The Deception series boxset: FaCade, Cadence, Beneath Innocence (32 page)

I wanted to touch it, trail my fingers across the picture but I knew I had to allow the paint to dry. The urge was overpowering.

My stomach lurched when a bang resounded on the door. Where had the last three hours gone?

“Star?”

“My name is Faye!” I spat, my lip curling at the sound of Dante’s pet name.

He ignored my reprimand. “Are you going to open the door now?”

“No.”

Although my whole body stiffened with fear when a huge crash rang out and the door gave way, I stood my ground, staring at Dante when he appeared in the doorframe.

He smirked, giving me a small tut. “Now we have to pay for a new door.”

He walked across the room towards me, his wide, angry strides causing me to back up a little.

“I’m sure
our
budget will cater,” I retorted with disgust.

His steps faltered when his eyes landed on the painting behind me. A large movement in this throat alerted me to his fury, his blazing eyes fixed on the canvas.

I chuckled bitterly. “How amusing is it that you even went out and got the same tattoos as your brother. Quite sad how jealous you always were of him.”

I gritted my teeth when his hand curled around my throat, his wrath lifting my feet off the ground. I didn’t struggle; I didn’t give him the satisfaction.

“I would love you to end my life right now. I’d rather fuck the Devil himself than you,” I choked out around his hold. “You’ll be killing my baby too though, Dante.”

He dropped me immediately, his eyes widening. I knew he had forgotten I was pregnant. The conflict in his eyes was clear. He wanted to hurt me but the need to protect his baby was physical in the air around us.

He leaned into me, his hot breath tickling my eyelashes and making me blink. “There’s only one of us who kills their child, Star.”

The air escaped me with his verbal punch. No one could ever make me ache more than I already did at my choice to terminate. I was just a girl, I had no money, and we were both going to different colleges. He had so much potential and a great opportunity he never would have taken if he knew.

I scoffed, nodding. “If this is what they would have been raised with as a father, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I did what I thought was best.”

I hissed when his palm knocked my face sideways, the thread that had been holding his need to instill pain at bay finally snapping. The sting made my ears ring and I dabbed at my lip, wiping the blood away.

Makeup covered my other bruises but the impact of this hit made my lip throb and swell. He would have to look at his damage this time.

“Hurt me all you want, Dante. But I will never love you again. It’s quite fucking sorrowful that you thought kidnapping me would bring me back to you. All you had to do was come home all those years ago instead of allowing me to think you were dead.”

“You knew I wasn’t dead when the news got back to you that I wasn’t on that fucking plane. Where were you, Star? You never even looked for me! You just laid back and opened your legs for Cade. So easy. You’re a fucking whore.”

I didn’t retaliate. I was enjoying watching him squirm under my feistiness. The empty Star who had lost her memories was timid and nervous. However, I wasn’t and I never would be.

“And why didn’t you come back to
me?
Hmm?”

He smiled, a cruel twist of his lips showcasing his malicious side. “Because you were screwing my brother. Are you that fucking easy that you wanted us both in your bed? Oh forgive me, of course you are, you’d probably have us both at the same time. Once a slut, always a slut.”

“Once a vindictive bastard, always a vindictive bastard. You sound like a child, Dante! Grow up!”

It was dangerous to antagonize him, but I couldn’t help myself. However he always won. He always fucking won.

I closed my eyes, my heart weeping when he snatched the canvas from its easel, his evil smile fixed on me. “How beautifully you paint my brother, Star.”

I clenched my fists, praying he didn’t destroy the only physical image I had of Cade. My own imagination had put on canvas the reality of a person who loved me so completely.

Dante tipped his head, studying the painting. “How similar we both are. You don’t see it sometimes.” He sneered. “Yet you paint us both perfectly.”

I snatched for it when he suddenly brought the piece down on the corner of the table. A choked sob echoed around me when he lifted it back up and smiled. “Much better.”

He placed it back on the easel and tapped my cheek before walking away.

