Chapter 18 #2
I kept my eyes closed, moaned his name, and ground myself against his steely length. “I need you, Krew.” Desperation filtered in as I rocked my pelvis, craving the friction.
“Regi.” Krew’s voice shook, and I snapped my eyes open. My brain spun out of control the second I saw his pupils—blown wide. It wasn’t the black that held my focus. It was the speck of brown, almost swallowed whole, and my attention was forced back to the amber.
All the air left my lungs, Krew’s face melted right in front of me like someone had cast a spell and poof, Teke was the one holding me. Giant. Abrasive. Assaulting. A monster.
I wanted to scream, but a boulder sized knot was lodged in my throat and my voice was blocked, and so was the oxygen I needed in my lungs.
I closed my eyes again, thrashed out of his arms, and wished Teke back to the pits of hell, where he and the memory belonged.
My feet landed on the cold floor, and I knew I had to escape, but firm hands gripped my arms before I had a chance to run away.
“Breathe, Regi—damn it, breathe for me,” Krew’s frantic words penetrated my sheer panic and I opened my eyes.
This is Krew. This is Krew, I repeated to myself as I looked for the hazel in that one eye, but Teke’s face kept getting in the way and driving my burgeoning terror into an utter frenzy.
Krew cupped the back of my neck and drew me in to his chest like he was my safe harbor in this storm of emotions. I shivered at the solid reassurance his touch brought me.
“What the hell is going on?” Another voice boomed, startling me into stillness.
I slowly swiveled my head and saw Decker standing at the other end of the hallway. Then my eyes lasered in on the blood and dirt on his clothes, on his hands. Swiftly, the world spun around me and I was falling again.
My mind spiraled back to Teke dragging me by the hair into the denser part of the woods.
I’d screamed from the pain and fear. He had punched me in the face a couple of times to shut me up but I had fought back.
With my fists, my nails, and my teeth. Yet, nothing had stopped him from taking what he had wanted.
From shredding that sacred part of me—that part I’d been saving for Decker and Krew.
Then Teke was gone and I was in the dark. Cold seeped into my body—bone chilling and wet. I was back in that ditch again.
My vision went black, and everything stopped.
* * *
“Breathe, baby.” Krew’s panicked voice forced its way into the black space in my head. Then a foul, sharp odor filled my nostrils and flung the heavy, dark fog from my mind.
“Thank fuck.” That was Decker. “Why did she pass out this time?”
“I don’t know,” Krew barked. “Open your eyes, Regi. It’s me, Krew—damn it—open them for me.” The sheer terror in his voice pulled me further from the edge of my nightmarish abyss.
I wanted to soothe Krew, but the cold?—
“Damn it, Regi. Don’t do this to us,” Krew roughly whispered.
What was he talking about—the foul odor hit my sinuses again, and I was finally dragged back into reality. I blinked, then coughed, then sluggishly opened my eyes. Hovering over me were two blurry faces.
“Decker? Krew?” I croaked, then blinked, trying to clear my vision.
“It’s us.” Decker met me with a frown. Seeing his handsome face distorted with worry sliced right through me. I was still befuddled from whatever had happened just moments ago and wobbled a little as I tried to sit up.
“Take it slow,” Krew said as he helped me into a sitting position. I was in a bed—in a different room from the one I’d been sleeping in.
“Maybe she should stay lying down,” Decker reasoned.
My head swam like it was filled with muck, even though Krew kept a steadying hand on my shoulder.
I stared at Decker’s naked torso and all of the tattoos that covered his skin, and my clit suddenly thrummed to life. Disgusted by the lust pulsating between my legs, I looked away as I asked, “Why are you shirtless—never mind, I don’t want to know.”
Then I remembered the blood on his shirt. I shut my eyes and swallowed down the bile threatening to rise up my throat.
“Maybe Decker is right and you need to lay down,” Krew said, as he bent to look at my face.
I shook my head in response, and immediately became dizzy. My temples ached and as I dug my fingers against the pressure points, my stomach churned with distress.
I didn’t want to see their faces—not when I felt so weak and I’d just barely managed to stitch back together what was left of my crumbling fortitude. I needed time to rebuild the fortress that protected my sanity.
However, there was no staunching the rush of heat in my cheeks, as I returned my gaze to Decker’s muscled, fully tatted chest. I wondered if each of the tattoos that covered his skin had meaning. Probably, but it wasn’t likely that he’d tell me.
What the hell is wrong with me? Who cares what his tattoos mean?
I squeezed my thighs tightly together to ward off the desire.
I couldn’t keep putting myself in the path of these men, fantasizing about how it would feel to be moving against their bodies—holy hell, I nearly had sex in the hallway with Krew.
All because I wanted to forget for a little while that I wasn’t whole.
I had just wanted a little piece of him before I didn’t have either of these men in my life.
“Where did… the blood…” I couldn’t finish what I wanted to ask, I was about to throw up. I clamped my lips shut and swallowed down the vile taste in my mouth.
Krew’s finger gently rubbed the back of my neck. It was soothing, though, his touch didn’t stop my heart from racing out of my chest or relax my breathing.
“You don’t want to know,” Decker said gruffly, “What is more important is what’s going on with you, Regi. Before you fainted, you said, The blood—all the blood . Now what does that mean?”
“It means nothing,” I lied, as the roiling in my gut started again and I couldn’t talk about it.
“Again, you’re lying—what are you hiding from us, Regi?”
There it went. I hauled myself over to the side of the bed and threw up. I hadn’t eaten in the past twelve hours, so only yellow bile splashed across the wooden floor.
