Confessions (Boxset)

By Kristin Lovelace

This collection contains all five volumes of my confessions.
I tell myself this is no longer who I am, that these are just memories of a life I left behind. But, like a bad dream, they keep bubbling to the surface. The past marks you, inside and out. No point trying to outrun it. This is the story of a different person. But that person is still part of me. I can't bury the memories, but maybe I can set them free.

WARNING: These stories contain explicit sex scenes. 18+ intended for mature adults only!

All That’s Left:
I tell myself this is no longer who I am, that these are memories of a life I've left behind. But, like a bad dream, they keep bubbling to the surface. The past marks you, inside and out. No point trying to outrun it. This is a story of a different person. But that person is still part of me. I can't bury the memories, but maybe I can set them free.
Ties That Bind:
Things don’t always end neatly. What I’d thought was a once-off turned into something more. The bait was too tasty to resist. When Preston keyed me in for another job, I knew that my life was taking an unusual turn. I could already feel the bindings pulling tight.
Heart Bled Dry:
Life takes all kinds of twists and turns. Sometimes it’s just a question of how many people you’ve got around you to pick up the pieces when it all comes down.
Playing the Hand:
We all sell ourselves a little to satisfy our lifestyle, get all those things we think we want. What are you selling? I had slipped into a lifestyle that was almost comfortable, but it only takes a glimpse of the past to rock you out of it. I got more than a glimpse, I came face to face with it.
By Dawn’s Light:
Sometimes fantasies are just that, and sometimes you can reach out and touch them. I’d had it good for far too long. Or bad, depends how you look at it. A meeting with two beautiful people got me wondering whether giving myself away was really how I wanted it to be. And did I still have a heart to give?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kristin Lovelace
• Release date: Apr 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311109118

Book preview

CONFESSIONS

VOLUMES 1-5

by Kristin Lovelace

This document is copyright © Kristin Lovelace, 2015.

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

All That’s Left

There’d be people who’d say I deserved what I got.

I’d like to say those folk know nothing about me. Problem is, they know me well enough. It’s just they don’t care.

People are always ready to cast judgment—whatever fits the story they tell themselves so they can sleep comfy at night. It helps, I guess, not to have to think about those of us who might not be sleeping, might not have a bed to crawl into. At least, not one of their own.

Maybe I did deserve it, all of it—the situations I found myself in, the choices I was led to, the whole life I’d made. But then, sometimes things just happen one after another and while it’s happening it sure doesn’t feel like it’s of your own making.

Jeremy pulled me close, his hand clamped tight against the back of my neck, and he pressed his lips to mine. He made me smile, even as he kissed me, though that night the smile was a weak effort. He sensed it and pulled back.

I know I should make an effort for him, and I tried to smile big and cheery-like as I rubbed a crease out of his collar. Sometimes it just isn’t that easy to hide what you’re feeling, we can try and put on a brave face but it’s just a clumsy child’s hand that made it. Tonight I wasn’t fooling Jeremy. And I didn’t want to waste my energy—I’d have a whole lot more to hide before the night was through.

I know you’re worried, he said. I closed my eyes against the soft stroke of his knuckles on my cheek. But I’ve got a good feeling things are about to change for the better.

He looked good in a shirt. There was something rough around the edges, like he was just a boy playing dress-ups, but maybe that’s just because I knew him. Not comfortable in the getup, but keen. Maybe that’s what had hooked these banker geeks.

I’m really excited for you, I told him.

He held me at arm’s length and smiled.

You look more nervous than I feel, he said.

Pfft, I wafted my hand at him and turned away, feeling the flush on my cheeks. Don’t worry about me, just go and make sure they don’t want to let you walk out of there.

You’ll be in bed when I come home?

I shrugged. Hard to say, I’m waiting on a text from Stace. We might hang out for a while.

Well, don’t too anything too crazy.

We kissed.

I’ll be thinking about you, I told him.

Lies work best when they’re at least half true. I used to tell myself the ones that hurt are the ones that are bald-faced and cruel, that the little white ones we throw around telling ourselves it’s not a biggie, that we’re just lying to protect the other party, those ones aren’t so bad. Well, it turns out they cut just as deep. And if they get uncovered, they’re the ones that you can’t stop bleeding.

I listened to Jeremy’s car start up and through the curtains I watched his headlights disappear down the road. The crazies two doors down had already set to arguing, and it sounded like they were competing with the TV on our other side for which could make the most noise. Out on the street a car revved its engine, heading closer, and my heart started beating fast, but it was just a joyrider. Even if Jeremy did come back it would only be he’d forgotten something small.

