Hard Truths (Kiss Her Goodbye Book 1)

by Rebecca Royce

  With my arms filled with bundles of clothes in cheap plastic bags, we went back to his mausoleum. I was still feeling a buzz from my drink. I probably should have eaten more before I drank but that wasn’t the point.

  “Do you want to be buried here?”

  He opened the door to let me in, and I was once again struck by how completely off it was to be in a city of the dead, hiding from a secret organization bent on killing my captors. One of whom had just bought me knock-off clothing.

  “Are you going to kill me?” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Should I be afraid?”

  “My father kills people. Maybe it runs in the family.” We made it to the bottom of the stairs, and I turned to regard him as he was right behind me.

  “Your father farms it out. He’s never done the dirty work himself. And you’re not a killer.” He searched my face for a second. “Although I think you probably could be.” He pointed at my eyes. “There’s a spot in there that is hard. I see it. You’re vulnerable, sure. But you’re also tough as nails. Anyone else would be cowering in the corner. We’re passing you around, taking chances with your life, and yet it’s you who has us spinning in circles. What is it about you, Everly? You’re pretty. You’re smart. Funny. Yes, but a million women are.” He took a long breath. “So why am I all twisted up about you?”

  I kissed him. It surprised him. He didn’t respond right away. Kade stayed so stiff I wasn’t sure he was going to move at all. But then his mouth pressed into mine. And that wasn’t the only thing. He pushed me hard into the wall. I oomphed, but I loved it. I held onto him for dear life.

  “You done saying no?” I bit down on his lower lip. “Or playing whatever game you’re doing in your own head. You want me. I want you. Let’s get it out of our systems.”

  He tugged on the end of my hair. I loved the bite of pain. Somehow it represented my entire relationship with Kade thus far. I wanted it, but it hurt nonetheless.

  “You make me so fucking hard.” With that, he ground against me. A surge of heat pushed through me.

  “You make me so fucking nuts.” I kissed him again, harder. “Dragging me around. Ordering me out of the room the first day like you were king of the fucking manor. Calling yourself K. You like to be in charge. Guess what? You’ll never be when it comes to me.”

  He lifted an eyebrow infuriatingly slowly. “I’m going to hold you to that. I never, ever get to own you Everly. Promise me that I don’t.”

  That seemed like an odd thing to ask me to swear to. “Why?”

  “We own everything. I like the idea of not owning you. If you promise me that we keep going now. If you can’t, this stops here. I don’t need another ant in my life.”

  I ran my hand down the side of his face. He needed to shave, but I’d always found that not quite put together look sexy as hell. “That is such an incredibly… disgusting analogy that you keep making. Gross. Stop doing it.”

  “Doesn’t make it any less true.” He held my gaze steady. I could get lost in those dark eyes. That was part of what made him so dangerous. “I want that promise from you.”

  It wasn’t going to be a problem assuring him I wasn’t going to be one of his ants. “I promise. You’ll never own me.”

  “Good.” His mouth was on mine, and this time he kissed me again and again. And again. He tasted like his Manhattan, and I wanted to drown in the sensation. I didn’t rush him. I closed my eyes. I’d spent so little time on foreplay in the past. Maybe that was the problem with all my previous experiences. Maybe it came to time. The Letters were older. They didn’t rush to the end just to get there.

  Kade moaned, the smallest sound. It was almost a sigh. The sound made me shudder, desire rushing through my body. He didn’t give of himself easily. Even that little bit of sound was a huge amount from him. I grasped onto it. We could play our games again after this was over.

  I tugged at his t-shirt, and he took it off. I ran my hands over the muscles on his chest, loving the visceral feeling of my fingers on that part of his skin. He stared in my eyes as I did it, and I wished I could read him better than I could. I really didn’t know what he was thinking.

  But I knew what I was contemplating, and it was just how hard his muscles were. I walked closer to him; leaning my nose down onto his shoulder, I breathed in his male scent. I could scent the night on him, the alcohol, the bar, the jambalaya from the food truck we’d walked past. But beyond that was the clean scent of his soap. I bit down on his skin, just to mark him, just because I wanted to.

