Durability (The LockDown Series Book 3) (14 page)

“You’re forgetting one thing, angel.” Those lips turn into a naughty devilish smile and it makes the pussy between my thighs, that has already exploded multiple times today, tighten and struggle to remain calm. It is pulsing and throbbing and begging for him to carry out whatever threat he has conjured up in his brilliant brain.

“Oh yeah? And what’s that baby?” I bite my lip hard, staring at his intense dark green eyes, my blue ones boring into him, begging him for that hand of his that I can see struggling to not twitch.

“Oh baby, you are pushing me hard tonight, I think you’ll find I can be far more inventive and imaginative than a simple spank. You have seen many sides of me now Princess, well pretty much all of them, but there are a few sides to me that are a little, what shall I call them? Fucked up? Yes, that seems like an apt description.” He nods to himself, acceptant of his own description. His naked form is beside me and glorious in every aspect.

“And what are those sides? I’m sure I could handle them, baby. I can handle anything you throw at me.” I bite my lip again as he laughs sadistically.

“Oh sweetheart, these are sides of myself even I don’t think I can handle. I’ve kept them from even entering my mind because sometimes I just can’t control what happens and I fear it could overtake every ounce of the Leighton you know.” I don't know if it is just me but the temperature in the room has escalated above bearable. I am finding every word that leaves his mouth far too sexy and arousing. I should be petrified of this new person he is once again showing, the threatening words he is saying of how I should be scared of his other sides, but I am now so desperate to meet them, and love them with the same intense passion I do every side of him. There isn’t a thing he can do that will send me away.

“You can handle anything Leighton, and I will be there and love every ounce of you there is, good, bad, ugly and beautiful. Please let me see the true you, let me show you there is no part of you I would not die to keep, to have and hold.” I struggle to push myself to a seated position, my arm still showing no sign of returning to its original self.

“I wish I could believe you Abbi, but this is too dark for you and your beautiful pure self. I can’t allow anything to change the way you are, who you are.” I sigh as I turn my body so my legs hang off the edge.

I put my good arm around his hip and pull him between my legs, I lean my head to his chest and comfort in the steady beating of his strong whole heart. “I promised myself that I would never change for anyone, and I haven’t. Everything I have ever done in this life, since I grasped control of it that is, is to live the way I wanted to, to love who I wanted, to have what I wanted. Leighton, baby, I would never let you change me, and I would never want you to. You fell in love with this girl, not some make believe fake persona I wanted you to see. I’m real and I’m true and I want to see everything you have to give. Please let me love the entirety of you, not just those bits you think I can handle. Show me. Please.” I beg him, breathing in his intoxicating scent, a mixture of arousal, sweet sweat and pure and utter Leighton Lock.

“Baby, I can’t,” he reveals sadly, almost ashamed of the side he is keeping to himself. I thought we had gotten past the hiding of his true self when he had revealed the need to dominate. I thought he had completely opened up to me, but I have been wrong, and I fear for his emotional wellbeing as I see him begin to close down from me.

“Yes Leighton, yes you bloody well can. I am your wife, your lover and your partner. I deserve to know what I am married to; I want to know who you are. I promise you now, no matter what you think I can’t handle, I can. I have been raped, abused and neglected for the majority of my life. I have been beaten to near death and threatened to the extent of repeated nightmares, and who was there to see me through, to show me the lightness at the end of the dark abyss? You.” I point at his heart. “You were the one who made me see the good, so Leighton I can handle you, I can handle anything this god forsaken earth chucks my way. So please, let me be your wife, let me help you and see that you are pure and good and true.” I kiss over his heart, laying my hand atop the beating organ. It speeds up under my touch, his skin becoming goose bumped.

“Angel.” He sighs softly. His hands stroke my head gently. I look up to his face, his eyes looking at me with the most intense love I have ever seen. “I’ll be there to put you back together when you fall, I will be there to hold you when life becomes too much for you, I’ll shelter you from the bad on this earth and I promise I will always love you and from this point, always be entirely truthful.” I smile to him, fluttering my eyelashes at him.

“I love you Leighton and I promise I always will.”

“I know princess, I know. And I love you too, so much sometimes I can’t breathe without you near me. You have my heart in your fist baby, every squeeze pumping the blood through my body, the body that before you, was just ice and stone, a barely living or breathing vessel of a man who had lost his way when his parents left this world. Finding you made me begin to live again Abigail, you made me want to be a better man. I promise I will try to be the man you deserve.” He leans in and kisses the top of my head gently.

“You are all the man I could ever need Leighton, and more. There isn’t a thing you could do to make me want you any less.” I kiss his chest again.

“I hope so Abbi, I really hope so, because the things you will find out about me aren’t things anybody should be subjected to, I wouldn’t dream of even involving you in the other parts of me. But if you’re adamant you need to know I will tell you, but please, just don’t see me as the monster I see myself to be.”

“You are far from a monster Leighton. My father was a monster, Phillip was a monster, you are not a monster. You are my saviour, my hero and my husband.” He nods once, sighing for the umpteenth time.

“Okay. I’ll tell you.” He comes and sits beside me, turning his body so he is on the bed completely. I follow suit, twisting myself around so I am once again leaning on the headboard.

“Since I was a kid, I’ve been different, and it started when I was fifteen. That was the first time I killed somebody, the first time I took someone’s life and felt a kind of pleasure course through me that nothing in this world, including you, has ever brought me.”

How am I supposed to explain to my wife, who I love with my every breath, that I enjoyed taking somebody's life, that I loved seeing the blood drain from their faces, watch and smile as they inhaled their last struggled breath? Even now, thinking about the last person’s life I had taken, her fathers, I can’t stop the surge of pleasure that shakes my fucked-up system.

