Heart of Darkness - A Standalone Bad Boy Romance Novel Read online

  I lay against his chest until the air outside changed and it grew dark. It might have been an hour. It might have been three. I had placed my sweat-soaked and exhausted body length-ways along his, and as both our bodies cooled, it seemed that we had cemented ourselves together like that, permanently. There didn’t seem to be any reason to move anyway.

  Not yet.

  I nestled my head in the crook of his armpit and snuggled against him as he lay staring up at the ceiling. Or someplace far beyond the ceiling. Slowly, like I was afraid to scare it off if I moved too quickly, I began to think about what had happened to me. To him.

  Gradually, and then all at once, something had come over him. His edges blurred. He became an animal. I struggled to keep up with him. Somehow, his face had dissolved and he stopped being Zack, and became …something else. Meat. A body. Something sad and wild and hungry and full to bursting with rage.

  I settled against his body and he congealed against me, settled back into human form, re-shaped into the man I knew. But my own body was tender. I had come hard and desperately, shuddering and crying and with nothing to hold onto but the very man who was responsible for all the pleasure-pain in the first place. There was not an atom, not an inch that he hadn’t given me; everything was spent. His orgasm came over him like a defeat and he cried out like an animal, the knots all along his strong abdominals yanking tight as he bucked and quaked against me.

  We had gone all the way to the edge. And then over it. I was covered in bruises and welts and patches of red, angry flesh. My body was sore and stretched and stinging. And yet, I felt more alive than ever. Stronger than ever. Like the surface damage to my body only fired me up somewhere deeper down, where it counted.

  I traced my fingertips over the pink and red marks blooming along my upper thighs. I knew marks like this – they would morph into black bruises overnight, slowly, as my body came to realize the insult and decided to sulk in nasty shades of green and grey. But these bruises were different.

  “That looks bad,” he said at last, looking down at my body. I had forgotten what his human voice sounded like.

  “Not bad. Good,” I said.

  But that wasn’t quite right either. It was bad. Bad and good. It didn’t make much sense in my mind yet. But as I stroked absentminded fingers over those raw places on my skin, I wondered whether my body already knew. The words “good” and bad” didn’t even begin to properly hold all the strange sensations swirling in me. Zack seemed beyond that somehow. He had most eloquently told me what he needed, not with words, but with his body. And somehow I had understood, not with my brain, and not even with my heart. But somewhere in these strange, blooming bruises on my legs and belly and arms. I stroked them gently, and understood.

  “So…” he said.

  “So,” I returned.

  “I’m sorry about what I did to your furniture,” he said, after another long pause.

  “It’s just furniture.”

  “And I’m sorry about what I did to your …butt,” he said.

  I laughed.

  “You’re not a bad man Zack. But you are a man.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two – Zack

  There was something so pleasing about watching the white paste squashing seamlessly into the cracks. I pressed over the holes and dents, again and again, easing the mixture in and then leaning back to admire my smooth handiwork. Once I had finished the ceiling, the rest of the house had started crying out to me for repairs. The tiles in the guest bathroom needed to be grouted again. Her extractor fan needed to replaced entirely. The woman I loved had cat flaps on every door in her home, each and every one of them broken. Once I went into repair-mode, I found I had my work cut out for me.

  “Who’s a little jelly bean nose? Who is? Is it you? Hm? Are you a jelly bean nose?”

  She came into the living room cooing over a ball of fluff in her cupped hands. She always did have a penchant for kittens.

  “Maddy, I think you’ve identified who is, in fact, a jelly bean nose. Can you come over here and hold this for a second?” I said and held out the trowel to her as I tried to wobble down the step ladder.

  She shifted the kitten into one hand and took the trowel from me with her other hand, giving me a fleeting peck on the cheek.

  “If I had known how useful you were going to be around here, I would have adopted you much sooner,” she said and winked at me. I playfully slapped her ass.

