Declan Reede: The Untold Story (Complete Series)

by Michelle Irwin

  I sat next to the girl he had graciously “tossed my way” as he’d fucking put it, and wasn’t sure what to do. The moans and sounds of sex had started in earnest from the bedroom and I was fucking hard as a rock. I didn’t want to do anything the girl didn’t want though, especially when I still didn’t even know if I wanted it.

  “Is there another bedroom?” she whispered in my ear after a minute.

  I nodded and pointed in the direction of Morgan’s guest bedroom where I’d stayed during my first month in Sydney and still did from time to time.

  “Let’s go then.” She stood and gave me what I guessed was supposed to be a seductive smile. It had nothing on Alyssa’s though. The thought was enough to push me into action—however long my ex danced in my head, I would never be able to enjoy my life.

  I allowed her to pull me to my feet. Once we reached the bedroom, she pushed me down onto the bed. She grabbed something out of her purse and popped it into her mouth. Then she climbed over onto me, straddling my waist and kissed my mouth deeply. Her tongue pushed a small tablet into my mouth, and it fell to the back of my throat. Before I could protest or ask what it was, it was gone; washed away as I’d swallowed. I moved to sit, to question what the hell she’d done, but she silenced me with a finger pressed to my lips. Sitting up, and brushing her fingers through her hair, she moved her hips against mine. The sensation of her hips rocking against my cock distracted me and sent thoughts of the tablet rushing from my mind.

  While she writhed above me, she peeled her shirt off to reveal a lace and diamante bra. It occurred to me that she wasn’t quite as shy and reserved as I’d assumed. She grabbed my hands from the bed, where they were lying prostrate at my side, and pressed my palms against her breasts. I massaged them in small circles over the cups as she tipped her head back and moaned a little. Although the sound was a little off, and very different from the sexy little moans my ex had offered when I’d been with her, it was enough to keep me moving. I slid my hands around to her back and unfastened her bra. Quickest hands in the west I was—I’d taken off my ex’s bra more than enough times to have perfected it to a fucking art form. The constant thoughts of Alyssa made me harder, and the girl above me took it as a sign of interest.

  The chick leaned over and dropped the tip of one of her breasts into my mouth. I sucked it as deep into my mouth as I could, and held her sides as I licked and nipped at her skin. It felt wrong, because it wasn’t like Alyssa’s. It didn’t fit the same way, or even feel or taste the same. It just wasn’t what the sensation was supposed to be like. Nothing about the situation was right.

  I tried to push her off, but whatever she had given me started to take effect on top of the alcohol. I felt dizzy and woozy and wanted to be fucking sick. Obviously she’d taken one herself because her eyes had grown glassy and she started to giggle. She pulled my pants down just far enough to pull out my dick before rolling a condom over me. She pushed her panties to the side and holding my shaft tightly in her grip, slid herself over the top of me. Just like that, I was fucking someone else. Someone who wasn’t Alyssa. That’s all it was though—fucking.

  Throughout it all, my mind was disconnected from my body. I could have been watching a porno for all I accepted the actions as happening to me. A complete fucking stranger bounced on top of me and although my balls grew tighter and tighter until they finally released into the latex wrapped around my cock, I felt nothing. Not even when the fucking whore who straddled me had licked my neck to entice me to come.

  No joy, no love, no anything except a vague sensation of release. It was fucked-up, pure and simple. I was empty and wasn’t sure if I was even capable of feeling anything outside of the hole which had opened up inside of me and sucked the joy from me like a giant fucking black hole.

  My head spun and even though Alyssa and I had well and truly broken up—even though I didn’t plan on ever seeing her again—I still felt like I’d just cheated on her.

  Once I was done, the chick slid the condom off my cock before taking my shaft into her mouth to lick me clean. The move was too much for me to fucking stand. It seemed far too intimate and left me disgusted.

  “Fuck off,” I said to her, pushing her head away.

  “What?”

  “I said fuck off, slut.”

  At first, she looked shocked. A moment later, she went fucking nuts, launching herself at me. She beat at my chest with her fists and called me every name under the sun. I endured it for a minute before her words, the alcohol, and whatever the hell it was that she’d given me pushed me to the edge.

  In less than a second, I went from irritated at her actions to pissed off. I just wanted her to get the fuck off me. I screamed and shouted, telling her to fuck off, but when that did nothing to stop her attack, I grabbed her arms and shoved her away. I pulled myself to a sitting position and scrambled backward on the bed to escape her. She came at me again, swinging her arms wildly. One of her hands connected with my cheek, and her nails raked the skin like talons. Not even trying to be gentle anymore, I pushed her again. She smashed into the wall near the door with a loud thud. For a moment, she appeared dazed and disorientated.

  When she looked back at me, she spat in my direction. “Fuck you, arsehole.”

  ONLY CERTAIN things of the following three months stayed in my memory. I remembered the races, the track tests, and the days when I was at the team offices. Around those times, my days and nights were a fucking blur of alcohol, bongs, pills, and women—anything that could offer even a semblance of relief from the pain I felt constantly. Without fail, my trysts all ended the same way: me having my fill—not giving a shit about what the bitches wanted—then angrily throwing them out on the street. Somehow in my mind, it was always their fault. In every case, I threw them out for one simple reason—they weren’t and never could be Alyssa. That fact alone was enough to piss me off, especially when I was high.