My fingers pushed at the broken canvas, trying to place the ripped parts back together and fix the gaping hole in Cade’s face. Paint smudged on my fingers, the image still wet. I had never felt so much hatred in my whole life. I had loved Dante so much, so insanely that I would have done anything for him. But he would never see it that way. He would never understand because he didn’t have an ounce of compassion. He was a paranoid fool, a self-obsessed man who couldn’t accept things for what they were, only seeing them as a blatant hit against him. He had always been the same. He always saw things as a direct insult, even when people had tried to do him a favor or compliment him. He was insane.

I’d missed it. I’d seen his soul and I’d missed its desperate cry for help. Had I been so selfish that I had neglected what was so obvious in our years together?

No. I was just a young, inexperienced girl. One who had lived her life to give happiness to another. I’d lived for Dante. I’d tried to give him everything.

Exhaustion washed into me. Malik’s shadow fell over me as he stopped in front of me holding a plate of food.

“Star, you need to eat.”

My hand rose and came down against his cheek. “My name is Faye, you lying bastard. We are not friends. I don’t even know you! You will not address me again. Do you understand me?”

His jaw flexed, his eyes closing while he swallowed. When his eyes opened they were lifeless, looking over my head and down the hall. He didn’t answer; he walked around me and didn’t look back. Good!

I needed to lie down. I was weak, every inch of me ached, my eyes were sore and stinging. Emotional overload had me ready to collapse.

Closing the door to my bedroom, I stripped off the clothes that didn’t belong to me. He went all out in his lie. How could someone get away with this?

I made my way into the en-suite, blasting the shower as hot as my skin could stand and stepped under its torrent. I wanted to scald his dirty lies from me, to wash away my betrayals and my sins, make me unflawed, and make me good enough to have Cade’s love again.

The steam cocooned me, giving me a blanket for my soul to cry into and hope it cleansed some of the pain.

Even if Cade could get past the sex with Dante, I was carrying his brother’s child. What man would ever overlook that?

“You’re so beautiful, Star. Even in your grief.”

My insides curdled at the sound of his voice. The shower door opened and he stepped inside, naked. I tried to move around him but he stopped me, pinning me against the cold tiles, the hard plains of his body flush against my own. I hated him. How dare he touch me?

“Get off me, Dante. Now!”

“Stop acting like you don’t come alive to my touch, Belle. We both know the truth. We both know how the heat of my body against yours is sending shock waves of familiar need through your system. Your pussy is swelling with want. The needy thud of the blood rushing to your clit is making juices wet your walls for my smooth entry.”

That motherfucker. My body
did
awaken when he was naked against me but my hate overruled any subtle desire my whorish body might crave for.

“Dante, even rape victims can come. It’s the body being overruled, not the mind. I can’t control my body reacting to you but my mind,” I leaned my lips to his ear, “now it’s mine again, I will never succumb to you.”

His throaty laugh unsettled my false confidence. “Let’s test that!”

Before I could react, his knee forced its way between my thighs. His callous fingers, once welcomed, now invaded me without permission.

“Mmm, how you squeeze my fingers tells the truth you refuse to admit, Belle.” He knew how to touch me to get the reactions he wanted to use against me. The tips of his fingers grazed my sweet spot, eliciting a build of pleasure.

I closed my eyes and let my mind work for me for once. I went back to a memory of when I first made love to Cade.

“Real love is sacrifice, unconditional, selfless and benevolent. Love is watching you from afar, happy in the knowledge that as long as you were happy, I would never tell you of my feelings. I would hold them inside and worship the feeling of knowing I felt true love. Love is craving your company, counting the thuds in my chest when you walk into a room because it’s the only sound I can hear. Love is the electricity that ignites every nerve when you brush against me. Love is the million dragonflies taking flight inside my gut when I hear you giggle. If love was physical to touch, it would be your form. I sound like a pussy right now but it’s not weak to love fiercely, it’s powerful and a gift, the greatest there is and I’m grateful for loving you.”

I swiped the tear away. Cade’s words made my whole body melt. How did I get so lucky to earn his love?

My robe opened with a flick of my wrist, exposing my naked form. His eyes sparked with lust, glazing over with liquid fire. The shift in the room was tangible, coating our bodies in a burst of goose bumps. Heat slithered up my spine, heating my cheeks.

