The Beast Within by Terra Laurent

Author:Terra Laurent [Laurent, Terra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Erotic Romance Fiction
Publisher: Totally Bound Publishing
Published: 2012-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Tony

Aaron stood naked and awkward in the bedroom. The upstairs shower was tiny, and after his nightmare about the dismembered Kapre agents Aaron had no desire to bathe in the downstairs tub, so he resigned himself to a sweaty, sticky ten minute wait. He was afraid to touch anything so he paced a careful path in the floor, looking at the sparse collection of personal items in Tony’s room. A glint of gold drew him to the bureau. A small frame, no more than two by two, sat behind a pile of supernatural books. He nudged the books away with his elbow. Inside the frame, a woman with heavily feathered brown hair, and cheeks delineated by sharp swaths of coral blush smiled down at a grinning, dark-haired toddler. It was the grin that struck a chord of recognition. The grin Aaron couldn’t help but return, even to a photograph.

“She was young,” Tony said. He was hovering outside the bathroom door, a towel wrapped around his waist. “Too young. Too drunk. Too addicted.”

Aaron turned to face Tony. The pain in his voice was nothing compared to that in his eyes.

“She didn’t love my father. At least, she didn’t love him enough at eighteen to marry him. But, she did.” Tony edged around him and picked up the frame, holding it so they both could look. “She was beautiful, wasn’t she?”

“Very,” Aaron replied.

“My father had a hair metal band, or so I’m told. Average talent, but a nice handful of groupies. He went out on gigs that lasted longer and longer. Finally, he didn’t come back.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I wasn’t old enough to remember him going. Just a little older than I was here.” He tapped the photo glass. “Before he left, though, he made sure my mother had her priorities straight. Got her hooked on heroin early in their relationship. When he left and took away what little cash flow she had, she eventually went to crack. She said the booze kept her ‘even’ on the days she couldn’t score.

“I grew up thinking that the families on TV were fantasies, as real as unicorns or anthropomorphic teddy bears. I thought all dads left and all moms were so rocked they forgot to make lunch. By the time I was nine she might as well have been dead. She occasionally did things—unladylike things—to scrape together enough change to keep us in our shitty apartment, but that’s about all. Most of the time she sat in a daze while I did all of the chores I thought needed doing. I made my food, washed my clothes in the sink when I couldn’t find enough quarters for the Laundromat, tried to clean the filth off the floor without waking her. I went to school and usually came home to an even bigger mess. Sometimes on her lucky days I would come home to find a strange man lying in her bed, zoned out along with her.”

“How long did that go on for?” Aaron felt strange

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