by AC Arthur
“You come first,” he grunted and pulled out of her quickly.
She was about to say something, but his hands were spreading her cheeks wide before she felt his lips on her pussy once more. He pumped his fingers into her and licked until she was trembling, her thighs quivering around his head, chest heaving as she struggled to breathe through the onslaught of pleasure.
“Yessssss,” she moaned and felt that quick jolt of realization before her release seized her body.
“Yes, sweetness, that’s what I want.” When he finally pulled his face away from her, Tamika thought she was going to topple over, because every ounce of energy had been licked, sucked and drawn from her body. Instead, she realized Roark was switching their position once more. “I want you to make me come now.”
He lay on his back and pulled her on top of him. Tamika shook her hair back from her face and prepared to take the driver’s seat for the first time since she’d come into his room. She lowered herself onto his dick and marveled once again at how well he fit buried deep inside her. Then she began to ride, staring down at Roark as his hands reached up to grab her breasts, his face contorting with the sexiest sex face she’d ever seen.
“Bring it home, sweetness. Bring it all the way home.” The last word lodged in his throat as she circled her hips, lifted off him until only the tip of his dick was still inside her and then slammed down onto him again. Her rapid pumps from that moment on led to him gripping her breasts tightly and, for the first time since they’d begun, him moaning her name in that deep, rich, accented voice. When his dick ceased pulsating inside her, Tamika eased herself down and was going to roll off him, but his arms went around her waist tightly and he pulled her closer for a sultry kiss that sealed the deal for her—Roark Donovan was the best sex she’d ever had, and no matter what happened from this point on in their lives, she’d never forget that.
Part II
“Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it.”
—Francis Bacon
Chapter 11
She’d extended him the courtesy of going into the bathroom first, so now, Roark sat on the edge of his bed, waiting for her to come out. He’d pulled on a pair of basketball shorts and a T-shirt and allowed himself a few moments to think about what had just happened.
Pleasure still simmered in his blood; he could feel it easing along his veins, filling his body with an odd sort of satisfaction. It wasn’t the act of sex itself—he was certain of that, because he’d had lots of presumably good sex in his life. No, this was different. Stronger, more intense, a desire embedding itself deeply inside him. More notable was the fact that it was unlike anything he’d ever felt after sex with any other woman, and he desperately wanted to know why. Roark didn’t like not having all the answers. He’d been struggling with that daily in regard to his mother’s death, and now, this. Lifting his hands, he scrubbed them over his face and took a deep breath.
The day had gone by and now it was almost ten at night. He wondered if she’d be hungry when she came out. They’d had a pretty big lunch, but then they’d also had a very trying afternoon and then…the sex. Dorianne would be gone for the night, but he’d instructed her to leave the food she’d prepared in the refrigerator and they’d reheat it when they were ready. She hadn’t seemed happy about that, but she hadn’t reprimanded him for skipping a meal, either. The look on the older woman’s face said she’d wanted to do exactly that.
When it seemed like Tamika was taking a very long time in the bathroom, Roark stood. He walked to the other side of the bed and reached up to close the curtains at the window. He’d remembered to draw the ones in the sitting area closed before Tamika had arrived, which was a good thing, since they’d ended up together in that area instead of coming to the bed.
Katrina had never liked sex with the lights on, nor would she have ever agreed to sex on the floor. A smile ghosted his lips as he recalled pulling the blanket out of the closet and placing it on the floor in front of that fire. He hadn’t known where that idea had come from, but something had told him Tamika would be totally down for the setting he’d provided. As memories of their sexual escapade floated through his mind, he realized in the end he hadn’t appreciated the setting as much as the woman who’d made it complete.
Damn, she’d looked fucking phenomenal in the firelight, on her knees as he’d pounded into her and then as she’d ridden him. His body tightened with the thoughts, and he shook his head. “Phenomenal” didn’t seem like an adequate enough word.
“Full disclosure.”
Her words had him spinning around to see her standing in the doorway of the bathroom. She was wearing one of the heavy velvet robes that hung in the bathroom. It was black, with the Donovan insignia in gold on the right side. “Are you hungry? Do you want to go down and get something to eat first?” The questions came out in a jumble of words that made him feel ridiculous. He’d talked to women after having sex with them before, so acting like a nervous novice was way out of character for him.
She switched off the light in the bathroom and stepped further into the room, stopping before she could reach the end of the bed. With her hands buried in the pockets of the robe that was too big for her, she shook her head. “No. I want to get this out of the way.” She cleared her throat and then began. “I lived with Colin Hopkins for two years.”
Colin Hopkins was the name of the man Detective Pennington had brought up. He was the one whose apartment she’d been living in until recently. Roark had searched the guy online the moment he’d come to his room after the detectives had left this afternoon. So he knew a little something about the man she’d lived with, but now he’d wait to hear what she had to say.
