Cruel Temptation

by Callahan, Kelli

  Those damn tears brushed against my eyes, but again, I reminded myself that he had enough of my tears. He didn’t deserve them. He didn’t deserve any part of me. Jaxon might have me here, against my will, but my presence would be the only damn thing he’d have.

  I doubled checked to make sure the camera was still covered and tugged the ribbon from the back of my dress and slowly slid off the ruined gown. I wore white lingerie, hoping Brian and I would finally have sex. He wanted to wait until marriage because of what happened with Tracy, and while that was hard, I respected his decision.

  But again, along with the dress, the lingerie was wasted. I unhooked the clasps of the corset, one by one, and let out a deep breath when my lungs were free of the binding. I didn’t realize how uncomfortable it was until now. I slid off the garter belt next and decided since I had blood on me to take a shower and rinse off the day, Jaxson’s touch, and wash away how good it was to see him again.

  I worked too hard to get over him. I had come too far to take that many steps back in my life.

  My heart? While beat up and broken, it was mine again.

  My mind? While having the unfortunate memories of him lingering, was healthy again.

  My soul? I got it back from the devil since he broke his deal.

  Jaxon said he’d never hurt me.

  And he lied.

  Chapter Four

  Jaxon

  The damn hellion. I should have her ass for throwing that blanket over the camera. She had always been defiant, but there was a new fire burning in her, one that had been extinguished for far too long. This was the woman I remembered, not the woman walking down the aisle, unsure of herself.

  Quinn was a lot of things, but unsure was never one of them.

  “What do you want to do?” Sebastian asked as he tried to swivel the camera to get the blanket off, but there was no luck.

  “I’m going to let her sit there and stew. She wants me to come to her, and I’m not.” I wanted to, oh, how I wanted to, but I couldn’t let Quinn control me. I was controlling her. She played by my rules. My game. She was the pawn, and I had to make sure she stayed where I wanted her. “How much longer until we land?” I asked Louis, who was flying the plane right now through the intercom in the security office where Sebastian is currently working. Louis spent ten years as a combat pilot in the Army in his younger years. He was a guy that could do anything, and smile while he had to kill; it was why I trusted him.

  “About ten more minutes, Mr. Steel. Prepare to land, please.”

  I lifted my finger off the intercom button and sat down in the chair next to my best friend and put on my seat belt. “Change the camera view to Brian’s room.” The last thing I wanted to do was stare at a screen and not see Quinn. Her conniving ways made my jaw tick, and she hadn’t even been in my presence for more than a few hours.

  Sebastian clicked a few buttons, and the screen changed. I leaned forward right as the plane started to shake from descending, but it didn’t bother me. I held my chin with my fingers and rubbed my beard as I watched Brian. He sat in a chair in the middle of the room, head lowered. “Zoom in. What’s he saying?” I couldn’t understand a word that was coming out of the degenerate’s mouth, but he was saying something, and I swore, if it was anything degrading Quinn, I’d put a bullet between in his eyes.

  No, I couldn’t because this wasn’t about her. This was about me. I needed him alive to clear my name.

  Quinn didn’t matter.

  How many times did I have to tell myself that before I realized I didn’t believe it?

  Sebastian zoomed in, and the camera was so high quality I could see the pores on his face and the sweat dripping off his nose. His shoulder was still bleeding, but he wouldn’t die. It wasn’t a life-threatening wound. It was causing an astronomical amount of pain. Good. I wanted him in pain.

  “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you like I should have killed you all those years ago.”

  Was he already going to confess?

  He lifted his head and stared directly into the camera, beady brown eyes narrowing before a wicked, sinister smile graced his lips. He started laughing, a sound that would make a weaker man’s hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  Good thing I wasn’t a weak man.

  “I’ll kill you,” he said, his voice demonic. “And when I do, make sure you say hello to your sister for me.”

  I slammed my fist on the counter and tried to get out of my seat, but the seatbelt held me back from reaching through that screen and strangling him until his eyes fell from the sockets.

