Bad Decisions Read online

  Kane snorted. “Bullshit. You didn’t want to walk away. You’ve been seduced by the power, just like him. You think I haven’t been watching you, baby girl? Seen you in your designer clothes, with your fancy bags and shit? You fit right in with that lifestyle don’t you? Almost like you didn’t come from the streets like me. But I know your truth.”

  “People change.”

  “Yeah and it’s not always for the better.”

  His judgment skewered me but I was a stone on the outside. “Fuck you, Kane. You seem to think your opinion matters. I’m talking to a ghost. A dead man. A smart man would’ve walked away five years ago, started somewhere new, away from this life. But no, you had to come back to finish something you had no chance of ever finishing. You’re going to end up in the ground for nothing. All you did was screw up my plans for the next twenty-four hours.”

  I gasped as he hooked his hand around the back of my neck, his soft breath hot on my face. “When did you become this hard?” he asked. His gaze searched mine, perhaps seeking the woman he’d once loved. He wouldn’t find her. I buried her so Rey would never see her cry. “You used to care. You used to want to be free of this life.”

  “I was naive.”

  I remembered his lips on mine. The feel of his kiss, the way the world disappeared when his arms curled around me. Never in my life had I ever felt safe until Kane — and never again once he was gone.

  “You can’t tell me that you’re okay with selling your soul for the power and money. That’s not who you are.”

  My heart cried in silence as my mouth formed dead words. “You don’t know me. Not anymore.”

  Something broke in his gaze as he acknowledged my truth. He released me and stepped away as all hope drained from his eyes. “You’re right. Maybe I never did.”

  I watched as he left the room. The naive girl I’d been, the one I buried without mercy sobbed at the bottom of the emotional well. I caught an echo of her wails as everything good and pure I’d ever known died inside me.

  God help me, why does it still hurt like a motherfucker?

  Time was supposed to heal those wounds. I wanted to caress that scar running down the length of his face with the softest touch as I murmured heartfelt apologies for what my brother had done to him with my permission but I didn’t have that right.

  I could never hope to justify my actions and I wouldn’t waste my breath.

  What I’d done to Kane was evil but when I died and stood before St. Peter at the pearly gates then – and only then — would I plead my case. I may have done bad things but I did them for a good reason and I would not apologize.

  At least that’s what I told myself at my darkest moments when I questioned everything in my life to this point, when my sadness threatened to eclipse any hint of joy or happiness. Kane was alive because I did something so horrific that he’d never think of coming back to me.

  I betrayed the love of my life — to save him.

  Rey was my brother but he was a psychotic killer.

  And I couldn’t bare the thought of Rey killing Kane. I just couldn’t. So I did the one thing that I knew Kane would never forgive.

  I double-crossed him.

  I never expected Rey to scar Kane like he had.

  For that, I’d never forgive Rey but I was trapped, just like everyone else in Rey’s universe. There was no getting out.

  Pretty, pampered and trapped in a gilded cage.

  If Kane knew, he’d only try twice as hard to try and save me.

  I wasn’t about to watch him almost die twice.

  I had to find a way to make him hate me enough to walk away from the DeLeon family once and for all.

  But if I were being honest, Kane still lived and breathed in my dreams. My memories were the only peace I knew in the chaos that was my life. I played the part of Rey’s No. 1, his trusted ally, but I knew the truth if no one else did.

  I didn’t deserve a moment of his kindness or a gentle touch from his hand but I missed Kane with every fiber in my body.

  My sinuses tingled and I sniffed the tears back.

  No! Don’t cry! Get yourself together. You can fall apart later. After, you’ve figured out how to save his damn life again.

  The clock was ticking. I could feel time against us. I was watching the same movie twice and trying to change the ending yet again.

  How much more could I possibly spare of my heart before I had nothing left to give?

  Kane

  I couldn’t leave her tied up all night. Not like she was, her hands would lose circulation. As much as I wanted to hate her, I couldn’t bring myself to actually hurt her.

  She deserved no mercy, a dark voice argued in my head, she left you to die at her brother’s hands.

