Category Archives: Chapter preview
RELEASE BLITZ ~ Repossess by Jennifer Foor
From the award winning contemporary romance writer
comes a new standalone romance, Repossess!
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Full Blurb
Raised by my four brothers, I’m the poster girl of a hot-mess. A sucker for cheating assholes and shitty friends.
It’s the reason I’ve come home.
The only reason!
I arrive to find the family business in shambles. My brothers have managed to run it into the ground. With new competition, the stakes are high, especially when I realize whose stealing all of the business out from under us.
Seeing him again isn’t the hard part.
I’m over Crane Lord, his cocky, dangerous sex appeal, his criminal ways of getting by, and how he used to own every part of me.
He’s the enemy. I don’t want him.
I can’t.
Shit!
About the Author
Jennifer Foor is an award winning Contemporary Romance Author. She’s best known for the Mitchell Family Series, which includes ten books.
With over forty published titles, there is a story for every interest. Her books can be found on most platforms and in paperback.
She is married with two children and spends most of her time behind a keyboard, creating and writing stories straight from her heart.
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Alexa Riley is two sassy friends who got together and wrote some dirty books. They are both married moms of two who love football, donuts, and obsessed book heroes.
COVER REVEAL ~ Mister Moneybags by Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward
New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Authors Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward have teamed up once again to bring you another chance meeting, another Cocky Bastard who will charm his way into your heart on April 10th, 2017.
Photographer: Maurizio Montani
Model: Richeli Murari
Cover designer: Letitia Hasser, r.b.a. designs
I met Bianca in an elevator.
She was on her way to interview me when we got stuck.
The beautiful, raven-haired reporter assumed I was a delivery guy because of the way I was dressed.
She had no clue I was really Dex Truitt, the wealthy, successful businessman she’d dubbed “Mister Moneybags”—her afternoon appointment.
Bianca told me how much she hated Dex’s type—snobby, over educated, silver- spooned men who didn’t appreciate the simple things in life.
So, after the elevator finally started moving again, I cancelled the interview and let her believe I was someone I wasn’t—a bike messenger named Jay. I loved the way she looked at the fake me and didn’t want it to end.
I began dating her as “Jay”—all the while letting her interview the real me over email.
I didn’t expect that our chemistry online would be just as hot.
I didn’t expect the mess I’d gotten myself into.
I didn’t expect that Jay and Dex would fall in love with her.
And she was falling for two men.
Only, both men were me.
And when she found out, we were both going to lose her.
Nothing could have prepared me for that day. And I certainly wasn’t prepared for what came after.
All good things must come to an end, right?
Except our ending was one I didn’t see coming.
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About the Authors
Vi Keeland is a #1 New York Times Bestselling author. With more than a million books sold, her titles have appeared in over fifty Bestseller lists and are currently translated in twelve languages. She resides in New York with her husband and their three children where she is living out her own happily ever after with the boy she met at age six.
Vi’s Social Media Links:
Website | Facebook Fan Group | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Penelope Ward is a New York Times, USA Today and #1 Wall Street Journal Bestselling author. She’s a fifteen-time New York Times bestseller of twelve novels.
Having grown up in Boston with five older brothers, she spent most of her twenties as a television news anchor, before switching to a more family-friendly career. She is the proud mother of a beautiful 12-year-old girl with autism and a 10-year-old boy. Penelope and her family reside in Rhode Island.
Connect with Penelope Ward
Facebook Fan Group | Facebook | Website |Twitter | Instagram
Other books from Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward:
Cocky Bastard
Amazon: http://amzn.to/1LfN3fc
iTunes: http://apple.co/1PffE2J
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Stuck-Up Suit
Amazon: http://amzn.to/1S3LnpZ
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B&N: http://bit.ly/29vrQhV
Kobo: http:// bit.ly/1RJdUif
Playboy Pilot
Amazon: http://amzn.to/2d5I5rS
iBooks: http://apple.co/1Wb06Cf
Nook: bit.ly/2caXPEK
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2cJDXO1
Other books from Vi Keeland:
Standalone novels
Egomaniac
Amazon: http://smarturl.it/b1gi74
iBooks: http://apple.co/2fIsmvC
B&N: http://smarturl.it/t4ohsv
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Bossman
Amazon: http://amzn.to/2a8D5B6
iBooks: http://apple.co/25x2jyX
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The Baller
Amazon: amzn.to/1PBF2hG
iBooks: http://bit.ly/iBooksBaller
B&N: http:// bit.ly/BarnesBaller
Kobo: http:// bit.ly/KoboBaller
Left Behind (A Young Adult Novel)
http://www.amazon.com/Left-Behind-Vi-Keeland-ebook/dp/B00OJM92LI/
First Thing I See
http://www.amazon.com/First-Thing-See-Vi-Keeland-ebook/dp/B00AWXY3HG
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/first-thing-i-see-ms-vi-keeland/1114703332
Life on Stage series (2 standalone books)
Beat
http://www.amazon.com/Beat-Vi-Keeland-ebook/dp/B00ZOMUV12/ http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/beat-vi-keeland/1121715501 https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/beat/id983959123 https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/beat-5
Throb
http://www.amazon.com/Throb-Vi-Keeland-ebook/dp/B00SS2RYBU
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/throb/id948747986
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/throb-vi-keeland/1121112695
https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/throb-4
MMA Fighter series (3 standalone books)
Worth the Fight
http://www.amazon.com/Worth-Fight-Vi-Keeland-ebook/dp/B00FLG5B9S
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/worth-the-fight/id805540252
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/worth-the-fight-vi-keeland/1117014180
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/worth-the-fight
Worth the Chance
http://www.amazon.com/Worth-Chance-Vi-Keeland-ebook/dp/B00I2UKQOK
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/worth-the-chance/id813714461
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/worth-the-chance-vi-keeland/1118634058
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/worth-the-chance
Worth Forgiving
http://www.amazon.com/Worth-Forgiving-Vi-Keeland-ebook/dp/B00MWL78EG
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/worth-forgiving/id906130022?ls=1&mt=11
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/worth-forgiving-vi-keeland/1120173153
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/worth-forgiving
The Cole Series (2 book serial)
Belong to You
http://www.amazon.com/Belong-You-A-Cole-Novel-ebook/dp/B00BUTCXLE/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/belong-to-you/id639401754
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/belong-to-you-vi-keeland/1114962845
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/belong-to-you
Made for You
http://www.amazon.com/Made-You-A-Cole-Novel-ebook/dp/B00DPWVKS6
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/made-for-you/id84550637
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/made-for-you-vi-keeland/1115883225
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/belong-to-you
Other books from Penelope Ward:
Mack Daddy:
Amazon: http://amzn.to/2kWzE1S
iTunes: http://apple.co/2iNrIPj
B&N: http://hyperurl.co/aiypfj
Kobo: http://hyperurl.co/r3hv19
RoomHate
Amazon: http://amzn.to/1TksrpE
iTunes: http://apple.co/1PgsvE7
B&N: http://bit.ly/1PLGnSL
kobo: http://bit.ly/1POvSnW
Stepbrother Dearest
Amazon http://amzn.to/1mFNMeg
ITunes: http://bit.ly/YER0mT
B&N: http://bit.ly/1taMFjG
kobo: http://bit.ly/1fJaaBs
Neighbor Dearest
Amazon: http://amzn.to/2aS8BPa
iTunes: http://apple.co/29mC6L8
B&N: http://bit.ly/2akQ2aq
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Sins of Sevin
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iTunes: http://apple.co/1K8mzGg
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kobo: http://bit.ly/1OaGY3D
Jake Undone (Jake #1)
Amazon: http://amzn.to/1dJrHBC
iTunes: http://apple.co/1fJayQ8
B&N: http://bit.ly/1obAwJ6
kobo: http://bit.ly/1SPKl0M
My Skylar
Amazon: http://amzn.to/1obOG2F
iTunes: http://bit.ly/SLNOTR
B&N: http://bit.ly/SLO1qi
kobo: http://bit.ly/1kNrtAB
Jake Understood (Jake #2)
Amazon: http://amzn.to/1GFdves
iTunes: http://apple.co/1DQQwgC
B&N: http://bit.ly/1FwJC0z
kobo: http://bit.ly/1LQ7Fvk
Gemini
Amazon: http://amzn.to/1vgk1SE
iTunes: http://apple.co/1QTaONj
B&N: http://bit.ly/1KfmLHD
kobo: http://bit.ly/1BGJ2wu
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CHAPTER REVEAL ~ Coal (Regulators MC #3) by Chelsea Camaron and Jessie Lane
Title: Coal
Series: Regulators MC #3
Author: Chelsea Camaron and Jessie Lane
Genre: MC Romance
Release Date: February 28, 2017
Cover Model is Jacob Wilson
Cover Photographer is Furious Fotog
Cover Design by Mina Carter
Coal (Regulators MC 3)
Chapter Excerpt
Written by:
Chelsea Camaron and Jessie Lane
Copyright © Chelsea Camaron and Jessie Lane 2017
This book contains mature content not suitable for those under the age of 18. Content involves strong language and sexual situations. All parties portrayed in sexual situation are over the age of 18. All characters are a work of fiction.
