Devil's Despair Box Set: Books 1-3 (37 page)

She was smoking a cigarette, filling up the room with her rancid poison. She smiled at me crudely as though waiting for the perfect moment to drop some horrific bomb she could light on my life while she stepped away and watched it explode. This was a practiced motion of disgust on her part and one I had gotten pretty friggin’ used to. It stopped hurting years ago, and in its place, I felt the same disgust toward her.

She put her cigarette out, shut the television off, and decided to tell me a story. It was a watered-down version of her own truth, as I now know it to be, but she confessed to me that night that I had an older brother I knew nothing about. She then went into trivial detail about her life she had left behind. When she talked of Travis and his father, she looked distant and lost in a memory of a happier time. It was as though she was transported to another place where she felt both content and safe. I don’t imagine she had felt either of those things in a very long time.

At first, I didn’t believe her. My life with her was built on a stack of unstable lies or at the very least, vague truth. I thought this was another way she had found to punish me for my existence. After she was done talking through her bedtime lullaby, she passed out from too much scotch and exhaustion, so I immediately went online and googled Travis Nikels, age twenty-four.

He lived only an hour away!

First, I cried in relief; I had a big brother. Second, I got angry for all I’d missed in his life. Third, I stopped to realize . . . he didn’t know me and if my mother treated him with the same pride and understanding as she treated me all my life, he wouldn’t want any reminders of her and that included a lonely and needy kid sister.

So, I left it alone. I didn’t call him, write him, or attempt to get in touch with him in any way. I wrote it off as Karma’s way of making me pay for her mistake—again.

That is, until I came home one evening thirteen days ago and saw something no daughter, no
woman,
could ever un-see. Something so vile and sick that even thinking about it now makes me to want to violently retch.

* * *

“You’re not leavin,’ Lacey.”
Alec’s southern drawl and kind demeanor were a mess of emotion in the stir of his guilt.

“I am.”
Actually, I was leaving right at that moment, but I didn’t need to explain the obvious to him. He was slow, but not stupid.

“Damn it, Lacey. It was a fuckin’ mistake. I said I was sorry.”

“No, you didn’t. You said you ‘felt bad.’ Not that an apology would’ve mattered anyway.”

“God, you’re being a bitch. It means the
same thing
.”

Punching him in the gut as he stood in front of my closet door, blocking my path, I explained.
“Shit, honey. I ‘feel bad.’ There, I’ve apologized. Move now, so I don’t find a reason to feel really bad.”

“Baby, please let me explain.”
Alec’s pleas of sorrow and sadness fell on deaf ears.

“Oh, for the love of God, please don’t.”
The pain and hurt radiating inside me was masked by my anger in the face of his infidelity.

When he reached his hand out to touch my face, I ducked, lowering to pose, and delivered another blow to his ribs using the fierce right hook my old boss showed me how to use when handling drunk and touchy customers. Unfortunately, he taught his grasshopper well, and in turn, it was used against him when he became the drunk and disorderly. I was fired after that, but it was
so
worth it.

Alec folded in front of me right before cursing my name. Oddly, it was delivered in the same breathless voice he used as he called out my mother’s name during his climax inside her, only fifteen minutes before.

Sick fucking bastard and miserable slutty whore.

Throwing the last piece of a possible future in my bag—my brother’s phone number and address—I zipped it up, threw it over my shoulder, and headed for the front door
. “I’m leaving, Alec. We’re done.”

“I love you, pie.”
I heard the tears in his voice, but they offered me no absolution.

Stopping at the bedroom door, I turned around and took one last look at the man I thought I loved. Memories of our time together caused me to wince once I realized this mess was our undeniable ending. With a heavy heart full of regret for time I’d lost waiting for him to grow up, I responded,
“You’ll never call me that again, Alec.”

Sighing, he dropped his head as my words penetrated his traitorous brain.

