Break Read online

  Break

  CD Reiss

  Flip City Media Inc.

  Copyright © 2015 by CD Reiss

  Spin copyright (c) 2014 by CD Reiss

  All rights reserved - Flip City Media Inc.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental

  The series was formerly Songs of Perdition. It was completed at the end of 2015 with the third book - Break, and the complete series bundle, Forbidden.

  Contents

  The Drazen Books

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Epilogue

  Also by CD Reiss

  63. Chapter One

  64. Chapter Two

  65. Chapter Three

  66. Chapter Four

  The Drazen Books

  Submission Series

  Monica has one thing to tell Jonathan. She is not submissive. Not at all. Not until he tells her to kneel, then her knees have a mind of their own.

  Submission | Domination | Connection

  Corruption Series

  Theresa and Antonio are combustible. Their passion will set the Los Angeles mafia on fire if it doesn’t get them killed first.

  SPIN | RUIN | RULE

  Forbidden Series

  Fiona loves her life, but it’s killing her. Her therapist built a life of routine and safety, and he’s dying inside. Can these lost souls find love? And will it be with each other?

  KICK | USE | BREAK

  1

  FIONA

  Three words to describe the feeling of driving with Deacon, trying to sit as if my ass hadn’t just been ripped open. Vulnerable. Insecure. Guilty.

  The paparazzi had been waiting outside the gates like fucking fuckers. Leeches. Slurping sucking animals who fucked you even when you said no. Who thought they were doing you a favor or at the very least thought they weren’t hurting you when they were. They were.

  Deacon hadn’t said anything. He turned his face—blue eyes deadly, cheekbones of a god—toward one on the passenger side and stared down the man with the lens until he backed away from the car.

  They knew who he was. A photojournalist. No more, no less. So they didn’t know shit, but when he looked at people that way, they had to know he was a force of nature.

  I put my fingertips on my cheek, slid them over to cover my mouth. My hand shook. How long had I been shaking? I hadn’t even felt it. What parts of me were kinetic? I put my hand between my legs and hoped he didn’t notice.

  “I moved us out of Maundy,” he said. “To the place in Laurel Canyon.”

  “What did you do with my stuff?”

  “Your stuff is safe in your room.”

  I didn’t actually care.

  Who was I?

  What was I supposed to do?

  This wasn’t new.

  My ass hurt.

  I was going to get Warren for this.

  I’d said no.

  One syllable and the same word in a dozen languages.

  En-oh.

  Deacon glanced at me. He was a dangerous man. If I told him about Warren, what would happen?

  The easiest thing in the world. Like blowing up a building to take it down.

  But they never talked about the mess it took months to clean up.

  I’d said no. Clearly. And there I was with a ripped asshole while Warren was behind an electrified fence in a luxury institution.

  The sun caught Deacon’s eyes when he looked at me.

  Never seen blue like that on a face. Not before him or since. Never seen a nose that had been broken so many times look so seamless. Nothing like it. And the look on his perfect face? Fuck him too. He couldn’t tolerate lying, and I had to decide right then if I was going to do the intolerable.

  Only Elliot had done things to me no man had before. He’d given me permission to choose to do things differently. He’d opened me the same way Deacon’s look had, and Warren had walked right into the wound and ripped out my guts.

  Deacon pulled up the private road off Laurel Canyon. I wanted to go home, and I didn’t really have one anymore.

  Why was I letting all these men do this to me? I was in the middle of nowhere, and I couldn’t even get out of the car and get home. The door, the seats, the ceiling, and dashboard were leather-padded.

  I laughed to myself.

  Oh, God of irony, thou art great.

  2

  FIONA

  Once we drove through the gate of the Laurel Canyon house, Deacon took my face and pulled me toward him. He kissed me in the way only Deacon did, owning me, sending a message that my mouth was his. I gave in to it, letting his tongue flick against mine, letting his lips guide mine in a dance of ownership. Even his hand was part of the kiss, pressing my jaw open. I breathed him in.

  “Welcome back,” he said.

  Sex was never the point with Deacon. Sex was optional. Getting off didn’t always mean unloading his balls on or in me, though when he did, I was in ecstasy. Getting off meant dominating me. And when I met him, it took me a while to understand that. Because I’m hot and horny, and he’s a man. A man I wanted a lot.

