Addicted (Tempting Book 4)

by Alex Lucian

  “Makes you think about how bad the Jews have had it, in many eras of European history.”

  “It does,” I agreed. “But it makes me think about how you and I—if you’re of European descent—are descendants of people who survived things like the Black Plague. How distressing is it that we stand here, hundreds of years later, walking across the gravestones of people who lived during that time? Many people had to die in order for us to be here now.”

  Elias was quiet for a long moment as we stared down at one stone in particular. I didn’t think the name on the stone itself was what caused his silence, but he was quiet nonetheless. He turned to me and squeezed my hand. “How lucky are we, then,” he said with a soft smile.

  I returned his smile, thinking about how this conversation with Elias was one of the deepest conversations I’d had with anyone outside of my classes, about the things I was most passionate about. And Elias had been the one to initiate it, to press me for more information. It gave me a little thrill, to be able to talk about this with someone who wasn’t in class with me.

  “So, are you glad we came here?”

  I smiled softly at Elias. “Part of my fascination with religion is its history, so yes. I’m thrilled you brought me.”

  “Are there other churches you’d like to visit?”

  “In Amsterdam?”

  He shook his head and tucked his hands in his jeans. “Anywhere.”

  “Well,” I began, thinking. “There's this chapel in France … the Chapel of St. Michael d’Aiguilhe.”

  “Ah, that sounds sexy coming from your mouth.”

  I blushed, and I was almost embarrassed for even mentioning it and gave him a funny smile.

  “What’s special about it?” he asked.

  I blinked, surprised he was asking me. Of all my boyfriends, though there had been few, never had one taken an interest in this sort of thing. Never asked me about my future, the things I wanted to see, the places I wanted to travel.

  In fact, Nicholas had brushed me off one night when he’d talked of his years traveling through Europe, brushing me off by saying that the places I wanted to see were insignificant in comparison to the places he’d seen. It’d been easy to keep it to myself ever since then.

  Discussing it with Elias felt weird. But I let out a sigh and said, “It’s this little chapel, perched at the top of a tiny mountain. From the photos I’ve seen, it looks rather dramatic; this lonely, needle-like mountain jutting up toward the sky.” I shrugged, my embarrassment coloring my cheeks. But he looked at me expectantly, so I continued. “It was built in the tenth century, so it’s even older than Oude Kerk. It’s had a number of renovations since then, of course, expanding and updating it, but the original sanctuary still survives, a thousand years later.”

  “How do you get to the top?”

  “There are steps that wind up the side of the rock. The mountain is a puy,” I explained, but Elias looked at me with a question in his eyes. “A puy is a volcanic hill.”

  “It sounds worth a trip.”

  “I mean,” I shrugged, trying to brush it off, “the chapel itself is supposed to be beautiful inside. It’s even said that the mother of Joan of Arc went to it, to pray.” But I gave him a smile, feeling foolish for bringing it up. “Not that I’ve been, of course.”

  “What’s stopping you from going?”

  I sighed. “My studies. My lack of free time. My fear of flying.” I paused a beat, ashamed to admit the last one, the most significant one, “Money.”

  “The good news is, you’ve conquered your fear of flying.”

  I laughed with him. “You’re right, I have.”

  “So you just have to work on the others.” He reached forward and tucked an errant strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m well-traveled, Ruby, but I wouldn’t trade my experiences for anything. You should make time to see the world.”

  I could only nod at that, gladly accepting his hand when he reached out toward me.

  After looking over the gravestones of a few of the more famous Amsterdam citizens, Elias and I left the church. It was strange, trying to describe how I felt after being in a structure as old and historically significant as Oude Kerk. It had felt like walking through a graveyard in some parts, and other parts like I was witnessing a place left, mostly, untouched by time. As we stood outside, Elias said, “You know, this is the last building in its original state in Amsterdam that Rembrandt walked through.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. He visited it often, and had all of his children christened here.”

  As we stepped away from the building, I encountered a bronze statue I must have noticed on the way in, considering its placement in front of the building, but hadn’t paid attention to until now. It was a full-breasted woman, standing in a doorway. The way her hands were placed on her hips and how her chin was held high told me she was confident, maybe even proud. Below her, the inscription read, “Belle.”

  “Respect sex workers all over the world,” Elias read off the plaque from beside me. His arm came around my waist as I let that settle in. Escorts weren’t necessarily sex workers, but that’s certainly what I boiled down to. Looking up at Elias, I tried to guess what he was thinking.

  “Are we in the Red Light District?” I asked him.

  Nodding, he smiled down at me. “We are. This statue is honoring the prostitutes of the world.” He squeezed his hand on my waist and led me from the church.

  Surprisingly, I wasn’t tired. I thought being in a church that was home to thousands of bodies would have drained me, but after stepping back outside, I felt different. Like I was finally getting a glimpse of what I’d studied for so many years, able to touch the buildings that had only existed in my textbooks. And Elias had seemed interested in my knowledge. It made me smile to myself, that he’d wanted me to share my thoughts even when the subject matter wasn’t something heartwarming.

  “Come on, let’s go to a coffee shop,” he said, interrupting me from my thoughts.

