Taming The Storm

By Alexa Rose

Lena Davidson, a twenty-two-year-old Graphic Artist, spends her final months of life struggling to pay off her parent's death. With a failing kidney, her family name is ruined when her parents steal the donations raised for her kidney transplant, blowing it on their drug habit. 

While Lena works hard to pay off the debt, a storm leaves her stranded in Crescent City. Working to figure out where she'll sleep, she meets Eli Blackburn, a member of one of the richest families in the state, offering his home as a place for shelter for the stranded. 

Eli has secrets of his own, a scandal that has made him a recluse for the past six years. Sharing a common ground, Lena warms to the hot stranger, she's soon swept off her feet, pulled into a world she's never imagined. 

Eli doesn't just want to save Lena from death. He wants to keep her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Midnight Press LLC
• Release date: Oct 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386589532

Alexa Rose

Alexa Rose, a pseudonym for a full-time stay at home mom and wife, who loves to write erotic fiction. 

Book preview

Chapter 1

To be honest, I'm not really in the mood for this shit right now. Staring down at my phone, I groan from the missed call log. Seventeen missed calls from my mother. This shit is getting ridiculous, it should be the other way around. My parents should be parenting me, but unfortunately, I wasn't blessed with the smartest of the bunch. The only thing my parents have blessed me with is the fact that they managed to stay married for over twenty years. Twenty-five to be exact. I'm not sure where they went wrong during their two-decade vows, but I've concluded that it's my fault.

My fucking fault.

My parents weren't always junkies. They were actually upstanding citizens before the recession, which was right around the time I was born. They'd gone from middle class to poverty. My father picked up a heroin habit to get by, which he passed down to my mother. By the time I turned nine, they were full-fledged junkies. Thankfully, I learned how to cook, clean, and take care of myself by that time.

I don't know how we made it to be honest. My parents still had half a brain to at least keep me in a house with electricity and water, but that was the just of it. Any other monies that didn't go on bills went to their habit. That meant I had to rely on my grandmother for food, clothing, and toiletries. I'm grateful for my grandmother. She'd stop by faithfully once a week, usually on Fridays, which was the day my parents got fried the most and dropped off the things I needed.

My mother had a rocky relationship with my grandmother, so living with her was out of the question. I was thankful for those visits, which lasted until I was seventeen, then she got cancer and passed on me. By that time, I had a part-time job while in high school, so I was able to get by with what I needed.

I worked eight hours days, and with schoolwork, that meant no times for friends. I had major health issues at the time, which didn't make things any easier. I lost a kidney, and after several infections due to poor hygiene, which was my own problem since I couldn't work to pay for the things I needed, now my other kidney is failing.

My parents were devastated, turning to the Internet, pouring their heart out in hopes to save my life. They raised a GoFundMe of over one hundred grand, which was more than enough to cover my replacement surgery along with recovery time.

But when you have parents that are junkies, logic pretty much goes out the window. The minute the savings hit the family checking account, they blew through it like hot water. It was gone in two weeks. Devastated, I pulled myself off the donor's list, and now we were stuck in a town scandal.

Everyone looks at me with a half-grin now, and I'm so thankful to have finished high school because I was close as fuck to dropping out. I'm the black sheep of my small down by default. Which, in turn, has pretty much broken me. Not only am I dying, but people are also happy to see me go.

This sweet little girl that was once full of life and optimistic is now dead inside. The only thing I have left that matters is my pen name. My art teacher took notice in my gift for drawing and encouraged me to self-publish my graphic novel. That is pretty much what saved us from this scandal. I've used my earnings to pay back the money my parents stole from the GoFundMe, using the pen name no one truly knows is me.

This alter ego has a masked appearance. While I'm a plain girl by day, I'm a goth by profession. I wear the full getup. The white makeup keeps my skin looking pale, bright red lipstick and black eyeliner, and a black straight wig to mask my very curly light brown hair.  They completely mask my natural features. My skin is naturally tan, a light brown, and my face is covered in freckles. My entire body for the matter. My eyes are naturally dark chocolate, but I wear light green contacts to give them more life. I wear fishnet stockings and a short mini skirt, with knee-high boots and a corset. I pretty much fit the bill for a goth whenever I'm in costume. I try not to wear the white makeup too much, it tends to get itchy after a few hours.

Speaking of itch, I start to scratch my arm as I glare at my cell phone. I need to get back home to my parents, but as I sit in this motel room, I could use a nice hot shower. I'm about two hours from the house, in a small town that has a high population of Goths. I traveled here for a special appearance, especially since my alter ego is a celeb. I don't usually come back home as Misty Gray, my goth self, but tonight that's just what it's going to be. This motel, which is paid for by the nightclub is utterly disgusting but quite suitable for a goth. I have some wipes in my bag, which is enough to clean myself up once I get close to home.