  Sebastian’s hand landed on my shoulder and held me down. He stared at me a bit wide-eyed, surprised I would come so unglued so fast, but Tracy was a trigger for me, not because I got blamed for her murder, but because she was the most important thing in the world to me and this bastard took her.

  “He said it,” I pointed to the camera. “He said he killed her! That’s enough for me to go on.”

  “It isn’t enough, and you know it. He didn’t say he killed her. You need to think clearly, or your emotions will fuck this up.”

  “I don’t fucking have emotions,” I sneered, clenching my fists until my nails dug into my palm.

  “You have the kind that kill, Jaxon. All of us do. It is what makes us dangerous men, but if you lose it, he will win. He won already once before, don’t let it happen again.”

  I shrugged his hand off me and scrubbed my hands over my face. He was right. I couldn’t let Brian get to me. I had to think smarter. He would bring Tracy up to dent my armor, and even though it worked, he didn’t have to see that. “You’re right. You’re right,” I relented. “Gas them, both. I want them unconscious when we bring them into the mountain.”

  “There’s something you don’t hear every day,” Sebastian mumbled and pressed the orange button that released a safe, but effective gas through the vents in their rooms. They wouldn’t know. They would just fall peacefully asleep.

  “You boys want some?” Ingrid opened the door to the security room, way too at home for someone we didn’t have a background check on yet and held out a joint. “It’s good shit.”

  “Where the hell did you get that? You can’t smoke on a plane,” I ripped it from her fingers and flicked it into Sebastian’s water.

  “I was drinking that,” he sighed, picking up the cup to stare into it.

  “It was in my purse. I’m old, not dead. Loosen up. Don’t make me regret hopping on this plane.” Ingrid, the woman I thought was sweet and precious, flipped me off and shut the door, leaving it smelling like a skunk.

  I despised the smell of marijuana.

  “I’m going to have to send her back,” I said, rubbing my temples. I always bit off more than I could chew. I never admitted it though.

  “No way! You can’t. She’s awesome. Please, can we keep her?” Sebastian pouted and held his hands together as one big fist under his chin as he begged.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said right before the tires hit the runway. I swayed and bounced as Louis brought the plane to a stop. “I’ll think about it. I thought she was a sweet old lady that wanted adventure. I have a soft spot for old people.” I pointed a finger at him. “Don’t tell a soul I have a soft spot.”

  He snorted and zipped his lips shut, throwing away the key.

  I narrowed my eyes at him and unbuckled my seatbelt. I stared into the monitor again, seeing Brian asleep. I could kill him. End all of this. Move on with my damn life, but I needed the truth. I needed Quinn to believe me.

  My end goal was for her to see that I wasn’t the monster in this story, in her story, and maybe any hate she had for me she could let go. I wasn’t a fool to think I had any chance with her. Our love died a long time ago, but if I could make her see I wouldn’t kill someone I love, then others could see it too.

  None of the Underground Kings could show our faces in public. All our fiasco’s made national news, and everyone had an idea of who we were. The stares I could deal with, the whispering I c
ould handle, but the fact that it was all a lie. I refused to live my life under a bed of lies.

  Maybe then, I’d be able to show my face without shame.

  I was a man who carried a lot of burdens. I shouldn’t care what people think, and while a part of me doesn’t, there was a sliver of me that did. I believed that if someone said they didn’t care what people thought, I’d call them a liar.

  Society was the fuel to a person’s life. To do better, be better, and live better than anyone else. To make the world your kingdom, and a kingdom wouldn’t exist without competition.

  When the plane came to a stop, I stood and hurried out of the room to get to my suite. As I walked down the aisle where the tan leather booth seats sat along the right and left and minibar equidistant from the front of the plane to the back. Everything was beige, gold, and white, with pops of black. I liked minimalist color. The only power that needed to be in the room was mine, not anything else.

