by Tawny Taylor
Using my hair, he pulled me away suddenly.
“My god, you’re going to make me lose control.” He shoved me down onto my back and climbed over me again.
I threw my arms around his neck and pulled him toward me. This time he rested his weight on me. His erection poked at my slick opening as he kissed me with fierce, feral hunger.
His tongue swept into my mouth just as his cock slid inside. He curled his arms over the top of my head, cradling it, and began thrusting in and out in a lusciously slow rhythm. With each inward thrust, my body warmed. Pulses of pleasure thrummed through me. I felt so safe and cherished, especially when he kissed me tenderly.
Within minutes his skin was burning, our bodies slick and tense. I was on the brink of orgasm, teetering.
He pulled out abruptly and I cried out, “Nooo!”
“Trust me,” he whispered against my lips. “Please.”
My response was a whimper and a slight nod.
He angled up, reached into the nightstand drawer. When his hand withdrew, he was holding some condoms and some lube.
He handed the condoms to me. “Please.”
I tore open a package and rolled the latex on, sheathing him while he squirted some lube on his fingers and began massaging my anus.
Oh my God, he really was going to try it.
He coaxed me to roll over and climb onto my knees, and he handed me a pillow. I angled down so I was hugging the pillow as I knelt, my chest resting on it. Once I was in position, he smoothed some cool gel on my anus and stroked the sensitive skin around it. With his other hand, he teased my clit. This I’d done myself, when I’d masturbated. My body responded immediately, warming up. My blood pounded hard and hot through my body, sensation amplifying down there. When he pierced my anus with his fingers, my inner muscles tensed, gripping his invading digits, and a rush of decadent pleasure pulsed through me.
“That’s it, baby. You’re going to take me, and you’re going to love it.”
I wasn’t so sure about either statement, but I couldn’t deny my body was loving what was happening so far. His fingers were slowly working in and out, stretching the tight ring of muscles at the very end, encouraging them to relax. Within minutes I was trembling, on the verge of orgasm, so close I could practically taste it.
He pulled my ass cheeks apart and placed the tip of his cock at my entrance. I was slick and prepared, and to my surprise he slid right in.
“Yesss,” he hissed as he pushed deeper, deeper, filling me.
The sensation was different but oh so good. I was going to come, hard.
He withdrew slightly and surged forward again, driving deeper, stroking nerves I hadn’t realized I had. “Baby,” he muttered, reaching down and fingering my clit. “I can’t last long,” he warned. “Come for me.” He increased the pressure on my clit, and a huge surge of pleasure slammed me.
My orgasm was like a tidal wave. It was powerful and overwhelming. I felt like I was tumbling head over heels in steaming, thrashing water. Every muscle in my body spasmed. The pleasure was beyond description. I trembled and shook and cried out. His voice joined mine as he found release too. And together we pulsed and throbbed until we were exhausted, spent, sated.
I heaved a heavy sigh as he pulled out. He threw away the rubber, rolled me over, and pulled me against him.
I was smiling as I tumbled into a deep sleep.
9
The next morning I woke up. Looked left. Looked right. No sign of Kam.
I closed my eyes and tried to fall back asleep. I was still exhausted. My eyes felt like they’d been plucked from my head and rolled around in a kid’s sandbox, then shoved back in the sockets. I was sore from head to toe, but particularly between my legs. And my head was groggy.
But I couldn’t fall asleep.
After lying there for what felt like hours, I got up, took care of some bathroom issues, got dressed, then stumbled and wobbled downstairs to find Kam and some caffeine. I wanted to wish him good morning. I wanted to kiss him, too. And feel his arms around me. But I also wanted to ask him about my brother, to find out if he had learned anything about the allegations. By now he had to have some information, at least what had happened and why my brother had been fingered as the culprit.
The caffeine, I found. A full pot. Steaming hot. But Kam, I did not. I poured a cup of liquid energy and took it to the wide French doors in the nearby family room.
