Uncontrollable Temptations (The Tempted Series Book 3) (17 page)

I climbed the stairs, two at a time, until I reached the fourth floor. As I walked through the hallway I noticed some of the doors were open. Reina’s neighbors standing by waiting for word on whether life can continue for those subjected to life in the projects. Most of them were unfazed by what was happening. I bet they see a lot of this shit. I bet half of them are wondering when the cops will be gunning for them.

Reina’s door was closed, locking herself away from the dark shit, only for the king of darkness to demand she let him inside. I pounded on her door, ignoring the eyes of her neighbors and listened as the lock slid out of its place and the door opened a crack.

Her hooded eyes met mine, and I felt the air filtrate through my lungs. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until the moment I saw her. Shock invaded her features as she held my gaze, slowly opening the door a bit more.

“Honey, I’m home,” I whispered, my lips quirking ever so slightly.

Home.

She pushed opened the door fully, our eyes locking as she stepped aside never breaking our gaze.

Sometimes home isn’t four walls.

I stepped toward her, wrapped one arm around her waist and bent my knees a fraction, making our eyes level.

Sometimes home is a pair of eyes and a heartbeat.

“Aren’t you going to ask me in?” I muttered, my fingers kneading her hip.

“Still wondering if you’re really here,” she said hoarsely.

“No place else I’d rather be, Sunshine,” I admitted. Loosening my hold on her hip, I took her hand and walked inside of her apartment.

I stared at her as she closed the door, drinking her in from head to toe. Her hair fell halfway down her back in waves and she was only wearing a t-shirt that hung off one of her shoulders, revealing her pale skin. Her long legs exposed except for the leg warmers that were scrunched around her calves.

“You do know that your building is on lockdown don’t you?” I asked, lifting my eyes to hers.

“The cops knocked on the door earlier. They’re looking for the guy who shot the woman in apartment 6L,” she said, pointing up at the ceiling. “Two floors up, poor lady,” she frowned then she hiccupped.

I took a step closer, peering at her.

“You answered the door dressed like that?” I accused.

She glanced down at her lack of clothing before she hiccupped again and covered her mouth with her hand.

“No, I didn’t get undressed until after they told me to stay put,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Wasn’t expecting any visitors, as it’s been…I don’t know…a week since the only visitor I have dropped by last.”

“Five days,” I corrected.

“What?”

“You said it’s been a week since I saw you last. Seven days are in a week. I’ve been gone five,” I explained, my patience running thin as I stepped closer to her.

“Oh. Well, thank you for clearing that up,” she mumbled, stepping around me to grab the half-empty wine glass sitting on the table next to her couch.

She took her glass and flopped down on the couch.

“Any particular reason you been drinking?” I questioned, finding it peculiar that the cops were hunting for a murderer and she was sitting calmly in her living room unwinding with a bottle of wine.

“Don’t need a reason to drink,” she commented, tipping her head back and emptying the glass.

I walked around the couch and sat down on the coffee table, leaned over and took the empty glass from her hand, setting it down beside me.

“What’s going on, Reina?”

She stared at me blankly for a moment before leaning forward and grazing my whiskers with her fingertips. I reached up, closed my hand around her wrist, turning my face slightly to press my lips to where her pulse point was.

“Tell me what’s going on,” I probed against her skin.

Her phone vibrated, dancing across the table I was sitting upon. I dropped her hand and lifted the phone, staring at the caller ID and extended the phone to her.

She took the phone, denied the call and threw it beside her on the couch.

“Who’s Dr. Spiegel?” I asked, reaching for her, pulling her closer toward the edge of the couch so her knees brushed mine.

“My shrink,” she admitted, and I remained silent. The only noise surrounding us was the muffled sounds from outside the apartment. She moved to stand, her hands moving to my knees pushing them aside so she could move past me. I grabbed her hand and lifted my eyes to hers.

“You should leave, Jack,” her voice sounding broken as it pleaded with me.

I studied her for a moment, took in her sad eyes and the empty bottle of wine she was using to wash away her pain and shook my head.

“Don’t think that’s what you really want,” I said simply. “So why don’t you do us both a favor and tell me what you
do
want.”

“What do you want with me?” She questioned. “I know why I’m drawn to you but for the life of me I can’t figure out what a man like you is doing hanging around with a woman like me,” she said, pulling her hand away from mine. “Do you know what it’s like to not feel anything? To go through life feeling numb all the time?” She shook her head. “Forget it, that’s not even the issue.”

“Reina, then for the love of God, what the fuck is the issue?” I growled, my patience gone.

“I can deal with numb I know numb. What I don’t know is how to feel, it’s a foreign thing to me but something I like. I like it too much, way too much, that I missed it when you disappeared,” she continued.

“I didn’t disappear. I told you I would be gone for a few days,” I hissed.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Doesn’t matter, I didn’t like it. I needed you, I craved you. Then I drove myself nuts thinking about all the shit you were off doing. The women that were probably on their knees between your legs and that’s when I decided I didn’t want to feel anymore,” she said, turning her back to me. Her shoulders slumped in defeat as she dropped her head into her hands. “I use you, Jack. For a ride on the back of your bike, for a quick lay, for a goddamn person to talk to. I use you because I’m so tired of being lonely.” She turned around abruptly, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “I hate you for making me remember what it feels like to be alive. I hate you so much,” she cried, the tears finally falling from the corners of her eyes.

I stood up and for the first time in my life I wanted to fix what was broken. But I wasn’t sure if crazy could fix fucking crazy.

“No,” she protested.

