Blood to Dust(28)

Mine too, and for the same reason.

It reminds us we lost our mamás.

I press my palm to my cold sheets and close my eyes, thinking about how she looks like right now. Her legs sprawled on her blanket—golden, smooth and soft. My cock swells inside my low-hanging sweatpants. The only reason I ain’t fondling my meat to the sound of her raspy voice is because she’s confiding in me and that’s a little f*cked up. Okay, a lot f*cked up.

“One month absorbed the next. I didn’t make friends. I didn’t re-enroll in school. All I did was sit around and wait for him to arrive from work every day. I was sickly in love, Beat. It was the worst form of love. The kind of love that doesn’t give, but consumes. The kind of love that quickly turns into hate. Everything else—family, hobbies, friends, the outside world—was just a distraction I resented, pulling Camden away from me. Fast forward eighteen months, and guess what?”

“Spill it.”

“I came back home from a Chelsea shopping spree one day to find him nailing a glamour model from Page Six on our kitchen island.”

I smirk to myself, eyes still shut. I don’t know much about this girl, but it’s safe to say she set his balls on fire, just a starter to the main course of torture she had in mind for him. Pea’s bold. She’d walk through f*cking fire in kitten heels with a smile on her face and wouldn’t even break a sweat. I saw it in the way she handled Godfrey and Seb.

“I closed the door quietly, stepped back and descended the stairs. Waited at a coffee shop across the street until I saw the skank leaving my apartment. I didn’t want him to know that I knew.”

“Because?”

The room hushes before I hear the smirk on her lips. “Because where’s the fun in that?”

For the next half hour, Pea tells me about the digging work she’s done, looking up Camden’s bank statements, hiring a PI and doing pretty much everything a crazy bitch can to plow out dirt about her lover.

“He had seven side-pieces in total. Didn’t use a rubber with any of them. I wanted to plan the perfect revenge. Something epic. The man who claimed to love me, who wanted to marry me, missed my nineteenth birthday so he could shack up with an exotic dancer in Shoreditch. He was late to our anniversary dinner because he had an orgy with two Polish tourists. Meanwhile, he was spreading promises, spewing lies, holding me captive with his charm. . .no, I couldn’t just let this end with a slap and a hate letter.”

She giggles, her voice rising from my floor, and to my horror, this time it makes a brief stop in my chest before migrating down to my groin for a cock-twitch.

“Do that again,” I order.

“Do what?”

“That giggle.”

She giggles again, no questions asked. Fuck.

“I take it back. Don’t do that again,” I grunt. The need to charge downstairs and f*ck her is overwhelming.

“Over the next few months, I played the dutiful girlfriend. Went the extra mile and then some. Gave the best head. . .”

I adjust my junk in my sweats. I don’t even know Camden Archer, but if she won’t pull the trigger, I’d be happy to kill him myself.

“My boyfriend finally cracked. It took time, but he did. Camden asked me to marry him. I said yes, but that I needed to do something with my time. And what better way to spend it than doing something for him? He agreed to let me help him out with his business and signed a few power of attorneys granting me access to some of his bank accounts. He didn’t get me anywhere near the shady business. Didn’t trust me, no doubt, as I find it hard to believe this man would protect me from anything or anyone. Nonetheless, I became privy to his businesses. Now, I had access, a motive and the due diligence. It was time for the grand finale.”

I swallow, knowing exactly where it’s heading. She tried to hit him and took a blow. The ricochet was too much, and she crumbled.

“Did you know that the last time I saw my mom, I was fifteen, and the last time I spoke to her was before I was of drinking age? Camden was my first honest attempt at a genuine human relationship with someone who wasn’t Preston…and it boomeranged straight into my face, breaking every single bone in the process.”

“Tell me you didn’t cut off his balls,” I grunt. Not that it’d deter me from asking her to suck on mine, but that’s pretty much the only reason I can see for Godfrey and Sebastian hate her so much. Pea giggles. Again.

My heart stutters. . .again.

My cock twitches to that adorable sound. . .again.

“One day Camden came back home to find it completely empty. I had moved out and gotten on the first flight back to the US. I also donated all of his furniture, clothes and belongings to the Octavia Foundation, because I’m a sweetheart like that. The bank accounts I had access to were emptied, the money thrown into an offshore British Virgin Islands account in my name. By the time he found out he was a lot less rich and very much single, I was sipping a virgin Bloody Mary in first class. I was smart enough not to go back home, though.

“I went to live in New York. The apple was big and I bit into it with gusto. London opened my big-city chakras and I was more than happy to disappear into the throng and melt into being another faceless, pea-coat wearing student. I picked up a few college courses and lived off Camden’s fortune that I stole, keeping in touch with my brother and father by phone.