The sun had risen, but it was hanging low in the east yet. A quick check of the clock told me this was the earliest I’d roused on a Saturday in ages.
I would be taking a nap later, for sure.
But for now . . .
I wandered his huge house as I drank my coffee. In a small way, I felt like I was snooping as I checked out his photographs hanging on the walls, the treasures he kept hidden in his built-in cabinets and drawers. But in another way, I felt like this was a chance to get to know him a little better.
I discovered an office at the front of the house. It was decorated in very masculine décor. Two walls were a deep gray. Floor-to-ceiling wood bookcases loaded with volumes covered a third and the forth, behind the polished, old wooden desk, was mostly window, swathed in gray silk. I sat in the desk and stared straight ahead. The desk faced the room’s entry. But next to it hung a black-and-white picture. Dragging my fingertips over the desk’s glossy top, I wandered over to take a closer look at the photo.
The two men looked very much alike. One was older; one was younger. Father and son. Smiling. This was the second photograph I’d seen of him and his father. Funny, but he hadn’t mentioned his father to me. Not once. Nor his mother. Nor any other family. I wondered if there was a reason why.
Staring at the picture, I downed the last of my coffee. Then I headed back to the kitchen for a refill. As I was pouring, someone opened the front door.
Thinking it was Kam, I set down the cup and scurried toward the sound.
I stopped in the center of the foyer. My skin prickled as a chill swept up my spine. That was followed by a rush of heat blazing to my face.
“Mr. Maldonado sent me to pick you up and drive you home,” the strange man said. He was older than me, probably by a couple of decades, lean and well groomed, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and tie.
That man surely knew what I was doing at Kam’s house on a Saturday morning. I wondered if this was a normal thing, to be sent over to take Kam’s latest plaything home.
Don’t think about that. He said you were different.
Trying to hide my slight mortification behind a veil of nonchalance, I said, “Okay. I just need to get my purse.”
“Take your time.” The driver went to the kitchen. I heard the rattle of cups as I vaulted up the stairs.
When I came down, it looked like he was emptying the cup he’d just filled. He smiled. “Mr. Maldonado has the best coffee.”
“It is good.”
“Ready?” he asked.
“Sure.”
We headed outside to a sleek black sedan parked in the driveway. The man opened the back door, but I shook my head and pointed to the front passenger door. “May I?”
“Sure.”
We strapped ourselves in, and within minutes the big, black car was prowling down the quiet streets.
“Sorry you had to work on a weekend,” I said.
“No problem. I work every weekend.”
“You mean you don’t get a day off? Ever?”
“I get a day off whenever I want. All I have to do is ask. Mr. Maldonado is a good man to work for. A very good man.” As we rolled to a stop at a light, the driver looked at me. “I lost my wife last year. The kids are grown, gone. What else am I going to do?”
I heard the loneliness in his voice, the sorrow. “I’m very sorry about your wife.”
The light changed, and he hit the gas. “She was a good woman. My best friend. My companion. My lover. It’s taking some time to get used to living without her.”
“I can understand that. How
long were you married?”
“Forty-eight years. We had our good times and our bad times, but those were still the best years of my life.”
Forty-eight. That was a lot of years. More than I had lived, up to this point.
Someday I hoped to have a husband who would say the same thing about me. Right now that dream felt so distant, out of reach. “How did you meet your wife?”
“She was dating my best buddy. We both were in the army. Deployed together to Vietnam. He went home before our tour was up . . . KIA.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I was with him when . . . That day he made me promise to take care of her. So when I went home, I contacted her. We became friends first. Husband and wife much later.”
It was only when he shifted the car into park that I realized we were at my apartment. He had known my address.
“Thank you for the ride,” I said as I reached for the door handle to let myself out.
“It was my pleasure. Any time.” He gave a little wave as I pushed open the door. “I’ll see you again soon.”
