Forbidden Sensations: A Dark Romance by Savannah Rose (best ereader for pdf and epub .TXT) 📗

I wanted to slip it inside of me, feel it stroking and caressing my sex, pushing deeper, and deeper. It would feel so good. After all the pain I'd gone through, I deserved to feel good. I'd gone so far as to put my hand beneath his jaw, put my finger against his bottom lip and draw his mouth open. To kiss him, perhaps.

That's when, thank God, reality stepped in.

What the fuck are you doing? Holy shit, girl. You do remember what he did, right? What hell he put you through? Hello? Is this thing on...?

It was on, alright. And I could not be more disgusted with myself. I'd caught myself off guard, was all. Had an ill-defined moment, no big deal, and I didn't believe myself for a second. But it would haunt me for a while. Maybe forever.

I came back to my senses, and told him to open his eyes, because looking into them would ground me. Put me back in the real world, not this existential bullshit. Take a true, close up gander at the evil master of puppetry he was, and that would be that. I could get on with my life. Such as it was going to be.

There was no evil. He opened his eyes and all I saw was desperation. Fear.

Evil doesn't do fear and desperation.

It wasn't one of those god damn windows to the soul things, was it? Was he, deep down, not wretched, hateful slime?

Did he honestly not know what he'd done to Rebecca?

Was ignorance, in this case, a legitimate defense?

I hated him even more for making me think those things. Those unforgivable things.

I kept my finger on his lips, and glared at him. I'd never despised him so much as right now.

I'd asked him if he ever killed anybody, and I guess I must have looked quite psychotic when I did. I felt psychotic, no lie. I had just been turned on by a man I hated more than any fucking thing on the planet, and it was not fair. I was honestly almost scared of myself, feeling that way.

It didn't help matters that Maddox's fear and desperation combined themselves into terror. Horrified bewilderment. Honest to fucking god confusion.

He replied, “no”, but not before shaking his head hopelessly.

He really believed that. The poor, fucking schmuck really believed he hadn’t. Maddox had no idea. No clue. And for a fleeting moment, I wanted to talk to him about it the way civilized people work their problems out.

But fuck that. Fuck civilized. Fuck him, and fuck me.

He wanted to plead with Sofia, but I wasn't Sofia anymore. I didn't know who the hell I was. I pushed myself away from him, and swam away.

There wasn't a lot of distance between us, but enough. Enough for me to have a good, hard think on what the shit was going on. I laid down to let the sun dry me. Feeling the rays against my face always helped me sort through matters. Although this matter was something so foreign, so strange, it would take a month of Sunday sun baths to be able to get to the bottom of it.

Fortunately, nature gave me a nudge in the form of a tropical storm, complete with thunder and lightning. So perfect, I thought. Let God and nature sort it out, do with him what they would. I didn't want the responsibility of Maddox anymore. Vengeance is supremely honorable, but really, really tiring.

Perhaps it was exhaustion doing my talking at that point. Maddox wanted to know what to call me, trying out all sorts of negotiation tactics to convince me to unlock the cuffs and let him go. He was pretty pathetic, really, and isn't that what I wanted? It had come down to this, and he was in the perfect place to think about what he did.

But if he didn't know what he did, it wouldn’t mean anything to him. Or to me.

I told him my sister's name, told him of my niece, trying to choke back the tears that always rose to the top of my throat when I spoke about them aloud. He didn't remember. And he wished and swore that he could.

I believed him.

And left.

When the lightning kept striking, I halfway entertained the idea of going back and checking on him. Part of me wanted to see his dead, naked body hanging from the tree limb. Not all of me, though, which I found troubling. I munched on protein bars and drank palm tea, watching the light show like I was sitting in a movie theater.

And like all good movies, this one came with a twist.

Motherfucking Maddox somehow escaped his fate, and stumbled his ass back to my camp. I was mad, I was angry, he looked like death warmed over (and he was) which should have delighted me to no end. Except he had to ruin it by telling me about his brother – The dead sibling always looking back at him from the mirror.

I'd take partial responsibility for that revelation, as I did ask him why he shaved his head.

Curiosity and the cat, you know.

Meow, I thought as I sat back on my haunches, and stared at him. If I had a tail, it'd be twitching.

I didn't know what to do with him. Moreover, I didn't know what to do with myself which was even worse.

Beads of sweat dotted his forehead, just above his dyed brows. They were overdue for their salon appointment, obviously. Maddox was not a true brunette, as I'd accused him of before. This guy was a red-head. His dead brother must have been a ginger, too. No, not must have been. He definitely was. Thinking back, I had seen his picture in Maddox's office – that fucking, corporate sex suite – him, and their parents on an island somewhere.

“Hey,” I said, and jabbed him on the shoulder. Touching him was like poking