  I took a right down a narrow hallway and came to my bedroom door. It had a gold handle, and right behind it was a woman that could have been there for me when I needed her most. Her lack of faith in me was the thing that hurt most over the years. She should have known I would have never killed Tracy, but instead of staying by my side, she was instantly afraid of me.

  It still fucked me up that she abandoned me so quickly. She was always better than me. A trust fund girl and a criminal on the wrong side of the tracks didn’t live happily ever after. She saw what she wanted to finally see— a man destined for failure.

  I laid my forehead on the door and did my best to compose myself. I was strong, but my greatest weakness was beyond this door. I knew it. And I didn’t care how long it took to convince myself, this plan had to be about me, and if I told myself enough, I’d finally believe it.

  The knob twisted under my palm as the jet engines hum became lower and lower until they finally shut up. I cracked open the door, and my shampoo lingered in the air, rosemary, and tea tree oil. It relaxed me while I showered, and besides sex, I didn’t have many things in life that relaxed me.

  I stepped forward, and my shoes gave under the soft carpet. The four-post canopy bed sat in the middle of the room, and I saw a figure lying on my side of the mattress where I usually slept. My hand gripped the wood, the soft mosquito netting acted as a barrier to keep skin from touching the wood, and when I was on the right side of the bed, I parted the sheer curtain.

  My damned heart beat so hard I thought it was about to leap out of my chest when I saw her lying there. Her blonde hair fanned across the silk tan pillowcases, and she clutched the black shirt to her chest, showing the delicate curve of her breast from the side. The skin was so flawless, and it looked softer than the silk that made the sheets.

  The gas that came through the vents must have interrupted her while she changed. I leaned down and caged her head between my arms, the bed giving under my weight as I stared. She was sleeping beauty. I wanted nothing more than to lay my lips against her, but true love’s kiss didn’t come from a villain, and I was no prince charming.

  She had a bit of venom in her veins too. She could fool everyone, but she couldn’t fool me. There was a darkness inside that yearned for me, and I had a feeling she gave up on me so easily because I brought it out of her.

  I brushed a piece of hair out of her face and ran my finger down the vein on the side of her throat, allowing a smile to tug my lips. She was truly exquisite.

  “You know what happens when you enter the devil’s lair?” I spoke to her as I kept my eyes above her breasts while I tugged the shirt over her head. I wanted to look, but I was more of a man than to take advantage of an unconscious woman. “You never escape.”

  When darkness met darkness, sometimes the brightest light couldn’t see into the depths, and that was what Quinn and I were, the abyss at the end of a black void.

  Chapter Five

  Quinn

  It was the second time I woke with a dizzy head, and I couldn’t be more pissed off. The man had some nerve; I’d give him that much. Jaxon Steel always had what it took to get under people’s skin and itch them the wrong way.

  When he got under my skin, it felt good.

  No, that was then, and this was now. A man who ruined my wedding day, my happiness, and destroyed my heart for the second time in my life. What else could he really want from me? He had taken everything. I had nothing left to give him.

  I rolled over in bed, and the mattress went on forever. When I sat up again, I held my hand to my head and cursed Jaxon Steel with every damn word I could conjure. Just wait until I saw him. I was going to give him a piece of my mind and punch him.

  In between the legs.

  And then I’d make a run for it.

  Stupidest plan ever. I had zero chance of escaping his hold. He wasn’t a man that kept anything out of reach.

  Studying my surroundings, I noticed the room was different.

  Was every time I woke up going to be a maze of rooms?

  The walls were stark white with one gold accent wall to dull how bright the room was. There were a few wide diagonal skylights along the ceilings, showing a tease of the evening sun setting.

  God, was it still the same day? Amazing what could happen in twenty-four hours.

  I rubbed my hands along the fluffy comforter and looked left and right to see the gigantic mattress I laid on. No wonder when I rolled it felt like it went on forever. It was a double California king. This room was massive, it had to be to fit a bed like this, and who needed a something so large to sleep in? How many people did Jaxon sleep with?

  No, I didn’t want to know.

