Allure (Forbidden #1)

by Michelle Betham

  ‘It’s OK, baby,’ she whispers, her mouth touching mine and I ache for this woman, I really do. I’m telling her about my dead ex-wife and I ache for her. Is that wrong? Or is it just something telling me it really is time for me to finally move on. ‘It’s OK.’

  I kiss her, I have to. I want to. I want to feel her, touch her, know she’s real.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me any more, Neal. If this is too much…’

  I shake my head and take her face in my hands, resting my forehead against hers. ‘I need to tell you, Kira. I need to explain…’ I close my eyes and breathe in deep. ‘I went back to work, got someone in to care for Lisa, but the guilt I felt…’ Another arrow of pain shoots right through me and I try to ease it by inhaling deeply again, but it doesn’t really help. Maybe I deserve that pain. ‘That’s when I started sleeping with escorts. I needed to feel… I needed to feel like things were normal, y’know? In some warped kind of way. And I know that sounds selfish, but that’s what I’d turned into – a selfish, weak man who couldn’t cope with reality. I’d created my own other world, a place I could go to where I could feel like things were – like they were normal.’ I laugh, a hollow sound because listening to myself, I realise just how selfish I really was. ‘I still loved her. I loved her so much, even when I was fucking those faceless women I still loved her. But things were never gonna be the same. And I just couldn’t deal with that. And then… then one morning she…’ I take another deep breath, because saying this next bit out loud, it’s gonna kill me. It’s lived there, in the back of my mind for over six years and I have never, ever re-lived it, never spoken about it. Ever. ‘One morning she just didn’t wake up. Just like that, she was gone.’ I look right into her eyes, and I can see my pain mirrored in them and it tears me apart. ‘She was gone. And the only way I could cope with the grief and the guilt was to carry on living that life I’d created for myself – crazy nights out, meaningless sex with escorts, working as many hours as I could... I just kept going, on that empty, pointless merry-go-round until… until that life became the only life I wanted. It allowed me to keep my distance from anything or anyone that could get too close. I didn’t want to fall in love again, Kira. With anyone. Because I couldn’t face the prospect of losing them. I didn’t want to go through that, not again. I couldn’t do it. So I just shut myself off, from it all. From everything.’

  She closes her eyes and kisses more of my tears away and I hold her so tight I don’t even know if she can still breathe.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Neal.’ She runs her fingers slowly through my hair, and it calms me. Her touching me calms me. ‘Baby, I’m so, so sorry.’

  I rest my head against her chest and breathe her in – my beautiful bad girl.

  ‘And then there was you, Kira. You walked into my world and you changed everything. You changed me.’

  She pulls back, just enough so she’s looking at me. ‘I think it was you who walked into my world, Mr Cannon.’

  She smiles, and I can’t help but smile back. This is still so messed-up but it’s all we know now. And it’s all I want.

  ‘You’re not some faceless escort, Kira. You never were.’

  She smiles again, and kisses me quickly. ‘I was, Neal. That’s exactly what I was, in the beginning. You came to me for the same reason you went to all those other escorts. Something else just happened along the way, that’s all.’

  I stroke her hair from her eyes and touch her hip, and I want to make love to her again. All night. I want to show her she really isn’t like all those other escorts I fucked and discarded because they never, ever mattered.

  She does.

  She matters.

  So fucking much…

  Kira

  There’s a knot of sadness inside me now that is so physical I can feel it, right there in the pit of my stomach. No man has ever opened up to me before about why they use the services of women like me, although, in some cases it’s quite obvious. But the fact Neal chose to share his reasons with me – I can’t leave this so one-sided now. He was brave enough to open up to me, that took guts. We still barely know each other in any way other than the physical sense. But he’s just bared his soul to me. Maybe I need to be brave, too, and share my own secrets, my reason for doing the job I do; the reason why I’ve been doing it for so long.

  ‘Are you alright, baby?’ I look into his eyes and I can still see traces of the tears I know he didn’t want to cry, but I think he needed to. He needed to get that emotion out, and my heart breaks for everything he must have felt back then; for everything he’s still obviously feeling now.

  He nods, and smiles, and I hold him tight and kiss him gently; kiss his pain away, for what it’s worth. I feel closer to him now than I ever have. Every night we seem to cross another line, but this one – this one is different. This is the night the truth came out.

  ‘Kira, I… I want to know about you. I want you to talk to me…’

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Am I ever going to stop playing games? I know what he needs to know. And he does need to know it.

  ‘What brought you here, darlin’?’

  I pause for a few seconds, taking the time to search his brutally handsome face for something that will make me think this really has a chance of working. Somehow. But I don’t think either of us has really thought that far ahead.

  ‘I’ve never been in love,’ I whisper, and his expression changes in an instant. ‘I thought I was, once. In the beginning… but when I think back, it’s obvious I just got swept up in something that I didn’t really want. I can see that, now.’

  I drop my head, wishing I didn’t have to tell him this, I really don’t want to talk about it, but I’ve thrown those floodgates well and truly open and there’s no going back now.

