by Dakota Gray
And that is why I call foul on the whole situation. I don’t need to have a conversation with her to know she has a prissy streak that runs a mile long. She’s like that chick from that old school Billy Crystal movie—she wants vanilla ice cream with the chocolate fudge on the side. Prissy women don’t go for me. Professional, educated, and everything in between, fuck yes. They come to the gym and eye-fuck me until we fuck because those types of women love a man who looks like he’s rough around the edges and only knows a good time. Prissy women see me and know the score. I’m a mess. Not worth the trouble to fix or fuck.
So why the cautious come-hither from her when she must know the truth about me with a look? Unlike my friend Nate, I have no plans to get curved by a pretty woman with a mouth I want to defile. And I definitely have a past that comes with consequences.
I check my watch. With ten minutes before my client is due, I head down to security to get a photo of Nina. Next, I make my way over to membership. Five minutes left on the running clock, I confirm the mystery woman’s name is, in fact, Nina Williams.
I hit the back hallways to get to the stairs. My mind already on the last step in my mission to find out the truth before life headbutts me with karma, I dig my phone out and call my friend.
“Need a favor,” I say without bothering with a hello.
“Jesus Christ, not another goddamn hike.” And that’s Duke in a nutshell. He answered my call on the first ring, and he likes to bitch about things he’s going to do anyway.
“I don’t know why you’d be bitter about it. You got laid on the last one.”
“I doubt I can talk Kennedy into another hike.”
Kennedy loves hiking and Duke. If my friend asked his girl to go on a hike, she would do it in a heart beat. “You’d use your fiancée to get out of one?”
“I’m not above that, and we both know it.”
Shaking my head, I climb the stairs two at a time until I can push through the door, back on my floor. I grab a mat since every workout includes a stretch first. “Not why I’m calling. I need you to find out what you can about a woman named Nina Williams within the next hour. I have all her identifying details.”
There is a long pause on the other end of the phone. “You want me to dig up information on a woman?” Duke’s incredulous tone says it all.
He’d do this without losing sleep. Nate has done it. Me? Never. They call me the good guy of the group. That’s not saying much with Nate and Duke, to be honest. It’s just I believe in things like giving a woman freedom to tell me who she is. I also don’t struggle showing someone real and deep emotion. To be fair to my friends, in my relationships I live by a Does It Get Her Off? credo. If that means encouraging her to wear a butt plug in inappropriate places or helping her solve 69 + 1, I will. That credo can invite all kinds of people to want me to pay for past deeds. Shame is a hell of a motivator. I so know. I’ve never experienced something, like a woman, to come back and bite me, but my friends have, and I’m kind of paranoid about it now.
And Nina Williams just doesn’t make sense. My gut is screaming at me about her and I can’t decipher the words. I need to know everything there is to know about her before our meeting.
I take a deep breath and hold it for a second. “Yes, I want you to find out everything about her,” I confirm without any explanation.
“I thought you were against shit like that?”
“This time I’m making an exception.”
He’s quiet for so long, I shift, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirrors that cover the walls. The lines around my mouth is the only sign of trouble. My shoulders and stance is relaxed. Even though I have no problem emoting, I can’t put words to how I’ve been feeling the last few months. I’ve just been trying to hold onto the man I know I am. I’m the calm in chaos, the voice of reason. I don’t troll clubs every week to find women to pick up to fuck senseless. I don’t pretend to be okay, because the last time I did, I ended up with the scars on my legs.
In this silence between me and my friend, is he finally realizing I’m not myself?
Duke says, “Is this the same woman you’ve been drooling over for the past couple of weeks?”
I sigh. Not much gets past Duke. “Yes.”
He mutters a curse under his breath. “Dimples.”
I kick the mat straight as I try to find the meaning of his single word reply. “I give up. What does that mean? “
“It’s always been your downfall.”
“What has? Dimples?” I say again, confused.
“Keisha had dimples. Two women before that had some. There’s a whole history of a woman with dimples smiling at you, and you losing your goddamn hold on sanity. It’s a thing for you. Just say no, Tarek.”
I can’t help it, I ask, “To what?”
“If a woman with dimples is offering you pussy, just say no.”
Duke’s pep talks often need work. Can’t say he’s wrong, the talks just need work. “Are—”
“It could also be your other Achille’s heel.”
I have to ask, “And that is?”
“Damsels in distress. Women you think need saving.”
Too fucking right again, except I don't think they need saving, least of all by me. That's not why I am drawn to women who may have been broken in some way in the past. They usually don't run in the other direction when I show them my jagged parts. “Are you going to get me the information?”
“Already on it,” he says without a hint of annoyance I’ve ignored his two very valid points. “I’ll email you what I have in an hour.”
I thank him, make plans to see him later this week, and end the call. Across the gym, and even above the music, a wolf whistle rings out.
Zero minutes left before my appointment.
I smile at the older woman headed my way with her cane. Her gray hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She grins at me like I’m one of her grandchildren who rarely visits. Her brown face is weathered with crow’s feet and the faintest of smile lines. I try not to have favorites when it comes to my clients, but she’s definitely in the top ten.
