Madman (Love & Chaos #1)

by Ws Greer

  I yank the rest of the sweater off of her and pull her close to me, pushing my hands under her arms and lifting her off the floor. Reina lets out a satisfied exhale as she wraps her legs around my waist and I spin around, pressing her back against the giant window overlooking the city. Our hot bodies cause the window to fog around us as I press my mouth into her neck and bite down—gently at first, then harder to cause the perfect combination of pain and pleasure. Reina moans into my ear, telling me how much she missed me, and I rub her body with my hands, from her stomach, to her perfect breasts, to her supple neck.

  We breathe heavily together, our bodies starting to sweat from the intensity as kissing is no longer enough. Still holding Reina, I carry her to the stairs and climb every one of them with her body in my arms and her mouth attached to mine. She starts to suck my tongue as we ascend the last step and finally crash on top of the thick red comforter on my bed.

  I yank Reina’s pants off and find that she’s not wearing panties, and the sight of her sends my desire into overdrive. Before I can stop myself, I dive forward and let my tongue taste her. My mouth covers her and sucks as my tongue slithers inside of her before sliding back out and dancing on her clit. Reina moans like a woman who knows exactly what she wants as she puts her hands on the back of my head, begging me to keep going, and I grant her wish, sucking and licking until she lets out a scream that bounces its way down the stairs and into the halls of my building.

  As she recovers, I push off my own pants and position myself over Reina. Her skin is flushed red and sweat is beading on her face, but I swear it’s the most beautiful she has ever been.

  As she looks up and finds me waiting for her to catch her breath, Reina reaches down and takes me in her hand. She massages me and strokes, pulling gasps from my lips before she speaks.

  “Are you my beast, Solomon?” she asks, her eyes overflowing with lust.

  “Damn right, I am. The only one that can tame you,” I reply.

  “Show me,” she says, just before she slides my erection inside of her.

  She lets out a gasp as every inch of me fills her up, forcing her to adjust to my size. She’s wetter than I could ever imagine or explain, and immediately begins grinding her body up and down, pleading with me to take her, to help her forget whatever it is that she’s been through for the past seven years. Tonight, she’ll only think of me and how I make her feel. I am her beast.

  I pound into Reina over and over again like a man possessed, and her screams are fuel to the fire burning within me. I don’t hold back, I don’t take it easy, and I don’t stop. Sweat pours off of me and my breathing is ragged like I’m finishing a marathon, but I don’t dare stop. Tonight, I’m making up for seven years apart. I’m making up for never telling Reina how much I’ve always loved her. We switch positions from missionary, to doggy style, and my onslaught never wavers.

  I take full control of Reina with the intention of letting her know that our bond will never be broken again, as I grip her hips and pound into her, our bodies smacking together repeatedly, and sending sweat flying into the air. I’m sealing our fate by taming the monster inside of her, and even after the two of us have come at the same time and collapsed onto the bed side by side, it only takes one touch of her skin and one thought of how much I’ve loved her all these years to get it all started again.

  If I can help it, tonight will never end. Not an inch of her will go untouched, neither outside nor inside her body. Thoughts of Dante are nowhere to be found. Tonight, it’s just us. The monster and the beast, back together at last.

  Behind me, the city of Philadelphia shines brightly in the night with the orange glow of the streetlights. It’s the city that Reina and I will run together now that she has come back to me. When it’s all said and done, I’ll be the king, and she’ll be the queen at my side. The two of us will reign supreme over everything we lay our eyes on, and we’ll bring fire and chaos to anyone who stands in our way.

  I never thought it was possible, but Reina is back, and she’s not getting away this time. I don’t care how damaged she is. We’ll be damaged together—a madman and his insane woman. The perfect match made in hell.

  Only a beast can tame a monster.