This book is not meant to be an exact depiction of a motorcycle club but rather a work of fiction meant to entertain.
Please Note: The following excerpt is subject to change in final edits.
~Coal~
She is the everyday girl next-door.
He is shadowed by regret laced in broken memories.
Dark sins of the past have a way of taking hold of your heart and never letting go.
Paisley Asher is the average woman trying to get by in life. Happy and safe in her bubble of ease, she is not prepared to take on the black pit that is one man’s heart.
Trevor ‘Coal’ Blake has a past covered in black. Tainted. He is a dark soul.
In the moment, it is easy to lose sight of what is going on. Looking back, however, little cues were misread … or were they? He lives with more questions than answers.
Chance encounters bring these two together. Is she the angel to pull him from the depths of his personal hell, or is he destined to remain alone and as black as coal?
Prologue
The pounding in my head continues to assault my ears. Chad’s party last night was epic, and my head is making sure to remind me of the good time I had.
Bang.
Bang.
Thump.
Thump. Bang. Thump. Bang.
The rhythm is now unsteady.
“Trevor wake your ass us right the fuck now!” My dad yells in his Army Ranger voice that has me immediately up and at attention by my bed.
Shit, why is my dad yelling? This tone is reserved for the major fuck ups.
Making my way to the door, I don’t bother to put on clothes and exit in my boxers. Immediately, I’m met with the brick wall that is my dad. We’re about the same height and of similar build. Only my dad has seen war, has scars and quite honestly scares the shit out of me.
“Turn around and put some clothes on. Then you get downstairs and face the shit storm you’ve caused. Two minutes, or I drag you down and let them see you in your naked glory, I don’t give a damn.”
He gives me a slight shove back into my room while my vision blurs and the chalky taste in my mouth only makes me wish I had time to grab a glass of water. His instructions were clear and precise. I won’t press my luck with the Ranger. Quickly tossing on my sweats and a t-shirt I rush downstairs only to stop midway. There is no way I’m going to be any longer than necessary, not with the mood he is in this morning. No sir.
The sight in front of me is like a punch to my hungover already ready to puke gut.
My girlfriend, Amber, stands at the bottom of the stair case with tears in her eyes with her parents flanking her on either side. The girl I have spent every spare moment with for the last few months doesn’t look like the lively, beautiful young woman I’m used to seeing. No, she looks a mess, hurt, broken, and could it possibly be she’s ashamed. Her mother’s eyes are swollen from crying and her father …
His face is murderous. What the hell is going on?
I shake my head trying to sort out why they’re here. Why my girlfriend looks like the world has crumbled at her feet. More so, why she’s brought this to my doorstep.
“Trevor,” my father barks harshly making me jump while I complete my descent and hit the bottom step. “Ass – couch – now.” He commands me before looking to the other family. “Mr. and Mrs. Bridges, Amber, please head into the living room so we can address this matter.”
Matter? What could be wrong? I haven’t seen Amber in three days. She said she had the flu. We’ve been dating six months. Three weeks ago, she finally gave it up at a party at her best friend, Kiki’s house. Nothing has seemed out of the ordinary. We haven’t had much time together. I know I was drunk, she was drunk, so it wasn’t some romantic thing. In fact, once I got inside her tight pussy, I had to fight not to blow my load with the first thrust. I didn’t last long, but I told her next time would be better. I tried to make it good. I even held her afterward knowing it was her first time.
I sit while my mind races.
“Trevor,” my mom says my name gently while I look up into her dark eyes and see pain. “Amber’s family tell us that something occurred a couple of weeks ago,” she starts only to be interrupted.
“You fucking piece of shit got my daughter drunk and raped her!” Mr. Bridges roars lunging at me only to be held back by my dad who easily towers a good six inches over the man.
My mother rushes to my side, her long black hair hitting me in the arm. She’s Native American and I get my dark hair, dark eyes, and tanned skin from her. My height of six feet seven inches comes from my beast of a father.
“We need to discuss this,” my mother says to the Bridges.
“Nothing to discuss,” Mrs. Bridges replies. “Graduation is in two weeks, we want to see Trevor gone. Amber will have enough of a reminder for the next nine months of what’s happened to her. After the kids graduate, Trevor gets out of town for school or the military, or we go to the police and press charges.”
“Press charges?” I scream and run my hands through my hair as sharp pains assault my head. “For what?”
“Rape!” Mr. Bridges yells back.
Tears hit me. I’m seventeen years old. One night at a party where I swear she said yes leaves me in this kind of mess.
“I didn’t,” I gasp and try to get out the words, only I make the mistake of looking into Amber’s eyes. The fear, the pain, the sadness, and the desolation are all writing in her features as she shakes her head at me. “I didn’t do that.” I can’t even say the word.
My mother grips my arm in support. “Let’s sit down and talk this through.”
We back up and sit on the couch where my father releases Mr. Bridges and paces behind us. The Bridges’ take their seats on the loveseat and chair. Amber refuses to make eye contact any further with me.
“Were you at a party two weekends ago with Amber?” Mr. Bridges starts his interrogation.
I nod.
“Were you drinking?”
I nod.
“Do you understand that the legal drinking age in the United States is twenty-one?” He continues to fire questions at me. “Do you understand that an underage girl being intoxicated is not of the right mind to give consent to sexual activities? Do you understand the pain you’ve caused our daughter? Do you understand the ramifications of your actions?”
“Sir,” I have to swallow the lump in my throat as I fight back emotions. “I understand the legal drinking age. I understand that while yes, I was intoxicated, your daughter was an equal participant. So no, sir, I do not understand the ramifications of my actions.” I fight back the urge to puke.
My father’s hand comes to the back of my head. “Since your mother and I failed to make a man out of you. The Army will.” He clips out. “Trevor will be signing enlistment papers today and be gone within thirty days time.”
Mr. Bridges rises to extend his hand to my father to shake. “We appreciate your attention to the matter and easing the burden for Amber. We’ll be in touch about the future.”
Amber stands with her mother never once looking at me as she exits, while I can’t help but fear what my future holds and my mind tries to grasp what they’re saying.
I didn’t do it. I didn’t take advantage of her.
**
Two years later, I finish selection to become a Green Beret. The badass of the badasses. One of the elite. I remember in the selection process, while trying to mentally survive one obstacle to the next, someone said, “Hell is a fictional place. When you’re done here it’ll seem like a fucking sanctuary.”
He was both right and wrong. Finishing selection was the most grueling thing I’ve ever done, but I had already seen hell.
Hell was your girlfriend saying you raped her when she turned up pregnant. Hell was getting a letter she lost the baby before summer was over. Hell was knowing her life went on while I couldn’t figure out if my memories of that night were teenage fantasies or reality.
Hell was living day in and day out haunted by an event you aren’t sure really happened.
Chapter One
Coal
“Ropa Vieja,” I order my shredded beef while Ice looks over his menu beside me. Without having to watch him I know what Ice is doing – scanning the restaurant. Taking in the colorfully painted booths and wood stained stables while checking to make sure there is no threat in here to us. To men like us, it’s second nature to make sure your area is free of danger.
“Arroz con pollo,” he gives the waitress his chicken order.
With a nod, she takes off to the back, weaving in and out of the tables, leaving me with one of the few people who I consider family sitting in front of me.
“It’s been three years, brother.” Ice meets my stare and doesn’t back down. “Madyson is good. She’s working through it.”
I pause and give it to him honest, “you really think someone works through something like that?”
“Watching her, I know they do.”
His statement does nothing to ease my fears.
“You got a thing for my wife’s sister, Coal?” He asks the question everyone seems to wonder. “Look me in the eye and tell me. If you do, I’m not gonna judge. Not sayin’ I’ll be happy either, but you need to buck up, Coal.”
“Fuck no, I’m old enough to be her damn dad.” I am angry he can even think this. “You know me better than that.”
“Then why since the day we got her back, you’ve made it your mission to make sure she moves beyond this. Hell, Coal, you’ve paid for her college like she’s your fucking kid.”
I glare at him. “No one is supposed to know that. As far as she goes, Morgan goes, or the damn Pope goes, you pay her way through school. Drop the subject.”
“Easier said then done, brother.” He raises an eyebrow at me.
