by Liz Durano
His kiss grows deeper and I rest my hand on his shoulder before letting it slide down his hard chest. There’s no denying that I want him just as much as I wanted him two years ago, if not more. Back then I’d sworn off men so that could focus on finishing the degree that had been cut short in New York because of a man—the married professor—and I sure as heck wasn’t going to let that happen again, not even with Benny. At least, not until I graduated with honors, showing my father that I could achieve something if I put my mind to it.
That’s when I thought I could finally focus on Benny. After all, we’d flirted the whole time we knew each other and finally, I could touch him the way I’d always dreamed of touching him even if we were both going our separate ways in the next few days. I was also drunk, suddenly determined to ask him if he was willing to try something new with me. So flippant, too confident. Too drunk. No wonder the man balked.
“You okay?” Benny asks as he studies my face. “You disappeared on me.”
“I was just remembering the last time we did this. It didn’t work out too well.”
“You were drunk then... but you’re not drunk now,” he says. “Does this make you uncomfortable?”
I shake my head. “Only if I think about that night.”
“Then don’t think about it. Be here... with me.” He lowers his face again and this time, I heed his advice. I take in the manly scent of his skin and the minty taste of his tongue on mine. I lose myself to the sensations that overthrow all reason, my hand drifting lower to the buckle of his jeans until Benny wraps his hand on my wrist, stopping me from going lower.
“Not yet, nizhoni,” he murmurs as as the porch light turns on and I jump away from Benny.
“Oh great! Is it two already?” I mutter as the front door opens and my father steps out and peers at the truck.
“Two o’clock, on the dot,” Benny says as I straighten my blouse.
“Can you believe this? I’m twenty-six-years-old, for crying out loud. I’m too old for curfews.”
“But not too old to have a father worrying about you, Sarah,” Benny says as Mom pops her head out from behind Dad’s shoulder. “Or a mother.”
I brush my hair with my fingers. Clothes I can fix, same with hair. But I’m still blushing and there’s nothing I can do about that. “They should be asleep.”
“And you should be inside,” Benny says, reaching for an umbrella from the back seat. “Hold up and let me open the door for you.”
He gets out of the truck and opens the umbrella as he walks around the truck, holding it up for me as I push open the door. With the rain coming down hard, the umbrella is useless but he uses it anyway, laughing as we run toward the house.
“Mr. Drexel. Mrs. Drexel,” Benny says, closing the umbrella and shaking off the water on the side of the porch. “Sorry we’re late.”
My dad makes a show of glancing at his watch. “One minute.”
“That’s not too bad, is it, love?” Mom asks, stifling a yawn. She’s got a blanket wrapped over her shoulders.
“You guys shouldn’t have stayed up,” I say.
“We just finished a re-watch of African Queen. It’s our favorite,” Mom says. “Have you seen it, Benny?”
“The one with Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart?” Benny asks. “Yeah, I have. It was one of my dad’s favorites.”
“Well, thank you for driving her home, Benny,” Dad says stiffly. “We can discuss movies another time, preferably during the day.”
“Dad,” I say, shaking my head. Why does he have to be such a party pooper?
“Why don’t you come in, Benny?” Mom asks and Benny shakes his head.
“I should get going,” he says before turning to face me. “Good night, Sarah. Call me when you’re ready to head back tomorrow.”
“Three work for you?” I ask and he nods. “Thanks, Benny. I had a lot of fun tonight.”
He moves in to give me a kiss but stops himself and runs back to the truck. The three of us watch him drive away before Dad ushers us inside and I see Dax in his pajamas asleep on the loveseat, his legs draped over the armrest. At seventeen, he’s outgrown the phase where he was all arms and legs and is now filling out.
“You guys didn’t have to wait up for me,” I say as I switch off the TV that still has the credits for The African Queen paused on the screen.
“We weren’t,” Dad says. “It’s movie night. Dax gets to pick his action flick and then your mom and I get to choose a classic. Always guaranteed to put your brother to sleep in no time.”
“How’s his eye?”
“Nana put arnica on it so it shouldn’t look so bad,” Mom replies, nudging Dax gently. “Mijo, wake up. Your sister’s home.”
Dax sits up, his thick dark hair sticking out in places. As he rubs his good eye, he looks at me and yawns. “About time you got home.”
“So you weren’t waiting up for me,” I say, shaking my head as I look at the three of them. “Right.”
“We’ve got security people now,” Dax says, pointing to a corner of the living room. “And cameras, too. High-tech stuff.”
I turn to face Dad. “Is this all necessary?”
“Your ex-boyfriend posted our address online with your picture, Sarah. Of course, it’s necessary,” he replies. “Police are going to beef up their patrols in the neighborhood to make sure there are no strangers hanging around and there’ll be two security guys staying here when I leave and it’ll be just your mom and Nana here at home. The last thing I need is having strangers thinking they can do whatever they want with my family.”
The gravity of the situation hits me like a punch in the gut and I can’t believe I brought this on my family. My mother, my brother. Nana.