  “Watch out, I’m not completely tame yet,” I said, and wiped away some sweat with my forearm.

  “Well, you have just over two hours till we have to leave.” She glanced at her watch. “How’s the speech coming along?”

  She looked radiant today. When she got really busy, really distracted with playing with the dogs or when she came back from a long walk, her hair always went a little crazy, sending golden brown filaments all over her head that, in the right light, looked like a crown.

  I peeled off my shirt and started for the shower.

  “No speech. I’m just gonna speak from the heart, just like you said I should,” I smiled. She lifted an eyebrow at me and smiled doubtfully. I cleared my throat and pretended to be on a podium, addressing the kitten in her hands.

  “Gentlemen, there is no time for speaking delicately. We are soldiers, so let’s start by speaking honestly, before anything else. Before we can be strong for others, let’s be strong for ourselves. Can we dig deep to be face our own enemies first, our own fears, our own monsters and terrorists within?” I said, doing my best to come across as a serious orator, leaning in to the little creature purring in her hands. It mewed. I nodded seriously.

  “It’s no longer a question of psychology. PTSD isn’t something that strikes, like a cold virus, just at random. It is a natural and obvious reaction to atrocities that no person should ever be forced to face. PTSD is not something to be medicated, to push away. It’s something to be listened to. Trauma is a sign that no matter how dark times have been for you, you are still alive. Alive and kicking. Anger is a gift. Fear is a gift…”

  The kitten mewed again; cutting me off of the part of my speech I had worked hardest on. She smiled broadly at me and giggled, then put the kitten down. We both watched it scamper off.

  A lot can change in a year. An old house can become new. Bruises and welts can heal. And with patience, the black haze in my heart was lifting, evaporating off, molecule by molecule. It had started with a small blog, and then a book, and now I was speaking at six different places all over the country, addressing others like me, those men who had carried around dark hearts for too long. I headed for the shower but she playfully caught my arm and pulled me towards her.

  “Hey, you can’t just parade around here half naked like that and expect to get away with it,” she said.

  I kissed her, smiling.

  “Hot Guy Six Actual, I repeat Hot Guy Six Actual do you read? This is Mad Dog Delta, requesting permission to grope sir, over,” she said, giggling.

  She was so cute when she got like this. And she always, always messed it up. I pressed my bare chest against her and drew in a deep breath of her smell. All warm soap and perfume and the faint whiff of kitten.

  “Roger that, Mad Dog, we are Oscar Mike and ready to rendezvous at approximately,” I lifted her wrist to look at her watch, “fifteen hundred hours, do you copy?”

  “Roger that!” she giggled and leaned in for a kiss.

  She collapsed into me and our hungry mouths met. We had already made love once this morning, but when she got in this mood, there was no quenching that appetite of hers. The woman I loved had a lot of broken appliances in her life. And she was sexually ravenous. For both of her needs, I obliged happily.

  She was my suburban Disney princess, nursing to health all the broken, ugly animals nobody wanted, including me. More than any soldier I had met in my short and tortured military career, Maddy had a capacity for pain that defied logic. She swallowed it, smiled, and still found the guts to look sweetly and kindly at the world. She had
a strength that took my breath away. And as I quickly peeled off her clothes, for the second time that day, I was reminded that it wasn’t just her strength that left me breathless.

  My hands melted over her warm, inviting flesh and she moaned and sighed, our bodies slipping easily into the now-familiar rhythms. I wanted to share it with everyone. I wanted to tell everyone how the curve of her hip had healed me. How salvation had arrived in her lips and her deft little fingers and her smile. At the talk this evening I was going to tell the men about the prison of the mind, and how freedom was scarier than any jail, about how the wounds we inflicted on ourselves were deeper than any the enemy could inflict on us.

  But the secret was simpler than that.

  Breath to breath, skin to skin, pain to pain, Maddy had taught me something strange and yet completely ordinary.

