Need Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy Book Three) Read online

  NEED ME

  TRUTHFUL LIES - BOOK THREE

  BY RACHEL DUNNING

  Copyright © 2014 Rachel Dunning.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Cover Design Copyright © 2014 Rachel Dunning.

  Cover Photo of Male Model - Copyright © 2014 FXQuadro

  Smashwords Edition

  ISBN: 9781311818027

  All photos obtained from Shutterstock and used with permission.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Rachel Dunning:

  Know Me, #1 Truthful Lies

  Find Me, #2 Truthful Lies

  Finding North, #1 Naïve Mistakes Trilogy

  East Rising, #2 Naïve Mistakes Trilogy

  West-End Boys, #3 Naïve Mistakes Trilogy

  Like You, #1 Perfectly Flawed Series

  Christmas Comfort, #1 Hot Holidays Series

  Easter Sundae, #2 Hot Holidays Series

  Girl-Nerds Like it Harder, #1 Girl-Nerd Series

  Girl Nerds Like it Faster, #2 Girl-Nerd Series

  Girl-Nerds Like it Deeper, #3 Girl-Nerd Series

  Girl-Nerds Like it Longer, #4 Girl-Nerd Series

  For news of upcoming releases, visit:

  http://racheldunningauthor.blogspot.com

  Or connect with me on Facebook:

  http://bit.ly/RachelDunning

  For S. I love you.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  BEFORE YOU BEGIN READING...

  TO NEED...

  PROLOGUE ONE

  PROLOGUE TWO

  PART I

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  PART II

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  PART III

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  EPILOGUE

  POSTSCRIPT

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  FOREWORD

  -1-

  Please keep in mind that this is a work of fiction. Sometimes facts, dates, events get altered to make them fit into the flow of a fictional story.

  -2-

  All efforts have been made to make this book stand on its own. For a full appreciation of the story and its characters, it is highly recommended that Books One and Two be read before reading this one.

  BEFORE YOU BEGIN READING...

  This is not a fairy-tale, its heroes’ hair is not made of solid gold, their thoughts are not borne on clouds of cotton candy and, most of all, they sure ain’t perfect.

  This could probably be called a “dark story.” Its characters are human, flawed, imperfect. But they’re also full of heart and full of passion.

  Mr. Darcy ain’t gonna be sittin in these here pages. Romeo’s time is long since gone. Within these pages you’ll find the realest of loves that could be found: Two imperfect people, with imperfect ideas, who’ve made imperfect decisions.

  And who try and pull through all of it.

  But I’ve said too much already, overstayed my welcome, so let’s get on with the story. The best tales are those where the author is transparent.

  So I bid you ado...

  Fade to black. Narrator exits by side curtain.

  Play begins...

  TO NEED...

  To need (transitive verb):

  1. To be in want of; to have cause or occasion for; to lack; to require.

  Need (noun):

  1. A state that requires supply or relief; pressing occasion for something; necessity; urgent want.

  Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary - 1913

  PROLOGUE ONE

  SOME WEEKS AGO

  ~ NOVEMBER, YEAR FOUR ~

  -1-

  Blaze Ryleigh

  His entire body is hard, sitting on a couch in the corner of the room, silhouetted by a wash of moonlight through the open window, dark skin sparkling like a crystal glass. His eyes are dark, his skin is dark, his mind...is the kind of mind I need right now.

  He grins, teeth glittering like fangs, black eyes drawing me toward him like iron shavings to a magnet.

  He sticks his hand out toward me. I’m on the bed, doubting, wondering, questioning, and asking, Why?

  I get up, possibly controlled by some external force, possibly by my own mind that plays tricks and that has played tricks and that has put me in this room, with this man, who I don’t love.

  My right foot, shod in a comfy slipper, scrapes its big toe on the ground. My legs feel heavy. I don’t want him, but I need him. I need him...to forget. I need him, because women need men, because the man I really want, the man I really yearn for, is gone forever.

  My toe scrapes on forward, my knee being held back by the inertial friction of the carpet against my feet.

  The dark and sexy man, the one with the teeth like fangs and eyes like erotic silverware, keeps his hand held out to me. His open palm glows in the spill of nightlight. His smile is warm and cold at the same time. His body is perfect, statuesque, chiseled, manly.

  His manhood gleams and shines, pulsing and throbbing while he sits there, expecting me to go to him. And he knows I will. I always do.

  Because things have changed...

  My left foot drags now, like a zombie with a limp. A car hoots outside. Someone shouts in a British accent. Right, because I’m in London, playing a gig. And making lots of money. Yay. How exciting. Wind from the open window gushes under my babydoll and my nipples tighten, but not because of the wonderful man in front of me. They tighten because of the cold, both exterior and interior.

  “Come here, Blaze. Come here.” His voice is velvet, warm, the kind of voice that makes your eyes flutter and your tongue loll back with need. A voice which rumbles in your ear like so much deadly passion when the owner of that voice enters you, pleases you, takes you to physical plateaus you never expected could exist.