“Je-sus.” Decker scrambled backwards while Krew took off out of the room. He rushed back moments later with a wet towel and a metal bucket. I stared blurry-eyed down at the pail, wondering where he had pulled that out from, and told him it was a bit too late.
“Just in case,” Krew said as he handed me the towel.
I slowly straightened, took the cold, wet towel out of his hand and wiped my mouth. The foul taste at the back of my throat had me gagging again, but I choked down the acrid tang.
“Why did the blood trigger you, Regi?” Decker questioned, his eyes narrowed into pinpricks. “What happened to you?”
“I’m not hiding anything,” I defended, lying—again. “It’s only a bodily fluid, Deck.” I said with a shrug, not wanting to use the B word, in case it incited another bout of vomiting.
“Regi, you fainted,” Krew said. I was momentarily distracted by the sight of him folding his beefy arms across his broad chest. When my gaze returned to his sad eyes, his worry was still plain to see.
I shivered and diverted my attention to the mess on the floor. My insides were raw like a reopened sore, one that was being constantly picked at. My yearning for these men was an internal battle I was continuously waging with myself. And yet, I had enough fortitude to remain steadfast in my lies.
“It would trigger most people. Don’t make a big deal out of it,” I said with another shrug.
“Don’t make a big deal out of it? Fucking A—is she for real?” Decker spat—literally spat in the vomit and I wanted to laugh at the absurdity. “Why are you lying to us?” Decker growled in frustration. “You never used to lie to us.”
“I’m not that little girl anymore, Deck!” I shouted the first truth I’d said since we’d been back together. “I’m not that Regina you remember. The girl who was too na?ve for her own good. She’s dead and buried.”
Everyone was clueless—these men were clueless, and I kind of liked it that way. Their lack of knowledge of who I was now made it easier to spin my web of lies like a spider.
“You made us promise, a long time ago, to never lie to each other. Do you remember that, Regi?” Krew’s gravelly voice shook my focus, because I remembered that day clearly.
It was one of the days Krew and his brother fought, and Krew came away from the fight with a busted nose and a black eye.
The same day, Decker went after Teke and kicked the crap out of him before Krew’s father aimed the shotgun at Decker and warned him off his son and his property.
As broken as these two had looked, they lied to me about where they’d gotten their bruises.
Until I found out the truth from Maya. I made them swear that, from that point on, we would always tell each other the truth. What a childish promise to make.
“Those promises don’t mean much now. We’re adults—not kids, Krew,” I defended.
“Adults or kids, we made a promise to each other. If you can’t keep your promise, if truth between the three of us isn’t important to you, then maybe I don’t know you anymore.”
Shit, that stung deep.
“Well, you don’t.” I clenched my teeth and looked away, for fear they would see behind my false bravado.
What could I say to them? Yes, I was the biggest liar of them all? When I was young, I couldn’t lie—not to them. But I wasn’t that girl anymore—and I told them that. Didn’t they see I was no longer Regina K. Morton—the good girl who fell in love with two boys from school.
I may not have been a good liar back then, but I was a great liar now. Not even my ex-best friend, Maya, knew I lied to her about things in my life I didn’t want her to know.
She knew firsthand about the rape—Maya was the one who found me in the ditch. But the dreams that haunted me for years… I tried to keep them to myself. Still, I’d woken her, and eventually, she made me talk about my nightmares.
How would I even explain the hell I went through back then?
Or how I had never truly recovered from losing myself, the life I thought I’d have, and the love of my family and these men?
Or how lonely I was now? I’d rather swallow a pound of rusty nails then tell them all the evil that had been done to me and the shit I had to crawl through to reach some level of sanity.
What would it achieve? Nothing but carnage.
Krew would track down his brother and beat the hell out of him.
Or worse. And Decker? He’d put the hurt to my rapist first before he finished him off with a bullet.
I had no doubt what Decker was capable of, especially after watching him kill the hitman in my apartment and seeing the blood he had on his skin and clothes today—blood I knew wasn’t his.
Then they would be hauled off to jail, all because of me.
So no, I wouldn’t let them put their lives on the line for me. I couldn’t have that on my conscience.
“You don’t know me,” I repeated stridently. “Neither of you know me. I keep telling you, I’m not the same person you knew back in Elida. The sooner you get that in your heads, the better.” I refused to look away from Decker’s eyes, even though I could feel them drilling through my armor.
“Maybe you need a good spanking to get you to tell us the truth,” Decker warned.
I sucked in a shocked breath. “I swear if you touch me, Decker Joseph Moss, I will cut off your balls,” I shouted.
“Since you want to be a hard ass,” he pointed to the vomit, “you made the mess, you can clean it up. When I get back, it better be clean enough for me to eat off of.”
“You can’t tell me what to do,” I screamed at him.
“Deck.” Krew glared at Decker. “Maybe?—”
“No, K. If she thinks it’s no big deal to lie to us about what she’s hiding, then we will treat her as such.
As a liar.” Then Decker turned to me. “We won’t bother you any longer.
You don’t have to worry about us asking you anything.
I’m done with you, Regi.” He sneered at me and I almost flinched.
“Out of respect for my friend, who owns this house, you’re going to clean up this puke, or I’m going to spank your ass like you deserve. ” Decker stormed out of the room.
“You can go fuck right off, Decker,” I shouted at his retreating back, turned and faced Krew. “Get out.” I snarled, like it was his fault for what just happened.
Krew glanced at me with eyes filled with sadness, before he walked out of the bedroom without another word.
I didn’t know what was crushing my heart more: Decker’s words, the sneer I gave to Krew or the anger radiating from my soul.
I stomped to the door, slammed it out of pure frustration, and locked it. I covered my mouth, slid down the door, and silently cried. They would surely hate me now.