Soon.
That brought a smile to my face. And I wondered, as I strolled up the front walk, if he knew something I didn’t.
A few minutes later, as I let myself into my apartment, I found my brother lying on the couch. At least twenty beer bottles lay scattered over the coffee table and floor, along with an open, half-full pizza box, napkins, and potato chip bags.
Dread wound through my body, like ropes tugging my insides into knots.
Dammit, not again.
I smacked his foot, which was protruding out from under the afghan he had draped over himself. “Go to bed,” I snapped.
He groaned.
I heard a sound deeper in the apartment. A door shut. Nervous—I had no idea who it was—I tiptoed down the hall, hurrying toward the relative safety and privacy of my bedroom.
Over the past couple of years I’d become painfully aware of the fact that my brother didn’t always associate with the nicest people. More to the point, some of his friends were downright scary. Felons. Thieves. Thugs. As I made my way down the hall, my eyes jerked left and right. My body tensed. My heart started pounding.
I breathed much easier the minute I had myself locked in my room. Shower first. I grabbed some fresh clothes and padded to my bathroom. The door was shut. I didn’t usually keep the door closed. I knocked softly. No answer. Weird. But I decided I must have closed it yesterday when I was rushing around, getting ready to go out with Kam.
I pushed the door open.
My eyes jerked to the wild-eyed woman sitting on the toilet. I recognized her immediately. It was the woman who’d come to thank Joss for driving her kid to the hospital.
Mortified for her, I lunged backward, slamming the door shut again. What a shock that had been. When my brother had houseguests, they usually used his bathroom—the one in the hallway—never mine. It took a few seconds for me to catch my breath.
But a second later a loud thud in the living room had me gasping all over again.
What now?
I heard a low moan. And a familiar voice saying, “Fuuuck.”
Then the sound of retching.
Praying my brother made it to the kitchen trash can, I flopped onto the bed, pulled up the covers, and buried my head under my pillow. He was an absolute bastard when he was loaded. A bastard and a pain in the ass. Mean and needy.
“Abby!” Joss slurred. “Abby!”
I heard my bathroom door open, soft footsteps cross the room, then my bedroom door open and close.
Furious and frustrated, both for the invasion of privacy and for having to deal with an intoxicated man-child, I stomped into my bathroom and slammed the door.
Let him clean up his own freaking mess this time.
In the bathroom, I cranked on the hot water, shucked my clothes, and steamed myself until I was feeling somewhat human again. Then I toweled off and put on some comfortable weekend cleaning-the-house clothes. Yoga pants and a T-shirt. When I padded barefoot out to the living room, my first instinct was to check on Joss.
He wasn’t on the couch anymore. Or on the floor, where I expected him. Slightly concerned, I checked his room. He was in his bed. After checking the rest of the apartment, I concluded his houseguest had helped him get into bed and then left.
Getting a little payback in, I cranked on the TV, tuned it to a music channel, and started cleaning the living room. If he wasn’t my brother, and it wasn’t partially my fault for him being the way he was, I’d have thrown him out ages ago.
A few hours later the apartment was looking much better, and I was ready for a long nap. As I was dragging my weary body down the hall toward my bedroom, Joss’s door opened. He blinked red, swollen eyes at me.
“You’re home,” he grumbled.
“I’ve been home for hours. Rough night?”
“Rough morning,” he confessed.
“You do it to yourself.”
“I know.” He pushed off the wall, staggering toward the bathroom. A second later, before I’d reached my room, I heard more retching.
It was painful to hear. Not because I felt bad that he was sick, but because I knew why he was drinking so much.
A memory flashed through my head, powerful and painful. I shut my eyes and tried to shove it out
“You little bastard. I’ve told you over and over to clean up the dog shit. What do I have to do? Huh?”
I heard the thump, but I hadn’t known what it was.