  It’s the kind of voice that could control you, tell you what to do, and you’d listen.

  It’s the kind of voice I’ve been hearing for three years now, but it’s not that voice I want to hear.

  I make it to where the man is sitting. His manhood beats and throbs between his legs, gleaming with need and unspent desire. He rubs his hand over it, rolls his palm over the head, moistening himself. He’s beautiful. He’s always been beautiful.

  And yet...

  The fingers of his other hand touch my waist. They’re lightning-fire against my skin, sending both pain and pleasure down my legs and sizzling out my toes.

  My eyes close.

  My lips open.

  My breath deepens.

  And I feel my body start to respond. Down there, and in my stomach, my knees, inside me...

  He’ll take me, because now I need to be taken. The need has passed from mental to ph
ysical, from the forsaken hope of love to the guaranteed promise of lust. I stand between his legs.

  He smiles pleasantly, satisfied, confident. He’s got me again.

  He takes both hands and puts them behind my butt, pulls me closer, keeps grinning as he looks up at me.

  And yet, the pain, the pain I feel inside is so deep, so sharp, so screamingly loud that his smile does nothing but whet that need, that yearning, that desire...for something gone. For someone else...gone.

  For...him. The other man. The man who is not this man.

  The man who I really love.

  This man’s hand slides down and then up my thigh, gently, upwards, onto my left butt-cheek. What a beautiful hand, I think. That hand has held me and touched me and sprinkled its fingers over my skin on so many nights when the wind has also blown cold like it does tonight. That hand, now, on my butt, moves, presses, squeezes. I move my own hand to above his, encourage it, let it slide further in, to the middle, and then lower, lower, lower...

  It touches me. And now I’m damp. My body has taken over, the mind is gone. The estrogen level has raised and the blood has been trapped.

  I’m aroused.

  I’ll let him take me. I’ll close my eyes and tell myself that I love him, or that it’s as close to love as I can get.

  And, if I can stop thinking of him, of That Other Man, then I might just forget love altogether. I might just take the upcoming snap of pleasure for what it is: A primal need that must be quenched; a physical relief.

  An itch, and the necessity to have it scratched.

  The man stands, tall and powerful. In control. Strong. Everything a girl could want. Everything a girl could love.

  But I don’t. And he knows it. And I know it.

  He leans down, tilts my chin up so my lips can meet his. His shaft pushes and scrapes against my nub.

  I close my eyes, try my damndest not to think of That Other Man, but That Other Man’s blue eyes scream at me at night, through the window, carried on and around this room via the carrier-wave of gusting winds.

  And This Man kisses my neck now, clasps my back, pulls me against him so that the thought of That Other Man is speared dead by the feel of This Man’s member pressing moistly against my belly.

  It throbs against me, makes me forget, makes the carnal need stronger, sends the thought of those blue eyes further away...

  “Oh, God,” I moan, This Man’s hands pulling my babydoll up, baring my flesh to his and pressing against it with his sheening cock.

  “Oh, God,” I say again, that cock now pressing firmly against my own growing nub, which is harder now, responding to his need.

  But the need only makes it worse. I hold onto This Man tightly and shut my eyes, feel his maleness press and push against me. There’s no going back now. I want it as much as he does. I’ve gone over the edge and he’ll satisfy me, he always does. “Oh, yes,” I say. And the statement has so many different meanings, so many connotations. It’ll never mean with This Man what it meant with That Other Man, but still, it’s a “Yes, oh, yeah, oh, God yeah...”

  It’s a request to make the slashing thoughts in my head go away. It’s a plea for mercy, not to This Man, but to the Wielder of Human Thought, to The One Who Keeps The Memories in Your Head Alive like a Hollywood picture that just never goes away, always playing, always flickering in your thoughts in bright shining color. Play it again, Sam. And again, and again, and again.

  When I say, “Oh, yes,” to This Man, in this room, on this night, I’m begging That Unknown Force to make the screams of pain disappear, to make disappear the cries of a love that has been lost, shattered, killed. Buried. But, yet, a love which still rises. A love whose restless hand crawls up from its grave and refuses to be buried, refuses to sleep a peaceful sleep that all Dead Things need and deserve. A love which died prematurely and for all the wrong reasons. But what difference does it make now? Because it’s dead no matter “the reasons.”

  I clutch This Man, push myself against him, there, harder. I feel him wanting me more, needing me, for reasons of his own, perhaps. Reasons I’ve never understood because I’ve never asked him about them, reasons neither of us has ever shared with the other. We are warm bodies—hot bodies—in a room. Nothing more.

  The thoughts of him don’t disappear completely. That Other Man never leaves my dreams, my mind.

  I’m about to say, Oh Yeah, again, but this time I can’t. Because his face—The Other Man’s face—won’t let me go, won’t let me feel peace tonight.

  The Other Man’s face crashes against me, reminds me.

  “Fuck!” I say, and it’s not a statement of pleasure, but of frustration.

  I grab This Man’s shaft in my hand, start rubbing it. Tonight, like so many other nights, I’ll deny him...

