Craving Dragonflies Read online

  Craving Dragonflies

  Terri E. Laine

  First Edition

  Copyright © 2018 Terri E. Laine

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in form or any manner whatsoever by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or a book review. Scanning, uploading and distribution of the book via the Internet or via any other means without permission is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support for the author’s rights is appreciated. For information address to SDTEL Books.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Michele @ Michele Catalano Creative

  Photo taken by Scott Hoover

  To all the survivors.

  "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Author’s Note

  If you want to know when my next release will come out, please sign up for my newsletter. http://eepurl.com/bDJ9kb

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  If you are a fan of this series or me, make sure you join my fan group. Terri’s Butterflies

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  And you can join my reader group to talk books. Terri E. Laine Reader Group

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Epilogue

  Thank You

  Coming Soon

  Preview of Songs for Cricket

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Terri E. Laine

  Prologue

  Ashton

  * * *

  Darkness covered me like a shroud and I was too paralyzed to end it. Gripped in memories where blackness meant pain or loneliness, I struggled for breath.

  Somewhere far off I heard my name, but my eyes were glued shut. I tried to pretend I made the light disappear on my own so fear wouldn't overtake me.

  But it was in the absence of light where the monsters lived.

  My savior was gone, and I had nothing more to live for.

  I’d been a pawn in someone’s game all my life.

  For the monster, I was blackmail, an exhibit in a legal document to force my father to pay.

  For the devil, I was the vessel for pain in his pleasure.

  For my savior, I was his disciple to rule.

  For me, I was no one.

  I thought again about death as an ending for my suffering.

  I had nothing left to live for.

  A hand on my arm jerked me out of my torment. Light filled the room, but his touch was no longer welcomed. It didn’t ease the pain it once had.

  “Ash,” Sawyer said.

  I didn’t turn to face him. If I had, I’d only be lost again. He’d made it clear, I wasn’t his to find.

  He was temptation, my ultimate self-destruction.

  I was nothing without him and nothing to him. He’d made that all too clear.

  “You don’t have to stay here. Come back home,” he said.

  Why? I wanted to say. So I could listen to him be with someone else?

  No thank you. I was good here in the frat house where I could learn to live by myself or die on my own terms.

  “You’re not going to talk to me now?” he asked.

  No, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I would no longer blindly follow in hopes that he would see me.

  “Please,” he begged.

  I closed my eyes, even knowing I would go back to that dark place. Locked away in my own prison of memories was better than his pity.

  He reached out again, fingertips grazing my arm. I pulled free, rolling away, curling into a ball.

  “Fuck, Ash, don’t be this way.”

  Mentally, I shut him out and thought of all the ways I could end things.

  A blade, a pill, a drive, a gun… all too easy.

  My life had been hard. My ending should be harder.

  A door closed, and I was alone again.

  This was my destiny, and it was better for all if I not only honored it, but accepted it.

  Fate had only ever been a bitch to me. I didn’t expect anything less.

  1

  Ashton

  * * *

  There were days when I missed the townhouse I’d shared with my friends, Chance and Sawyer, like today.

  The dark-stained wall carved out of someone’s Gothic nightmare was a show of wealth and privilege in the Sigma frat house I didn’t subscribe to. My brothers thought of themselves as living in a throwback to times where smoking jackets were a thing.

  I hated that I missed the brick and plain painted walls of the townhouse I couldn’t go back to.

  Catcalls were a precursor of what I was walking into. It was a new semester and the start to my senior year here at Layton University, the Darling of the South. Pledge Week was in full swing. New recruits were brought in to be humiliated, thinking they had a chance in hell of getting into Sigma fraternity. I hated it.

  The great room had tufted leather sofas and other pieces I couldn’t name that blended into the walls and built-in bookcases that displayed Sigma paraphernalia and old books no one actually read.

  Some of my brothers stood. Others lounged on the sofas where sunglasses hid their utter glee as they watched the dumb freshmen on their hands and knees wearing aprons that didn’t cover their bare asses. But that wasn’t what they were laughing at. The pledges were using toothbrushes to clean the rugs and floors.