“Got ghosts,” I reply as the waitress drops our plates in front of us.
It’s all I’m going to give him. My personal life, my hell, is not his business. I have the means now to find Amber. I don’t. I made a vow to my father the day I signed my enlistment papers to let the Army make a man out of me. I promised I would let Amber go and live her life free of me. Since the moment I took my oath, I haven’t looked into her. I won’t. The baby is gone. There is nothing for me to talk to her about without bringing up what is one bad fucking memory.
When Madyson was found, I promised her I would be by her side to make sure she could move on in life. I made a vow to leave Amber alone, good or bad. I had to keep my word. I wouldn’t let Madyson be alone, though, no I gave her my word to be her support.
And I have.
Ice raises his hands in surrender knowing I’m done talking about Madyson. “For now, I don’t have to kick your ass.”
“Forever,” I clip back meaning it. I do care about the well being of Madyson, but not in the way he thinks.
Three years ago Madyson was kidnapped, drugged and raped by men who were operating a sex slavery ring out of the Miami area. The Regulators had already taken notice of the number of women who were going missing, but it became personal when Ice’s daughter, Brooke’s best friend, Madyson, became one of those missing women.
Our club went in undercover, starting a business relationship with the man we thought was running the ring. I had to do some despicable shit to prove the Regulators were genuinely interested, such as fuck two of their drugged-up whores, but in the end it had been worth it because we got Madyson back.
Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty to help other people. I have no problem doing that. I also have no problem with the black strokes each offense leaves on my soul after doing them. I am coming to realize there isn’t much of a soul left in me anyways. The way I prove to myself that I actually am some sort of decent human being is by doing things such as putting Madyson through school. Giving one girl the chance that I had inadvertently taken from another so many years ago.
It’s one of those things I don’t need to explain to a single soul. It’s between me and whatever higher power I choose to believe in today.
With our meals in front of us, we eat and spend the rest of our time in companionable silence. Brett ‘Ice’ Grady is one of my long time friends. He’s also not one to press me for words. Even if he did, he wouldn’t get them. My past is my own and it’s not something anyone needs to know.
I left Trevor Blake behind the day I enlisted in the United States Army. My black heart is dark as coal they say and earned me my name in the Green Beret’s where I met, Ice, Shooter, and Hammer. I kill without question. I sleep without dreams. And even all these years later, I still wonder if no was yes or somehow yes was no. It eats at me. It’s my penance to pay. I won’t bother her, I won’t dredge up the history for Amber. I let it be the gray area in life and determined that my future would be black and white forever. I no longer leave anything to chance or a misunderstanding.
Our phones ping at the same time, the text is from Screech, our tech man, and it’s a simple one-word statement.
Mission.
We have orders, time to finish up here and meet everyone at the club to see exactly what Uncle Sam has in store for our undercover group next.
Regulators Motorcycle Club, a brotherhood of military men with a job that is a special skillset. One that walks a line between right and wrong. We’re always one second away from going too far.
I have nothing to lose. I’m more than okay with it all.
Some of the other men in our club, such as Ice and Hammer, have everything to lose. Ol’ ladies, families. That’s not me. I have nothing to tie me down and not one fucking thing to lose.
My father died ten years ago from a heart attack. Now my mom lives alone. I help her out when it comes to making sure her bills are paid, but I can’t make myself face her in person. I’m afraid all I’ll see is shame in her eyes from the things in my past.
As I walk out of the restaurant behind Ice I see a familiar face. She goes by the street name Precious and is one of the whores I use when I need to get off. I don’t do many repeats, but Precious is one of the few that I have gone to more than once because she’s always clean, pretty, and I know she has a kid she’s trying to support on her own.
Sauntering over to me she purrs, “Hey baby. Haven’t seen you in a while. Want to go get a room?”
I shake my head. “Got somewhere to be Precious. You hittin’ on me because you want my dick or because you need to pay a bill?”
Her eyes flash in humiliation and I know it’s the latter. Pulling out my wallet I take out a hundred dollar bill and put it in her hand. “Take this and I’ll see you when I can.”
I walk away, not wanting to hear her thanks. I’m not the sort of man anyone should thank for anything. Seeing her desperate like that makes me wonder about my mom. It makes me worry if she needs more money from me or not. She’s stubborn and doesn’t like to take the ‘handouts’ I give her. Instead she would rather earn it at the little garden shop she works at. I’ll have to have Screech hack into her bank account and check things out for me.
My parents might have believed that I was a disappointment of a son because of what happened. Since the day I left to join the Army I still remember all the lessons my father taught me. Taking care of your family was one of those lessons. Whether my mom likes it or not, I’m going to check in on her soon to make sure she’s got everything she needs. If that means paying her bills for her behind her back, then that’s what I’ll do.
Throwing my leg over my bike, I start her up and rev the engine. Ice is already moving so I head out after him. I have no idea what the mission is yet, but I’m ready for it.
I feel that familiar need to fight, get my hands bloody. Release some of the rage I hold inside of my body twenty-four hours a day. I’m just hoping this mission gives me the chance to make someone the mangled mess I am inside.
Paisley
“Girl, you’re on fire!” I tell the air around me as I dance around my loft apartment getting ready for my day. Self-talk, it’s working wonders. “Dance, Paisley, dance, no one is here to see.” I shake my bootie and swirl around the kitchen making my morning smoothie. The space is open and airy, so I can twirl and shimmy my ass anywhere I please to go from the living room to the kitchen. For now, I stay in the kitchen as I start to drink my smoothie and bounce my hips from side to side.
In the last few years, I’ve changed my routine to start my day with as much pep as I can conjure. When everything is taken from you in a blink, it’s hard to rebalance.
Within thirty minutes, I’m at the gym for yoga. Walking through the front doors, I have my earbuds in and my music up, jamming in my mind. Looking down, I am stopped abruptly when I feel two firm hands grip my shoulders stopping me just inches from his chest.
Scotty.
While the man has muscles on top of muscles he’s an ego-maniac. I’m sure most women do swoon over him, but ‘man grunts’ and flexing don’t do it for me.
“Paisley, baby, gotta be careful.”
“Sorry,” I mutter knowing I need to pay attention.
“Make it up to me, take me to dinner tonight.” He sort of commands in the way Scotty does.
I reach up and pat his pectoral muscle to which he makes it jump in what I assume to be a way to impress me. “Scotty, at least twice a week you tell me to take you to dinner.” I sigh. “It’s getting old, buddy. Women want to be whisked away, swept off their feet, ya know,” I look up into his green eyes, “romance, buddy, romance.”
He cups my chin with his first finger and thumb, “Paisley, this ain’t no fairytale. You can have a night or two with a man like me, gotta take the leap, baby.”
I raise an eyebrow at him, “you really think that works?”
“You have no idea,” he smirks and I’ve had enough. Jerking my head back, I step to the side and around the behemoth.
“Not happening, Scotty, go have another protein shake.” I say without looking back at him.
I make my way front the front entrance of the gym, passing a few isolated exercise rooms to the door that leads into the women’s locker room. Desirae, who is one of my closest friends is already putting her stuff in a metal locker when I walk in.
We met when she came to Miami after the death of her sister. She still visits North Carolina regularly but for the most part her life is in South Beach with her man, Ethan ‘Hammer’ McCoy. They’re cute together in that ‘get a room’ kind of face sucking way.
Des is easy-going and doesn’t judge a soul. It’s why we get along so well.
She takes one look at my face before automatically speaking, “Scotty, again?”
“Yup. Des, is it really bad to think romance is dead?”
She laughs. “Honey, I live with a biker. Depends on your definition of romance.”
I sit on the bench rather than tuck my stuff away. “I want to be knocked on my butt. When cupid nails me with his arrow, I’m gonna be swept away. It’s not something I’ll find on a date, it’s something that’s going to spark and then go BOOM.” I raise my hands dramatically.
“You do realize it doesn’t necessarily work that way, right?”
“You and your logic. Okay so for most people it may not, but for me that’s how it’ll be. The stars will align and something will happen sending me barreling into the man of my dreams life and instantly there will be fireworks. I know it.”
She closes her locker before picking up my phone and towel to toss them in the locker beside hers.
“Fireworks, those can happen for a lot of reasons, Paisley.” She smiles and takes me by the hand to pull me from my perch on the bench. “I love you to death, but you are the craziest woman I know. Maybe a little meat in you would take the edge off?” She jokes to which I just sigh loudly.
“Meat in me, huh? That’s gonna solve all my problems.” We both laugh and make our way to class. Exiting through the other side of the women’s locker room, we walk through the heart of the gym filled with various exercise machines until we reach the yoga classroom in the back.
