I grinned, offering my hand to him. “Hi, my name is—”
“Keaton Mara.” He took my hand, giving the back of it a chaste kiss before releasing it. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’m Archie.”
I nodded in recognition. “Braedan’s mentioned you. It’s very nice to meet you, too.”
“I’m sorry to rush out but…” He glanced behind me at the two bodyguards standing watch only a few feet away from me, and they weren’t the ones sent to me by Braedan after I left Noah.
Archie frowned so deeply, I felt guilty for a reason I couldn’t discern. “You should trust him, Keaton.” His words were grim and low. “Above all, he wants to protect you, and only he has the knowledge of who is and isn’t working for Noah. Can you say the same of your new bodyguards?”
“I…” The discomfort in the moment prevented me from answering him. I couldn’t take anything from Braedan without feeling everything I tried to pretend wasn’t there.
With a nod, Archie left the door open and stepped down the front steps to go on with his day.
Stepping into the foyer, I gave my bodyguards orders. “I’ll only be a few minutes.” I pressed my hand out, directing them to stay and closed the door behind me. As I roamed around the house, I searched around for Braedan. I could hear the soft strained grunts emanating from the left side of the house. Following the sound, I checked my purse, making sure my Taser was within an easy reach.
In an open room that could’ve been large enough for a fitness center gym, Braedan was shirtless and making good use of the bar wedged in the doorframe. A tattoo on his back, that I’d never really been able to see before, was deep and rich in various colors; it was also remarkably scary. The single skeletal drama mask encompassed his entire back. It was Noah’s drama mask tattoo, amplified and more intricate. Underneath the mask was the expression “The tears of yesterday bring the strength of tomorrow.”
As I stood there in awe, I realized I’d never gotten the chance to really appreciate his body. He would either distract me, be partially dressed, or show me certain parts of him while keeping others hidden.
His sinewy back tensed and rolled to accommodate his movement. A fine sheen of perspiration coated his skin and amplified every dip, bump, and curve. Trailing my eye level, I scanned down the dramatic inward curve of his waist to his firm round—
“Would you like to add to the weight, Keaton?” He held no hint of being winded. “I could use a challenge.”
“I”—I cleared my throat from the thick obstruction collecting at the back of it—“came here to thank you for helping my father. Whatever you did or said. He’s drinking less. I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think he’s even attending AA meetings. There was this guy at the house he didn’t want to introduce and…” My voice was a little more breathy than I preferred. “I should’ve called first, and I’m sorry I forgot.” I quickly turned to leave.
“Keaton,” he called back. The thud of his sneakers hit the hardwood.
Delaying as long as I could, I slowly turned around to be met with a man who smiled at me while blotting his face with a towel. He ran a hand over his sweat-slicked black hair and neared me.
I scanned his neck, glistening with moisture, entranced by the scarred skin running from the side of his neck to his collarbone. Droplets of moisture streamed down the caverns of his body. As he walked, the appendage between his thighs began to sway against the thin material of his pants.
I squeezed my purse tightly in front of me, pointlessly shielding myself as I bent the leather. “Why are you doing this?” I asked, my voice barely able to project.
He took one large step forward, filling my nose with his intoxicating scent. “Good morning, Keaton. It’s always a pleasure to see you.”
I shut my eyes and dropped my chin, taking shaky breaths through my mouth. I might as well have stepped into a sauna, heated by a fire while naked.
“The way you came here haphazardly”—he pointed down to my mismatched shoes, making me feel unbelievably embarrassed—“I’m going to assume that you couldn’t sleep last night, because your mind was too busy. What was on your mind, Keaton? Were you wondering if the man I revealed to you was genuine? Are you attempting to make sense of the hatred you felt for Reven and the contradictory feelings you’ve developed for me? Is it why you repeat your questions to me?” His hazel eyes glinted with mild amusement and darted at my purse, now practically a ball inside my unsteady hands.