“Reina, stop it,” I growled, reaching out and cupping her face in the palms of my hands. “Go ahead and use me, keep on using me. Use my bike, take my cock, milk me for whatever the fuck you need, Sunshine and I’ll keep using you in return,” I spoke through clenched teeth. “I’ll keep you feeling, realizing you’re living and breathing just as long as you keep giving me what I need. We’ll take whatever we need from each other just as long as we don’t take one another’s hearts, ‘cause I ain’t the loving type, Sunshine,” I warned.

I dropped one hand from her cheek and cupped her chin with the other, my thumb tracing her jaw. “Been a while since I took what I need from you. You about done with this tantrum so we can get on with it?”

She swallowed. “What if I want more?”

“Don’t be stupid, Reina. No one smart ever wants more because the more you have the more you lose,” I said gravely.

I didn’t tell her I was teetering on the edge of stupid or that I was thinking losing everything, my mind included, would be worth it in exchange for having it all with Reina. Just for a little while.

Just a taste.

I wasn’t smart. I was fucking stupid.

And I was going to wreck us both.

Grief was the biggest bitch of all. There were days when the bitch took over and held me captive, feeding me lies, making me believe all the hurt in my heart was because I had lost Danny. Sure, I loved him, thought I would spend my life with him. He was all I had after having nothing for so long. But I learned that I was done mourning Danny. That sounds horrible, I know. But my truth, the one I hide from myself is that I have misplaced my grief. I’m not mourning the man I loved but the woman I used to be.

The realization became clear the day I shared Danny’s murder with Jack because it was the easiest scar to share. The easiest scar is the weakest, the one that’s fading slowly but surely.

The other scars, they were deep and tore me down. They were the scars that were visible, the scars I kept hidden underneath my clothes. Still, they wove their way inside, latching onto my self-esteem and tearing it to shreds. There was still a shred of hope they would one day vanish from my body. As stupid as it was for me to believe that, I was smart enough to know that if that day ever came they’d still live inside. I still remember what my body looked like when I peeled the gauze from my skin and stared at the ugliness in the mirror. So ugly.

I try to tell myself that vanity is a sucker’s possession, beauty fades over time, and appearances become a memory but it doesn’t seem to work. I’m always transported back to that day when I first saw my body after the fire.

I remember crying; I remember screaming and I remember thinking I’d lost more than just my skin. I lost Danny in that fire, yes, but he was the only man to ever love me. He loved Reina before the scars and he would’ve been the only one to love me after them.

Grief was the biggest bitch but God was a twisted fuck too. He chose this life for me. He made me the survivor. No one asked if I wanted to live the rest of my life like this. I didn’t get a fucking vote.

It was a hard pill to swallow, jagged edges scraping the walls of my throat as I realized I would spend the rest of this miserable existence alone. But what choice did I have? The scars were too much for me to look at—to accept. How could I ever expect someone else to?

As time passed, I learned to live with the scars, to hide them. I claimed them as my own and vowed never to burden anyone else with them. Loneliness took root in my veins, making me an inverted version of myself and I learned to be numb, to ignore the longing in my heart.

Until Jack.

Jack.

That walking, breathing, sliver of hell, masked as a man, shadowed in darkness.

At least that’s what he thinks of himself.

He is so much more. To me he is the light at the end of this tunnel of turmoil. He is the Mederma to my scars, the ointment that will make them fade away. Something I never saw coming but somehow he broke the walls around me without me even noticing.

He’s my hope.

And I realized all of that when he disappeared for five days. It started slow, like a baby taking his first wobbly steps before he jumped into the world exploring everything. My body became alive; the Band-Aid I hid myself beneath was ripped off. Jack had started pulling emotions and sensations from me that I thought had died in that fire with Danny.

But with any kind of good, comes a shitload of bad. I felt the ugly things too—jealousy and insecurities I didn’t know existed for a woman. It’s ridiculous, completely absurd, but uncontrollable. After I gave him the piece of my truth, he took off into the unknown, and even though he promised to come back to me, it wasn’t enough. By the third day Jack was MIA, I was a basket case and acknowledged that I had become dependent on Jack.

I had a medicine cabinet full of pain meds that I rarely ever used. It was one thing to live life lonely but another to live it lonely and addicted to drugs. Noble, I know. See there is a small part of my brain that thinks responsibly from time to time. However, that part of my brain seemed to shut off because now I was hooked on Jack. I needed him like I needed air. He gave me back a piece of myself without even trying and I wanted more. So much more.

I counted the hours, then the minutes of how long it had been since he left. My mind wandered and when I closed my eyes I pictured him, much like I had seen him the night I went to his clubhouse, with a willing mouth wrapped tightly around his cock.

By the fourth day, I hated Jack Parrish. I hated that he was a man of mystery. A man, who without giving me much of himself, had made me want to give him all of me. I hated that I missed him.

I hated that I felt anything at all for him.

And on the fifth day I decided I didn’t want to feel anything anymore. I wanted to be numb again. I was halfway there when he showed up. One look at him and my thighs were clenching. So much for being numb. I hated Jack Parrish.

I gave him more truth by admitting I was using him.

He gave me his truth and told me he was doing the same.

I hated that too.

But too weak to fight, and too desperate for him, I agreed to keep using.

He put me in the shower and ordered me to pack a bag. In the middle of all my revelations the woman that lived two floors up from me was shot, resulting in my apartment building being ambushed by cops. I vaguely remembered the cops knocking on my door and telling me to stay put. They made it clear that no one could leave or enter the building.

Apparently, bikers and their broads were the exception because an hour later I was staring up at a sign that read Roll N’ Roaster.