  “I don’t think I need any more caffeine,” I told him as he steered me into a shop with blue umbrellas outside.

  “It’s not a café,” Elias said on a laugh as he pulled me into the shop. The walls were a deep, midnight blue, and along the right was a bar top and several stools with patchwork-covered seats. Twinkling lights covered the ceiling, giving it a cave-like feeling.

  “Do you just buy coffee beans here then? It looks like a bar,” I asked. I looked around the room, taking in the different seating areas. And then the smell hit me. “Ohh,” I whispered as several patrons turned to look at us. “This is where you buy pot, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” He laughed again and wrapped an arm around my waist as we walked around the place. It had a distinct Asian theme, with the Thai Buddha heads that decorated a few of the low tables and the large stone Chinese guardian lions that were placed on either side of the wood door we’d walked through.

  On one of the tables was a beautiful blue glass bong, surrounded by people on their phones and tablets. It struck me how different marijuana culture in Europe was when compared to the culture in the states.

  Inspired, I turned to Elias. “Let’s get high before we leave Amsterdam,” I said in an excited whisper. He looked at me with eyebrows raised.

  “You, high?”

  Shrugging, I grinned. “Why not? Just one little joint.”

  “I don’t think they specifically make little joints,” he replied dryly. “But all right.” There was glint in his eyes when he smiled down at me and I felt my legs go a little gooey from the look he gave me. “Let’s do it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “You sure you’re ready for this?” I asked Ruby, who was all but pressed against the train window as the Dutch countryside bled green beyond the glass.

  “For the cheese city?” She grinned at me. “I’m ready.”

  “Of course you are. You get to see another church.”

  She practically vibrated in her seat. “I can’t wait. Th
e stained glass windows at Saint Janskerk have been preserved through two military invasions. In World War II, they actually pulled them out and buried them in sand dunes to protect the glass from when the Germans inevitably bombed the city. People go to incredible lengths to preserve the symbols of their faith.” Ruby shook her head. “I mean, think about it. You’re worried that you’ll be killed, your entire village leveled, and they risked it all to protect the windows of their church. It amazes me.”

  You amaze me, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. I settled into the high-back red seat opposite of her. My legs stretched across to the empty seat next to her for the almost two-hour train ride south to Gouda. “I wish we had longer. We’d be able to see more of Europe while you’re here.”

  “You won’t see me complain about a single part of this trip.” She sank into the seat with a happy smile. It was one she was wearing more and more frequently as our days blurred together. Sitting like we were, in the half empty train, it was becoming more and more difficult for me to remember the Ruby from the first night. So cool and distant. Even the memory of the sex was going fuzzy in my mind.

  It had been hot. We’d both come. But it couldn’t touch the way things were between us now. Everything felt heightened between us. Her hands were greedier, more possessive when they were on my skin, her kisses were deeper, her moans louder, her orgasms more explosive. When she came, she clamped around my dick so fucking hard that it sucked the breath from my lungs. Every time.

  And now, I couldn’t remember if it had felt like that the first night, or if the fact that we were complete strangers then had lent a sterile aspect to the sex. Knowing her now, even though the full picture wasn’t completely clear, there wasn’t one thing about our relationship that could be considered sterile.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of seeing windmills,” Ruby said, breaking into my thoughts while she stared out the window.

  “It’s beautiful here,” I agreed.

  She hummed.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  Ruby nodded, taking a sip of water from the bottle out of her large, leather purse. “Sure.”

  I took a beat to think about how I wanted to word it, since she had no fucking clue what was tumbling around my head. “You said something to me at the airport in New York. About how you’d kill to have your family four hours away.”

  Her eyes lost a bit of a happy glow they’d had, but she didn’t shut me down. You know what that means? Mother fucking progress. “That’s not a question,” she said quietly, even though no one was close enough to hear what we were talking about.

  I gave her a quick grin. “Such a smart ass.”

  She nudged my feet with her elbow. “And you like it.”

  “Even talk of your world-class ass won’t distract me.”

  “Fine,” she sighed. “Ask away.”

  “Where does your family live?”

  Ruby gave me a level look. “Couldn’t you have started somewhere easier? Like, how did you become an escort?”

  I tipped my head back and barked out a laugh. “Fine. How did you become an escort?”

  “You don’t really want to know this, do you?”

  “I do,” I said simply. Because I did. I wanted to know how someone so beautiful, so smart, and so accomplished ended up selling her body to strangers. And I wanted to know what happened to her that she made men promise to go visit their mothers like it held such deep personal value.

  “My friend Stella got me into it. She knew I’d just gotten out of a bad relationship and had student loans that were about to cripple my entire life.” She shrugged, and I kept a tight lid on my tongue when I wanted to ask her about the bad relationship. “Lenore met with me, wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into, and then set me up with my first john.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Almost two years.”

  “So you … you like it?” My heart tanked into my stomach while I waited for her to answer. I wanted her, desperately, to say no. Or to say something that made me feel like what was between us was different. I’d have been lying to myself if I didn’t acknowledge the sense of ownership that I felt over Ruby. The thought of another man’s hand on her perfect body made me want to break someone’s fucking neck.

