Removing his hands from me while I felt on the brink of falling into a swirling pool of his alluring darkness, he stepped away and walked toward Nadine’s cell and stared at her. He drew the finger that touched me across his lips and sucked the taste of me away from his skin. His teeth distorted his bottom lip as he grinned. “Truth or dare? Did you lie to Keaton about who was with her the night she was blindfolded? The night that held her thoughts so strongly, she finger fucked herself the next day with Noah’s name on her lips. Did you lie, Nadine? Did you tell her Noah was with her?”
Nadine divided her attention between the mass of torture devices on the wall, adjacent to her cell, and back to Braedan. For some unclear reason, Braedan looked over his shoulder at something in the corner; an antique phone with exposed wires wrapped around the device with a pair of dry-cell batteries next to it.
She whimpered an inaudible answer.
“Louder!” Braedan shouted, startling both Nadine and me.
“Yes,” Nadine admitted, her voice quavering with emotion. “I lied. We both lied about it.”
I clutched my chest as it ached strongly. The one thing I held to, the one glint of hope and light I thought Noah had, was blown out before my eyes. Deep in my core, I knew it was the truth. I knew it was the only truth to make sense of the senseless.
“Who was really with Keaton that night?” Braedan prodded her.
“You were,” Nadine admitted, ensuring the tiny thread holding my emotions together snapped completely.
Tears clouded my vision as I shook my head repeatedly. It couldn’t have been true. It couldn’t have been remotely possible.
Braedan turned to me. “You were always supposed to be with me that night, but my brother had other ideas. I outsmarted him. I made him think he was fucking you when he came into a room that wasn’t mine. He was heavily under the influence of a pill I slipped into his drink. He wandered to another room and fucked Nadine, thinking it was you. He could’ve been with a dog and never known the wiser. Prior to Nadine succumbing to the influence of a hallucinatory drug and spreading her legs to my brother, she failed to seduce me to keep me away from you.”
“You’re…no.” I stepped backward, blocked by a wall of glass, leading to a room that strangely looked similar to the ones in the House of Rebirth. “That can’t be true.”
“The next morning you touched what I had claimed and moaned his name, as though he was the one who made you feel those things. Do you remember what I told you when I came to you? He brought me in the viewing room and made me watch you call out for him as though he was the one you wanted. If I had to compare it to all the pain I’ve endured in my life, it couldn’t compete. I was blinded by rage, scared I’d lost my chance with you. I did what he led me to. I thought it would fix everything. In my anger, I slipped into the world that raised me.” Calming himself by taking a deep inhale, he added, “Fear makes us do unthinkable things.”
“I am not yours!” I shouted through a sob, clutching my aching chest.
“Aren’t you? Aren’t you realizing it in this moment that I’m telling you the truth? The night we were together for the first time, didn’t you feel the difference? You were wrapped so tightly around my cock, you had to adjust to me.”
I held onto that night and made it my reason for putting up with Noah and everything he had done to push me away. It was a small sliver of hope that I held onto, hoping he’d return to that man without the need of a blindfold. Every touch, every kiss, every thrust screamed love and devotion to my pleasure. I’d never felt so safe and so adored.
Braedan drank me in, appearing to know every movement of the shift occurring inside me. “You believe me, don’t you?”
Nadine’s guilt-ridden face broke me further. If she’d lied about the night I spent with Noah, could do the things she had done to me and my friend, there was nothing to believe about the woman any longer. The secrets between Noah and Nadine were once easily kept because Shiloh died, as I now knew they had intended all along.
There was one thought I couldn’t wrap my head around, and I needed answers, even if it was like asking the devil to return the soul you promised to him. “Why would Noah do that, Nadine? Why would he tell his brother to rape me?”
She quickly receded into the shadows of her cell.
“Answer her,” Braedan barked, his undertone slipping into the demand and darkness reminiscent of Reven.
“Because he knew what Reven had planned,” Nadine said, only her face visible, showing the glare she directed at Braedan.
The shock on Braedan’s face indicated the information Nadine shared was new to him. If I wanted to remain in denial and hold on to the thought that Nadine would’ve said anything because she was a captive, it was no longer viable.
“He…” She sighed and tried to run her hands through her knotted hair. Her fingers got caught, giving her trouble with removing her hands from her hair. She grumbled and continued. “You doubted it was Shiloh and Noah played on it. He wanted you to hate Reven so much that when Noah did what he had to do, you wouldn’t lift a finger to save Shiloh. Noah wanted you to see him as this big fucking hero for doing what he promised he would. He knew it was the last thing he needed to do to make sure you would be with him when he was ready to be with you.”
“Go on, Nadine,” Braedan urged her on. “I have a strong inkling there’re many more secrets you need to divulge.”
She swallowed, the audible clicking noise echoed into the room. “Noah knew where you were all along after you were freed and waited for the perfect time to come to you.”
The unending and brutal punishment. The distance. The way Noah seemed to disappear for hours on end, attending to things he wouldn’t share with me? I was blind not to see it before. “He’s starting it up again, isn’t he?” I asked, startled at my own deduction. I didn’t need anyone’s answer. I knew the truth. Noah broke me down, hoping to mold me into the new Reven. “Is that where he is? Rebuilding what he burned down?”