  The pain of the knife slicing my face had been nothing in comparison to the pain of her betrayal. How could I have been so seduced by her lies?

  I leaned against the kitchen counter, my heart still heavier than it should be after all this time. Five years was a long time to nurse a wound. Fuck, made me feel weak. I was no better than Rey. Keira was my Achilles heel, too.

  Having her here, alone, just the two of us, I underestimated how the situation would crawl under my skin. I could feel myself slipping into a dangerous headspace. Memories assaulted my brain at a clip that made my mind spin.

  Like, the way her hips bucked when I sucked her clit.

  Or, how she moaned when I dragged my tongue down the small of her back to the cleft of her ass.

  Even things that weren’t about sex at all — like, how she talked in her sleep about weird shit that made no sense at all but were funny as fuck if you just stopped and listened for a bit.

  I’d loved her with my soul, man. Not with my heart. Hearts can be fickle but not your soul. Your soul has no choice in what heaven sets as its other half.

  My other half is a fucking bitch from hell who gave me up to her psycho brother. If I wasn’t born under an unlucky star, I don’t know who was.

  I clenched my fists and blew out a short breath — get your shit straight, Kane and stop talking to yourself like a jackass — and returned to the bedroom.

  “I’m going to untie your hands but if you try anything I won’t hesitate to knock you on your ass and then hog -tie you to the fucking toilet. Got it? You’ve got one chance to play nice. Fuck it up, and you’ll spend the night sleeping next to the shitter.”

  “You’d never hit me,” she said, lifting her chin, her eyes glittering with challenge. “It’s not in your nature.”

  “Try me.”

  At that moment, I’m not sure if I was bluffing. She was right, I didn’t believe in hitting women. I’d grown up watching a succession of fucking assholes beat on my mom as she cycled through boyfriends during my childhood and I swore I’d be different.

  To this point, I had — but Keira was doing a fine job of pushing buttons. I didn’t trust myself around her right now. No telling what she could drive me to do.

  “My, I guess I was wrong, you have changed,” she said with a small curve of her lips as I jerked her bonds loose. She winced as her hands were freed, rubbing the circulation back into her fingers. Finally, after a moment, she said, “Now you don’t have to watch me pee. There goes tonight’s scheduled entertainment, unless you have cable in this piece of shit.”

  It took herculean strength to step away from her. I could smell her skin — blood orange and a hint of bronzed coconut — my cock hardened instantly. In the five years since I’d been gone, I hadn’t been celibate but you couldn’t tell by the way my cock was reacting.

  Of course, she noticed.

  Her gaze dropped to the bulge in my jeans and she sucked in a tight breath, swallowing in reaction that she couldn’t hide either.

  She lifted her gaze back to mine. The silence between us grew heavy as my balls. I should leave the room, lock the door and calm the fuck down but the thoughts in my head were raging in a different direction and I couldn’t seem to stop the rampage.

 
Keira was mine.

  Keira would always be mine.

  Her pupils dilated in response to the primal energy flowing between us, her plump bottom lip pouted with an invite I didn’t dare take.

  “You’re the fucking devil,” I murmured, zeroing in on that lip, the hunger quickly building to a crescendo bordering on a crisis. “Nothing but pure evil with the most beautiful face and body I’ve ever seen.”

  “Aren’t you the sweet talker,” Keira said but the breathlessness of her retort belied its sting. “What do you want, Kane?”

  I want you, Keira.

  She knew what I wanted.

  “You want to fuck me for old time’s sake?” she taunted, moving her hand to slowly rub herself with a coy smile. My cock nearly split open. I needed to find control. My hands were shaking. Sweat popped along my hairline. I could taste her skin already, hear her breathy cries. “Do you still jack off to thoughts of me, Kane?”

  “Knock it off,” I growled.

  “Why?” she asked, opening her legs wider. Keira popped her jeans open and slowly unzipped her pants, sliding her hand into her panties. “Do you think of how it felt to slide your cock inside me, that big fat one, stretching me to the point that it almost hurt? But baby, it hurt so good…”

  “Fuck, Keira, what’s wrong with you?” I said, but my voice was thick as I fought for control. She was killing me. My breath was short and shallow. “Didn’t anyone ever warn you not to play with fire…” I warned, my gaze narrowing.

