Bury Me with Lies (Twin Lies Duet Book 2)

by S. M. Soto

We both stand there, chests heaving and lips red with the roughness of the kiss. I don’t know how it happens, but I’m kissing him again, raking my hands through his hair, tugging on the ends until he’s slamming me back up against the wall and taking my lips with a violent possession that’s feeding the darkness swirling inside of me as of late.

  It feeds the manic thoughts.

  The chaos churning in my brain.

  He’s the medicine I didn’t know I needed.

  I feel his erection, and my core throbs in eager anticipation, dying to feel him inside me. It’s been too long. I miss him. Every part of him. I rake my nails down his chest, trying to work his pants off, but he halts me. His grip tightens around my wrists, keeping me from touching him.

  Slowly, he backs away, staring down at me. He walks away, his gait stiff and angry. Much to my displeasure, I realize he took my gun with him.

  I don’t know how I knew she was up to no good, but I had a feeling when Marcus called me to tell me she had left the resort. At first, I thought she was seeing that little shit again. I still need to pay him a visit because, apparently, my first visit didn’t leave a lasting impression.

  When I called her and she didn’t answer, it only threw up even more red flags for me. I had no idea where she was, and when she turned off her phone to purposely remain hidden, it scared the absolute shit out of me. Anything could’ve happened to her. With the way things are going with the rest of the guys, there is no telling what they will do if they run into her.

  She is staying at the resort with me for a reason. I need her close, so I can protect her and have eyes on her at all times. Hearing she was at the club at the same time Vincent was nearly gave me a heart attack. In hindsight, I probably should’ve told her they were here, but this is what I was trying to avoid—her interference. I am trying to get to the bottom of this, and I am doing everything I can to protect her from them without raising any red flags, but if she keeps intervening, I won’t be able to help her.

  I broke everything down for the guys today. They have been cut from Kings. All of them. Including Marcus. He understood my decision and even stood by it. Trent was upset, just like the pussy he is, but it was Zach’s and Vincent’s reaction I was waiting for. Because they relied on me for so long, pulling the rug out from under them would kill them. It would make them angry.

  And in their anger, I needed to see if they went after my girl because, if they did…if they so much as tried to lay a finger on her? Brothers or not, I’d kill them both. I’d kill them all for her, and of course, she was fucking everything up.

  Earlier, I had one of our security guys escort her to the car where Dan was instructed to give her a ride back to the penthouse. He was under strict instructions to stay with her and keep her in his sight at all times.

  I rake a frustrated hand through my hair, my back screaming with fatigue, as I now head back to the penthouse. Back to Mackenzie.

  A fucking gun.

  She had a fucking gun.

  If she had been caught by anyone else with it, everything I’ve been working toward giving her would’ve been ruined. She would’ve ruined everything.

  How long has she had it, and most importantly, where the fuck did she get it? It’s small, a simple .22 caliber pistol. I’m sure it was easy enough for her to get, but I know there’s no way she obtained it legally. My lips thin as Jack comes to mind. He’s the only idiot she’s friends with who would be stupid enough to give her a weapon.

  When I step over the threshold into the penthouse, I’m not all that surprised when I see her. She’s freshly showered, sitting on the couch, a glare painted across her gorgeous face. A spark of anger ignites in my chest. As if she has any right to be angry right now. Especially after I just saved her ass.

  “I knew I couldn’t trust you.” Her voice is laced with venom, as she glares at me with a look of disgust in her eyes. I shed my jacket, keeping my face impassive, even while I’m raging inside at her words. She’s held such a mistrust for me, it should’ve turned me off her.

  It’s done the exact opposite.

  Her anger has done things to me that I shouldn’t be feeling in such a serious moment like this. That’ll have to wait for another time. I need to get this situation handled quickly.

  “You don’t know shit.”

  She jerks back at the ice in my tone. I’ve let Mackenzie wallow in her anger and sadness for far too long, but that shit stops now. If she wanted all those things she talked about needing in order to be happy, the other night, she had better listen and listen good. I can only do so much. I can only make so much happen. If she keeps going down this road, trying to solve it all and get revenge on her own, everything I am doing will be for nothing, and I refuse to let that happen.