  The real lesson I had learnt was this: every good thing that has ever happened in this world is because of women like Maddy. Not in a fancy, fluffy, mystical sense …but in a plain, everyday way.

  Whatever is beautiful and transformed and good in this world, follow it. You will find it eventually leads back to some sweet, unassuming woman in a run-down suburban house filled with cats.

  Every thread of forgiveness, everything that was once bad but is now good, follow it and you will find it starts in a messy kitchen, folded in the warm hands of a kind woman.

  - THE END -

  For more books like this, and awesome deals, feel free to join my VIP

  >>> NEWSLETTER <<<

  (PS: there’s a naughty little something waiting for you...)

  ADDITIONAL BOOKS IN THIS ANTHOLOGY

  FANTASY/SCI-FI

  Manipulator Of Elements

  Earth

  Chapter 1

  The Fromatius Mall stood at the edge of the parking lot and dominated the countryside around it.

  No one seemed to know where the mall had come from; it just showed up one day in the field and sat there empty until the stores began to open. After six months, the mall’s owners held a “Grand Opening” celebration and employed the local marching band and trade guilds to help in the celebration.

  Since the trades anticipated a profitable relationship with the mall, they were glad to help out. The schools were thrilled to have a place where the high-schoolers could work during the evenings and weekends. It would be a much better place for them to hang out in than the local Drive-In or bowling alley.

  A few people down at the township hall talked among themselves about how quickly the mall had appeared and were stunned it showed up so fast. Although the building plans were submitted and the proper forms filled out, it seemed strange everything went as smoothly as it did when the mall was constructed.

  Some of the local firms were hired to do the finishing work and pour the concrete for the sidewalks around the structure, but no one could recall ever seeing the construction firms who were hired to build the mall in town before. And before any of the trade guilds could complain about a lack of their involvement, it was there. As soon as it was constructed, the other trades were contracted and given lucrative contracts to maintain it.

  Granted, some of the stores in place seemed a little odd for a suburban shopping mall, but there were enough major retailers in it to defer any bad thoughts from the local suburban moms. Besides, it was spring and people were getting ready for the summer. The big auto plant in the nearby town of Scipio was planning to shut down for two weeks of inventory. This would allow them the chance to make certain they had everything they needed for next year’s models and allow the employees to take vacations. Some employees had additional time in based on years of service and could take as much as two more weeks of vacation. Therefore, if your father or mother were one of the lucky ones to have started working there right after the Korean War, you could spend an entire month at some pleasure dome in Florida.

  Lilly Arrad wasn’t one of the lucky ones. Her father ran an insurance company in Fromatius out of their house. Her mother stayed home and took care of her and her older sister when they were coming of age, but now she was looking into a job at the mall. Lilly didn’t want a job at the mall when it opened. She didn’t care for most of the kids she was stuck around all day at her high school and found a job with a catering company. However, most of the jobs her company pulled were at the mall for the various out of town dignitaries who came in to see how their store branches looked and what the sales represented. So, she might as well work at the mall. Perhaps next week’s job would take her somewhere else.

  She sat on the hood of her Pinto and looked at the mall again. These things sprang up everywhere. Was the entire country turning into one big shopping mall? The 70’s surely brought with it a lot of novelties. Right now, she could look forward to attending college in the fall at Cincinnati. She had her future mapped out: international studies, find a diplomat, get married and spend the rest of her life throwing parties for foreign dignitaries.

  She looked down and sighed.

  Her shoes were still in the mall. She’d forgotten them and walked barefoot all the way to the car. She really needed to get beyond that, it was so childish. Now she would have to walk back in that place and get them.

  Maybe she wouldn’t. She could drive home barefoot and find her spare sandals in the bedroom closet. She had the dance class tonight her sister taught.

