by Izzy Gomez
When she swirled her tongue into the indent of his navel, he grabbed her under the arms and pulled her up. At the same time, he stepped out of the tub.
Grabbing her waist, he spun them. His hot body pressed her into the wooden door. Caught between hard and deliciously hard.
His mouth covered hers. Rough. Possessive. Exactly what she wanted. She couldn’t handle gentle and tender, not today. She needed to forget.
With no clothes hampering them, their hands explored. Amanda couldn’t keep track of where he touched her; no sooner did she feel the sensation shoot through her than he’d moved on.
She slid her hand between them and gripped him, hard and hot and strong. She guided him to where she wanted him. Needed him. “Now.”
Hands still caressing her, he pulled his mouth from hers and looked into her eyes. Although glazed with lust, his expression was serious. “You’re sure? Like this?”
“Please.” Panting, she tugged him closer. She used a light tough to tease his sensitive skin.
“I don’t want—oh, God.” His gaze went unfocused. He dropped his forehead to her shoulder. “I don’t want regrets,” he said while nibbling her neck.
“No regrets.” She hooked her leg over his hip and shifted so the tip of him slid inside her. “I need you.”
He lifted his head again and met her gaze. The scorch of his stare made it impossible to look away.
In two quick thrusts he was fully inside her. She wanted desperately to close her eyes and lose herself in the thrill. But she couldn't take her eyes off his. Something held her. Passion and understanding and an element she couldn’t define.
Then he hit the magic combination of spots inside and out and she no longer had a choice. Her body melted into his as her eyes drifted shut. She wound her arms around his back as their bodies slid together.
It didn’t take long for the humid room to fill with the sounds of their lovemaking. Moans and cries mixed with the rhythmic clunk of the door against the frame. The noise only added to her yearning.
One more touch, one more kiss and she would be ready. She’d wanted him for so long and in that moment, only he could give her what she needed.
“Greg, please.”
“I know, baby.” He bit her earlobe.
Light burst behind her eyelids. It shimmered through her until it reached her core, where it triggered an explosion. The intensity overwhelmed her and she couldn’t stop a screaming as she shook with pleasure.
He increased the speed of his thrusts, pounding her into the door, holding her in a suspended state of ecstasy. Just when she thought she couldn’t stand another second, he went rigid against her. He muffled his shout in her hair as his large hands gripped her hips and ground her against him.
Sated, she fought the encroaching reality. She wanted to keep this peaceful lethargy a little longer. She pressed kisses to his shoulder and drew lazy circles on his back.
He scraped his teeth along the side of her neck. "I'm sorry if that was—"
"Exactly what I needed." She pushed on his shoulder until he lifted his head and met her gaze. He was fighting reality as much as she.
"I don't need to be wined and dined or romanced. And we'll have plenty of time for slow later." Her heart gathered speed as she formed the next words. "But if I'm going to get through today, I needed this. I needed you." Terrifying as it was to admit to herself, let alone him, she owed him that truth.
His eyes searched her face. What was he looking for?
He cupped her face between his hands and kissed her. A kiss both so tender and so passionate it twisted her gut until a knot formed in the back of her throat. Dammit, she would not ruin this by bursting into tears.
Instead she wrapped her arms around him and held on. What else could she do?
As memorial services went, Hank's was more somber than most. Probably because so many of the same people had been in the same house for the same reason only a week ago.
Amanda busied herself arranging cheese and crackers on a platter and tried not to listen to Emily snipping at her children. The stress of the past ten days was clearly taking its toll on the usually unflappable woman.
"Daisy, I told you to keep your shoes on. Go get them."
When the four-year-old didn't move, Emily extended her arm and pointed toward the living room. "Go!"
Daisy's chubby face crumpled and she ran from the room calling, "Daddy!"
Emily covered her face with her hands. "I don't care. I don't care. Let her father deal with it. I don't care."
Amanda straightened the row of crackers and said nothing. Who was she to judge someone's parenting?
"What the hell are you doing?"
Amanda looked at her sister's shocked face. What now? "Putting crackers on a plate. For people to eat." They were all running on the shortest of fuses. Was it too much to ask to get through the afternoon without a confrontation?
"Hank hated Ritz. He would never want them at his memorial." Emily grabbed the plate and threw the whole thing into the trash.
Amanda didn't bother to point out it was one of Emily's own platters, and one of her favorites. Amanda could pull it out later.
"You asked me to pick up cheese and crackers. You didn't mention what kind, so I just grabbed anything."
Amanda had offered to cook but Emily insisted cheese and crackers was fine. Amanda should have known better than to take a stressed-out Emily at her word.
"Maybe if you spent a little more time with your family, you'd know the right kind to get."
Rather than voice one of a dozen snippy responses, Amanda closed her eyes and took a deep breath. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. It wasn't worth it. She was not having this fight right now.
"Do you want me to send Greg to the store to get something else?" It's not worth it. It's not worth it.
"What exactly is he doing here?"
Oh hell. She'd known bringing him wouldn't be a popular move. But she needed him today. And dammit, she deserved that much.
"He came with me."
Emily's dark eyes narrowed as she glared at Amanda. "So what, you're fucking him? You brought your boy toy to your brother's funeral?"
