by A. L. Woods
Sunlight streamed in from my bedroom window, illuminating her sleeping features. Her hair spread behind her onto my pillow like a halo, just like I’d always envisioned. It was no small feat to bring a man to his knees in only a couple of weeks, never mind having him extend his heart out to you in hopes she might accept it. I wanted her to take it. I didn’t care if she didn’t want to give me hers in exchange right now. I meant what I said: I would earn my spot in her heart no matter what it took.
Raquel’s facial expression was relaxed, the deep wrinkle that normally etched itself between her brows gone without a trace of its existence. The wound above her brow had scabbed over during the night, but the bruises that marred her creamy neck were an ugly deep blue and purple that had my fingers twitching for my car keys so I could deal with her mother myself. I couldn’t imagine how any mother could hurt her daughter that way. Why didn’t she see Raquel the way I did?
“Stop watching me sleep, it’s weird,” she mumbled without opening her eyes, pulling me out of the absorption of my thoughts.
“How do you know I’m watching you?” I rolled over, resting on my elbow, propping my chin on the palm of my hand.
“I can feel your eyes on me.” At that, she squinted, her leaden eyes batting the sleep away. She made a small sound and pulled the sheets up to her chin.
“I like looking at you. What’s the problem?”
“I don’t like being looked at.”
“Tough, Hemingway.” I chuckled, reaching out an arm and dragging her against me so her ass was flush against my morning wood. “This isn’t up for negotiation.”
She wiggled against me, the skin-on-skin contact nearly stirring my primitive instincts to mount her right there. Her sigh of contentment had me itching to graze my teeth against the tendon of her neck, just to see if I could coax the sound out of her again. “You don’t play fair.”
“Neither do you, apparently.” My hands skimmed her bare sides, one hand palming her breast, the other settling between her legs. My nostrils flared at the pooling arousal against her heat, my heart taking off at a gallop as anticipation knotted my insides.
Raquel pushed my hands away, sitting upright. I laid back just as she slid a leg over my waist, settling on my lap. Without warning, she guided me inside of her with surprising ease, sinking her weight atop of me until I filled her to the hilt. Her tight pussy clenched, and an eruption of sensations hit me as her body enveloped mine, warmth registering in my mind as I watched her lift herself up back up onto her knees and my cock disappeared inside of her again.
Shit, I wasn’t wearing a condom.
“Baby,” I murmured, momentarily getting lost in the contact that was making every sensory receptor in my brain fritz and misfire from overindulgence. “Let me get a condom.”
“Are you clean?” She looked down at me in waiting, her hips rolling in a way that elicited a shiver of excitement out of me.
“I got checked in September.”
“Okay.” She nodded, pressing her fingers against my chest, rocking herself forward again. Her mouth popped open, a suffocated mewl escaping her that had my balls jerking in delight. Her brows pressed together as she formulated a thought. “I got checked the last time I was with—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” I growled, my fingers digging into her hips. I didn’t want to hear that jackass’s name in my bedroom while I was inside of her. It just reminded me that he had been with her. The thought alone sent more blood rushing to my cock, and I swear it grew three sizes. As if confirming that theory, she shifted her body to accept my strain.
“I’m on the pill, and we’re both clean.” She worried her bottom lip as her gaze swept over mine. “I’m okay with it if you are.”
I exhaled, relaxing beneath her. My older sister might have scoffed under the reassurance that Raquel was on the pill, but I trusted her implicitly. Or I was a loved-up idiot so hot on her tight little pussy that I didn’t give a shit about the risks or ramifications. That was for future Sean to deal with…if he had to.
“Stop thinking.” She gripped my chin between her fingers, rocking her hips, my cock rolling inside of her.
Watching her through hooded eyes, I appreciated the view of her breasts from under her and the angle of her profile as she shifted herself forward and accepted everything that I had to offer her on the descent of her body’s plunge.
