Pretty Perfect Toy -- A Temptation Court Novel (Temptation Court, Book 2) (14 page)

Really, asshole? Because you’ve chosen a twisted way of showing it.

I still can’t explain, even to myself, what happened in those moments after our passion in the bedroom—only that the flood I’d expected came as a firestorm instead. It was acid rain from the corners of my psyche, turning into radioactive fury once hitting the light of my conscience.

That’s the extent of what I
logically
get.

What my soul declares is something else entirely. A dictate demanding action. Right now.

“They told me Doyle was out here.”

Ella answers my searching stare with a little nose wrinkle. I haven’t answered her question—and she’s had more of that than I intended tonight—but right now, logistics must supersede the chaos. Untangling it for her means setting it straight for myself. Staring at the ceiling for an hour, with my ass parked on an ER gurney, has given me insight into the best place for that—but I’m going to need a car for it.

“I’m right here.” Doyle strides up. “Figured one trip in my truck was probably enough for you tonight, so I called for Scott and the Jag to get—”

“Your truck.” The recognition jolts like good espresso. His fifteen-year-old Ford, a subtle middle finger to all the other creature comforts of being on my payroll, is usually the eyesore I put up with. Right now, it’s my answer. If it’s a slow news day and the paparazzi
are
looking for the Jag—sometimes I doubt the wisdom in having the fucker custom-designed—they’ll be duped.

“Shit.” Doyle reacts to my incisive stare—at the keys in his hand. “What the hell, Cas?”

I extend my hand, palm up. “Wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

“Would not ask what?” Ella’s stare goes summer sky wide, triangulating from my face to Doyle’s to the keys. “What on
Earth
are you—” She sputters her way out of my interrupting kiss. “Cassian Cameron Jonathan Court. You will entertain delusions about going nowhere but
home
right now!”

“Don’t try the puppy eyes on
me
.” Doyle whisks up both hands. “I’m on her side.”

I advance on him by a step. “Give me the damn keys.”

He slams the collection of metal into my left hand. “You crash it, you’re dead.”

“Too late.” Ella pushes forward so furiously, the curls fan a little off her shoulders. “I have already decided to murder him.” Wheels on me with no mercy. “What in Creator’s name are you—”

“
Ella
.” The snarl in my voice isn’t what softens her. It’s the choke I add to the end. “I can’t explain. Not right now.” I cup her face, hating how my bandages scrape her soft skin—and make her wince again. “Not yet.”

My emphasis on the final word beams a little hope into her eyes—before she rams them shut. When she reopens them, exhaling hard, I feel my own face tighten. The hope is still there but so is all her stress and exhaustion. I can’t remember her looking this tired, even after a week at my bedside after the shooting, or on the morning I showed up at her family’s villa on Arcadia with the contract that would irrevocably change our relationship.

And me.

Everything about this woman has changed me.

And dammit, I can’t backslide now. Can’t become that person frozen in the graveyard of my heart, so afraid of disturbing the ghosts that I’m unable to move…to live.

I just need to tell that to the ghosts.

Especially the most tenacious one.

“All right.” Ella finally pushes it out on a resigned sigh. “Do what you must.” Mutters something under her breath mentioning stars and faith and terrified saints. The little monologue becomes sexy with shocking speed, forcing me to step back before everyone in the hallway gets to take a camping trip courtesy of the tent in my jogging pants.

“I won’t be long.”

“I shall burn your feet with that.”

“Huh?” Doyle mutters.

“Hold my feet to the fire?” I circle her waist, yanking her close once more. Pain pinballs up my arm because of it, but I’m beyond caring.
My woman.
The more it rides over the repeat button in my mind, the more incredible it sounds—and the more I wonder if it wasn’t in there all the time, from the moment I met her.

The more right it sounds…

The faster I need to get
myself
right—

For her.

When our lips ease away from each other’s, I keep her close, needing to capture every facet of sapphire life from those huge eyes. Needing all the fortitude her nearness can bring, before I have to let it go for one of the shittiest mornings of my life.

*

I arrive at
the cemetery a good hour before dawn. Wait in the truck, getting used to returning emails on my phone with my left thumb instead of my right, while waiting on the groundskeepers to arrive. That goes well for a while, until it’s clear that Singapore has gotten wise to the fact that I’m awake and on line, and messages start flooding in.

And the photo album on my phone beckons like fun new candy.

No. Even better—now that the folder is filled with pictures of a certain Arcadian sorceress.

The throb in my body eases.

The weight on my mind feels lighter.

The smile on my lips is huge.

Suddenly, the morning becomes a tribute to her. The sunrise streams through the trees in textures of gold and umber, like her incredible hair. Birds call to each other, pure and free, like the music of her laughter. And the brightening blue in the sky is always,
always
the magic of her eyes. Eyes that always give me so much. Believe so completely in me.

Giving me the guts to finally rev the Ford’s engine and follow the groundskeepers through the cemetery’s wooden gates.

It’s a small and unassuming place, though my belly would be just as tight a knot if driving into fucking Woodlawn, past Jay Gould and Joseph Pulitzer. No bullshit like any of this for me. In the “personal affairs” I’ve been ordered by an army of lawyers to have in order, I’ve dictated specific instructions about where to put my carcass when the world decides it’s done with me—and in the ground is
not
it. I’ve already served enough years in a dark, dirty box. It was called a New Jersey tenement.

