Brutally Beautiful (15 page)

Blood.  Gore.  More blood and gore.  By the fourth chapter, I was sure the male main character was a fucking serial killer
.

As soon as my lips touched hers, her smile wandered its way to my mouth.  I loved the softness of her lips, the warmth of her tongue, the way she moved her mouth over mine, her body leaned closer against me.  “You make me smile when your lips are on mine, like I’m borrowing your happiness, like it’s wiping off on me.  Maybe I’m just stealing it, I don’t know.  All I know is that it gives me a calmness, a happiness I never thought I could feel…you give me a reason…”

She was mine, and no other’s.  Only my lips could kiss hers.  Only my hands could hold hers.  Only my body could sink deep inside her between those smooth ivory thighs…And only she could tame the beast I was. Only she could quench the thirst I hungered after, and coax the monster inside me to be a man again, if only a broken one…

More carnage.  An eerily true to life decapitation scene from an accident, and wait…by chapter twenty, I believed the female character might have been the serial killer.  This book…this book was dragging me to the dark dungeon of my own psyche where I did not wish to linger.  Holy crap, I just got mindfucked.  The book ended with a cliffhanger that made me scream.  Like literally, scream.  Out loud.  His words were like liquid poetry, emotion dripping thickly off of every single sentence.  It made my heart thunder in my chest and ache for the characters.  They were written so close in likeness to both Kade and me, right down to the way my hands trembled and twisted napkins when I got nervous, to the destructive and angry way he tugged on his hair.  The scenes of carnage, the gruesomely horrific violence, were so real and terrifying that I found myself gripping the edges of the couch cushions with anxiety.

Is that why the people in this town think he’s the devil?  Because he writes horror-fiction? 
That’s absurd
.

Rubbing my eyes, I looked at the clock on the wall; it was eleven.  I read his words, his book, straight through for seven hours.  Rifling through my drawers, I changed into a pair of jeans and a turtleneck to go back to the bar.  Every sound I heard had me wondering if someone was outside the trailer, every howl of the wind had me hearing voices of people I never wanted to see again, and I didn’t want to be alone.  Kade Grayson was one talented writer, because I was still feeling the effects of the complete terror of his book.

After locking up the trailer, I silently made my way through the park, staying on the road with eyes wide open.  No matter where you might have met up with your nightmares in your past, you could always find new ones on cold dark country roads.  Relief swept through me when I had the bar in my view. The neon lights of the shaking ass sign were like a beacon of safety to me, but I still had a strange gnawing fear in the back of my head.  It was probably from reading the horror story, alone…but I just couldn’t shake the thoughts that someone was right behind me, reaching out their hand to grab me in the darkness of the night.  You know that fear…that something is there just beyond your sight, waiting…watching you. 

When my feet hit the asphalt of the parking area, I ran to the door of the bar and stumbled in, breathless and shaking.  I could brush it off as being out of shape and cold, but truth was, I was dead scared.  Because Kade Grayson wasn’t the only one who’d lived through a real-life horror and I remembered all too well what those hands that spring from the blackness of the dead of night felt like around my throat.

The bar was practically empty.  Cynthia (aka Sin Dee) was on stage, surrounded by four men raptly watching her spin herself around the pole, and for the briefest of moments, I envied her sexuality, her lack of inhibitions and her confidence in her beauty.  I would love at least one night in my life to feel
that free
about my body and myself.

Dylan, Bree, Fran, and Natalie, another dancer, sat around a table in the middle of the bar, deep in some sort of discussion.  Natalie was still dressed in her thong and a sparkly bikini top, and Fran didn’t seem to own the ability to lift his eyes off her breasts.  Good, maybe he’ll ask her out and leave me alone with my coffee.

Kade sat in his normal booth.  Back to the wall, facing the whole bar nearest to the back door, and now I completely understood why.  He would always need to see the whole of a room, always need to be nearest to an exit,
just in case
.  Kade Grayson had a whole new personality to me now, and I understood it.  God, I
understood him
.

