Body Box: Adult Paranormal Romance (Supernatural Thriller) (Dark Suspense) (The Smoke & Fire Series Book 2)

by Michele Wesley

  Neither of them spoke a word, because the intensity in the way they connected expressed more than words ever could.

  Kevin tightened his hold, and she accepted his embrace. He squeezed her way too tightly, but she didn’t care. He was all she could think about for months and finally having contact with him soothed her.

  He seemed reluctant to let her go, but eventually took a small step back. Neither could fight the urge any longer as they closed the space between them once more. The kiss that followed left Yala breathless, but she endured without oxygen to savor a few more tantalizing seconds. She broke the kiss to breathe and think. The warm rush of her breaths bounce off his neck and enticed her to seek out more. He cupped her jaw and tilted her head to recapture her lips.

  “What are we doing?” she asked. Her voice breaking through their passionate reunion.

  He took one last quick pull of her lips.

  “I don’t know, but I can’t get you out of my head, no matter how much time passes.”

  After one last peck, she took his hand and led him to the living room.

  “I think I need to be seated, if you intend to keep taking my breath away.”

  After she’d taken her seat, Kevin patted the area right next to him.

  “Will you please sit closer? I promise, I won’t make you lose your breath again.”

  She gave him a playful tap on the arm and lost her breath once more when he lured her across his lap. She struggled to remain calm as his hands roamed passionately over her body.

  She was confident when she shifted into a man, but she didn’t know a thing about this kind of play. She lost her chain of thought when his lips raked her neck and sent her body into a heat-filled frenzy.

  He pulled her against his chest before enveloping her in his arms, seeming to sense her sudden rush of uncertainty.

  Their heaving breaths were the only sound that filled the space. They remained quiet, for a moment, enjoying the state of being close to each other.

  Finally, Kevin whispered, “I would like to know about you, Yala. I want to know everything about you, if you’re willing to share.”

  Chapter 18

  Tortured Soul

  She didn’t want him knowing everything; but she couldn’t seem to say no to him, even when her brain screamed for her to. Yala’s actions with Kevin scared her to death.

  She hated the younger version of herself, because she was weak, vulnerable, and helpless.

  Before uttering a word, she collected her thoughts.

  “I must warn you about something, before I start this story.”

  Her long pause put a hint of worry in his eyes.

  “I have done some things that I’m not proud of. Some horrible things that I sometimes have trouble believing I’m capable of. But, however horrible my actions were, I’m not sorry for them.”

  He readjusted their seating arrangement, so that she was able to sit next to him and still glance into his face. He held onto her hand, likely sensing she needed the encouragement.

  “We catch killers, and sometimes we have to kill bad people to effectively do our jobs; so I don’t think there is anything you can tell me to make me think less of you.”

  She snuggled onto his side when he wrapped an arm around her back.

  She exhaled her last bit of tension and started.

  “When I was a girl, I lived with my mother, Nikki, in one of the worse projects in the Liberty City area of Miami. Nikki had been crack addicted my entire life, possibly while I was even in her. My mother was one of those serious cases of an unfit parent. If it hadn’t been for our elderly neighbor, Mrs. Bertha, I am pretty sure I would have died from starvation or something worse.

  “I managed to scrape through my first five years, by the grace of God and Mrs. Bertha’s prayers. The older woman was afraid that I would end up raped, or killed, as a result of my mother’s lifestyle. Mrs. Bertha was the one to register me in school and, for years, ensured I had at least one extra meal—besides what I received from school.

  “Unfortunately, Mrs. Bertha died when I was eleven and it left me to find a way to take care of myself.”

  Yala swallowed her reluctance and forced herself to continue. She dreaded telling this story because it dredged up the worst part of her life, but decided she'd endure the tortured memories for Kevin.

  “I loved school. I found comfort in learning and regretted going home every day, because my mother entertained a different man every night. Loud drinking and drug parties greeted me most nights. More than once, I'd walked into the kitchen, or into the bathroom, and found my mother having sex with some strange man. Nikki was usually too drunk and drugged to care about being on display.