“You’re right, I don’t understand.” I dropped my hands, tucking them and my handbag behind my back. “I know you said this isn’t about revenge. I can’t believe you. If you want to get Noah back for trying and failing to kill you, you’re looking in the wrong direction. You should’ve taken Mrs. Sherman, or Nadine if you wanted someone he really cared about.”
A skewed grin tugged at the corner of his mouth, exacerbating the sensation taking over my body.
“Whatever you have planned, it doesn’t make a difference now.” I tried to continue as I forced myself to keep my eyes on his face. “I know the truth about how Noah felt about me. No one who really loved me would’ve taken what he had, nor did what he did. He…beat me. Had Nadine do things to me that I didn’t want…”
His brows knitted together and his once genial expression made way for the one that intimidated me. “Things such as?”
“Things,” I said curtly, hoping he wouldn’t dig further.
“I can’t make any sense of what Noah has done to you. Not that I had high expectations. It disappoints me that he had you and treated you that way. When you walk into a room, you have a presence that ensures any other woman in the room pale in comparison to you.”
“Braedan,” I gasped, shaking my head and averting my eyes. “At Rebirth, you made me feel pretty much the same way he did; as if nothing I did was ever good enough because I was never good enough. I was far from the only woman in the room with you in that place.”
“You weren’t focused on what was underneath the surface, Keaton.”
I rocked on my heels, thankfully, the same height.
“It was difficult to sleep last night.” He effortlessly reverted to our earlier topic. “I continuously wonder why I’m worse in your eyes. If anything, Noah and I should be dead equal. He’s killed countless people, and he’s left you with more scars than he made when you were at Rebirth.”
His suggestion that Noah had a hand in the death of many was hard to digest. I knew Rebirth had gone on for years, and remembered what I had seen and smelled in the desolate forest behind the compound. It was hard to fathom that the man I slept next to at one point had been responsible—redeemable from their evil or not—for the deaths of many. “You left me with scars, too. You just can’t see them. They used to be worse than the scars Noah left me with. After what he’s responsible for—you’re no longer equal.”
“But it’s not enough.”
“Where else do you want to be?”
“With you.” He reached up, running his fingertips along my bare arm, peeking out from underneath my wool high-collar cape. The warmth surrounding my body began to increase as he stepped forward, running his fingertips up and down my arm. The soft sensation of his skin against mine made me sink into what my body had missed. His brilliant hazel eyes began to shimmer against the sunlight pouring in from the windows.
My hands clawed at my bag, wanting to touch him—wanting to bring him closer to me and cure all the bad between us. I wanted him to put his arms around me and erase everything that kept us apart. I wanted the truth to be a lie.
I quickly leapt back on the brink of feeling myself burning with want. It was a sickness I couldn’t rid myself of. Every time he was near me, I craved the closeness. I needed some part of him on my skin at all times. “I told you, I want to forgive you. I need to forgive you for myself. No matter if I’m able to do it or not, you can’t erase your bad deeds.”
“No,” he said, his voice lowering as he stepped forward, “I can’t erase what y
ou remember of me, but I can continue to make new memories.”
The smell of him flooded my senses strongly: remnants of his aftershave and with the natural scent of his recently worked-out body. My eyes began to wander down his chest, tense from his exercise session. I told myself I was looking for the scar from his bullet wound, but when my eyes remained on his pelvis, my mind began to follow.
“Did you know Noah didn’t want to take you on?” He kept his moves slow as he lifted my chin over his fist. “He took one look at your file, called you a rich bitch who didn’t appreciate the life she had, and said he wouldn’t agree to taking you in. He left Rebirth shortly and temporarily after our discussion.
“I found him, near to indulging in the addiction that often plagued him, and told him to look at your file again. When I shared with him what I wanted—for you to be mine—his mind changed. Do you know why, Keaton?”
In awe, I was only able to shake my head. How could it have been true? I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that more of Noah’s black lies were coming to the light.
