, forever blackening my soul. I didn’t know if I’d make it through all of it, but I told her anyway.

  “I was young when he was born,” I began. “I hadn’t really given much thought to having children at that age. My father had a construction business, and I wanted to work my way up to taking over when he retired. That was all I thought about at the time. Women were on my radar, of course, but I didn’t want a relationship. I dated casually, and I was always upfront about my intentions. I was careful, and I wore protection.”

  “There was a girl I went out with a couple of times who’d been chasing me for a while. She told me she was okay with the situation, but after a while, I could tell she wanted more. I tried to break it off with her, but she told me she was pregnant. She’d been sabotaging the condoms.”

  “She sounds like a gem,” Gypsy chimed in.

  “She was far from it,” I answered. “And it didn’t become obvious to me how unstable she was until I was too deep in it. But regardless of the circumstances, I was having a child, and I wanted to do the right thing. I stepped up and tried to make it work with her for the baby’s sake. I was there through every milestone of the pregnancy, and for a while, I was deluded enough to think that everything was going to be okay. But after Dawson was born, her moods only worsened. She wanted all my attention to the point that it became detrimental to the baby. If I interrupted a conversation with her to feed him or change his diaper, she’d fly into a rage. She was jealous of her own son, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t win. I got her into therapy and got her started on medication, but nothing worked. She started drinking and sleeping most of the day. I couldn’t trust her to take care of Dawson while I worked, so my mother cared for him during the day. But when she started getting violent, I knew something had to change.

  “I tried to break it off with her. I offered to let her keep the apartment, and I would pay the rent. She could focus on getting herself help, and I would take care of Dawson full time in the interim. She was heartbroken, but it had nothing to do with Dawson. She kept telling me I couldn’t leave her. That’s the only thing she cared about. Eventually, she got the point that it was really over, and she calmed down. I thought everything was fine. She went into the bathroom, and I fed Dawson and put him down for bed. But the next thing I knew, the cops were banging on the front door. When I let them in, they arrested me on battery charges, and I couldn’t understand what was happening until I saw her come out of the bathroom with a bloody face.”

  “Oh my God,” Gypsy murmured. “She beat herself?”

  “She smashed her face into the mirror and told the police I did it. I was charged and booked into the county jail that night, and it didn’t matter what I told them. They didn’t believe me.”

  Gypsy curled into herself, glaring at the floor as she considered the circumstances. “That’s so awful. They had to figure out she was lying at some point, right?”

  A dry laugh ejected from my throat. “It only got worse from there. My parents bailed me out, but she’d been granted a restraining order against me which included my son. I wasn’t allowed to see him or contact her. I abided by the rules because I knew it was the only way to get Dawson back eventually. I had faith in the system. I had faith that somewhere along the line, somebody would figure it out. But they didn’t. And when she started using a phone she’d registered in my name to send herself threatening texts, it only compounded the problem. Stalking charges were added, and I was brought back to jail. This time, my parents didn’t bail me out. They didn’t know what to believe, I guess.”

  “But you were their son,” Gypsy said. “How could they not believe you?”

  “It happens more often than you’d think,” I assured her. “Things can get so skewed in a courtroom that people find themselves questioning things they never thought possible. But regardless, it wouldn’t have mattered what my parents believed. The court-appointed attorney didn’t believe me either, and it was evident in court. He did his job with the least amount of effort required on his part, and that was it. The judge handed down my sentence, and I was convicted on both charges with a two-year sentence.”

  “What a load of bullshit,” Gypsy snarled.

  “I didn’t care about the sentence. My whole life had been ripped apart, and the only thing that mattered to me was Dawson. She took him away to punish me because I wouldn’t stay with her. I was worried for his safety and well-being, and nobody would listen to me. I requested welfare checks. I did everything I could, but they left him in her care.”

  Gypsy shook her head in disgust. “Just another kid falling through the system.”

  “They failed him.” I pinched my eyes shut. “I failed him.”

  “What happened to him?” Gypsy pressed.

  “I was a few months away from my release when the warden pulled me into his office and sat me down. He told me that Dawson was gone. He’d been gone for two weeks, and I didn’t even know it. Nessie had been getting violent with him. Hitting him. Kicking him. I don’t know the extent of it. He had internal bleeding and died from the injuries because sh
e never took him to the hospital. He was three years old.”

