Twisted Affair: Dark Taboo Romance (Eddie and Heaven Book 1)

by V Vee

  And they wouldn’t hesitate to complete their task.

  “I can, but I don’t want to chance being caught. Besides, I believe I would like to take Heaven to the Bahamas and elope. It will sound romantic to the papers, but it will just be a way to ensure she is loyal to the O’Sullivans. She’s too honor bound to betray me—us—if she’s a part of the family.”

  My grandfather hummed; no doubt having picked up on everything I wasn’t saying. After a long moment it wasn’t his voice I heard in response, it was my father’s which let me know that while it had been approved there was a contingency attached.

  “Granted. But you have to help your cousin with her little problem.”

  I sighed. “Fine. I’ll help Charlene with her problem with Kyra McCarthy.”

  “Be careful, Son. That woman is more dangerous than I think we know.”

  I scoffed. “Please. I’m not afraid of that black bitch. I dare her to bring it on.”

  Chapter 11

  Heaven’s Condo

  Baltimore, MD

  Heaven’s Bedroom

  Eddie

  There was a weight on my chest and a familiar, intoxicating fragrance beneath my nostrils. I inhaled deeply as I woke up, trying to pull the scent deep into my lungs. When I opened my eyes, my heart thudded furiously as I took in my surroundings. On the wall were childish drawings, pictures of Heaven, Ava, and a little girl, of Heaven, the same little girl, and Kynan. Various photos of the little girl with different people in Heaven’s family were on the wall, the dressers, and the nightstands. I frowned as I looked around, but it was the photo of a very young Heaven in the hospital, her hair in disarray, tears rolling down her cheeks as she held a small bundle in her arms, with Zander’s arm around her shoulders, smiling widely at the camera that grabbed my attention.

  What. The. Actual. Fuck?

  Did Heaven have a baby with Zander?

  I wanted to get up to check out the pictures a little closer, but Heaven slept on top of me. Her hair was contained beneath an orange silk bonnet, her body bare and pressed close to my own nude form. After we’d made love at the hospital, we’d come back to Heaven’s place and had sex again.

  In the living room.

  The kitchen.

  The shower.

  And again in her bedroom.

  I was determined to christen every square inch of Heaven’s condo.

  Before I talked her into coming back home with me. Where she belongs.

  My eyes drifted back to the photos on the wall and a peculiar feeling moved through me.

  It was… jealousy. Envy.

  Heaven was supposed to have my babies. No one else was supposed to experience the wonder, the beauty, of her swelling with their baby inside of her. The fact that it was Zander only made it worse.

  The monster inside of me wanted to rage. Tear down the pictures, the illustrations, break the picture frames. I wanted to yell. Punch holes into walls.

  I wanted to find Zander and finish what I started.

  But the soft snores coming from Heaven’s full lips and slender throat soothed the savage beast within me. I would wait and talk to her once she woke up. I would ask her about the little girl in the photos.

  I would find out why she gave him what was supposed to belong to me.

  And as I had these thoughts an image rose in my mind of another woman, one who wanted to give me the very thing Heaven had denied me.

  A baby.

  Afghanistan

  Marine Camp

  Two Years Before Discharge

  Eddie

  I slid my hands down the smooth, silky skin of the woman lying in my arms. As long as I didn’t open my eyes I could imagine that she was Heaven. The only woman I really wanted. The one I longed for every minute of every day.

  The one I was a fool to leave.

  “What are you thinking about?” Her voice, husky from sleep, drifted up from the scratchy pillow she had her face pressed into.

  Illusion ruined. Iris spoke.

  I tried to hold back the sigh of annoyance and frustration that wanted to leave my lips. It wasn’t Iris’s fault that she wasn’t the woman I’d been longing for and dreaming of for the past six years. It wasn’t her fault that I’d cut off communication with Heaven because hearing her tell me about college hurt too much. And it certainly wasn’t her fault that I’d decided to re-up after four years for another tour because I’d felt pride over the Master Sergeant telling me they needed me.

  All of these mistakes were on me.

  I missed Heaven so much that I couldn’t take a breath without my heart breaking just a little more and dropping the broken pieces down into my stomach, making me feel ill. I heard her melodic voice in the wind. Smelled her sweet scent in the desert air. And night after night, I felt her touch on my skin. I heard her cry out for me in the darkness, and it was only my sense of self-preservation, my love for my country, and my sense of duty that kept me from going AWOL.

  “Nothing,” I responded, placing a kiss to the back of her shoulder and sitting up.

  “You’re thinking about her again, aren’t you?”

  I groaned and rubbed my face. I’d unintentionally stepped into an emotional minefield. I didn’t want to lie; Iris would see through that and it would cause an argument. But I also didn’t want to tell her the truth. It would only hurt her feelings, and she didn’t need to be the stand-in for another Marine. Not after what she’d already been through. But fuck, what did I say?

  Thankfully, Iris kept speaking, letting me off the hook, until I actually listened to what she was saying.