  “I hate you,” she hisses, fighting back tears.

  My jaw clenches with anger at her display of emotion. I grind my teeth together, working to tamp down my frustration with her. She wants to hate me so badly that, no matter what good I do, I’ll always be the bad guy in her eyes. That fills my chest with ice and turns my blood cold.

  “The feeling is entirely mutual, baby.”

  Her face falls, but she covers it up with a grimace, hiding behind that mask, always masking her pain.

  “Why were they there? Why were you with them, and why didn’t you tell me?” She crosses her arms over her chest, demanding to know the truth. I guess my first mistake was not telling her the truth. I thought keeping what was happening with the Savages a secret from her was me protecting her, but it’s had the opposite effect instead.

  “They were there because I’m cutting them out of Kings’ shares.” Her eyes widen, and she collapses back on the couch, looking shell-shocked. “Vincent tried to kill you. Cutting him out of my life was a given.”

  “But…but why would you do that for me?” she asks, confusion swirling in those big beautiful eyes. I set my jaw in a hard line, glowering at her.

  “If you can’t figure out why by now, that’s not my problem.”

  “I can’t imagine them taking that news well. What happens if they come after me for retaliation?”

  Closing the distance between us, I drop down to my haunches in front of her, leveling our gazes. I slide my hand around her neck, dragging her into me. Pressing my forehead against hers, I breathe her in. She fits against me like a glove, a missing piece I never realized I was looking for, and I’ll be damned if I let anyone take her from me.

  “Do you really think I’d let that happen? I promised to take care of you in exchange for your freedom. They won’t come near you. But I am testing them, to see who strikes first, because I think you may be right. Maybe the night of Madison’s death wasn’t what they led me to believe after all. Nothing adds up. That’s why I want to keep you close.”

  She stares up at me through her lashes, those beautiful soul-filled eyes searching mine. They’re a blend of green and brown right now, and a slight ring of blue blends seamlessly into the edges of emerald. So much emotion is there to be read in her eyes. All I want to do is take her in my arms and keep her by my side forever. Only, Mackenzie isn’t the kind of woman I can do that with. She is broken, and like all broken things, she needs the chance to heal on her own, instead of being smothered.

  “Is that the only reason you’re keeping me close?” she asks, a glint of hope sparking in her eyes.

  “Do you want it to be?”

  When she remains silent, I heave a deep sigh and stand to leave her. I hear her soft feet padding after me into my bedroom. I strip out of my clothes, needing a shower and time to think clearly. Usually swimming does that for me, but I am too tired for that right now.

  “You’re mad at me,” she realizes aloud, and all I can manage to do is scoff at her because, fucking yes, I’m angry with her for doing something as stupid as she did today. I’m angry with her because she’s still doing her damnedest to hide how she feels about me. Even when I can see it—when I can fucking feel it. “What else did you expect me to do, B
az?” She reaches out, gripping my arm. “I needed protection!”

  “And now you don’t. I’m not letting them near you. End of story. I won’t be able to give you what you want if you don’t let me. You’re hell-bent on ruining your own life. For what?” I brush past her, dislodging her hand, and head into the bathroom.

  After my shower, I’m surprised to find her sitting on my bed. I’d assumed she’d leave, go back to the guest room, and hide out there like she has been doing. Mackenzie seems uncertain of my mood as she follows me across the room with her gaze. As if coming to some sort of decision in her head, she gets up from the bed, and just when I think she’s going to leave, she saunters up to me.

  “Look, I can’t stop being afraid. I’ve tried that, Baz. You don’t understand what it was like all those years ago while you were gone. I just…I need you to help make it go away. Just for a little while.” Tentatively, she places her hand on my stomach, and the muscles there quiver beneath her touch.

