Embracing Darkness: A Dark MMMM Insta-Romance, page 1
Embracing Darkness
N. Slater
Copyright ©2023 by N. Slater
Embracing Darkness – Sinful Surrender Book One
All rights reserved.
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 has only been authorized to be published in full by N. Slater on Amazon. Should this be found in its entirety on any other site in any other form, it is a pirated copy.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblances to actual events, locales, events, businesses, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
To my mother who told me I should write more of my profession into my stories.
I'm not sure a dark romance involving a statistician was what she was talking about but… uh, here it is.
Contents
. Chapter
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
24. Chapter 24
25. Chapter 25
26. Chapter 26
27. Chapter 27
28. Chapter 28
29. Chapter 29
30. Chapter 30
31. Chapter 31
32. Chapter 32
33. Chapter 33
34. Chapter 34
35. Chapter 35
36. Chapter 36
37. Chapter 37
38. Chapter 38
39. Chapter 39
40. Chapter 40
41. Chapter 41
42. Chapter 42
43. Chapter 43
44. Chapter 44
45. Chapter 45
46. Chapter 46
47. Chapter 47
48. Chapter 48
49. Chapter 49
50. Chapter 50
Author’s Note
The romance in this novella is categorized as insta-romance which means that the sexual tension and relationship moves very fast. It is established very early on in the book and all love interests become involved with the MC very quickly. Please be aware that there are several triggers that play out in this novel. Triggers and content warnings have been listed below that may have a minor or major part throughout. There is absolutely no child harm, sexual assault, or miscommunication tropes between the main characters.
Onscreen and Offscreen Emotional/Physical Abuse and Mild Domestic Violence
DAP (double ass penetration)
Sex used as a healing tactic
Scenes involving panic attacks and trauma responses
Depression
Mild Obsession (with aspects of stalking ~ not by the love interests)
Insta-Attraction/Romance/Lust
Gaslighting
Open Relationship (before the MC becomes officially part of the relationship with the others)
Chapter one
RHYS
Running my fingers along the Fibonacci inlay on the back of a playing card had always helped distill the panic. I found the thing on an Etsy shop nearly ten years ago and Fibo and I became thick as thieves. It was my own geeked-out version of a fidget spinner, numbers the only thing that could ever truly soothe the unrest in my head. My parents hated the chaos I subjected myself to, but I loved it—craved it even. My house and my life reflected my love for math and everything it entailed, so much so that my office was littered with numerical madness. Algorithms and equations were written along every space of those walls and while it was just madness to everyone else, it was home to me.
I was very aware that it was strange but everyone had their crutch. Some used a paper bag. I fingered Fibo until I could breathe again.
Well, not finger him.
I let out a panicked breath, trying to push past the reason why I hadn’t left the safety of my car for the last fifteen minutes. Leaning forward, I pressed my head to the steering wheel as I continued fingering the inlay of swirls, running through the numbers one at a time until my heartbeat slowed and breathing became easier. 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5-
A blaring horn in the distance ripped me out of my peaceful little bubble, a tired sigh falling from my lips. Even after an hour-long therapy session and sitting here in my driveway, I still hadn’t managed to fully deal with my feelings concerning a certain ex of mine. Owen, as wonderful as he had been at the beginning of our relationship, became a fucking nightmare in recent months.
An average Biochemistry professor that I met at a routine STEM conference in France should have been the end of the story but somehow the shaggy-haired, off-the-wall, personable professor had captured my heart. Between working on my dissertation involving a government program and a top security clearance and dealing with a shitty as fuck fiancé, my life had spiraled.
Whatever sanity I still had was slowly dwindling away every time he stuck his head into my fucking business.
And it wasn’t just because he was a cocksucking mentally and physically abusive bastard. Well, he wasn’t sucking much of anything. Touch became stagnant between us and I had been suffering because the only thing I loved as much as numbers was touch. That and sugar. I was a slut for all three, but the physical and emotional intimacy that came with relationships? That is what I craved. My entire existence was built on it, like a crazed obsession but Owen’s idea of love involved a lot more yelling and a dose of gaslighting.
I took a deep breath and slid from the safety of my car after stuffing Fibo back into my pocket, my gaze locked on my front door. It was a terrible shade of brownish-green, reminding me of a mixture of puke and leaves masquerading as an evergreen. It didn’t make a lick of sense but I all I knew was that I hated it, however, my painting skills were shit and any task that involved perfection would throw me down a rabbit hole.
Repainting that goddamn door would have me somehow taking on a project of fixing up the entire exterior and I didn’t have time for that shit.