  He shuddered. “Use your teeth anytime.”

  We pulled each other’s clothes off. I was going to be completely naked with him in the front hall. If anyone came through the front door of his mausoleum, they’d catch us totally nude. I grinned. If anyone was able to come through that door without us noticing, let them look.

  He took a step back, staring at me for a second. It was a long glance, and after a second, I wondered if he found something lacking. I lifted my chin. Let him dare to criticize. I’d make him pay.

  Kade leaned forward, kissing me on the end of my nose. “You know you’re beautiful. Like sometimes it hurts to look at you because you almost don’t seem real.”

  “You know you’re built like a Greek god, right?”

  He didn’t answer me, instead grabbing his pants. He pulled a condom out of the pocket and placed it in my hand. “Hold that for me.” Sure, I could do that. He hadn’t asked so much as ordered, but right then I didn’t mind. The condom indicated completion and that was the goal. “I’m going to fuck you against that wall.”

  I pointed at the wall behind me. “That wall?”

  “Unless you’d prefer another one?”

  I shrugged like it didn’t matter, like my heart wasn’t racing with excitement. “That one seems fine.”

  “Great.” He backed me into it. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him. He returned the caresses. Eventually, he ran a hand down my body, stopping at my breasts. He squeezed them, his lips never leaving my own. I stroked the length of his back where I could reach, digging my fingers into his skin because I wanted to.

  I pulled back just enough to reach his cock. Between us, I stroked him several times. He closed his eyes before he flared his nostrils. “Careful. Too much of that and we’ll have to pause a minute before we go any further.”

  “What’s your recovery time like?”

  He opened his lids. “Find out later. Lean on that wall.”

  I pushed back, following his direction. I’d never had sex standing up before. He could lead me through this, and I’d gladly do as he said. My core clenched in anticipation. Every part of me wanted to get off with Kade right now.

  “Hand me that condom.”

  We really weren’t doing a lot of foreplay but that was okay. I didn’t need it, didn’t want it. No, this whole night had been foreplay. I wanted to get to completion. I placed the condom in his hand, and he tore the packaging before he rolled it onto himself.

  He grabbed my leg and pulled it up, placing it so my thigh straddled his ass. I held onto him, my back to the wall. This was awkward but not so much that I didn’t want to keep going. “Hold on.”

  Kade pushed inside of me. There wasn’t a lot of movement I could make. No, in fact, the best thing I could do was not move. I needed to stay still. It was hard, as my hips wanted to surge toward him, but if I let them, I was going to fall over onto him and this was all going to be over very fast.

  Porn sometimes made things look easy that were absolutely not that way. Yes, I’d watched some with boyfriends in the past. This should have been simple. It was not. That didn’t make it any less… hot.

  I wanted to see if we could pull this off.

  Anticipation filled me as I called on all my patience not to tell him just to lay me out on the floor and fuck me hard. He jerked his hips, moving his cock in and then out of me. I closed my eyes. Sometimes just feeling was the most difficult thing in the world.

  He’d told me not to let hi
m own me, and I didn’t plan on that at all. Another round of his jerking inside of me, and I knew I couldn’t let this continue. It felt amazing, and it wouldn’t be hard for me to come, but he had all the power here. I didn’t want him to see that.

  Maybe I’d been wrong earlier. Maybe sex really was a game. Or better yet a power struggle.

  “Flip me over.” I opened my eyes to look at him. “Take me from behind.”

  He stared at me for a long second. “If that’s what you want.”

  “It’s what I want.”

  Kade pulled out of me fast. He hissed in a breath as he did. I was wet, hot, ready, and yes I was going to be pressed with my breasts against the wall. But this way he’d never know, never see if this moved me. With Kade it was better that way.

  I couldn’t give him too much.