An hour session later, love, fireworks, romance, and all thoughts of my morning are gone. No, the meditation, the focus, the calm is all back in place. I’m balanced. Rejuvenated.
My shift at the grocery store begins on a register. Beep, beep, slide the cans with a smile, its my job. I count items or sing songs in my head to entertain myself as I ring up my customer.
“Paisley,” the produce manager calls my name getting my attention.
“Yes, sir.”
“Flip your light. Finish that one then you gotta work organic today, Paul called in.”
I nod my head and do as I’m told.
Bin by bin, I go through the vegetables and fruits making sure to discard any that are going bad and refill low stock.
“Can you believe they want over a dollar more for this organic crap?” A lady says to her friend.
“Half of it still has dirt on it,” her friend chimes in. I should probably mind my own business, but they are missing out on some good foods by their assumptions.
“While I can understand one’s aversion to the dirt, please understand that once rinsed in tap water the metal and mineral components in all water speed the process therefore the food rots at a faster rate. Organic does cost some more because the rate in which a store loses the produce is higher since they aren’t packed full of preservatives which settle in your gut and make for a slow moving digestive system. And the dirt you visibly see is simple the covering provided in nature to slow oxidation and keep the air off the fruit or vegetable.” Immediately, I regret speaking. I switched majors in college and finished with a degree in Horticulture. Plant life, studying it, exploring it, well it’s the only thing I could make sense of after facing loss of real people’s lives.
“Thanks for the science lesson,” the woman cuts me off and I draw back at her tone. My intention wasn’t to offend but to explain.
Shrugging my shoulders, I go back to work deciding not to press my luck.
I made a decision five years ago to live a simplified life as much as I can and be conscious of my decisions for both my body and my environment. I lost everything by being careless and I won’t do that again. The regrets kept me up at night for far too long. I try to remain focused and centered in my every thought, word, and action.
I even considered going off the grid living, but soon realized my fear of bugs and my height leave me at a strong disadvantage to making a go at it. Plus, living in South Beach there isn’t really a whole lot of possibilities for that lifestyle.
Instead, I live in a one room loft style apartment, drive a Prius, and eat a mostly natural diet. Like the women beside me, the life isn’t for everyone. Modern day conveniences come at a price to our bodies and environment, but it’s my choice and I can’t push it on everyone.
They push their carts on by without buying anything organic and I go about straightening up.
My shift ends and I find my mood to be lacking. Sadness, an emotion I was once all too familiar with encompasses me.
Depression.
I remind myself I won’t go there again. I’ve cleaned up my life. No demons haunt me anymore. Today was not the best day, but it wasn’t the worst.
I have dealt with the worst. Now I have my crystals, my diet, and my lifestyle to keep my energies refocused to the positive and not into the darkness. I lost a lot, yes, but I haven’t lost it all.
Not everyone can understand me. I don’t take it personally. The choices I make are for me and me alone.
It’s hard to keep it in perspective. Living a clean life allows me to not lose sight of the blessings I have. For me, keeping my diet away from processed foods isn’t about being skinny, it’s about not clogging my heart, my pores, or my mind with junk. Yoga, balances both the mind and the body. It wasn’t until I immersed myself in this lifestyle that I found peace.
I gather my things from the break room and make my way to my car. Distractedly, I pull out into traffic trying to forget my past and stay in my current.
The alarm on my phone goes off reminding me it’s time for a snack. Reaching over to my passage seat cooler, I take out an apple. We eat for sustenance not for hunger. By maintaining a healthy glucose, I don’t feel the hunger pains and keep my body and my mind on a regimented schedule. My mind can’t become distracted and my emotions won’t run in a panic if I continually eat in small portions. Again, it’s about control for me.
The light ahead turns red and I take my foot off the gas and decompress the brake. Lifting the green fruit to my mouth, I bite, feeling the bitter of the granny smith apple hit my taste buds I close my eyes briefly in appreciation.
That’s when the bump happens.
Throwing the apple over my shoulder, I look up to see a huge man on a motorcycle look over his shoulder at me as my bumper has clearly pushed into his rear tire.
Oh heavens, what have I done?
He pushes the kick stand down as I throw the car in park, slap on my hazard lights and open my door.
“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry.” I say rushing to him.
Before me stands a stunningly tall bald man whose aura screams sex. He has one of those seriously killer beards that you sort of want to pet because it’s so fabulous. It accentuates his strong face and tan skin. His long legs are covered in jeans that hug his tree trunk thighs, and his feet clad in some serious looking ass kicking boots. A black shirt covers his chest underneath his leather vest with patches all over it and the whole visual strikes me as an intimidating figure. His dark eyes stare right through me as I look at him. ‘Coal’ sits on the left side of his vest, over his heart. ‘Vice President’ lays opposite the name on his right side. The rest of his vest has a bunch of different patches with different cities and sayings. Is this a biker in the same club as Desirae’s man?
He shakes his head. “You okay?”
“Yes, I am, but are you?”
He nods. “I’m fine. Get in your car, pay attention and go home,” he dismisses me. “Don’t just stand there looking stupefied. Get in the car go home, it’s done.”
“I need to make this right,” I stammer as my mind spins and I feel like things are suddenly out of control.
“Nothing wrong so nothing to make right.” He studies me as cars rush past us. “Get in your car, can’t leave till I know you got back in the vehicle.”
“Don’t you need my information. I have insurance.”
“It was a bump.” He doesn’t hide his frustration. “Not a patient man, Pixie, so get in your pedal car and go on.”
Pixie? I want to ask, but I don’t. The man is clearly not wanting to do anything about our incident. So doing the only thing I can think of, I get back in my Prius, turning off the hazards and putting it in gear, I try to shake off my emotions. Anxiety, guilt, frustration, and sadness all toy with my carefully balanced core. I feel myself tipping, falling, and stumbling down into the darkness.
Next, I do what every respectable, twenty-six-year-old woman does when she is faced with a scarier than a horror movie biker, I follow him.
She is the everyday girl next-door.
He is shadowed by regret laced in broken memories.
Dark sins of the past have a way of taking hold of your heart and never letting go.
Paisley Asher is the average woman trying to get by in life. Happy and safe in her bubble of ease, she is not prepared to take on the black pit that is one man’s heart.
Trevor ‘Coal’ Blake has a past covered in black. Tainted. He is a dark soul.
In the moment, it is easy to lose sight of what is going on. Looking back, however, little cues were misread … or were they? He lives with more questions than answers.
Chance encounters bring these two together. Is she the angel to pull him from the depths of his personal hell, or is he destined to remain alone and as black as coal?
USA Today Bestselling author Chelsea Camaron is a small town Carolina girl with a big imagination. She is a wife and mom chasing her dreams. She writes contemporary romance, erotic suspense, and psychological thrillers. She loves to write blue-collar men who have real problems with a fictional twist. From mechanics to bikers to oil riggers to smokejumpers, bar owners, and beyond, she loves a strong hero who works hard and plays harder.
Jessie Lane is a best-selling author of Paranormal and Contemporary Romance, as well as, Upper YA Paranormal Romance/Fantasy.
Jessie Lane is a best-selling author of Paranormal and Contemporary Romance, as well as, Upper YA Paranormal Romance/Fantasy.She lives in Kentucky with her two little Rock Chicks in-the-making and her over protective alpha husband that she’s pretty sure is a latent grizzly bear shifter. She has a passionate love for reading and writing naughty romance, cliff hanging suspense, and out-of-this-world characters that demand your attention, or threaten to slap you around until you do pay attention to them.
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CHAPTER REVEAL ~ Ripple Effect by Keri Lake
Coming February 24th
Ripley
They call me RIP.
I’m a killer. A murderer. A psychopath.
In the eyes of the righteous, I’m a monster, born of sin and depravity.
I want to protect her, but I’m not a good man.
I want to love her, but I no longer feel.
She gets under my skin, though, and has awakened something inside of me.
Something I’d kill for.
I’m not her savior—not even close. In fact, I’m worse than the hell she’s already suffered.
I’m her vengeance. Tit for tat, as they say.
And if she’s not careful, I’ll be her ruin.
Dylan
For months, I’ve watched him.
I’ve fantasized him as my savior, my lover. My ticket out of the hell I’ve lived in for the last six years.
I never dreamed he’d be my nightmare.
Had I known what he really is, I’d have never gotten in the car that night, but life is full of cause and effect.
And sometimes the choice on offer isn’t a choice at all.
It’s the result of something already in motion, and we’re merely left to survive the ripple effect.
*This is an erotic suspense/erotic romance not recommended for readers under the age of 18 due to graphic violence and sex.
Shells are made to be cracked.