  “At eleven, I held more worldly knowledge than the average child, since I’d spent most of my life watching my mother’s mistakes. I was teased and taunted at school about my scraggly appearance, but I didn’t care about being teased. Life at school was ten times better than what I endured at home. When Nikki felt the need to discipline me, it was with her fists. The act was always brutal, as if she was taking out her failures in life on me. Then she’d go through long spells of total detachment that left me wondering if the verbal abuse and physical abuse would have been better than the neglect she dispensed. The fact that the entire school, students and faculty, knew my mother as a well-known crackhead was added punishment.

  “I was way too young to work; but I got lucky when an Asian guy, Mr. Lee, allowed me to bag groceries for tips at his neighborhood store, in the evenings. The job couldn’t have come at a better time. With what little money I earned, I purchased food and clothes, since I no longer had Mrs. Bertha.”

  Although Kevin remained quiet, Yala could feel his tension grow with each additional sentence she spoke.

  “I spent the next couple of years much the same, illegally working and taking care of myself, but my mother’s habit worsened. Instead of leaving for days at a time, Nikki started to leave for weeks at a time and, on occasion, forgot to pay the rent and electricity bills. It was difficult to sleep in a hot apartment, teaming with rats and roaches. I often used what little money I made to keep the power on. My mother was ignorant to the fact that I even had a job. I never told her because I feared she’d take my money for drugs.”

  The jarring memories caused Yala to shut her eyes tightly before shaking her head a few times.

  Kevin squeezed her hand and rubbed his hand across her back. The gestures gave her the encouragement she needed to continue.

  “Section 8 was more than a term to me, back then; it meant the rent was only fifty dollars a month, and I wouldn’t have to sleep on the streets when my mother left for long periods of time.

  “About a month after my thirteenth birthday, I suspected Nikki’s time may have been up. She’d been away for more than three weeks.

  Kevin remained quiet, but his breathing sped up and the muscles in his arms twitched against Yala’s back. He likely sensed the story was only going to get worse.

  “I knew every nook and cranny our neighborhood. After two days of searching, I found Nikki. The hateful stench grabbed me first. Sure enough, there—among the trash, covered by the dirty blankets of our surroundings—was Nikki.

  “In our neighborhood, seeing a dead body wasn’t a big deal, but seeing someone you know made death a reality. I stood and stared into my mother’s dead, glossed-over eyes, as rats scurried away from nesting and eating what was left of her body.”

  An involuntary shiver shook Yala's body and caused Kevin to pull her more firmly against him.

  Yala pried the words loose from the lucid memories that still plagued her dreams.

  “Nikki’s mushy flesh and the stench told me she’d been there for days. Her eyes had changed from light brown to a grayish blue. They were wide open, and her gaze was empty and haunting, as if she’d finally acknowledged all of her mistakes. Her skin, normally light beige had turned a dark ashy gray.

  “I didn’t know what to do, so I rewrapped Nikki’s rotti
ng body with the trash I’d found her under. I must have stood next to her for hours, trying to figure out what to do. I had to find a way to get her into a grave.”

  Yala closed her eyes, took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  Kevin kissed her on the forehead, “Take your time or finish later. You don’t have to keep going if you don’t want to.”

  Yala shook her head.

  “I want to finish. I need to finish.”

  She took another breath.

  “After discovering Nikki, I walked home numb that day. I didn’t feel sorrow. Instead, relief filled me. I actually went to work and called the cops from the phone inside of Mr. Lee’s stockroom.

  “I reported that there was a dead body, without giving my name. Since everyone knew my mother as the local crackhead, I assumed people would quickly figure out who she was; but no one ever mentioned the fact that she was missing, and the cops never came looking for me. She was just another dead body.