  “... perfectly understandable, she was your high school sweetheart, but she’s probably moved on by now, and so have you. She probably has kids and is married to some other man. And maybe she thinks about you every so often, but it’s been six years now, she could have a kid that is at least four, you know, give her a year to grieve losing you, a year to be pregnant…”

  “What the fuck?” I growled. “Are you trying to tell me that you think Heaven went out, found another man, and had his fucking baby?”

  Iris shrugged. “I’m saying it is certainly a possibility and you should prepare yourself for that.”

  I shook my head. “No. I know her. I know Heaven better than I know anyone. There’s no way she would do that. It took her four years just to sleep with me, and she loved me. There’s no way she would turn around and just sleep with another man like that.”

  Iris laughed and shook her head. “What makes you men so arrogant that you think we women sit around and wait for you to pull your heads out of your asses and come back to us, or treat us right? She waited because she was a virgin, and every woman, all over the world, has heard about how special and precious their goddamn hymen is. We’ve been given the song and dance about giving our virginity to either our husbands or to that special someone in our lives. But what we’re not told is that once we lose that virginity, we need to treat every sexual encounter as if we’re losing our virginity all over again. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, and a lot of women see that as their right to explore their sexuality, to be free sexually.”

  She leaned close to me and I felt shock, denial, and anger coursing through me. No. I refused to believe that Heaven was out there with some other man, giving him what belonged to me.

  “I bet your little Heaven has a baby with another man… so why don’t you have a baby with another woman?”

  Heaven’s Condo

  Heaven’s Bedroom

  Baltimore, MD

  Eddie

  I’d been saved, once again, from responding by the call to arms. But that conversation had lingered in my mind. Long after Iris and I stopped sleeping together and she was discharged, amazingly, for getting pregnant while on leave.

  I looked down at Heaven who was sleeping peacefully in my arms and tried to figure out when she and Zander had their daughter. I wanted to ask her, to shake her awake and demand that she tell me everything, but as I looked around the room, guilt settle
d in.

  Heaven was right. I had left her. While I had been doing it to make something of myself, to get a career where I could take care of her, to follow in my brother’s footsteps, I’d emulated Logan just a little too much. And while Parker had been in a limbo, somewhat, in regard to dating—a lot of that due to the fact that she’d been pregnant with my nieces when Logan left—the same could not be said for Heaven.

  She’d moved on, and if I wasn’t such a bastard, I would let her go. Let her live her life with Zander and their daughter. Let her get married to him. Let her be happy. But…

  She was mine. She still loved me and I for sure, was still madly in love with her. We could deal with the whole, her having a kid thing, but I was home now.

  And there was absolutely no way that I was letting her go.

  Chapter 12

  Heaven’s Condo

  Baltimore, MD

  Heaven’s Bedroom

  Heaven

  I knew he was in my bed as soon as I opened my eyes.

  Waking up to him was like a dream...

  Or a nightmare.

  The sunlight caught on my engagement ring and guilt pierced my heart.

  But at the sound of his groan it quickly faded.

  He was my fate, my destiny.

  Loving him couldn’t be wrong, and if it was...

  I just didn’t care anymore.

  Lifting my head, I found his gaze resting on mine.

  “Morning,” he greeted me with a slow, seductive smile.

  “Good morning,” I responded, feeling shy. The same way I’d felt the first time we’d ever slept together.

  Senior prom. When Ashley had been conceived.

  A different type of guilt curdled in my belly and I had to avert my attention so that Eddie couldn’t see the lie I’d been keeping from him since the moment I found out. Parker had warned me—over and over—with Ava joining in, that I needed to tell Eddie about Ashley. But I hadn’t, and now…

  “Hey.” Eddie reached out, pinched my chin in between his thumb and forefinger and lifted my head until my focus was on him once more. “None of that. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Eddie…” I started. Determined to tell him everything.

  He shook his head. “No. I thought we went over this already. You belong to me, Heaven. You always have. We belong to each other. I am yours, and you are mine. This whole engagement thing with Zander is fucking stupid. Just call it off and let me spend the rest of my life making up for my mistakes and loving you so fiercely, so thoroughly, so completely that they write songs, books, and movies about us.”

  My breath caught in my lungs as I stared up at him. Shaking my head, I pushed away from him and climbed out of bed. I began to pace, trying to figure out how to tell him that I wasn’t feeling guilty about Zander. In the comfort of Eddie’s embrace I could safely think, Fuck Zander, but it was Ashley, her true parentage, that had my stomach tied up in knots. I’d been lying to my daughter and to the man who’d fathered her for so long I was afraid I’d never be able to uncover the truth.

  I felt Eddie coming up behind me, and I stiffened. But only for a moment. Once he was close enough to me, he tugged me to him, and unable to refuse the comfort I knew I would find, I lay my head on his chest. He shivered as I burrowed closer to him and I couldn’t help but grin when I felt his erection against my belly.