  Eden had been the one to help me wake up to myself. There’d been a moment when I was at a true crossroads between straightening up and fucking up. Every day after, I thanked my lucky stars that she’d been there just as I was starting to slip even further into the clutches of drugs and alcohol abuse.

  On my absolute worst day, I’d turned up to work stoned. Eden had grabbed me just as I was about to walk into the offices.

  Danny would’ve had my arse ripped to pieces if he’d seen me. The one thing he’d demanded was clean drivers.

  “DECLAN!” EDEN’S voice was shrill and as sharp as her nails, but neither were enough to pierce my mellow. The only thing that surprised me was that she knew my name. She was the strategist for the ProV8s and didn’t have anything to do with my class. We’d probably had four conversations in total since I’d started.

  “What?” I asked with a lazy smile.

  “You go in there,” she pointed to the offices, “like that,” she pointed to my eyes, “you will be given your marching orders quick smart.”

  I went to shrug away from the hold she had on my arm, but she just gripped more tightly. My mellow dissolved and my lips curled into a snarl. “What does it fucking matter to you?”

  “It matters because you’re fucking talented. You’ll be a fantastic driver one day and I would love to work with you on the ProV8 team. In fact, I’d be willing to bet it’ll be sooner rather than later that you’re given a chance in one of those cars. That will never happen if you get kicked off the team though. You think anyone else wants to touch Danny’s trash? They all know Danny’s regulations. The simple fact is you fuck up here, you’re fucked everywhere.”

  It was easiest to pretend I didn’t care, so I shrugged.

  She wasn’t buying it. She squared up her six foot frame and, despite her slender build, somehow managed to be fucking intimidating as she stared into my eyes. “Why’d you come here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why’d you move here? To Sydney. Why are you here at Sinclair? What is it that you want to do?”

  My brows knitted in
to a frown. “I want to race. Why the fuck else would I come here?”

  She sighed. “If that’s what you want, then you have to do yourself a favour and listen to me. Go home, get yourself sorted, and come back in tomorrow clean. Then get off the fucking drugs for good.” She paused for a second to let her advice sink in. “If you don’t, I will tell Danny everything you’ve been doing in your spare time.”

  “And how the fuck would you know what I’ve been doing?”

  “Morgan.”

  I snarled at her. I’d forgotten that she’d straightened him out a few weeks prior and they’d been fucking each other exclusively ever since. Honestly, I could threaten to expose them to Danny, but it wasn’t worth making enemies, especially when she was just trying to look out for me.

  “Fucking whatever,” I said, but I still took her advice and turned away.

  “Oh, and Declan?” she called after me.

  “What?”

  “Give this guy a call.” She handed me a card for a fucking shrink, a Dr. Henrikson. “He’s discreet, he’ll help, and it won’t get back to Danny.”

  AFTER EDEN had straightened me out and put me onto Dr. Henrikson, I didn’t actually stop drinking, but I’d never touched illegal drugs again. Since that day, I’d known it was a fucking fine line for me to end up back there whenever my life went to shit.

  The thought made my guilt over my actions spike. Drinking a whole bottle of alcohol in one fucking night, two nights in a row, was a damn scary start.

  I grabbed the apartment key and my wallet, sparing a second to glance at the photo that now resided in there. With the image of my daughter firm in my mind, I swept out of the apartment, unsure what to expect of the rest of my day.

  Unsure what to expect from the rest of my fucking life.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: LONDON

  FOR FOUR DAYS I’d been alone in London.

  Four fucking days.

  For that time, I’d been petrified to venture any farther than the corner store half a kilometre from the apartment. A lingering dread filled me whenever I thought about going out and exploring anything else. I was certain that the one time I went any farther than that would be the time Alyssa chose to visit me. It was stupid that I felt that way even though it was pretty fucking clear to me that she wasn’t coming. Four days of absence and silence had proven that. Still, I was trapped like a prisoner in Danny’s apartment.

  In two more days, I was due to be on a plane flying back home, which left just one day of prison. I had absolutely no clue what the fuck I was going to do after I got home though. I’d half debated going back to Browns Plains to confront her, but that would only have landed me squarely in the lion’s den. I’d have to deal with too many fucking crazy people, most of whom were all kinds of pissed at me. Not that I blamed them. I just didn’t want to be forced to deal with them.

  Frankly, I was fucking terrified of some of them—Josh and Curtis in particular. If I faced either of them, I’d been surprised if I ever walked again—let alone drove—for the dick manoeuvre of throwing Alyssa out on the street after I’d learned about Phoebe. True, Alyssa already had a hotel room she was able to go to, but it was still a fucking dick move. I knew that and tortured myself mentally—her family’s torture would be physical and would ensure my agony was complete.

  Even without the thought of the hate I was certain I would face, I didn’t think it would be a good idea to follow Alyssa home for another reason: I wanted to talk to her alone because I needed to know the truth and I was sure that was the only way I would get it. If I wanted to know what she was thinking, and to try to figure out what the fuck she’d been through, it had to be just her and me. The fact that there was much less chance of my face being mangled was just an added fucking bonus.

