I shot my attention to Syl. “Give me what you took before you came here.”
“I-I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I snapped my head in his direction. “Do you want to lose your other eye?”
Still staring at me with his jaw unhinged, he fiddled in his pocket for a clear packet.
I snatched it from his hands and began to retreat upstairs.
“What about her?” Syl called after me.
“Leave her there. I might need a few pieces of her—an incentive.”
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Your obsession with that woman is going to fuck us all,” Syl warned at my heels.
“It won’t.” I turned and shut the door to the basement, locking it with a key only I had access to.
Syl grabbed me halfway across the room.
I spun around, scowling at his hand on my shoulder.
“There’s something you’ve got to see. Pastor Richie brought it to me. You’re not going to believe this.” He pulled up his cellphone and showed me a picture.
“Who’s this?” I looked at the picture in confusion.
“He calls himself Braedan Michaels, but I think you know him as someone else,” Richie said, standing next to Syl.
I squinted at the picture. Any high I felt over the moment disappeared. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
My brother was still alive.
“Now that you know”—Richie stood in front of Syl—“you should know my next plan. I’m going to call a few friends who always had an issue with Shiloh and believe he needed a community punishment before he could take his rightful place, vacated by his father. With him broken, Keaton likely won’t view him the same. She’ll see how weak he is. With Brandy no longer a piece we can bargain with, this is how it will be done. This is how we will both gain what we both need.”
“This should’ve been done before you brought me Brandy.” I smiled at the prospect of his punishment being the stuff of his nightmares. Even if they broke him, he would have one more person to face before I sent him where he belonged.
I WAS STUCK between surprise and comfort when Marcia came into the bedroom to greet me. I hadn’t the slightest idea what to accept from Braedan as genuine. It seemed his passion for the homeless was one of the things that was always real.
Marcia was my caretaker when Noah went too far and left me debilitated for days or weeks. She once told me there was a good man at Rebirth, and I always assumed it was Noah. Given the recent events in my life, I assumed wrong.
For two weeks, Marcia took care of me, helping me manage my fits of withdrawal from the narcotics, and took care of my wounds.
As she did at Rebirth, she wouldn’t say much to me despite my questions. I was only able to get her to say that she had an apartment and a job, thanks to Braedan.
On the final day of my recovery, Nathan called me. We chatted about Brandy, and I brought up the subject of having a goodbye dinner. There was a finality in his words to me before he left, indicating the goodbye dinner would never happen, because I had long rested my eyes on my friend for the last time.
While Noah hadn’t actively taken anything away from me in those two weeks, his reach carried consequences, and I lost another friend due to him.
Feeling well enough to get out of bed, I showered for the first time in weeks and dressed in the clothes I was provided. As I descended the stairs, rhythmic sounds pulled my steps to the large room where I assumed Braedan usually worked out. In only fleece pants, his body draped in moisture, he went to work on a wood device I couldn’t name.
“What’s that?” I asked, keeping my distance.
“A Wing Chun dummy.” Barely out of breath, he ceased his assault on the wooden dummy with his back facing me.
“Can you teach me to fight like that?”
“When you’re better.” He grabbed a towel from the top of the wood dummy and turned to greet me. “It was very difficult to keep away from you, but Marcia reiterated your need for space away from me.”
I never explicitly told her I didn’t want to see Braedan, but I understood why she might’ve said that to him. The time apart didn’t give me clarity. It didn’t provide me with a single second of peace from my warring mind. “I’m better. I should get home. Thank you for…all that you did. I’m sure my mother’s campaign needs—”
His eyes flashed for a moment and angled to the right, looking at something invisible. “She didn’t tell you when you spoke to her?”
Conversations with my mother were strained while I healed. I pretended, and she pretended. The only mention of my issues were when she consistently and verbally distressed over finding a new therapist for me. “Tell me what?”
“Your mother conceded the race last week.” His words were spaced and distant.
Shocked, my jaw unhinged. “What? Why? It’s all she ever wanted. Did she do it because of me? I would never live it down if she quit her dream because of me. I have to call her. Where’s my phone?”
“Keaton,” he cooed and took a long stride forward to stand before me and placed his strong hands on my shoulders to steady me. “She did it because she loves you. Real love means sacrifice.”
I recalled my mother mentioning the same thing when I was in the hospital after Noah’s brutal destruction of my body. “Does it have to be that way?”
“Yes. It’s a lesson I’m still learning.” He dropped his hands from me with reluctance. “I promised your mother I’d take you away from here, and I mean to keep that promise. If you showed up at her doorstep, I’d break my vow to her.”
Nodding, I slowly paced toward him. “Then, take me back to where you were raised.”
His eyes shifted and his entire face sank. “I was expecting you’d like to visit somewhere tropical. It would be easier…”
Holding his jaw, speckled with barely there hair, in both hands, I slowly urged it upward. “Show me what your world was like.”
