Page 19 of Crazy Rich Monsters (Necessary Evils 1)

I maintain a brave face, all the while I’m absolutely fucking petrified. This woman could destroy me, her own son. She could disown me and remove me from the family fortune. Life would suck without a meaty trust fund to fall back on, but I came here for the truth because the truth is worth so much more than luxury. The way she’s looking at me though? I have a pretty damned good inkling that someone is lying to me. It’s just not about to be her.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen my mother speechless before. There’s a first time for everything though. I think about sinking back into my seat and cowering next to her, but that’d make it too difficult to run.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” she says lowly, but there’s a vicious bent to her tone that’s bubbling under the surface. “I assume you’re joking but this isn’t a game, so I’m going to ask that you leave.”

I swallow a nervous lump in my throat and take quick measure of the crowd around me. The entirety of them refuse to make eye contact with me. “I’ll see myself out.”

She’s a bitch, a cold-hearted demon that terrorizes the Hamptons with an iron fist.

She’s a liar too, always weaving a tapestry of stories to place her firmly in the limelight.

But she’s not lying. I know this because of the angry tenor in her voice. She’s a quiet liar, the kind of woman that passes untruths along in vague whispers. Her lies are never stated as truths and that’s why they’re so difficult to discern.

As I approach the back of the house, Cathy comes walking outside. She stares me down with rage, knowing she’s been bamboozled but completely puzzled as to why. I’m sure someone will fill in the blanks when she takes a seat at the war-torn table. My mother will make sure everyone knows that I’m not always acting out of turn, that I must be drinking. Someone will offer the idea that I’m on drugs, to which my mother will scoff.

I’ll pay for my sins later. She’ll never let me live this down, but I had to know the truth.

As for Addison, she wants to watch the world burn, so I’m going to put on one hell of a show.

ChapterEleven

ADDISON

Some people believe that dreams are a manifestation of the future, that if you look hard enough, you can interpret what’s to come. As if the mind exists in some alternate dimension that can foresee the consequences of the present. I don’t believe in psychic visions any more than I believe in fate.

The only thing I believe in anymore is that people are cruel.

There is such a thing called lucid dreaming that’s defined by the awareness that you’re dreaming while you’re asleep. For some, the idea of lucid dreaming is something that can be obtained through meditation and practice. For me, it’s always been this way. Since the time I was a little girl, I knew I was dreaming. That’s not to say it lessens the fear of nightmares. It doesn’t but there is the slightest comfort in knowing.

For those who suffer from serious nightmares, lucid dreaming can be prescribed as a medication of sorts. The idea is that if you’re aware that you’re dreaming, you can take control of the movie that’s playing inside your own head. That’s never been the case for me. I’m never in control, not when I’m awake and certainly not when I’m asleep.

I’m dreaming. I know this and yet my mind isn’t strong enough to pump the brakes, to change course. I’m staring down the barrel of a proverbial shotgun as I wander along the shoreline just down the way from Tauk. The air is heavy and thick against my naked body. There’s a storm brewing in the distance. The smell that permeates the light breeze is familiar, but I can’t pinpoint the source.

And then my eyes spot Nick out in the water. He’s far enough away that I shouldn’t be

be able to recognize him in the darkness, but there’s no realism in dreams. They are surreal wastelands where anything is possible, and the unknown is known and the known becomes unknown. As he breaches the edge of the shore, he rises to his feet, naked and unafraid. His gaze settles on me and it stays there.

I feel as if I’ve had this dream a hundred times, but I haven’t. There’s a familiarity to it all though that’s tugging away at me as if I should remember. He approaches, his mouth flat and unresponsive. Then he’s petting his hand down the side of my face. And then I’m on my hands and knees, naked too. He circles his fist in my hair, grabbing enough to hold me in place as he thrusts into me from behind. I can safely check having sex on the beach off my nonexistent bucket list.

It’s just as wrong and perverted in my dreams as it is in reality, but just the same I can’t pull away. I can’t put a stop to the way he has the power to undo me with just one glance. He twists his fingers in my hair, pulling tighter with each thrust. A crowd begins to gather, coming from everywhere and nowhere. Bodies rise from the ocean and slip from the shadows from underneath the sandy pier. The audience is getting one hell of a show as I roll onto my back. Nick wedges himself between my legs, parting my thighs with his muscular body. The friction of the sand rubs the skin on my back raw.

Pain and pleasure, both at the same time. I force my eyes to close and drop a hand to his taut ass, begging for him to thrust deeper into me. I can feel the blood seeping from his back as I dig in deeper, my nails cutting into his skin. He fucks me harder and I crave to see the feral look in his eyes, but when I open my own, I freeze.

The world spins in heavy circles, and our passionate public display of fucking blurs into slow motion. It’s no longer Nick above me. It’s Carter. I’m dreaming. Of course I’m fucking dreaming and I don’t have the power to change things. It’s like I’m standing somewhere outside of my own body while somehow still looking through my own eyes.

His hands curl into the sand to better his grip as he begins fucking me harder. There’s rage in his eyes, burning hot with the fire of damnation. The veins in his neck threaten to pop out from underneath his skin. The same could be said for his strained arms as they begin to be swallowed by the sand until he’s buried to his elbows. The beach is going to drag us both to the depths of hell and all Carter can think about is coming.

The gravitational pull of his body begins to crush me as he reaches climax, thrusting to the hilt and then burying himself there as he comes inside of me. My hands fall to the side as I watch his face contort with equal parts pleasure and pain.

And then there’s a single fucking tear welling up in the corner of my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

His lips curl into a terrifying grin. “I’m not.”

And then the single tear is streaming down the side of my face. I can’t let Carter see me like this, so I throw my head back to gaze at the crowd gathered at the top of the pier above me. Just a bunch of blurred out faces without personalities or names, that is until a familiar face parts the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea.

It’s Dad.

He stands at the railing above, wrapping his hands around the metal bars. He stares me down and shakes his head with disapproval. When he was alive, he always looked at me as if I was the only thing he had ever done right. In my worst nightmare, he looks at me just as he used to look at my mother.

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