“When I became cognizant of the true nature of my brother, he tried to kill me. He’d always been jealous of me. He’d been living with the delusion of what my life was like at the community, picturing me as he once pictured you—someone who had everything and wanted for nothing and never appreciated it. He never saw the reality of my life, and he never believed the truth about you.
“He looked at you as something I wanted and used it to compete with me. In his mind, he’d never been able to compete and win. He never knew there was no competition; my parents favored him. Giving him freedom and ignoring his bad deeds were the best gifts they could’ve ever granted him. He didn’t see it. Instead, he saw me as the enemy and used you to teach me a lesson.
“I could’ve had you if I knew the kind of man you needed me to be. I could’ve had you if I knew playing the part of Reven would push you away. I could’ve made you fall in love with me at Rebirth. I could’ve shown you the contrasts. I failed because I was a coward who pined for the approval of someone who would never grant it to me. I blindly chose him over you. It’s a mistake I will never live down.”
Everything Noah had ever said to me was consistently contested. I could no longer thank Noah for saving me by bringing me to Rebirth. I couldn’t fathom how Braedan should’ve received accolades, either. The events there healed me and ruined me. They brought me back to my family and made me see my body as something other than a dirty receptacle.
I thought I knew what a strong desire was in what I felt for Noah at Rebirth. What I felt for Braedan topped it by miles. “You’re right, I can’t work through what I know, with what you put me through, and what you’re showing me now. You…raped me, and you did it again by entering my life and not telling me who you were. What do you expect from me? For me to forget everything?”
His chin slanted downward and he looked at me through the dark shield of his eyelashes. The darkness I recognized from the man who ordered my punishments and hurt me had made a return.
He brushed past me, calling down his path, “Follow me.”
I kept my distance as we navigated through the house. My hand remained on the Taser in my bag as he led me to the antechamber with a door at the end of the room. The stairwell was narrow and lined in cobblestones. A stench I couldn’t place burned inside my nostrils. The stirring of varied people echoed up the narrow stairwell as we descended.
At the landing to the basement, in three cages lining the west wall, I found Nadine, Adam, and Mrs. Sherman.
Braedan busied himself with the panel on the far wall. With a few keystrokes, he invoked the low hum of some sort of mechanism. Tiny blue sparks were emitted at the base of their cells.
I stepped toward the cells with my jaw unhinged.
Braedan immediately stopped me. “I wouldn’t, the cells are electrically charged. If you touch them, it will knock you unconscious for a few minutes, perhaps more.”
He walked down the aisle, looking at each one of them as they stood or sat in their cages. “You were curious about what I expected of you. I expect you to give me a chance. When you don’t, it drives me insane, Keaton. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted you. How I tortured myself waiting and playing the part of a man I thought I needed to be to get you to be with me. To know that I was wrong…”
His chest heaved with a heavy exhale. “I’m done punishing you. My vow to God, I will never hurt you again. These people are my proof. They hurt you. They were partially responsible for the horrors you experienced in Rebirth and what you experienced when you escaped. They’ll pay for what they did to you and what they took away from you. All of them.”
He looked at the people he held in cages. “After all, they are the reason I lost you. They are the ones who conspired to kill me when all I did was what was asked of me. They are his left and right hands, and not a single one of them meant you well now or in the past because Noah doesn’t mean you well.”
With his eyes glossy and soft, Braedan returned his attention to me. “This isn’t about my revenge. Everything I’ve done from the moment I awoke in the hospital is for you, Keaton.”
I glanced from Nadine, to Adam, to Mrs. Sherman. The sudden rush of hatred filled my abdomen and nearly made me double over. “Why?” I asked, directing my question to Adam. “Why did you take my friend away from me? Why did you take away a friend, a fiancée, and a sister? Why did you steal her chance to become a mother? Why did you take the life of someone who hadn’t even had a chance to live it yet?” I stepped forward, my voice raising and shaking as the tears streamed down my cheeks. “Why?”