  The room was cut at an odd angle, not like a plain square, but the ceiling was high and slanted, and the walls were obtuse angle’s, fanning out from the doorway instead of staying narrow. The bed sat on a white and gold slate, and this time, art hung on the walls, a style that reminded me of Jackson Pollock. A winding marble staircase sat to the left and spiraled up to the top floor. Must be a loft of some sort.

  The room was beautiful, but even with all the beauty, I wanted nothing to do with it. I wanted to go home. I was on the verge of freaking the hell out but knew throwing a tantrum wouldn’t get me anywhere with Jaxon, and I knew he wanted me to lash out at him. I knew well enough that a bit of defiance turned him on, and that was the last thing I wanted to do.

  Yeah, right. I remembered all too well how Jaxon reacted to defiance.

  It made goosebumps appear on my arm when I thought about how good he used to make me feel. If there was one thing I could say, Jaxon Steel was the best lover I had ever had and the worst man to trust. Still, memories of us rolling around in the sheets haunted me to this day. With his strong body, lean torso, tight ass, and big cock, it was hard for a woman to deny him when he carried the arsenal needed to take us down.

  “Bastard,” I grumbled, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. I didn’t remember putting on my shirt. I tilted my chin down and pinched the material, doing my best to think about how it got on, but the last thing I remember was being on the plane. “Jaxon,” I hissed. He had something to do with this and the reason why my head pounded.

  Which meant he saw me naked.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then counted to ten. It was what I always did when I got worked up and had no outlet to release my anger. I had a bit of a temper, and Jaxon never failed to bring it out of me. My feet landed on the cold floor, and I sucked in a breath. My eyes flew open from the sudden shock, and I pushed myself off the bed. My eyes landed on a leather chair nestled in the corner with a modern lamp standing to the side. There was a bookshelf to the left, probably full of ‘how to get away with murder’ or ‘best way to get rid of a body’ books.

  Turning to my left, I tugged on a long string hanging from a rod, and the extravagant curtains that took up the entire back wall parted. My breath caught when I saw the view in front of me. I was out in the middle of no man’s land by the looks of it. The ocean went on for miles, an
d the waves crashed against the rocky embankment. The large waves plundered the cliffside, even splashing up against the window, which had me taking a step back, afraid the glass might break from the strength of the water.

  I learned to never underestimate the sea.

  A knock at the door had me running to it, but right before I crossed the bottom of the bed, I thought better of it. I sat on the mattress instead of running toward the door and begging for help. I wouldn’t give any of them the satisfaction of pleading for help. I lifted my chin up and looked around the room, trying to see if there was a camera, but it wasn’t obvious like the one in the plane. If he was watching me, I had no idea.

  The knock came again, and I yawned, bored. Maybe I’d crawl back into this massive bed and take a long nap. The knob clicked, and the white door swung open to reveal an old lady wheeling a tray inside.

  “You didn’t answer the door. I like that.” Her old voice shook, and upon further inspection, I recognized her. She was the woman who sat in one of the back pews of my wedding and watched.

  I stood, wishing I had the heart to kill an old hag, but I didn’t. “You! How dare you talk to me at all after what you let happen.”

  “What could I have stopped, Rabbit? Hmm? I’m seventy-years old. All my fucks are gone. These men were the kind of men to either work for or die for seeing what wasn’t supposed to be seen. I’m smart. I’m a survivor. And these men aren’t too bad. Uptight, if you ask me. I’m sorry what’s happening to you, Rabbit, but I had to pick a side. I wasn’t ready to die. I didn’t think he’d take me up on my offer. Thought he’d kill me right there in the middle of the church before God and everybody. At least it paid off.”

  Two things about Jaxon Steel.

  He didn’t believe in god.

  And he thought old women were adorable and in need of saving.

  The woman exploited his weakness, and she had no idea. She thought it was dumb luck that kept her alive, but honestly, Jaxon probably saw his grandma in this crazy old bat. A woman who died when he was sixteen and then his parents two years later.