Page 20 of I Was Born Ruined (Death by Daybreak MC 1)
Crown steps up to the edge of the water in boxers with skulls on them.
Everything about him, I find attractive.
I feign indifference; that's sort of my thing. I might be an apathetic bitch, but remember: it was beaten into me by the harsh hand of life. Joy is … just too fragile. It breaks like glass. For a while, it's pretty to look at. It's waterproof; it holds all the tears, lets them collect in a wet and salty pool. But one drop, one fall, one tumble, and it shatters to pieces, cuts and makes you bleed.
I won't let myself have it. Not anymore.
Then again, I'm not sure that I could ever call the things that happened between those men and me joy. It was passion and pain and heartache and cocks, mouths and hands and hate and want. It was lust. It was agony. It was …
Crown leaps into the water and splashes me from head to toe, dragging dark hair around my face. Fortunately for him, I'm not wearing any makeup. If I were, I would finally give in and give him that cock punch that he deserves.
“Oh, are you having a pool party?” Nellie says from behind me.
I glance over my shoulder at my mother, smoking a cigarette in a dress that costs more than Reba's mother's car. It's fancy, but it doesn't make her look fancy. It doesn't take away the lines on either side of her mouth from smoking too much, or the haunted glaze in her eyes from burying her daughters' still bodies. It doesn't cover the scars on her inner elbows from the drugs or the tightness of her face from too much drinking.
Nope. Nellie Kesselring won't fool a soul, not even with an Alexander McQueen gown on her thin frame.
“No, Nellie, I'm not having a pool party,” I say, and deep down, right behind all that bone and sinew and hot red beating pulses of my heart, I feel bad for treating her like shit. She looks so sad right now, her blue eyes like pools of tears, just sitting in the middle of a face that says hard, tough, awful little life with every blink.
But then I remember that she made me sit outside the room once while she screwed one of dad's club buddies. I remember her laughing and blowing smoke in my face as I coughed and cried and told her I didn't want to sit at the clubhouse anymore, that I wanted to go home. If she'd cared about me then even one tenth as much as I want to care about her, then things would be different. Things would be good. Maybe Queenie and Posey would still be alive?
“Please go away,” I tell her as I snatch the smoke from her fingers and walk the edge of the pool, watching Crown's big, thick body part the water as easily … as easily …
I sit down on the chair next to Reba, hard.
“I can't do it,” I tell her, feeling my breath pick up, my skin tingle. “I can't be surrounded by them every goddamn day and not think about it, Reba.”
Reba pauses and puts her magazine in her lap, glancing over at the three girls fawning over Crown in the water. He's eating it up, giving Amiya, Chardou, and Dena a ridiculous amount of attention and praise for their stupid lip licking, hair tossing, and giggling. He'd probably fuck them all, too, if they really wanted it.
I hate him. Them. All of them.
“Sweetheart, you need to calm down and listen to me,” she starts, plucking the cigarette from my hand and stabbing it into the ashtray on the side table. Reba turns to me and throws her legs over the side of her chair, planting her bare feet on the pavement.
She's the only one who knows what happened that night between me and Crown, Sin, Beast, and Grainger. The only person who knows the truth.
“Do you remember what happened last time?” she asks, and I feel this shivery heat take over my skin, like a blast of hot, desert wind.
“Yes.”
I certainly do.
Only, maybe not in the way that Reba's intending me to. Of course I remember the awful aftermath, the way I fell to pieces, the way my body ached and craved and dreamed. I remember how hard it was to walk away, to distance myself. I remember being afraid that Cat would find out, that I'd get my heart broken. I remember … everything else.
But I also remember mouths as hot as the sun, thick curved cocks of velvet and steel.
Hands on my hips.
Stubble against my thighs.
Heat, heat, heat.
“Are you even listenin', sugar?” Reba asks me as I blink red-brown eyes at her and sit back, my black bikini studded with small silver skulls. Annoyingly enough, it sort of matches Crown's boxer shorts.
