21. SINS OF THE SOUL

21

SINS OF THE SOUL

RYDEN

S he was too much. Too much fire. Too much passion. A goddess of sin and seduction. I wasn’t ready for this feeling of helplessness and need.

I ached to surrender to her flames, to let her consume me, take me anywhere she desired. It’d be so easy to give in, to say yes, to have everything I wanted, to let her give me everything she wanted.

But this woman was not a sensible decision. Despite the haze of lust, I knew she could one day become a storm that could destroy me. I couldn’t allow her to be that.

It’d be prudent to stay away. Even though my brain knew that… my body wanted her. Just her. Caution be damned. Everything else be damned. Throw it all to hell and burn them down.

“I can’t.” I stood up from the couch, and she looked up at me with brown eyes that had become impossibly dark. “I’ll send you everything I have on The Strangler if you still want it,” I whispered.

I took a step away from her, knowing very well that standing closer to her wouldn’t be good for me or my sanity. I was already halfway close to doing something I knew I’d regret.

“You know that’s not all I want. You’re going to run now?” she scoffed, raking her fingers through her red hair. “I didn’t know you were a… coward.”

I bristled and growled. I hated that look in her eyes—I knew she was pushing me, checking my limits. I thought of taking her by her throat and teaching her not to talk to me like that, but… I took in a calming breath, shaking my head.

“I know what you want, but I can’t give you that. We can’t…” I paused and stared at her, her blazing eyes, her shameless smile. “It doesn’t make me a coward. I’m simply responsible.”

“Responsible, my ass,” she said with a gleaming grin, standing up from the couch with a shake of her head.

Temptress. Fucking witch.

“I wanted you when you so smugly called my report absurd, and I know you did, too. I didn’t imagine that day in the café. I know I didn’t.”

My lungs were trying to malfunction.

Not now, stupid organs. I need to breathe.

“You didn’t, but…”

“But… oh, oh shit.” She paled. “I didn’t…” Her eyes narrowed. “Do you—do you have a girlfriend?” She looked almost bewildered as she stumbled back from me. Her face went pale, and she didn’t look so strong. “Shit, I thought… no, there was nothing about a girlfriend when I…” When she realized she had said too much, she slapped her hand against her mouth. “Fuck.”

The trapped, wild look in her eyes made something in my heart clench, and it hurt. I had never felt such odd feelings in my life. What in the strange fuck was this?

“No, Yara, calm the fuck down.”

“I wouldn’t have done anything if I knew you had a girlfriend. Forgive me,” she said, wringing her hands together. It was like something had shifted, and I could see another side of her, a side she must not show often to others. “My father… he cheated on my mother, and…” she trailed off, and her eyes shuttered. “Never mind. You should leave.”

“No. I don’t have a girlfriend. I wouldn’t have touched you like that if… I had a girlfriend,” I whispered, and she let out a relieved breath.

“Oh, thank fuck. I’m glad I didn’t hurt someone like my mother was hurt,” she said with a wince. “That would be terrible.”

I took her hand in mine, looking into her eyes. “Do you want to tell me about your mother, only if you feel like it?”

She sat there for a while, her eyes lost and distant, her eyes contemplative.

“My father cheated on her.” Her voice was hesitant. She wasn’t sure whether she should tell me or not. “First in secret, and once it was out in the open, he started to bring women into their bedroom. He made a hole in her self-esteem until she was… she was nothing.”

Her nostrils flared and her eyes blazed. I saw the hint of darkness in her eyes as she grabbed her hair.

“The fucker twisted and turned her into something so distorted until she lost everything, and she just became this faded version of what she had once been, and then she… died.” She winced, rubbing her face, and I saw the little girl she was once. Her eyes were made of broken stars.

Everything in me burned to find her father. To hurt him, rip him apart until he screamed for mercy and begged for death, and then burn him down.

“I hate him.”

Pain like that never left you. Memories like that would cut a scar deep within. You could cover it with a new skin, but it’d always stay. I knew all about it. I had my scars that still hurt whenever I thought of my mother.