  THE RED DIGITAL clock on my nightstand turns from three-fifty-nine to four o’clock in the morning. Reina and I, having finally gotten our breathing under control, lay in bed with the sheets half on us and half hanging off the side of the bed. She has her head resting on my chest as she lays on her back with a champagne glass half-full of Cristal, while I lean back on the headboard, smoking a thick Cuban cigar. The white smoke curls into the air and forms a cloud above us, and I look up and through it, focusing on the image of Reina and me reflecting in the mirror on the ceiling. It’s been a few hours since she showed up, and seeing the two us together still feels brand new and strange, but it’s the best version of strange I’ve ever felt. I rub her soft, smooth skin as she sips the champagne, staring out the window in front of us. The city lights shine brightly into the dark room, providing us our only light, and I swear, there isn’t another place in the world I’d rather be.

  As I marvel at her skin, I try to force myself to get over the awe of it all. It’s the best thing in the world having her back, but there’s so much I don’t know about what happened to Reina. If she didn’t tell me anything about the past seven years, I’d still love her all the same. But, my desire to know would never go away. She left, and I have to know why. So, after a few minutes of silence and letting her get a buzz from the Cristal, I ask the question I’ve been dying to ask all this time.

  “What happened to you, Reina?” I say softly as I continue rubbing her skin. “Why’d you leave?”

  Reina doesn’t move a muscle. She just keeps staring straight ahead, out the window. There’s something in her face that grabs my attention, though. Something about the way she doesn’t react makes me think there’s something dark in there that wasn’t there before. Reina looks like she’s been through something, and the look on her face reminds me of someone else whose been through so much trauma that people call him a madman. Me.

  Reina lets out a loud exhale before swallowing the rest of the champagne in her glass. As she sits up, her demeanor darkens and her eyes turn cold. She had an innocence in her before, and from the looks of it, that innocence has been snatched out of her.

  “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long,” Reina finally replies, looking down at the sheets that are still wet from our sweat and her come.

  “I’ve wondered for so long,” I reply. “I wanna know everything. Everything, Reina.”

  “You sure?” she asks. “Not everything is as pretty as you may think.”

  “What makes you think I need it to be pretty? I don’t care how ugly the story is, Reina. As long as it’s your story. Tell me.”

  With that, Reina leans over and grabs the golden bottle of Cristal from the nightstand, but she doesn’t pour any into her glass. Instead, she places the glass on the nightstand and keeps the entire bottle with her as she rests her back against the headboard next to me. She takes a swig from the bottle before staring straight ahead again, her bare chest drawing my attention from time to time. For a moment, I think she won’t tell me. But after a minute of staring out the window, she takes a deep breath and lets the words come out.

  “I remember the last time I saw you,” she begins, still looking outside. Her eyes aren’t moving, but I can tell her mind is replaying like a movie, and she’s watching it, unblinking.

  “We’d had sex in your mom’s basement,” she continues. “Then you walked me to the train station. I remember thinking about you the entire ride, wondering how somebody like me—somebody with parents like mine and a background like mine—could fall in love with somebody with a life like yours. I was shocked as I realized just how much I loved you while I was sitting on that train. I remember feeling like I was in heaven, on cloud nine, and then the train stopped and my cloud disappeared. It evaporated from under my feet and I
plummeted towards the ground. You weren’t there to catch me though. Charlie was.”

  I feel a sudden shudder hit me and my muscles tense at the mention of the name. How could I forget Charlie? He was the pompous little prick Reina was being forced to hang out with. Her dumbass parents were trying to play matchmaker and force her into Charlie’s arms, and when she wouldn’t do it, she’d get in trouble. He was the asshole I confronted at her prom. Scared the kid half to death. So hearing her say he was there to catch her and I wasn’t is like taking a knife to the gut.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask as I struggle to hold back the rage I feel surging.

  “When I got off the train, Charlie was there,” Reina replies. “I can still see it all like it just happened this morning. He was wearing a royal blue letterman’s jacket that used to belong to his father, and he was leaning against his white BMW with a smug little smile on his face. He knew he’d caught me red-handed coming back from Strawberry Mansion because he’d followed me to the train station, saw me buy my ticket, and actually waited in the parking lot the entire time for me to come back. He wanted to catch me so he could tell my parents, and that’s exactly what he did.”

