To Burn In Brutal Rapture

by Nyla K

  It’s fun, entertaining, and satisfying on a strictly physical level. I’ve never felt the need for anything else.

  The only relationship I’ve sustained for more than a weekend is with Damien. He’s my family, and we’ve been on each other’s team since we were kids. Outside of that, I don’t see the need for companionship. My current process is sufficient, and as scumbag foster dad number four used to always say, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

  Then again, he was a drunk perverted asshole, so maybe I shouldn’t be following his advice.

  Regardless of all that, I quickly forgot about my date with Evangeline after it happened. I was sure she would tell her father I was a lost cause. Too quiet, too pensive, too dark and complicated. In short, too much fucking work.

  So I wrote off the night as a business venture explored and dubbed a dead-end, instantly planning where to go and who to see to get my rocks off that weekend. But to my surprise, Jerald reached out to Damien and me with the invitation to come aboard the yacht, being that the stars had aligned and all our schedules were clear. And he informed us that Evangeline would tag along since, according to him, she was very excited to see me again.

  It threw me off just a tad. I’m not changing my plans or anything, but I’m intrigued now. I wonder what on Earth this waspy woman would want with someone like me? She’s already a billionaire. It’s not like she could be trying to get at my money.

  Damien suggested that I give it a shot with Evangeline, which is the only reason I’m entertaining these thoughts right now, sitting next to her while she bats her lashes and sips Moet from a glass with a strawberry floating in it.

  If Day thinks it’s a good idea, then I suppose it’s worth exploring…

  “So I had fun the other night,” she speaks, scooting in closer so that her knees are touching mine.

  The off-white dress she’s wearing hangs away from her shoulders a bit, displaying her golden complexion and the fact that her tits can easily be supported without need for a bra. Her dark brown hair is loose and flowing down to said tits, blowing in the ocean breeze, a few strands flying across her little button nose.

  I blink twice and cock my head. “Really?”

  Most women like her are thrown off by my limited words and reactions to their advances. They get caught up in thinking I’m being a dick, and it either makes them want to give up on me, or try harder.

  Evangeline must be a part of the second group, because she ignores my grumpy facade and grins, biting her lip before nodding. “Yea.”

  There’s something ensnaring about her. I’m not sure what it is, but despite knowing what her father wants to happen between us, and knowing it’s not something I’ve ever wanted to take part in, I find myself inching closer to her.

  “Me too,” I breathe, feeding her the lie like it’s one of those floating strawberries.

  And she eats it up, just like I want her to, placing a hand on my thigh and allowing her fingers to dance ever-so-slightly.

  “We should do it again,” she whispers, then presses her breasts into my arm. Clenching my jaw, I swallow hard to keep myself in control, though the feeling of her pert nipples is growing the interest of my dick. “I mean, alone. Without the chaperones.”

  I release a huff of breath that’s as close to a chuckle as I get. But she likes it, and it makes her smile wider.

  In this moment, right here on this million-dollar yacht, surrounded by caviar and champagne, I can see what Jerald wanted for the two of us. Evangeline and me together makes sense. We’re both rich and bored. I’ve never had an actual relationship, and I’d be willing to bet she hasn’t either.

  It’s as if she’s been saving that persona for her future husband.

  Me.

  Later that evening, Damien and I arrive back at his home, where my Maserati is parked.

  I live less than ten-minutes from his place, which was a requirement when we moved out here. We haven’t been more than a few miles apart since we were kids and coming to Miami to start our business together solidified that we’d never have to be.

  I still remember the day we decided to move down south. It was the day after Damien and Ophelia’s wedding in Key West. Her dads live there, and they thought it’d be a fun place to have the wedding. Plus, Damien knew it would really irk his parents, forcing them to fly out to Key West and sit amongst a rowdy group of Ophelia’s gay dads and all their colorful friends. He was spot-on, too. Dallas and Elenora Wright were out of their element, which made the whole weekend that much more satisfying.

  Day and Lia, on the other hand, had a blast. As did I, because seeing them so happy brought some fresh red blood into the blackened lump of coal that lives in my chest.

  It was a gorgeous wedding. We were in our twenties and the world was truly ours, everything twinkly and alive to our youthfully optimistic eyes. As miserable as I was deep-down in my soul, these two people had brought me to life as much as I could ever hope for.

  I was happy. My best friends got married with the Florida sun setting behind them and I’d never felt so whole.

  The next day, I drove them the three hours from Key West to Miami so they could catch a flight to Aruba for their honeymoon the next morning, after which I would get my flight back to New York. That night we stayed in a hotel, to experience some of that infamous South Beach nightlife while we were here. After way too many rounds of tequila shots, we went out walking along the beach, across from all the colorful dancing lights.

  Miami just seemed so different from New York. New York is stuffy and congested. Miami is vibrant and liberated. Hot as balls, but Ophelia loved the heat.

  Ever since her dads had moved to Key West a few years earlier, she’d been complaining to Damien about hating the snow. She painted him a picture of a tropical wonderland, very different from the noisy, bustling city we’d called our home for so many years. Then Day painted that picture for me.