  The numbness I’d always felt whenever I spoke those words seeped into every crevice of my soul, and I couldn’t think of anything else to add. That was the end. That had always been the end for me. The day Dawson died, I stopped living too.

  I didn’t know what Gypsy would think. I was almost relieved she hadn’t said anything at all. But when I opened my eyes and they fell on her, there were fresh tears on her cheeks. Those tears were for Dawson, and maybe a little for me too. I couldn’t recall ever sharing the grief with anyone, and it was a comfort to have a companion in my darkness, even if only for a little while.

  MY BODY MOVED BEFORE MY mind could process what I was really doing. It wasn’t my conscience, but my heart that led me to him.

  I’d been torn about this man from the very beginning. From day one, I had declared that I could only ever hate him. But between the shadows of last night and the early light of day, something had changed between us. He knew my darkest secrets, and now I knew his.

  I needed to go to him. Breathe in his scent, feel his skin against mine. It wasn’t logic, it was compulsion. A new addiction that I feared I might not ever recover from.

  He looked up at me as I approached, and I reached out my fingers to brush them through his hair. He had beautiful hair. A striking face. And a body that was made to be seen. I could understand why someone would never want to let him go because at that moment, I felt it too. But more than anything, I felt a new rage inside me on his behalf. An equal need to destroy the bitch who ruined his life, and one to comfort him in the only way I could.

  I made myself at home on his lap, straddling him as his cock stirred to life between us. “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?”

  “No,” he answered, his lips a breath away from mine. “You would be the first.”

  I slipped my hands beneath his shirt, savoring the warmth of his skin against mine. “Sometimes, I think you came into my life for a reason. I think you came to save me.”

  “Then you would be right,” he answered.

  I buried my head in the crevice of his neck and breathed him in. “Why?”

  “It’s the only thing I have to offer you.”

  I clung to his body, terrified of what I wanted to ask next. “Have you done this with others? Women like me?”

  “No.” He petted my hair. “You’re the only one.”

  Tension melted from my body, but I was greedy for more. “What about the girls at the club?”

  “They are different,” he said.

  “Different how?” I demanded.

  “They want pain. I want to provide it. That’s all it ever was.”

  “And sex too.”

  “No.”

  I tried to accept it, but the way that girl devoured him with her eyes still haunted me.

  He reached up and brushed his fingers against the pulse on my neck. “What are you thinking about?”

  “That girl at the club,” I admitted. “You seemed intimately acquainted with her.”

  “Pain is intimate,” he said. “Exposing yourself, trusting someone so completely to push your limits but stop when you ask… there’s nothing else like that. Some people, that’s what they need.”

  “And what do you get out of it?”

  His eyes darkened, and his voice was deeper when he responded. “Power. Catharsis.”

  “Do you think of your ex when you hurt someone?” I asked. “Is that it?”

  “No. I never think of her.”

  “How could you not?” I challenged.

  “If I thought about her, that would give her exactly what she wants. What’s done is done. I can’t change the past. I can’t change anything.”

  “Is that why you go to church?” I hedged. “To find forgiveness?”

  “I can’t forgive her,” he said roughly. “But I have to believe that my son is in a better place. It’s the only thing I can believe in. I’ve tried to hold onto that by living my life in a righteous way. At least, until I met you.”

  His words stung, and I couldn’t hide it. “Is the sin of my flesh worse than the others?”

  “There have been no others,” Lucian answered quietly. “She was the last before you.”

  I stared at him, certain I’d misunderstood. “You’re saying that you’ve been celibate for—”

  “Seventeen years.”

  I got lost in the dark pools of his eyes. There was nothing to compare them to. They were warm like chocolate and strong like coffee, but even those words felt too weak to describe the visceral power of this man. He could disarm a woman with a single look, but he chose not to. I wanted to know what made me so different, but I was too afraid to ask.

  My palms found his face, and my lips brushed against his. “Maybe you can find a way to repent.”

  He wrapped his arm around my waist, dragging me against his body as he sighed into my mouth. It felt like I was causing him physical pain. He was tormented, and I didn’t know if I was taking advantage of that, but I couldn’t stop. We couldn’t stop. And if he believed we were going to hell because of it, then we’d be going together.