  “Seriously?” I interject with a frown. “That prick from your prom told your parents you’d been coming to see me?”

  “He took great pride in telling them,” Reina answers, her eyes still gazing out the window. “He was pissed about what happened at prom, and he was looking for a way to get his revenge.”

  “On who? You or me?”

  “On both of us. He wanted to hurt you by hurting me,” she says, her voice trailing off after the last two words. Her eyes finally move from the window down to the bed before she closes them tightly, remembering.

  “What?” I ask, sensing her distress. “What’s the matter, Reina?”

  “After hearing what Charlie had to tell them,” she continues, ignoring my question. “My parents decided it was best to send me away. I always knew that if I didn’t act the way they wanted me to act that they’d send me away, and after hearing about me leaving the safety of Center City to take the train to the poor people’s neighborhood of Strawberry Mansion, they finally decided to do it for real. They decided to send me to boarding school, all the way in fucking France.”

  “France?” I snap, my voice booming down the stairs. “You went to France? That’s where you’ve been all this time?”

  “I tried to call you at first,” Reina presses on as if I’m not even there. “But they took my phone from me. My father threw it on the ground and shattered it right in front of me. So I tried to sneak onto the train, but my parents were having Charlie tail me wherever I went. He caught me again—brought me back home.”

  Her voice trails off again.

  “That little bitch,” I say under my breath as the feeling of pinpricks settles into my face.

  “Then that was it,” Reina continues again before taking another drink from the bottle. “The next thing I knew, I was on a plane, flying away from everything I’d ever loved—flying away from you.”

  I puff my cigar and send smoke rising into the air above us as I look at Reina. She looks lost in her words. It’s like she’s not even here as her eyes bounce back and forth from the bed to the tall buildings outside. I want to be able to comfort her, but I’ve never been good at that kind of thing. I’m more of a laugh-at-your-pain kind of guy, and I don’t think that’s what this situation calls for. So, I just watch her and wait for her to continue as she takes another swig from the bottle and exhales.

  “The boarding school was called Ecole des Roches,” she says. “When I got there, I knew from the beginning that it was going to be hell. After everything I’d seen in Philly, there was no way I could conform to that kind of life. With you, I’d committed robbery and bought fancy things, and lived a life that filled me with exhilaration. Hell, even my parents spoiled me enough before I was permanently on their shit list, and they knew what they were subjecting me to when they signed me up for Ecole. They knew I would struggle, because they knew that as soon as I got there, the staff was going to take everything away from me, which is what they wanted—to cut me off. No make-up, no nail polish, no jewelry, no phones, no laptops, no internet, no elaborate haircuts or anything else they considered to be fancy. I showed up and there was strict schedules and curfews, and a dress code where I had to braid my hair every day because it was too long. I was surrounded by snotty little rich kids who were so good at being sneaky, and school authorities who were verbally abusive in public, and physically abusive in private. They honed in on me from the moment I got off the plane, and they never left me alone. It was like they knew I was a rebel, and they weren’t going to get off my back until they broke me.

  “My first year there was bad. I missed curfew my very first weekend, which meant I wasn’t in my room at the mandatory ten o’clock. When questioned by the Student Life Counselor, I told her the rules were ridiculous and that I wasn’t going to follow them, especially on the weekend. The counselor responded by calling a security guard in and forcing me to kneel on top of frozen peas they’d poured onto a concrete floor. I didn’t think it would hurt as much as it actually did, and the marks on my legs took three days before they finally went away completely.

  “Even when I tried to do what they told me to avoid their punishment, I couldn’t do it for long. They reacted to the smallest things, and before long, I wasn’t having issues with other students. The staff became our enemy, and it was a war we could never win.

