The Damaged One
THE DAMAGED ONE
(Part One)
MIMI HARPER
The Damaged One
Copyright © 2014
All Rights Reserved
. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Cover Art: Book Cover by Design
Published by: Rascal Hearts
hapter One
“Have you ever been married?”
Augustus Pierce groaned as he rolled onto his back. This was the part he hated the most. Why did they always want to talk afterward? Why couldn’t they just bask in the afterglow like men?
“Come on, baby,” the
blonde said, following him. She rested her chin on his chest, a teasing smile on her thin lips. “I know almost nothing about you.”
“Why do you need to know about me?”
She shrugged as she ran a hand slowly down his stomach muscles. “After what we just did? I feel like I deserve to know a little something about you.”
Augustus
looked at her heavy breasts where they were pressed against his ribs. He wasn’t sure it was really worth it. She was fun…but there were always other girls ready and willing.
He climbed off the b
ed, leaving her alone in the tangled sheets.
“Oh, come on,
Gus,” she groaned with a pout in her voice. “You won’t even answer a simple question?”
He grabbed a pair of sweats from where he had abandoned them
that morning after his run and sat on the edge of the chair to pull them on. She had called him Gus. He hated when they called him Gus.
“No,” he said
in a voice he hoped would end the conversation.
It didn’t.
“No, what?”
“No, I’ve never been married.”
“Why not?”
Augustus
pulled up his pants and settled back in the chair, his eyes falling to a single photograph, the only piece of personal décor in the room. The entire apartment, really. Three faces, so different, but still so alike. Charlie, the only blonde. Fontaine, the dark-eyed beauty. And Jackie, the littlest, the most innocent. The most damaged.
He shook his head as though he could shake loose the anger and guilt that always came when his thoughts moved to
Jackie. To the choices he’d had to make. To the anger that still overwhelmed him because he had to make those horrifying choices in the first place.
“I like being single.”
“What about when you’re older?” she asked, climbing out of the bed and coming to him, moving her hips in that seductive roll he had noticed earlier, at the restaurant where he picked her up. He’d known her only a few hours, and, yet, she had already learned more about him than most of his daily business associates knew.
“Don’t you want someone to t
ake care of you in your old age?” she asked, continuing to push his patience.
“I have family.
A brother and two sisters.”
“But what about love? What about children?”
“I already raised my family,” he said as he stood, wrapping his fingers in her long, thick hair. He pulled her head back roughly, exposing her throat to the mercy of his eager tongue. She groaned as he tasted her salty skin, smelled the sweat of their earlier passion. It took a minute, but his words registered through the fog of her desire. She stepped back, twisting from his hold on her hair.
“What do you mean?
I thought you said you were never married.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Then how did you raise a family? Do you have a kid?”
“No.”
He sat back down, wondering why he had said anything at all. “It’s a long story.”
“We have all night,” she said as she climbed into his lap, pushing him back against the chair.
Augustus ran his hands slowly up her naked back. Nothing felt better than the naked skin of a woman. It was his one downfall, the one thing that could make him do a stupid thing. Like mention things about his past that he never really talked about. It was nobody’s business but his.
“
Gus…”
“Do you want to talk, or do you want to fuck?”
That shut her up.
The
blonde captured his lips before the words were fully formed, pushing her tongue hard into his mouth as though he might change his mind if he could escape her probing intrusion. He yanked at her hips, dragging her tighter against him, suddenly regretting the pants he had pulled on moments before. He tried not to think about the past, about the woman who valued sex and drugs over the four lives she had brought thoughtlessly into this world. Tried not to make comparisons in his head between her chosen profession and his own, sometimes reckless, behavior.
Instead, he took great handfuls of the blond
e’s tight ass in his hands, moving her against his cotton and spandex covered cock. She tasted sour, of the wine and whiskey they’d shared at the restaurant. But her ass was tight and her hips were loose. Her cunt was like warm cream when he finally managed to get his pants out of the way and won the battle with the condom wrapper.
“Wow, that’s so good,” the blonde groaned as she leaned back, her hair brushing the top of his knees as she continued to roll her cunt against his cock.
“So good.”