Then I saw him, my little brother, lying on the floor. Blood was oozing from his nose, and one side of his face was a deep scarlet. Later, his lip would swell and an ugly bruise would blossom across his cheekbone.
Our father had hit him. Hard. And, judging by the way he’d clenched his hand into a fist, he was about to do it again. He grabbed my brother by the shirt and hauled him to his feet. His arm pulled back.
Joss cried out, “Abby.”
I ran.
I ran as fast and as hard as my legs would take me.
I ran down the street. I ran to the park. I ran until I couldn’t move another inch. Then I collapsed on the ground, sitting on my butt, knees bent, face tucked down.
I shook. I cried. I tried to think of what to do. I needed to tell someone. I needed to protect Joss. But who could I trust? Who?
Grandma? Grandma was good to us. I would call her.
I made sure I’d wiped away my tears before I went home. I didn’t want Dad to know I’d seen what he did. I was very quiet as I went into the house. I looked and listened. No sign of Dad. I grabbed the phone and dialed the number.
When Grandma answered, I had to swallow a sob. I told her everything, and she listened, not saying much. When I was finished, she told me she would take care of things. I thanked her and hung up.
A few hours later I learned a hard lesson.
You don’t tell.
You don’t tell anyone.
I also learned how hard my father could punch.
I hadn’t realized I’d fallen asleep until my phone roused me from a dream. I blinked watery eyes, searching the semidark. I could hear the stupid phone, but I couldn’t see it.
Grumbling, I shoved myself upright, then swung my legs over the side of the bed. Of course the phone stopped ringing the minute my feet hit the floor.
But it started ringing again a few seconds later, before I’d fallen back into bed.
Following the sound, I lumbered over to my dresser where my purse was sitting. It was still ringing when I dug it out of the deepest, darkest depths where it had settled.
Kam.
I poked the button. “Hello?”
“Hi.”
“Hi to you, too.”
“I . . . just wanted to make sure you got home safely.”
Was that really why he had called? Wouldn’t he know I had made it home okay after speaking with his driver? I had more than a sneaking suspicion Kam would have called him. “Yes, I did. Thank you.”
> “I’m sorry I had to leave this morning. I didn’t want to wake you.”
Ah, so there was the real reason for his call. He wished to apologize. Not a bad reason to call.
“It’s fine,” I said, smiling to myself. I plopped down on my bed and, sitting cross-legged, I hugged a pillow to my chest. “I’m a big girl. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“You found the coffee?”
“I did. It was delicious.”
“Okay. Well, then. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yes, tomorrow.”
And with a click, the call was over.
That was strange. One of the oddest conversations I’d ever had.
Although I had spent a fair amount of time alone with Kameron Maldonado, I still felt like he was a mystery. He didn’t ever talk about family or friends. He worked hard. He was generous. His employees had only good things to say about him. He made a mean cup of coffee. And he was amazing in bed. But that was about all I knew. I grabbed my laptop and powered it up, wondering what I might find about him on the Internet.
As it turned out, the Internet had all kinds of information about him. His father, Emile Maldonado, had immigrated to the United States when he was only eighteen years old. He’d been penniless when he’d arrived, but by the time he’d died, he had married, fathered one child, and built a solid, thriving manufacturing business. His son, Kam, had taken the reins when he died, and within a few short years Kam turned what had been a multimillion-dollar-a-year enterprise into a multibillion-dollar-a-year conglomerate, mostly by buying his competition or forcing them out of business and expanding into new industries.
Kameron Maldonado was a ruthless businessman.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
I powered down my computer and set out to do my regular Sunday thing. My brother was nowhere to be seen—not in his room, not in the apartment at all. That was okay. I didn’t want to deal with his sorry-ass hangover today. While dancing to the tunes cranked on my stereo, I scrubbed the bathroom and kitchen, dusted and vacuumed and cleaned, stripped my bed and washed, dried, and folded the laundry. Then I headed out to do the grocery shopping for the week.