  “We can do this, if we do it together, Heaven,” he murmured softly.

  I clenched the front of his shirt and sighed. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about. There’s so much more going on than you know”

  “Then tell me what it is, Baby, because from where I’m standing, the biggest issue we’re having is that you’re engaged,” he told me.

  I leaned back and stared up at him.

  “You think I wanted to get engaged to Zander?” I shook my head. “That makes absolutely no sense, Eddie. Everyone knew that one day you and I were going to end up together. Everyone. You’re the one who fucked up and I needed someone. I needed help.”

  “I. Love. You.” He shook his head when she opened her mouth to speak, already knowing what she was about to say. “The love I have for you goes beyond friendship, beyond familiarity, beyond comfort. I love you with my soul. I love you with every piece of me. You are my breath. You are every beat of my heart. The rhythm of my spirit. You are the other half of me. I am not me, if you’re not there. By my side. My better half. My soulmate. You own me, Hev. You are in my blood. You possess me. I am yours.” He placed his hands on either side of my face and stared into my eyes that had flooded with tears.

  “And you. Are. Mine,” he declared before he took my mouth in a kiss that was so filled with passion, so possessive, so wild and free, that the only sound to be heard in the bedroom was our harsh breathing, the wet tangling of our tongues in a battle for dominance. He shuddered when I slid my hands up to stroke his neck, before burying them in his hair.

  Hands caressed, stroked, and gripped.

  Mouths touched, pressed together, opened, and sucked.

  Teeth bit. Tongues licked.

  Clothes flew across the room.

  Before long I was pressed down onto the bed again, Eddie deep inside of me. Thrusting. Panting. Moaning. Moving. Bringing me more bliss and pleasure than I even thought was possible. Until finally, blissfully, wonderfully, my orgasm crashed over me. My body shaking, fingertips and toes going numb, my mouth going dry, and my eyes rolling back into my head for a moment.

  He pressed close to me, holding me to him so tight that not a drop of his cum was wasted, and he chanted how much he loved me over and over again.

  I knew it then.

  I felt it.

  I saw it.

  Just… while we belonged together, I couldn’t let things continue until he knew everything.

  “I love you,” he breathed against my neck.

  “Oh Eddie, I—” I began, stopped, took a breath, and plunged on, having diarrhea of the mouth as I let every secret spill out from between my lips.

  “I was pregnant when you left. When you got over there and we stopped talking, I turned to Zander and asked him to help out. I gave birth to a little girl, I named her Ashley, after your mother, but Zander is the only father that she knows. But Zander knows that I don’t really love him, but I’m afraid to leave him. He’s dangerous. And I’m scared of what he might do to Ashley. To me. To my job. To my family. So while I love you—I mean, of course I do. You’re my soulmate—I can’t leave him. I have to marry him.”

  Chapter 13

  Logan & Parker’s Home

  Logan’s Backyard

  A Marine Barbecue

  Baltimore, MD

  Eddie

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Logan’s voice jerked me out of the haze I’d been in for the last few hours.

  I blinked over at him and wet my dry lips.

  “Ashley…” I said softly.

  Logan nodded. “Yeah man. I’m glad you finally know.”

  I whirled around and glared at him. “You knew I had a fucking kid out there and you didn’t tell me?” I shoved him.

  “Didn’t you do the same thing to me?” Logan pushed me back.

  “Which means you should know not to do it to me! After how you felt over the whole thing,” I growled. “How the fuck could you keep something like that to yourself?”

  “I told you to bring your little, pasty white ass home, didn’t I?” He shook his head. “I told Heaven to tell you, but she kept denying that Ashley was yours. Stopped coming around because I kept talking about it. But bro… that little girl looks just like Mom.”

  All of the anger dissipated as I thought back to the pictures that had been on Heaven’s wall and her nightstand. And the picture I’d snatched of the two of them on my way out of the door. I reached in my back pocket and tugged out the fold photograph. I stared down at the beautiful, light-brown skinned girl, with the gap in between her front teeth, her hair a mass of dark brown curls with what l
ooked to be strawberry blonde streaks in it. She had big, wide, green eyes, but it was her smile…

  I’d know that smile anywhere.

  “Mom?” I breathed out, emotion clogging my throat.

  I knew the little girl wasn’t my mother, I mean, it was pretty obvious, but, for as much as I’d become obsessed with discovering when Heaven had given birth to her, I hadn’t actually looked at her. As I looked over her features it hit me right in my gut. She—Ashley—was almost an exact replica of my mother at the same age.

  “Yeah. I sort of reacted the same way,” Logan confessed, rubbing the back of his neck, sheepishly. “I mean, I don’t believe in all the reincarnation bullsh—” He looked around to make sure his daughters, my nieces Holly and Noelle, weren’t nearby, before he continued. “—bullshit, but hell, I would be inclined to just looking at my niece.” He nodded towards the picture I held in my hand.

  I shook my head. “How could she not tell me?” I whispered, swallowing the tears that threatened.