I received no answers.
Unable to withstand being in the presence of hatred and evil, threatening to lure me in, I left the basement as quickly as my feet could take the steps.
Braedan called after me, and when I didn’t answer, he grabbed me from behind and swirled me around. The collision of our bodies threw me, and I slipped into his arms. My messy bun fell from its loosely pinned style, and my ponytail whipped around before landing down the side of my face and down my shoulder. I struggled as I adjusted in my position and pulled the Taser out of my bag to make contact with a piece of Braedan.
He grabbed my wrist and barreled into me. I fought back hard. But he kept one hand up above my head and slammed it against the wall until my grip loosened. The Taser dropped into his hands. He quickly slid it into the back pocket of his thin cotton jogging pants and placed himself between my legs, hindering my ability to kick him. He grabbed my jaw with one hand while keeping my hands both held high with his other hand above my head.
“You looked at me as though you understood.” Exhaustion and perplexity made his voice hoarse and low. “What changed, Keaton? Why are you fighting me?”
Anger and betrayal blinded me in their red lights. Braedan became the receptacle for everything that consumed me, and I fought like I was thrown back on a plane heading to Rebirth.
“I do not want to hurt you,” he warned, “but I will protect myself if you try to attack me again.”
He dodged and I lunged. I tumbled, falling backward, headfirst onto the door.
The throb in the back of my head pounded. All I saw were visions of blurred stars. He helped me to stand up and held my waist, steadying me.
He jerked my head up to look at him. “Are you okay, Keaton?” he asked in a gentle way.
The man who watched me endure the greatest physical pain, and at times ordered it, claimed he didn’t want to hurt me, and seemed filled with genuine concern when I was in pain. I nodded, slowly lifting my head to look him in the eyes.
“Have
you calmed enough to stop directing your anger at me?”
“Yes.”
He let me go and I slipped. He caught me, holding me upright. “You said you were all right.”
“I am all right,” I croaked. “Let me go.”
He wouldn’t budge.
“Let me go. I can stand on my own.” I weakly pushed against his chest. My hands clung to the tensing muscles in his pecs and wouldn’t move anywhere else.
I marched forward and slipped my hand around his back, touching the bare flesh. He seemed to stiffen under me and hold his breath. I met his eyes, and an intangible pressure pulled us closer. It removed me from having confidence in my once perfected pickpocketing skills. I shut my eyes to erase the sensation washing over me and quickly went through his back pocket to pick up the Taser.
He caught my wrist and shook his head. “You’re quite relentless.” He chuckled with apparent frustration. “It’s what I loved and hated about you at once. You no longer need to do this with me.” I stepped backward as he stepped forward until my back met the wall. He left me cornered and placed his palms flat against the wall behind me. “Noah manipulated the both of us.”
“And you’re using me to get him back.”
“Why aren’t you listening to me?” he scolded me, frustration creasing his brows and creating a dark shadow over his hazel eyes.
“I am, Shiloh, I just don’t believe you.”
“It’s Braedan,” he pressed with annoyance, his hands balling into fists and grinding against the wall.
“Change your name, but you are still cut from the same thread as the people you are holding captive downstairs. I could’ve bought into the man you claim to be until you showed me that nothing has changed about you.”
“Keaton,” he crooned with a smile the devil would envy. “I witnessed the look of satisfaction on your face at their predicament. Do you feel ashamed for what you feel?” He slanted toward me, brushing his tender lips against my unreceptive mouth, burning me internally. “Let yourself go, and become the woman I know you can be. The one who knows I’m right.”
In his moment of weakness, I kicked him in the groin. He made a hissing sound and crouched over. The instant my hand was on the knob, ready to scream out to my bodyguards, I was grabbed and slammed in opposition with the wall. The force stole the breath from my lungs and a breathy oomph slipped from my mouth.
Abruptly, both of my hands were restrained above my head. “Behave, Keaton,” he snarled, his eyes shading with a dark fury.
“Let me go, and I’ll calm down.”
Frustration took a hold of his facial features. “Do you remember the night of your initiation and what I said to you? Do you think that’s how we traditionally initiate the members of the house?” He waited a second for an answer. “It’s not. Your ceremony was tailored for you by me. I needed you to understand my empathy for you.
“Do you remember what I told you on stage? I wasn’t playing a character when I told you I understood. You were not a coward for running away. I promised you I would be the one to take your guilt away. And I was going to do that with pleasure and not pain.”
I drew a breath to find myself again and to let go of the woman who was angry and wanted to fight the source of all her emotional maelstroms. “Let them go, Braedan. Call the cops. Let the authorities handle them.”
He turned away from me, staring at something in the distance. His jaw clenched tightly, the muscles spasmed. His forehead creased with the scrunching of his dark brows.
“Braedan.” I walked in front of him and touched his chin, pulling him to look at me. He caught my hand, removing it from his face.