  “Things only got worse as time went on. The longer I was there, the more I wanted to leave, and the less I cared about breaking their rules. Once, I left my hair unbraided on purpose. So my Activity Leader decided to give me a haircut in front of the class. I threw a fit and hit him, so he called the guards and they held me down while he cut my hair with scissors in front of everyone. I cried, but it didn’t matter to them. They wanted me to cry, and the staff made me stand in the middle of the hall with my nose in a corner while everyone walked by, laughing at my new, boyish haircut.”

  As Reina speaks, I feel my blood staring to boil. I wasn’t there to protect her while she was going through absolute hell. I thought my life was bad after Whitney died and Reina left, but after all of that, I was making a name for myself. I was stealing money and becoming a legend on the streets while Reina was being tortured in France. Every bone in my body wants to get up and head straight for the airport. I’ll burn the whole damn school down for what they did to her.

  “It was my second year that got me out of there, though. That was when things hit rock bottom.” Reina swigs more champagne as if she isn’t even affected by how much she’s had already. She still looks like the Reina I once knew, but something inside of her is different. Darker. “I had a Student Support Advisor who thought I was pretty. His name was Arthur. He had black hair, a clean-shaven face, and a smile that immediately told me he was a creep. But he also had a reputation around the school of being abusive. There was a rumor that he once made a kid wear a hat that he called the Cone of Shame. Kind of like the ones dogs wear when you don’t want them to lick themselves. When they sent me to him, I was nervous, I admit. I got sent to his office after one of my teachers found some scratches on my leg where I’d cut myself shaving. They thought I did it on purpose, so they sent me to Arthur—told him I was troubled and needed special attention.”

  As Reina tells her story, I want nothing more than to hunt this Arthur down and drive a knife into his throat. I don’t even know exactly what he’s done yet, but I already want him dead. I want the entire staff dead and buried in unmarked graves.

  “He was cute,” Reina says, cutting off my train of thought with her shocking words. “I have to admit he was cute for a forty-five-year-old. But as soon as we started talking and I saw the way he was looking at me with his dark brown eyes, he was instantly hideous. Before the first of our three meetings was over, he’d already written on my arm with permanent marker after I told him he
could go suck himself for accusing me of being a cutter. His response to my insult was to write the word Monster on my forearm in thick black letters for everyone to see. I scrubbed my arm all night until it was red and raw, but it still wouldn’t come all the way off. Everyone could see it, and they knew he’d given it to me.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I snip, but Reina mows over my words as if I never said a thing.

  “The second time we met, he gave me a compliment for not going off on him. It’d been a week since the marker incident, and the letters were mostly gone by then. The session went well and he told me I’d made progress since we first met, and when I went to leave, he got up to walk me out. At the door, he rubbed my shoulder, and then slid his hand down to my lower back before unsubtlety grazing my ass as I stepped over the threshold. When I turned around to look at him, he was already closing the door behind me.”

  There is fire in my veins, but Reina takes another drink, makes herself more comfortable, and keeps talking. It’s as if a gate has been opened that she can’t close now.

  “The next session we had he tried to rub his penis against my hand as I sat in the chair in front of his desk,” Reina says, and I feel like screaming. “When I felt it, I snapped, because he wasn’t even trying to be slick about it. I grabbed a pen from his desk and stabbed him in the leg with it. When he screamed, I pulled it out of his thigh and stabbed him again, this time aiming for his prick. I wanted to stab a hole right through it. He screamed and pushed me away, and I walked out of the room, leaving the pen stuck in him. I don’t know if I actually hit his dick, but I tried with everything I had, and his scream of agony was music to my ears. They kicked me out after that, and my parents refused to pay for my flight back home, so I was forced to stay in France with barely any money and no place to live.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” I ask her, wishing we could go back in time and do it over again. I would’ve been there on the next flight. I was already halfway to being a millionaire by the time Arthur tried this shit. I would’ve flown over and burned him alive inside his office.