  Chapter 18

  I turned to face the wall. My heart beat fast. Already worked up from the little bit we’d done, I had to find my center before I started weeping like a baby just from having him touch me. Why was I so raw? I didn’t know. But Kade never gave me a chance to find my center. No, he was back inside of me faster than I could fathom.

  I’d wanted to turn from him, but what I hadn’t considered was how deep he’d be inside of me in this direction. From behind, there was always deeper penetration and Kade was large. He filled me up so far it was almost painful.

  I moaned and his hand came to my front, slipping in front of me even as he slid all the way in from the back. He found my clit, and he rubbed. I gasped.

  “I’ve got you, Everly. You aren’t going to fall.”

  Distantly, I wondered if that wording worked on many levels and not just the obvious “I wasn’t going to fall on my face” reference he was likely making. I stopped thinking. It was hard, but I had to force myself. The things he did to my body should be illegal for how they wrecked me, and I just wanted to enjoy them, not get lost in my head so I missed the moment.

  He breathed on the back of my neck. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel his nose pressing into my hair. “You fucking smell like strawberries. My new favorite scent.”

  I held onto the wall. I couldn’t talk. There was only Kade, his dirty mouth, and the shit he was saying to me that was as hot as any aphrodisiac ever could be. But his hand was making his thrusts even more effective, and I trembled with the need to come. I wanted to. Oh, it was so close but still it held off. Why couldn’t I just come?

  “Give it to me, Everly. You make me so hot. So unbelievably hot. I want to feel you explode. I need your noises. I need to feel your cunt squeezing against my cock.”

  I exploded. His words must have been all I needed. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but come apart in his arms. He hardly made a sound when he came, didn’t shout, didn’t say my name, just sighed as he climaxed inside of my body.

  We stood there together, me holding onto the cold wall, neither of us saying anything as we panted, trying to catch our breaths.

  “Was it disappointing?” His voice was low, almost harsh. He was still inside of me. I could feel him. He wasn’t as hard anymore, but I wouldn’t call him flaccid either.

  I shook my head. “Not in the least.”

  “Good.” He pulled out slowly.

  “To say the least.”

  He turned me around in his arms, and stared at me. “Come to my room.”

  I blinked. “Why?”

  “Less noisy in there.”

  As the air conditioner loudly blasted cold air on my naked body, that sounded like an excellent idea. “Do you snore?”

  “Maybe.” He winked at me. “Don’t come if you don’t want to. I was being nice. I only sleep two hours at a time. Suffer the whole night if you want to. Life’s full of stupid decisions.”

  I almost didn’t go to his room just to make a point. I didn’t really know what the point I’d be making was, and my grandmother used to say that I shouldn’t cut off my nose to spite my face. I kind of thought that applied here. After a quick shower where I changed my mind ten times, I put on a t-shirt we’d bought that said NOLA on it, and I padded down the hallway to his room.

  The problem with Kade—and maybe it wasn’t a problem, maybe just the opposite—was that it wasn’t so easy to pretend he was nice. Both Trace and Warden could act downright sweet for periods of time. Kade never really gave into that. He might have seemed that way for a little bit, but he never let me forget he was really in this to win and I was just a minor player thrown in his way.

  Sex was one thing. I could turn around and slightly detach emotionally. Sleeping was another thing altogether. Curled up in a bed with him, I was vulnerable. Still, it was loud in my room, and I didn’t think I could do another night like that.

  Chapter 19

  I made my way down the hall to his room, entering to find him standing by the left side of the bed in his boxer shorts. I was pretty sure that he’d been wearing briefs earlier. Maybe he slept in one and wore the other kind during the day?

  He turned when I came in. “Hey.”

  I nodded toward him. “Hey.”

  The air conditioner blasted through the place, the noise slightly dampened in here, but still too loud to be comfortable. How did he live like this without noticing it all the time?

  “You really don’t hear that?” I pointed upward. “It really doesn’t make you cringe in agony?”

  He shrugged. “I have actually cringed in agony in my life. Maybe I just have worse hearing than you.”

  “Maybe.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “So you sleep on the left?”