  The irony lost on the dozen that wanted in was that we had a maid service that cleaned daily any mess made the night before. Their labor was nothing more than entertainment.

  Trent Willhouse, son of a media mogul, stood in the middle of it all. He was laughing so hard when he spoke, I almost didn’t get what he said.

  “We should make them wear tails and neigh and shit.”

  His sunglasses tipped lopsided on his face as he sprawled onto the sofa f
rom the arm he’d been sitting on.

  “What, like pin the tail on the donkey?” another idiot said who was filming the pledges with his phone.

  “Like, would we use duct tape or something to keep them on?” someone else said.

  Just as I was about to ignore it all and leave to hunt for food, Willhouse, doubled over in laughter and holding his middle, straightened.

  “I’ve got an idea. Let’s make them wear those tail butt plugs.”

  I pivoted to face them. “No.”

  That’s when they noticed me.

  “No?” Willhouse asked.

  His face had more wrinkles than a Pug when he turned in my direction. “What the fuck, man? You decide to speak and we’re supposed to listen?”

  All was quiet. Even the pledges stopped. I glanced at a few of their faces and saw relief.

  “It’s not going to happen,” l declared.

  Willhouse popped off the sofa and stalked forward to position himself in front of me like he held some power. Problem for him, he was a few inches shorter than me. As much as he tried, he couldn’t look me in the eye without angling his head up slightly.

  That didn’t stop him. His ego was charged and spoiling for a fight.

  “You think that after three years of reaping the benefit of brotherhood and not doing a damn thing to earn it, I should listen to you?”

  There were quiet murmurs and chuckles as the peanut gallery dug out their metaphorical popcorn ready to watch what would happen next.

  “You’re not the king here,” he said.

  I didn’t eye the crown and scepter that belonged to Sawyer.

  A muscle twitched in his eye when l said, “Neither the fuck are you.”

  My former best friend Sawyer was. He’d been voted in without so much as a campaign.

  “I don’t see Cargill here.” Willhouse’s hands were held up, but the crowd was reluctant to join his side in this. They kept looking at me for my response.

  Thing was, Sawyer had no desire to be president of our fraternity. He had all the women he wanted and that was power he desired. Real responsibilities for the assholes in front of me he cared little for wasn’t his thing.

  I stepped into Willhouse’s space and jabbed a finger in his chest. “It’s not happening.”

  “We’ve established that Sawyer’s not here for you to suck his dick, so who’s going to stop me?”

  I didn’t think. It was a reflex. One second Willhouse stood there daring me to punch him, the next he was on the floor looking up at me through fingers that covered his bloody nose. I studied my knuckles and the spray of red. I roughly wiped them on my jeans.

  “You bastard.” His muffled words hung in the air after penetrating his crimson hand, which he held to stanch the flow.

  But the way he glared at me, I knew there was more he wanted to say.

  Secrets were a thing with the rich. They used them as leverage and bargaining chips. His choice of words to jab at me meant he might know about my father’s indiscretion. My parents weren’t married despite my mother’s aspirations. She’d snake charmed a lonely man into bed while his wife was dealing with ovarian cancer and gave him the one thing his wife couldn’t. Me.

  “I think you broke my nose,” Willhouse whined, which was louder than his bark.

  I raised an eyebrow. “I guess you can get that nose job you always wanted.”

  He snarled as he ambled to his feet, but the brothers were there to hold him back ostensibly to save me.

  This wasn’t the Omega house filled with steroid charged sports players. This frat was filled with trust fund babies. They fought with lawyers not fists when they had an opponent they weren’t sure they could physically beat.

  “This isn’t over,” Willhouse warned.

  His arm was aimed at me like a missile. Part of me wanted him to try. I had pent- up anger that needed an outlet.

  I didn’t respond and headed for the door.

  “Let me go,” he told the guys holding him.

  I’d ruined his fun, and retribution would come. Hopefully, some of the freshmen heard my message and got out while they could. No amount of following orders would get them in if their parents’ bank account didn’t have enough zeros.