  “I followed Nikki’s case based on what the streets whispered and found that the cops hadn’t bothered to investigate. They labeled Nikki’s death an overdose. I’m not even sure if they bothered to identify the body before they ordered it cremated.

  “I was truly on my own and, at thirteen, had enough experience to know I could survive. I'd heard so many horror stories about foster care, that I took my chances on my own. I knew how to feed myself, how to cover the rent and the electricity bill, and how to purchase the few personal items I needed. It seemed like no one, except me and the person that put Nikki in the alley, knew the truth. Since Nikki had been famous for her disappearing acts, when someone stopped by the apartment for her, I told them she was away, getting high.”

  Yala adjusted herself, burrowing deeper onto Kevin’s side. Another deep breath spurred her to reveal more as Kevin clung to her tightly.

  “Over time, guys who used to ignore me started to whistle at me and heckle me as I made my way to my apartment. I often worked late for Mr. Lee, knowing I was in desperate need of the extra money.”

  “My mother’s actions with men and the way they treated her gave me a warped view of how I portrayed men. I was naïve. I truly believed not showing any interest in men would deter their interest in me, but ignoring them only seemed to intrigue them. Many of the women and girls of my neighborhood were easy, with men and boys, and most of the men didn’t respect women. My luck ran out the night of my fourteenth birthday.”

  Kevin seemed to know where her story was leading; his shoulders dropped and he went still. Yala could see him shut his eyes out of the corner of her eyes, but she continued.

  “That night, a group dragged me through the window of a boarded-up apartment, with the intent of having their way. One of the saddest parts of the incident was that there were people, sitting outside, talking and drinking. None saw fit to help a young girl, kicking and screaming against the will of four guys, intent upon taking her virtue. I was ignored.”

  Although Kevin had place his forehead against the side of her head, Yala continued the story. If she stopped now, she feared she’d never restart it.

  “Two were teenagers and the others were at least in their early twenties. I was their temporary entertainment. My screams and thrashing around didn’t deter them from taking my virginity. The pain was horrendous. It got to the point that I slipped in and out of consciousness and was unable to hear and see them half the time. However, I heard enough to know that they bragged about raping my mother and was likely the ones who killed her. After the third guy started his turn, my mind had apparently latched on to a way to block out the pain.

  Kevin’s head shook against the side of hers. She realized it was as difficult for him to hear this story as it was for her to tell it.

  Yala’s voice cracked partly because of Kevin’s reaction, but mostly due to the harsh memories. It had taken her a long time to accept that the events of that night had shaped her entire adult life.

  “I stopped fighting when my body went numb. I’d somehow found a way to separate my mind from my body, to endure what was being done to me. Help never came, no matter how much I screamed. I accepted that I was trapped in a nightmare, as I lay there helplessly enduring the violations.”

  A tear slipped from Yala’s eye although she’d promised herself that she’d never spill another tear over her torturous past. She acknowledged the hand Kevin kept firmly wrapped around hers. She sniffed a few times and steadied her voice.

  “Those four faces, I filed them away in my brain. Raping me hadn’t been a big deal for them. They left me lying on an old dirty mattress like a piece of trash. The mattress was as torn and as dirty as I felt. They’d ravished my body and eaten my soul, and threw away what was left. My mind blacked out, for a time; and I awoke in so much pain, I could hardly walk.”

  Yala paused the story when Kevin’s shoulders quaked, as if crying. She pulled away from him enough to see his face and noticed a tear glistening in the corner of his eye. Touched by his sentiment, she fought tears of her own and used her thumb to wipe the tear from the corner of his eye.

  She reassured him.

  “It’s okay. I’m okay, now. It made me a stronger person. It’s not the most conventional way to gain strength, but…I found a way to pull strength from it because I survived it. I remind myself that that girl died. Yancy died there on that old dirty mattress.”

  Yala had never seen anyone shed a tear for her. Kevin had listened, absorbed her sorrow, and shared her pain. It was there on his face, in the way he gazed at her and in the way he comforted her.