“He…he forced her to take her own life. He killed her.” Her lips trembled. “And then he carried on like she never existed. His life went on, and there were no repercussions. Money makes everything alright. In the end, everything fell into place for him, and my mother was just a forgotten, crazy, mentally ill woman who committed suicide.”

Fuck. I wanted to pull her into my skin and steal her pain away, protect her from the viciousness in the world, but who would protect her from me?

“I don’t want to say sorry, but… I want to… kill the man who did that to you.” It came out before I could stop. “I want to hurt him in every way possible.”

She smiled at me, and my breath faltered.

“He isn’t alive anymore,” she said.

I wished she hadn’t so readily given me a look into her secrets, her scars. Her trust in me was staggering, just as staggering as her confession about how much she wanted me.

“You must miss her,” I said, and she shook her head, a soft smile slipping past her brokenness, quickly filling the cracks in her mask and the Yara West I knew was back. “My mother died, and I still miss her.”

“Yes, I miss her so much, but I’m grateful that she decided to end her life sooner rather than later. I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone. The worst thing about all of this was that she loved my father until the day she died.”

“Some are so conditioned by the society around them to accept whatever was given to them. They’re manipulated to take the scraps of love thrown their way, coated with abuse. And these women forget they deserve nothing less than the very best. It’s depressing, but I’ve seen it happen so many times.”

The stories I chased took me into places I had never wanted to visit again, to men who didn’t deserve to live.

“You must have seen a lot of it,” she said as she took a deep breath. “This isn’t where I wanted this night to go, Ryden,” she finally said with a shake of her head. “Not really.” She looked confused as if she wasn’t sure what the fuck was going on.

I chuckled. “You have a one-track mind, Doctor West.”

“That’s what made me become a Chief Medical Examiner at this age, Mr. Sinclair. I know you’re the same. You wouldn’t have been here if you weren’t focused.”

“I am.”

“Tell me about the woman,” she said after another long pause.

“I said I don’t have a girlfriend. I wasn’t lying, but I do have someone. It’s purely physical between us, and we both know it’s temporary,” I said. She looked up at me, her fingers tugging at the silky strands of red.

The image of her on her knees in front of me, her mad eyes bright, her red lips wide and ready to take all of me in… it was so fucking vivid it made my breath snag.

“But?” she asked, leaning her head back on the couch. “Go on.”

“There’s no but,” I said, a bite in my voice. It came out harsher than I intended. My jaw clenched, my eyes fell to her lips, and I felt hunger rushing along my skin. Wild and unconstrained. I wanted to break myself out of the cage and hunt—hunt her to the edge of the night, chase her into oblivion until we were tangled together, our naked bodies bruised from pleasure and pain.

“There is definitely a but,” she said with a soft smile that made my cock harder.

“Fuck, Yara.” Her name was a curse, a prayer. My fingers itched to feel her, just one more time. Maybe then this ravaging need inside me would simply shut the fuck up.

I came here to talk about Victor, but now I wanted to know more about this maddeningly sexy woman in front of me, looking at me like she had been thirsty for a long time, lost in a desert, and I was that one drop of water.

Why can’t you give in? It can be a one-time thing. A small, hungry voice prodded inside my mind. I shook my head and took another step back from her, saving myself from the torture of being so close to her.

“I need to go.”

“Why, Ryden?” she said my name in a whisper… like a supplication. Like an offering to God. Fuck. She’d be my demise.

I’m scared of this raging hunger inside me, the quivers in my heart.

For the first time in my life, I was afraid. Afraid of what this woman could do to me if I gave into the need roaring inside me, if I let my guard down and made way for her inside the walls.

No. That would be stupidity.

“Because we both know that this isn’t going to end well.” I shrugged, and her lips pulled up as if she was amused to hear me say that. “Why do it when you already know the ending?”

