Taryn’s sweet, soft lips.
The honeyed, spiced flavor from my scotch that she sipped so easily.
I’m still savoring the faint moans she let me swallow when I rolled my hips and groin against her needy center through her clothes. The sounds Taryn made replay on a loop, each passing of the track furthering my craving.
For the last five years, I’ve worried that alcohol would become my addiction of choice. That I’d be driven to succumb to alcoholism like my father because solving your issues by forcing down bitter liquid is easier than facing issues head-on.
The business.
This family.
This property.
Even the withering relationship he had with my mother pushed his weak cognizance to locate his solution at the bottom of a bottle to numb the stress of it all.
The same pressure I combat daily because of him.
This is why I never give myself to the poison, giving it the power to flow through my veins and devour me from the inside out. It destroyed him rapidly, transforming him into a shell of a man rotting in a cell because his obsession reigned over him.
Lounging with a glass every night reminds me that I’m in control. Inhaling the aroma and being determined never to let it influence my mind shows me that I hold the power.
That’s my fix.
My drug of choice pushes me forward to be the best man I can be for my family.
It’s a reminder.
I always thought if something would destroy me, it would be the temptation and sensation of liquor. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.
It’s the taste ofher—the feeling of her soft skin molding under my hands like putty. Alcohol impacts the brain, but I should’ve known that Taryn Meyers would be wildly more dangerous.
Like a lily of the valley that my siblings and I would come across playing in the woods—toxic if ingested, but with a sap that can seep through your skin and cause as much damage.
And I’ve done both.
I let my hands drift over her soft skin. I tasted her mouth. Her perfect cunt.
Because I let my control slip away.
She’s infecting my head, and it’s taking all my fucking willpower not to barge into her room and pretend that she’s the remedy to cure my insanity.
As I walk across my driveway, inhaling the fresh air to compose my racing heart and clear my muddled head, her scent clings to me. Follows me.
I have never kissed a woman I fuck.
It’s too intimate.
Has the ability to shift the casual relationship into something I will never allow myself to have.
But the moment I flipped her over onto that couch, she was the numbing agent. I forgot all I stand for as my body melted into hers, and she gave herself over to me.
Her brown eyes saw more than the man who has cowered behind the barricade he built five years ago when he witnessed his father attempt to murder his mother.
Love doesn’t fucking look like that.
Love isn’t a piece of glass cutting through flesh.
Devotion isn’t letting someone’s blood drip and soak into the carpet in a family home.
