Coming Soon

by Christy Gissendaner

  COMING SOON

  All Rights Reserved.

  Copyright © 2015 Christy Gissendaner

  Cover Photo © 2015 All rights reserved – to be used with permission.

  Cover design by Natsumi Covers.

  This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This book contains adult material. Reader discretion advised.

  DEDICATION

  For my Big Momma.

  OTHER TITLES

  BY CHRISTY GISSENDANER

  Tybee Island Shifters (In Series Order):

  In Too Deep

  In Deeper

  The Deep End – Coming Soon

  Out of Bounds (In Series Order):

  A Touch of Sin

  Some Kind of Trouble

  I Heart Shifters (In Series Order):

  Shift Happens

  Standalone Paranormal and Contemporary Titles:

  One Hot Knight

  Unmasking the Wolf

  Christmas Spirits

  Amuse Me

  Amuse Me Again

  The Deed

  A Hot Mess

  Just Right

  Overnight Sensation

  Having Cake

  Uncaged

  PRAISE FOR CHRISTY GISSENDANER

  "Sin is like chocolate-covered sex on legs!"

  Place of Reads (A Touch of Sin)

  "A Hot Mess is a funny, sexy, page turner."

  Author Jackie Weger (A Hot Mess)

  “…you might want to hang on to your clothes.”

  Night Owl Reviews Top Pick (In Deeper)

  Coming Soon

  Cara Daniels lost almost everything. Her parents. Her home. Most of her innocence. Her close friendship with Jase Whitmore is the only thing keeping her sane, but hidden secrets threaten their relationship. To escape an abusive uncle, she embarks on a journey to save herself.

  Desperate for money, she auditions for a role in an adult film and soon discovers Jase is a leading porn producer…and her new employer. The starring role of Dagger Production’s upcoming release is hers, but how can she pretend to be a sexy vixen when all she wants is the best friend who doesn’t realize his new star is a virgin?

  Caught up in a tormented web of pain and guilt, Cara learns Jase has demons of his own. His dark obsessions have the power to destroy the fragile thread holding them together if they give in to their shared desire. She’s determined to heal him, but is Jase strong enough to protect Cara from herself?

  Chapter One

  Rain misted in my hair, but I paid no attention to the damp chill. Two gray stones stood before me, a stark reminder of all I’d lost. Two parents. My home. My innocence.

  The day was colder than the night I lost everything. Pumpkin spice lingered in the air then. Now the scent of pine needles and freshly baked cakes hung heavy about me, a sign the holidays were in full-swing. Unlike the two story homes surrounding the tiny cemetery I stood in, no family waited for me. I was eighteen but felt like an old woman, broken and beaten by the curve balls life had thrown.

  A friend slipped his warm arm over my shoulder, and I turned my nose into Jase’s chest. He held me as I cried, a silent presence at my side for two months, ever since it happened. He’d been the first to arrive at the house when I found my parents, making it there before the cops and paramedics, and he’d been the one who held my hand the day their bodies were lowered into the cold, damp earth.

  The familiar citrus and mint of Jase’s cologne, a smell I’d always associated with my best friend, comforted me. He hadn’t started out as my friend. In fact, he pretended I didn’t exist when I’d hung out with Jackie, his sister. As we grew older, my friendship with Jackie dissolved as many pre-teen friendships did. Jase was the one who remained with me, pushing me when all I wanted to do was curl into a ball and pretend I hadn’t seen both my parents with their brains blown out against the wall of our pink stucco home.

  “It’s good to cry,” Jase said, his voice deep and husky. “Let it out, Cara. No one can hurt you here.”

  I opened my mouth, wanting so much to tell him what waited for me at home, but I snapped it closed. I couldn’t tell him. Jase wouldn’t understand. I had to make it work, at least until graduation in May. Five months to go.

  Jase let me go when I pulled away, but with enough reluctance to prove he hadn’t tired of playing hero. I retrieved the two wreaths he’d carried from the car for me and kneeled to lean them against my parents’ headstones.

  I ran my fingers over the engraved name of my mother, wishing for the thousandth time she hadn’t cheated on my father, hadn’t led him to put a bullet through her head and then his own.

  What sort of legacy had I inherited? Being so consumed by love it destroyed everyone around you?

  “Cara?” Jase squatted beside me. He tugged off his green and white striped toboggan and ran an awkward hand over his mussed brown curls. “Is everything okay?”

  No. Nothing was okay. My parents were dead. I was alone, and I hated who waited at my temporary home.

  I turned my face to the gloomy skies, the clouds gray and heavy with the promise of rain, and did what I always did.

  Pretended.

  “Everything is fine. It’s just the holidays, you know?”

  “You’d tell me though. Right?” Jase prodded. “If you need anything—”

  I stopped him before he made more promises. “You’ve given me enough, more than anyone. I don’t need anything.”

  I owed Jase more than I could repay as it was. Not just money, although he’d given me plenty to supplement my parents’ meager life insurance. I owed my sanity to him. If not for his steadying presence, I would’ve slipped into madness, truly curled into a ball and wished for death to take me too.