A sob escapes my throat but no words make it out of my mouth, only a wail of frustration and shame as Mom crosses the distance between us and wraps her arms around me.
“It’s okay, mija. Your dad’s got everything set up and we’ll be okay. We’ll take care of this together… as a family.” As she strokes my hair, I take in the scent of lavender on her skin and the earthy scent of clay that must have clung to her clothes after hours spent in her studio.
In her arms, I’m a child of eight again, confused at the change of scenery and blaming her for everything, for wanting to come live in this small town where nothing happened and where her usual routine of hanging out with her friends at the country club and running the PTA meetings were now replaced with hours spent at her father’s pottery studio, barefoot in front of his kick wheel, her hands and arms covered in dried clay as she relearned everything she used to know before she moved to New York for college and met Dad.
It didn’t matter to me how I’d never seen her so happy before that moment. What mattered was that I wasn’t in New York anymore and how dare my father not allow me to stay with him. Underneath all the anger, I’d convinced myself I must have done something wrong. For why wasn’t I Daddy’s girl anymore, the one who could do and get everything she wanted?
And maybe that’s why I did all the crazy things I could think of just to get Dad to come home and notice me. Maybe he’d tire of hearing about all my antics that he’d take me away from Taos and move me back to New York again where I could be with all my old friends. I even tried flunking school thinking if I did, they’d send me back to New York and out of Mom’s hair. I didn’t even show up for the summer makeup classes that would have guaranteed a passing grade. But even that plan backfired on me. That’s what happens when you fool yourself into believing you can pressure your parents—your father especially—to give you everything you want. You learn the hard way and you repeat 8th grade even though you were a straight-A student.
And maybe that’s why I always pushed the envelope from then on. Even my relationship with the professor in New York was pushing it. I knew it the moment Dad ran into us at Da Marino’s where I’d taken Marc, showing off to him that this was one of the places my Dad hung out and where I went to when I felt like it. All it took was
one look and Dad didn’t need to ask me how old Marc was. The difference was three years.
Is he married? Dad had asked.
He’s separated.
Is he married? He’d asked again, through gritted teeth this time. Yes or no, Sarah.
Yes, but he’s filing for divorce.
Two weeks later, Marc’s wife would be waiting for us in the lobby of the hotel where Marc and I had spent the weekend. She made sure to bring the kids with her, as if to remind him that not only was he still very married, they had children together—three little girls with ringlets in their blonde hair. Five-year-old twins and a three-year-old with a cochlear implant.
After the scandal broke, Dad sent me packing to Albuquerque where I told myself not to get involved with men ever again, not until after I graduated with honors and prove to him that I wasn’t the sex-starved woman people in New York—his friends and colleagues, most likely—painted me out to be. Only it didn’t take too long before I’d fail Dad again when I returned to New York after my graduation. That’s when I started seeing Ryan Thayer, one of the young doctors in my department who I thought was perfect in every way. He even indulged me the same things Benny refused me that night—a bit of BDSM here and there, nothing serious.
But I should have known that no one could ever be that perfect. When Ryan proved to be too controlling and too possessive, I broke up with him and that’s when I found out just how far he’d go to get me back, stalking me even after I moved away. When he realized I wasn’t coming back, that’s when he decided to make my life miserable, posting my pictures along with my personal information online.
Only now he’s taking it one step further.
As if making my life miserable wasn’t enough, now he’s determined to make my family’s life miserable as well.
Chapter Ten
The townhouse is empty when I arrive home. Mariano must have opted to stay at the sisters’ condo tonight and I’m glad. I need to be alone with my thoughts even though thinking is the last thing I want to do. I’ve been thinking enough as it is. After kissing Sarah, I need a cold shower and I need it now.
In my bathroom, I step into the shower stall and twist the knob to a blast of icy water, wincing as the water hits my skin. It’s a sobering sensation, a harsh reminder that I can’t risk falling for Sarah. She’s way out of my league. She belongs to a world so far from my own. There’s also that promise that I now need to keep even if it means ignoring everything else.
But the cold doesn’t do anything to ease the tension in my muscles. It does nothing to tame the desire raging inside me for the woman I can’t have.
Love was never meant to be in my vocabulary, not when duty trumped everything else. I’m not just the first one in my extended family to earn a college degree—and a doctorate at that—I’m the one who has the means to support them, from my mother whose husband spends all his money on booze off the reservation every weekend that I don’t see how he can keep his job at the power plant for long to my sister with her apartment near the college and her car. And then there are my twin brothers’ savings plans that I’ve set up should they decide to go to college and need to pay for living expenses.
Duty. That’s what I was raised to do, to provide for my family when I can, the same way my late father provided me with the trust fund that paid for everything I needed while attending college. It afforded me a way out of the reservation so I could come back and help as many as I could. It’s just the way it is and there’s no way I’m bucking that trend… or breaking the promise I made about getting back with Noelle and finally getting married.