  I pulled the tee shirt up over my head and discarded it on the floor. His eyes raked over my body as I fumbled with his zipper, trying desperately to free him.

  “Don’t deny that you want this,” I said.

  His cock sprang free, a pulsing monstrosity that belonged only to me. The thought was intoxicating in a way I couldn’t admit. I wanted all of him, and I was the only one who’d tasted him in seventeen years. I’d demolished his celibacy. Broken his vows of purity. And I wanted to do it again and again.

  His fingers slipped between my thighs, and he groaned when he felt how wet I already was. “I don’t think I have it in me to be virtuous anymore.” He dragged me along the length of his cock. “All I’ve wanted to do from the moment I saw you was desecrate you.”

  “Do it,” I begged. “Make me yours.”

  He stroked himself roughly and edged the fat head of his cock against me. “You’ve been mine from the minute you said I do.”

  The words were finalized when he buried himself inside me and shuddered. I collapsed against his chest and breathed in his masculinity. His raw vulnerability. Everything that made him my sweetest addiction yet.

  I stroked his face and ran my fingers through his hair, searching his eyes as I leaned back. “Fuck me hard. Show me.”

  He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to hurt me. “That isn’t what I need from you, pet.”

  “Maybe it’s what I need,” I said.

  He studied my face, searching for lies. But he didn’t find them. And when he was certain, he made his decision.

  His hand found my lower back, and he lifted me as he stood, only to let me collapse back onto his desk. We were still connected, and his eyes hotter than I’d ever seen them when he spread my legs wide and propped my feet on the edge of the desk.

  He could see all of me this way. Every little part. It was the first time I wasn’t inclined to squeeze my legs shut, and he knew it.

  “Fuck, you’re going to kill me,” he murmured as he gripped my knees. “Don’t move, baby girl. I’ll give you what you want.”

  He squeezed my calves in his palms and lifted my legs to suit his preference, holding me in place as he thrust inside. I watched him enter me, and then I became mesmerized by the drunken bliss on his face as he fucked me hard and fast.

  I didn’t have any intentions on coming. This was about him. I wanted to watch him use me. I wanted to know that I was the only one he’d ever use this way. I waited for him to say the words. I watched his every twitch and listened to the painful sounds that erupted from his chest. He never told me what I wanted to hear. But when he buried his cock deep inside me and unleashed his orgasm, it was good enough for me.

  When it was all over, he leaned his forehead against mine, dark lashes softly caressing his cheeks. “Don’t fall in love with me, Gypsy.”

  “
Then don’t make me,” I whispered.

  “I can’t love you back.”

  “Because of her?”

  “No.” He didn’t give me further explanation, but it didn’t matter. It felt true. And I think we both needed it to be true.

  It was the only way to protect ourselves.

  “HEY,” BIRDIE CHIRPED FROM THE other end of the line. “What’s up?”

  “Not too much.” I stared up at the ceiling from my spot on the bed. “You haven’t been answering my texts.”

  “I have been answering them,” she said guiltily. “Just not as timely as you like, but still.”

  “That’s it?” I rolled my eyes. “No explanation?”

  “I’ve been busy,” she mumbled.

  “With what?”

  “Life.” She was being vague, and I didn’t like it.

  “Are you staying out of trouble?”

  “Why does everyone always think I’m up to no good all the time?” she groaned.

  “Who is everyone?” I demanded.

  “You,” she covered quickly. “Just you.”

  “I have good reason to ask that, B.”

  And I also had good reason to doubt what she was telling me now. Something felt off with her every time I’d talked to her lately, but I couldn’t figure out what she was hiding.

  “I know you do,” she said softly. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a bitch, but if it means anything, I miss you.”

  I smiled into the phone. “It means everything. But if you miss me, then why don’t you come visit me like I’ve asked.”

  The other line was quiet for so long I had to check the call connection before she answered. “When?”

  “Soon,” I pleaded. “I want to see you.”

  She shuffled around like she was getting comfortable. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.” And surprisingly, I meant it. I could imagine Birdie probably thought things would be terrible here, but if that was the case, she hadn’t expressed it outwardly.

  “You sound different,” she noted.

  “I do?”

  “Yep.” She blew a bubble into the speaker, and I could see her trying to work it out in her mind. “What’s going on with you?”