Kissing Fire Page 10

  “I want this Preston.” I grabbed one of his hands and placed a kiss on his finger right before I took the tip of it into my mouth and sucked on it.

  Chapter 12

  Preston

  When she opened the door and plowed into me, we scared each other half to death. There was no way in hell I could keep my arms from pulling her close to me. She was dripping wet and gloriously naked. I’d never seen anything I wanted so badly before either. She ran that tongue of hers across her lips and that was all I could stand. My mouth was on hers before I could stop myself, and I’d never tasted anything so sweet in all my life. Jesus, what this woman did to me was not normal. My whole body jerked in reaction to her as she pressed herself against me. I wanted to absorb her into me. All of her. Her hair was wet and all messed up and looked so damn sexy like that. But there was one thing I didn’t get and it was that crazy idea she had about her body. She thought she was fat when she was nothing but perfect.

  Before this went any further, I had to tell her the truth about me. She had to know. When she came downstairs, I did and it felt so great when she held me but then she took her top off and I froze. I wanted her, God I wanted her. But she still didn’t know everything.

  “Avery, please.” I looked at her face and she saw the regret in my eyes. “Please let me talk to you and tell you everything. You have to know things about me before we do this.”

  “I know enough,” she started but I put my fingers on her mouth, hushing her.

  “No, you only think you do. Please?”

  She nodded so I handed back her top to put on. She gave me a funny look and did that cute little wiggly thing with her head. “Well, you said you wanted me naked, didn’t you?”

  “That I did. But if you don’t put this on, I’ll be very distracted and we won’t get anywhere.”

  Then she stuck that lower lip of hers out and I raised my brows.

  “What?”

  “You know what,” I answered right before I took that lip between my teeth and then sucked on it. “You know how I feel about you sticking that lip out at me.”

  “If it keeps getting that kind of reaction, I’m gonna keep sticking it out at you too.” Then she stuck her tongue out at me. Well, damn, I didn’t stand a chance with this girl. I lunged at her, but that was a mistake. She cowered and her hands flew up in front of her face.

  Jesus, we were both a mess, I thought.

  “Avery, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by that. You must know I would never hurt you.”

  “I do know that. It’s just a stupid reaction. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not stupid and you don’t have to be sorry. I think you have a very mild form of PTSD.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Post traumatic stress disorder. It’s from when you were attacked by that son of a bitch.”

  “Oh. You really think I have that?”

  “Yeah. I do. I know, because I have it too.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, but mine is much more severe.” I scrubbed my face. “It’s from being in prison and getting the shit beat out of me constantly, among other things.”

  Every bit of color drained out of her beautiful face.

  “Oh Preston.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not okay. Don’t ever say that. No one deserves what you went through.” She pulled her top on and I began to tell her everything. I didn’t hold back because I wanted her to know it all. If she was willing to bare her body to me, then I’d better be willing to show myself to her. The most difficult part to see was the pain reflected in her not blue not green eyes. At times, tears threatened and I knew she wasn’t the kind of girl that cried very easily. I reached my hands out and brushed my thumbs beneath her eyes.

  “Don’t shed any tears Avery. It’s all in the past.”

  “But Preston, the things you did for your job. It makes me so sad for you that you had to live that way.”

  “Well, I chose it for the most part.”

  “I don’t believe that. I think you made a conscious choice to become an agent, yes. But if you could do it all over again, would you change it?”

  “Hell yes I would. I would’ve gone to law school and been a boring lawyer. My dad would still be alive right now.”

  She squeezed her eyes together but a few tears still escaped, leaving their lines down her cheeks. I kissed them away with my lips.

  “Preston, I don’t think any less of you because of what they did to you.”

  I looked at her again, hard in the eyes, trying to read everything that was there. There was pain, sadness and something else that I couldn’t define. At the risk of pushing her away, I knew I had to put everything out there. If I didn’t now, there would never be another time.

  “Listen to me Avery. You’ve been put in a terrible situation. I’m so sorry all this has happened because to say it’s disrupted your life is an understatement. You’ve also put a great deal of trust in me, in more ways than one, so you deserve all of the truth. My life is tarnished. My body is tainted. Not just because of what happened to me in prison. Oh, that’s part of it, yes. But, ever since then, I’ve chosen only to be with...” I found it so difficult to tell her this. I swallowed the fat lump in my throat and forced the words from my mouth. “I’ve only been with prostitutes.”

  Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. I looked at her for a few seconds and then stood up. Her reaction was what I had guessed it to would have been.

  “Now you understand why I don’t see myself as being worthy of someone such as yourself. I’m dirty Avery. I won’t let myself be with someone like you. You represent everything that’s good about the world and I am quite the opposite. Do you understand what I’m saying here? I haven’t been with a woman, someone I’ve made love to in a long, long time. I know this sounds crude, but I’ve only been banging prostitutes ever since I was in prison. You deserve so much better than this.” I dropped my head and scoured my face with my hands.

  In a small voice, she asked me, “Weren’t you afraid of getting HIV, or other things?”