  I stepped out into the light and glared up toward the sun. The clear day like this I liked. The heat that came with it, not so much. Where I grew up in the Hamptons, low eighties was the norm for the summer. Daily hundred-degree heat wasn’t something I loved. Even if it got hotter in New York, we had the sound and ocean close by to cool us off.

  The door opened behind me and two wide-eyed freshmen held balled up clothes to cover their front with one hand and the back with the other.

  “And don’t fucking come back,” Willhouse yelled.

  He turned his steely gaze on me. I ignored him and jumped into my Challenger. Since my Hellcat had a muffler delete, I revved my engine a few times, creating noise pollution before peeling out. The growl my car made could drown out anything, including my thoughts. That’s why I’d chosen it.

  By reflex, I realized I was headed for the townhouse. I made an abrupt course correction at the next corner toward campus. That was the thing about Oklahoma. There wasn’t much to do in the small town that was made up mostly of our campus. Back home, I could drive to the city or to the beach to get away. Here was nothing outside of the college town for miles on end.

  There was one spot where I could find some peace, but I didn’t drive there either. I ended up in the parking lot, a growling stomach leading my way. The café was open. I checked the time and decided it was unlikely I’d run into Sawyer. The fact was, I didn’t want to see anyone. I had shit to figure out. One year left and then what would I do?

  When I parked, I spotted a tiny girl with a mass of curls framing a pixie-like face scrunched up in frustration.

  There was something familiar about her. My mind filed back to a movie Sawyer and I watched when we were kids. He’d been flipping through channels and stopped when he saw a chick in her bra and panties. Barely in our teens, it was enough to get him to stop. I racked my brain for the movie and he’d been enthralled as she jumped in and started getting hot and heavy with another guy on screen. I thought it might be called Seduce the Babysitter or something like that. I couldn’t remember.

  What I did remember was the girl in the movie had hair like this girl’s, big and curly.

  I popped a baseball hat onto my head and pulled the brim down to cover my face. I got out with every intention of the world not to stop until I watched her kick her tire. Fuck me. I really didn’t want to stop. The last thing I wanted to do was make conversation. If I helped her, she would expect me to talk. If I didn’t, what would that make me? Shit.

  2

  Willow

  * * *

  Okay, kicking it hadn’t helped. The tire was still flat, and I was going to be so late. I looked at the vile thing in my hands, knowing any minute it would ring. Celeste was not going to be happy, and I cursed my phone, though it wasn’t its fault.

  The parking lot behind the building wasn’t empty, but it was filled with silent steel traps that in no way could help me. Then the air combusted with sound. An engine that meant to be heard roared into the area like an amplified swarm of bees.

  Black paint so shiny the sun reflected off in bursts of starlight had me lift my hand to stave off the brightness. That’s when I noticed the double gray racing stripes down the middle of the car.

  With my jaw hanging open, I could only stare, especially as a blindingly beautiful boy stepped out from behind the wheel. A cap left his face in shadows, but there was no mistaking how gorgeous he was. The newly created silence when the engine died was a gift from heaven like he was. I stood holding in my other hand a lug wrench that looked more like a cross as if I was warding him off. And maybe I should. He was most definitely one of those guys who didn’t have to work hard to get any girl he wanted.

  Tall with a short crop of hair that curled around the fringes of the hat
he wore crowned him the prince he was. He strode forward with purpose, never once looking in my direction. I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t the prize my stepsister Celeste was.

  The breath that I’d been holding escaped as my own stupefaction kept me from asking for help.

  As if that air that left my lungs somehow created a breeze strong enough to reach him, his eyes rolled heavenward and he switched course to head in my direction.

  There was a gathering storm brewing in his blue eyes as they narrowed on me and down to the tool I held in a white-knuckled grip.

  When he reached me, I sputtered words because he looked very much put out to help me.

  “I know how to do this. It’s just the nuts are tight.”

  I clamped my lips shut, sounding like a complete idiot. He towered over me, reaching me in a few powerful strides. I stared up at him like some zealous fangirl unable to speak.

  He held out his hand and I glanced down at his large palm before slowly handing over the tool.

  His gaze zipped away as he bent down and easily loosened the nuts one by one with powerful jerks. His biceps flexed, and I was pretty sure I drooled a little.