It's not worth it. It's not worth it. It's not–oh to hell with it. "I know it's hard to believe, but this hasn't been easy on me either. Since you and Dad haven't been outpouring with the moral support, I thought I'd bring someone who actually gives a shit about me."
"And you thought the best person would be the same person who put handcuffs on Hank." Sneering, Emily yanked open the pantry and began pushing around boxes. "You always were the classy one."
Amanda was done. She couldn't deal with this family anymore. If they wanted to make her the enemy, fine. To hell with them.
Instead of give in to the scream welling in her chest, she started for the door. Only to come face to face with Dad and Karen's sister Mona.
Maybe Amanda would go find Madison and Daisy. The three of them could have a tantrum together. That sounded really satisfying.
Much better than facing holier-than-thou Aunt Mona. Few people disliked Amanda more than Karen had, but Mona earned that title.
"Amanda." Mona looked down her nose at Amanda, no easy feat given she clocked in around five-foot-two.
"Aren't you supposed to be helping your sister get the food together?" Dad asked before Amanda could slip past him.
Her stomach pulsed and that tantrum looked better and better. Damn them for making her feel this frustrated and impotent. Damn them for making her feel thirteen again.
"Emily deemed my efforts insufficient."
Dad glanced at Emily, then back to Amanda. "I don't have the energy to deal with you two acting childish. Get some food out there."
She wasn't acting childish. She wanted to, but Emily was the one throwing food and serving pieces in the trash.
But no point mentioning that. She'd already been cast as Bad Guy for the day.
Mona straightened the pictures of Daisy and Madison stuck t
o the refrigerator. "What do you expect, if you left her in charge?"
The air sucked out of the room. Amanda wrapped her arms around her waist, absorbing the physical impact of Mona's words. Damn her stupid emotions for letting Mona have the power to hurt her.
"I didn't see anyone else volunteering," Amanda bit out.
Mona turned and glared at Amanda, eyes narrowed. "How could you let your brother get arrested?" Her tone matched her sneer. "That's what got him killed."
"Excuse me?" Mona wanted to do this now? Fine. Amanda would oblige. It was petty, but it would feel really good to go off on Karen's bitch of a sister.
"She's right," Emily said. "You didn't have to let them arrest Hank. Isn't that supposed to be the benefit of having a cop in the family?" She spat cop like a dirty word.
They'd always treated her career choice as inferior. She and her lowly associates degree were no match for Emily's doctor of chiropractic, Karen's law degree or even Todd's medical degree. And while Dad and Hank only had bachelors degrees, they were in engineering, which was a real field. In their minds, she might as well have moved to a crack house and taken up prostitution.
"Actually, I did. There's this little thing called an arrest warrant. I won't bore you with specifics, but when you have one, it means you can arrest someone. There's no fine print exempting you if your sister's a cop." She spoke slowly, as if they had intelligence on par with Rocky. They sure as hell were acting dumber than the dog.
"How can you arrest him if he didn't do it?" Emily whined.
If she didn't cut out that whiny voice, Amanda was going to be facing murder charges of her own. "He was arrested because they found drugs in his apartment. He wasn't charged with killing anyone." But he would have been.
"Again, I want to know how you could stand by and let your own brother go to prison?" Mona leaned on the counter and glared up her pointy nose at Amanda.
He spent one night in jail. Not prison. It wasn't worth explaining the difference. She'd think Amanda was too dumb to get her point.
"I don't have the power to make arrest warrants magically disappear. I might be able to fix a parking ticket, maybe even a speeding ticket. But violent crimes are a big difference." She needed to leave. She was going to either go ballistic or suffocate if she stayed.
Dad opened the pantry and pulled out a bag of potato chips. "Find a bowl." He shoved the bag at Emily. To Amanda he said, "You made sure nothing happened to Hank when he was in college."
And regretted it every day since. "He was never charged with anything in college. All I did was not report him even though I have a duty to. Which, by the way, you're welcome for putting my job on the line for your jackass of a son."
"He's your brother too."
Barely. "And that was selling a few bags of weed to other college potheads. This time they found serious quantities in his apartment. Not to mention they had a case against him for your wife's murder. So no, I wasn't going to risk getting fired to save his precious hide."
"But he didn't do it!" Emily actually stomped her foot. She'd been spending too much time with her kids.
"No. He didn't. Todd did." Old hurts burned at the surface. "And once again, Dad, how come you're so quick to defend Hank's innocence? But as soon as the heat shifts to Todd, you're silent. How come you're not protesting his innocence?"
Chapter 23
Dad stared at her, cold and hard. His jaw tightened but he didn't respond.
"You wanna know why he did it? Has anyone told you that part?" He needed to know. They needed to know. Maybe Todd had become a monster, but Karen made him one. They didn't get to hold on to a distorted memory of her as a martyr, killed by her ungrateful stepson.
Dad looked away, concentrating on nibbling a chip.
"He killed her because he's an evil man who never had any respect for the woman who raised him," Mona said.