  He placed her hand up to his cheek, before he kissed the inside of her palm.

  “You don’t have to finish, if you don’t want to.”

  She shook her head.

  “You need to hear it all.”

  She continued the story where she’d left off.

  “I stumbled, crying and with blurred vision, to the nearest bus stop. Making it to the hospital was more of a blur than an actual memory. The nurse at the desk took one look at me and immediately knew what had happened. The hospital called the cops, but I knew the cops couldn’t help me, so I pretended I hadn’t seen any of my attacker’s faces.

  “I explained my mother’s absence by informing them of her drug abuse. I couldn’t tell anyone my mother had been dead for nearly a year and that I’d been on my own the entire time. The doctor and nurse did their best to explain to me that things had been damaged, and I’d never be able to bare children. I spent five days in the hospital before I was discharged.

  “I reluctantly returned to my neighborhood and, thankfully, didn’t see the guys who raped me for nearly four months. I’d started to carry the gun and the switchblade my mother kept in the shoebox in the top of her closet.

  “It was also the start of my disguises. I started dressing like a boy and, to my surprise, people treated me differently. They seemed to respect me more, and they treated me nicer. I hadn’t glanced in a mirror since the rape, so I had no idea I’d been shifting into a boy, not just dressing like one. It was people’s reaction to me that forced me to finally uncover the mirrors.”

  Yala tilted her head in thought.

  “I have always wondered how Mr. Lee saw me for who I was, the entire time. He never asked or commented on my appearance.

  “Another month went by before I spotted one of my attackers. Since I could become a guy, it was easy for me to lure him, with drugs, into the same abandoned apartment he’d raped me in. I intended to shoot him and get the deed done fast, but I didn’t. I wanted him to feel pain. I wanted him to suffer as much as I had. I stabbed him, repeatedly. I was small and not very strong so it took longer for my attempts to seriously impact him. I stabbed him until my hands went numb, and it still didn’t seem like it was enough to make up for what he’d done to me.”

  Yala took a quick glance at Kevin. He'd paled in the face but continued to hold her, so she continued.

  “He begged for help, pleaded for me to stop. When I revealed to him my tru
e face, his horror seemed to grow more extreme than his pain. I let him see the monster he’d help to create.

  “I expressed to him that no one was going to answer his cries. I studied his despair and observed his pain and agony, so that I could compare it to my own. As he begged for help and mercy, he apologized for what he’d done to me. Unmoved by his apologies, I stood there and watched my tormentor fight for his meaningless life. Time. Consequences. Nothing mattered to me, until he was finally dead.”

  Kevin hadn't let go yet, so Yala kept going.

  “I didn’t call the cops to get his body. I wanted to feed the rats. I’d heard people say, killing someone that wronged you wouldn’t make you feel better; but they were wrong. Killing my rapist did make me feel better, and it meant he couldn’t do it to anyone else.

  Yala was certain her words would lead Kevin straight out of her front door, but other than a raised eyebrow, he didn’t seem disgusted by what she’d done or what she was capable of doing.

  “It took less than a month for me to find the other three, and I killed them all in the same manner. They all begged for their lives. They all apologized. I know I was supposed to, but I didn’t feel remorseful about any of their deaths.

  “Right after my last tormentor took his final breath, two men in black suits entered the abandoned apartment. Knife in my hand, bloody body at my feet, and three other half-eaten dead bodies remained where they’d died. I was sure the men in the black suits saw me as a soulless monster. I didn’t protest as the men approached. I sat my weapons on the floor and raised my hands, in surrender.

  “But, the men hadn’t come to take me to jail. I’d proven to them, at a young age, I was capable of killing with no remorse. The new world they introduced me to was one that understood pain, understood suffering, and dished out as much in kind. They were two Top agents.”

  Yala paused before glancing into Kevin’s eyes.

  “So. You’ve heard it. There was never much good in my life, so I gave you the bad and the ugly.”