  Raising my head, my eyes locked with hers. God, I hated opening up with her, giving her all the dirty details about myself. “I was cautious and used protection. I would also get tested after every, well, you know, so I’m clean Avery.”

  “I see.”

  Silence then permeated the air around us as I got up and moved into the other room to refill my glass. I had placed the bottle of wine in the wine cooler so I was bent over, retrieving it when I felt a hand on my back side. That was not a good thing for me, as it took me back to my days in prison...days when I would be attacked and tied down, and then raped.

  My mind and body switched into overdrive and as I stood up my arm flew out and grabbed my offender by the throat, pushing him against the wall. The other arm was locked in place over his diaphragm, cutting off his air supply. It took a couple of seconds for me to realize I had Avery in a deadly body lock. Tears were running down her cheeks but she couldn’t speak because I was choking her.

  “Fuck! Fuck!” I shouted as I quickly released her. She immediately cowered from me as her hands came to her face and she sucked air into her lungs.

  “Are you all right?”

  She didn’t answer me right away. She just kept gulping in air.

  “Avery, please say something.” She was shaking from head to toe. And I felt like a total shit. “God, I am so sorry. I know it doesn’t excuse what I did, but it was just a reaction. I am so terribly sorry.” I rubbed my face and I honestly didn’t know what to do.

  “You really scared me.” Those eyes of hers dug right into mine and I’d never felt so awful in my life.

  “I know and I didn’t mean it. It’s just that...” I bent my head down because I was so ashamed of what I had done to her and it was all in response to what had been done to me. “Avery, when I was in prison, they, um, raped me. Not once but dozens of times. They would grab me from behind, like you did. And then the
y would tie me down, and...well you don’t need to hear the gory details. It doesn’t excuse in any way what I just did to you. I’m so sorry for hurting you. I would never have done that had I realized it was you. I just snapped when I felt your hand back there, and suddenly I was in prison again. Fuck. This is why I don’t want to touch you Avery. I’m a dirty fucked up shit.” I left the room, unable to look at her beautiful face any more, knowing I almost punched her lights out.

  Now it was me who needed the air. The back deck was calling my name and if I didn’t get there quickly, I was going to puke all over the damn floor. With my stomach churning like a damn stormy sea, I bolted for the sliders and hit the back deck just in time. Shit, this was never gonna end as far as I was concerned. And this one wasn’t a quickie either. Sometimes when I got sick, it was over and done with fairly quickly. Oh no, not this time. I kept heaving until my guts felt like they were on fire and there was nothing left but bile in there.

  The cool evening air was like heaven against my burning cheeks and I let the breeze fan my face for a few more moments before turning around to make my way back inside. She must’ve followed me out there because there she stood, leaning against the house with her arms wrapped around her midsection.

  “Does this happen to you often?” she asked me. Her voice was so soft that I could barely hear her.

  “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether or not I think about the time when I was in prison.” And there it was again, knocking on my gut’s door. I ran back to the edge of the deck and was sick again, only now there wasn’t anything left in my stomach to throw up. I never knew what was worse...having it this way or the other.

  “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

  Who in their right mind would want to help someone that just tried to knock the shit out of them?

  “Oh God Avery. How can you even ask me that after what I just did to you?” Talk about feeling like a POS now.

  “May I touch you?”

  “Why would you want to? I just tried to hurt you?”

  “Preston, may I touch you?”

  “Yes.”

  I felt her hands on my shoulders, softly at first and then she began to rub those tiny circles on my back. She had to feel the tenseness of my muscles for I was wound up like the tightest of springs. But her hands felt like magic and they kept rubbing my shoulders, then my neck and finally my back.

  “Preston,” she whispered, “can you turn around please?”

  I didn’t really want to because I was terribly ashamed of what I had done to her, but I didn’t want to refuse her either.

  When I was facing her, she stepped close to me and hugged me. It was an automatic reaction to hug her back, and it felt so natural to have her in my arms.

  “Now it’s my turn to say I’m sorry...sorry for what happened to you. I wish I could turn back time and make it all go away, but it’s impossible. Nevertheless, I’m still sorry for what you went through.” She held me like that for just a few moments, then stepping away from me, she took my hand and walked me back inside.

  “I’m thinking you might want to go and brush your teeth and I’ll pour us some more wine while you do.”

  Not knowing what to say or do, I simply nodded and walked up the steps. Brushing my teeth was a great idea and it made me feel good all over. When I joined her back downstairs, she handed me my glass of wine and asked me if my stomach was up for eating dinner. It wasn’t so we sat and talked for a bit. Then she told me all about Avery.

  Avery was a funny girl. She had all sorts of comical stories that had me quite entertained. We talked about her family and how tight she was with them. She and her mom had been very close, but when Justin’s first fiancé had been killed, her mom had changed. Everything became about her. No one really understood it, but her fun loving mom was gone and in her place was a self-centered selfish woman, only focused on her own happiness. Avery missed her old mom immensely.