But it’s not Noelle who’s been in my mind for the last two days. Instead, every second has been filled with the scent, the feel, and the need of holding another woman in my arms, a woman I know I can’t have. To have Sarah would be abandoning my duty to my family and my clan, as a Diné. I used to joke to Sarah back in Albuquerque that I was spoken for back home. That’s why I played when I could. But I’m not playing now. I can’t.
My erection is as hard as ever, my cock begging for release. My hand moves down my body, my fingers dancing across my shaft. I gasp, the vision of Sarah’s hands wrapping around me, stroking me. Pinpricks travel up and down my spine, my hand squeezing once, twice, before I let go, the water turning warm now, hitting my back. I turn the dial again and for the second time, icy cold water hits me though it does nothing to quench the fire that’s been raging through my body all the way to my cock. An ache that I’ve been fighting for so long.
I blow a long breath through my mouth, closing my eyes as I will myself to remember the promise I made to my family, to our clans. It’s the same promise I made to myself so long ago, in the midst of one of my stepfather’s beatings when I forgot to do something he’d ordered me to do. I was going to prove him wrong. I was going to be as good a Diné as I was raised to be. And even better, I’d provide—for everyone, even if part of it was done out of spite for everything he put me through before my grandfather took me under his wing.
The water shifts to warm again, my heartbeat back to normal as I lean my hands on the wall in front of me, letting the water wash over my back, over the scars my stepfather left behind, from the whips and the cigarettes he used to smoke. Duty. It’ll always be about duty. Proving myself until there’ll be nothing left to prove.
After spending the morning sorting through all the mail I’d received while I was gone, I arrive at the Drexels’ at three in the afternoon. I shouldn’t be nervous, but I am, as if I’m meeting her parents for the first time. Forget that I’ve already met them twice or that last night, I swore to remember my duty and the promise I made.
As I step out of the truck, Sarah’s brother Dax appears from the side of the house. The skin under his eye is swollen and there’s a faint tinge of yellow. The black eye.
“Nice truck,” he says, his hands in his jeans pockets. “So you dating my sister or what?”
“I’m a friend.” I could laugh at such an ambitious declaration. My feelings for Sarah have been far from platonic since that damn kiss.
“You don’t look at her like you’re a friend,” Dax says, peering at me. He’s already got that cocky air about him and right now, he’s doing his best to act like an alpha, needing to protect his turf. In this case, his sister. After what Sarah told me last night about him getting into a fight to protect her reputation, I get it. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let an seventeen-year-old tell me how I’m supposed to act around his sister.
“How do I look at her?”
“Like you want to get into her pants. That’s true, isn’t it?” Dax squares his shoulders back, his chest puffing. “Just letting you know, dude, you hurt her, you’re gonna hear from me.”
I try not to grin. I remember saying the exact same thing when Marjorie had some guy coming by the house years earlier. He happened to stop by when I was visiting and I made sure he’d never forget that Marjorie had an older brother. “I’ll remember that.”
“You better.” As Dax balls his fists at his sides, I can see the defined muscles of his forearms and his bruised knuckles.
“You work out.” It’s not a question but a statement and it seems to catch Dax off-guard. He follows my gaze and brings his hand in front of his face, opening and closing his fist.
“Yeah, I do. Dad set up a home gym for me in the back,” he says, his gaze returning to me, assessing me. “Looks like you do, too.”
“You box?”
He shakes his head. “Not yet. You?”
“Got a bag at home but I go to Taos Boxing Center whenever I can. You heard of them?”
He thinks for a moment, his defensiveness gone. “Sounds familiar.”
“You should give it a try. I have a feeling you’d be good at it,” I say as the front door opens and Sarah emerges with her backpack. Her dark hair falls loosely over her shoulders and the pink top she wears accentuates everything I love about her. Feminine, sexy, with a smile that can light up a dark day.
> “Hey, Benny. Hey, bro.” She looks at me and then her brother, her brow furrowing. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Guy stuff,” Dax replies as his scowl returns but I don’t say anything. The guy loves his sister and that’s fine with me.
Taking Sarah’s backpack, I open the passenger door and set it in the back seat. “You ready?”
“Nana is still packing food for us,” Sarah replies before turning to face Dax. “Hey, you okay?”
“I’m cool,” he replies as Sarah wraps her arms around him as he tries to walk away but he’s not really trying too hard. He grins when Sarah pinches his cheek.
“It’s all going to work out, okay?” She says as she steps away. “You make sure to put that arnica gel around your eye so the skin doesn’t turn purple.”
“I will,” he mutters almost sheepishly. “Anyway, I’m going back inside to help Nana.”
When Dax returns into the house, I lean against the truck. “He’s very protective of you.”
Sarah chuckles. “Well, he was pissed at me yesterday, but you’re right. He is protective of me, just as I am of him. I mean, this address is out there for the world to see.” She stops when a police car drives past the gate and she waves.
“What a fucking asshole.”
She shrugs. “Dad had security cameras installed and the police are going to be patrolling the area for awhile. We also have security guys staying in the back house now. They’ll be here when Dad leaves.”