Page 68 of Conflicted Lies

I kick off my shoes and step out of my overalls. I’m left wearing only a pair of panties and a black t-shirt. We separate for a second as we both try to remove his shirt. He pulls it over his head, and I step back, admiring every flex of his muscles. He really is beautiful. I could try to sculpt him for a lifetime, and would never capture every detail and sharp ridge of his perfection.

His jeans come off next, and I lick my lips with anticipation. My body is on fire like I can’t be with him soon enough. The darkness within me pacing back and forth and needing to be touched. Needing to beseen. In the way that only he ever has.

He turns the shower on and steps inside. I remove my shirt and my panties before I follow him. He shuffles back, making room for me, and my red hair falls down my back as the warm water hits my face.

His mouth is on mine in moments, kissing, biting, sucking, and drowning as we gasp for air through the spray. Swirls of brown hit the tiles of the shower floor as the bits of clay come off me. His hands are all over me, washing away the mess, and it breathes desperation into me as I do the same to him.

I need and want him. It’s been torture to only dream of him this past month. Twisting between images of kissing him and killing him. Hating him, then fucking him. But deep down, I’m beginning to understand that this hate might be something entirely different. This hate I feel, might, in fact, be love. And that hurts more than anything else could.

His mouth finds my breast, and his tongue teasingly rolls around my nipple before he begins to suck. His hands slide down my back, past my waist and hips, to my ass, where he squeezes before lifting me up.

I wrap my legs around his waist as I look down at him, cupping his cheeks. Those beautiful blue eyes. This sinfully inappropriate man.Mine. I want him to be mine. And if I can’t have him in this lifetime, then I’ll kill him so no one else can have him, and I’ll find him in the next.

“Sometimes I think you’ll look better dead,” I whisper, a confession of my depravities. I don’t know why, but I feel like I have to give him more of me because his rejection might be the thing that helps me end this completely.

He shakes his head with an arrogant smirk as he pushes back some of my wet hair. “Then should I be flattered that you keep me alive but offended that you don’t create statues of me meeting a tragic death?”

He doesn’t get it. Or maybe he’s not right in the head, either. But for the first time, I don’t deny the statues. If he’s so certain it’s me, doesn’t it mean he accepts at least part of me? Or am I being lulled into a false sense of security?

I lean forward and bite his bottom lip as I lower myself onto his cock pressing between my legs. The moment he’s inside me, I moan as I stretch to take his full size, and he presses my back against the wall as he slams home. The wet slaps echo, mixing with the sound of the water, as I ride the pure bliss. His hand wraps around my throat, and I’m reminded just as I threaten his life, he could take mine as well.

A wave of heat pools at my core, pulsing at the idea. Life and death. Danger. Consumption. It’s all the same. I don’t know why the thought of nearly dying brings me pleasure while having sex, but it does, and he’s the only man not to shun my heated desires.

If anything, he’s the one who birthed them.

He fucks me hard and long, biting my shoulders and neck, claiming me. And I want them all. I want all the marks he’s willing to give. I want him to brand me, to bruise me so irrevocably that I won’t be able to forget about this moment for days, even weeks, after. An ease settles over me as a scream rips from my lips, brought on by his forceful thrusts.

I’m broken for any other man.

I’m choosing to tie myself to him because I never want to forget this feeling.

I never want to forget Braxton Hero. Even when I try, I can’t get him out of my head. And I haven’t been the same since that fateful night four years ago.

CHAPTER36

Braxton

She turns over in her sleep, and I see my teeth marks imprinted above her breast and on her throat. I trace my finger over them, and she doesn’t even stir. She continues to softly snore next to me.

I wonder if that was her admitting to me in the shower about the statues. Is she just fucking with me to cure my addiction to her? Because that’s what it’s turned into—an addiction. I can’t seem to stay away, even though I know I should.

Her mother came to see me the week after I met her at the art show. Everyone in the police station was happy to see her, flattered by the famous singer making a generous donation to the patrolman’s fund. But she wasn’t there for a social call or a photo op. She warned me that a relationship between myself and her daughter would never work.

That’s when it hit me that the women in these families don’t need to depend on their men. They’re powerful and influential in their own right, as Hope has always been.

I understood her mother’s message well and clear. Her donation was her subtly trying to pay me off to stay away from Hope. Instead of heeding her warning, I kindly showed her the door. That was the day before Kylie was murdered, and to say the timing couldn’t be more suspicious is an understatement.

It’s the wake-up call we both needed. We shouldn’t fit. Shouldn’t want each other. She’s slowly undoing everything I’ve pieced together in my life for stability and security. Hope Ivanov is no doubt my weakness and undoing.

So when I realized she was avoiding me, I tried to stay away. But I was still there. In the shadows. Watching her from afar, practically pining as I fought with my demons to keep my distance.

I rub a lock of her hair between my fingers.

Hope’s so reckless, especially with the statues beneath my bed, but equally, a careless part of me wants to protect her.

And that’s my biggest problem.

I always thought she listened to her family. That she was mostly a sweet, innocent girl. She’s always been intriguing to me. Someone like Hope Ivanov will never stop learning. She respects her family but is independent of them. She works hard, although she doesn’t like being publicly recognized for it. She doesn’t need her parents’ money, but she lets them spoil her. She’s the perfect daughter. The perfect facade for the creature that lurks beneath—the one she’s only willing to show me. And I stayed away for four years because I knew my curiosity would lead to nothing but destruction.

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