Immersed, consumed in whatever he was writing, I took advantage of his distraction to study him raptly.  Leaning forward, the chiseled features of his face illuminated by the glow of his computer screen, his fingers danced quickly over the keys.  He looked a mess.  Hair tousled, falling darkly across his forehead, tight gray shirt, a simple cotton one, clung to his body, demonstrating his powerful chest and hard solid muscular arms.  A smear of ketchup covered his cheek from the half-eaten hamburger lying on the dish next to his laptop.  I found myself drawn in, in front of him, softly wiping the smear from his cheek.  “
Shit
,” he whispered, looking up with wide eyes.

“Nope.  Just ketchup,” I whispered, feeling every beat of my heart as it banged hard against my chest.  I couldn’t believe I had touched him.  Quickly, I wiped my fingers on a napkin, then balled it up tightly and squeezed it spastically in my hand.  “I’m sorry.” I gave him a watery smile and tried to hold back my tears, because I could still see the death and chaos around him. He wore it heavily on his face and in the tightness in his eyes.  Like a soldier just home from war.

Slowly putting his drink to his lips, he took a long pull of his beer, his eyes never leaving mine.  Swallowing, he placed his drink down and snapped shut his laptop, ceasing the screen’s glow against his skin.  With only the flickering flame from the small candle on the table, it made his features look even more menacing and colder than ever before.  His eyes were so light they seemed colorless. His hard angular face, chiseled as if from stone, tilted to the side in question.

“That was something a friend would do, no?” he whispered.  Softly.  Dangerously.  Chilling me.  His gaze dropped to my lips and it felt as soft as a touch.

I cleared my throat trying to get my breath back.  “Why don’t you come and sit with us?  Have a bit of normal conversation,
friend
.”

His right eyebrow shot up. “I’m not
normal
,” he said, trying to provoke me, crossing his thick arms over his chest as if he was waiting for my rebuttal.

Leaning forward, I placed my face a few inches in front of his and whispered, “Then redefine what normal is, Kade.”  Being so close to him, I noticed the slight widening of the whites of his eyes, making his grey irises more brilliant than they already were.  His pupils dilated completely, leaving me staring at complete black pools of desire.  I swear I saw a layer of sweat burst out across his forehead.

A chuckle fumbled unevenly past his lips, and his head tilted to one side to look at the table I had invited him to sit at.  “I appreciate your invitation, but I believe that every time that
Fran
of yours speaks to me, he’s actively trying to annihilate every last one of my brain cells.” 

He was teasing me
.

“Well, considering the average intelligence level of the people, and let’s say the chairs and crumpled up napkins there, I believe you’d fit in perfectly with any conversation we could throw at you.  Now, get up and stop your whining.”

His smile…his smile almost killed me.  Arrow right to the heart, with a stampede of fluttering butterflies exploding from it.  That man was breathtaking when he smiled.  And that dimple,
holy divots of smooth skin everywhere
, I could have fallen right into it and lived a happy life there for the rest of my days.

Sliding himself out of his chair, he stood up tall, and stretched.  I was captivated by the way his shirt stretched and clung to the muscles of his arms and back.  I was well aware that I was the one that looked like the obsessed stalker then, so I stepped away and tried to rub the sight of him from my eyes. 

Walking side by side, we made our way across the bar to where everyone was seated.

“Here she is, just ask her,” Bree slurred, smiling at me.  “Who is the Karaoke Queen of Manhattan?”  Crap.  Bree was drunk.  And telling everybody exactly where we were running from.  Perfect.

I sat down across from her, leaving open the chair that faced the entrance to the bar for Kade to sit in.  His face looked ashen, his entire demeanor screamed uncomfortable, and guilt quickly overwhelmed me.  Catching his glance, I offered him an encouraging smile and he sat down and slid the seat closer to the table.  The expression of everyone was astonishing to me.  Dylan was giddy with happiness that his brother was there, but Fran was sneering like an ass. Bree was plainly drunk, and Natalie practically shoved her breasts in his lap. 

“Bree was just telling us a little secret about you,” Fran broke the silence.  “She swears that your Karaoke skills are unsurpassable.”  Need I tell you that my stomach dropped for a bit, wondering what secret she could have drunkenly let loose?

“Ugh.  My brother loved karaoke and he used to drag me to bars when we were younger to sing.  It’s no big deal.  How did you guys get on this subject,” I asked, watching Bree.  Her eyes were closed and I knew she was thinking about Michael.