I was also mentally and physically drained from not dealing with problems, the only thing I wanted to do involved pillows, covers, and staring at the algorithms on my wall. Add in a few warmed-up chocolate chip cookies leftover from the local bakery and life would be perfect.
The shrill ring of my phone destroyed that option.
“I thought I turned that shit off,” I mumbled to myself because who in their right mind still had their ringer on these days? I wasn’t important enough for people to be calling me and anything I had to respond to could wait for me to remember I had a phone. Still, I answered it. “Yes?”
“How you holding up?”
I immediately relaxed at my brother, Liam’s, voice as his words softly came through the earpiece. Him and his husband, Joey, were the only two in this world that even remotely understood what was going on in my life. Not the super-secret government project that I was working on, but everything else—including how Owen wasn’t the perfect man, no matter how much I tried to parade around that everything was fine.
There had been another person in my life who cared just as much, a neighbor that I used to visit at times when I needed someone to pull me out of my head. Gianni moved away just weeks after I threw Owen out, not that I would have expected him to pick up where we had left off. We hadn’t made anything official. I kind of wished we had.
“Rhys? Talk to me,” Liam pleaded.
I realized I was still standing in the doorway, my entire private life privy to anyone who passed by my driveway. I closed the door and slipped off my shoes before double-checking that it was locked. Could never be too careful with someone like Owen waltzing around. “I’m okay,” I finally responded.
My ex had a habit of finding his way in here despite the restraining order. Liam and Joey, our family lawyers, had been the ones to help me file but I was terrified to ever actually make sure it was enforced. Not only could the order not be criminally enforced, but calling the police to deal with Owen always seemed to make the situation worse. It made Owen worse.
One of the first rules of my program had been to stay out of trouble with the law. I knew that it wasn’t my fault that Owen was an obsessive piece of shit but this dissertation was my entire life’s work. One wrong move and everything I had worked for would go up in flames.
Liam had mentioned filing for a protective order but if my program found out about the trouble that was surrounding me, they could drop me altogether and I just couldn’t have that.
No, I’d just handle him.
He wasn’t that bad. Most of the time.
I shuddered at the last time I had found him in my house, not-so-subtly asking questions about my project as if he truly cared. The visit had ended in an altercation, leaving me with a large purple bruise
See? Healthy adulting. I was killing it.
“Bullshit,” Liam responded to my lame statement. “Is Owen there?”
My hackles raised as I did a 360, sniffing at the air to see if his pungent cologne lingered in my house. While he could be lurking in a corner, Owen was a show-off. He would have come to greet me. “No, I don’t think so.”
“And I wasn’t asking because I thought he snuck in. Rhys,” Liam trailed off and I knew he was trying to help but now all of the hard work I had done to calm down was gone. My breathing quickened as I ran through another sequence of numbers, mentally taking a deep breath. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
Liam knew how fragile my mind could be despite my academic intelligence. Sometimes, we joked that my sanity had been switched out for smarts. The constant stress of everything in my life was starting to take a toll on my mental health, not that I would ever ask for help.
“It’s fine,” I pushed out through clenched teeth. Changing the sequence, I mumbled through a different one as I relaxed, looking around once more for any sign of Owen. He wasn’t here and he hadn’t been. At least not since I left a few hours ago.
There were two obvious tells—his cologne and any god-awful smell coming from the kitchen due to what Owen used to call peace offerings. He couldn’t cook for shit but he believed he was a chef and that food could fix everything—even abusive outbursts.
“I’ll be fine,” I reiterated, not that I sounded convincing in the slightest.
“You’ve been going to your therapy sessions?”
“Yes.”
Yet another thing my brother had convinced me to do. I had hated him at the time but fuck, it was one of the best decisions I had ever made. Being able to relax and actually talk to someone about my issues had made life just a little easier. Granted, we had to jump through a few hoops and find one approved by my program but I was glad that my therapist was there for those panicked sessions I always seemed to schedule at the last minute.
“Will we see you tonight? You know Mom’s been asking.” Sounds of laughter picked up in the background, telling me that Liam and Joey had probably come into town last night and stayed at the house. I was only an hour away and whenever I did visit, I refused to stay overnight. The comfort of my home was a little too enticing for me to put up with family drama longer than I had to.
I didn’t want to attend the weekly family dinner Mom had been running for the last decade, though. It was a chance to regroup with my siblings and their families but over time, it had become a chore rather than something I looked forward to.
Mom and Ada, my older sister, had never understood my brand of crazy, both of them highly vocal about how unsupportive they were of my choices. Dad and Ada’s husband, Ernest, were relatively silent but always sided with their women. Never once had any one of them defended me from a jab at my expense. Other than Liam and Joel, the only reason to attend these family dinners was my niece, Tia. The light of my life, and a whole bundle of joy despite her parents.