“We met at a mutual friend’s wedding. He seemed like a great guy and just my type, entrepreneur with just a touch of thug.” She shrugged. “Some women don’t shake the attraction to bad boys during their teen years.”
Roark didn’t speak. Her tone was different from when she was asking questions or simply talking about any of the things she liked to talk about. There was a hint of something in her tone, but he couldn’t put his finger on it, not just yet.
“We went on a few dates, and you know how it is in the beginning, so romantic. Like, I’d be looking forward to each date all day long and when we were together, I didn’t want the night to end. Then we took trips to Las Vegas and Miami. The first-year anniversary trip to Hawaii was the best.”
Roark tried to ignore the immediate spike of jealousy at the smile on her face. She’d obviously enjoyed that trip.
“But the newness eventually wears off.” These words were said in a snappish tone, and she stepped back to lean against the wall near one of the dressers. “No woman believes she’s the type to stand for any kind of abuse.”
His fingers fisted, and Roark resisted the urge to demand she immediately tell him what this idiot Colin had done to her.
She was shaking her head. “And believe me, I’m not. I was an only child, but I was a straight tomboy, fighting any and everyone who came at me wrong in my neighborhood. My mother used to get so mad when I came home with ripped shirts or scrapes on my legs and face because I’d been either wrestling or downright brawling with some kid who’d gotten in my face. And they got in my face a lot, because kids are cruel and they love to pick on the fat girl on the block. They just weren’t prepared for this fat girl to fight back.”
Now, his heart ached for her, for the bullying she must’ve endured in the name of childhood.
“And Colin was from the streets too, so he knew he had a straight ride-or-die chick on his side. I could get dressed in my suits and go to work at the insurance company and be as professional as I was trained to be, but if there was ever something to pop off while he and I were out, Colin knew I’d stand right there with him. In fact, that was one of the things he said he loved about me.”
There was so much more to her though, so much more than Roark had seen in such a short amount of time.
“He didn’t hit me, if that’s what you’re thinking. We would’ve been going ‘round for ‘round in that apartment if he had. But there are so many other ways to break a person down. It started with the quick jabs of ‘you still hungry?’ or ‘you can’t fit that.’ I brushed those off, because I’d heard them before when I was younger and it wasn’t that big of a deal. But then when he started complaining about our sex life because of my size, or the way I looked in pictures.” She stopped and chuckled. “The funny thing was, I was actually a little heavier when I first met him, so I really couldn’t understand where all this was coming from. My parents hated him, but I stayed with him. For whatever reason, he started coming at me about my job and about how I was trying too hard to impress my father, or to be like him—that’s when he began to work my nerves. Nothing I did or said was right after the argument we had when I insinuated he was jealous of my father’s college education and success. Colin didn’t go to college, unless you count the college of the streets that earned him a ton of money, a bullet in his right leg and probation before judgment on a distribution charge.”
Roark knew about the guy’s criminal record and the barber shop he’d opened in Alexandria. The place that acted as a front for the drug enterprise he continued to run. “Why did you stay?”
It seemed like such a simple question, but Roark knew there was so much more to it than just walking away. He’d heard so many stories of women who’d been abused; when a woman on his staff had become a victim, he’d taken the time to actually read articles about the cycle of abuse. Eventually, his employee had decided to seek help, and Roark had made sure the company had provided her with all the resources she’d needed to get her life back.
“Maybe I thought it was easier.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’ll make a very long and distressing story short. I found out he was not only selling drugs again but was also investing in a strip club, where part of the job requirement for dancer was to sleep with him. He was trash—I’d known it for a while. That was the final straw, and I moved out. That was two weeks before my father was killed.”
Just because his hands weren’t fisted anymore didn’t mean Roark wasn’t still pissed the hell off. But he managed to ask the next question in as calm a voice as he could muster. “He just let you walk away?”
“Ha! Of course not. He took all the things I’d left in the apartment and brought them to my job, where he proceeded to burn them right there on the sidewalk.”
Roark stepped toward her. “Your ex burned your belongings two weeks before your father died in a fire?”
She’d had a semi-smile on her face, but it quickly faltered. “He was the first person I checked out after I knew the fire at my dad’s office was arson. He had a solid alibi for the time of the fire, and the person who started that fire had to be standing right there in the office with my father when he did it.”
“What if he paid somebody to do it for him?” Roark asked and considered for a brief second that this was the strangest after-sex talk he’d ever had with a woman.
“Why? Killing me would’ve been easier. He could’ve walked into my office that day instead of dropping my things on the sidewalk then texting me to come downstairs so I’d see him burning it.”
“But just as he stood and watched you grow upset at him burning your things on the sidewalk, he could watch you suffer at finding out your father was dead.”
“Why wait a year to go after my mother?”
Roark shrugged. “She left. Maybe he didn’t know where she went until now.”
“But what about your mother? If Colin’s hiring people to kill my parents to get back at me for leaving him, how does that explain her death?”
