DirtyBeautiful (5 page)

Gliding the tips of his fingers down her spine, he slipped
his hand beyond the elastic and cupped her ass, scraping his blunted nails over
the ripe flesh. Erica whimpered. He swallowed the sound with his mouth. She
cupped his neck, following his lead. Sucking on her plump lip, he ran his teeth
over it and pulled away. He cupped her upper back, bringing her closer, her
tits pressed against his shirt and he damned the cotton that separated him from
her. He breathed on her neck as he swirled fingers over her shoulder blades. He
wanted to tease her with want. Make her feel as he did.

Her head tipped back, her hair caressing the tops of his
hands. Damn that felt good. Cupping her hips, he pressed her down onto his
erection, hissing out a breath at the spike of pleasure. Her breath hitched,
body bowed forward. Bracing his feet, he rocked as she followed his lead.
Pleasure blasted through him, his mouth hovering near hers. Breaths
intermingled. Erica slapped a hand on the roof, her breast exposed and near his
face.

With a groan, he cupped the heavy flesh and licked the
areola before nipping her nipple. She moaned and he soothed the sting with his
mouth, rolling it against his tongue. Wet heat penetrated his jeans and a musk
scent filled the car. Abandoning one breast for the other, he blew on the
tender skin and traced a line around the dark pink flesh.

Erica rode him harder, her movements frenetic. She was
close. He guided her along his shaft, pleasure skating along his cock. Her eyes
half-mast, breasts swaying with each undulation, she was a picture of pure
temptation. She threw her hand back in search of leverage.

A horn blasted through the night and shattered their cocoon
of ecstasy. Erica startled and gasped. “Oh my God.
What are we doing?
”

She threw herself off him and scrambled to pull her clothes
to rights.

Swallowing hard, Dylan dropped his head back to stare at the
ceiling. His cock pulsed against the rough denim. She was going to kill him
yet. He was going to die of blue balls. He exhaled sharply and shifted in his
seat, damning his dick once more. Once confident he wouldn’t throw her over his
shoulder and carry her to his bedroom, he faced her. She sat with her back
against the door. In the semi-darkness, she still looked flushed and very
desirable.

“I can’t believe I did that,” she whispered, the husky
vibrato making him groan.

“No chance you’d come in for a nightcap?”

She wagged a finger at him. “I thought your kitchen was off
limits.”

Yeah, just like her. “Maybe another time.”

She pushed hair back from her face, her fingers trembling.
“Yes. Well… Good night, Dylan.”

He waited until she opened the door before he exited the
vehicle. He didn’t know what he’d do if he tried to open it for her. He waved
goodbye as she walked up the steps to her porch, then ambled back to his house.
He fished the keys out of his pocket and opened the door. The light flicked on
and he was hit by the heavy fumes of varnish. He booted the door shut and
marched up the stairs. Here the smell was less prevalent and enabled him to
breathe easier. In his bedroom, he flung himself back onto his sleigh bed and
stared up at the ceiling fan. The light from the moon made the white blades
look gray. A thick silence permeated the air and Dylan keenly felt the
loneliness like a demon on his chest. It threatened to suck the life from him.
He checked the time then retrieved his cell. He flipped through the contacts
then pressed dial on “Becks”.

It rang twice before it picked up.

“Hello—”

“Hi, Becks, it’s me—”

“This is Rebecca. Sorry I missed your call. Leave a
message!”

Dylan’s heart hurt. It went to voice message after two
rings. It didn’t take a genius to know she was screening his calls. His throat
tightened and he coughed a bit to dislodge the lump there. “Hey, it’s me,
Dylan. Just wanting you to know I got into Templeton okay… Um, I hope you’re
good. I’m good too, just…”
Lonely.
He cleared his throat. “I suppose
you’re probably busy, so when you get this message, give me a call. Bye.”

He hung up, fist clenched around the phone. She wasn’t going
to call him back. Eyes burning with misery, he tapped the cell against his
forehead. Why did he keep torturing himself like that? He heaved a breath and
dissected the hurt and frustration, surgically removing it from his
consciousness to stuff it behind anger and determination. He hadn’t spoken to
his sister since that day over two years ago. He remembered it clearly.