  But I’d forgotten a lot of things in Westonwood. And when I stepped onto the leaf-padded drive, I knew I’d changed.

  And my insides hurt.

  And I didn’t know what to feel.

  I was so confused. That caterpillar. Eating that leaf. And the pain. The same pain I’d felt a hundred times, but this time, I’d said no. I didn’t ask for it. And that confused me and pissed me off, and I couldn’t show it because Deacon’s reaction wasn’t something I could control.

  The house was a classic, part of another small compound in the mountains. There would be coyotes, and he’d shoot them. There would be hippies and stoners, and he’d tolerate them.

  Something about all of it made me sad. I should have felt relieved and safe, but all I felt was fucking sad. Not passive sad. Sad like I wanted to break something.

&
nbsp; The house was furnished in hand-wrought chairs and wool rugs. I’d seen the place when he bought it, but I’d spent no time there.

  “Where did you put me?” I asked before I could scream.

  “Tell me what’s wrong first.”

  We were headed into a conflict. We solved those by talking or by knotting. By me transferring my power to him. He’d ripped my memory from me in Westonwood without telling me what he was doing. Fucked me sane for half a minute. He’d do it again, and I wasn’t sure if I could stand it. If he opened me, I didn’t know if I’d be able to give myself time to think before he started making plans for Warren’s destruction.

  “I’m tired,” I said. My guts were bubbling tar, foul and hot. Uncontainable. I wanted to destroy Warren. I wanted to do it myself, and I wanted Deacon to back the fuck up.

  “You can tell me in bed.” He took me by the shoulders. “Speak.”

  “It’s stressful, that’s all. Everything. What I did to you. And now I’m out, and I feel fucked up about it.”

  And now you’re a liar.

  Use different words to describe yourself.

  He didn’t believe me.

  We went into the house. He took off my jacket. I didn’t have a thing to say. The house had windows like most houses had walls. He leaned on a chair and folded his arms. He had a leather band on his wrist, and a silver bracelet with a feather engraved on it. His hair was perfectly mussed, and his hands had built fences and dug ditches. They’d pulled triggers and tied ropes.

  “Deacon, I…” Words failed me. They got in their own way.

  He picked me up and carried me. I put my head on his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I know.”

  He laid me on his bed. It was still daytime, but I was stone-dead tired, lost at sea in the white foam of his duvet.

  “Do you think our limits move? Did you ever think you would have let anyone hurt you like that before?” The words slipped out like escapees. I hadn’t thought about them for a second, and there I was, watching them run into the field without looking back.

  “Why do you ask?” he asked without reproach.

  He was a picture in a magazine. Lit for his angles, the ruddiness of his skin, the light beard, the way his hair draped in a sideways S. Flawless and secure. A wish blown off a dry dandelion.

  He brought his hand up and drew his thumb along my lips. Suddenly I wanted to open up to him. I wanted to be broken all over again. Now. Right there. I didn’t want to wait until I’d put Warren in a box or wait until my ass healed. I wanted to crack like an egg for him.

  And yet, I didn’t want that at all. My intentions stabbed each other in the back.

  “I don’t know.” Trying not to cry was the most obvious sign something was wrong, and I didn’t want him to know. Not yet. So I didn’t cry. I just knew my limits had shifted from a foggy line miles and miles away to a cinderblock wall I’d just been smashed against.

  3

  FIONA - Two years earlier

  I leaned over Amanda and called into the little security mic on the driver’s side. “Fiona Drazen.”

  The gate to Maundy Street clicked and opened slowly, and the driveway lights flicked on. Amanda and I were sober. The handsome older guy in the leather jacket had specifically requested sobriety and more. We weren’t permitted to even bring stuff with us.

  “This better be good,” Amanda said, turning her Mercedes into the gate. “Or I’m going to Phoebe’s.”

  “There’re a hundred paps outside that place. The rest are always pointing and looking away like they don’t care. I’m sick of it already.”

  “You love it.”

  “You can take the car if you want to bolt,” I replied, checking my face in the visor mirror.

  “So you’re staying the night? Jesus. You haven’t even seen his dick.”

  “He’s unbelievably sexy. I cannot deal with how wet I am right now.”

  She parked beside a Bentley, one of six or seven cars parked along the private street and hardly the most expensive. “Is this number two?”

