Complicated: A Tainted Love Novella, page 1
part #2.50 of Tainted Love Series
COMPLICATED:
A Tainted Love Novella
Copyright 2014
Ghiselle St. James
Cover Design by Kari Nappi
License Note
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed, electronic or mechanical form, including photocopying or recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without the expressed, written consent of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are purely the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental or is used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products, music, and/or bands, referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Complicated: A Tainted Love Novella Blurb
Seven years ago, a secret had torn them apart, but their love always pulled them back together. Things have taken a turn for the worse, and once again, circumstances have brought them together. Can Rachel continue to hide behind her past, or will she stop running from the one man she would love forever? Can Marshall get his girl back, or will it always be a complicated cycle of make ups and break ups?
Other Titles by Ghiselle St. James
South Row: A Comedic Romance
Amazon US: http://amzn.to/1Asagk6
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/1rU3iWf
Tainted Love (Tainted Love #1)
Amazon US: http://amzn.to/1p0leXz
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/1q4HViB
Broken Love (Tainted Love #2)
Amazon US: http://amzn.to/1wQmz84
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/1w9WXlx
Table of Contents
License Note
Complicated: A Tainted Love Novella Blurb
Other Titles by Ghiselle St. James
About The Author
Foreword
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Acknowledgments
Coming Soon
Connect With the Author
More Books from Ghiselle
Final Note
About The Author
Ghiselle St. James is a Jamaican author who has a never-ending love for written thoughts: poetry, song lyrics and non-fiction. She has been writing erotic novels since she was 13 years old which made her popular with the boys (hehe). Writing has been her outlet, as has singing, for most of her life, and will continue to be.
I really hate talking about myself in the third person…
Having graduated in 2010 from Jamaica Theological Seminary, with an honors’ degree in Social Work, the writer in me seemed to reawaken and has yet to go back to sleep.
I completed my first novel in January of 2013 and had never felt so accomplished in my life. Since then I have published four books and have no plans on stopping any time soon.
I write what’s in my heart as it’s hard to separate my heart from anything I write. As a result, characters that are real to me often come out. I pray my passion brings you as much joy as it has brought me.
Foreword
When I first started writing the Tainted Love series in 2013, I had no idea that it would take me here. Rachel and Marshall were only meant to be secondary characters, but even as I brought them together in Broken Love, I began to see them both take on a life of their own. Still, I had no plans to tell their story. As a result, Complicated turned out to be completely fan-driven. The more readers asked about Marshall and Rachel, is the more I realized that they, indeed, needed their story told. What better name to dub their story than Complicated? Truly depicting the struggles and the mistakes that plagued them, causing their relationship to be as memorable as it was to readers.
You wanted to know their story, so I here it is…in all it’s passionate, intense, and complicated glory.
Enjoy!
Dedication
To those who have lost something that changed the course of their lives forever…
“If you live in the past, you will miss the blessing of your present and never prosper in your future.”
Ghiselle St. James
Prologue
Marshall
I was twenty the first time I saw her, she was just fifteen. Wavy strawberry blonde hair encased the heart shaped face of the most beautiful person I’d seen since my sister Delilah. While Delilah was short and voluptuous, with curly dirty blonde hair that she left untamed like her personality, Rachel Welles was taller, with a tight athletic body and had a quiet fire about her. I found out later that she was on the debate team and also ran track – a distance runner; a combination of two things I loved: a woman with a mouth on her and a limber body.
I’d been home for the long break, having gotten a Summer job temping for David Hampton – a friend of my Dad’s – whose paralegal had gone on maternity leave. It had been a long, frustrating day and I had gone to court with Hampton where he’d been representing an alleged murderer. As a pre-law student, even then I knew I never wanted to do what he did. I knew I wanted to practice criminal law, but Hampton defended the scum of the criminal underworld, the mob, drug kingpins, all for financial gain and critical acclaim. While the experience gave me immense inside knowledge, I knew I didn’t want to defend criminals, especially with the stuff my sister had gone through in her life.
I know it’s more than what she’s let on. Delilah has had a rough life – having been neglected by her mother – but some of the behaviors she exhibits tell of deeper emotional scars. She keeps her secrets close to her chest, gripping them in an iron vise, such that it’s hard to get a proper read on her at times. Rachel balances her out. She is the calm to my sister’s wild, and that is what I noticed first about her – how serene she was, to the point where she made everyone around her take on the peace and happiness she exuded.
