Taking Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy Book 1)

by Wild, Nikki

  “But I want to!” he said, frustration clear in his voice as he paced like a caged animal. “Every time I’m with those women all I’m thinking of is you, Gwen! I can’t get you out of my mind. You’re all I think about anymore and I can’t stand not being near you. You’re what I’ve always wanted, Gwen.”

  My heart skipped a beat as he leaned in close, his lips so close to mine as he whispered sweetly to me.

  “So long as I have you then nothing else matters, Gwendolyn. You’re the one that I’ve always dreamed of having ever since we were younger. I didn’t know it then, but I know it now. You come first, in all things. Gwendolyn… I love you.”

  “Tristan,” I gasped, his arms sliding around me tightly as he pulled me in close for a deep, passionate kiss. I saw fireworks flash across my vision as my body melted against his own, my body tingling as I began to feel the warm rush of my juices begin to flow between my thighs.

  Every logical part of my mind knew that this was wrong, that we were doing something that we could never undo, but my heart cared nothing for the reasoning of my brain. I knew what I craved just as much as Tristan did, and his admission of his love for me only spurred me to throw caution to the wind and give in to the thing that I desired most.

  Our lips met in a passionate dance against one another, his mouth so hot against mine I swore I would ignite like kindling. I could already feel the stirrings of his member pressing against my body, encouraging my own lustful body to shudder in excitement. I’d craved him like a drug from the first moment he was inside of me, his dick sliding between the slick lips of my pussy. I missed the cool touch of the metal piercing against my sensitive little spot as he slammed himself into me over and over again. I needed him more than I had ever needed anything else in my entire life.

  “I love you,” he whispered breathily against my lips, his fingers sliding into my hair, grabbing a bunch of it and gently tilting my head back so that he could better lay his soft kisses on the skin of my neck.

  “I love you too, Tristan,” I gasped, my body arching into his as I felt his teeth graze over the soft flesh of my neck. I felt like I was about to explode, my entire body practically vibrating with the anticipation of feeling my stepbrother buried deep inside of me, prompting me closer and closer to an earth-shattering climax like I’d felt the first night we were together.

  Without warning, Tristan swept me up in his arms, carrying me from my living room and out into the hallway before depositing me roughly on top of my bed, sprawled out helter-skelter as I watched him begin to undress himself. I bit my lip in anticipation, my heart fluttering as I watched him free his cock from the confines of his slacks. I was soaked already, but by the time he pulled that monster out, I was utterly drenched.

  “God, I still can’t believe how big you are,” I marveled, my face flushed with color.

  Once he was undressed, my stepbrother crawled across the bed toward me, savagely pulling at my clothes until I was finally free of them before he began to kiss along the soft, gentle curves of my most sacred of places. I let out a gasp, my eyes closed as he buried his tongue into the velvet folds of my womanhood, my back arching. But just as I was about to come against the expert ministrations of his tongue, I felt something slide inside of me, and before I could process it, the enormity of his cock was invading me, filling me up from the inside out.

  This time, it was different. This time, it wasn’t raw, hot, and heavy. We smoldered against one another, a low, slow burn that consumed us from head to toe. We moved as one, not fucking, but making love. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I’d never gotten close enough to anyone for it to happen like this.

  But with Tristan, it felt good. It felt right. Tears brimmed in my eyes as I realized this was exactly where we were both supposed to be: healing ourselves, the wounds that had been inflicted upon us by our parents, and seeking solace in the only other person in all the world who could truly understand the damage we’d sustained.

  I wreathed my arms around his neck, holding onto him for dear life as our walls finally came crumbling down. Tristan covered me in kisses, some so hard they left me reeling, others so gentle and light I could only beg for more. And when he came inside me this time, it was like a flood—like he’d been holding back before, but now he could give me all of himself, freely and without regret or hesitation.

  I gave myself to him, too, coming around his cock in a steady rhythm, finally obtaining that sweet release no other man had ever given me. This was more than an orgasm. This was coming home. Finally finding the place that I belonged.

  In Tristan’s arms.

  Chapter 80

  I awoke to the sounds of my phone ringing from the inside of my slacks as they lay strewn across the floor by my stepsister’s bed. My eyes fluttered open, and I could hardly help but smile as I felt the silken skin of my lover beside me, stretched out across her bed with the blankets just barely covering up those gorgeous breasts.

  I leaned down and dug my phone from the pocket of my pants, frowning as I noticed my father’s number writ big across my screen.

  “What do you want?” I asked, hiding none of the scorn in my voice.

  “Do you have any idea what it is you’ve done, you utter fool?” he screamed, so loud that I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “My reputation is ruined!”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?” I asked, utterly perplexed.

  “Turn on the damn news, you repugnant idiot!” he snarled.

  I didn’t like the sound of this, drowning as I reached over to the bedside table to turn on the flat screen that hung opposite from Gwen’s bed. The screen immediately showed an image of Gwendolyn and I emblazoned across it, our arms wrapped around each other as we kissed passionately. From what I could tell, the picture had been taken from the street looking in on Gwen’s apartment.