Augustus
let go of her ass and slid his hands up her back. He pulled her forward just slightly so he could snatch one, then the other, of her nipples between his teeth. She groaned over and again as he nibbled at the tender, erect flesh. She began to move faster, her roll turning into a bounce as she ground herself against him. He could feel the tension coming into her back, her shoulders, as her orgasm built in her lower belly. She screamed like a banshee, disrupting Augustus’s concentration. He sat back and watched her cum on his cock, finding her pleasure almost repulsive as her face clenched, her thin lips all but disappearing.
He closed his eyes, tried to concentrate just on the feel of her cunt as he
r juices flooded over him. He thought of big tits and tight asses, of a model he met just weeks ago and a flight attendant he visited a few times a year. But, as it always did, his mind moved to boyish curves and a tiny butterfly tattoo. He knew guilt would come later, but he let his mind travel over the body he once loved, the woman he once thought would be his salvation. Claire. His lover, his friend. The woman who should have been his wife.
His orgasm was quick, painful.
Just like their love had been.
There was no salvation for a man like
Augustus.
The blond
e settled in a heap in his lap, content, it seemed, to lie there for hours. Augustus settled back in the uncomfortable, if expensive, chair, trying to think of a nice way to move her off. Then his smartphone began to vibrate on the nightstand.
“I should get that,” he said, lifting the woman up and setting her in his place as he left the chair.
He didn’t expect the phone call to be important. Thought it might just be his business partner leaving one of his many late night messages. Dave was like that. Always thinking of something important in the middle of the night, so he would text or call, leaving the message for Augustus when he knew Augustus wouldn’t answer. Would he be surprised when Augustus actually picked up?
“Pierce,” he barked into the phone, years of business training second nature to him now.
“Mr. Pierce? This is Wayne Foster…the private investigator?”
Augustus
frowned as he turned away from the still somewhat dazed blonde and began to peel the wet condom from his flaccid cock. “What can I do for you, Mr. Foster?”
“I didn’t expect you to answer,” the man said, clearly at a loss for words.
Augustus glanced at the alarm clock. Three forty-five, it read. “Then why did you call so late?”
“I, uh…sorry,” he said.
“I’m an early riser and it’s after five here. I just thought I would be leaving a voice mail.”
“But you got me.
So speak.”
“Yeah.”
The private investigator hesitated again.
Augustus
could imagine him sitting in a greasy spoon somewhere, his notebook open in front of him next to a big pile of fried eggs and bacon. Foster was the epitome of the private dick, an ex-cop who liked to make extra money photographing philandering spouses and chasing down missing persons. He had assured Augustus a month ago that no one could ever truly go missing in this day and age, what with technology tracking everything from credit card purchases to text messages. Augustus had bet fifteen thousand dollars on the hope that he was right.
“So?”
Augustus said, tossing the sperm filled condom into the trash.
“I found your sister.”
Augustus sat heavy on the side of the bed, his glance again going to the photograph of Charlie, Fontaine, and Jackie. He picked it up, studying her blue eyes, completely forgetting about the blonde across the room until he felt her climb onto the bed behind him, resting her chin on his shoulder as she looked at the photo. “Where?” he asked, as he slid the photo into a drawer.
“Texas.”
Augustus frowned, dark memories chasing one another through his mind. A tiny, rundown apartment. Drunk strangers banging on the door. The landlord threatening to toss them out—again. “Where in Texas?” he asked as he shook away the memories and the blonde hanging on his shoulder.
“Denton.
It’s a college town north of Dallas.”
“Yeah
, I know.” Augustus leaned forward slightly, more memories flooding his mind. Darkness lay at the edges, threatening to invade. He could feel it, almost like a palpable thing. “I’ll catch the first flight out.”
“No,” Foster s
aid quickly. “I’m coming to Los Angeles in an hour. I think it would be best if we talk in person first.”
“I want to see her.
I need to see her before someone spooks her and she runs again.”
It had happened before.
They found her outside of Denver last time. Before that it was Portland, Seattle, and Boise. That was two years ago. Two years he had been searching for his sister. Two years since the last intervention, the last time he forced her into rehab, the last time she promised she would try. Jackie. His baby sister.
“I understand,” Foster said.
“But I think we should talk first.”
And then the darkness buried
him, sinking its claws deep into Augustus’s soul. He wasn’t sure how he knew. Maybe it was something in Foster’s voice. Or something about the look in Jackie’s eyes the last time he saw her. Or just the knowledge of what addiction, of what their collective past, could do to someone as fragile as Jackie.
But he knew.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”