  Although, truthfully, there was no guarantee no mangling would occur with me alone with Alyssa. She could be a fucking wildcat when cornered. A memory from school came to me unbidden, something I hadn’t thought about in years. I snickered to myself as I recalled the time she’d caught Darcy Kinsley trying to pretend she’d received a valentine from me.

  Thinking about Darcy dredged up Alyssa’s confession of her reason for knowing I always used condoms when I fucked random chicks. She only knew because Darcy had been one of the masses and she’d wanted to make damn sure Alyssa knew it, the fucking scrag. I hadn’t been physically violent with a woman since putting the drugs behind me, but fuck if it didn’t sound like a good idea where Darcy was concerned. Maybe she’d be a little less likely to fuck with Alyssa then. I should have made her take her mask off; maybe then I would have known who she was and told her to fuck off. Although, it was just as likely I wouldn’t have made her leave—and that fact made me feel like shit.

  Recalling the things I’d done to distract myself made me feel a hundred times worse about myself than I already did. I’d been the one who’d stuck my fucking dick into Darcy. Ultimately, I was responsible for the ammunition she’d used to hurt Alyssa. Every fucking day we’d been apart, I’d fucking hurt Alyssa in some way, even when I didn’t allow her to cross into my thoughts.

  I was such a fucking arsehole.

  The guilt that ate me slowly from the inside out was the ultimate reason I sat on the kerb in front of Danny’s apartment every day until at least nine at night. Then I would go inside and ring her parents’ house in Australia and get chewed out by whoever answered the phone, all while begging them to let me know where she was staying, or give me a contact phone number, or fucking something. That was what my fucking life had been reduced to.

  A fucking dog waiting to be either kicked again, or given a fucking treat, depending on the whims of one fucking woman. A woman who clearly didn’t want anything to do with me despite the bombshell she’d unwittingly dropped.

  Fuck this shit!

  I needed a night out. One good night to forget it all, to go out and get myself completely fucking wasted, and hopefully get laid. All I could think was four days and that fucking bitch hadn’t even bothered to call, even though I’d left the apartment number with her family every time I called them.

  Why should I wait for her anymore?

  Standing from my position on the kerb, I brushed myself off before walking back into the apartment. Before jumping in the shower, I pulled my black slacks and the formal grey team shirt from my suitcase. Whether the grey formal one, or the casual orange, the team shirts always guaranteed me a screw in Australia. They might not have quite the same pull in the UK but one could only hope. I was getting sick of my own fucking hand being the only thing that came near me, and four fucking days for me was like a year. Especially with all of the shit going on inside my head. I needed some fucking tension relief; the sort that only a wet pussy or willing mouth could provide.

  After I’d finished in the shower, I pulled on my boxers and grabbed my electric razor. The blade was already set to just the right length to allow a little of the rough stubble that seemed to drive women crazy. When I was about halfway through the job, the phone rang. Stopping the razor, I headed down the stairs to answer the phone. It stopped ringing just before I answered it.

  I was almost at the top of the stairs when it started ringing again. Whoever it was they must have really wanted to talk to me. I figured it was probably Danny again. He was the only one who had the number—at least the only one who was actually likely to call. When I answered it, I was surprised that I didn’t hear the usual beeps indicating that it was an international call.

  “Hello?”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “Hello?”

  The line was still almost silent, but I could hear faint sounds, like barely contained sobbing or possibly someone hyperventilating.

  “Who is this?”

  I heard a sigh. Then I had a thought and my heart did the strange throat/feet combo thing again.

  “Alyssa? Is that you?”

  The phone line clicked and the call was disconnected.

  Fuck. Was it her?
It was the only thing that made a lick of sense. Who else would call the apartment number from within the UK? Someone dialling a wrong number wouldn’t have remained silent for so long. Grabbing the phone directory, I leafed through it to find the number I needed to dial in order to call back the last missed call. I waited anxiously as it rang once . . . twice. It was answered on the third ring by a pleasant female voice.

  Pleasant, but not Alyssa.

  “Suncrest London, Caroline speaking.”

  “Hi, I . . . um, I just had a missed call from this number.”

  “All of our rooms dial out over this number, sir, so I won’t be able to put you through unless you know the room number or name of the person who called you.”

  It was a long shot. “I think there’s an Alyssa Dawson staying there. She’s the only one I can think of who’d have called me.”

  There was a pause and tapping on a computer. “I’m sorry, we have no record of any rooms registered in that name.”

  Fuck.

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it hadn’t been Alyssa. There was no one else who would ring me from a hotel in London though. Maybe she was staying there under another name, which could be fucking anything. It was a long shot, but it was also a possible lead. I knew it would sound suspicious if I asked Caroline for the address when I’d just admitted to not knowing who was there, so I finished the call with her with a polite, “Thank you for your help.”

  I hung up and then pressed redial, hoping I got someone different.

  “Suncrest London, this is Suzette.”

  “Suzette, would you be able to give me your street address please?”