  “I miss them.” My voice came out needy. Weak. I hated it. Hated them for leaving me.

  Jase pulled me back into his arms. I snuggled against his hard chest and pretended I’d stay there forever.

  Warm. Safe. Protected.

  His breath ruffled my bangs as he pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead. “If you need me, call. I have my apartment in the city. You can crash anytime you need to.”

  The offer tempted me. More than he’d ever know. “Thank you, but I’m going to tough it out here.”

  Jase was twenty-one with a life of his own. He didn’t need an eighteen-year-old orphan crashing on his couch and upsetting the careful balance he’d created for himself there.

  A sigh lifted his chest, reminding me of how lean and strong he’d become. Where once he’d been somewhat overweight, Jase was now a tight slab of muscle, thanks to twice daily work-outs and a strict diet regime. “I can carve out time in my schedule, make sure you get to school every morning and pick you up after your shift at the cafe.”

  I held out my hand. “No. Jase, stop. I can’t ask you to. You’ve given me too much already.”

  “God damn it, Cara.” His green eyes snapped with fire, a lambent heat that always appeared when I upset him. “Don’t consider it charity. You’re my friend for fuck’s sake, and I want to do something nice for you.”

  “You have.” I framed his warm cheeks with my palms. “You do. Thank you.”

  The fire in his gaze disappeared, replaced by resignation and sorrow. “Promise me you’ll call if you need me. I don’t care when or why.
Promise me.”

  “I promise.” It was a lie. I wouldn’t burden him with my problems any more than I had to. “We should go.”

  Jase straightened effortlessly and reached out a hand to help me up. He towered above me, well over six feet tall to my five-four. Designer jeans, scruffy but still expensive, clung to his muscular thighs, and a distressed T-shirt covered his broad chest.

  Jase was hot, if I had to be honest, something I seldom was. Life had taught me candor came with repercussions best avoided.

  Jase led me away from the gravestones, his hand clutched around mine. He opened the wrought iron gate and stepped aside for me to pass through first before locking it behind us.

  The Gardens was small and inconspicuous, a tiny spot nestled in the center of suburbia. Vestavia Hills was close enough to Birmingham to give us the benefits of a large city without the crowded housing and traffic.

  Jase drove me to my step-uncle’s house, my home until graduation. I sat in Jase’s Hummer, staring out the tinted window, and wished I could tell him to keep driving, to take me home with him like he offered. The cheerful, yellow house and white picket fence gave the impression of picture perfect, happy domesticity, but horror awaited me inside.

  A chill passed through me, chasing away the warmth from the Hummer’s heating vents. I pressed into the soft leather seat and willed my body to move, to open the door and go inside, but my muscles betrayed me.

  “Cara.” Jase reached across the console and touched my thigh. Fleeting and gentle, as only a friend would touch me. “Want me to keep driving?”

  More than anything, but I shook my head and forced a laugh. “No, I’m just not looking forward to getting out in the cold.”

  He plucked at my thin sweater. “You need a coat. What happened to that ridiculous ski jacket you used to wear?”

  I didn’t tell him it was gone, too stained by the blood I’d washed from the walls before calling him the night of my parents’ murder. I’d burned the coat in the fireplace. “Maybe if I’m good, Santa will bring me another.”

  He moved his hand to my cheek and cupped it, turning my face toward him. “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t elaborate, didn’t have to. He knew how tough the first Christmas without my parents would be.

  I covered his hand with mine. “Don’t.”

  He tightened his fingers, but he released me without argument as I unbuckled the seatbelt. “Call me.”

  “I will.” The belt slipped through my hands, and I pulled on the door handle with chilled fingers.

  When my feet touched the sidewalk in front of my uncle’s house, I wished I was anywhere other than the yellow house at the end of a quiet cul de sac. I was eighteen now. Nothing or no one could force me to stay.

  But where could I go?

  I turned to give my friend one last look before I shut the door. “Goodbye, Jase. Thanks for coming.”

  He stared at me, his silence more damning than anything he could’ve said. “I mean it, Cara. Don’t shut me out.”

  I briefly closed my eyes and prayed for the strength to resist. “Merry Christmas. I’ll call you. Promise.”

  I slammed the door and rushed away. My spirits sank. With Jase gone, there was no one to protect me. To save me.

  To love me.

  Long after the gift exchange, after everyone had gone home, taking the sound of laughter with them, I huddled on my bed and stared at the door. Tom’s holiday party featured a lot of liquor. I wished with my entire being he’d drunk himself into a stupor and wouldn’t come that night.

  My phone buzzed in my hands, and I glanced at the display. Merry Christmas. I hope Santa is good to you.

  Jase.

  I typed a message back to him, teasing him for the lateness of his text. The message went through and the white clock face on the screen returned.

  A spurt of hope rose when I noticed the time. Almost midnight. Maybe I was right, and Tom passed out in his recliner, like the other nights he drank too much. His wife, Betty, had gone to bed hours before. Her normal routine.

  I despised her for it. If she stayed up later, it wouldn’t happen every night. I wouldn’t sit in bed and listen for footsteps and the tell-tale squeak of my door hinges.

