Czytaj książkę: «Filthy Beautiful Forever»

Chapter One

Collins

I can’t seem to ejaculate lately.

It isn’t from lack of effort on my part. Hell, no. I’m no quitter, but despite pumping into my very hot supermodel girlfriend for the last hour, trying every position you can imagine, and even inventing a few of my own, I am nowhere near coming.

Fuck.

Sweat drips from my abs and chest onto hers, and I murmur an apology and thrust harder, slamming into her body again and again as I try to get there. She’s already come four times and during her last two orgasms she asked me if I was close. Yes, I lied.

Giving a final huff, she pushes me off her. ‘What the hell, Collins?’ She moves from the bed, tossing a pillow at my face, as she grabs her silk robe.

I sit back on my heels; naked as the day I was born, wondering what the fuck is wrong with me. Tatianna is tall and thin with long silky hair, and she’s front and center in the mental spank banks of men worldwide. This has nothing to do with her, or shit, maybe it does, I don’t know.

‘Listen, babe, I’m just tired, okay?’ I’d run six miles that morning and then done a brutal kickboxing workout with my youngest brother, Pace. And hell, maybe some of the conversation we’d had while throwing jabs and uppercuts is still spinning in my head. When he’d inquired about my relationship with Tatianna, I’d admitted to him that I was pretty sure she only regarded me as her personal bank account, and she was merely a warm body to lose myself in. Only that isn’t working so well for me lately either.

I watch from the bed as Tatianna dresses herself, choosing designer garments from the massive walk-in closet I had built for her. She tosses stray clothes to the floor before finally settling on a black shift dress and matching heels. ‘I’m going out,’ she says in my direction.

I know she’s pissed at me, but shouldn’t we talk about this? Isn’t that what couples do?

I merely nod.

I’m sure she’s going out shopping, her typical Saturday afternoon activity.

After she’s gone, I shower and dress, then sit alone in the library enjoying a one-hundred year old scotch. I consider calling my brothers, but they’re probably each busy with their families. Leaning back in the leather armchair, I close my eyes.

I exercise control over all things in my life—from my company, to my relationships, to the way I handle my business—only my cock hasn’t gotten the memo. The selfish prick.

I could make an appointment for a physical—but I’m sure my doctor would tell me the problem is with my head, not my dick. I can come just fine with my own hand—and I don’t want to hear why he thinks that is. Not something I care to examine, thanks, Doc.

As the oldest brother in a family without a mother, and a father who worked too much, a hell of a lot fell on my shoulders. I ran a tight ship and made sure my brothers kept in line. And now, as the CEO of a company, it’s no different. I rarely have time for frivolous things, like fun. Maybe now I’m paying the price. I’ve forgotten how to fucking ejaculate. Christ.

I’m sitting alone, enjoying a drink while the sun sinks low in the sky, when the doorbell chimes. No one rings the bell. My brothers would let themselves in, and the housekeepers would enter through the garage. I push up from the chair and head toward the foyer, wondering who the hell is at my front door.

I open the door to find a young woman standing on my front porch. There’s something alluring and vaguely familiar about her wide set mossy-colored eyes fringed in dark lashes. My dick perks up in interest. Really, now? To this brown haired girl who looks equal parts terrified and hopeful?

We each stand there, eyes roaming over the other. Did her car break down? It seems unlikely that she hiked the mile up my private driveway. I’m about to offer her my cell phone when she speaks for the first time.

‘Collins?’ She squints at me, like she isn’t just looking at me, but looking into me, as strange as that sounds. Her voice has a familiar quality to it. Soft, yet gravelly. My memory scrambles through a scotch-induced haze to place her.

‘Gremlin? Is that you?’ I find that I’m the one squinting now, trying to understand how the girl I used to know by that nickname has transformed into this beautiful creature before me.

‘It’s Mia now,’ she corrects me with a pout.

‘Mia, fuck!’ I pull her into my arms, squeezing her against my chest. She’s still the same height as when we were teens—barely clearing five feet, whereas I’ve sprouted up to a commanding six-foot-two.

Her posture relaxes once she’s in my arms and she lets out a small chuckle. ‘I didn’t think you recognized me at first.’

‘I’ve had a lot on my mind today. Besides you look just a little different than the last time I saw you.’ I release her and meet her eyes, and I can tell we’re both remembering the last time we were together. We were fifteen years old and below deck on my dad’s boat while it swayed gently at the dock. She’d told me that she was moving. And then begged me to take her virginity. Which I did. My last memory of her is with blood smears on her thighs and tears blurring her emerald green eyes. I still feel like a shit for that night. Shame burns hotly through me, forcing me back into the present.

