Read Online SCARS by Amy Leigh McCorkle - Free Book Online Page B

relationships. But then I hardly approved of any of hers. After all our friendship had survived just about everything and anything that had been thrown at it. This relationship was different than the others that had come before.
                  This was a man.
                  Most of the men in our live had been little boys in grown up clothes. Including Kevin. Especially Kevin.
                  A man with scars. A man with demons. A man with a heart engulfed within a house of shadows and bruises. A man who was by far and away the most dangerous man I had ever known that I hadn’t been forced to kill. Was I worried about him turning on me? In a way yes. I’d be a fool not to entertain those thoughts. But he should fear me too. The feelings he engendered in me. The need to possess him and for him to possess me. Dangerous. Reckless and absolutely irresponsible. My viral load was nearly undetectable. We could use condoms and he could take PReP treatment. The way I was feeling that conversation was going to happen sooner rather than later.
                  I thought of his doomed love affair with the abused mafia wife.
                  He never mentioned the word love.
                  But it was obvious to me that he had loved her. And in his grief had sought vengeance and justice. He understood there were people in that world that would haunt him until the day he died. He worried about me being exposed to that world. Of that world finding me and crushing me. I’d faced the cruelties of this world and was still alive to tell the tale.
                  We’d have to have the talk soon. Something that I often put off because that usually marked the end of the relationship. Men were good with the idea of me having HIV in theory. But the idea of being an active participant in my treatment and them taking medication as well? Well they often disappeared from my life and never looked back. It made for a lonely existence at times. I had been living the life of nun. I had even ceased to masturbate. My libido had been lying dormant for many years. Yet with that once kiss it sprung back to life.
                  All of this was on my mind as I laid out my medication to take. The shower would have to wait. I made myself a tall glass of ice water and sat down at the table and began to take the protocol one by one until final the table was void of any pills.
                  Suddenly there was a hammering at the door.
                  It startled me and scared me. Ellen never knocked like that. She had a key. No, this was a thunderous hammering that made her heart race. She went to the door and looked through the peephole and her heart leapt into her throat.
                  I opened the door and there stood James. A pharmacy bag in one hand. I was puzzled by the bag but the look on his face. It had been a long time since I’d seen that look on a man’s face. Raw, pure, animal magnetism. He oozed desire. The hunger in his eyes said it all. I shivered with desire of my own.
                  “Rayna…” his voice was harsh and rough to my ears.
                  I stepped back to let him into the house. He came in and as soon as I locked the door he grabbed and kissed me like a man possessed and dying of thirst. And if he just kissed me long enough that thirst would be enough.
                  All it did was fan the flames from earlier.
                  We stood there clinging to one another.
                  The world had stopped.
                  Inside that moment it was us and us alone that had choice alone to make.
                  “I’ve been on the PReP protocol for three days. I’ve got condoms. Tell me to go home and take a cold shower and that’s exactly what I’ll do.”
                  It was all I could do to