  I snuggled under the cover and held the phone to my chest, wondering if Jase was still awake and would send another message. The phone buzzed again and joy filled me.

  I glanced at the screen, at the nonsense letters he’d written followed by a series of emoticons, and chuckled. The sound echoed in the cold, sterile room. Bare walls, a small bed, and a tiny dresser were all the items the room contained. I’d liked it that way at first; no reminders of my life back home, until Tom filled the barren haven with more bad memories.

  My fingers hovered over the phone, prepared to type a response, when I heard the slow, plodding footsteps. Dread filled my heart, and I tossed the phone aside. I pulled the covers over my head and struggled to breathe even and deep, hoping feigning sleep would save me. The ploy had worked before.

  The hinges squeaked. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping, praying he’d see I was asleep and continue to his room, to his wife. Not the step-niece who wanted nothing more than to escape.

  My wish didn’t come true. The floorboards creaked beneath his weight, and the sound of heavy breathing accompanied a rush of cool air as the covers were shoved away from my feet.

  It always started like this. He’d touch my legs and then move higher, sometimes touching me in places I’d prefer no one ever touched.

  His clammy, somewhat sticky hand touched my ankle. “Have you been naughty…or nice?”

  Alcohol-tinged fumes washed over me, and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter. Memories like my afternoon with Jase, when I’d been safe and cherished, helped me make it through times like this, when I wished I was anywhere else in the world.

  I wanted to answer, “Fuck off,” but knew better. I had nowhere to go unless I wanted to trespass on Jase’s easily-offered hospitality.

  I breathed in and out, softly, as rhythmic as possible. Tom’s heavy breathing grew louder. “Cara…spread your legs.”

  I did the opposite, determined not to let him touch me. Not wanting his sausage fingers on me. Go away, I pleaded silently. Over and over again. Hoping it would come true.

  His knuckle brushed the triangle of flannel between my thighs, and my spirits sank. Even with the smell of liquor on his breath, I sensed the desire. The nasty, unwanted need to touch me. Perhaps it would be best to get it over with, spread my legs like he asked, let him touch me, and be gone. But I refused to succumb, couldn’t give myself away like that.

  I wanted to be strong, to stand up and accuse him of the monstrous acts that had grown in frequency since I’d moved in. When I was younger, he’d corner me at parties or come to my room the few times I’d stayed with him while my parents were out of town. I’d been a child then, too scared to do anything. I was eighteen now. I could fight back. I should fight back. But the thought of being homeless frightened me more than Tom.

  I tightened my thighs and made a tiny, whimpering noise. Maybe he’d get the hint and leave. Each encounter had grown progressively worse, quickly deteriorating from comments of a sexual nature to unwanted caresses and now to midnight visits.

  I had to leave, but hadn’t tucked away enough money yet. Common sense told me to go to the authorities, to ask for help, but fear kept me silent. I’d tried to tell my parents when I was thirteen, but I’d clammed up, frightened it was my fault somehow.

  My phone vibrated from its place on the mattress, and I wished for the happiness I’d felt before, to be like any other girl answering a text and not combating disgusting advances of relatives, who should care for me instead of whatever fucked-up perversion this was.

  Anger bled into my veins, icy and hot all at the same time. I was tired of being the victim. No longer content to shut up and take it anymore.

  I squeezed my legs tight, trapping his fingers between my thighs. He cursed and withdrew his hand
, and for a moment I thought I’d won. I shoved my face in the pillow to hide my relief, but then I distinguished the rasping sound of a zipper. Cringing, I dug my face harder into the pillow.

  I hated this part the worst. When Tom would touch himself, knowing I heard every disgusting grunt he made. Perhaps it turned him on, the sick voyeur fantasy he forced on me.

  At least he hadn’t touched me with it. Not yet.

  I kept my eyes squeezed closed and went somewhere else, a place my parents had taken me when I was a little kid. I smelled the ocean and heard the cawing of birds high above my head. Sunshine warmed my hair and burned the tip of my nose.

  My memories warred with the disgusting scene taking place beside my bed. A final grunt and it was over. The door squeaked open and closed, and I finally opened my eyes.

  Chapter Two

  When I was nine years old, I found an abandoned puppy by a storm water drain in our neighborhood. She had tiny, black spots sprinkled in her white fur. I thought she was perfect. I bundled her into my book bag and took her home on my pink bicycle. The weight of the tiny puppy against my back comforted me, made a bad day at school a distant memory.

  My parents were still at work, so I hurried upstairs and washed the puppy in the tub, squirting it down with my mom’s expensive perfume and tying a lopsided bow around its neck. I took her downstairs and fed it bologna, laughing as she devoured the slices whole.

  The afternoon was perfect, until my dad came home. He took one look at her and opened the back door, shooing the puppy outside with frantic motions.

  I stood there, staring through the glass doors and wondering why my father didn’t see what a perfect pet she was.

  “Why can’t I keep her?” I cried. Heavy, hiccupping sobs escaped me.

  “Your mother’s allergic, remember?” He went to fix a drink.