  ‘I wasn’t in love.’

  I feel sick, but he starts to rub my back; slow, gentle motions that soothe me. And it helps. But I still don’t know if I can do this.

  ‘I’d known him forever, you know? We’d grown up together, our families had been friends for generations, and I think it was almost a given that we’d end up together…’

  I stop talking, just for a second, because my story doesn’t seem to have half as much impact as his. It doesn’t feel as tragic or as real or as important. Not to me, anyway. Or maybe I’ve just stopped thinking about it in any way other than a bad memory that hasn’t yet been fully erased.

  ‘But you didn’t love him?’ His voice breaks into my thoughts and I look at him, shaking my head.

  ‘We’d always been so close, even as kids, and I loved being with him, I really did. He was kind and funny and he was always there for me when I needed a friend. And I guess we just sort of fell into a relationship, like it was always meant to happen. I can’t even remember when we stopped being friends and became something more. And in the beginning… in the beginning it was good. I was happy, we both were. I couldn’t possibly have known what would happen…’

  ‘Kira…’

  ‘I thought I knew him… I thought everyone was right – we belonged together, that’s what they all kept saying. We belonged together… They had no idea they were throwing me to the fucking wolves…’

  I trail off again, but he tucks a finger under my chin and tilts my head back up, his beautiful eyes staring deep into mine. ‘What happened, Kira?’

  ‘I… He started…’ I swallow hard to try and dislodge the lump that’s suddenly formed in my throat. ‘He started to hurt me…’ I can’t say it. I can’t get the words out, I really do feel sick, and I don’t want to remember this. I don’t. I spent years forgetting it, or trying to, and I don’t want to remember it.

  ‘Kira?’

  His eyes narrow, but he hasn’t shifted his gaze.

  ‘He hurt you, how? What did he do, baby?’

  I swallow hard again, and he continues to rub my back, and I need him to keep doing that. ‘He just seemed to change, overnight. We’d only been living together a matter of weeks, but one day he just… he
just seemed to change. And everything was different…’

  ‘What did he do, Kira?’

  ‘He… he started hitting me, when something didn’t go his way – the smallest, most stupid, insignificant things; he didn’t like what I’d made for dinner, or the way I’d ironed his shirt. He’d lose his temper, punch walls… he’d tell me I was worthless, that he was only staying with me out of pity, or because it was good for business, for our families to stay close to one another. He said that’s all I was – a business deal.’ I throw my head back and close my eyes for a few seconds, and I’m glad he doesn’t say anything, that he just lets me take this minute to get my head together. ‘I knew he was sleeping with other women. He made no secret of that. Sometimes he even rubbed my nose in it, bringing women home, knowing I’d be there… It was almost like he – like he felt he had some right to do those things because we’d known each other all our lives, and this was just the way things were supposed to be. And I didn’t see the signs, saw nothing that made me think it was even possible for him to turn into that man. But he did. Somehow. And I didn’t see it coming. I don’t even know why I stayed, why I kept on taking it, why I kept on letting it happen… When we were with everyone else he was the perfect man, but when they weren’t around he became someone I didn’t recognise, and it scared me. Because I knew nobody would believe me, if I told them…’ I look down, and his hand’s holding mine and I feel like crying. I’m angry at myself for having been so weak, and my heart’s breaking for him because of what he’s been through. I’m a mess, this is a mess, and I don’t know how we move forward from it now. ‘The night he…’

  I stop, again, because I hadn’t meant to go any further. I’ve told him enough, it’s too much, and I’m exhausted with the emotion and the pain we’ve both endured in our fucked-up pasts. It’s too much. But he isn’t letting it go that easy.

  ‘What did he do, Kira?’

  ‘He raped me.’

  The words are out before I have time to even think about it, but maybe that’s best. They’re out, and I don’t know whether I’m relieved or terrified that I’ve done the wrong thing. The only other person in the world who knows about this is Joey. And the bastard who hurt me.

  ‘Oh, Jesus, Kira…’

  Two fucked-up people, that’s what we are. Neal Cannon and Kira Blu – destined to be together because nobody else could cope with the mess our lives have become?

  ‘He raped me.’

  I don’t know why I repeated something I haven’t wanted to face up to for over a decade now. Maybe I thought that saying it out loud might make me come to terms with it more, but the only thing that ever made me come even close to coming to terms with what happened was becoming Kira Blu; I created her because I’d needed to use men like they’d used me. It was the only way I could cope – to become someone different. Someone completely different.

  I look into his eyes, and he’s as scared as I am. Have we said too much? Opened up more than we should have done?

  ‘Talk to me, baby.’

  His voice is so soft, so kind, and I don’t want to cry, not over this. I’ve cried enough tears over this.

  ‘I don’t know if I can,’ I whisper, and then I realise my fingers are digging into his arms and I loosen my grip slightly, dropping my gaze but he tilts my chin back up so my eyes meet his. And I can’t stop the tears now, I can’t.

  ‘What happened, Kira?’