  “Sometimes I do. Other times, I don’t.” She laughed, shaking her head. “I’m sure that sounds awfully ambivalent for someone in my line of work.”

  “A little.”

  Her eyes were trained on the seat over my shoulder when she spoke again. “Occasionally, I think about what my life would be like right now if I’d hated it that first night. If I’d had a horrible experience. Where I’d be living, how … how fucking poor I’d be.”

  There was a sick, masochistic side of me roaring to know what her first night was like. What if it had been me? What if I had been the guy to hand her the cash, ram my dick into her inexperienced cunt? Maybe I would have ruined her for every man that came next. Maybe if she’d been my first escort, she would have ruined me for all the other sterile transactions that would’ve followed. They didn’t feel cold before. But now, they did. Faceless, nameless, empty transactions that didn’t make me want to fucking explode from the pleasure. What if I had been there on her first night?

  Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask, a voice screamed in my head. “What was your first night like?”

  “You really want to know?” Her dark eyes were trained in on mine, like she knew that there was a violent struggle going on in my head. That the dominant side of me, the possessive side of me was warring with the sick desire to know more about her. My feet dropped off of the seat so I could sit up straighter.

  “Yes.”

  Ruby waited to answer. Outside the windows of the train there was lush green and bright swaths of color from flowers. If I hadn’t been looking at her, I would have been snapping my camera the entire train ride. But she was all I saw, the only thing I wanted to see. She opened her mouth and I clamped down on my teeth. “He was nice. Older. Probably in his fifties. Married to someone that bored the hell out of him. But he treated me with respect, asked questions about me,” she trailed off and her face got sad. “God, that sounds pathetic. Because he cared enough to try to make me come and asked trite questions, I kept going back.”

  Mother fucking hell, my blood was roaring, picturing some sick old fuck’s hands on her. “It’s not pathetic,” I said softly. Softly, because if I let the leash off of my temper, I’d throw her over my shoulder and fuck her against the back wall of the train.

  “You look mad,” she said in the exact same measured tone.

  “I’m fucking furious, Ruby.” I fisted my hands on my thighs to keep from reaching for her. I’d shred her shirt open, tear the bra from her body, shove my fingers into the front of her leggings and pull all the wetness from inside her so I could smear it over my face like fucking war paint. “Because right now, having you here with me, makes it fucking impossible to think about you with someone else.”

  “Then don’t,” she answered quickly, soothingly. Her eyes were like black coal, but they were so hot, so intense. “Don’t think about me with anyone else. Just think about me with you. That’s all that matters.”

  Her soft, cultured voice was meant to tame, meant to smooth the hackles that were raised on my back. My chest heaved with deep breaths when I couldn’t blink the visions away in my head.

  “Where does your family live?”

  Ruby’s eyes widened at my abrupt change in topic, but she answered. She actually fucking answered. “They’re dead.”

  I wish she hadn’t. “What?”

  “My mom died of breast cancer when I was little. Not even four.”

  “Fuck, Ruby,” I whispered, leaning forward, hating that I was far enough away from her that I couldn’t easily touch her. Hold her. Anything. “I’m so sorry. What about your dad?”

  She pulled in a ragged breath. “I usually say that he died of a broken heart. But,” she swallowed, “th
e official cause of death was an accidental overdose. Drank too much one night about a year after she died, took a few too many pain pills that had been left in the medicine cabinet from my mom’s treatment. After that, it was foster homes for me until eighteen.”

  Unable to sit, I shifted across the space so I could sit next to her. We angled toward each other, and I marveled at how she tilted her chin up and met my gaze in a way that practically dared me to pity her. I didn’t pity her. I was in fucking awe of her.

  “You’re amazing,” I told her. She averted her eyes, but I reached out to grip her chin so I could force her face back to me.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “The fuck you aren’t,” I said fiercely. “Do you know how many people would have curled up and let life keep screwing them over after that? Accepted that life was some fucking cruel joke and not even tried to better themselves? You’re amazing.”

  Her eyes sharpened with the sheen of tears and I cupped the side of her face, used my thumb to swipe the impossibly soft skin over her cheekbone. It struck me that I hadn’t been half as strong as Ruby since Diana died. I’d accepted that life was a cruel joke. I’d actively avoided any relationship of significance because I refused to put myself in the position that my parents or, fuck, even Nathan had been in.

  “Elias— “

  “Unless you’re about to say thank you, I don’t want to hear it,” I interrupted. She breathed out a laugh. “I’m serious. Losing my sister was hard. So fucking hard because she was my best friend. If I’d been able to show even one percent of the grace and … god, the faith that you have, I’d probably have been a lot happier the last six years.” A light bulb went off in my head. A really fucking big one. “That’s why you study what you do, isn’t it? To try to answer the questions you’ve probably had? About a higher power and why people believe what they do.”

  Since I still had her face in my hand, she couldn’t look away. She only nodded. “I never knew what my parents believed. But I had to know that there was something beyond this life. Beyond this place that people live and die in every single day. Every culture, every group of people has a common thread. For the most part, people want to know that the life we live has a purpose, has a meaning outside of this world. No matter what divine being they believe in.”