I stare down at the tiny white egg, wedged between the ashtray filled with cigarette butts and the empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the balcony. Hardly broken in two halves, the busted center reveals an underdeveloped bird inside, nearly devoured by the bugs that crawl in and out of the shell. I can just make out one bulbous eyeball, surprisingly intact, staring back at me. Mourning Dove, I’d bet. They seem to flock to this shithole every year, for whatever reason.
The nest teeters on the edge of the eave somewhere above me, as if the mother intentionally chose this most dangerous spot to lay her egg then up and abandoned it. Left to the careful watch of carnivores.
Poor little bird.
A tickle hits my arm and I slap a hand to my skin, before scratching at the spot just below a black monarch butterfly tattoo, digging my nails into the place where I’m certain I felt something crawling over me. I hate when my long wisps of hair skim across the surface like a translucent web dancing over my skin. Insects give me the willies. Well, except for butterflies, I don’t mind them so much. My therapist put a name on it once, said I had ento-something-phobia—a fear of bugs. It’s not really the bugs themselves I fear, though. It’s the idea that something could breach the barriers of my skin, and infest, just like the shell that housed that bird. Sometimes I have dreams about them, crawling over me, nesting inside of me.
The very thought casts a shiver down my spine, and I’m grateful for the pane of glass that separates me from the macabre outside my window.
Wind rattles the glass in its frame, the tendrils of late winter snaking their way beneath the thin afghan wrapped around my shoulders. It’s been mild, unseasonably warm enough for bugs and early blooms, but that Chicago wind carries the vestiges of a brutal winter.
The fog of my pills is lifting, making me more aware of the cold, but I’m holding off for something stronger. I’ll need it tonight.
From below, the mumbled shouts of Lady Ortiz, as I call her, push their way through the rotted wood planks that separate our balcony from hers. She and Mr. Ortiz are fighting again, their voices escalating into the crash of broken glass. The Yorkie, three floors below, barks an incessant plea to take a piss outside, and I wonder if his owner, Mrs. Silvia, has finally kicked the bucket. The lady’s pushing ninety, and the pungent reek of ammonia that fills her apartment seeps through the heating ducts of this place sometimes.
Oddly enough, in spite of the noise, the smells, and the crawling bugs, this is my moment of peace. Escape. Freedom.
I must be the only teenage girl on the planet who longs for quiet moments without the gossip, the socializing, and all the damn noise. In a generation of selfies and the desperate need for validation, sometimes I like to slip onto the other side of the mirror and simply watch.
Fringed by the glow of my bedroom light, I study the broken shell, eyeing an ant that marches away with a chunk of something far too big for its size, and I’m reminded that the world takes what it wants even after death.
That’s how I got here, this shithole apartment smack in the middle of Chicago. Just like insects, after my father’s death, the bank took our house, the creditors took our cars, and shame stole our pride as we bounced from shelter to shelter, my mom and me. I was nine years old when he died, and as innocent and vulnerable as a baby bird trapped inside a fragile shell.
Because he committed suicide, my dad’s insurance policy was considered null, and we were left without a pot to piss in. For a while, though, we got by. My mom landed a job dancing, and as a veteran’s widow, qualified for something like Section Eight housing. I was left home alone most nights, but it worked. We survived. Things were okay for a while.
I can’t even remember the moment life changed for us.
Feels like it happened in the span of a year, but I know it only took one fleeting second in time, when she didn’t have to worry about me, when the weight bearing down on her lifted and she felt high as the clouds.
An odd dichotomy, heroin—the way it rolls off the tongue as two completely opposite things—a selfless and courageous woman, and a selfish agent of destruction.
My mom gave up one for the other and that began our descent into some of the darkest days of my life.
My stomach twists, and I curl into myself, bringing my knees tighter to my body.
Almost time.
Two silhouettes hit my periphery, and I turn toward the mouth of the alley, where they move abruptly, limbs flailing, as if they’re in the thick of a fight. I focus on them for a moment, spotting the sag of his slacks just below his un-tucked shirt, and realize they’re not fighting at all. They’re fucking. A prostitute and her John pressed against the dirty bricks of the building, beside the overflowing dumpster. Her dark skin is hard to make out, but his crisp white shirt stands out like a beacon of debauchery.
This alley is a constant stream of slum life stories.
Staring at them drudges a memory of sitting tucked beside a line of garbage cans in the back alley of a bar, watching a rat pick at a maggot-infested chicken leg lying in a toxic pool of wastewater, while the sounds of my mother’s animalistic grunts and moans drifted from the other side. Nothing but meat and the stench of rot taunting my gag reflex. Through a small gap between the wall and garbage, I could just make out a man’s naked ass slamming into her, his dirty fingers curled around her bony thigh. Even then, no more than eleven years old, I knew what she’d become before the word was brutally carved into her skin. Whore. Junkie. A prostitute, always searching for the next high.
The two in the alley stop moving. Only that they’ve begun to pull their clothes back on tells me one of them must’ve climaxed. There is no big finale, or magical moment of ecstasy in the underbelly. It’s all quick and quiet fucks, while breathing in the fog and reek of stale sex and damp garbage. He tugs his slacks over his hips and holds up an object, which I’m guessing is a thin wad of cash. She reaches for it and the guy strikes her with the back of his hand, the echoing smack that kicks her head to the side is the first sound I’ve heard between them.
He’s probably her pimp. If she fights him, she’ll have to drag her ass across the city looking for an unclaimed street corner, and pray some crazy lunatic doesn’t pick her up and turn her into a human skin rug with her head mounted on his wall.
At seventeen, I know more about organizational hierarchy and job security than the average middle-aged CEO, and just like the corporate world, success depends on how many people get fucked.
Wolves and sheep.
For those of us in the flock, survival comes down to how well we manipulate, because a predator’s eyes are naturally drawn to the most innocent. So when my mom’s John started giving me that carnal look, I began carrying a pocketknife, and at thirteen, I once held it to the junkie’s throat, threatening to slice out his voice box if he ever touched me again.
Sometimes the sheep can be cunning, though.
My mom once tried to make me pickpocket—a lesson that landed us in the back of a cop car. Took ten minutes with the cop before we were released with a warning, and it was then I learned a valuable lesson in life: even at a woman’s weakest, sex could be her most powerful weapon.
I glance back at Charlie, my stark white Dogo Argentino, stolen from one of my mother’s back alley conquests. If not for her, I wouldn’t be sitting here, letting the blood-sucking insects feed off of me, after my mother spiraled straight to her grave.
Charlie gives me purpose. If there is a God, I truly believe he put her in my life to keep me from doing stupid shit. That, or to give me a weakness, because Lord knows I’d probably go psycho bitch crazy and end up in a padded cell if anything ever happened to my beloved dog.
Because of her, my heart is a tenderer piece of meat for the insects to tear apart.
At the opposite side of the room is another bed that belongs to my eight-year-old foster sister, Layla. Well, for now anyway. She won’t be here long. This place is a revolving door for foster girls, most only staying a couple months max. I don’t know where they go, and honestly, I don’t care. There’s no point getting to know them. In the time I’ve lived with the Westpricks, at least two-dozen girls have been in and out of here. In some ways, I resent them, getting out and moving on to something else. Maybe somewhere better.
I’m the only one who ever stays. The constant in this hellhole.
Since I was nine years old, I’ve been bounced around from house to house, wishing and hoping for things that just don’t happen to kids where I come from. For six of those years I’ve been lost. The forgotten. The unwanted. I’ve been hurt in ways that have forever changed my landscape and numbed me to future pain.
But now I have Charlie, who’s a reminder that good things can come from bad situations, and that even a beast can penetrate the hardest of hearts.
Charlie makes me think of my mother more than I care to. Perhaps because it was my mother who stole her for me, unwittingly gifting me my own personal guardian angel.
I miss her sometimes, though.
The memories of her are like bent photographs that I pull from my back pocket from time to time, wishing I could set them out on a shelf someday. But life’s too short, particularly in this part of the city, to dwell on what will never be again.
My mom wasted away before I even hit middle school. Police told me it was an overdose, but I think she got a hold of a tainted batch of heroin.
And I’ve been caught up in the system ever since.
A few places worked out okay. They let me keep my dog, which was cool, but people tend to give up on kids who don’t love as easily as others. I acted out. Punched my first foster mother in the face and broke her nose. Didn’t even have a good reason, really, except that she was the first person I had to deal with after my mom died.
Lucky for me, my caseworker managed to track down my mom’s sister, Chanel, and her long-time boyfriend, Randy. I’d never met her before, never even knew my mom had a sister. Aside from the fact that Chanel treats Layla and me like her favorite Barbie dolls, the two of them can’t stand us most of the time.
Doesn’t matter, though.
Two more months and I’ll be out on my own.