  I was furious. I couldn’t believe some damn scumbag of a reporter had stooped to getting pictures of me through my sister’s windows. If there was one thing that I utterly hated about being a member of the upper class it was the disgusting amount of attention everyone paid to the comings and goings of your life.

  “You realize that my name has been sullied, don’t you?” my father growled menacingly over the phone. “You’ve made me a laughing stock with your disgusting lust for your own sister!”

  “We’re not even related!” I shot back, my face reddening as Gwen began to stir beside me. I could only imagine what she must be thinking as she realized what was on the television.

  “It doesn’t matter you fool! They know her mother is my wife, and that is scandal enough!” He screeched.

  “Scandals fade out,” I said. “And what in the hell do I care? I’ve been in the middle of more than a few. This will blow over like the others, and once it has, Gwen and I will continue on as we like.”

  “You truly think the press will leave you alone just because you stop being interesting? Or that you’d ever see yourself appointed duke after what you’ve done? You’ve ruined any chance you ever had of taking my place in Parliament. You stupid child, you’ve ruined everything you touch, like you always have.”

  “I don’t need your damn title,” I snarled back at him. “I don’t need anything from you, least of all your place in that outdated shithole.”

  My father let out that cruel, heartless laugh of his that I hated more than anything else.

  “You think I’ll stop with just the title?” he asked, unable to contain his cold mirth. “I’m going to ruin you, boy. Everything you’ve enjoyed of your privilege as my son will be taken from you by the end of business today. The trust fund, the respect. All of it.”

  “You can’t do that,” I said. “It’s not yours to take from me I—”

  “Oh, on the contrary,” he interrupted. “Your trust fund specifically stipulates that it go to my son. And, by the end of business today, I’ll have had the paper work to disown you filed with the courts. You’ll have no claim to a single pound of that fund… a
fund that my new baby boy will gladly inherit when he comes of age.”

  “You disgusting old bastard,” I hissed. “You piece of shit.”

  My father laughed again, this time more uproariously than I’d ever heard it. It was the sound of his victory. Without the trust fund I was destitute and homeless. He’d won.

  “Goodbye Tristan, and good riddance.”

  He hung the phone up with a click and I threw mine across the room with a clattering crash. My heart was hammering from my anger, the back of my neck hot with it as I stared at the muted news caster saying something about the entire affair. I didn’t have to turn the sound on to know she was making some kind of horrible joke.

  Good riddance to you, too, I thought, leaning back against the headboard as I watched them show the same few photos again and again across the screen. Maybe this will be for the best. I took a deep, calming breath and tried to collect my thoughts. There was an upside to all of this, and I just had to find it.

  Now that I was no longer a member of my father’s family or even a member of the aristocracy I was more than free to live my life as I saw fit. I’d already told Gwen that I cared nothing for the title so long as I had her and I had meant every word of that. The more that I began to think about it the better all of this was working out for me.

  I would be able to be with my sister, given now that I wasn’t bound to my father’s family by the same legal binding that would have made me refer to her mother as my own in any capacity. In fact the simple thought of not having to worry about hiding anymore filled me with a joy I hadn’t felt since I was much younger. The thought of walking out with Gwendolyn in public made my heart soar to new heights. We didn’t have to sneak or hide any longer. We didn’t have to pretend that our love for one another was anything other than what it truly was.

  It was Gwendolyn’s gasp that brought me back to reality from my thoughts. I turned over to find her staring at the television, her eyes wide with shock as she saw the two of us kissing on screen. Her face was pale as a sheet.

  “I suppose they were going to find out sooner or later…” I said, trying to perhaps break her from her shock. “And… now that my father is disowning me we can finally be together. We don't have to hide anymore, Gwennie.”

  She turned to look at me, her face incredulous and her eyebrows raised.

  “Do you honestly think what just happened was a good thing?” she asked, her voice tense.

  “Well, yes,” I said, a laugh breaking from my lips. “We don’t have to hide anymore! We can be together out in the open and no one can—”

  “What have you done?” she whispered, looking at me in horror. “You ruined everything that I’d built for myself… and I let you!”

  Gwen backed away from me in the bed, tears streaming down her face, a sight I hoped never to be the reason for. My chest felt cold and I was suddenly aware of just how vulnerable I felt with my clothes off.

  “What have you done?”

  Chapter 81

  “Leave,” I said, fighting back the torrent of tears threatening to soak my face. “Just get out, Tristan.”

  “But this is for the best!” he said, trying to make me see some brighter side of my life being ruined. How could my reputation being dragged through the mud possibly be a good thing?

  “You really have no idea what you’ve done, have you?” I asked, laughing incredulously. “How could you not understand that you’ve ruined everything that I’ve made for myself?”

  “It’s just words!” he cried, as though that would make it all better. “It doesn’t mean anything!”

  “It means something to me!” I shouted, my face burning red with anger. “My reputation is everything in my business! And now I have a scandal over my head! How are my clients going to trust my discretion when I sleep with my own client! Let alone the fact that you’re my stepbrother!”

  Tristan frowned, though the confusion on his face somehow told me that he still didn’t completely understand. How dense could one person be? I wondered.