How Ada had ever created that beautiful angel would always be a mystery to me.
“Rhys?”
Lost in my head again. I had no idea how Liam put up with me. “Yeah, I’ll be there I guess. Just me.” I put that out into the world, reminding Liam that I was still upholding my side of the restraining order as best I could. I also hoped that Liam would help redirect any conversations regarding Owen. Mom and Ada were hung up on the guy, constantly telling me that he was the perfect partner in my life. I’m sure Mom only thought so because Ada did as if that piece of shit had been a present dropped into my lap.
He was definitely anything but.
It had been a little while since I had seen them all last, probably around the same time I kicked Owen out. However, if I didn’t show up this week, there was a strong likelihood that either Mom or Ada would show up on my doorstep to ‘check-in’. Hanging up with my brother after a quick goodbye, I headed for my office deciding to forgo my original plan of warm cookies. They’d still be here later.
Without even thinking, I grabbed a pillow and a blanket from the closet before curling up on the couch against the back wall. My gaze focused on the sequences and algorithms I had etched into the wallpaper over the years. It was a wall of madness but it was my brand of madness and it was all I needed to feel safe, wrapped up in my little cocoon of happiness. Soon enough, sleep overtook me.
Chapter two
RHYS
The putrid smell of cheese tore me out of whatever pleasant dream I’d been having. The scent scorched my nostrils and made my throat constrict, fear racing through my limbs. I used to fucking love cheese, in any form, on every dish that I indulged in, except for my sweets. Those were a beautiful gift all on their own. However, Owen made me hate the fucking thing that used to make me whole.
It was his way of apologizing. We’d fight. He’d storm out. And then he’d return, making food as a peace offering. There were several problems with his way of attacking our issues.
Our fights were never regular things that couples fought about. I had a problem with him stumbling in at all hours of the night, looking like he had gone several rounds with a meat grinder. He refused to explain where he was or what he had been doing but I knew he was caught up in something. It didn’t help that on occasion strangers showed up looking for him, threatening my safety if I didn’t point to his whereabouts.
He also had this unnatural interest in my dissertation—work that I wasn’t allowed to speak about to anyone other than those with a top security clearance. Owen knew this and still, he asked and poked until I began changing the code on my office lockbox weekly out of pure fear that his intentions were anything but innocent.
The other lingering problem was how he returned. Gaslighting was putting it lightly as he tried to coax me back into his arms with my favorites. Instead of making me fall in love all over again, though, it made me hate the things I used to obsess over.
Like cheese.
My goddamn cheese.
Owen had ruined it.
A snarl formed on my lips as I sat up on the couch, trembling from sheer rage and fear that was slowly taking over my emotions. The last problem—the most important one? Owen wasn’t supposed to be in my fucking house, let alone within one hundred feet of me or my property. Sure, we had once talked about renovating this house together after I stupidly accepted his engagement proposal. He had all but moved in at that point. In the end, though, it was still my name on the deed. This was my house.
I stayed put for several more seconds, trying to gain enough confidence to face the man in my nightmares. I used to love him or at least I thought I did but now he was the one adding to my instability. I reached into my pocket and clamped my fingers around Fibo, taking several deep breaths before I pushed off the couch and inched into the hallway.
The cheese continued to assault my poor sense of smell, burnt by the taste now lingering in my mouth but I pushed past it as I stumbled toward the kitchen. A groan slipped from my lips as Owen peeked out, a wild smile plastered on his face. It was as if he didn’t know how wrong this scene was. My gaze traveled along the room, my shoulders falling in defeat. It looked like he had exploded over my home, his coat and bag thrown on my couch, papers from his professorship spread across the coffee table. Almost as if he still lived here.
“Hey, gorgeous! Was wondering when my sleeping beauty would wake up.” He tried to purr but it came out like a feral coyote slowly being strangled.
I frowned at his overjoyed greeting, stepping out of reach when he tried to touch me. I might have welcomed it a few months ago but as of now, it felt vile and wrong. “What the fuck are you doing in my house?” I made sure to emphasize that it was my house and that he had no reason to be here.
“We had a little argument, just like we always do. I’m making your favorite. Go ahead and sit on the couch and-”
I swallowed down my normal timid response and cut him off. For too long I had let this man walk over me and I just couldn’t do it anymore. Like fuck, the ink on the restraining order was still drying. “No, we broke up months ago. You’re not supposed to be here. How the fuck did you even get in?”