I checked the time and got up to go and get changed.

My heart was beating shallow and fast as I scrounged the rack for something to wear. I already knew what I’d wear, I was just killing time. The look I was aiming for was anything but subtle, but it would do the job just fine.

Mostly I was rummaging to take my mind off things. To stop from thinking. Thinking dredges up all those smarts you didn’t have at the time, shames you, you get to second-guessing everything you do. I knew well enough my mistakes—but that doesn’t make it any easier.

Dressed and perfumed, made up and sexed up, I blew the mirror a cynical kiss. Debts were debts. They run our lives and run us down. You can no more escape them than you can escape what you are.

I know that well enough. Almost as well as I know myself.

Preston had a place not four blocks north—not his main place, probably not even his second—so I had more time than I needed. The clock sat at 7:25. I paced the living room, well, best I could the narrow three-pace stretch wedged between the TV and the sunken-ass sofa. Jeremy would be just now sitting down with his new friends, maybe a pre-dinner drink—liquor, ‘cos beer would just show his breeding—a couple jokes, maybe. They wouldn’t be talking about money yet, not upfront, that wasn’t classy.

Time to go, I told myself. I took a deep breath, and it rippled back out over the thudding of my heart. I picked up my bag off the arm of the sofa, giving the leather sack a wry smile, then headed out the front door.

The streets were calm, calm as they could get. TVs blared and their colors made twinkling patches on curtains. People stood in the shadows of their creaking porches, noting me and forgetting me as I passed through patches of light from the streetlamps.

Call it selling myself, I call it a last resort. There were worse things—there always are. It’s like they say with drugs, though: one thing leads to another.

The first time, at least what I think of as where it started, was when I was still in college, all bright-eyed. I’d let a guy dip his fingers for half a pack of smokes. Blown all my money and payday was forever away. I’d enjoyed it. The thrill. He was all too happy to indulge me when I tugged his drink-happy cock from his pants and hitched a leg up his hip and rode him right there against that cold brick wall.

It was some kind of turning point, and I’d known it at the time. The marker pen scrawls on the brick behind him read like something familiar, some set of accusations but in a language I barely knew. As I came, hips grinding, teeth clamped about his collarbone, the excitement of the unknown future seemed to mingle with the thrill of danger and maybe it all got twisted in my mind.

That time I made it to payday, and most times since. It gave me, rightly or not, a sense of invincibility. Like the dangerous situations I put myself in could only harden me each time, until all that was left was a solid core of animal survival where nothing gets in and nothing comes back out.

Maybe they did, but not enough—all it took was one cut through that rough outer layer to remind you how soft we all are inside.

One thing, as they say, to another. Blame that initial thrill. I always pushed it, a little farther each time. But it never seems enough, not until you’re in it, right up to your throat.

I found the address I’d memorized. It was a nice two-storey place, pool out back in a large yard walled eight or nine feet high. I’d been there before, a party with a friend. I can’t remember how I first met Preston, maybe that party—things got hazy at some points. Shared contacts, ties that bind.

Preston answered the door with a ready-made smile tipping one corner of his mouth. He dipped his head in greeting as I stepped into his home. Pleasant cologne wafted gently as he stepped past me.

Make yourself at home, he said over his shoulder.

Let that be the last cliché, I thought, and we’ll do just fine.

I watched him a moment before following. He had a body crafted to be looked at, and he didn’t care who by. It was a big, bold frame, with a sense of power hinted in his movement. Hands and neck showed amber tanning maybe heightened by the light blue shirt.

He walked ahead of me into an open living area, only this one wasn’t for living. All for show. Just a burlesque of status, and he’d slowly reveal the layers.

Immediately I got that ripple of feeling I remembered from the party there. And there was the smell—something exotic, newness maybe, leather sofa, clean carpets. That feeling, was it envy? Or just some schoolgirl excitement like I was in a wonderland for just a few hours, a look at the other side, all the things we always aspire to, sometimes without even knowing it.

Get yourself a drink, Preston said, picking his own tumbler from a marble topped coffee-table.

Hell yeah I would. I went around the plush sofa and over to the liquor stand—decanters, for Chrissakes—and picked at random. It had an inset mirror that reflected the lights through all the glasses like a floor-bound chandelier. Sat up against some glasses was an envelope with