I wasn’t a tits man, but hers were too pretty to keep my grubby palms to myself. They weren’t more than a palmful, but her nipples were small, pert and the same shade of dusty rose as her lips, and they puckered whenever I so much as touched her.
It was another thing I loved about her.
She steadied herself with a hand on my stomach, fingers spread out to stabilize herself. She rolled her hips, her stomach flexing as she rocked atop of me, her inner walls clenching my cock as she took what she wanted from me.
She had been enchanting under the glow of moonlight that poured into my darkened bedroom last night, but under the early warm rays of the sun, she was a goddess I wanted to spend the rest of my life worshipping and paying homage to.
She could take whatever she wanted from me in droves, and I would be there to give it to her. Raquel rode me like a champion equestrian. Her greedy body was relentless, coming back for more over and over again. I was torn between wanting to watch her and my desire to take over.
As though reading my thoughts, the faint traces of a smirk edged the corners of her mouth. I reached for her bouncing breasts, getting lost in the soundtrack of my headboard’s churning and the breathy notes leaving her parted lips as she rode me until her cry of release was the crescendo of her song.
Only one thought resounded in my mind as I spent the rest of the dawn worshipping this woman…
Nothing was ever going to be the same.
“I’m not going in to work,” Raquel announced, reappearing in the doorway of my bedroom in one of my gray Red Sox T-shirts that hit her just above the knees, the sleeves too long for her lean limbs. She clutched her battered cellphone between her clenched fists as she padded into the room and climbed onto the bed. She rested on her haunches, her hair smoothed out, the grooves from where her fingers had raked through it still visible. It was the first time I’d awakened with her in my house She was every bit the beauty, even bare-faced and wearing one of my shirts that could have been a dress on her.
She looked as happy and content as I felt.
“And not because you wanted me to,” she added, smirking at me as she dropped her weight on the edge of the mattress.
I laughed. “Of course not. I would never dare to assume it was for me.”
“Even though no one is there, my neck looks like shit. Plus, I would still need to go to a store to get clothes, y’know?” She looked at me earnestly, rubbing the stretch of neck where the bruises peppered her skin. “You can’t really mistake that these are fingerprints.”
I hadn’t forgotten, but I didn’t want to think about it when I brought her home. The whole reason she had ended up in my bed to begin with was because of yesterday’s unpleasant events, and I hated that.
Sitting upright in my bed, the sheets bunched at my waist, I drew my knees to my chest and draped my forearm across the small hills.
“I’m sorry for not calling sooner.” Her eyes searched mine, for what, I wasn’t sure.
She hesitated before she spoke. “You did call. I just didn’t answer. But it’s not a big deal. We cleared the air already, remember?”
My shoulders rose and fell. We sat staring at each other, the rays of the early morning sun warming our skin as time seemed to halt. It wasn’t that I wanted to unearth shit I was confident she was trying to block, but now that we were temporarily finished exchanging bodily fluids, I wanted to gain some insight on where her headspace was.
I drew my upper lip between my teeth in contemplation. As though reading my thoughts and detecting the shift of our conversation toward enemy territory, Raquel blew out a breath and slid off t
he mattress. The pads of her feet were soft against the hardwood as she moved to the window, looking positively radiant in the sunlight.
I cleared my throat, and she turned her head just enough for our eyes to lock. It was hard to tell what was going on in her mind. Her expression was vacant, her lips relaxed, her brows resting in their rightful place sans the fissure that usually existed between them. If it weren’t for the faint traces of despondency dancing in those honey pools, I would have never been the wiser that something was amiss.
Something told me not to ask her, but the part of me that wanted to know everything about her had me asking the question. I just hoped she would be willing to give me the full story this time.
“You wanna tell me exactly what happened with you and your ma?” I had filled in the blanks myself yesterday when she informed me that her ma had an arm that would have won the Sox another World Series if she had been pitching.
I caught a ghost of something swim over her face. Her lips compressed as she turned to the window.