  Her sister, Rachel, had learned belly dancing in college and used it to supplement her spending money. Although Rachel married last month and left the house, it still felt as if she was around. With her older sister moved out, Lilly started to feel lonely. She still had a few good friends from the neighborhood, but everyone was headed to different places for college in the fall.

  She wanted to stay close enough to come home on the weekend, but far enough to enjoy the life on campus and socialize with the right kind of people. She would be forced to stay in a dorm the first few years, but afterwards, she would find a better place to live. Somehow, the sorority life didn’t appeal to her, and Lilly doubted she would pledge one. She could see herself sharing an apartment after a year or two. Her friend Cindy started college a year early and wrote her letters about how crazy the college dorm life was in Indiana. It was one of her reasons for attending a school in Cincinnati.

  The hood of her Pinto started to burn into her butt, so Lilly decided to hop off it and go home. It was early enough in the year to walk barefoot across a parking lot, but she had no desire to go back and retrieve the shoes. They were an older pair and she had more at home. She’d look for them tomorrow. The jeans, on the other hand, were precious. She’d spent the weekend fading them to just the right hue in her mother’s washing machine. They matched the light sweater she wore.

  Lilly was small and, at five foot in height, didn’t expect to get much taller. She wasn’t a big eater and kept her weight at a comfortable hundred pounds. She even dieted down to ninety at one point, but didn’t like the way it made her feel. She stayed away from the pot smokers and druggies at her school, although she did enjoy her time on the literary magazine and French Club.

  Lilly decided to forget the shoes and turned to open her car door when she saw something.

  It was the new guy who transferred into school this year. He was sitting on the edge of the fountain at the entrance. He was staring at it and moving his hand over the water in the pool. The fountain was huge and filled up with coins every day from well-wishers who wanted to bring good luck by tossing three coins in it. But he wasn’t dropping coins in the fountain; he was busy with his eyes fixed on the pattern his hand traced through the air.

  Now she was curious.

  She finally remembered his name. It was Dion Bacchus. She remembered it because he was in her homeroom. One of the strange things she noticed one day was how many of her close friends had similar names to her last name. The school was huge. Her senior class had five hundred in its enrollment. Not only did the local auto industry contribute to its size, but the regional air force base added to it as well. It
wasn’t unusual for her to call a friend’s house and have a “Colonel Adams” answer the phone.

  Dion started school that year as a transfer student from some place in California that year, but mostly kept to himself. She had said little more than “hello” to him since he started. It was strange to see someone start school in their senior year and he didn’t seem to interact with anyone. Dion’s locker was two sections down from her, but Lilly seldom saw him speak to anyone. He was in her biology class as well, but she couldn’t ever recall him asking a single question.

  This was too bad for Dion because plenty of the girls at school were obsessed with him.

  He stood almost six foot tall, had dark features and black eyes with hair that cascaded down his back to a school-acceptable length. He wore the standard jeans and t-shirt apparel, which dominated in the school, but had an intense look on his face and a tight set of chest muscles that showed through his shirt.

  A few girls approached him one day and, although he was polite, he didn’t speak very long with any of them. A few of the local tough kids who were into drugs and hard rock tried to corner him in the hall one day. He took the hand of one and gently pulled it off him. The kid who placed it there walked away swearing under his breath with a look of pain in his eyes. Lilly remembered the tough one later coming to school with his hand in a cast.

  Rumors abounded about Dion’s background.

  He lived with his aunt and uncle in one of the nicer houses on a good street, but people seldom saw him leave the house. The rumor most people believed was that his real parents died in some kind of tragic accident and his relatives were the only ones who could take him in. Some said his family were foreign spies, others said they were extraterrestrials who were under the protection of the air base. Among other things, the base was rumored to hold the bodies of aliens who’d crashed on Earth in a flying saucer. Some people believed Dion’s family were all black magicians who sacrificed goats in the back yard, although no one had ever seen it take place. The house where he dwelled was quiet and never gave the neighbors any reason to be concerned about what happened over there.