  So the three of us decided, that night, just drunken fools stumbling around the beach, giggling like the young, stupid kids we still were, that we would move to Miami, and start our business here.

  We chose this stifling sunshine city over the seasoned, over-saturated business world of Manhattan. We were building our company with the help of Damien’s father’s connections, so we’d be able to get it off the ground anywhere, really. But we were confident enough in ourselves that we didn’t need anyone other than us.

  When Damien and Ophelia got back from their honeymoon, we all packed up and moved to Miami. They bought their first house, and I rented a luxury apartment downtown while we got the business off the ground. And it only took us a couple years before we were bringing in so much money, we could buy the houses we own now, in Bayshore.

  No matter what happens in the future, I wouldn’t change our story for anything.

  I was content being on the sidelines while Damien and Ophelia started their family. Realistically, I knew I didn’t have it in me to try for what they were doing - marriage and a baby. It wasn’t something I saw for myself.

  I still don’t… Not really, anyway.

  But now, with the way things are going, it may be time to move on; to move forward and try it the normal way. If for no other reason than it being more validation for me. I’ve made myself into a stable and successful man. I already own a billion-dollar company. What’s next?

  A wife, I suppose.

  “You want me to come in for a bit?” I ask Day as we step out of his Mercedes.

  He peers over his shoulder at me and that one look has me questioning everything I was just thinking and planning. It’s overwhelming how he’s still able to do that after all these years.

  “Are you really going to do this?” His tone is sincerely curious. He’s not defensive. Damien is never defensive with me, because he knows he doesn’t need to be.

  But he does worry. He worries a lot, it’s just the way he is.

  “You’re the one who said maybe it was time for me to stop whoring around…” I lift one sho
ulder in a casual shrug. “Getting a wife would probably do that. Probably.”

  He scoffs and shakes his head at me. “Lazarus…”

  “What?” I sigh.

  “You don’t love her.”

  “So what?”

  “Funny, I thought that was what,” he gives me a pointed look.

  “You want me to come in or not?” I lean against my car, giving him my usual unaffected eyes. He never buys it, but I always give it a shot anyway, mostly because he knows I’m fucking with him, and I really appreciate his concern for me, more than he probably even knows.

  “No. I’m over you.” He grins and I chuckle. “Go home and figure out how you’re going to talk yourself up to marrying someone like Evangeline Cartwell.”

  I flip my keys over in my hand. “She’s pretty hot.”

  “Yea, and I bet she gives really shitty blowjobs,” he hums as he walks away.

  I smile at his back. “See you Monday!”

  He grumbles whatever, but I can tell he’s smiling, and that’s enough to have me whistling all the ten minutes home.

  Sleep evades me.

  I’ve never been great at sleeping to begin with. Call it whatever you want, but I always get this feeling that things are going to fall apart while I’m asleep. That the world as I know it will erupt into darkness and devastation, and if I stay awake, I can be prepared for it.

  You won’t catch me sleeping through hurricanes, or tornadoes or a zombie apocalypse.

  I’m not crazy. I have every reason to feel this way, since a majority of the fucked up shit that’s happened in my life I always woke up to.

  Like the drama of my Four…

  I barely remember much about foster family number one, since I was so young. I vaguely recall their faces, but I tend to associate them with melancholic desolation. Laura - typically referred to as Foster Mom One in my mind - suffered from undiagnosed depression, I guess. I wouldn’t have known what that looked like, since I was a small child while I lived with her. She and her husband, Bill - Foster Dad One - took me in when I was a baby, after my mother, Birdie, lost me to the state, and I was with them until I turned six.

  I think I blocked out a lot from that house. It wasn’t bad, like Two or Four, but it wasn’t inherently good either. I suppose now I know it was because of her inner struggles and his outer selfishness.

  What I do remember is waking up one morning to police officers in our kitchen. I remember padding up to the corner, peeking around it to listen to what the grown-ups were saying. A bunch of adult words I didn’t understand then, which I now understand were centered around Foster Mom One having swallowed a bottle of pills.

  And then of course I remember Foster Dad One muttering, I can’t do it on my own.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but he was talking about me. Only a few short days later, wherein I saw social workers more than I saw him, I was whisked away to a temporary home in Albany.

  My mind has put a block on a lot of memories from my childhood, but none more than the four months I spent living in that group home. The only thing I actively remember was feeling scared and lonely. That and how much my lack of speaking used to piss everyone off.

  They never stopped to think about why I wasn’t speaking. Just that it made me a liability no family wanted to take on.

  Until Two came along.

  Pulling my head out from under my pillow, I whip my sheets back. This is fully annoying. I can’t rest and I have too much excess energy rippling through my limbs. I could go into my home gym, hit the bags, maybe burn off this restlessness. But then I think there are more interesting ways for me to settle myself right now.

  Sitting up and grabbing my cell phone, I scroll through all the names in my contact list. There’s an abundance of booty calls I could utilize to destress myself in here. I see a few right away who stand out. The ones who like it rough and detached.

  Before I can do eenie-meenie-miny-mo to choose, a text comes into my phone. It’s a surprising one.