Chapter Three

Twenty-six months ago…

Unease clinched his chest, the invisible band tightened with
every passing day. For the last week, he felt as though he stood on a sheer ice
surface, waiting for it to crack beneath him. The phone call from his mother
six days ago had shaken him up and he couldn’t concentrate at work. Cancer had
returned and at the moment she was undergoing treatment. Dylan had offered to
fly back to help out, but she laughed him off. It’d been caught early enough
that she had a ninety percent chance of recovery. All the tension and anxiety
from the past returned with a vengeance. Once again he was nineteen, hearing
the news his mom had cancer and without insurance they didn’t have the means to
cover her treatment. The helplessness and desperation had sucked the soul from
him until it made him sick to his stomach and had pushed him into compromising
his values in order to save her life.

His mouth twisted bitterly, his pride held no value when
compared to the life of his mother. He needed his mom. He shoved the door to
his condo open and chucked his keys on the hall stand. His cell rang and he
picked it up.

“Hello?” The sobbing on the other end turned his blood to
ice. “Becks?”

“Dylan. I-It’s Mom.”

“What happened?”

Beck’s response was a garbled mess between words and wailing.
He couldn’t understand her. His heart raced in a hollow chest and his knees
gave out. He fell heavily against the tiles but didn’t feel the pain. “Becks!
Is Mom okay?”

“N-nooo!”

His world tipped off its axis and tumbled straight into
hell. “No, no. She said she had a ninety percent chance.”

“The doctors said her liver failed under the chemo. Dylan,
she’s dead.”

The next few days ran by in a surreal swirl of activity.
He’d packed his bags and booked a flight straight to Arkansas. Funeral
arrangements were made and the wake held a couple of days later. He couldn’t
fathom his mother was gone. For days he drifted in a cocoon of disbelief. He
was a spectator to his life, as though he watched a macabre nightmare happen to
someone else. He functioned. He ate, he responded when required, yet he
felt…numb.

But it didn’t last. Several more days after he said his
goodbyes, Dylan opened his eyes to the morning sun slanting across the ceiling.
Outside birds sung and the sky was clear, an affront to his grief. Despair
ripped through him like the serrated edge of a rusty knife. It cut ruthlessly
into his chest and filled his lungs with the acrid weight of misery.

A bird flew down to the windowsill and sung to its friends.
He swung his head toward the window. In angry misdirection, he snatched at the
first available item to throw at the sparrow. It hit the windowsill with a thud
and tumbled to the ground. The bird flew from its perch and left him in peace.
Light reflected off the silver item and bounced into his eyes. He’d thrown a
picture frame he’d bought for his mother. The photo he’d taken after she’d gone
into remission, her eyes alight with life and laughter.

He got up and grabbed the frame to hold it in the sunlight.
He ran the pads of his fingers over her face. He thought of her, he thought of
the pain that she went through and all that he had sacrificed to keep her here
in this world. A choked sob coughed from his chest as he sat back on his bed
and bowed forward. Tears splashed on the glass and he clutched it to his chest.
Picture frame still in hand, he lay back and cried for the soul of his mother
and for his own until he passed out. The next time he woke slightly
disorientated and for a flash second he felt all that had transpired had been
nothing but a horrible dream.

But that moment passed. He was in his mom’s house, in his
old room, but this time Mom wasn’t in the kitchen, making pancakes and dancing
around to Bruce Springsteen. The wake was not that long ago and still he had
yet to absorb what his being here meant. The house, once full of life, now
seemed bereft of it. He threw the sheet aside, padded from the room and into
the kitchen. There, where his mom’s effervescent spirit felt most present, the
misery he held back pounded on his chest and squeezed the air from his lungs.
His throat ached with the effort to hold the tears at bay, but they broke free
anyway. He pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose and
sucked in a ragged breath.

Nothing could be more painful than this and he desperately
wished for someone to comfort him.

“Jesus Christ.” He didn’t know if that was a prayer or a
curse.