  “I want you to leave, now,” I said, my voice trembling with and effort not to start sobbing right in front of him. I wouldn’t give him the privilege of seeing me weak. “You’ve caused more than enough damage already.”

  “But Gwen, I—”

  “Get out!” I screamed, picking up the nearest thing I had and throwing it at him—which happened to be my phone. He was more than lucky that I wasn’t trying to hit him. “You’re just like they always said that you were. Your father way right, all you ever do is ruin everything you put your hands on! I never should have agreed to help you, I should have known better than to think you wouldn’t find some way to make this into another one of your media circuses.”

  He staggered back out of my bed, once again hurrying to pick up his clothes and put them on before I lobbed another projectile at him, one that wouldn’t miss.

  “Go!” I shouted at him again, my voice breaking.

  Tristan didn’t say a word as he picked up the rest of his things and left. It wasn’t until I heard the front door close that I allowed myself to cry.

  How could he be so stupid? I asked myself. How could I?

  How would they trust a woman who can’t keep her hands off of her own stepbrother?

  I want to slap him as hard as I could, make him pay for the way he could just drag someone down into the mud and not once bat an eye. He had the privilege of being born into a life of money and power—a life of wealth that he never had to lift a finger for. I was never so lucky as that. I had to put my blood, sweat, and tears into building my business from the meager little thing that it was from my days at the university. My entire life was in that business, and he had taken a flame to it all.

  I needed to do damage control.

  I dug around in the bed where I’d thrown my phone, surprised not to have even one call from Tina to warn me. Either she was swamped with handling the fallout or something was terribly wrong. I dialed her up and waited for the phone to ring.

  She answered after the first one, and I could already tell she was fighting not to panic.

  “Marm,” she said, “you’ve seen the news?”

  “Tell me how bad it is,” I said, bracing myself for what I knew would be bad news.

  “I’ve had clients calling me all morning to cancel their services with you, marm,” she said, and I could feel the worry in her voice, not just for her job, but for the company she’d help me run for the past few years. Both our hearts were in this business and I knew Tina hated to see this just as much as I did. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure how well we’re going to weather this.”

  I sighed, trying not to cry over the phone as I did my best to come up with some sort of plan.

  “I’ll need to make a statement—a message to our clients apologizing for bringing them into the spotlight. At this rate they’ll all be investigated to find out whether they were slept with as well. By the time the day is over they’ll be trying to make it sound like I’ve been running some sort of escort service.”

  “I’ll prepare something within the hour, marm,” Tina said dutifully.

  “Thank you, Tina,” I said. “I’m not sure what I’d do without you.”

  “You’ll not see me abandon you, marm, that I can promise.”

  After I hung up the phone I descended into a mess of tears.

  Chapter 82

  The music pulsed through me, the bass thrumming in my ears as I watched the countless men and women on the dance floor grinding and pressing into one another to the rhythm. I hated clubs

  I need somewhere that I could drown myself in enough alcohol to kill an elephant all while having the excuse to ignore anyone who decided that they knew who I was. I wanted to be surrounded by people, while at the same time be alone with my thoughts.

  I sat there as the world moved around me in a constant motion, while I felt like I alone stood still, watching everything pass me by, changing and evolving while I stay the only constant. I laughed at myself
, and at how every single word that Gwen had said about me was true—I would never change, and that I had done everything within my power to make her life a living Hell all for my own selfish needs and desires.

  She had every right to hate me for what I’d done, for who I was and would always be. I was a burden, an embarrassment, and if that was who I was meant to be, then why hide from it? If life wanted me to play the Fool then who was I to deny it? The best thing that I could do for Gwen was to stay out of her way—to disappear and never show my face anywhere near her again. I’d hurt her enough, and I was more than willing to put an end to all of it right then and there if it meant sparing her another minute of the pain I had caused.

  I looked up from my drink to find my eyes draw toward a woman only a few seats over from me at the club’s bar, her eyes half-opened in a sultry stare that I couldn’t deny was utterly enchanting. She smiled at me, her full lips turning up at the corners like a cat that was about to eat the pet canary.

  “All alone tonight?” she asked, sliding over into the seat next to me and shouting about the noise. “Sort of shocking for a guy as gorgeous as you are.”

  “I had something of a breakup,” I said, my gaze drawn to the plunging neckline of her dress. “I thought I could come here to get over what happened.”

  She laughed in a way that made my spine tingle.

  “The only way to get over a lover is to take another, darling,” she cooed in my ear. “And I’m more than available for a gorgeous thing like you tonight.”

  Why not? I thought, wondering whether it even mattered at this point if I could ever win Gwendolyn back. What was the point of staying true to her if no matter what I did I’d always be a plague on her life? Maybe it’s better if I try my best to forget these last few days ever happened.

  “You think you’ve got what it takes to make me forget?” I asked, trying my best to sound coy, though no matter how much I wanted to I couldn’t stop thinking about Gwen. I’d never fallen so hard for any woman in my life, and now that I lost her it was hard to let her go. “She was the best I’d ever had.”