  “Bl—Blaze, wh—?”

  I pump him harder.

  “Bl—Blaze...oh God. Oh I’m going to—”

  He does, and it’s beautiful. His body cracks and breaks and he pushes me to the bed and lands on top of me, still firing, his juice looking exquisite on my lingerie and on my skin. “Oh, God!” he howls.

  He takes over the motion, covering my hand with his and squeezing himself off desperately until he’s smiling because he got what he needed.

  He finishes off, and then moves down to between my legs, opens me up. And kisses me.

  I careen up into the skies, stay there for a second, fire and hell and heaven all staring at me from different locations below me.

  He thrusts a finger up inside me, pushes, carries me over the edge with the tip of his tongue.

  I burst.

  And I sigh.

  Relieved.

  This I can do. It deals with the physical need. But that other thing, when Laz—This Man—enters me the way a man who loves you is supposed to enter you, that I can’t deal with. No matter how many times I try it, it only makes the pain worse; turns the physical need into a mental one, a personal one.

  Even though it’s been over four years—over four years since Declan Cox and I broke up—I still cannot do it comfortably with This Man. And when I do, it’s never the same as it had been before...

  Laz looks up at me, smiling, satisfied, grinning.

  “Well, you know I liked that, love.” He says “love” to everyone, because he’s English. “But you know I’m going to need the real thing again one of these days. I can’t go so long withou’ it, you know?”

  I smile coyly. No conversation, no sharing of emotions. It’s me and This Man to a tee.

  He wipes me off with a nearby cotton shirt, gets up and goes to the bathroom.

  I turn my head on the pillow, listen to the city sounds outside, focus on the whoosh of the wind through the billowing curtains. And my mind drifts, out of control, to what could have been, to what once was.

  And what never will be.

  My mind drifts to Declan Cox. And to how much I miss him.

  PROLOGUE TWO

  A MAN

  -1-

  Declan Cox

  I’m not a writer. I’m a man. I’ve been told that the essence of good writing is to tell the truth. And so that is what I’ve done here.

  You might hate the truth. You will certainly hate me for the truth. But I need to tell it like it is. Because I think it’s the only thing that will purge me, that will allow me to move on, finally, after so much suffering and pain. After so many mistakes.

  I haven’t gilded the lily here. There was no lily there to gild in the first place. What you’ll find here, what you’ll read about in these here pages, is about human sin. Fateful errors.

  Painful mistakes.

  I made those mistakes. I hurt the people I loved—the person I loved—the most.

  I’m no knight. No chivalrous king.

  I’m the bat in the dark. The blood in your wound. The gun wielding drunk at the bar.

  I haven’t written this tale down for you to like me. I’ve written it down to tell the truth.

  I am the epitome of human m
istakes.

  I am Declan Cox. And this is my tale.

  PART I

  ONE

  TODAY

  ~ DECEMBER, YEAR FOUR ~

  -1-

  Blaze Ryleigh

  Deck’s playing today. Tom’s Restaurant is packed. Mr. De Luca has been hosting Sunday Night Football events here since Deck made it into The Giants two years ago. Yeah, The Giants—can you frickin believe it? I’m so proud of him and Trev. Even though Deck and I are not together anymore, I’m still proud of him.

  And I’ll always watch his games.

  Trev’s been in longer than Deck. He got in after his scholarship fell through.

  I can hardly hear the gang in the booth over the din of the restaurant. Skate’s here, his arm around Vikki’s neck. They’ve been going steady since April of Year Zero—the year Deck and I both started going out, and broke up eight months later. Clarissa’s still waitressing. Tonight she’s behind the counter. It’s too full to have waitresses serving the tables directly. It’s standing room only in here.

  Outside it’s snowing, inside it’s a hot-box. I’m actually in a tee there’s so much body heat.

  Our eyes are glued to the massive screen up on the wall behind the counter. Mr. De Luca has three of them set up in here. He only puts all three on when The Giants play.

  Damn, The Giants! I still remember when I heard the news. It wasn’t Deck who told me, it was Skate. Deck and I still aren’t speaking. We haven’t spoken in over four years. Hurts too much.

  I was in London at the time, DJing at Club Pacha. It was May, almost two years since Deck and I had split up. Trev was already in the NFL, playing for The Giants as well. He’d made it in while Deck and I were still together, after Trev had lost his scholarship.

  Skate had sent me an email asking me to call him urgently, telling me he had news about the NFL Draft. This was in May of “Year Two.” I didn’t like hearing much about Deck, but this was a big thing, and I was happy he was making it, so I’d asked Skate to keep me up to date on Deck’s progress. Besides, I’d picked up in conversations that Deck had not been doing too well a few months earlier. I’d been worried about him, and I got the distinct feeling from Skate that he was hiding something from me; like some horrible thing had happened to Declan that neither Skate nor Trev were letting me in on. I knew, also, that I had no right to push it, so I left it. It was for this reason, however, that news of Deck trying out for the NFL had been so welcomed by me. Because it assured me that he was well and healthy.