By sheer force of will, he pulled his emotions under
control, lifted his head to glare straight ahead. He pushed his grief behind a
wall of anger and locked it away. He had to pack up his mom’s stuff…

A knock interrupted his thoughts—thank God—and he made his
way to the front door. He peered through the peephole then threw it open,
concern tight in his stomach. “Rebecca.”

Tears streamed down her face as Rebecca stepped forward and
slapped him. Hard. Reeling from the shock, he slowly faced her as she pushed
past him into the house. Numbly he closed the door behind her.

“How could you do this to us?” she screamed.

Dylan stared back in bewilderment before understanding
dawned. He reached for his little sister, desperate to soothe her pain. To
protect her. “I know you’re grieving—”

She veered away from him. “Don’t you touch me!”

Her words ripped a hole in his chest and he rubbed at the
pain. He knew she didn’t mean what she said. She had felt alone and abandoned
when he failed to come when their mom had been admitted. Mom had said not to
bother, and he hadn’t. He had a shoot to do and knew his mom would need the
money he’d generate from that.

“I can’t believe you would do something so—so vile!”

Now Dylan was really confused. “I’m sorry, I…don’t know what
you’re talking about.”

She laughed, a sound absent of any humor. “Of course you
know! Half America probably knows.”

“Knows what?”

She fished for something in her bag and threw it at him. It
hit his chest and fell to the floor before he could catch it. He stared at the
glossy cover and his heart dropped.
Oh no.

“Don’t recognize it?” she snarled. “How about these?”

She tipped her bag until over a dozen films tumbled to the
floor. Each had a picture of him on the cover in some lurid pose.

“These came in the mail today! Some anonymous person thought
I should know you have been busy doing porn while our mom was sick. You…selfish
bastard!” The last came out in an anguished scream, the weight of her agony hit
him like a freight train.

“You weren’t even there!” she gasped. “I had to take care of
her. I had to w-watch her struggle through chemo and you—you were fucking some
skank!”

She stared at him as though he were lower than slime. Her
lips trembled and she threw up a hand in revulsion and moved toward the door.

“Becks, wait.” He made a desperate grab for her arm and she
spun on him. His gut twisted at the betrayal on her face. “You don’t
understand.”

“What’s there to understand?” She wrenched her arm from him.
“Am I supposed to understand that I was left here to take care of Mom alone so
that you could fulfill some misguided male fantasy? That while I was trying to
do CPR on Mom you were screwing some dirty…” She waved her hand in front of her
chest, her sentence ending in a wordless sound of disgust.

Dylan swallowed hard, his eyes stinging under the onslaught
of her words. “I had to,” he whispered. “I had to take care of—”

“I don’t care! If Mom knew what you did… It would have
killed her to know that her son was prostituting himself. Well, I hope your
dick falls off. I don’t want to ever see you again.”

Present day

And she kept her word. She never returned any of his calls
or emails. She moved without telling him, an unfortunate incident he discovered
when he’d flown up there for a Christmas Eve surprise. The day she left had
burned a hole in his heart and made him wish for something to bring the pieces
all back together. Deep down Dylan knew that if he had to do it all over again,
he probably would have. It gave Becks, who was only sixteen at the time, six
more years with their mom. Six more happy years for her to remember.

Dylan rolled over in his bed and the cool slide of a tear
trailing down his cheek reminded him of his misery. Fury threaded through him
and he dried his eyes, but loneliness and injustice burned deep in his chest.
Judged for his choices and abandoned by his sister, Dylan felt the sharp pain
of the past slice his chest. He closed his eyes, taking cold comfort in knowing
he did what was necessary to save a life.

* * * * *

Erica lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, calling herself
an idiot. She’d seen the hot desire in Dylan’s eyes. Her body ached with
unfulfilled need and despite knowing it could create a type of awkwardness
between them after the fever had passed, she still wanted to go over there and
take him up on his offer. She knew the nightcap didn’t involve martinis and a
roaring fire. Judging by the way he kissed, sex with him would be hot, heavy and
animalistic. She shuddered at the thought and rolled onto her side. The digital
clock glared at her. Twelve thirty. Two hours had passed and she still didn’t
feel even close to drifting off. Drawn tight like a guitar string, her body
vibrated with unspent tension. She clenched her thighs against the dull throb
between her legs and groaned.