How will, or can I tell her that a lot of the time, when I am fucking the living shit out of her, I am thinking about the next unfortunate person I will be killing, or thinking of the sadistic way in which I will do it?

“What do you mean you killed somebody when you were fifteen Leighton, you were a kid?” She asks me, and I can
see her trying to stop the feeling of shock from plastering her perfect face.

“You already knew I started in the business I am in when I was a young boy, my father encouraged the violence I know so well. He was the one who put a gun in my hand, the one who let me go with him on jobs, who let me take control.” She nods to me, her body sitting at the headboard, her legs bent with her working arm resting on her knees.

“Well, it continued throughout my young life into my teenage years. By the time he finally let me take somebody's life I had already seen enough blood and devastation that it had fucked me up a great deal. It got to the point that I couldn’t actually go through a day without feeling that adrenaline kick I got from hurting somebody. I would fidget, shake and sweat until my father would realise the thing I needed most. He was the only person who knew the extent of what was happening to me. I couldn’t control it, I couldn’t grasp any semblance of reality, all I wanted was blood, and a lot of it.” Her eyes are wide and frightened. I knew she wouldn’t be able to handle the truth; she is just too pure and perfect. If she knew the extent of the torture I have bestowed on people in their final hours and days, she wouldn’t even be here, she would be as far from me as she could possibly get, taking my daughter with her.

“I’m not quite understanding what you’re saying Leighton?” She looks as confused as I am feeling.

“It’s hard to say, because I don’t want to scare you angel. I can’t put this in any terms that won’t make you want to run far from me. I can’t risk losing you; you are the best thing I have in my life baby.” I flinch as her eyes flare like a thunder storm.

“Tell me the truth Leighton, you promised to, and I promised I would love you no matter what. I can’t handle any more lies; I need honesty and openness from this minute forward.” I definitely underestimated the strength my wife houses, because the look in those powerful eyes makes me want to run and hide, yes me, the powerful, slit-any-fuckers-throat-happily, guy.

“I need it,” I state, not actually revealing the truth entirely.

“Need what Leighton?” she asks seriously, her body stiff and angry. I am pissing her off with my deliberate avoidance to certain questions. I have agreed to tell her the truth but it is harder than I ever expected it to be.

“Blood, death, destruction. The coke, the addiction I have to that is nothing to the need for this. Your addiction to those darn pills is mild to this power inside of me. It’s been hard Abbi, it really has, trying to stop myself when all I really want to do is feel somebody's pulse wither beneath my grip when I’m having a hard day. You’ve made it possible to control it, giving me your body to lose myself in. But baby, everything has been building up, all the bad things that have happened to you have been boiling inside of me and all I really want to do right now is go out and find some fucking low life to destroy.” I breathe out hard as I finish talking.

Her gasp shakes through me and makes my heart rise up in my throat.

“Leighton,” she says quietly. That powerful bright look she had had in her eyes melts away to a scared pale blue.

“Baby,” I reply sadly, trying to show her I’m not always the monster I have described.

“God, how are you surviving right now?” She gets to her knees and brings her hand to my face, stroking my cheek gently.

I lean my face into her warm palm feeling the love she exhumes. “My heart is breaking Leighton.”

I clamp my eyes closed, knowing what is coming. It isn’t fair to ask her to stay, to ask her to accept me, because let’s face it, I don’t deserve acceptance. I deserve a mental institute and a lot of lobotomies. “I understand Abbi, but please don’t take my girl away from me, losing you is enough but Mel, I can’t live without seeing her every day. I don’t expect you to want me anymore, this is a horrible side to me and I warn you it is bad. But every day, the urge and need is getting worse and more uncontrollable. I’m literally on the edge and about to fall off, I can’t ask you to take that leap with me baby, it isn’t fair for me to drag you down, but know I have and always will love you with everything I am and everything I will ever be. But I can’t hide or keep this at bay any longer, it needs to be released before I snap.” I try to stop the tears as they fall, first one then another. Each trickle of water burns my flesh as I begin to hate who I truly am with such a raw loathing I’m not sure I will actually survive without the support and structure my family brings me.

Not even my boys, the people who have been my unit before Abbi, know about this part of me, not even Ant who I have shared my utmost secrets with. They would probably understand, would probably have some of the same urges, but that’s not what these are. They are not urges, they are black demonic viruses that plague my entire system. I can’t rid myself of them, I can’t purify myself because they are going to always be there, always latching onto my humanity like a fucking leach, draining me dry to the core.

“Leighton,” she says again, her face mere millimetres from mine. I can’t look at her, can’t bear to see that hatred and disgust I know she would be harbouring in her brilliant blue eyes.

“I’ll see you soon angel, don’t ever forget the good times because I know for sure I’ll never forget a single moment with you. I love you, always and forever, to the moon and back.” I look up and kiss her lips softly before climbing from the bed and walking from her room.

“Leighton.” She shouts after me. “Leighton,” she speaks again, this time with the clear sound of tears in her voice. I ignore the hurt she presents and carry on walking. I can’t stand this; my life is crumbling to the floor. My heart is barely beating as it lay on the hospital tiled flooring, the occasional thump driving the dried
up blood through the system inside of me that no longer wants to live. There is no point in living because without Abbi I am a morsel of a man, an empty shell of a guy. “LEIGHTON!” I can hear her screaming as I walk the hallways of the dark hospital. It is late night-early morning and the only thing anybody will probably hear is my wife breaking down as I walk away from her. It is the only thing I can do, because I saw in her eyes and heard it in her voice. We are over and there is nothing I can do to change it. I can’t stop or alter this part of me, it is impossible, I have tried, goddamn hard. Reverting to sex and drugs to try and override the need but nothing has truly dissipated the feeling. It is always there, always causing me to kill some random guy here and there.