Groaning again, I pick up my phone and dial my mother, scowling at the musky smell that seems to linger through this dingy room. I scratch at my arm again, starting feel like the stench is starting to stick to me. I dial my mom.

Mom, I say as she answers on the first ring.

Where are you, honey? We need you to get home soon, we don't have any power. A low growl escapes me. Looks like what little left of my parent’s responsibility is gone. My mother's addiction has caught up with her at work, and she's lost her job of sixteen years for stealing. My father doesn't work at all, collecting disability, which he uses to support his habit. My mother worked part-time for a law firm as an accountant but was fired for embezzling thousands of dollars. Thankfully, the firm took pity on her and just fired her, writing off the theft as a business loss. We are currently making ends meet of what little my father shares from his disability check, and my royalty checks. I have to work overtime just to make sure there's food on the table.

Seriously? I groan because I gave them money to pay the bill before I left. Now I know I have to pay the bills on my own, I can't trust my mother with something so meager as bill money. I'm not going to bother drilling her, because she's just going to give me the same shitty speech over and over. I love my parents, but I'd be lying on God himself if I told you that I liked them.

I'll be home as soon as I can. I'm checking out of the motel now. But, I'm two hours away, so light some candles until I get there. I hang up and immediately go to my checking account to check my account, letting out a sigh of relief. I have just enough to get the lights shut back on and get a few groceries. But this will put me behind on my budget. I'm going to have to find some more gigs just to keep afloat. I log into the energy app and immediately pay the balance. Of course, I'm shaking my head as I do this because it's something I should have done the first fucking place.

I pack up my things and load my small blue Ford Focus, a car I inherited from my grandmother's estate. This car is pretty much on its last leg, but thankfully, it hasn't let me down yet. I turn the key into the front desk, the hop into my car and start making my way back. As I pull out of the parking lot, lighting illuminates the sky. I pull out my phone and check the weather report as I hit the interstate.

Shit! I moan out. My timing couldn't be worse. I'm driving in the middle of a thunderstorm, that's quite frankly supposed to be pretty intense. The rain picks up, and I turn on the wipers to see the road. My speed slows as the rain comes down pretty hard, too hard for me to even see the road. I should just pull over, but I keep going, maintaining my slow speed.

This is going to be along ass drive home. I turn on the radio to listen to some tunes to take the edge off. My hands grip the steering wheel, and I try to think of anything but how fucking terrible this road is. I get about forty minutes into the drive before I run into a traffic jam. Great, just great. Good thing the storm has passed, but it certainly didn't move by without leaving some debris behind. It's quite the backup, I'm sitting in traffic for another hour. My cell starts to blow up again, it's my mother. I don't have time for her shit right now, the lights should have cut back on automatically. I turn off my phone and relax in my seat. Once I get out of this jam, I'll call her back. No, since in my blood pressure rising while I'm stuck in traffic.

A low sharp pain hits my lower abdomen, nearly knocking the wind out of me. It's time for my meds, and I can't really take them without food. I find a candy bar in my purse and pull out a bottled water. This is not going to help worth shit, I'll be sick as a dog after these meds.

So, driving up the 101 interstate wasn't the best idea in this weather. I should have turned around and waited, but I already checked out the hotel. But this type of rain was odd for this time of year. It's nearly Christmas (And my birthday) for crying out loud. I turn my stereo to the A.A. frequency to listen out for any road blocking. Sure enough, I'm locked in. I stepped out of my car to get a better look at how far traffic is backed up. There were cars everywhere, and they didn't seem to be moving. I'm tired, hungry, and my pains are starting to kick back in. Apparently, I wasn't the only impatient person on the road. There were other families out of their vehicles trying to assess the waiting time. The air was cold and thick, blowing hard. Maybe the storm hasn't fully passed after all. I quickly climbed back into my Ford, cranking up the heat. My gas gauge is getting low, so if traffic doesn't start moving soon, I'm going to be stranded.

After another thirty minutes, I finally approach the problem. Just before the next exit, bright highway patrol lights lit up the night sky and two officers were directing traffic off the highway. Two Red Cross trucks are set up just past the exit. One of the officers approaches my vehicle, and I roll my window down. Of course, he's a bit taken aback by my getup. He probably thinks I'm a misfit looking for trouble. I roll my window down to find out what's going on. Hopefully, my trip back home isn't going to be more difficult than it already was. He leaned into my window with one of those stupid bright flashlights, his face