Twice, she opened her mouth to speak, her expression shifting from frustrated to nervous.
“Coffee first?” she finally said.
I couldn’t tell with full confidence if this was an evasion tactic on her part, but I pulled the sheets back and got up anyway. She kept her gaze trained outdoors, but I caught her roving eyes getting an appraisal on what was doing between my legs from my reflection in the windowpanes.
My girl was still in there. Temporarily satiated, but likely not for long. I had to work fast, before she found her deflection angle and went for it. I didn’t trust myself to resist.
I jammed my legs into sweatpants that had been discarded two nights before on the bench at the foot of my bed. She didn’t move when I invaded her space, just observed me as I hooked a curled finger underneath her chin and tilted her head up so I could plant a tender kiss above the wound on her forehead.
I really wasn’t a violent person, but the people in Raquel’s life beyond the burst of sunshine Penelope represented, really fed the growing and unfamiliar bloodthirst inside me. I felt her relax an inch under the kiss, and with her hand in mine, I led her down the hallway to the kitchen.
“You have a really nice house,” she remarked, running her fingertips across the surface of the white granite countertops when we entered the kitchen. My eyes roamed up her bare legs as I rounded the counter, watching as she stood in place with her arms loose at her sides, eyes wide as she drank in every detail. Her stare landed on a fuchsia and black block hoodie draped over a barstool.
“Yours, of course?”
“Yeah, the pink brings out my eyes.” I snorted with a shake of my head, pulling out a filter liner from a package. “Trina’s a slob. She leaves shit everywhere.”
I caught the softness of her smile from the corner of my eyes, the hood of the jacket pinched between her fingers as I scooped coffee grounds into the liner.
“Do you like her living with you? Maria told me the why.” Her voice was a whisper, her gaze avoiding my eyes after sharing what she obviously thought was some sort of clandestine detail she wasn’t supposed to know.
It surprised me to hear that had come up in their conversation, but I knew if Maria had divulged that, it was for good reason. It wasn’t a secret Trina had gotten pregnant. Everyone within the county knew. Portuguese people talked too much.
I filled the carafe with water and poured it into the coffeemaker. “It has its moments,” I replied, catching a glint of something sad skirting her expression as I pressed the start button. “But she’s a good kid. She just doesn’t pick the best romantic partners.”
“That must run in the family, then.” Raquel laughed, releasing the hoodie. This time she did meet my eyes, and I held her stare, my eyes tapering as her words registered in my mind.
“Don’t ever loop yourself in the same category,” I warned.
The look in her eyes challenged me, but if she wanted to argue with me further, she decided against it. Instead she pulled the barstool back and sat down. I didn’t understand how someone so intense could lack the confidence to see her self-worth. Then again, when your ma was still trying to knock you around at twenty-eight years old, I couldn’t begin to even try to hypothesize the kind of head fuck that did to your ego. It didn’t change shit for me, and I wasn’t going to have her placing herself in the same box as the shithead who bolted on my sister. They weren’t even in the same universe.
Opening the cabinet that housed drinking glasses and mugs, I pulled two mugs down from the shelf.
“You take it black, right?” I asked, glancing at her over my shoulder. I hadn’t recalled her reaching for the sugar or creamer that had been placed on the table at the diner the night of our first real date.
“Yeah, as is.”
When the coffeemaker shuddered to a finish, I filled up two mugs, sliding one toward her. There was no good way to tear off the Band-Aid on this one. I sensed she knew what was coming but was baiting me to start first, perhaps in an effort to buy herself a bit more time. She lifted the mug to her lips and took a cautious sip.
“So?” I pressed as she lowered the mug to the counter. Sparing me from playing stupid, Raquel drew air between her parted lips that didn’t seem to have time to reach her lungs before she released it on an exhale.
With her eyes locked on mine, she began to tell me what happened.
My fists had clenched as she spoke.