  I drop the towel that’s secured around my waist and step into her. She gasps in surprise, both of her hands now settling on my abdomen, her fingers tracing over every ridge. With deft fingers, she traces circles through the droplets of water, and she trails her fingers all the way down, pausing just before she reaches my cock. Mackenzie glances at me through her lashes, heat and desire reflected back at me in her eyes.

  “Do it,” I order her, my tone like gravel even to my own ears. Her tongue juts out, wetting her plump bottom lip at the same time her soft little hand wraps around my dick, and she strokes, working my length. I groan at how good she feels around me.

  My chest tightens when she drops to her knees before me. With her gaze glued to mine, she takes me in her mouth, and my breath gets caught in my throat. Those plump bee-stung lips wrap around my head as she sucks me, her cheeks hollowing, her tongue licking the underside of my shaft, driving me fucking crazy. Pleasure courses down my spine at the feel of her warm, wet mouth fucking me. I bury one of my hands in her hair, gripping the strands for support as I guide her mouth on me, bobbing her head on my cock exactly how I want her. A curtain of hair falls into her face, shielding her expression from view, but her eyes. Fuck, those eyes. They’re screaming fuck me.

  When my cock hits the back of her throat, I let out a groan of approval, and the muscles in my thighs bunch from the effort it’s taking not to drive into her mouth at full force. Suddenly feeling the need to release all of today’s mess, I grip her by the shoulders and lift her. She moans in protest when my cock falls free. I toss her onto the bed, a little more aggressively than I intended, but by the flare of arousal I see in her eyes, it’s obvious she likes it. She strips out of her clothes, and I flip her onto her stomach, shoving her down and lifting her ass. My hand cracks down on one of the round and curvy globes of her ass, and she groans into the sheets.

  Her pussy is drenched, those perfect pink lips dripping with her arousal, begging me to fuck her. My girl didn’t even need foreplay; that’s how bad she wants it. Not wasting any more time, I dig my fingertips into her hips for support and slam into her from behind, balls deep. Gripping a fistful of that beautiful blond hair, I tug her head back, watching as her back arches beautifully. I pump inside her; my eyes riveted to my cock disappearing in and out of her, drenched in her juices. The sound of smacking flesh and her arousal echo around us, and I relish in it. In her.

  Her walls start to tighten around my cock with each stroke, gripping onto me for dear life, and her moans grow louder, bouncing off the walls of the bedroom.

  “That’s right, Dirty Girl. Come all over my cock. Just like that.” Her backside puckers with the force of her orgasm, and she lets out a scream of pleasure into the sheets. Lifting her hips higher, I change the angle and fuck her until I can’t keep going. That’s exactly where I stay the rest of the night, rooted deep inside her.

  As we lie there, both finally able to catch our breath, I wait for her to fall asleep. I expect her to. Hell, after what happened today, I need her to fall asleep, so I can fucking think straight. But I’m not at all surprised when she snuggles into me, as if she’s looking for support. Her next words are a shock to my system.

  “She talks to me.”

  My brows tug down, and my heart lurches. I have an inkling of who she is. “Who does?”

  There’s a long pause. So long, I don’t think she’s going to answer me, but she does.

  “Madison.”

  My mouth opens to say something, but nothing intelligible comes out. I don’t know how to respond to that. I don’t know how to feel about that.

  “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” she whispers, her voice tinged with sadness. I shake my head, blowing out a heavy sigh and pulling her closer.

  “I don’t.”

  “Sometimes it feels like it. She comes and goes as she pleases, but my mind always tries to rationalize it. She’s dead. How can she be in one place, standing at the foot of my bed, when I know she’s not really there?”

  I press my lips together, deciding to delve deeper into whatever this connection is she has to her sister. “What does she…say to you?”

  “Everything and nothing.”

  “Is she here now?”

  I feel her stiffen in my arms, and she jerks up, glaring down at me. “You’re making fun of me.”

  I do my best to hide my smirk at the angry expression shrouding her face. “I’m not. I’m simply asking a question because I’m curious.”