She chuckled and licked her lips. “Because we both know that the sex would be unbelievable. It’s stupid to resist something that could bring us both a world of pleasure. It’s not like I’m asking for a ring. I’m just ordering you to fuck me. One night. Just one night.” She licked her lips, and her eyes went to the half-opened book on her table. It was something obscenely sexy. She followed my eyes and smirked. “You can borrow it if you want. He does things to her… dirty things. He ties her to her bed and fucks her hard; cuts his name on her skin… he chases her into the woods and uses her like the whore she is before he fucks her with his tail… oh, and he’s a dragon.”

My body went hot. My heart almost collapsed.

A long pause, before she whispered, “I want you to do those things to me. I want you to use me.”

“You’re obviously drunk, Yara.”

“Not drunk enough to not know what I’m talking about,” she said, smacking her lips together. “I want you to touch me, take me, and destroy me. I want you to do things you’ve always wanted to do without any mercy. I want your cock inside my cunt, filling me, ruining me. I want your hand around my throat until my eyes swim with stars.” She leaned against the wall, her eyes half closed, as if she was already imagining the things she wanted me to do.

“Stop. Yara, please.”

“I want you so bad it hurts here.” She traced a finger down her pussy. My throat was filled with burning hot sand. Her fingers trailed down her breast as if she couldn’t control herself. “Why would you say no to all of that when your cock knows exactly what it wants?”

I couldn’t get lost in the madness in her eyes, the promises that lingered on her tempting words, the sensuality of her scent.

She smelled like fire burning through trees, leaving only ashes in its wake.

Her eyes were wide, her smile innocent, but I knew. I always trusted my gut, and nothing about Yara West was innocent. She was fucking mad. A beautiful, chaotic mess. She might not be mad like me, but she was not normal either.

That rumbling thunder of craziness in her eyes was far too easy to see when she talked like this.

“One moment of pleasure is not worth the headache that follows,” I said, knowing very well that I’d regret it as soon as I walked out of her house.

“Isn’t it?”

She trailed a finger down my cheek, rolling it down my lips. She traced the scar that was on my lower lip with a sigh, eyes half closed.

“You feel so fucking good,” she muttered before she took a step back from me. “You have better control than I do. Very well, then, Ryden. It’s a pleasure meeting you,” she said with a smile that looked practiced on her lips, and she no longer looked so free, so out of control. This woman was a crazy ride, and I wouldn’t ever be ready for it.

I let out a breath of relief, even when disappointment followed soon after.

“Send me every single detail you have on The Strangler.”

Her eyes darkened for a second when she mentioned The Strangler, and then something replaced the anger. It was fleeting. I would have missed it if I hadn’t been so focused on her.

Why? Was it only because she worked on a woman he killed?

“I’ll see you around,” she said in that singsong voice as if she had already decided this would not be our last meeting. Perhaps she was right. I somehow knew it wouldn’t be the last time.

She pushed her hand forward, and I took her palm in mine. The animal in me screamed to hold on, to tug her to me, to chase her into oblivion. “Goodbye, Yara,” I said as she walked me to the door.

“Wait, you forgot something.” She walked to the table and grabbed the autopsy report. “This is Victor Bane’s report,” she said as she handed me the file and the book I had been eyeing.

“What?” I asked, glaring at her.

“You looked curious when I was telling you about the dragon. Read it and regret it, Turtle Mocha.” Her voice was so fucking confident, so was the slight smirk. “Regret all the things you couldn’t do to me and stay awake at night imagining me tied to my bed, my fingers buried in my pussy. It could have been your fingers.”

I didn’t know whether I wanted to kill her or kiss her to make her shut up. I was going to lose my last thread of sanity if I stood there any longer, so close to her, so close that every pore in my body felt like it was being filled with her luscious scent.

“Thank you for that,” I said sarcastically.

When the door closed behind me, it took me every ounce of my strength to not pound on her door and take her pressed against the walls.

“You need to fucking get your head straight, Ryden. You can’t afford to mess up right now,” I said to myself as I left her home, even when everything in me wished I could just stay and take her up on the offer.