Awaken to Pleasure Read Free

death.
    She’d been so lovely that day, a shimmering memory of the girl he’d wed, before news of her father’s death had stolen her joy. He’d long since learned that that girl had been a mirage, but when she’d turned to him for comfort, he hadn’t been able to deny her. Not when grief had ripped apart the mask of sophistication that had become her face.
    And they’d created a child.
    Whom Bonnie had murdered when she’d taken her life with a cocktail of drugs. If she hadn’t, he might have been a parent, too, able to refute Taylor’s claim. He could still feel the knives that had sliced through his soul when the autopsy had revealed her to be pregnant. Further tests had proven that the child had been his flesh and blood.
    But, even that incredible grief hadn’t compared to his rage at discovering that Bonnie had known of the tiny life growing inside of her. She’d known that his child was in her womb when she’d taken her final lover, and she’d known that his child was in her womb when she’d ingested the fatal drug cocktail.
    At that moment of understanding, hate had spread through his body like a virus, decimating his ability to feel tender emotions.

Two
    “S he could be nice sometimes,” Taylor said, betraying the soft heart behind that tough exterior.
    “When she wasn’t drugged to the gills.” He knew too much about the kind of pain “nice” Bonnie could inflict.
    “I wonder why she did all those things.”
    He knew she was talking about the drugs and that final affair, unearthed by the press and gleefully announced to the world. What would she say if he told her that Bonnie’s famous lover had been the last in a string of men?
    He’d stopped touching Bonnie as soon as he’d discovered the infidelities. His love for her had died long before. After a lonely, barren childhood, her joyful charm had drawn him, only to teach him an even deeper sense of isolation. They hadn’t shared a bed again, except for that day four months before her death. After hours spent at work in Taylor’s company, aching for things he had no right to demand, his defenses had been at an all-time low. Seeing Bonnie smile afterweeks of depression, he’d desperately wanted to believe that they could salvage their marriage.
    As the forgotten child of an impulsive celebrity union, he’d promised himself that he would not repeat the cycle of divorce and remarriage that characterized his parents, and which had already spread to his three younger half siblings. Even the youngest, Valetta, had a broken marriage under her belt.
    Driven by that promise, he’d kept trying to glue together his and Bonnie’s shattered relationship. He’d even let Taylor go without a single touch, stifling the hungry need her presence always aroused.
    But even his most precious vows had a breaking point—he hated Bonnie for teaching him that lesson. The final straw had come the day she’d flaunted her faithlessness, meeting her newest lover in a place haunted by the paparazzi. That humiliating betrayal had forever severed any remaining loyalty he’d had toward the girl he’d married, and he’d immediately filed for divorce.
    He still remembered her reaction.
    “Oh please,” she’d mocked, cocktail in hand. It had been barely 10:00 a.m. “As if you’ve been faithful.”
    The tragedy was, he had. The only infidelity he could be accused of was of the mind. In his bleakest moments, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Taylor, but he would’ve never touched her while a wedding band encircled his finger. Never. She deserved better than that.
    After he’d walked out on Bonnie, a cautious hope had taken root in his heart. Once the divorce was final, he’d intended to seek out Taylor and see if someone so young and untouched could find something to love in him.
    Then all of his dreams had crumbled to dust. Bonnie’s death hadn’t shocked him; she’d been trying to kill herself for years. It was discovering the murder of his child