  “Unlike some people, I’m not afraid of the heat,” Keira said.

  “Big talk for a little girl about to get burned.”

  Keira laughed, the open derision in her tone scratching against my raw nerves. “You need a new fucking hobby. Your obsession is pathetic, really. I almost feel bad for you.” She rubbed at her chaffed wrists and her smile dropped. “Almost.”

  She was mocking me. Instant rage threatened to blot out my lust until I realized what she was doing. Two could play at that game. I wasn’t the only one fighting a primal urge.

  I sensed her hunger riding beneath the surface of that cool facade and I knew how to bring it out.

  If she wanted to play dirty…I knew how to push buttons, too.

  I’d brought Keira out here to get answers before taking my revenge on Rey DeLeon but if karma wanted to deliver a little sweetness before paying out justice I was open to the package.

  Throttling down, I cast a smirk Keira’s way and said, “Baby girl, don’t hurt yourself patting yourself on the back too hard. One pussy is the same as the next.” I leaned in close, inhaling her scent before admitting, “Sure, I’d fuck you and I’d enjoy it. If memory serves, you were all right in the sack — nothing especially memorable, honestly — but it wouldn’t change the end game.” My voice hardened. “I’m still killing your brother and if you get in my way…I’ll kill you, too.”

  Keira

  That fucking liar.

  Nothing especially memorable?

  He was lying through his goddamn teeth.

  I rocked his world.

  My sexual pride was howling like a fucking banshee. Like, that wasn’t the biggest issue at stake, I knew that, but for some reason, it was the thing that propelled me off the bed and sent me after him.

  Ego was a crazy thing, right?

  “I know what you’re doing,” I said, following him into the dingy kitchen as he pulled a beer from the fridge and cracked it open without even offering me one. The selfish prick. I pushed past him and grabbed one, casting a dark look his way. “You’re trying to goad me into some kind of pissing match over who was the better lover, which is a weird flex and I’m not going to fall for that so don’t even waste the energy.”

  He was so damn sexy, standing there with his fucking beer like this was a regular Saturday night and he hadn’t fucking kidnapped me and he wasn’t planning to murder my brother.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked with mild irritation. “I’m not trying to goad you into shit. Nothing about tonight is about you.”

  “So you’re just using me to get to Rey.”

  “Yep.” He tipped his beer back. Cold as fuck. “Pretty simple plan but efficient.”

  “Bullshit,” I called him out. “You want something from me. You wouldn’t have dragged me all the way out here if you all wanted was to use me to get to Rey. Why this place?”

  He held my stare for a moment before shrugging. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Yeah, I know I am. So spill it. What do you really want from me?”

  “Maybe I want answers. The truth.”

  “The truth of what?”

  “The truth of why you betrayed me.”

  I couldn’t give him that. I tipped my own beer and feigned indifference, lying to his face, “Because I was over it and you wouldn’t have left me alone if I would’ve said exactly that. You would’ve tried to talk it out or some kind of shit like that.”

  “So you gave me to your brother to cut me up like a fucking fish.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat, hoping he couldn’t see the pain in my soul at the memory of that moment. I would bear that guilt and shame forever but that was my cross to bear. “Well, I didn’t expect him to go that far but Rey does have a flare for the dramatic, you know?”

  “Flare for the dramatic,” he repeated, finishing his beer and tossing the bottle in the trash. “Fuck you.”

  Kane deserved better in life than I’d ever given him, better than I could ever give him. Why couldn’t he see that? Why hadn’t he taken the chance at a new life? “Why didn’t you just keep going? You could’ve started fresh somewhere else. Walked away from all this bullshit. You didn’t need to come back to all this, Kane. Was the need for revenge so much bigger than your need to survive? Goddamn it, anyone else would’ve run faster than their legs could carry them the minute they got free but not you. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Maybe he heard the slightest hint of desperation edging my tone instead of my usual cold disdain that I’d perfected because he didn’t come back with a quick, pithy retort.