I close my eyes so tight they ache. Two more months. That’s when I graduate and can get the hell out of this shithole, and away from the shady foster system that threw me into the hands of Randy Westprick, as I like to call him, and my flighty aunt. In a few weeks I turn eighteen and no one will own me anymore. No one.
I could run away now, ditch school and hit the streets, but that would put me on the same path as my mother and I’d rather die in this hellish place than repeat her mistakes.
The neon sign across the alley blinks a mesmerizing repetition of lost hopes that reflects off the patches of water along the pavement.
A shadow slips along my periphery, and I lift my gaze as a dark figure stalks down the alley toward the old fashioned-looking diner that sits across the narrow cross section on the corner. A place that reminds me of the Boulevard of Broken Dreams painting I once saw at the mall.
It’s him.
Head to toe in black, the stranger’s tall frame remains concealed in the leather coat he always wears. I flip open the dull brass pocket watch, the only remnant left of my real dad, and check the time. Ten o’clock, as usual. Churning in my stomach has me hugging my mid-section.
Almost time.
Every Friday I watch the stranger enter the diner, choosing the corner booth beside the window, where he orders a burger and drink. It’s only Friday he orders a burger. Some nights he’ll come in, grab carry-out, and leave. But not on Fridays. On those nights, he stays and sits alone, never seems to make small talk with the waitress—the same lady who waits on him every time he ventures in. Their interactions are brief and as cold as I’d imagine from a man like him. In spite of that, the sight of him makes me dream things. I don’t know who he is, but I fantasize that he’s a deft killer by the way he carries himself with such lethal grace. If he is, then this is the side his victims never get to see—his vulnerability, choosing the same place, the same seat, the same time every Friday night. It’s a sadness that speaks to me, because without fail, I find myself settling in by my window at the very same time.
Occasionally, he goes at different times, on different days, some weeks not at all, which might seem erratic to some, but I’ve watched him long enough to know there’s a pattern. One that I’ve picked up on, because that one week he’s not there, is repeated precisely four weeks later. Perhaps it’s mindless on his part, maybe his visits correspond to events in his life that I’m not privy to, but I’m a creature of patterns, and I’ve memorized his.
From as high as my window, I can see he’s big. A man, not a boy, at least ten years my senior. His bulky frame fills the creases of the leather coat he wears, and he reminds me of something straight out of a comic book—not the hero, but the menacing antihero, the bad guy no one expects to be good.
No, in my fantasy, he’s bigger. Meaner. Stronger. A man who kills on instinct.
Beneath the cover of my blanket, I sneak my hand down inside my shirt, closing my eyes the moment my fingertip makes contact with my hardened nipple. I imagine his lips closing over it, the scratch of his day-old scruff against my skin and his strong hands holding me in place, the gruff in his voice as he says my name like a fervent prayer. I imagine he smells good, not like stale beer and the putrid mix of body odor and bacon grease, but something deliciously masculine.
I shouldn’t want for a grown man this way, but I do, and I don’t even know him.
For months, I’ve held this invisible rendezvous with him, staring down from my perch, imagining him stealing me from this cage. Turning me into whatever he is. Killer? Criminal? I don’t even care, so long as it’s tougher, more wicked than Randy Westprick.
I fault him for my lack of interest in the boys at school. Not that I’m allowed to date them anyway, but I’m certainly not touching myself to any of the guys my age.
Sometimes he stares out the window and I swear his gaze scans up to my balcony. However, if he sees me, he never makes it known. Perhaps to a man like that, I’m nothing but a young girl, hardly a threat for noticing him.
With my bottom lip caught between my teeth, I succumb to the visuals toying with my mind and the soft moan that escapes me has me stealing a furtive glance back at Layla to make sure she’s still asleep.
He takes his usual seat, filling the booth with his bulky frame. Some nights I picture sliding into his lap, his body crushing me against that table, as I straddle his thighs. I imagine his massive arms enveloping me. His tongue across my skin and in my mouth. Sweat dripping down my back, along my spine where the palm of his hand holds me in place. How he’d feel without the pills denying me the sensation of his cock filling me. The edge of the table beating into my back with every punishing drive of his hips, and the tight clench of his jaw in that reckless moment when he finishes inside of me.
My lips part at the vivid imagery, and my belly tightens while I circle my nipple with the pad of my finger.
If anyone were after him, he’d be hard to miss in those bright lights, the way he stands out like a splotch of black paint on a stark white canvas. He hasn’t looked this way once tonight, which allows me to study him intently, admiring his virile features.
He’s beautiful. A sad, but beautiful man.
The click of the doorknob sends a knot straight to my throat and my stomach sinks like bricks in a murky river. The sound alerts my dog, who I can hear rustling in her bed, and a low growl rumbles in her chest.
I slip my hand out of my shirt, straightening myself beneath the afghan.
A beam of new light invades the soft glow of the Christmas lights I’ve strung around the room for Layla, and as my nightmare enters, Charlie’s growl dies to a whimper.
The thud of his boots across the floor sound like the hooves of the devil coming to claim my soul. A scuffling tells me he’s stumbled, but not even that prompts me to turn around.
Drunk again.
The moment I caught him hunkered down in front of the television with a six-pack, I knew he’d come for me. I don’t want to look at him. I hate him. The smell of him makes me sick, like a walking deep fryer.
If not for Charlie, I’d climb over the railing of the balcony, spread my arms, and fly. The police would find a broken shell of me. They’d study me, the same way I studied the baby bird, while the world dissects pieces of my story to suit their curiosities, leaving nothing but a picked over carcass.
All because my mother abandoned her nest.
They’ll never know it was he who gave the final push, and it won’t even matter. Once he injects the drugs, I’ll fall into dissociative bliss, tucked away in the same fog that kept my mother oblivious of the world around her, on rose-colored clouds, and a never-ending dream.
The darkness behind my eyelids is my only refuge from the hell around me, and I’ll willingly climb inside, burrowing myself in that place where no one can touch me. While my body’s propped on the cold metal of the washing machine, I’ll be miles away, fallen deep into the rabbit hole. No one can find me there. Not Randy, nor the men who see the photographs of me that he takes in the dingy laundry room of this apartment complex.
Although he never violates me himself, for whatever reason, he likes objects. The more common they are, the more he gets off. He once had me masturbate the end of a vibrating toothbrush and used it for months after—smiling at me every time he brushed his teeth.
I’ve been defiled in every sense short of rape, stripped and purged of innocence, feeding his disgusting obsession with me.
I often wonder what Chanel’s like when she’s not hopped up on pain pills. If she’d be jealous and accuse me of fucking her man, or if she’d take pleasure in watching him do it. I once tried to tell her about him taking me down there and snapping pictures of me. She offered me one of her pills and asked if I liked the boots her friend had handed down to me.
I can’t blame her too much, though. Randy likes to use her as his personal punching bag, and most days, she’s sporting a bruise somewhere. Even if it’s not always visible. He’s hit me a few times, but unlike Chanel, I hit him back, even at the risk of more pain, because I believe once you show weakness, it’s easier to fall prey to it.
A tug at my elbow and I glance to the side, swatting at his arm. “Don’t touch me.”
Sometimes Randy offers gifts—small tokens that come with his usual pep talk about how it’s not abuse because he never actually penetrates me and the photos don’t show my face. That’s a lie. I once swiped his phone when he passed out on the couch and deleted a good few dozen pictures of me—his little mementos. I couldn’t stand to look at my own face—droopy eyes singed with the apathy toward whatever he forced me to do. I’d hoped to see shame in those photos, but it seemed buried too far beneath the effects of the drugs.
He’s threatened to circulate them throughout the school if I say a word about any of this. Send them to all my classmates on Facebook, as if they’d come from me. Like he’d ever let me have my own account. As far as the world is concerned, I don’t exist.
“C’mon,” is all he says, before walking out of the bedroom.
I give one more glance toward the man in the diner, as he stares off, waiting for his food. Maybe one day he’ll look up and see me.
Maybe he’d want to kill Randy Westprick, if he knew that somewhere close by, a girl was forced to do bad things. Very bad things.
For now, the drugs will put up a barrier, separating my mind from the horrors of my reality, much like the pane of glass that separates me from the insect-ravaged bird outside my window.
Maybe it won’t hurt as much this time, knowing that I do this to keep Randy from slaughtering my dog or taking away the pills that have become as necessary as the air I breathe. A vicious cycle of escaping to survive and surviving to escape.
Because sex is power.
And even the hardest shells are made to be cracked.
