Free Brutally Beautiful by Christine Zolendz Page A

She’s fearless .  Blood dripped from my fingertips as her pure unscathed lips touched mine, pulling the hate and anger away from my soul. 
    Pure unadulterated raw sex emerged from the pages.  Erotic touches, words, and violence twisted together to form an epic story of horrific proportions, with a sick tangled web of obsession and passion.
    I had never been afraid of anything in my life with the exception of one violent day from my youth, which completely changed the person I was then, to the empty shell, I was today.  Since that day, I’ve kept everyone and everything away from me so I don’t hurt anyone with my wrath and my belligerence.  But this girl, this woman, she was slowly captivating me, slipping the fear, the hate, and the rage away from me with her mysterious poise and calmness in my world. 
    When the sun rose over the evergreens that surrounded my home, I had over fifty thousand words to my next book.  I didn’t stop either, I couldn’t.  My muse would not shut the fuck up.  The obsession consumed me for days.  The girl, I knew would be an obsession for longer.  I wanted to scrape the words I’ve written off the white of the screen, grab them tightly in my hand and smash them against her face.  Have her feel my words against her flesh, smear them into her pores, and have them seep into her skin.
    I needed to see her again.  I needed her to hate me and to stay far away from me, because I wanted to consume her completely.
     

Chapter 5

     
    Empty wine bottles and burgundy bottom stained glasses littered the trailer.  Fran had tried to be a gentleman and attempted to help me clean after Dylan’s birthday dinner last night, but we didn’t get too far.  From the moment Bree and Dylan slipped out of the door to sleep back at Dylan’s place, Fran’s hands were all over me. 
    When his lips met mine, I felt like I was watching myself from a distance, trying to find some sort of feelings or something…some glimmer of want .  But all I could think of was the life I’d run away from.  How I thought I’d be able to delude myself into thinking that I could possibly date a man after what I’d been through was laughable to me.  My body tensed up, a small whimper escaped from my mouth and I simply pushed myself away from Fran’s pawing limbs.  My past was going to haunt my every kiss from now on, wasn’t it?  Every time another man places his lips or hands on me, I’m going to cringe and wonder what it is he really wants to take from me, aren’t I?
    I did my best to compose myself and offered a silly excuse about getting to know one another better and cleaning, I had to clean.  Fran, the gentlemen he was, understood and helped clean a bit, but I just called it a night, and when he gently asked me, I agreed to another date out of guilt. 
    After he left, I had another miserable night of sleep, tossing and turning, nightmares pecking at my grey matter.  Nightmares about blood and fists, hospital ceilings, dark shadows on city streets and moonless desert nights listening to explosions like music in the air.  Nightmares about my brother.  Nightmares about Kade and the way his dangerous eyes watched me during dinner, and the way I liked it . 
    At eight in the morning, right in the middle of gulping coffee straight from the coffee pot , my phone buzzed and I groaned out loud.  “I’m cleaning it up.  I don’t need help, go back and snuggle with your Bucket of Yum, and relax,” I laughed into the phone, not even bothering with any hellos.
    Bree sighed on the other end and whispered, “The guilt is killing me.”
    “This isn’t about the cleaning, huh?” I asked, knowing full well it had everything to do with not cleaning .
    She whimpered into the phone.
    “My brother loved you more than anything, Jen .  He’d want to see you move on and be happy.  Michael’s been gone over a year and you deserve a little bit of fun and happiness.  Please, just enjoy yourself.”  I laughed