Walking past my mother, she took another drag from her cigarette; the swell of smoke surrounding her resembled the dark cloak of her deceit. She smiled grimly when her face turned to meet mine.
“Sorry, darlin.’ Didn’t expect you home so soon. How’d the job hunt go?”

Meet my mom.

“You disgust me,”
I sneered as I edged toward the front door, the gateway to my escape.

“You’ll be back.”
She smirked through her words that even she couldn’t truly believe.

“Like fucking hell I will. Have a nice life, Mom.”

* * *

And I never looked back.

That was a snapshot of the meager existence I had called my life.

I’m twenty-one, unemployed, and as of this moment, I’m newly single. My boyfriend of one year had just finished fucking my mother. No, not ‘fucking with’ or ‘fucking around with’ my mother, he was
fucking
her when I came home that night. Dogs in heat have nothing on how I would describe what I witnessed upon my arrival.

When I walked in, I found the two of them laid out on the kitchen floor. My mother’s long, pale, and nastily bruised legs were wrapped around his jean-clad ass as he viciously pumped himself into her while she moaned a chorus of sated bliss into his neck with each nauseating thrust. My stomach wanted to revolt, but I kept it together long enough to dump a pitcher of freshly made iced tea onto them, sending them scurrying like animals across the orange tile floor.

Fancy.

What I thought was an ordinary Friday night had turned into
that.
I had just gotten home from applying for a bartending job downtown. It’s what I know how to do; my skills are limited. I know how to make drinks, count cash, and flirt shamelessly for tips. I have no training whatsoever with computers, phones, or office machinery, and I have no desire to ever learn.

My mother is an unpaid, but highly successful, whore and my father, who I haven’t seen in a year and who I think deep down wants to be a good person, can’t hold down a job. My mother’s current boyfriend is a nasty, beer-bellied creep who likes to pretend he and I are a couple.

My mom and I lived in a run-down, two-bedroom house in San Francisco’s dirtiest district. It’s the same house we’d lived in for over fifteen years. My car is a piece of shit and until that night, I’d never felt safe enough to take it anywhere out of town.

Circumstances change and risk becomes less of a factor when you’re pissed off.

So, I said fuck it and decided it was finally time to find my brother, Travis.

When I got to his door at one-thirty in the morning, he was less than pleased to say the least. I had woken him up.

* * *

When the door swung open after my aggressively frustrated knock, the first thing that struck me was our physical similarities. His hair was the same strawberry blond as mine. His green eyes, although a shade lighter, were like a reflection of my own. We’re both tall and fit, but he’s built whereas I’m toned.

“Can I help you with something?”
Apparently, he didn’t see the same resemblance.

“Travis?”
I asked gently while searching his angered face.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Lacey,”
I answered with hesitance.

“You have the wrong apartment.”
He looked me up and down and gave a small smirk.
“You’re looking for Travis McCabe. He’s apartment 201.”
He pointed to the number on his door,
“Not number 126. He’s on the second floor to the right.”

As I found out later, Travis McCabe was an annoying college kid who lived on the floor above Trav’s and held parties often for his college friends and their women. Travis mistook me for their evening’s entertainment.

I started to speak again, trying to convey our connection.
“I’m Lacey . . . I can explain more . . .”

He cut me off without delay.
“You said your name already and I told you, party is upstairs. You can use the . . .”

My blood started to boil. The man was infuriating me and after the evening I’d had, I wasn’t in the mood.
“Would you just fucking listen to me?”
I exclaimed and watched his face get red, the vein in his temple pulsed, indicating I didn’t have much time before he sent me on my way. I was desperate. I couldn’t go back home.
“Travis, I’m your little sister.”

He paused and for the first time since laying eyes on each other, he looked at me with recognition.
“My sister?”

“Yes!”
I raised my voice louder than needed and watched his eyes narrow as a result.
“Your sister! If you’d let me come in and talk . . .”

Before I had a chance to finish my sentence, the door started to close in my face. To avoid this, I put my foot inside his apartment and unfortunately heard the crunch of his toe under it. If he was already pissed, I knew he was about to go ballistic.

