Free The Filthy Series: The Complete Dark Erotic Serial Novel by Megan D. Martin

lips, drawing their attention to me.
    “Well, hells bells.” Uncle Georgie stepped over to me, most of his hair balding. “I thought you were gonna kill her all over again.” His blue gaze critiqued me much like Gina’s had. “You okay, Faye? It’s hard losing your momma.”
    My heart swelled, making the ache in my bones seem nearly non-existent when he wrapped his arms around me. My other aunts followed suit, gushing about me and how they’d missed me. Not one of them put me down for the things I said in the funeral home. And I hated that I hadn’t given them all more of chance when I was younger. My mom had never completely discarded them as family members, but she didn’t spend a lot of time with them either. Her connection to them was strictly through Facebook and sparse phone calls here and there, even though they all lived in a small town barely an hour away. The times we saw them were just mutual meetings at weddings, or when we went to see my grandparents, which wasn’t often either.
    She had written them off so easily once she found Taylor and didn’t need their charity anymore. I was only nine years old and didn’t know better when she told me that they were beneath us. That we were better. What a fucking joke.
    Within minutes we were all sitting around on the various plush furniture, my aunts and uncle chattering loudly, trying to talk over one another to tell me about their lives, their kids, grandkids. None of them came today because Taylor had demanded that they not. I assumed he hadn’t wanted her siblings there either, but he couldn’t very well tell them they couldn’t come to her funeral.
    I didn’t really feel bad that my cousins didn’t get to come and say goodbye. My mom was the mean aunt no one liked anyway.
    “You know my little Bethie has four of her own now, with number five on the way,” Gina gushed.
    “Good God, isn’t there a law that you people shouldn’t be able to reproduce?” I jumped at the sound of the cold voice. Laura’s voice, my step-grandmother, Taylor’s mom. She was adorned in a dress that probably cost more money than I made in the last three years fucking strangers. Sparkling black jewels hung from her ears. Her hair was dyed black and done up in an elaborate swirl on her head. Just because she hid the gray hairs didn’t mean she hid her age. Her skin was worn and leathery from too much tanning.
    Gina stood up defiantly, her hand clutched around a glass of wine. “You’re lucky today was my sister’s funeral old lady, or I’d punch you in the fuckin’ face.”
    Laura smirked. It was a look so familiar to me, so identical to Taylor’s that it made me shiver. Laura had never liked me, never took me in as her own grandchild. She never cared for my mother either. All around she was just a bitchy old bag of bones.
    “Well, look who it is.” Her cold hazel gaze met mine. “The little whore came back to make a fool of herself in front of everyone we know.”
    I clenched my hand in my lap. “It’s nice to see you too, Laura.”
    She narrowed her gaze. “I never said it was nice to see you. Rhett should have left you wherever it is he found you. Where was it? Some run-down shack with the rest of these heathens?”
    I was almost too shocked to respond. I figured that Rhett had told everyone about my new seedy life. Looks like he didn’t.
    “You’re asking for it aren’t you?” Gina charged forward, while my other two aunts started shouting at Laura simultaneously. Uncle Georgie jumped up at the last minute and snatched Gina back forcing her to drop her wine glass, red liquid coated the carpet.
    Laura looked absolutely appalled and terrified all at once. I nearly laughed, but then he came into the room. Taylor walked in like he owned the place, which technically he did, but there was air about him that I had never seen in anyone else. It was that cocky I own you air. It made strangers look his way in awe and jealousy and it stilled my aunt’s flailing