“Noah brazenly attended a party with several law enforcement officials and the police commissioner in attendance. How do you think going about the legal way to seek justice for the death of Sonja will end?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know full well. You’ve seen the malfunction of the justice system for yourself with Gregory, as you admitted to me at Opaque. I’m offering you an escape, a way to cut the tethers from Noah. Nadine and Adam’s death will lead you there.”
“If I give you a chance to show me you’re different, to prove that you’re really sorry for what you did to me, will you turn them over to the police?”
He dropped his hands from encaging me, taking several steps backward.
“If you want me to believe all you’re doing is for me and not your own personal vendetta, then do this. Show me you’ve changed, Braedan. Because what’s going on downstairs is just another version of Rebirth, and it reminds me of who you once were—Reven.”
His head dropped so suddenly I thought something had gone wrong with his neck. “You should leave.”
My chest felt like a hand had ripped through my ribcage and squeezed the beats from my heart. Denial had given way and left me with an indescribable feeling over being spurned. “Braedan…”
“Now, Keaton.” He turned his back on me, his shoulders tensing and broadening.
“Call me if you change your mind,” I said with trepidation and sorrow lacing my words. “If I don’t hear from you by the end of the night, I’ll have to do the right thing and call the police.”
THE BARRAGE OF information containing enough veracity for her to loathe my brother had affected her more than I anticipated. Yet, there she stood, tormenting me with how little progress we had made together.
I brushed my hair from my face, leaving my hands to linger behind my head. “I told you to leave. I believe that idea is a very prudent one at the moment.”
“I don’t understand.” She reached out, resting her hand on my shoulder.
I jerked, regarding her with a silent warning.
The drapes of disappointment shaded her eyes. Her crystal tears streamed down her cheeks; it would always count as one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever seen. I enjoyed watching her cry. The things I had to do to make her cry netted the opposite of what I wanted and needed from her right now—or what she needed from me. I had to be Noah’s polar opposite.
My gait was purposeful as I moved toward her. “It took quite a few maneuvers the night we spent together to ensure we could be together. You haven’t the slightest clue of the type of planning and arrangements that had to occur to ensure success. I hadn’t become cognizant of the nature of Noah’s knowledge until Nadine revealed it to me only moments ago. I realize now, he knew he’d been foiled. His demeanor the following morning? He was livid. He didn’t need to see me with you to know; I did things to your body that he never could. Looking back at it now, I know it’s why he fucked with me. You were a weakness to be exploited.”
My recollections took a toll on my face. She felt it and witnessed my descent as it occurred again before her very eyes. “How could you think Noah would ever be that way with you? Why, after all I’ve shown you, do you want to take the easiest road for you conscience to bear? Extreme measures have to be taken to ensure your safety. Trust me.”
I stroked the hair hanging from her up-style. My fingers expanded, wanting to wrap the dark strands of her hair around my fist while I threw my patience aside. Having her again and again until we both grew sore and drew tired from exhaustion flirted around my thoughts.
“Trust you? Y-you weren’t exactly someone I thought would ever be with me that way. It’s so hard for me to accept all this as you doing something just for me. There are no excuses for what you did to me. You can’t just erase it away with the things you say and think I’ll fall for it. Don’t…don’t make excuses for what you did to me.”
“The private dinner we shared after Rebirth—didn’t you understand? Did I not show you how kind I could be toward you? Didn’t I show you how everything was a mind-game and I had no intention of directly hurting you to get what I wanted?”
Struggling over her words, she failed to express anything with coherency. Her eyes moved erratically back and forth. I pressed my body against hers, feeling the pounding beat of her heart reverberate through m
y chest cavity. Her breasts heaved, brushing against the bareness of my chest. The friction between us made her nipples, sharp as a knife’s edge, cutting through her thin shirt, tease my receptive flesh.
I caught my lip between my teeth and sucked while keeping my breaths restrained, and the wanton desire for her at bay. “I bet he never lasts very long unless he’s hurting you, does he?” I asked, fully thrown into my trademarked soft and quiet voice. Every word slipped from my lips with a tinge of eroticism.
Her shudders became more severe. “I-it wasn’t only about sex between him and me,” she proclaimed and was far from convincing.
“Really?” I drew out the question leisurely. “You two shared a deep connection where you divulged all your hopes and dreams? Did he let you in?” I brushed my fingertips across her temple and ran my hands down the length of her dense, dark hair, gathered by a weakening black band.
“Did you let him in? Did you two have a connection beyond you allowing him to be a sadist and you pretending to be a masochist? Did he make you laugh? Did he show you how to have fun again? Did he do anything to make you smile? Did he do everything he could to protect you? Did he involve himself in your life, or did he make you feel ashamed for living it?”
My fingers continued to toy with her hair, following a strand down to her collarbone. With a dramatic tremble, her skin prickled under the soft touch of my fingertips. “Did he tell you he loved you while staring at you with dead eyes? Did he try to convince you the pain he gives you is proof of his love?” I leaned forward inhaling the scent of her.
I thrust my hand into her hair, tilting her head back, offering her neck to me. Cowering down to her shorter height, I swayed my lips down her neck until I reached her collarbone, giving it a gentle suck. My thigh wedged between her legs; she responded, slowly grinding against me.
Seducing Virtue (Wicked Trinity Book 3) Page 11
