Happy Thursday!!

Today kicks off the start of my free Forever Broken chapter posts. This is a standalone book that I had started talking about over a year ago, but had never quite finished.

I decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to thank all my amazing readers and give you Forever Broken for free! So I’ll be posting Forever Broken every week, one chapter at a time, on both my blog and wattpad.com as a thank you to my readers. Once all the chapters have been posted, I’ll publish it as one whole book on the various retail sites.

If you’d like to be notified when the Forever Broken chapters are posted, you can join my mailing list: http://jessicawoodauthor.com/mailing-list/

If you want to follow me on Wattpad, you can find me here:http://www.wattpad.com/user/JessicaWood344.

Here’s the first chapter–the prologue:

FOREVER BROKEN

PROLOGUE

“Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for each other.” — Jane Austen

His body glistened with sweat as he rocked inside me. My nails dug deep into the muscular hardness of his back as each of his violent thrusts went deeper than the last. His face twisted in pleasure as uncontrollable gasps and moans escaped my lips. These scenes flashed rapidly through my closed eyelids as if I were watching spliced clips from a movie inside my mind. Almost like I was having an out-of-body experience. Almost like these memories did not just happen.

My eyes fluttered opened. I must have dozed off for a few minutes there. The room was pitch black and there was a musty smell of sweat and sex in the air.

I felt hot, steady breathing against my left shoulder. I slowly turned my head in that direction and saw a guy sleeping next to me. He shifted in his sleep, his left leg and arm moved on top of my naked body, trapping me in place. I felt suffocated by his hold on me and my mind and body screamed to escape his stronghold.

I could hear the muffled sounds of distant chatter and a melodic dubstep mix playing somewhere outside of the room. The frat party must still be going on downstairs.

My chest moved up and down against the weight of this guy’s arm as I let out a deep sigh. Why did I get myself into this situation again?

To escape the pain, I heard a small voice respond inside me.

But escaping the pain was short lived. Not even the empty bliss of an orgasm could keep it at bay for too long. I felt my body waking up from the pain-numbing effects of the hot, casual sex I’d just had with this guy who now had me pinned and trapped in his bed. I need to get out of here.

I slowly shifted my body away from him, trying to inch myself out of his embrace without waking him.

I failed.

“Mmm,” he growled in a husky voice as he curled his arm around my torso and tried to pull me towards him again.

I averted his touched and sat up on the edge of the bed.

“Where are you going with that sexy ass of yours?” he groaned as he reached behind him and turned on the lamp on bedside table.

I blinked. When my eyes readjusted to the light in his bedroom, I turned towards him and saw his chiseled, naked body facing me in all of its glory, showing me that he was ready again.  “How about another round?” he asked as he looked up at me with a devious smile twisted on his lips. His eyes unabashedly looked back and forth between my face and my full breasts.

As I stood up, his hand found mine and pulled me back down onto the bed. Before I could pull away and get out of the bed, he guided my hand down to his already-hard erection.

I looked away, cringing inside at what I had just done with this stranger. “Sorry. I gotta go, John,” I said as I finally managed to pull my hand out of his grip. I got up quickly, grabbed my clothes from the couch a few feet away from the bed, and started putting them on.

“Uh, it’s Jim,”

“What?” I looked at him, realizing he was saying something to me. My mind was somewhere else—already somewhere outside of this room.

“My name is Jim, not John.”

“Oh. Right.” I gave a feigned apologetic smile as I quickly buttoned my jeans and grabbed my purse. I walked to the door of the bedroom and then stopped to look at him quickly. “Well. Uh … thanks for the sex.”

“No, thank you,” he said huskily, “We should do it again.” He licked his lips. “Soon.”

“Uh huh,” I lied. My hand eagerly reached for the door nob that would free me from facing this mistake.

“So, can I get your number then?” he asked. I knew this question would come. It always did.

I sighed. I opened the door and then turned around to face him.

“J—Jim. Look. I’m not looking for any type of relationship. If I was, I probably wouldn’t have slept with you after knowing you for half an hour at a frat party.” Shame filled me as I realized how I had just slept with another man I had no feelings for.

“Let’s call this for what it was,” I continued. “An one-night-stand. You were a great fuck, and I got my mind off some things I didn’t want to think about. And I’m pretty sure you had a great time too.”

He smiled at me coyly, indicating his agreement.

“But, let’s just keep it at that. Let’s not drag this out.”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” he teased. “We can still get to know one another and have a good time.”

“Trust me,” I said almost inaudibly as I turned away from him, “you don’t want anything to do with me.”

Without looking back at him, I walked out into the empty hallway and closed his bedroom door behind me. Regret gripped my insides as I started my walk-of-shame procession across the hallway, down the stairs, through the almost-emptied living room of the frat house, and out the door into the cold, bitter evening darkness that welcomed me with open arms.

I wasn’t like this all the time. Actually, I hadn’t been in a relationship for three years. By choice. And yet, I don’t usually sleep around. But, when I do, something inside me seems to go into a full-throttle mode of being reckless, throwing all caution to the wind, like an idiot who didn’t know any better.

I knew better.

But why was I so reckless? Why did I tell him I didn’t want to use a condom? Why did I say I was on the pill when I wasn’t? I shook my head violently as I walked the few houses over on Greek Row to my sorority house.

You know why, Natalie, I told myself.

I did. I knew exactly why I was reckless with a complete stranger, with one of the many frat guys on this block who slept with hundreds of girls during their college career.

I was fucked up in the head. Empty, mindless sex was one of the few things I could do when I didn’t want to face reality. When I didn’t want to feel the pain. When I could distance myself from … well, from none other than myself—the empty shell of a person that I have become.

My life changed over three years ago, on January 25, 2010.

It was the day that I could never forget. It was the day that I could never escape. It was the day that I made a conscious decision that had forever scarred and shattered my soul. It was the day that had left me forever broken.

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What do you think? Come back next week for Chapter 1. 🙂