But that’s not the piece of the past I’m here to visit.

Today, it’s all about the asshole buried in the knoll ahead.

Though his plot is marked by a simple stone plate in the ground, I’ve long since memorized its location. No surprise, since I’ve been visiting the fucking thing for nearly the last fifteen years.

The words on the plaque are simple.

Damon Matthew Marcus Court

Beloved Son – Cherished Brother

The dates beneath aren’t worth getting into. They mean nothing, since my brother’s spirit was gone long before his body.

Since he let the drugs take it.

My stomach matches my arm for pain. My throat convulses, battling the heat of the sick, the surge of the anger.

Always the goddamn anger.

“Shit.” It escapes me in a slow, burning hiss. I long to let my body drop the same way, just giving in to the weariness in my spirit, but I dig deep to keep my legs locked.
You don’t get my surrender today, brother. You don’t get my tears.

“You shouldn’t have even gotten the house call, asshole. You don’t deserve it.”

The wind picks up, giving brief reprieve from the muggy slush calling itself air.

My core remains ice, congealed by pure fury.

Just before the heat ambushes the backs of my eyes.

“God
damn
you, Damon.”

I huff hard. Stab a foot into the grass, deep enough to reach the muck of mud beneath, and lob a small heap of it over. Watching the stuff ooze like shit over my brother’s name.

And instantly want to do it again.

“Mom isn’t here to stop me, dick wad.” I toe the ground, so tempted. “Nobody’s here except me now, because nobody else gets to hear this. Kind of like all those other things I reserved just for you, man. You remember, right? The secrets we saved just for ‘the brotherhood’?” A harsh spurt gets past my lips, twisting into an unwilling smile. “Fuck. ‘The brotherhood’. The secret handshake. That stupid rules and regulations book. The all-nighter we pulled working on it. You wrote it all down so Mom wouldn’t find it on the computer’s hard drive—on the back of your goddamn algebra homework.” A laugh scorches out. “Can’t believe you didn’t think she’d see it after you racked up that F for not turning it in.” Drop my head and shake it. “But after she bawled about the whole thing, she hugged us like we were going to disappear. Did
you
ever understand that shit?” Short shrug. “No. Me, neither. And
then
she drove us out to bum-fuck for a couple of Skyscraper cones at Cliff’s…and you nearly puked on that shit, man.” A scoff echoes on the air. It has to be just the wind, but warmth rushes my chest anyway. “No, asshole,” I argue to the echoing chuckle in the air, “it was
you
, I’m sure of it. You ordered maple walnut, then inhaled that shit like—”

My throat clutches shut as the wind fully gusts.

I plummet to my ass in the grass.

And here I am, hurling smack at a ghost again
.

“Why, Damon?” I straddle the marker. Beg for answers from it with fists clenched atop my thighs. “Goddammit,
why
?”

Did the crap in those needles and pills feel better than ‘the brotherhood’? Than going for ice cream at Cliff’s
?

Those are the easy questions.

Meaning the hard ones are coming.

And grate from my lips as whispered chokes.

“Weren’t Mom and I good enough for you, fucker? Dammit…weren’t we worth fighting for?
Living
for?”

The wind sweeps across the knoll. Sighs through the grass, swishes through the trees.

Doesn’t bring me any more phantom scoffs or laughs. And sure as hell no more answers.

In the silence, only one sensation remains.

The ice in my veins.

It pushes me to my feet again. Yanks me back from the cement square by a step, staring down at the marker with a brand-new recognition.

I no longer want to kick more mud.

Or hang on to more memories.

Or try to get out any more words, except the ones that well up right from the heart that, for the first time in so long, I can
feel
beating. Feeling.

Living.

“You know what, brother? Save your answer. I don’t care what it is anymore.” The words are snatched at once by the wind—fitting exactly what has happened to the ice in my veins and the loss in my heart. It’s time now. All of it needs to be taken higher…transformed into freedom. “The thing is…I’ve found an answer of my own. Someone worth
my
fight. She’s waiting for me right now, and she’s ready to fight for me, too. Hell,”—a smile spreads, and it feels fucking good—“she already has.”

I breathe deeply. The sunshine seeps into my limbs, and the music of the new day fills my senses.

It’s time for this. At last.

“You know what that means, Damon?” I step back over. Stoop once more. Lay a hand to the cool stone slab, letting the damp mud spread up between my fingers…letting it remind me…empower me.

“I’m not coming back anymore, brother. Because you sure as hell aren’t.”

*

Mishella

“D
amn.” Doyle mutters
it as he and I ride Temptation’s wrought iron elevator from the art décor splendor of the building’s lobby to the glass and dark wood modernism that await six floors up.

“What?” My prompt is soft but stressed. Exhaustion bites at my bones but no way can I relax before Cassian’s return—from wherever.

From visiting yet more ghosts?

And
there
is the extra burn I did not need, even knowing Doyle will be a sympathetic audience if I need to vent. He probably sees through my thin façade anyway, though is merciful about bypassing the notice to go on, “Sometimes, it’s worth it when Prim gets stressed.”

I do not have to ask for elaboration. By the time we glide past the fourth floor, the aromas in the building provide it. Melted butter. Baked dough. At least three kinds of chocolate, and sugar in twice as many forms. By the time Doyle pushes open the door and we step out, my mouth craves an early breakfast feast of everything I smell.