I clear my throat, and Mia blinks away the memories no doubt clouding her vision. If she’s here on my doorstep in LA, maybe that means she’s forgiven me for that night. We grew up together and were pretty much inseparable from the time we were five years old. Until she moved away. I haven’t seen or spoken to her in fifteen years. As I drink in her appearance, I realize some things are still the same—her green eyes that sparkle when they catch the light and her messy brown hair that curls every which way, but some other things are definitely new. Those tits for instance. I’d remember those. Her waist is tapered and trim, but her hips flare out, and without needing her to turn around, I can tell her ass is round and lush. The girl has curves that are completely at odds with the scrawny, scab-kneed tomboy I recall playing with my entire childhood.

‘What are you doing in LA?’ I ask.

‘I… ‘ She pulls in a deep breath. ‘It’s a long story. Can I come in?’

‘Of course.’ I’d been practically guarding the door like a jackass. I step aside and welcome her in. She has a large suitcase with her, and I offer to take it, pulling it inside and leaving it by the front door, since I have no idea what its presence means.

‘Your home is amazing,’ she says, her eyes darting up the curved staircase that rises above us.

‘Thank you,’ I murmur. I don’t want to talk about my home, I want to understand why she’s here. The mischievous twinkle in her eyes has dimmed, and even though I haven’t seen her in fifteen long years, I hate the thought that something happened to her. This woman once meant everything to me.

I show her around, giving her a brief tour of the first floor before leading her into the library. My drink is still on the side table, reminding me of my shitty afternoon. ‘Would you like one?’ I ask.

‘Sure,’ she says. ‘But only if you have something a bit less manly than whatever that is.’ She waves her hand at the glass of amber-colored liquor.

‘I think I can make that happen.’ I head to the small bar in the corner of the room, and pour some vodka into a glass, then reach into the mini-fridge below and grab cans of lemon-lime soda and cranberry juice. ‘Will this work?’ I ask, holding them up for her approval.

She nods and smiles at me. It was always so easy to make her happy.

I hand her the pink drink, and she joins me, sitting down in the leather armchair across from mine.

Seeing her here, watching her cross her ankles, and the delicate way she brings the glass to her lips…it evokes all kinds of memories.

Our relationship had never been romantic—we were friends—best friends. But when I lost my mom tragically in an auto accident at age fourteen, it was Mia who was there for me. It was Mia who I wanted. For days I couldn’t eat, wouldn’t talk to anyone, not even my brothers. I remember Mia holding me with my head against her chest. I listened to her heartbeat while she stroked my hair and told me silly little stories to distract me. The pain was so all-encompassing, so deep, I didn’t know how to put it into words. But Mia didn’t need words. She knew.

It was after one of those sessions that we shared our first kiss. It felt natural with none of the fumbling, over-zealous tongue attacks that some of my previous partners had. I’d instantly grown hard for my friend, and that confused the shit out of me. I’d never seen her as more until that moment. But something changed that night, because from that day on, I began noticing her as a developing woman. I would catch her watching me too, her eyes following me around the room with a certain curiosity twinkling in their green depths.

It was about a year after my mom’s passing when she told me she had something important to tell me, and we agreed to meet late one night out on my dad’s boat.

It sat in its slip at the dock, and while there was no sign of Mia, I climbed below deck, surprised to find she was already there waiting for me on the pullout bed. I crawled up beside her, the moon our only source of light. With a solemn expression, she told me that her parents were moving across the state, and that they couldn’t afford to send her to private school anymore.

I remember my stomach twisting into a knot, and pulling her close to me. I couldn’t stand the idea of her leaving. Needing to fix it, to take away Mia’s tears, I’d called my father on his cell phone right then. I asked him about paying for her schooling so she could remain at Linden Academy, but he’d blown me off. He said there would be other girls and I shouldn’t give my heart away at age fifteen. But he didn’t know that I’d given her my heart the day we met. We were five years old, and I still remember the first time I laid eyes on her. She was so small, much smaller than all the other kindergarteners and was being bullied by a couple of the older kids. Unable to stomach the thought of someone so defenseless being hurt, I rushed to her side. The big green eyes that latched onto mine pierced straight through me, and the silly smile that uncurled on her mouth did me in. She’d captured a piece of me that day.

When I hung up with my father, the look in Mia’s eyes told me she already knew his answer. But the next words out of her mouth shocked the shit out of me. She told me she was a virgin, which I assumed, and said she wanted me to be her first.

God, just thinking of that conversation transports me back to that humid July night. My stomach was rolling with nerves, and even though I knew we probably shouldn’t, my dick was rock hard at the thought of fucking her. At being inside her first.

Hoping she didn’t look down and notice the erection straining in my gym shorts, I told her we couldn’t. We weren’t even dating, and with her leaving the next day, I was worried she’d regret it, and I didn’t want her to feel bad after. She said she didn’t want it to be with anyone else and wanted to always have the memory of her first time being with me. She made a very convincing argument, or hell, maybe I didn’t need much convincing.

I only agreed to do it because I made her promise that she would be okay when she left the next day. She promised me she’d move on, accept her move, and date other guys at her new high school. I believed her.