Nadine clucked her tongue and called my attention. “Adam is a little crazy, Keaton. Maybe I had something to do with that.” She shrugged as though my pain and the loss of an angel on Earth meant nothing to her. “Yeah, he’s to blame, but do you really think he should pay like this? You’re a good girl. You’re not like that evil shit standing beside you. You want your justice. Get us out of here, and Adam will turn himself in. Promise, princess.”
“Don’t promise me anything, Nadine.” I turned my ire on her.
“Ooh, someone’s found their moxie again.” She stepped forward and nearly touched the outside of her cell. “Look, we can argue broken promises and all that later. Get us out of here, and call the cops.”
I didn’t know what to feel. I felt guilty for taking a little pleasure in their predicament. My mind was a muddled mess as I shook with tears. Stepping backward, I cast my gaze to Mrs. Sherman.
Braedan stood at my side. “Do you remember her, Keaton?” Reaching up he ran his palm down the back of my head and brought me closer. “She’s watched you fuck my brother on repeated occasions. She made sure he had the opportunity. You have to question why a woman—an ex-nun—would want to see the man she mentored in such a position. Did Noah discuss the details about her with you?”
I didn’t answer.
“Silence means no.” Braedan turned me to face the people on his death row, pressing his chest to my back. A hand slipped down my erratically moving sternum, stirring up the chaotic thoughts and feelings, severely skewing my head. Nothing I knew made sense anymore. “She broke his virginity, because up until she came along, he’d only kept the company of men for payment. She led him to his need to hurt women. It affected him deeply, it became better than the actual act of sex to him.”
I would never have wanted anyone to endure the worst of what I did at Rebirth. From what I could presently see, it seemed that they were in the midst of a nightmare that was much worse than what I had to endure. For some reason, I couldn’t stop the thought slowly deleting anything toward forgiveness and legal justice. Nadine and Adam were the cousins to the devil. Was prison too good for them?
“H-h-e broke my virginity and he didn’t need to hurt me to do it,” I retorted, almost showing the full extent of the battle waged between right and wrong. I was losing my grip on the difference. “There were other times he was with me, and he di
dn’t need to hurt me.”
“I’m sure you’re aware of my brother’s drug problem.” Braedan’s soft voice vibrated down my neck. His hand lingered suggestively low at my torso. “I know he told you. The only reason he admitted to some of his past faults was to appear flawed and empathetic. The problem with drugs…the side effects are very unpredictable. They can work once and never work again.” He twirled my body at a dizzying speed, holding me near. Only his hand, hovering over my heart, separated us. “Was he ever able to fuck you without hurting you once you two began living together?”
Stuck on the edge of losing the grip on my mind, I remained silent.
“What was your answer again, Keaton?” he urged, sliding his hand lower, sliding the button of my jeans from the hole.
“No,” I sobbed, the word bursting forcefully from my mouth.
A hand slipped beneath the band of my jeans, gliding down the front of my lacy underwear, tearing me farther apart. “Has he ever been able to make you feel the way I can?” Braedan’s lips circled my ear as his hand found the piece of me he had owned in spite of my denial.
I gasped and closed my eyes as his hand teased, rocking against my clit through the thin material.
“Has he?” He slid his hand lower, moving the crotch of my panties away from my sex. Another hand surrounded my neck. “My hands are yours to command. However you want them to suffer, it’s done. However you want me to take your body, it’s done.” He exhaled a stream of hot air to make me shudder. “I breathe and move for you, Keaton.”
The blaring signals screamed at me, fighting over my guilty need for vengeance. All I knew was I needed to get away from the seduction that had rearranged me, preventing me from thinking clearly. “Please, let me go.” My movements betrayed me, leaning against him. My hand cradled his wrist, encouraging him.
He locked his fingers into the crown of my hair and jerked backward. My neck curved and my face upturned to meet his tall height. He softly captured the swell of my mouth between his lips. His finger moved in slow agonizing circles against my soft nub, pulsing for more. “You can ask anything of me and I’ll do it. Letting you go is the one thing I can’t do.”
Seducing Virtue (Wicked Trinity Book 3) Page 10