  Instead, he walked toward me, slow and steady, his gaze never leaving mine, stopping my heart as surely as a bullet. When he pulled me to him roughly, I didn’t fight him even though I knew I should. “Don’t you think I wish I knew?” he murmured in a low, aggrieved rumble that I felt in in my toes.

  It was as if something sapped all the strength from my legs as I sagged against the solid wall of Kane’s body. The smart thing would’ve been to push back but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be smart or reasonable or anything resembling shrewd in this moment. I’d missed his touch, the safety of his presence in my life. A sob threatened to bubble up from my throat.

  God, I was so damn weak but I didn’t care. I lifted my gaze to meet his, almost afraid of what I’d see.

  I could drown in the depths of his eyes. He’d always had the kindest dark eyes — fathomless and filled with mystery yet always warm with sweetness when he looked at me. It wasn’t until I was staring up at him in that moment that I realized how much I’d missed that warmth in my life.

  Rey brought nothing but constant stress. I was always on alert for the next shoe to drop. I couldn’t show an ounce of weakness. It was kill or be killed in Rey’s universe.

  I was slowly turning to pudding in Kane’s arms. I didn’t have the strength to resist even though there was the tiniest, mewling voice trying to tell me to walk away.

  I wanted to be selfish. In this moment, I wanted to think of only my needs.

  My spirit hungered for the kind of sustenance that only Kane could provide. His mouth came down on my mine like an inevitability and I opened eagerly, our tongues seeking each other like lost souls in the night.

  I clung to him, a groan slipping from my lips as he hoisted me onto his hips and his hands cupped my ass. The heat between us caught fast and violent. There was no time for tenderness. The urgency in his touch rivaled the desperation in mine. It’d been so long si
nce I remembered feeling anything that I was greedy for every sensation tripping across my nerve endings.

  We didn’t make it to the bedroom.

  I tasted the beer on this breath and it mingled with mine. He ripped my jeans from my body, throwing them across the room, his eyes blazing with a fire that threatened to burn me alive but I reveled in the heat. Kane grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled me to him, my bare ass pressing against his hard cock as it jutted between my cleft. The heat of his shaft pulsed between us. His hand came up to roughly palm my neck as he nuzzled the soft skin near my shoulder blade.

  My nipples pearled instantly; my pussy ached.

  “You wanted to know if I jerk off to thoughts of you, baby girl?” he asked in my ear, his hand tightening ever so slightly around my neck. I thrilled at the barely caged violence vibrating between us. His cock nudged my ass, prodding, seeking my wet heat. When I managed a short nod, my breath shallow, he rewarded me with a growled, “Every damn night,” before releasing my neck and sliding his hand down my belly to slowly push his finger inside me. “So sweet…” he groaned. “On your knees. I want that ass.”

  I didn’t question. He popped his finger free, licked off my juices and pushed me forward. I landed on my hands and knees. I sucked in a wild breath when he grabbed my hips and drew me to him and shoved my head down.

  This was a new Kane. In the past I’d always been the aggressive one. I didn’t know this new version of Kane but it left me dripping with excitement. I felt the spongy head of his cock playing at the entrance of my ass and I stiffened with a whimper. He chuckled, saying, “Ready to play, baby?”

  My fingers curled into the dusty, dirty carpet as a gasp popped from my mouth. Ohhh God, yes. A hot tongue penetrated my rosebud, in and out, teasing and circling while his fingers carefully worked my clit, using my own juices for lube.

  “Jesus, Kane!” I cried, shocked at how quickly he was going to make me cum. But just as I was about to crest that wave, he slowed the rhythm to flip me over onto my back. He descended on my pussy, sucking on my clit without mercy, pushing two fingers into my pussy and one into my ass. I cried out as I started to shake. I wouldn’t survive this orgasm. My heart would fucking explode. “Ohhh, God, please, ohhh, fuckkkkkk,” I cried, stiffening as I lost all sense of time and space as pleasure washed over me, clenching every muscle in a beautiful spasm filled with rainbows and candy everything that was ever good in my life.