From the author of Passion's Insanity and Time Waits for No ONe comes a new tale of love, fame, and forbidden desire.
Based on the world built in Passion's Insanity, The Truth of Lust takes a deeper dive into the shadowed past and fiery present of M...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
It rarely rained in Southern California. It sure as hell never snowed.
Or so Victoria had been told when she moved there all those years ago.
The springtime was always heavy with rain where she came from, but the skies didn't seem to build up and overflow that way out West. Months could go by and the sky wouldn't release a single drop, day in and day out of perpetual, perfect sunshine.
However, a few weeks ago, the City of Angels froze over. 5 inches of snow blanketed Hollywood, from the beaches of Malibu all through the valley, catching many Angelenos with their pants down, unprepared to navigate a winter storm. A few weeks later, record temperatures hit, a contrast from the winter wonderland, the early days of April feeling scorching, hitting peaks of 106 degrees.
Now, as if the jolt from ice to fire wasn't enough, the cloudy days were rolling in, with expert meteorologists predicting unusual thunderstorms, rain set to start any day now. Victoria knew it before the weatherman did, feeling it in her joints as the pressure in the atmosphere changed day by day, ramping for a storm. Similarly, a storm brewed in the cramped backroom where she and Michael had been arguing for what felt like hours. The air inside was thick with unspoken words and stifled grievances, mirroring the heavy clouds that loomed outside.
"Victoria, listen to me-"
"I'm not listening to shit, Michael, I gotta go."
"You don't have anywhere to go until I go, so sit back down."
The firm tone and point of his finger to the folding director's chair she had just risen from invoked an urge to comply from Victoria, parking it back in her seat before her pride could tell her not to. The cold and clipped manner with which the man before her levied the command betrayed the nature he was known for. The sweet, innocent, altruistic beacon of love the world knew and loved was far from the saint he portrayed himself to be as his eyes tore into her flesh like daggers.
Despite the wretched rigidity in the air and the suffocating silence surrounding them as she watched veins jump in his curl-framed temple, Victoria couldn't fight her lips twisting as she fought back the urge to laugh in his face. Before she could taunt him and tell him he was much too pretty in his suit to be acting so stern, he spoke again, his voice strained like he wanted to yell, but knew he couldn't.
"I'm so tired of this, Victoria. After this, I'm completely done with this nonsense. I'm finished."
"So what are you still doing in my face?" Victoria spat back, not giving his declaration even a second to stand. "You always talking that shit, just get out my life then. If you really as bad as you say you are, then leave! You're the 'King', right?"
For a fraction of a moment, the superstar nearly broke character, a flash of something that resembled anguish flashing through his features, quickly replaced by the impenetrable steel he had been channeling, careful not to surrender to her calculated attempts to disarm him of his power.