Roark didn’t have an answer to that, a fact that was steadily wearing on him. “It’s late. Let’s eat and get some sleep. We can go over all this with fresh eyes in the morning.” It was a suggestion made because he didn’t know what was going on. When he’d read about her ex’s criminal tendencies, he’d been annoyed but not suspicious. Now, he didn’t know what to think.
She pulled her hand out of the pockets of the robe and pressed them to her face. After a deep breath, she let her arms fall down to her sides. “I’m not really hungry. Just tired.” The words sounded so desolate as she turned to leave.
“Stay.” He said it so quickly, his mind didn’t have time to decipher whether or not it was a good idea. “I mean, I’m not an after-sex snuggler, but I want you to stay.”
She turned around slowly until she was facing him again. With a tilt of her head, she smiled. “Did you really think you had to tell me you’re not a snuggler, Roark?”
“Full disclosure,” he replied with a tentative smile.
There were a few moments of silence that seemed to sit in the space between them like a boulder. He didn’t know what else to say; he didn’t want to push, and he didn’t want to let her go to her room alone. Not tonight.
His heart thumped quickly when he saw her hands go to the belt of the robe. He watched her shrug out of it and then reach down to pull back the covers on the bed.
When she was in the bed, she patted the space beside her and said, “You coming?”
Roark had no idea what he was doing. Why now? Why this woman? More questions and more answers that eluded him. He climbed in beside her.
They lay in silence until they both fell asleep and sometime during the night, Roark turned over and reached for her. She was there, so it wasn’t a dream, and he wrapped his arm around her waist, spooning his body against hers. Seconds later, his hand moved upward to cup her breast. She sighed in her sleep and snuggled back closer to him.
Roark held her tight and for the first time in weeks, slept deeply until the morning.
Her mother’s hand was warm, her body was still, her eyes closed and Tamika’s heart was heavy.
She sat in the chair beside the hospital bed the next morning, holding her mother’s hand and letting her head rest on the rail the nurses had lifted along the side of the bed. Throughout her childhood, her mother had insisted they go to church every Sunday. Mostly, Tamika had just played with her dolls, lining them up on the dark wood pews. She’d dress them in their church clothes on Saturday night and stuff them into the backpack. It was the only time she played with what were considered “girl toys,” and that was because Sunday was the only day her mother had insisted she wear a dress, tights and those shiny patent leather shoes—black in the winter and white starting on Easter and going through to Labor Day.
The memory made her smile, and Tamika wished she’d paid more attention in church all those years ago. If she had, maybe she’d know how to pray now. But even after she’d outgrown the dolls, she still hadn’t gone to church to listen to the hymns or the sermon. By that time, she’d learned the church participated in a community basketball league and there were boys from the church wearing basketball shorts and tank tops instead of the ill-fitting dress pants and shirts she’d seen them in on Sunday mornings. However, seeing them in their basketball uniforms on Saturdays during the games had changed her whole outlook on them when Sunday morning rolled around, so much so that she’d begun sitting in the back of the church with some of the other boy-crazy girls just to be closer to the boys.
She’d been such a child back then. That thought had her giving a little chuckle because what else was she supposed to be. Now, her mother needed her to be so much more. She’d spoken to the insurance agent on her way to the hospital this morning and had an appointment to meet the representative at the house the day after tomorrow, because that was when the Fire Brigade said the scene would be released.
The “scene” was her mother’s home, and Tamika had no idea if Sandra would be able to return there. She had no idea if Sandra was ever going to wake up.
“Her vital signs are good. The burns will take a little more time to heal, but we’re giving her plenty of pain medication to keep her comfortable. Skin grafts may be an option at some point, but that’s nothing to worry a
bout right now.” That was what Dr. Duvall, the slim woman with coal-black hair that hung straight down her back, had told Tamika the moment she’d arrived at the hospital today.
“Is that why she’s not waking up? Because of all the pain medication?” she’d asked.
“It could be. Sometimes after a traumatic experience such as your mother endured, patients will slip into a coma. It can be their body’s way of dealing with all it’s been through. But as I said, we’re monitoring her carefully, and her brain activity is fine. She’s just resting.”
Tamika hadn’t liked the word “coma” and had wanted to push it far out of her mind. Unfortunately, there was another word she’d needed to say at the moment. “There’s a possibility she was drugged,” she’d blurted out before the doctor could walk away. “I know you had to do blood tests while you were treating her, but did you run a tox screen?”
Dr. Duvall had shaken her head, her eyes immediately filling with concern. “She came in as a burn victim. We did run normal blood screenings, but there was no need to do a toxicology workup.”
“There’s a reason. What I mean is there might be a possibility she was drugged before the fire. Would it be too late to do it now?”
“It depends. I mean it’s only been two days since the fire, but some drugs linger in the system longer. I could try to see if there’s something notable.”