  “I don’t even know if she’ll notice that I’m gone.”

  “Do you really think that?”

  “No, I was just saying that to feel sorry for myself.”

  “You don’t seem the type to feel sorry for yourself.”

  “I’m not. I usually just get mad and then do something really stupid.”

  “Oh yeah? Like what?”

  “Throw something and break it and then get pissed because it was something I adored and I can’t find exactly the same thing to replace it. So I wander around for days lamenting the fact that I screwed up to begin with by having a tantrum.”

  “Avery?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you always ramble a lot when you talk?”

  “Always Preston.”

  “I thought so.” I scratched my head. “Avery?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I wanted to let you know that Justin and Caroline are fine. I talked to Pete and they are in their apartment with protection. Some men tried to break into their house, but were caught and they’re being interrogated as we speak.”

  “Really? What apartment?”

  “They keep an apartment for emergencies.” I could see the excitement on her face. She was glowing.

  “Hmm. Well, I’m so glad Justin and Caroline are okay.”

  “So am I.”

  “Does that mean I can go back?”

  “No, I’m sorry, but you can’t. Not yet. Those guys are really vicious and just because they didn’t find me doesn’t mean they’ll stop at that. They’ll keep looking for me, so we need to sit tight here for some time. You understand, don’t you?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Good.”

  “So Preston?”

  “Yeah ?”

  “Are you ever going to tell me how you’re really connected to Justin and Caroline?”

  ********

  When she asked me there was no trying to cover it up any longer. Her life was in danger as much as my own. If I didn’t trust her now, I would have to keep her around me for life. For some reason though, trust wasn’t an issue for me. Whatever I was getting ready to tell her, I knew for certain she would never tell a soul.

  So I began to tell her the entire story of Preston Mitchell and his sister Terri and what really happened that night. She sat and listened patiently, not asking any questions.

  “I hated myself more than anything for ripping the two of them apart. I’d never seen two people more in love than Terri and Justin. The worst part was the aftermath. I’m sure Justin was awful. Terri was...well, she ended up in a mental hospital for three months. She became so despondent and she kept failing the treatments they tried. It was like she was swallowed up by her depression. Luckily, she had a great doctor who finally got her on the appropriate things. It took a while but eventually the spark came back. Terri, or Caroline I should say, was the one who worked diligently toward bringing down the cartel. It was really her intel that did it. She was relentless. After everything was over, she talked to Pete and me. She told us she wanted to go to Charleston for closure. The only things she kept from her relationship with Justin was her engagement ring and the diamond necklace he gave her for Christmas.”

  Avery looked at me and said, “I remember that necklace. Justin always wondered what happened to both of them because neither were found in the car or the house.”

  “We tried to get her to part with them so we could put them in her car but she refused. She said we might as well kill her. Anyway we finally agreed to let her keep those two things. I couldn’t refuse her that. I mean, my God, I’d already taken so damn much from her...ruined her life and nearly destroyed her in the process.” I had to stop for a minute and collect myself. Even now, after all this time, I still got choked up thinking about how she had suffered. “After the cartel was brought down, she decided to go to Charleston, like I said, and see Justin for closure. One of the things she wanted to do was to pass on the ring and necklace to him. Terri Mitchell had finally died in her eyes and those
two things had been her security blanket. She thought it was time to let them be his, if he needed them. If not, he could sell them since he was the one who’d bought them to begin with. She knew in her heart she would never love another man for the rest of her life. So it didn’t really matter to her if he was with someone else or not. Her time had finally come to move on. Once they saw each other and she explained what happened, they knew they had to be together. That’s why Justin moved to Seattle. Terri became Caroline Cole as part of the witness protection program. She had plastic surgery and her identity was changed. She can never go back to Charleston and no one can ever know. You’re not supposed to know. She was really nervous about being around you...about you suspecting something. Keeping that secret is paramount to protecting her life Avery.”

  Avery wiped the tears from her face, stared at me and nodded. She didn’t say anything right away, but sat in silence. I supposed she was digesting everything I had just explained to her and in my mind, I was sure she despised me for what I had done to her brother. When she finally got up, it was to go in search of a tissue. She returned and sat next to me, taking my hand into hers.

  “As you probably already know, Justin died when Terri did and we were all so happy when he made the decision to go to Seattle. We thought he had been reborn. Now I know the truth. For whatever it’s worth, I’m happy for them. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted either of them to die and you did what you had to do. Had Justin known what was going on, I’m certain he would’ve been killed in his attempt to protect her. You did the right thing Preston.” She squeezed my hand.

  That tiny gesture meant more to me than I could even tell her. The weight on my chest lifted a bit and I felt like I could breathe easier again. I knew she noticed a difference in me immediately so I tried to explain it to her.

  I half smiled and said, “It was all my fault, you see. My profession and what I had chosen to do. I was responsible and carried the guilt of what they both had endured. And not only them. My father was murdered because of me and my stupid job. So there you have it all Avery...all of the ugly mess that is Preston Mitchell.”