The Filthy Series: The Complete Dark Erotic Serial Novel (51 page)

I glanced over at Rhett who looked sexy as ever with his sleep-tousled hair. “You aren’t high-fiving the manatee?”

A frown creased his forehead before he glanced up at the picture. A smile crept across his lips. “No.”

It didn’t matter, really, what he was doing in the picture. It was just a stupid image taken years ago. But somehow it mattered to me. “Then what were you doing?”

He turned on his side and leaned against his elbow. “That’s Martha. She’s the oldest manatee at the Woodington Aquarium.” His eyes stayed focused on the picture, crinkling in the corners as his lips quirked up even more. “I was just an assistant when I worked there getting my undergrad in college. But since I loved diving so much my boss let me swim with Martha after hours. You see, Martha loved me because I would always feed her chocolate.”

I blinked. “Chocolate? Can they have that kind of thing?”

“Technically, no.” He laughed. “But one day I was eating a Reese’s by her tank and I dropped it in and she swam over and ate it before I could fish it out.”

I giggled. “Really?”

“Yes. I was terrified too. I just knew it was going to kill her or something like that.” He shook his head, his eyes going far away. “But she didn’t. She was fine. She didn’t forget that I did that though. Any time I was near her tank she was right there at the side waiting for me to drop more in.”

“So you did?” I leaned up on my elbow too.

“Well, of course. How could I say no to that face.”

I glanced back at the picture. Martha was turned almost sideways, her face toward camera. “I suppose that would be hard.”

“So I would bring her a Reese’s once or twice a week.”

“Did anyone ever know?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I never told anyone, though I always suspected my boss knew something was up, since Martha was so taken with me. So then I started swimming with her after hours whenever he would let me.”

“Was it scary?”

“I was a little nervous the first time, but no, not at all. Swimming with Martha was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done. You see,” He sat up, pointing to the picture, “this picture was taken by my boss a couple months after I started swimming with her. He thought it was so interesting as to how she would swim with me, as if I was her friend.”

“It sounds like you were.” I stared at Rhett in awe.

He nodded. “Yes, I think we were.” He paused for a moment, still staring at the picture.

I sat up. “So you weren’t high-fiving?”

He shook his head slowly. “No, this picture was taken just before we hugged.”

“Hugged?” I looked back at the picture. “You and Martha hugged?” I could see it now, how they were in the motion to hug one another. That big animal that weighed thousands of pounds and Rhett.

He laughed. “All the time.”

I stared at him intently. “You miss it, don’t you?”

He shrugged, looking away from the picture. “Some things are just dreams. That’s all they will ever be.” He didn’t sound sad or disappointed, just neutral, okay with the choices he had made that led him away from Martha and being a marine biologist. I watched his form disappear into the bathroom and glanced back up at the poster. Wondering why my heart throbbed in my chest at the sight of it.

The vibration of my phone snapped me back to the present and away from Rhett, his soft blue sheets, and Martha.

Casey:
I miss you.

I stared the text message for a good minute before I realized I was crying. They were silent tears. Not the kind that left me gasping for air and crying out. These were the tears of realization. They were tears that told me I was stupid for loving Rhett, because I did. I had never stopped loving him. They were tears that told me I had to move on. Tears that told me to leave the past where it belonged. They were the same tears that led me to respond to Casey’s message.

Me:
Come over.

FIFTEEN

The engine hummed quietly as I sat in my car. I stared at the front door of her apartment. I’d been sitting there for thirty minutes. As soon as I’d had the ability to pull myself off the floor of my home where I’d lain for I didn’t even know for how long with Badger running circles around me. As if he didn’t realize that his master was shattered into something completely unrecognizable. Something disgusting and broken. A slovenly version of my former self.

I laid there until I realized that I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t survive without her. And I knew it wasn’t just me. My love wasn’t singular. I wasn’t alone in this. I had to prove myself to her. I had to show her that this wasn’t something random. That I wasn’t just blowing words out my ass to keep her around so I could discard her later.

This was real. My feelings were real.

And I wasn’t going to let her go. Not without a fight.

I just hadn’t had the nerve go knock on her door yet. I wanted to say all the right things. I didn’t want to go in there and fuck it all up like I had at the house. I didn’t want her to see the sniveling shell of a man I had been reduced to. I wanted her to see the strong Rhett. The man who loved her. The man who wanted to be her future, no matter how fucked up the past was.

I took a deep breath and turned off the car.

I love her. I can do this. I can save us.

My feet moved on the concrete with purpose. I was a man on a mission. I thought about that time, after she came home from the hospital all fucked up from the things my dad had done to her. When I finally knew the truth. I would watch her sleep. It was pathetic, really. She hadn’t known I was there, in her room. That I would sneak in on those nights where the images of my father on top of her body on the bathroom floor plagued me.

I watched her because I was in awe of her. I was baffled by the fact that she had survived something so horrid, for so long. That she had survived it, and yet she could sleep. She found a way to fall into a slumber, when one view of it kept me up for months. I had watched the rise and fall of her chest, the slow movements. They were rhythmic, comforting, proof that strength existed—that she existed.

And when she would wake up with nightmares, the ones where he stalked her, where he raped her over and over again. I was desperate for her to tell me about them. Desperate for them in a way I’d never needed anything else. I had to have that pain, to share it with her. I deserved to live it, if she did. I deserved to be plagued with the images her dreams would conjure.