  “Well, no. She’s not,” she says dryly. I pull her back down onto my chest, and she surprisingly comes willingly, falling back into me like she didn’t just reveal a deep, dark secret.

  “Sometimes, I think I still hear her because we were twins. I wonder if our bond was so strong that I can still hear her even in death? Then there are other times when I wonder if it’s all me, just in my head. I don’t want to believe I’m imagining it—imagining her.”

  “Deep down, what does it feel like?”

  She’s quiet. Too quiet. “It feels real.”

  I hum, the sound vibrating in my chest, beneath her head, and she sighs. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  I pause, careful with how to respond. It’s not that I don’t believe her. I just don’t have any of the answers she’s searching for. “I believe that you believe it.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Mackenzie, I don’t believe in stuff like that. I never have. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe you’re telling the truth. It doesn’t mean it isn’t really happening.”

  She remains silent, as she mulls over my words. I mean them. I don’t think she’s crazy because she has conversations with her sister. I’ll never know the pain of losing a sibling, let alone the pain of losing a twin. I can’t fathom what she feels inside.

  “If she were still alive, do you think we would’ve ever crossed paths with each other? I know you believe it was all planned from the start, but it wasn’t. The first night with you, in the restaurant, it was pure luck I ran into you. I hadn’t talked to my mom on the phone in years, and when she called me, I couldn’t think straight. I was headed to dinner with my friends that night, and then when I met you…everything changed.”

  I’ve thought about this quite a bit. Always wondered how she planned our first meeting so seamlessly. How she knew to walk in there at that exact time. Hell, the dinner was spontaneous. After a business meeting that ran longer than expected, I wanted to eat by myself. What would’ve happened if that business meeting ended earlier, and I never had dinner there that night?

  “I don’t know. We might’ve crossed paths eventually, but I’m sure things between us would’ve been a lot different. I didn’t know your sister well enough to imagine what her future would’ve been like had that night never happened. I had a few conversations with her over the years.” I swallow, not sure how she’ll react to this information. “And one on the night she died. Before I left.”

  Mackenzie shifts in my arms. I expect her to push away and
glare up at me, but she doesn’t do that. Instead, she rests her chin on my chest, all ears. I search her gaze for any lingering remnants of anger or betrayal, but there are none. She just wants to hear whatever it is I have to say. I get the feeling that, sometimes, Mackenzie just wants to talk about her sister because she misses her. Instead of missing her on her own and keeping her emotions locked inside, this gives her a chance to share it with me. And I can respect that.

  Blowing out a sigh, I recount that night. “I noticed you that night. Didn’t put it together until much later.”

  “Me?” Those gorgeous eyes grow round with surprise. Right now, they’re a beautiful blend of honey with specks of pine. When she’s like this, all soft, and the strong façade is gone, that’s what I love. Because it’s her. Her face free of any makeup, hair free of any dye. Just the Mackenzie she was always meant to be. I want to breathe her pain and share her air because she is vital, a vital piece of me I am sure I’ll never be able to let go of.

  I smirk down at her, remembering that night. “You wouldn’t have noticed. You looked at Trent the whole night.”

  She groans, burying her face in my chest, making me laugh. “Teenagers are so stupid, aren’t they?”

  I sober as I stare down at her. It’s odd, I’ve looked at her like this so many times, and I think this is the first time I can clearly see pieces of her sister in her face. The black hair masked it well, but with her natural hair, I’ve been seeing the parts of her she’s tried so hard to keep hidden from me. “I was leaving the bonfire when I ran into her. She was upset and angry, and well, I was drunk.” She stiffens on top of me, and I know she expects the worst of me, just because of everything else that’s happened. I’ll never admit it, but it bothers me. That she can think so lowly of me.

  That’s the problem. When I think she’s giving me an inch, she isn’t really giving me anything at all. She purposely has a shield up around herself, a vine of thorns wrapped around her heart as her form of protection. Whenever I reach out to grab it, claim her as mine, those thorns embed themselves into my flesh, leaving me to bleed out. As much as she wants to, she’ll never truly trust me or let me in.