I tried to stay away. I’d been dating Kelly at the time, a fellow law student. The relationship we had bordered on something regimented: when to have sex, when to show appropriate displays of affection, nit-picking over the smallest detail…just not natural behavior for persons who should be in love, really. Rachel and I fell into such an ease, from conversation, to little looks here and there, to slight touches in passing. I never thought she noticed, but every time we touched or if I was in the same room as her, a kind of electricity always crackled between us.
It wasn’t until one night after a long case that I even knew she had felt anything. I should’ve left her alone. I should have stayed away. It’s complicated; even now I can’t explain it, but when she’s around, it’s impossible to keep away. She has such a pull on me; as if her spirit calls out to my own.
I loved Rachel, still do, but things have become so complicated, so completely fucked. I wish I could take back everything that got us to this point, but what can you do when the one person in the world you love with every fiber of your being is the one you hate in equal proportion?
Chapter One
Rachel
EIGHT YEARS AGO
He came home that night later than usual. I was so worried; I’d been twisting the sheets the entire time while waiting for him. I know the case he’s working on with his boss, David Hampton, is a long, grueling and dangerous one. It’s hard not to worry.
As soon as he stepped into his parents Upper East Side apartment, the atmosphere sparked with awareness and my nipples beaded tight, my arousal soaking right through my pajama shorts.
Jesus.
Marshall Keyes.
I wondered if he knew what he did to me. I know he is older than me by five years, but it doesn’t stop my heart from beating faster and my body from responding in ways it never has with any other boy my age. Simple brushes or touches have me almost melting at his feet. A mere glimpse of him sets my body on high alert and eager anticipation.
Delilah, my best friend and his little sister, has been telling me to do something about my feelings for him but I am so afraid that he will laugh at this teenage crush that has become so much more than that now. Delilah has had way more experience than even the average adult, so she can say whatever she wants to. Some of us aren’t that highly sexed or experienced. Then again, she has been through more than the average adult so her word has some clout.
I am currently in her room, trying to hold back my raging hormones. Her parents are away on a trip to Chicago. They’ve always trusted her even though they shouldn’t. If they found out about the stuff she’s been up to whether they’re in New York or not, they’d ground her for life. Taking her freedom, Delilah left me to sneak out with some college guy, telling me that it was shit or bust time as it regarded her brother…and I’m currently shitting my pants about what I plan to do!
I am going to seduce Marshall Keyes!
Holy fuck, I am in way over my head. I don’t do stuff like this! I have only had sex once and I regret ever giving that asshole my virginity. Stupid fucking Joey Catalano and his stupid hoe cheerleader Cara Langley, I hope she gives him herpes…crab-infested slut.
Now, I’m going to throw myself at a grown man. It’s stupid, but, whatever it is that makes my blood heat and the warmth pool between my legs, I know he feels it too. When I see him – his wavy dark hair looking like silk, his golden brown eyes flicking alive with returned interest, his lips looking so utterly kissable – all I want to do is be beneath him, experiencing the pleasure he can bring to my body. Thinking about it now has me climbing down from Delilah’s black sheeted canopy bed.
My plan is to lure him to Delilah’s room under the guise that there is a huge spider that came through the faulty window. Everyone is aware of my fear of spiders, so it’s not that far-fetched. I just hope that I’m right that he feels the same way I do, because I’d probably go drown myself in the Hudson if he rebuffs my advances. How embarrassing.
I find him in the kitchen, sitting around the island, nursing a glass of amber liquid; no doubt his Dad’s expensive whiskey. Delilah and I have imbibed the lovely stuff, as well as the other kinds of liquor in the cabinet. The Keyes’ are some of the coolest parents I know. My parents are strict, stuffy people who like to look down on others. My mother is a Manhattan socialite and my Dad a successful venture capitalist – capitalist being the operative word. Mariana and Allan Welles are from old money and they don’t let people forget how wealthy they and their families are combined.
On the outside, the Welles family exudes power and high society, the envy of everyone around them; but on the inside, this family is like a decaying carcass – it stinks. Pretense covers pretense. Smiles cover ruthlessness. Expensive clothes, lavish cars and homes conceal the ugliness. My family is entrenched in secrets and for as long as I can remember, it has always been better when I’m not around all their lies and their expectations of me.
While my parents at home pressure me to be successful and to take over the family business or to marry a rich heir, the Keyes’ allow me to be who I want to be, saying that kids will become who they are destined to be through love and nurturing. I get neither from home, which is why I am always over at the Keyes’. That, and that they’ve got a hot fucking son who drives me crazy with lust!