“Why are we here, Braedan?” I asked, hugging myself from the bitter North Dakota chill. I stood on the charred remains of the same ground I spent many months fighting against being broken down and destroyed; the ruins of what was once the House of Rebirth. Greeting my vision was what once looked like an unassuming community with cookie cutter luxury homes and a mansion on the hill.
The buildings were piles of rubble, charred and burned. In the distance, only the theater remained somewhat. Clues of what happened inside were shown in the soot-covered brick and charred doors.
I whirled around, facing him with confusion. “I wanted to see the place you were raised.”
“They are one in the same,” he stated. “This place is where I learned about the world.” He surveyed the area with a distant and inexpressive stare. “Is there one good thing you remember about this place?”
“I can’t say there was good in anything I had to go through here.” I eyed his broad shoulders, adorned in a dark blue V-neck cashmere sweater and the matching knit cap that couldn’t have held enough warmth to fend off the frigid temperature. He lacked any semblance of a hint that he was discomforted by the cold. I wondered what his father had done to him to acclimate him to such extreme temperatures.
He took my hand and kept walking, making me fall in step until we reached what were the horse stables. Only the wall surrounding the doorframe stood. He leaned in the doorway and pointed to the mansion on the hill. “The House of Rebirth, the night that changed your world happened there.”
I was unsure of what to say of the night I held onto. The night I thought I shared with Noah—that solidified my need for him. “You mean the night with Noah?”
He released an exasperated sigh and let go of my hand. “You said you believed me.”
I choked on the words. “I don’t know what I believe anymore. I just know if I believed you, it would mean everything I went through with Noah was for nothing.”
“Believing what I say as the truth won’t make the lessons you learned about Noah disappear.” He parted from
me, running his strong hands along the wood panels of the stables. “The instant I entered the room, your body trembled, increasingly so with every small step I made toward you.” He inclined back on the wall of the structure, keeping me pinned with his gaze. “I couldn’t keep myself from taking a minute to stare at you, naked on my bed. You. Were. Beautiful.” He reached up to touch my face and I backed away. My head met the supporting wall and I had nowhere to go.
He placed his palms on either side of my waist and closed in on me. “Being naked with someone isn’t something I’d ever done before. I wanted to feel your skin against mine. If I made you tremble beneath me, I wanted to feel it. If I made your body hot and wet, I wanted to feel it.
“Pressed against you, I touched you here.” He slid his hand down and pressed his body against me, pushing his erection against my pelvis. “You were wet and soft. And your lips…” He expelled a stream of air. “…they melted like the sweetest candy at the touch of my tongue. I could sense your desire to fight the way I made you feel, and I could feel you come apart and give into me.” His hand hovered over my heart, thumping with a violent rhythm.
Despite the weather, the humidity rose to sweat-inducing levels. I was stuck in place while Braedan revealed every iota of my desire for him.
“When you sweetly moaned as your hips rocked against my hand, I could barely contain myself. I wanted you to taste the sweetness flooding between your thighs. You made the wait incredibly hard. I held out, and I took my time teasing you.” His lips grazed down my jawline to my neck. “Tasting your neck, your hard nipples, sliding my hands around your pussy. When you were ready, your hips raising, begging for me to come inside you. I teased you again. You were tight around me…dripping wet. Your little whimpers drove me insane. I slid inside. You were so tight, you swallowed me deeper. I could tell I was nearly too much for you. I took my time, wanting to make you feel good and not hurt you. Wanting you to know how much I’ve wanted you and what I would’ve done for you.”
I wanted out of the seduction that was working. I went over it in my mind, telling myself he saw all this on the camera and was lying to me.
“And when you came on my cock, Keaton, your eyes watered, and your tears soaked the blindfold.”
He completely negated my theory.
“Every time I touched you here”—he slid his hand up to hover over my sternum—“I was telling you I understood and everything would be okay if you trusted me, and I’d cure you from every evil deed that had been done to you.” He slipped his hands down my body and snaked them around my back to cup my lower back. “You left my cock so wet, I could’ve fucked you here without any help.” He slid his hand against the crease, covering the fissure of my behind. “But I didn’t want you to feel one second of pain.” Bowing slightly, his lips hovered over mine. He dropped his hold on me and took several steps backward. “I brought you here so you could remember the one good moment you had here, and know it was with me. Are you remembering, Keaton?”
“Yes,” I said, breathless.
“Do you believe me now?”
“Yes,” I replied with even less of a volume.
“Now we can leave.” He tugged my hand, leading me out of the stables and simultaneously ripped me out of my fantasy too soon.
“Where are we going?” I asked, following after him.
“You requested to see the place where I was raised. I’m going to take you there.”
Hours passed, and the scenery never changed. There were no towering buildings or interesting agriculture to take in. Only miles upon miles of open flatland and a dark road were seen outside of the rental vehicle.
My mouth felt like it was glued together by some kind of adhesive. I couldn’t speak and the heat was on too high of a temperature.