  I pointed at the steel number 2 bolted onto the front of the house. “I don’t hear any music.” I opened the car door.

  “Maybe it’s some old fart party.”

  We walked up to the door and rang the bell. A woman opened it almost immediately. She was in her mid-twenties, wearing a long silk dress that looked as if it were made of motor oil. Her figure was a perfect hourglass shape, and her posture made her seem taller than she actually was. Raven hair draped her shoulders, and her eyes were a clear blue that just looked clear in the night lights.

  “Are you Miss Drazen?” Her voice was silky and lower than I’d thought it would be.

  “Yes.” We shook hands.

  “And this must be Miss Westin.”

  “Hey,” Amanda said, taking the woman’s hand.

  “I’m Tiffany. Come on in.”

  I glanced at Amanda. She touched her curls. She was so vain. She’d probably leave because Tiffany had better hair.

  We followed Tiffany down the long, carpeted hallway. Her shoes were wicked high, explaining the height but not the posture, because they looked like they hurt to wear.

  “Did Master Deacon explain what kind of party this is?”

  “It’s a kinky BDSM party,” Amanda piped in. “Which is cool. I’ve been to those before. It’s not a big deal.”

  I wished she’d shut up.

  “It’s a big deal to us,” Tiffany said, stopping at a little wooden table in front of an interior door. “So we do ask that you sign non-disclosure agreements and liability waivers before entering.”

  She picked up two leather folders from the table and handed us each one. I opened mine and sifted through the paperwork. Amanda stood there with her folder unopened.

  “It looks standard,” I said.

  My friend looked a little stricken. “Wait, what if something happens? We can’t tell anyone?”

  Amanda, at her core, was a worrier. The weight of every single thing that could happen kept her from doing much of anything, except when she drank or snorted or shot up. Then she didn’t worry, and that was how she liked it. So taking her to a new place sober was already tricky.

  “You don’t have to participate your first time,” Tiffany said. “As a matter of fact, we’d prefer you didn’t.”

  “So then you don’t need me to sign this.” She handed back the folder.

  “Amanda, stop being weird.”

  “I have a bad feeling.”

  Tiffany took the folder. “It’s important that you be honest with yourself about your limits.”

  Limits. I knew mine. I had none.

  “I’m honest about my limits.” I signed the paper and snapped the folder closed. I handed it to Tiffany then turned to Amanda. “I’ll find my way home.”

  4

  FIONA

  The room was flooded in sunlight, and still I slept. Deacon left and came back a few times. He crawled into bed with me and held me, stroked my hair while a headache raged through me. He gave me water, fed me. He took calls, and I heard him speaking Afrikaans in the other room, using a voice that had brought me to my knees a hundred times. I didn’t realize how fucked up I was, how exhausted from Westonwood even before the events of the last day. But I wouldn’t have slept for twenty-four solid hours if I wasn’t.

  In that haze of sleep, with all my filters down, I heard Elliot’s buttercream voice.

  Count backward.

  Use different words to describe yourself.

  Fiona, listen.

  In my half-lucid state, I played the scene at the front door of Westonwood differently. I stopped. I listened to him. He said different things every time I rewound it and started again, but it always ended with him asking me to come home with him.

  Fiona, listen.

  When the fantasy ended well, I did go home with him, and I listened, and I slept until I woke biting back my scream, fogginess gone, too lucid, thoughts like brok
en glass.

  I was alone in my new room, staring out the window at the little stables. I felt as if I were still in Westonwood, in a room someone else had made up for me. A box. A hole. The windows were open to the sounds of the wilderness, but I still felt imprisoned. The rustle of the leaves, the scamper of little night animals, the crickets. The dirt in my fingers. The twisting in my gut. Taking it like a whore, as I’d done a million times already except for the en-oh.

  I couldn’t sleep.

  I didn’t feel safe.

  Warren was locked up, and I wasn’t thinking about him. Or it. Or anything. I was trying to fucking sleep at two in the motherfucking morning.

  I got up and walked down the hall. The light under Willem’s door was on. I passed it and knocked lightly on Debbie’s door.

  She didn’t answer. I walked in and snapped the door closed.

  She turned in the bed. “Fiona?”

  “Yes.” I crawled into her bed and put my arms around her.