  Evangeline: You up? Lol

  I smirk to myself.

  Me: Are you watching me?

  Evangeline: I can’t sleep.

  Evangeline: Keep me company?

  My fingers trail my jaw as I ponder this for a moment.

  Evangeline and I have been out a couple times since that day on the yacht. They were relatively boring dates, and one charity function, all of which ended with me kissing her cheek and sending her home.

  We haven’t hooked up in the slightest, so it’s strange that she’s messaging me now, at three in the morning, asking me to come over.

  Still, I can’t deny that I’m mildly interested. I’ve been thinking more and more lately about what I’m doing with my love life, and if maybe settling down is the next move. I don’t exactly want to give up my bachelor lifestyle, since it’s kept me warm and satisfied for many years now. But I also know, at risk of sounding like a total chick, I’m not getting any younger. Plus, it would be great for my image to settle with someone like Evangeline.

  My heart isn’t capable of falling in love, not in a way that won’t ultimately end in destruction and flames, so it might make sense to give this a shot. It could be just what I need to sate this endless unease that lives inside me.

  Me: I’ll be over in a half hour

  I freshen up, change into jeans and a t-shirt, then hop into my Maserati and drive.

  Through the night, through the dark sprinkled with lights, to the home of my girlfriend.

  The word in my mind makes me cringe. It’s odd for me to think of myself as anyone’s boyfriend. I never let any girls call me that in high school or college, and now that I’m in my thirties, it just feels ridiculous. I could almost be a husband before I could be a boyfriend.

  Driving the streets, my mind slips back in time again, to a tiny house in Long Island, where I was invisible.

  My second foster family didn’t abuse me physically, not like Four did, but in some ways they were worse. They ignored me completely. For three years, I didn’t exist.

  I woke myself up, and sent myself to school, something I’d already gotten pretty good at in the later years with One. At school, I would eat as much as possible, taking advantage of my state free lunch, never knowing if there would be dinner at home.

  There were always needles around, either in the trash, or sometimes on the floor next to them when they’d pass out. I learned at far too young an age what it meant, but I never told anyone. I didn’t think I could…

  I thought I deserved it. Back then, I felt like it was my curse to be tossed aside and disregarded as worthless. If my own mother didn’t want me enough to stop using drugs, why would these people?

  Two didn’t give a shit about me, and the house was just a house. A small, cluttered holder of silent torment they would occasionally spruce up when the social workers came to check in. Looking back as an adult, I know I should have said something. I should have told them what was happening; that I was so hungry and sad.

  But at the time, in my young, developing brain, I was on my own. No mother, certainly no father. I was seven years old, and it was my job to take care of myself.

  I took that knowledge with me to the next two, regardless of how things started to look up for a while there with Three. But as we all know, pain and loss are a given. They’re promised to us, like karma. What you give, you always get back, and if life gives you joy, you bet your ass it’ll take it away at some point.

  Nothing good ever lasts. So we might as well make the best of it while we can and wait quietly for its inevitable end.

  I pull into Evangeline’s driveway and get out of the car, striding to her front door. I’m still not sure what exactly will happen tonight, but I just keep telling myself whatever it is will be more entertaining than lying in bed staring at the ceiling while a slideshow of bullshit plays in my mind.

  Ten seconds after I ring the bell, Evangeline opens the door, giving me an alluring smile right off the bat. She has on a thin bathro
be, tied at the waist, short enough that I can see a lot of her long legs. The caramel complexion of her skin has me wondering how she tastes.

  I can’t help it. She looks damn good. Not exactly exotic in any real way, but I can’t deny her obvious beauty. Everything about her screams wealth, which isn’t something I necessarily care about. But in considering exclusivity, she fits the image of wife material.

  “Come in,” she offers, opening the door for me to step inside, which I do, kissing her cheek on my way in. She smells good, too. Like perfume that I’m sure is very expensive, from Paris or Milan.

  We wander through her house in silence, and I check out my surroundings, admiring the fruits of her father’s labor. My eyes land on her ass, the curves partially visible from the shortness of that robe while she walks. And now I’m wondering what she would let me do to her.

  It’s my experience that beautiful rich girls aren’t always the most adventurous in bed. I don’t think it’s their fault, they just wind up with guys who don’t know what they’re doing. It’s probably why most of them end up cheating, typically with guys like me.

  If Evangeline’s never had a man properly get her off, I’m sure I could volunteer my time. Maybe it will make this relationship more exciting for me if I serve some kind of purpose to her, other than a name and an image.

  “Would you like a drink?” She peeks over her shoulder, and it’s now apparent she’s wearing that skimpy robe on purpose.

  She wants me to look at her ass. It’s a smart move, playing her hand.

  “Wine would be good,” I answer, knowing someone like her will have wine in the house, and that she’ll probably join me in a glass.

  Which is exactly what happens. We sit in her living room with our glasses of expensive Pinot Noir, quietly sipping while casually eyeing each other. I still haven’t fully figured out why Evangeline would choose me out of all her eligible suitors, but it could quite possibly be for the same reasons I was just thinking about.