His tongue swiped out to moisten his lips as his eyes drew a caress over every inch of me. His steps pounded the floor as my heart pounded my ribcage. His scent fused with my own as his warm breath blew over my skin, making me shudder with anticipation.

He reached into my hair, pulling free the feather the stylist used to hold it in place. My hair fell like a waterfall over my shoulders, teasing my hard, aching nipples. The trace of the feather’s soft stroke down my nose, over my lips and onto my chest made me shiver. Each movement awakened my nerve endings. My nipples cried for a harder touch but worshipped the erotic caress all at once. Need dampened between my legs and he hadn’t even met my skin with his own touch yet.

The feather kissed down my navel, the warm air dispersing over the sensitive flesh from his breath following the path. My feverish body hungered for him.

A mewing sound resonated from my lips when he reached my pussy. The feather brushed softly over the small patch of short hair I groomed regularly as his lips met the tight hood of my clit, his soft kiss detonating shots of fire through my limbs. My weak knees buckled but Cade caught me, his hands gripping my hips. He pushed me back until I could support myself against the wall, then looking up at me, his lids low and heavy, he took my right leg and hooked it over his shoulder.

He looked pained, his brow pinching, his eyes closing briefly while he inhaled before reopening them to study between my open legs. Swallowing hard, he bit his bottom lip. “I always dreamed that you would one day allow me to pleasure you, share your beauty with me, but I never expected you to be this . . . this fucking perfect. Perfection isn’t even the right word. You’re God damn stunning.”

A blush whipped up my face, heating my skin further, tiny dewdrops of sweat beading across my forehead and nose.

He licked his lips then pressed the tip of his tongue to me, giving the swollen muscle a quick flick, making me growl. He smirked as my eyes widened, the shock of my fierce lust stunning even myself, although Cade didn’t look surprised.

“You taste like fucking heaven and sin. My cock is actually jealous of my mouth right now, but he’ll wait.” He swiped hard at my folds with the whole of his tongue, triggering another erotic snarl from me. “Because he gets the best part. He gets to feel every inch of your breath-taking pussy.”

And then he devoured me. The noises he made as he consumed me were the hottest sounds I’d ever heard. My body trembled; my blood vibrated as the pleasure he demanded I take from him ripped my soul from my body and left me soaring high.

I clutched his hair as I shamelessly thrust my hips harder into his face and pulled him closer.

“Give it to me, baby. Let me taste you.”

A silent scream tore from me when he slid a single finger inside me, curled it into my inner wall and bit gently on my clit. My body couldn’t take it; my lungs screamed when my orgasm ripped the air from me and replaced it with an exquisite white hot bliss.

I was still high from my orgasm when he scooped me into his arms and carried me to the bed. Placing me gently down, he cupped my face and kissed the tip of my nose as he climbed over me. His hard cock throbbed against my belly. Without any more foreplay, he positioned his cock at my entrance and ran his thumb over my cheekbone.

“And now, after so, so long, I get to own you. I’m going so deep I’m going to possess your fucking soul, Faye.”

My back arched when he slammed inside me, all the way to his balls, in one delicious thrust.

“Oh—fucking—Christ!” he gasped, his jaw clenching hard. He gritted his teeth. “Shit, I was fifteen the last time I came from the first thrust.” He screwed his eyes shut and blew out a breath. “Don’t fucking move!”

I watched his face, not daring to move. He felt so good inside me, his large cock stretching me wide, his balls laid against my ass. The look of pleasure on his face was intoxicating and I knew it would be engrained into my memory for many, many years.

“Baby,” he finally whispered as he pulled out slowly, holding himself at my entrance for a moment before sliding back in little by little. He started to move, slowly pulling out and pressing back in. His eyes never left my face, his expression full of awe. The tight moans and long groans he made with every plunge were so erotic that I soon joined him. As he sped up and drove deeper, our combined noises echoed around us, our own sensual melody filling the air.

He slid one arm under my back and pulled me flush to him as he started to fuck me hard, lust and need taking over.