"Sorry. Guess again." Amanda's voice came out matter-of-fact but inside she seethed. She couldn't defend what Todd had done, but it never should have come to this. "He did it because your sister sexually tortured him for years. And because of that, he couldn't be with a woman unless he thought about Karen."
"That's enough," Dad hissed as Emily gasped.
"You wanna know how I know that?" If Amanda had to deal with the truth, they could too. "I know because that's what he told Gabby. You remember Gabby, right? My friend Gabby? Todd told her all that, right before he raped her."
Dad flinched and closed his eyes. But she wasn't letting him off the hook. "First he told her all the lovely things your darling wife did to him. Then he tried to convince her to run away with him. When Gabby refused, he raped her. Lucky Gabby, all he had to do was think about Karen and he was able to complete the act." As usual, the idea of Todd raping Gabby made her want to throw up.
"You are as ungrateful and hateful as your brother." Mona stalked to Amanda.
Oh no. She should not get in Amanda's space. Amanda was not in a mood to be pushed. She would have no problem smacking Mona in her self-righteous face.
"You're right, I am ungrateful. I have no gratitude toward a woman who did her best to make my childhood miserable and turn my father against me. And I certainly have no gratitude toward a woman who sexually abused a teenage boy and drove him to murder." Amanda straightened her back, rising as tall as she could, and looked down at Mona.
If Amanda intimidated Mona, she didn't let on. Her face remained pinched, mouth pursed, like talking to Amanda left a nasty taste in her mouth. So they had that in common.
"You have no proof of what you're accusing my sister. Nothing but the word of a psychopath."
Maybe not, but it was easy enough to believe. After talking more with Gabby, she and Amanda started recognizing things from the past, signs that were there all along. They hadn't seen it at the time, but in hindsight it was almost obvious what Karen had been doing. The thought was both sickening and sad.
"You think I wouldn't have known?" Dad said. "My own wife, my own son."
"No. I don't." Amanda turned her focus to Dad, but she forced herself not to move. She would not back down first from Mona. "You let her scream at us. You let her tell us how awful we were, call us awful names. You let her exclude us from family events."
"I did no such thing." Dad's words lacked his usual conviction. Was he finally accepting how deeply he'd betrayed his older children?
"Right. Todd and I wanted to stay with Gabby when the four of you went to Disneyworld for two weeks. Because we would have hated having that much fun." Why, after twenty years, did that one still hurt so much? "And we much preferred staying home and making frozen pizza when the four of you went out to our favorite restaurants for dinner."
"Dammit, this is not about me!" Dad slammed his hand on the counter. He hit the lip of the chip bowl and sent it flying.
"Now look what you've done." Emily glared at Amanda as she crouched at Dad's feet and started scooping chips back into the bowl.
Now that was her fault? Should she take credit for climate change and poverty too? Gridlock in Congress? The Colts not making the playoffs?
"No, it's not about you. But it's not about me either." And she was getting damn tired of them making it. "You want someone to blame. Todd's not here and I am. I'm convenient. I'm a cop. But you know what? The only one to blame for what Karen did to Todd is Karen. And the only one to blame for what Todd did to Karen and Hank is Todd. And the only one to blame for Hank being messed up in drugs is Hank."
Emily sat back on her heels, surrounded by potato chip crumbs. Her hair was falling out of its twist and her lipstick was smeared. Under other circumstances, it would have been comical to see her so disheveled. "How could you not see this coming?"
Un-fucking-believable. "Me?"
"You were closer to him than anyone else," Emily said. "And you work with criminals every day. Why couldn't you tell he was going to do this?"
A dozen smart-ass replies came to mind but there was no need to escalate this insanity. "You were close t
o your mom. How come you didn't know she was abusing Todd?"
"That's different," Emily said, although her shoulders deflated.
"Sure it is," Amanda muttered.
"You two never even gave Karen a chance to be a mother to you." Mona shook her head as she backed away and took a seat at the table. Score one point for Amanda. A hollow victory, but today she'd take what she could get.
"You hated her from the beginning. I was here. I remember."
Oh. My. God. Seriously?
"I was two!" How did she even respond to this latest accusation? "Todd was three. What were we supposed to do? She's the one who never gave us a chance." She had no memory of that time, but as far back as she did remember, Karen had been cold. Amanda couldn't recall a single time Karen had given her a hug.
"I think it would be best if you left now." Dad moved to the sink and stared out the window. Twilight blanketed the back yard. "I think you've done enough damage to this family for today."
Amanda leaned heavily on the counter. The injustice of their accusations was dizzying. Just because they weren't valid didn't make them hurt less.
Greg's appearance in the doorway almost sent her to her knees. Tears burned behind her eyelids; she needed someone on her side before they leaked out. She hated it, but she needed him to rescue her.
The instant their gazes connected, understanding flashed through his eyes. He got it.
"I think you're right. No one wants me here anyway." She ground her back teeth to keep her jaw from trembling. She would not give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
It was touch and go whether she could get to the front door without collapsing. Thankfully, Greg put his arm around her as soon as she reached his side. He pulled her tight against him and supported her as they made their way out of the house.
The second the front door closed behind them, she let the first drop fall. She couldn't hold it back. She turned her face into Greg's shoulder and let him lead her to his car.