I gave her one slow kiss, pressing my lips against hers, giving her the chance to change her mind and pull away. Only she didn’t. Her tongue licked against my lower lip, and when I opened, it slipped inside my mouth and stroked mine.

Mia was surprised that I didn’t have a condom with me. She assumed I’d done it with a few of the girls from school that I’d messed around with. When I admitted it would be my first time too, she looked at me like she understood that we were both giving a piece of ourselves to the other. I jogged up to my house and retrieved a condom, and was back at the boat within minutes. I was guessing that by the time I made it back, she would have changed her mind, but instead she was undressed and under the quilt, quietly waiting for me with wide green eyes.

I still remember the tight squeeze of her around my cock, the puff of breath against my neck when I fully entered her, the way it felt when I came inside the latex for the first time, wiping her clean after and worrying that she hadn’t come. My chest gets tight as feelings of lust mix with ones of shame. I fucked up that night.

‘Collins?’ she asks, pulling me from my faraway thoughts.

I clear my throat. ‘Sorry. It’s just surreal seeing you here. Tell me what brought you to LA. Are you still living in Connecticut?’ I ask. I hate the formality of my questions, but we have lost ground to cover, and the scared look on her face when I’d opened the door is still lingering in my mind.

She takes a big gulp of her drink. ‘This is going to sound crazy…’ she laughs nervously.

‘Mia, I’ve known you since you were five. We used to tell each other everything.’

I didn’t know if someone had hurt her…or if she was running from something, but I waited patiently while she gathered her courage and downed several more sips of her drink.

‘Remember that promise we made each other?’ she says.

I watch her quietly. She was going to have to be more specific. Shit, it’d been fifteen years. ‘About?’ I probe.

‘Us. When we turned thirty…’ She swallows nervously.

I take a deep breath, trying to understand where she is headed with this. ‘Mia?’

‘When we were ten. We promised each other that if neither of us was married by the time we were thirty, we’d marry each other.’

The memory drifts into my head. Her soulful green eyes looking up at me like I was her savior, our pinky’s locking together in solidarity. Christ, we had promised that, hadn’t we? The suitcase by the front door. The fact that I’d turned thirty a few months ago. All of it slams into me at once, and a panicky feeling presses against my chest.

Heels clicking across the wood floor capture our attention. ‘There you are,’ Tatianna says, entering the library. ‘This house is really too big.’ She takes in Mia’s presence and stops. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I assumed you were alone. Hi, I’m Tatianna.’ She holds out her hand and Mia rises to her feet and shakes it.

‘Mia. It’s nice to meet you. I’m sorry, I should go…’ She sets down her drink.

I rise to my feet and place my hands against Mia’s shoulders. ‘You don’t have to go anywhere. I’m sure it’s been a long day of traveling. Please sit.’

She swallows and watches me uneasily. ‘Are you sure?’

I nod. ‘Very. It sounds like we have a lot of catching up to do.’ After that fucking bomb she just dropped on me, there’s no way she’s going anywhere.

She nods, her smile unsure.

‘Tatianna, would you like to join us for a drink?’ I ask, heading to the bar.

‘Sure,’ she says, her voice flat.

I make her the raspberry vodka-soda mixture she likes and hand her the glass. Tatianna sits down across the room and crosses her legs, her posture straight as a rod and her eyes glaring blankly ahead. She’s still pissed about earlier.

I fill Mia in on the past fifteen years—that my brothers and I all live in the Los Angeles area now and that I run a successful investment firm downtown. My mouth is saying the words, but my brain is still trying to wrap around the fact that she showed up here after all these years.

Both women watch me and listen, Mia interjecting with questions every now and then, laughing happily when I tell her both of my younger brothers are settled down—Pace with a young son and Colton just got married last month.

Mia doesn’t offer many details about her life, or what has prompted her to come here, but I’m guessing Tatianna’s presence has thrown her off. There is still a lot I want to know.

‘So, I’m sorry,’ Tatianna interrupts, ‘who did you say you were?’

‘Mia was my best friend growing up,’ I answer for her, not liking Tatianna’s tone.

‘Yes. We were pretty much inseparable until we were fifteen.’

‘What happened when you were fifteen?’ Tatianna asks, not knowing the minefield she’s walking into.

My eyes lock on Mia’s and her cheeks heat. I can tell she’s remembering our first and only sexual encounter. I still worry that I’d been too rough with her. The way her small body trembled in my arms after, the blood I saw between her legs. I feel sick just thinking about it. If I had the chance to redo things today, I’d fuck her so well, she’d never want to leave. Christ, did my brain take a sick day too? I need to lock it up. Mia is not here to fuck. I repeat the mantra in my head.

‘My family moved,’ Mia answers, blinking and looking away from me. ‘And you are?’ Mia asks, and takes a sip of her drink.

Tatianna frowns at me, obviously not happy that I hadn’t offered up this information. ‘I’m his girlfriend.’