“Today,” I say when she’s close enough, “there will be no damn cheek pinching.”
“Watch your mouth.” She pauses, frowning in thought. “But the fact I can catch you means I’m getting better.”
I laugh and then get us started on our routine.
Then in an hour, I’ll know exactly what Nina is up to.
MY PHONE VIBRATES on the locker room’s bench as I’m fighting my way into my tank top. I glance down to see a picture of Duke and Kennedy’s smiling faces filling the screen. I pull off the tank to pick up the phone.
“That was quick.” I check my watch and it’s a little more than the hour I promised Nina and less than the one since I last talked to Duke.
I don’t know why, but my stomach clenches. I pointed my friend in the direction of Nina because her very existence in my life puts a niggle in my gut. There’s no secret too dark or deep he can’t find out. That’s what makes him a damn good defense attorney. It’s also what makes him an incredible friend. He’ll look at your ugly and be unimpressed. Duke doesn’t judge, and I’ve needed that more often than one can count.
Dread still fills my stomach with sloshing bile.
“Before I tell you what I know,” he says, his words halting as though he’s picking them with care, “where is your head at with this woman?”
That sounds serious and fuck. Fuck. “That’s an interesting question.”
“I’m asking this because I know you. You don’t ask for stuff like this.”
“She’s been flirting with me, mostly with her actions, not her words. She asked me if I had a free moment to talk about something, and…I don’t know. I usually know what a woman wants from me before she even says the words.”
“True.”
The line goes silent between us. The only thing to fill it are the conversations floating around me in the locker room, all punctuated with the occasional cl
ang of a locker being shut. “Tell me,” I say.
“Nina Williams registered a restraining order in Hartsburg County from New York. The man she has it against currently resides in Queensboro Correctional Facility, serving a twenty-to-life over a gun possession.”
Air is knocked out of my lungs with his words. One doesn’t have to be a legal expert to imagine why a woman would get a restraining order against a man. My mind starts to dredge up every story a female client has told me over the years. I can’t help but remember the fear, the shame, and the strength they had to walk away from shit relationships.
And Nina is likely one of those women. “Is that guy anyone I know?”
“No.”
Her hesitance around me has nothing to do with my past but hers, and that doesn’t make the gorilla-like weight lift from my chest. “Fuck,” I breathe.
“It looks like he did have an attempted murder charge that was dismissed from lack of prosecution.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the prosecutor on the case didn’t have the balls to go to trial without a witness. He had plenty of medical evidence and pictures to corroborate the incident.”
I know Duke, and how his mind works. The attempted murder is why Nina has a restraining order. He’s seen the evidence, and it has to be bad. Duke tends to not see justice but loopholes in the law, ways he can win a case. He is a defense attorney to scumbags, but whatever has happened to Nina is ugly enough he’s pissed about the lack of justice.
My stomach curls up. I force myself to swallow. All I can say to this anvil he’s dropped on me is, “Fuck.”
He asks, “What were you scared of?”
I’m too shocked to filter my answer, “That I’d done something thoughtless,”—the unspoken again sits there for a moment between us—“and she was here for retribution.”
Duke scoffs as though I am a saint. “What are you going to do about her?”
I check the time again. “I’m headed to meet her for drinks. I’m going to find out what she wants. It’s probably something innocent. She was just scared to ask me.”
“And then?”
“Shit. Try to act like I don’t know this about her.”
Throughout the day the background noise of my mind had been mired in ways Nina and I could still end up in bed if nothing about her sent up red flags. A nameless hole in me is gnawing at my insides, has been for a few months, and I’ve needed a new distraction in woman form. Nina would have been perfect.
My laugh tastes bitter. “Of course, the one time I ask you to give me dirt, this is what I find out.”
“I’ve known you for a long time. You always listen to your gut, and it’s never wrong.”
“Are you getting philosophical on me?”
“Blame Kennedy.” There’s a pause. “Want me to keep digging?”
“No.” This was more than enough to haunt me.
We end the call. I sit there, stunned and unsure how to process the news. The effortlessly sexy woman who had been eyeing me for weeks has a dark past. She wants me for something, and it is probably not for a good, hard fuck.
If I were really the good guy of my group, I’d tell her no. I’d get as far away from her as possible, because I’m restless and feeling reckless, again, as though all the normalcy in my life needs an influx of chaos to keep me tethered. I need to stand at the edge of a cliff and consider if I should jump just to see where I land, if I land. It’s stupid. Often self-destructive. I don’t need a therapist to know where the trauma stems from or even the why.
I know when to reel myself back because people can get hurt. The scars on my shins aren’t just reminders but a cautionary tale. Over the years I’ve learned to be responsible while throwing raw meat to that thing beating inside the cage. It’s time for a feeding, and I thought Nina would be a perfect meal.
Turns out, she’s not.
Still, I finish getting dressed because nothing will stop me from going to meet her.