“Jesus Christ, what the fuck?”

“I’m sorry,”
I said with sincerity. The initial introductions weren’t going well. “
I drove a long way tonight, and I can’t go back where I came from.”
Watching his face settle from the pain, he grabbed his thigh as though that would soothe his ache.
“Our mother just told me about you recently and tonight I left her with good reason. I can’t go back.”

* * *

After he let me in, I offered as much proof as I could that we were related. Telling my life’s story in vague detail, and learning of his the same way, we talked until dawn when he told me he wanted me to meet his friends.

I found our four-year age gap didn’t make a difference to either of us. We both agreed that age was a number and after sharing some life experiences, we came to the understanding that although we grew up apart, our lives weren’t so different.

Travis told me about his band. His father had put him in guitar lessons when he was five. He did this with the intention of giving Travis something to focus on. From what I understand, and from what was evident during our initial introduction, Travis is moody and likely keeps to himself. I think I understand his dad. Although never meeting him, his plan was to give Travis an instrument and watch as he started to trust it to communicate for him, so to speak.

With Trav’s quiet disposition, it was a challenge drawing him out to talk about his friends. He cares for them and is protective of them in the same manner. Namely Raegan. She didn’t come into his life until recently, but when he spoke of her his voice gentled.

We spent the next day going through old pictures of him when he was younger. Obviously, I hadn’t thought to bring the few I had of me along; my hasty exit didn’t allow for forethought. I’m unsure I have much to brag about anyway.

It’s been nice spending time with him.

So, now I’m here and I’m about to meet the rest of those Travis calls his family.

CHAPTER TWO

Hayden

IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT and, just the same as any other night, I’m about to do what I do.

Fuck hard to forget who I am and what I mean to others.

The chosen woman of the evening—Casey, a brunette with smooth legs, a big chest, and an ass that begs to be taken hard and fast.

The object of tonight’s affection invites me in and lets me know we’re clear for play. “My roommate’s not due back until morning. We have all night.”

No, we don’t. I’ll be gone in an hour.

“Take your clothes off,” I demand, eager to start.

Walking into her kitchen, she turns around slightly with an invitation to delay the only reason I’m with her. “You don’t want a drink first? We could talk.”

“That’s not what you brought me here for, is it?” I answer, brushing my cock against her ass and pushing the front of her body into the kitchen counter as she clutches the glass in response to my rough whisper.

We’ve reached the final act of the evening.
The action.

Earlier tonight, Casey was standing along the back wall by the bar and I could tell she was mentally undressing me without shame. Her friends were laughing and talking, but her disinterest in their conversation was what made her an easy target. She was admiring me. This happens on a good night and when it does, if I find the woman acceptable, I’ll actively put my routine into play.

Act one: Show interest. Get her attention then shower her with affection to the point that all other men in the room don’t matter, making them invisible. Create a ruse that makes her feel like she’s the one destined to be mine; my one and only.

Act two: Buy her a drink and offer my company for the evening. Get her comfortable with my hands on her in public. On her face, in her hair, and up her skirt if accessible. The order doesn’t matter. I just cover the bases the best I can; providing her enough mental snapshots of what could come for her later if she’s willing to commit.

Act three: Invite myself to her place for the night. Whether she believes I’ll stay the night and wake up for coffee and breakfast in the morning doesn’t matter. It never happens. I just need to get in her front door then take her to the bedroom where she’ll submit without hesitation.

The final act: Where we stand now—be ready. Ensure the condom is in place; always in my wallet beckoning to be used. Check out the location and time frame to avoid the uncomfortable situation of getting caught in the middle of taking her.

“You’ve done this before,” she says smugly, looking back at me from her shoulder.

Ignoring her comment, I pull up the back of her tight skirt and find her wearing nothing underneath. I was rushed tonight and wasn’t able to find this out at The Ward. It’s a miss on my part being as I had her on my lap just an hour ago.