Sin & Suffer (Pure Corruption MC #2)(72)

Only once I’d achieved what I promised could I find any hope in trusting again. Only once I’d eradicated the lies and treachery could I be free. And only once I’d put into place something so much bigger than myself could I stop chasing that ever-elusive more.

Then … perhaps—just f*cking perhaps—I’d let myself be happy.





Chapter Twenty-One


Cleo


Arthur had made me promise something strange.

He’d stopped marking my homework and went silent for ages. I thought he’d leave, but he’d stolen my hand and made me promise that I would run away with him. I knew his family was cruel, but this was our home. Only, he didn’t feel that way. He said we were dying slowly—being strangled by lies. I didn’t agree, but what could I do? He needed me … so, I’d promised. I’d promised that I would run when he told me to. —Cleo, diary entry, age fourteen



Early evening turned into early morning.

The cicadas had retired, the radio continued its scratchy tunes, and the jokes became sloppy and crude.

However, I’d never had such a good time. Never been so relaxed and contented.

With my foster family, I’d always held back at gatherings or parties—afraid of forgetting something important or saying something wrong. No matter how much Corrine made me laugh, I’d never really made peace with the emptiness inside. I’d tried filling the amnesia-hole with new thoughts, but it was bottomless … devouring everything, throbbing with urgency to have me jump into the pit and remember.

However, there was one thing shadowing the ease and pleasure of the evening. The sense that this wasn’t just a bonfire to bond and gossip, but to hang out one last time before war broke out.

In the past few days, I’d been kidnapped, Arthur wounded, and the house broken into. That wouldn’t go unpunished. We were all on the precipice of something huge and it added a strange edge to the celebrations.

Could this gathering be the last time everyone was alive? Could this be the last time I witnessed Pure Corruption as a whole?

Arthur stared into the fire, his green eyes slightly unfocused as he relived things I could only guess. I slinked my arms around the back of his neck. “You okay?” I’d been on his lap for hours, my back nestled against his front, cocooned by his heat and smell.

He nodded, pressing his lips against my shoulder. “Never better.”

Pushing away my morbid thoughts, I sighed with contentedness. More time passed; we stayed poised in nothingness, hypnotized by the fire, and rocked into a lullaby of safety and serenity.

“What are you thinking about?” Arthur asked softly.

I smiled lazily, surveying the churned grass, discarded napkins, and strewn bottles around the roaring open fire. The majority of men were drunk. In fact, so were the women. But there was no aura of violence or suspicion like the occasional functions at Dagger Rose. No jealousy or resentment.

I just hope they all survive whatever is coming.

“I’m thinking how happy I am. Here with you.” Twisting on his lap, I pressed my mouth against his in a tender kiss. “I missed you so much, Art.”

His eyes shot to a dark green as lust sprang strong. “I missed you, too.”

The buzz in my blood from alcohol layered my vision with a romantic haze as I turned my attention back to the gathering. Chairs had been pulled from the tables and ringed around the large fire. Women perched on their men’s knees, their arms—bare in the Florida heat—draped over them. Affection was visible: pink strands joining ruffian men with their significant others.

Cuts had been removed and littered the backs of chairs while others puddled on tables. The orange glow of the fire sent stencils over their tattooed skin, marking all of us with its warmth.

“They’re a great group,” Arthur said, lifting his beer to his lips. The sound of him swallowing sent a shiver of need through me. As delicious as it’d been sitting on his lap all evening, eating morsels of barbeque from his fingers, and sharing a plate of dessert, I ached with desire.

Not only was I fascinated by this man but I was also in shock, in love, and most of all in wonderment of him. I needed to have him naked. I needed him above me, inside me, bared to me—so I could finally uncover every facet of who he was.

I need him because all of this … it’s fleeting. We were in the eye of the storm—whipped by unseen winds just waiting to tear our happiness away.

“They have a good leader.” My eyes fell on Grasshopper. He’d entertained us with bad guitar playing, awful lyrics, and terrible ghost stories once we’d all slipped into a food coma around the bonfire.

Now he sat alone.

Unpaired with a woman, he was one of the few single men, sitting in a fumigation of smoke, sucking on a cigar and nursing a beer. His long legs were spread in front of him, the heels of his black boots indenting the dry dirt below. Despite his aloneness, he seemed happy. His gaze was warm and slightly glazed as he took in his Club.

“What’s his story?” I asked, sighing deeper into Arthur’s embrace.

“Hopper?”

I nodded. “Despite being related to the man who sprung you from jail.”

Chuckling, Arthur shuffled me higher on his lap. The warmth of licking flames slowly turned the liquor in my blood into a sedative. The strawberry daiquiris Melanie had concocted subdued noise and light—making everything dreamlike.