“How much longer?” I asked, expressing how dry and parched my throat was.
“There’s water in the back.” He pointed to the back seat of the rental. “Are you hungry?”
My lips parted to take in more air, because my nose wasn’t quite up to the task. I felt blinded although I could see everything. I simply didn’t want to see what was right in front of me. What’s right in front of me.
“That day.” My tone rang a little too excitedly on the edge of the epiphany. I took a second to collect myself and tone it down. “At the private dinner we had in your room while you were Reven, you said I would never see what was right in front of me. After all that I had gone through and seen, you said there was more.” I dropped my chin to my chest. “I thought it was about Noah. I would call myself stupid for not seeing it before, but how else was I supposed to know? You were so cruel the whole time I was there, and you did the unforgivable the very next day.”
His grip strengthened on the leather steering wheel. A rigidness appeared in his posture. “As you’re thinking about what I made you want, you’re excusing it away by remembering the worst.”
“What do you think I want?”
Effortlessly never moving the steering wheel from its static position, he clutched my hand and placed it over his pulsing erection as it grew down his thigh.
My chest heaved with deeper and shorter breaths. Closing my eyes, I allowed myself to be open and to feel. He took my hand away, resting it back on my lap, ripping my comfort away from me.
I slipped my hands between my legs and closed them tightly. I shut my eyes hoping the thick heat developing inside the car would dissipate, and Braedan would cease bedeviling me.
KEATON’S REST WAS undisturbed when I pulled up to the desolate and derelict compound. Separating the open terrain stood a brick enclosure, once serving as protection from outsiders. The wrought iron gate, the only entrance or exit, hung half off its hinges, no longer in working order.
“Keaton?” My fingers grazed across the softness of her cheek to rouse her awake.
She startled and slowly opened her eyes to take me in.
“We’re here.” I exited the vehicle and met her on the other side, opening the door for her. She reluctantly slid from the seat, her feet meeting the cracked concrete.
As she yawned and stretched, my attention returned to the gate; it served as an entrance to a past that continuously haunted me and encouraged memories of numerous events streaming in constant motion before my eyes.
“Are you okay?” Keaton slipped her hand into mine, pulling me out of my place in the darkness.
Without an answer for her, I guided her by the hand toward the gate.
She came to a standstill when the abandoned homes came into her view. “This place looks so much like Rebirth.”
“Noah was never much for creativity.”
“Why would he try to recreate this place?”
“Haven’t you caught on yet, Keaton?” Separating from her, I stood in the middle of the drive, grappling to drain my mind from the flooding recollections of my harsher experiences. “My brother wanted to recreate this. He wanted to be my father. He was denied what he thought was his right, and he rebelled constantly, and eventually started a place under the same vein with completely different principles.
“The Birth of a Prospering Nation was rooted in Opus Dei, but to compare them would be similar to finding similarities between Christianity and mythology based in polytheism. They are very, very different.” My position faced off with what was once my family home: the largest house in the neighborhood at the end of the street. I could sense Keaton’s apprehension as she waited for me to open the door to my former life.
I brushed back a cobweb over the door and pushed it open. “This was my childhood home.”
She observed the two-story foyer, craning her neck to view the ceiling and mosaic stained-glass dome.
“It’s excessive, isn’t it?”
She brought her thumb and her index finger together with a nod in agreement. “What happened here? Why was this place abandoned? Did the cult die with your father?”
“No.” I feigned my comfort with the question. The cult had lost its intended leader, and as I well
knew, the compound serving as the headquarters became a roving band, in search of its prophet. “Someone else took the reins and they moved to a different area. It was what my father planned. He had concerns the government might intervene. It was always his plan to move, and when he died, the people who held onto their beliefs went in search of their next leader. I never cared to discover where they decided to make their home.”
“Are you worried some might see you as the closest thing to your father, find out you’re alive, and try to bring you back in?”
“I doubt it. Many shared the same thoughts as my parents did. The community lives and dies by its leader. One that was tainted beyond repair would be seen as a demon, blocking their blessings.”
“I just don’t understand how, compared to Noah, you were seen as the evil one.”
“You’re thinking in traditional terms. Here…sexuality was the purest form of evil. My brother…grew into his looks.”
She made a soft groaning sound and continued to wander around. She touched the door of a room I wish she hadn’t. She jiggled the handle, having difficulties opening it and yanked it, nearly flying back from the force.
I stood at her side, quietly questioning if she was all right.
Her attention was held hostage by the appearance of the interior of the closet, painted entirely black and missing a metal bar for hangers. “What was this place used for?”
“Punishment.”
She stepped inside and picked up a dusty old flagellum from the dust ridden floor with a question in her eyes.
“For self-flagellation.”
“Did you participate in this? Is that why you have that tattoo on your back, covering your scars?”
“They would lock me inside this room until I did, whether I wanted to or not.”
Seducing Virtue (Wicked Trinity Book 3) Page 18