  “I’ll only be here two hours. Then you can feel free to roll around the bed.”

  I chewed on my lip. “I’m not really a roller. Not usually. I often wake up in exactly the same position I went to bed in.”

  He motioned toward the bed, and I got into the right side of it. We moved around for a while until we adjusted, each of us on our respective sides. Kade flipped off the light, bathing the room in total darkness. I guessed he didn’t have any remarks on my comment about my sleeping habits.

  I hated questioning the things I had said. But Kade wasn’t an easy person to speak to. With him, perhaps I might as well get comfortable with the concept of silence. For whatever reason, it wasn’t as easy to be silent with Kade as it was with Warden. He cleared his throat.

  At least a minute passed when he spoke again. “Are you stiff in the morning? Staying still like that?”

  I smiled, knowing he couldn’t see it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who needed to fill the silence. “No, usually I’m okay. Why do you only sleep two hours?”

  “I don’t know. But I wake up fully aware that I’ve got to get back to doing something, anything, that I’m completely wasting time lying in the bed. I try to shut it off, but it doesn’t work that way. I get up, get to doing something. Every night.”

  I couldn’t imagine that. I loved sleeping, craved it. The warm, scrunchy feeling after a good night’s rest when for those brief seconds, everything seemed like it might be right in the world. Of course, there were other mornings when I was bleary eyed, in need of coffee, and hating the sun for rising. Either way, I wouldn’t trade sleep.

  There was nothing so important it required me to get up and do it every night.

  “Must be very hard for you to turn off your brain. I’m sorry.”

  He sighed. “Used to it. You should go to sleep. We have to deal with your father tomorrow.”

  “Deal with him how?”

  He didn’t answer instantly. When he did, I didn’t love his response. “I’m working on that.”

  I rolled over. “Whatever that means.”

  “When I know you’ll know. Either way, your dad will be made to work faster. By now he knows Henry is dead. He’ll know how that happened. Word travels fast in our circles. He’s going to hustle.”

  My father, with his high cholesterol and blood pressure issues, was just as likely to have a stroke as anything else. I rubbed my eyes. I hadn’t felt partic
ularly tired, but now lying in the bed and generally not wanting to deal with any of this crap at the moment, sleep seemed like a really good idea. I had my back to Kade and I wasn’t going to pretend that wasn’t purposeful. It was. Even in the dark he could make me feel… raw, exposed, and not in the naked kind of way. In the he could see all the way to my soul and find it lacking sort of a deal that I couldn’t say I’d ever quite experienced before.

  “Goodnight, Kade.” I whispered my words in case he’d already gone to sleep.

  He reached out his hand placing it firmly on my back for just a second. When he pulled it away, it was as though he’d left an empty space where his hand was for just that brief moment. “Goodnight, Everly.”

  Sleep drifted over me. I dreamed I was on the back of a motorcycle. The loud, screeching of tires on pavement assaulted my ears. That had never been my favorite sound and after my mother left, I’d made it a point to never get on a motorcycle unless I had no other choice. I’d unfairly blamed the vehicles for my mom’s departure.

  Still, I held onto the driver for dear life, my head pressed against broad shoulders covered in leather. I breathed in the smell. It was familiar and beloved.

  Three cars sped up next to us, one darting in front of us so close on the highway we had to swerve to not crash into the back. I screamed out my alarm even as the driver of the motorcycle stayed silent. A bullet whizzed by my head, and I cried out again. Still, the driver didn’t respond or act like he noticed at all.

  What was happening? The car next to us, a black SUV, slowed down enough that I could see the person holding the gun clearly as though neither of us tore through a three-lane highway at high speeds. With my heart plummeting into my stomach, I recognized his face. I knew it as well as I would ever know any, it was my father.

  He fired.

  I sat up in the bed, my heart in my throat. I couldn’t breathe. No, I had no air. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t. I held onto my head. My heart pounded in my head. Surely, I must be breathing. I’d be dead. Was I dead? Was I…