I had loved her then, I’d just been too stupid to realize it.

I stopped in front of her door. It was just a plain brown door, nothing special, but it was, because it was hers. I lifted my hand to knock and paused.

There were noises. Sounds. Moans. They came from behind that brown door that shouldn’t have been special and was. They belonged to her. Faint. The sound was faint. My cock awoke in my pants, stabbing into my zipper. But then there was something else, a groan. Deeper. It could only belong to a man.

She…

She left me just hours ago.

I looked down at my watch.

4 am.

Rage. That’s what coursed through me. It wasn’t the slow build of anger. It was a flood of rage so thick and deep I seemed to expand with it.

She planned this. She invited him over. She left me to come back to him. Him.

Someone else. Not me.

I banged on the door.

I waited.

I banged harder.

I could hear noises inside. Moaning. Louder.

My head spun. My insides had been run through a meat grinder, ground up and splattered all around me. That’s how it felt in those moments while I waited in the silence of 4 AM, outside Faye’s doorstep.

She’s not fucking him.

I shook my head. But the sound persisted. It seemed to get louder, like there was a speaker in my head and someone had cranked up the volume. I balled up my fists and pounded on the door until my hands and arms throbbed.

But still no one came.

They heard me. They had to have heard me. So why wasn’t she coming to the fucking door?

I took a deep breath, trying to calm down, but the more air I drew in, the more the rage expanded inside me, filling me up.

I stepped back and kicked the door. Nothing happened.

I took a deep breath. I didn’t have to do this. That’s what the rational part of my brain was screaming at me. It told me I could leave. It told me I could pretend like the last week never happened. I could go back to the meaningless existence of a life I had before.

That was a very small part of my brain.

I kicked the door again. It burst open, splintering sideways off a hinge.

“Say it, Casey. Say you fucking hate me,” Faye moaned across the apartment. Bile rose in my throat.

I charged inside and went straight for the bedroom. I found them there. A naked younger man with dark hair. He had her bent over. Faye. My Faye. He had her on her hands and knees on the bed. The same bed where I made love to her just a week ago. The same fucking sheets. Her ass was red from his hand prints.

“I—”

He stopped when he saw me.

“Don’t stop, Casey.” He voice was commanding, dominating. As if she wasn’t the one being fucked, but the one doing the fucking. I met her gaze. She stared at me with those clear brown eyes with such bitterness and knowing. She knew. She probably knew it was me pounding on the door, but she didn’t care.

She would rather be fucked and hated by the piece of shit that had her bent over.

A smile curled her lips up. It was the most calculating look I’d ever seen on another person’s face. There was poison in that smile, a monster.

Red. That’s what colored my vision. A deep dark shade of bitter red.

One of my hands started to tingle with pain and then I realized it was because I had slammed my fist into Casey’s face.

“What the fuck!” He fell off the bed and was on his feet a second later. His lip was bleeding, the blood marring his youthful face. I smiled at the sight of it.

“Leave him alone, Rhett.” Faye’s voice was calm, smooth. As if I hadn’t just broke into her apartment and punched the man she was fucking the face.

“Who the fuck are you?” The question was directed at me from Casey.

“You need to leave. Right. Fucking. Now.”

He held his fists in front of him. The muscles in his chest, flexing. “Fuck you.” He took a swing at me, but I dodged it and punched him in the stomach, but before I could pull back he grabbed my head and slammed his knee into my face. Pain exploded in my head, but I thrived on it. It only made the rage burn deeper, faster.

“Stop,” Faye commanded.

I swung again, catching him in the side.

“Get out, Casey. Go home.” Faye spoke again.

We both turned to her then. Our fight paused.

“What the hell? What do you mean? Who the fuck is this guy?” Casey was nearly doubled over in pain as he spoke.

“None of you business. Now get out.”

“You’re fucked up. You know that?” He grabbed his clothes off the floor and shoved his legs into his pants. “Don’t call me again.”

I didn’t watch him as he moved out of the room. The younger man that was fucking my Faye. I didn’t say anything to him. Nothing else. I kept my eyes on her. She sat naked in the middle of her bed. Her hair was loose and messy.

Probably from Casey yanking on it.

“You’re a fucking bitch.” The fury, the rage. It multiplied more with that smirk on her face. I jerked on my belt buckle. “You know that, Faye?”

Her gaze jumped to my hand movements. To the slide of the leather belt against the denim on my pants as I jerked it free. There was something there in her gaze. Yearning. As if she was desperate, fucking eager just to see what I would do with that belt.

“So what if I am? You don’t know me anymore, Rhett.”

“I don’t know you?” I wrapped the leather around my hand. “I don’t fucking know you?”

She sat up straighter her gaze meeting mine. “I’m not the pathetic, scared little girl who would do anything for your attention. Not anymore.”

“But you’ll fuck that guy?” The anger, the jealousy, it laced my voice with its hideous tenor. I jerked my shirt over my head.

“I can fuck whoever I want.” She got up on her knees, her breasts bounced with the movement. My cock kicked. The stupid traitor. I wanted nothing more than to leave Faye here and never fucking look at her again.

But I wasn’t going to do that. I didn’t have it fucking in me. I didn’t have the will power in my body to do the right thing for Faye. Not this time. Not again.

No, this time, we were going to do things my way.

SIXTEEN