I stare down at the tiny white egg, wedged between the ashtray filled with cigarette butts and the empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the balcony. Hardly broken in two halves, the busted center reveals an underdeveloped bird inside, nearly devoured by the bugs that crawl in and out of the shell. I can just make out one bulbous eyeball, surprisingly intact, staring back at me. Mourning Dove, I’d bet. They seem to flock to this shithole every year, for whatever reason.
The nest teeters on the edge of the eave somewhere above me, as if the mother intentionally chose this most dangerous spot to lay her egg then up and abandoned it. Left to the careful watch of carnivores.
Poor little bird.
A tickle hits my arm and I slap a hand to my skin, before scratching at the spot just below a black monarch butterfly tattoo, digging my nails into the place where I’m certain I felt something crawling over me. I hate when my long wisps of hair skim across the surface like a translucent web dancing over my skin. Insects give me the willies. Well, except for butterflies, I don’t mind them so much. My therapist put a name on it once, said I had ento-something-phobia—a fear of bugs. It’s not really the bugs themselves I fear, though. It’s the idea that something could breach the barriers of my skin, and infest, just like the shell that housed that bird. Sometimes I have dreams about them, crawling over me, nesting inside of me.
The very thought casts a shiver down my spine, and I’m grateful for the pane of glass that separates me from the macabre outside my window.
Wind rattles the glass in its frame, the tendrils of late winter snaking their way beneath the thin afghan wrapped around my shoulders. It’s been mild, unseasonably warm enough for bugs and early blooms, but that Chicago wind carries the vestiges of a brutal winter.
The fog of my pills is lifting, making me more aware of the cold, but I’m holding off for something stronger. I’ll need it tonight.
From below, the mumbled shouts of Lady Ortiz, as I call her, push their way through the rotted wood planks that separate our balcony from hers. She and Mr. Ortiz are fighting again, their voices escalating into the crash of broken glass. The Yorkie, three floors below, barks an incessant plea to take a piss outside, and I wonder if his owner, Mrs. Silvia, has finally kicked the bucket. The lady’s pushing ninety, and the pungent reek of ammonia that fills her apartment seeps through the heating ducts of this place sometimes.
Oddly enough, in spite of the noise, the smells, and the crawling bugs, this is my moment of peace. Escape. Freedom.
I must be the only teenage girl on the planet who longs for quiet moments without the gossip, the socializing, and all the damn noise. In a generation of selfies and the desperate need for validation, sometimes I like to slip onto the other side of the mirror and simply watch.
Fringed by the glow of my bedroom light, I study the broken shell, eyeing an ant that marches away with a chunk of something far too big for its size, and I’m reminded that the world takes what it wants even after death.
That’s how I got here, this shithole apartment smack in the middle of Chicago. Just like insects, after my father’s death, the bank took our house, the creditors took our cars, and shame stole our pride as we bounced from shelter to shelter, my mom and me. I was nine years old when he died, and as innocent and vulnerable as a baby bird trapped inside a fragile shell.
Because he committed suicide, my dad’s insurance policy was considered null, and we were left without a pot to piss in. For a while, though, we got by. My mom landed a job dancing, and as a veteran’s widow, qualified for something like Section Eight housing. I was left home alone most nights, but it worked. We survived. Things were okay for a while.
I can’t even remember the moment life changed for us.
Feels like it happened in the span of a year, but I know it only took one fleeting second in time, when she didn’t have to worry about me, when the weight bearing down on her lifted and she felt high as the clouds.
An odd dichotomy, heroin—the way it rolls off the tongue as two completely opposite things—a selfless and courageous woman, and a selfish agent of destruction.
My mom gave up one for the other and that began our descent into some of the darkest days of my life.
My stomach twists, and I curl into myself, bringing my knees tighter to my body.
Almost time.
Two silhouettes hit my periphery, and I turn toward the mouth of the alley, where they move abruptly, limbs flailing, as if they’re in the thick of a fight. I focus on them for a moment, spotting the sag of his slacks just below his un-tucked shirt, and realize they’re not fighting at all. They’re fucking. A prostitute and her John pressed against the dirty bricks of the building, beside the overflowing dumpster. Her dark skin is hard to make out, but his crisp white shirt stands out like a beacon of debauchery.
This alley is a constant stream of slum life stories.
Staring at them drudges a memory of sitting tucked beside a line of garbage cans in the back alley of a bar, watching a rat pick at a maggot-infested chicken leg lying in a toxic pool of wastewater, while the sounds of my mother’s animalistic grunts and moans drifted from the other side. Nothing but meat and the stench of rot taunting my gag reflex. Through a small gap between the wall and garbage, I could just make out a man’s naked ass slamming into her, his dirty fingers curled around her bony thigh. Even then, no more than eleven years old, I knew what she’d become before the word was brutally carved into her skin. Whore. Junkie. A prostitute, always searching for the next high.
The two in the alley stop moving. Only that they’ve begun to pull their clothes back on tells me one of them must’ve climaxed. There is no big finale, or magical moment of ecstasy in the underbelly. It’s all quick and quiet fucks, while breathing in the fog and reek of stale sex and damp garbage. He tugs his slacks over his hips and holds up an object, which I’m guessing is a thin wad of cash. She reaches for it and the guy strikes her with the back of his hand, the echoing smack that kicks her head to the side is the first sound I’ve heard between them.
He’s probably her pimp. If she fights him, she’ll have to drag her ass across the city looking for an unclaimed street corner, and pray some crazy lunatic doesn’t pick her up and turn her into a human skin rug with her head mounted on his wall.
At seventeen, I know more about organizational hierarchy and job security than the average middle-aged CEO, and just like the corporate world, success depends on how many people get fucked.
Wolves and sheep.
For those of us in the flock, survival comes down to how well we manipulate, because a predator’s eyes are naturally drawn to the most innocent. So when my mom’s John started giving me that carnal look, I began carrying a pocketknife, and at thirteen, I once held it to the junkie’s throat, threatening to slice out his voice box if he ever touched me again.
Sometimes the sheep can be cunning, though.
My mom once tried to make me pickpocket—a lesson that landed us in the back of a cop car. Took ten minutes with the cop before we were released with a warning, and it was then I learned a valuable lesson in life: even at a woman’s weakest, sex could be her most powerful weapon.
I glance back at Charlie, my stark white Dogo Argentino, stolen from one of my mother’s back alley conquests. If not for her, I wouldn’t be sitting here, letting the blood-sucking insects feed off of me, after my mother spiraled straight to her grave.
Charlie gives me purpose. If there is a God, I truly believe he put her in my life to keep me from doing stupid shit. That, or to give me a weakness, because Lord knows I’d probably go psycho bitch crazy and end up in a padded cell if anything ever happened to my beloved dog.
Because of her, my heart is a tenderer piece of meat for the insects to tear apart.
At the opposite side of the room is another bed that belongs to my eight-year-old foster sister, Layla. Well, for now anyway. She won’t be here long. This place is a revolving door for foster girls, most only staying a couple months max. I don’t know where they go, and honestly, I don’t care. There’s no point getting to know them. In the time I’ve lived with the Westpricks, at least two-dozen girls have been in and out of here. In some ways, I resent them, getting out and moving on to something else. Maybe somewhere better.
I’m the only one who ever stays. The constant in this hellhole.
Since I was nine years old, I’ve been bounced around from house to house, wishing and hoping for things that just don’t happen to kids where I come from. For six of those years I’ve been lost. The forgotten. The unwanted. I’ve been hurt in ways that have forever changed my landscape and numbed me to future pain.
But now I have Charlie, who’s a reminder that good things can come from bad situations, and that even a beast can penetrate the hardest of hearts.
Charlie makes me think of my mother more than I care to. Perhaps because it was my mother who stole her for me, unwittingly gifting me my own personal guardian angel.
I miss her sometimes, though.
The memories of her are like bent photographs that I pull from my back pocket from time to time, wishing I could set them out on a shelf someday. But life’s too short, particularly in this part of the city, to dwell on what will never be again.
My mom wasted away before I even hit middle school. Police told me it was an overdose, but I think she got a hold of a tainted batch of heroin.
And I’ve been caught up in the system ever since.
A few places worked out okay. They let me keep my dog, which was cool, but people tend to give up on kids who don’t love as easily as others. I acted out. Punched my first foster mother in the face and broke her nose. Didn’t even have a good reason, really, except that she was the first person I had to deal with after my mom died.
Lucky for me, my caseworker managed to track down my mom’s sister, Chanel, and her long-time boyfriend, Randy. I’d never met her before, never even knew my mom had a sister. Aside from the fact that Chanel treats Layla and me like her favorite Barbie dolls, the two of them can’t stand us most of the time.
Doesn’t matter, though.
Two more months and I’ll be out on my own.