“Oh, I didn’t know you had a brother,” Fran said, scanning his eyes back and forth from Kade to me, and back again. 

“Well, he’s deceased, so I don’t usually talk about him,” I explained. 

“Oh, I’m sorry.  How did that happen?” Fran prodded. 

Why do people think it’s okay to ask that question?  The answers are just for their own morbid curiosity and it hurts the person whom they’re asking.

“They said it was suicide.  Any other inappropriate questions you’d like to ask?” I said, offering an uncomfortable laugh.

Just like always, death kills the conversation.  Four sets of silent staring eyes were on me, all except for Kade.  No, what Kade did affected me the most, a simple brush of the back of his hand over mine under the table that took hold of all of my senses completely.  My insides fluttered.  Now that I knew about Kade’s tragic past, I understood why we’d felt drawn together.  People who have seen real life monsters up close will never feel understood by people who haven’t. What those people don’t understand, is that we still see those monsters, everyday.  They will never understand how tragedy makes you bitter and spiteful, and how it always keeps its claws around your neck, ready to suffocate you.

“Um…what we were saying was that Dylan should have some karaoke on nights when us girls aren’t dancing to get more people to come out to the bar.  That’s all,” Natalie said.  “I’m sorry about your brother,
hon
.”

Bree laid her head on Dylan’s shoulder and kept quiet.

“Hey, they have a Karaoke bar in town.  I should close the bar tomorrow night and then we could all hear this bird sing,” Dylan teased, pointing to me.

Bree’s face lit up, “I’m in.”

Natalie smiled, “I’m in for a day off and going out, but I have to see if I could get a sitter for the little monsters.”

Fran searched my face for my answer and I just shrugged, “Sounds fun.”  I turned my head towards Kade, “Want to come with us and watch me embarrass everybody?”

Again, his smiled crushed me.

“I still say the location is the problem with this bar, Dylan.  There’s nothing around here but the trailer park.  What made you open up this place here anyway?” Fran asked.

My eyes caught the way Dylan looked at Kade, the same way Michael used to look at me after we’d bicker about something, and then he’d stick up for me in front of my mother, “Because I needed to be near my family.  And this is the closest I’ve been allowed to get.”

“Pardon me,” Kade murmured, quietly pushing his chair back and walking off into the back hallway.  Dylan ran his hands over his face, and gave me a pained stare.  Curling his arms over his head, he cursed under his breath, “
Bloody hell
. Lainey you just had him smiling and I go and ruin it with my mouth.”

“Excuse me, I’ll be right back,” I said and walked into the back hallway, finding Kade in Dylan’s office looking out the back window.  “You okay?” I asked, as I walked up behind him.

“Yep.”  He snapped, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck.  When I stood in front of him, he growled.  “Okay, listen.  I don’t do talking and shit.”

“Kade, shut up.  I just asked if you were okay.  You said you were, far be it from me to tell you otherwise.  Your brother is just speaking the truth.  If you don’t like it, change it.  And you
are
coming with us tomorrow night.  You scare the shit out of the townies and I’ll make their ears bleed.”

I don’t think he could have stopped himself from laughing, but I know he tried.  A delicious smiled danced across his lips, “What I’m hearing is that, now you think we’d make a great team.”

“So, you’re admitting to hearing things,
Mr. Grayson
?” 

Kade hung his head and laughed.  When he looked back up at me, I saw the laughter reach his eyes.  “Friends, huh?”  The stress and tension that tightened his face eased away gradually.

“We could try,” I said, slowly smiling.

His steel eyes softened as they held mine.  Hesitantly, he reached his hand to my face and lightly brushed the knuckles of his hand from the bottom of my chin to the back of my jaw.  The touch sent fire across my skin and every last nerve ending in my body awakened and tingled with warmth.  Both of us stood there, silently watching one another, slowly leaning closer to each other until his hand slid up and wrapped around the back of my neck, threading his fingers through the strands of my hair.  My knees instantly weakened and all my senses heightened with almost painful acuity.   His scent of worn leather and whatever soap he used surrounded me, making me want to gulp deeply into his essence.  The sounds of his close heavy breathing had my heart pounding as if it were surround sound.  Everything seemed clear and just
more
.