Fifteen minutes later, she was done. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” she said at the end with a hard shake of her head. “Why tell me now after all these years that she has the answers to the questions that have eaten at me for a decade…and then not tell me who?”
Something wasn’t quite adding up here, and I couldn’t help but consider whether or not her ma had said those things to Raquel in a fit of anger to try to regain control of the situation.
I kept my features relaxed. At least her mind was on the same trajectory as mine. She wasn’t any more at peace with what her ma had said than I was. Still, until I did a little more thinking of my own on this, I didn’t want her to spend the weekend mulling it over and picking herself or this situation apart.
For now, I would calm her in hopes that it would be enough to pacify her for a few days until I could pull some strings with Maria. She owed me. If there was something there, anything, Maria would have the resources at her disposal to find it. I wanted to put this entire situation to rest for Raquel so she could get the closure she rightfully deserved and start to move forward with her life—our life, together.
“Sometimes people say things in fits of anger that they don’t necessarily mean.” I rubbed my chin, my fingers raking against the scruff. “She may not know anything and just looked for your weak spot when she lost the physical control she’s used to having over you.”
Raquel slouched in the chair, her scowl telling me she wasn’t at ease from my suggestion. “It’s a normal response, baby,” I continued. The term of endearment drew her stare to me, her lids flittering. She straightened in the seat, as if the four-letter word had been enough for her to right her posture.
I didn’t really think her mother would have been able to keep something like that from her daughter for a decade. For one, I got the impression from what I’d read on the Internet that the broad wasn’t all that bright, and she had the tenacity of a rat trapped in a tin can that was being heated by a blowtorch. She wouldn’t keep something like this from her all these years; she would have chewed her way through in a deranged and crazed frenzy as soon as she had the opportunity to do so if she had known it would get her out of the trap sooner.
“Maybe you’re right.” She sighed, bringing the tepid mug to her lips. If the lukewarm coffee bothered her, she didn’t let on. “I just can’t shake the feeling that maybe there was some truth to what she said.”
I could understand her desire to know the identity of the man who had been involved with her sister, but the detail about Cash’s betrayal had sowed li
ttle seeds of doubt that sprouted in my head like a weed—the kind that I wasn’t sure would ever be fully eradicated no matter how many pesticidal treatments I applied. This guy had been a force that had leveled Raquel’s life in one merciless swoop. I didn’t like the idea of him being able to reappear at whim whenever he damn pleased. Still, I kept my tone easy and worked the tension free from my jaw, not wanting to get her hackles up.
“Do you really want to know who Cash was seeing back then?
Would it really make that much of a difference to you now?” My insides twisted as I waited for her response. She said it wasn’t a competition between Cash and me, but they had a history with each other, there was no denying that.
“Honestly,” she said, meeting my eyes dead on, her thumbs working across the middle of the mug, “I do. Not because it matters to me, but because he gaslit me into believing that I was making it up.” She placed the mug back on the countertop, and I took the opportunity to top it off.
“All the evidence was there that he was doing something shady, but he kept denying it,” she continued.
I ran my thumb gingerly against the handle of the mug. “How did you find out he was seeing someone else if you couldn’t prove it?”
“It’s kind of silly.” Her laugh was dry. “Initially, I noticed that the passenger seat in his car was always pulled as close to the dash as possible. He said his younger sister had been sitting there, but I know Meredith. That girl is tall and willowy, and besides, the way Cash drives, she’d sooner walk fifteen miles. So, I wasn’t buying it.”
I frowned at that. The position of a car seat wasn’t a lot to go on, but Raquel didn’t strike me as the type to lose her shit over something like that.
“He was always evasive about his pager, always made sure it was out of my reach. Any time that thing so much as beeped, he was out of the room. We fought a lot about it, but he always told me it was for work, and that he didn’t want to take any chances with me overhearing anything that would make me culpable if shit ever hit the fan.” She swept her tongue over her bottom lip. “Cash used to deal for Terry, the guy you met at O’Malley’s, when he was in the business.”