I close my eyes so tight they ache. Two more months. That’s when I graduate and can get the hell out of this shithole, and away from the shady foster system that threw me into the hands of Randy Westprick, as I like to call him, and my flighty aunt. In a few weeks I turn eighteen and no one will own me anymore. No one.
I could run away now, ditch school and hit the streets, but that would put me on the same path as my mother and I’d rather die in this hellish place than repeat her mistakes.
The neon sign across the alley blinks a mesmerizing repetition of lost hopes that reflects off the patches of water along the pavement.
A shadow slips along my periphery, and I lift my gaze as a dark figure stalks down the alley toward the old fashioned-looking diner that sits across the narrow cross section on the corner. A place that reminds me of the Boulevard of Broken Dreams painting I once saw at the mall.
It’s him.
Head to toe in black, the stranger’s tall frame remains concealed in the leather coat he always wears. I flip open the dull brass pocket watch, the only remnant left of my real dad, and check the time. Ten o’clock, as usual. Churning in my stomach has me hugging my mid-section.
Almost time.
Every Friday I watch the stranger enter the diner, choosing the corner booth beside the window, where he orders a burger and drink. It’s only Friday he orders a burger. Some nights he’ll come in, grab carry-out, and leave. But not on Fridays. On those nights, he stays and sits alone, never seems to make small talk with the waitress—the same lady who waits on him every time he ventures in. Their interactions are brief and as cold as I’d imagine from a man like him. In spite of that, the sight of him makes me dream things. I don’t know who he is, but I fantasize that he’s a deft killer by the way he carries himself with such lethal grace. If he is, then this is the side his victims never get to see—his vulnerability, choosing the same place, the same seat, the same time every Friday night. It’s a sadness that speaks to me, because without fail, I find myself settling in by my window at the very same time.
Occasionally, he goes at different times, on different days, some weeks not at all, which might seem erratic to some, but I’ve watched him long enough to know there’s a pattern. One that I’ve picked up on, because that one week he’s not there, is repeated precisely four weeks later. Perhaps it’s mindless on his part, maybe his visits correspond to events in his life that I’m not privy to, but I’m a creature of patterns, and I’ve memorized his.
From as high as my window, I can see he’s big. A man, not a boy, at least ten years my senior. His bulky frame fills the creases of the leather coat he wears, and he reminds me of something straight out of a comic book—not the hero, but the menacing antihero, the bad guy no one expects to be good.
No, in my fantasy, he’s bigger. Meaner. Stronger. A man who kills on instinct.
Beneath the cover of my blanket, I sneak my hand down inside my shirt, closing my eyes the moment my fingertip makes contact with my hardened nipple. I imagine his lips closing over it, the scratch of his day-old scruff against my skin and his strong hands holding me in place, the gruff in his voice as he says my name like a fervent prayer. I imagine he smells good, not like stale beer and the putrid mix of body odor and bacon grease, but something deliciously masculine.
I shouldn’t want for a grown man this way, but I do, and I don’t even know him.
For months, I’ve held this invisible rendezvous with him, staring down from my perch, imagining him stealing me from this cage. Turning me into whatever he is. Killer? Criminal? I don’t even care, so long as it’s tougher, more wicked than Randy Westprick.
I fault him for my lack of interest in the boys at school. Not that I’m allowed to date them anyway, but I’m certainly not touching myself to any of the guys my age.
Sometimes he stares out the window and I swear his gaze scans up to my balcony. However, if he sees me, he never makes it known. Perhaps to a man like that, I’m nothing but a young girl, hardly a threat for noticing him.
With my bottom lip caught between my teeth, I succumb to the visuals toying with my mind and the soft moan that escapes me has me stealing a furtive glance back at Layla to make sure she’s still asleep.
He takes his usual seat, filling the booth with his bulky frame. Some nights I picture sliding into his lap, his body crushing me against that table, as I straddle his thighs. I imagine his massive arms enveloping me. His tongue across my skin and in my mouth. Sweat dripping down my back, along my spine where the palm of his hand holds me in place. How he’d feel without the pills denying me the sensation of his cock filling me. The edge of the table beating into my back with every punishing drive of his hips, and the tight clench of his jaw in that reckless moment when he finishes inside of me.
My lips part at the vivid imagery, and my belly tightens while I circle my nipple with the pad of my finger.
If anyone were after him, he’d be hard to miss in those bright lights, the way he stands out like a splotch of black paint on a stark white canvas. He hasn’t looked this way once tonight, which allows me to study him intently, admiring his virile features.
He’s beautiful. A sad, but beautiful man.
The click of the doorknob sends a knot straight to my throat and my stomach sinks like bricks in a murky river. The sound alerts my dog, who I can hear rustling in her bed, and a low growl rumbles in her chest.
I slip my hand out of my shirt, straightening myself beneath the afghan.
A beam of new light invades the soft glow of the Christmas lights I’ve strung around the room for Layla, and as my nightmare enters, Charlie’s growl dies to a whimper.
The thud of his boots across the floor sound like the hooves of the devil coming to claim my soul. A scuffling tells me he’s stumbled, but not even that prompts me to turn around.
Drunk again.
The moment I caught him hunkered down in front of the television with a six-pack, I knew he’d come for me. I don’t want to look at him. I hate him. The smell of him makes me sick, like a walking deep fryer.
If not for Charlie, I’d climb over the railing of the balcony, spread my arms, and fly. The police would find a broken shell of me. They’d study me, the same way I studied the baby bird, while the world dissects pieces of my story to suit their curiosities, leaving nothing but a picked over carcass.
All because my mother abandoned her nest.
They’ll never know it was he who gave the final push, and it won’t even matter. Once he injects the drugs, I’ll fall into dissociative bliss, tucked away in the same fog that kept my mother oblivious of the world around her, on rose-colored clouds, and a never-ending dream.
The darkness behind my eyelids is my only refuge from the hell around me, and I’ll willingly climb inside, burrowing myself in that place where no one can touch me. While my body’s propped on the cold metal of the washing machine, I’ll be miles away, fallen deep into the rabbit hole. No one can find me there. Not Randy, nor the men who see the photographs of me that he takes in the dingy laundry room of this apartment complex.
Although he never violates me himself, for whatever reason, he likes objects. The more common they are, the more he gets off. He once had me masturbate the end of a vibrating toothbrush and used it for months after—smiling at me every time he brushed his teeth.
I’ve been defiled in every sense short of rape, stripped and purged of innocence, feeding his disgusting obsession with me.
I often wonder what Chanel’s like when she’s not hopped up on pain pills. If she’d be jealous and accuse me of fucking her man, or if she’d take pleasure in watching him do it. I once tried to tell her about him taking me down there and snapping pictures of me. She offered me one of her pills and asked if I liked the boots her friend had handed down to me.
I can’t blame her too much, though. Randy likes to use her as his personal punching bag, and most days, she’s sporting a bruise somewhere. Even if it’s not always visible. He’s hit me a few times, but unlike Chanel, I hit him back, even at the risk of more pain, because I believe once you show weakness, it’s easier to fall prey to it.
A tug at my elbow and I glance to the side, swatting at his arm. “Don’t touch me.”
Sometimes Randy offers gifts—small tokens that come with his usual pep talk about how it’s not abuse because he never actually penetrates me and the photos don’t show my face. That’s a lie. I once swiped his phone when he passed out on the couch and deleted a good few dozen pictures of me—his little mementos. I couldn’t stand to look at my own face—droopy eyes singed with the apathy toward whatever he forced me to do. I’d hoped to see shame in those photos, but it seemed buried too far beneath the effects of the drugs.
He’s threatened to circulate them throughout the school if I say a word about any of this. Send them to all my classmates on Facebook, as if they’d come from me. Like he’d ever let me have my own account. As far as the world is concerned, I don’t exist.
“C’mon,” is all he says, before walking out of the bedroom.
I give one more glance toward the man in the diner, as he stares off, waiting for his food. Maybe one day he’ll look up and see me.
Maybe he’d want to kill Randy Westprick, if he knew that somewhere close by, a girl was forced to do bad things. Very bad things.
For now, the drugs will put up a barrier, separating my mind from the horrors of my reality, much like the pane of glass that separates me from the insect-ravaged bird outside my window.
Maybe it won’t hurt as much this time, knowing that I do this to keep Randy from slaughtering my dog or taking away the pills that have become as necessary as the air I breathe. A vicious cycle of escaping to survive and surviving to escape.
Because sex is power.
And even the hardest shells are made to be cracked.
Keri Lake is a married mother of two living in Michigan. By day, she tries to make use of the degrees she’s earned in science. By night, she writes dark contemporary, paranormal romance and urban fantasy. Though novels tend to be her focus, she also writes short stories and flash fiction on the many occasions distraction sucks her into the Land of Shiny Things.
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