3
Nina
* * *
The sports bar—of course it’s a sports bar—is in fact around the corner from the gym. I snatch us a booth with a view of the door. The bar’s a bit rowdy on the surface, with people occasionally yelling at the TV or someone at another table when their team does anything worth yelling over. The wooden tables aren’t sticky. My black heels aren’t swimming in a sea of opened peanut shells under the table. Eventually, a waitress gives me fresh tortilla chips and salsa to munch on as I wait. Apparently, it’s a high-end sports bar. Points in Tarek’s favor.
I tug at the hem of my fuchsia puffy skirt, hoping that small nervous tic can quell the jittery sensation in my stomach. I’ve spent the last five years putting my life back in order after divorcing my ex. He was an abusive bastard who deserved what he got—prison. I got me back and haven’t tried to waste a moment of living ever since. But this…this might be one of the most important meetings of my life. Freaking out or fucking it up isn’t an option.
The next nervous twitch of my fingers focuses on my shirt’s lowest open button. The black blouse I paired with my skirt shows just the edges of my fuchsia demi-cup bra, making me look stylish instead of thotty. I look the way the I am on the inside—sexy, really girly and with a hint of mystery. I’m comfortable and yet not because I need Tarek.
I grab a chip, scoop up salsa and chomp down with a satisfying crunch. That helps a lot more than fixing my clothes. Mid-chew, that undefinable prickle of awareness makes the hairs on my nape stand.
As I swallow down the food, my gaze finds Tarek taking up space and looking so very unf. “Fuck me,” I mutter.
He smiles a crooked smile like he read my lips and strides in my direction. He’s dressed not at all like I expected. There’s not a hoodie, jeans or basketball shorts in sight. Instead, Tarek’s in dark gray slacks and a black dress shirt with the sleeves rolled over his forearms. From the elbow down on his left arm, there’s nothing but tats decorating his brown skin. I wish he’d forgone the shirt and worn the tank top I can see peeking underneath. Even without a tie or suit jacket to elevate the outfit, he looks ten times more fuckable.
I have to mentally smack myself out of a lust stupor, because I’m not here to date him, much less fuck him. I do take note I’ve underestimated him, but my skin doesn’t grow cold. It should. Life has slammed a hammer down on me hard enough I wasn’t sure I could get back up on my own two feet. So hard all I could do was crawl to a safe place to lick my wounds. That truth no longer haunts me as much as it used to. I swallow the bitter taste of the past. Talking Tarek into my scheme should be my only focus.
I broaden my smile when he stands beside the booth I’ve commandeered. “Good of you to make it.”
“You can drop the act, Nina.”
Well, fuck. His reaction can only mean one thing, but until I know for sure he’s on to me, I’m going to play dumb. “What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t come to the London-Berg gym to work out. You came for me.”
Well...yeah. I hadn’t meant for him to find out before I confessed. His reaction is why, but how the hell did he find out?
“What I can’t understand,” he says, his voice sandpaper against skin now, “is why you implied this was a date. Why did you prance in front of me?”
Semantics I’m sure he’d find fault with is that I didn’t act like it was a date. I just didn’t say it wasn’t. I had also figured lying by omission until I had time to butter him up would work better. Every other way I had tried before him had failed. So, I nitpick instead. “Prance?”
He scoffs and slides into the booth next to me. “You haven’t been throwing your pussy in my face? Be clear, Nina.”
His accusation leaves no wiggle room. The truth is my only rebuttal. “I need you as a guide. Before you say no, there’s...” I squint at him because coming up with a price is a problem. I don’t know what will move him to say yes, and there’s a finite amount I can offer. “Two grand is in it for you.”
/>
He doesn’t touch me, but his gaze does. My chest heats as though his finger traces the swell of my breast. I don’t know what he’s about to say, but I know what he wants to.
“What am I guiding you in for two grand?”
The breath I release from the cage of my lungs tastes like relief. “Big picture? Some hiking.”
His eyes narrow, and he takes that much more space and air, practically shoving the scent of fresh laundry and man soap in my face. It’s potent. I’m going to die from how good he smells.
“Little picture?” he asks.
The answer is easy and complicated. “I’m a photographer. I’ve entered a contest where we hike to remote but beautiful places and take a picture. If it was simply running around an urban area, I could do that, but I’m not a mountain woman who can hunt for fish and dig a well. Think of it as an all-expense paid road trip. We’ll go to certain locations in California, and I take pictures.”
His mouth flattens into a hard line. “How many?” He leans forward.
“Six?” I squeak because he keeps leaning forward, and I keep moving backward to keep us from touching. Soon we’re going to be on top of each other under the table and away from prying eyes. I’m not sure if that’s what I want or not.
This is what scared me about him. I make sure I’m never in a situation that ever feels bigger than me.
Tarek went from a guy who fucks anything sentient, with a suspected dark edge, to a man who can make me flatten myself just to get air that he hasn’t tainted. What’s worse is that I’m not coiling into myself for self-preservation. I’m fighting the urge to curl into him, to nuzzle my face into his neck. The thick, taut skin hasn’t disappeared. I want to sink my nails into it to see if he’d groan or yelp.
No.
The worst thing is he seems to know that with a look. A corner of his mouth lifts. “In what timeframe?”