Like, seriously, it should be a crime to look as hot as him!
The plan is executed perfectly. I play the damsel in distress, almost fluttering away when Marshall casts a leery gaze down at my figure in a breast-hugging tank top and tight pajama shorts. He comes readily to my assistance, opting to stay with me in Delilah’s room, in case the spider comes back, since he couldn’t find it.
It doesn’t take any time for things to escalate between us. As soon as he sits on the bed next to me, something changes in the atmosphere. My nipples peak and my breath comes out shallow. I try not to squirm from the thumping of my vagina, but I can’t help it. I squeeze my thighs together and that’s when I hear Marshall groan.
I snap my eyes up to his and they have this glazed look in them. He is clenching his jaw so much that it’s a wonder it doesn’t break under the pressure. We are so close, all he needs to do is reach for me and I’d be done for.
“Rachel,” he whispers in a deep, gravelly voice.
I whimper at the sound of it and bite my bottom lip to conceal the sound.
“Fuck,” he swears, before grabbing my neck and pulling me to his lips.
Stars break out behind my closed eyelids and I melt into his kiss. He takes, that’s what he does. He doesn’t wait for me to give, he rips everything from me in that one kiss – my desires, my pleasure – and with that, he owns me.
He roughly pulls away from me and goes to stand, growls as he reaches up and grips his hair with his fingers. I am breathing hard and fast, trying to catch my racing breath, but finding it difficult. My tummy is doing somersaults and my underwear is ruined, so wet that my juices are running down my inner thighs. My fingers tremble as they come up to touch my bruised lips. Holy shit, that was sooooo hot!
“Rachel, I have been trying to avoid you,” he tells me, voice full of regret and lust. It does stuff to me. “But, Jesus H. Christ, you drive me crazy. I have jerked off to your tight little body so many times it’s a wonder I’m not in fucking jail. This is wrong, Rae.”
He looks so tortured. I hadn’t been thinking at all. This is so wrong. How could I put him in this position? If the authorities found out, he’d be put behind bars for sure. I can't do that to him, much as I want him to bang me like a drum.
“Oh, my God,” I breathe shakily. “I’m s-so sorry.”
I move to get up to try to make a mad dash to the adjoining bathroom in order to escape my utter shame, but Marshall stops me, backing me up to the door, and cages me in. My stomach drops to my core and it tightens at the look I see in his eyes. I want to fall into those eyes of his, now a dark brown almost black. He is wild with want, I see it; I feel it radiating from his very body like heat.
I follow the movement of his hand as he raises it and trails it down the front of my tank. His finger hooks into the front of it and he pulls it down over one breast. He takes a sharp breath when he sees how puckered my nipple is and traces the tight bud with the rough pad of his thumb. My legs give out from beneath me at the experience in his touch but he steadies me with a strong arm at my waist. His fingers dig in, scorching me, marking me. This is a grown man’s touch, a man who is hungry for the flesh of someone barely touched. This is wrong, but the throbbing in my panties tells me the opposite. It feels oh so good.
“I feel you in my blood, Rachel,” he rasps out as he idly toys with my nipple. “I have wanted you from the first moment I saw you. You could undo me.”
The way he speaks unlocks something inside of me. He is telling me something, something that I have always felt about him. He could unravel me like no other, he could destroy me, but like a moth drawn to a bright flame, I step into my demise.
Chapter Two
Rachel
TWO YEARS LATER
I stare down at the white stick in my hand. Two blue fucking lines. Pregnant. Motherfucking pregnant at seventeen years old. I stare at Delilah, tears brimming in my eyes with heartbreak. She knows the score. I want this baby, but I can’t keep it. If I keep it, as much as it would mean carrying Marshall’s child, it would ruin his career and my parents would disown me. The latter doesn’t mean as much to me as the former. Marshall is my life and it would kill me to see this destroy him.
What a position I have found myself in: pregnant at seventeen by a grown man. I have always turned my nose up at girls who got pregnant while in high school, thinking they’re foolish and irresponsible. Yet, here I am, foolish, and eating my words. I don’t remember even missing one of my birth control pills, but I must have. Now, as a result of my irresponsibility, I’m carrying the baby of the man I love. Maybe if I was just a year older; maybe if it was under different circumstances, circumstances where I was out of high school and no longer living with my parents, this would have been a dream come true.
Now, it’s just a nightmare.
My hand drifts down to my stomach and I try to convey every ounce of remorse to the growing fetus that will never see the light of day. I can’t have this baby.