  Just as he hasn’t talked about what made him so broken, I haven’t either. Joey’s tried to get me to open up but I’ve always shut it down, refused to go there because it doesn’t matter. But maybe it does, I don’t know. I just know that I hadn’t wanted to re-live this, and now I’m doing that, and there’s a part of me that doesn’t feel safe anymore.

  ‘It was just one night.’ I can’t raise my voice above a whisper, it won’t go any higher, and he’s holding on to me and I’m OK, as long as he holds on to me. I’m starting to feel safe again, with his arms around me. ‘But it seemed to go on forever...’ I briefly look down, swallowing hard because the memories are flooding my brain and they’re not welcome. I don’t want them there. But they’re invading my head and the tears are streaming down my face and he’s kissing them away as a million emotions clash and confuse me. ‘He raped me, more than once. I can’t even remember how many times because I just closed off, shut down and I…’ I breathe out and briefly close my eyes because I’m struggling to get the words out. But I need to do this – now. I really do think I need to do this. ‘I just let him. Because I couldn’t fight back. He was bigger and stronger and…’ I raise my gaze, my eyes locking with his once more and I feel a new strength start to rise up inside of me. Those memories aren’t going to drag me back down, I won’t allow them to do that. ‘I let him, do all those things to me. Because I knew that would be the last time he’d ever touch me.’

  I take another deep breath and close my eyes again, and I feel him lean in to gently kiss my damp cheek, feel his thumb lightly wipe my tears away.

  ‘I knew nobody would believe me, if I told them what he’d done.’ My voice is still little more than a whisper, but I really am starting to feel stronger now. That brief moment of weakness and vulnerability those memories caused has passed. It’s gone. ‘So I ran. I just walked out, as he slept. It was the middle of the night but I had to get out. I had to get away because I knew if I didn’t; if I stayed, I’d be trapped. I’d never be able to leave. He wouldn’t let me. So I ran… And I still can’t believe I put up with it all for as long as I did, I should have ran sooner, before he had the chance to… Jesus! Was I really that fucking weak?’

  ‘Kira, baby…’

  ‘I let him turn me into something nobody should ever become. I let him do that. That’s why I changed my name, my appearance; I put the woman I once was to rest, I had to do that. I had to leave her behind. I couldn’t be her anymore.’

  ‘You told no one? Your family, do they even know where you are?’

  ‘My family didn’t protect me. They couldn’t. I’m not sure they would have done, even if they’d known. Our fathers were in business together, and if I’d said anything… I don’t know if they would have listened. The truth, it would have wrecked everything, torn their settled, cosy, successful lives apart…’

  ‘And what about you? He fucking raped you, Kira. And you let that go?’

  He’s angry, I can see it in his eyes, but it doesn’t matter. What that monster did to me back then, I’m over it. I feel nothing but numb now. Most days, anyway.

  ‘It’s over, Neal. I left it behind, and it’s over.’

  His eyes are still telling me he can’t let it go, but he does, for me. Because he can see I don’t want to sit here and analyse it. I’ve done enough of that. I’ve moved on. Moved forward.

  ‘He made you do this?’ Neal whispers, and his expression is softer now, as though he already knows the answer to that.

  ‘What he did made me do this. He treat me like I didn’t matter, and the only way I could cope with that was to do the same to him, through other men – treat them like they meant nothing. I built a wall around myself, and I became Kira Blu, a woman who uses men but lets them think they’re using her. I needed to get the power back, Neal. And this is the only way I knew how to do that.’

  ‘But, ten years, baby?’

  ‘It’s my world now. You said yourself, the world you created soon became the world in which you lived. It was the same for me. I grew to like it. I grew to love the power I had – have. And it’s all I know now.’

  ‘Does Joey know…?’

  ‘Joey knows everything. And he’s the only other person who does. Joey saved me, Neal. I was at my lowest when my guardian angel found me, slumped in a heap at the back of Bam-Bams, tired and sore and bruised because I’d just ran. All night. There was no one I could turn to, I had nowhere to go because all my friends – they were all connected to my family, to him. I couldn’t go to them. I was on my own, and I was scared and tired and lost and Joey he…
he, quite literally, helped me get back on my feet. He took me into the club, he cleaned me up, and every one of those guys in there fussed over me like a princess. From that day on my life changed. I became their girl, their little sister, and they became my family. I’ve never needed anyone else.’

  ‘But Joey, he – did he not try and dissuade you, from going into the escort business? I mean, after what happened…?’

  ‘Joey learnt very early on how stubborn I can be. Nobody was going to stop me, Neal. Nobody. I needed this life, I really did. I needed it. I needed to deal with things in my own way. And, yeah, after what happened some may think that sex would be something I’d shy away from, but I wanted to use it to heal myself. And whether anyone else understands that or not, it doesn’t matter. Because it worked for me. I didn’t want to be scared of men touching me. But I needed it to be on my terms. And this worked, for me.’

  He says nothing for a few seconds, and I know he’s still trying to get his head around it all, because it probably doesn’t make much sense to him – to anyone, but me. ‘And in all those years nobody’s tried to find you? None of your family have even tried to get in touch? To see if you’re OK?’