Her Wicked Hero

by Caitlyn O'Leary

  She nodded. Zed sat down on the bed beside her and brought the tray between them.

  “I stepped out while you were asleep.”

  She reached for a piece of cheese and a cracker, but her heart turned over when she saw the strawberries and bowl of chocolate sauce.

  “You’re a romantic,” she whispered.

  “I have my moments.”

  “And you’re okay with eating crackers in bed? I would have thought that went against the whole Navy man mentality.”

  Zed handed her a glass of wine. “There are always exceptions, otherwise life isn’t worth living,” he smiled. “Don’t you need two hands to eat?”

  Marcia looked down and realized her left hand was clutching the sheet like it was a lifeline. She licked her lips and released the sheet. Slowly, it slid down, then caught on the swell of her breasts. She watched in fascination as Zed’s eyes gleamed; it gave her a wicked thrill. When the fabric pooled into her lap, she no longer felt exposed, instead, she felt liberated.

  Zed swirled a strawberry in the bowl of chocolate, then held it up to her lips. She bit into the sweet fruit, the flavor bursting across her tongue.

  “You’re gorgeous.”

  Marcia couldn’t think of anything to say in response, so she took another bite. It was as if Zed understood. When she was done, he handed her back her glass of wine.

  “Would you tell me about Rick?” he asked.

  “If you’ll tell me more about what it was like growing up in LA,” she countered.

  “Deal.”

  “I was stupid. I should have been able to see through him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He always said what I wanted to hear. He pretended like I mattered. He listened to what I had to say like it was important. I should have been able to see he was too good to be true.” Marcia looked around, then set down her glass of wine on the night stand and started to grab the sheet. Zed took her hand in his.

  “Honey, how were you supposed to be able to see he was bullshitting you?”

  “Because nobody’s really like that.”

  He watched her carefully as she pulled up the sheet with her other hand.

  “How long were you and Rick together?”

  “A little over two years. I thought. I thought…”

  He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “What did you think, Marcia?”

  “I thought we were going to get married.” It took everything she had to hold back a sob. Why was she being so emotional about something that was done and dust? Somehow, the tray was on the floor and her head was resting on Zed’s shoulder, the sheet over both of them. He was stroking his fingers over her shoulder. Her breathing was getting back to normal. At least she hadn’t done a full-on cry. What an idiot.

  “Be nice to my woman,” he whispered into her hair.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re too hard on yourself. Everybody else in your life, you will bend over backwards for and do everything in the world to make sure they get a soft spot to land, but you are amazingly hard on yourself.”

  “Don’t be nice to me,” she mumbled into his chest.

  He tilted her chin up to meet her eyes. “Marcia, let’s get one thing straight, I’m not Rick. I’m not pretending to be nice to you.”

  “You’re nothing at all like him, I know that. It’s just…”

  “Just what?”

  “I’m scared. I want you too much. I need you too much. You’re already a thousand times more important than Rick ever was to me, and if he couldn’t really love me, how can you?”

  He pulled her even closer. “You’re kidding, right?” he rumbled.

  Marcia’s skin was chilled, so Zed stroked her bare arms with his hands, trying to warm her. Her sherry brown eyes looked up at him expectantly. What should he tell her? The truth? Should he tell her when he first saw her photo, he knew they were destined to have a future together? What would she think of him if she knew he had those kinds of premonitions? He decided to go with something that was true, just not the full truth.

  “Marcia, from the first moment I saw you, I knew you were going to be someone special in my life.” She tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let her. “Without my instincts I wouldn’t be alive today, they have pulled me through ten years of special operations, and those instincts were very much spot on when they told me what a remarkable woman you are.”

  He watched her consider his words. He could see her entire process, it was one of the things he loved about her, she truly didn’t have a poker face. First, there was the fury he would lie to her, then the hurt, then he saw her wheels turn even further.

  “Zed, you’re not the type of man to lie, but you’re wrong,” she said slowly.

  “What am I wrong about?”

  “I’m not remarkable.”

  He cupped the back of her head and brought her forehead to rest against his.

  “So, says the woman who adopts a young mother and a baby in the jungle, fights a python, and babysits the nations NSA Director. Sure, there’s nothing remarkable about you.”

  Zed saw her eyes widen. “Well when you put it like that,” she drawled. “Maybe you should like me a little bit.”

  “Let’s not forget the part where you are dynamite in bed,” he reminded her.

  He had never in his life seen someone blush from the tips of their hairline down to the tops of their breasts before. Lord have mercy.

  “And you got one thing wrong in that statement, Querida,” he said as his fingers traced her blush.

  “What?” she asked breathlessly. Her eyes were staring at him as her body shivered under his touch.

  “I don’t just like you, I love you with all of my heart.”

  Two tears dripped down her face, and once again, Zed was tortured with the view of her even, white teeth torturing her bottom lip. She searched his face, and he waited. He didn’t know what she was looking for, but she must have found it. Marcia’s fingers fluttered over his neck before landing on his cheek.

  “I’m in love with you too,” she whispered.

  Zed felt a part of himself relax, a part of his soul that had been guarded and restless for decades was fulfilled by her words. “Thank fucking God,” he said, right before he claimed her mouth.

  Zed opened one eye and pretended to scowl. Marcia giggled as she wiped up the drizzled chocolate sauce on his chest with the strawberry. She’d been giving him a hard time about cleanliness in the bed for the last four hours, thinking he would mind her shenanigans. She was wrong on all counts. As long as she was naked in his bed, he was a happy man.

  He was really happy to see that for the last four hours, she had been totally unselfconscious about her appearance. Even after the first chocolate shower they’d shared, she hadn’t given a second look at her face, instead, she’d been more interested in his shaving routine.

  “You do realize we’re going to have to shower again?” he asked.

  Marcia popped the chocolate covered strawberry into his mouth, and he chewed.

  “I bet I can make you not care,” she purred.

  He bet she was right.

  “You still haven’t stuck to your part of the bargain,” she said as she licked delicately at a drop of chocolate on his chest.

  What was she talking about?

  “Hmmm?” he asked.

  “You were going to tell me about growing up in East LA.”

  Looking at Marcia’s wealth of tumbling curls and thinking about her huge heart, he couldn’t help but smile. “My abuela would have loved you.”

  “That’s grandmother, right?”

  “Yes. She had my mother when she was fifteen, then my mother had me when she was sixteen. They looked more like sisters than mother and daughter.”

  She stopped moving, her eyes overly bright. “Oh Zed, you’re talking about them in the past tense.”

  “They’ve both passed,” he nodded. “It’s been years and years.”

  She didn’t ask any questions,
she just got out of bed, went to the master bath, and came back with a warm wash cloth, wiping the chocolate off his chest, then cuddled up next to him.

  “When I was really little, we lived in a small apartment, and I remember a lot of laughter. Actually, a lot of singing too. And the food. My grandmother was a great cook. My mom? Not so much.”

  “The arguing started when I was about six. Mom would leave for days on end, and when she would come back, she wasn’t the mom I remembered. Later, I realize she was either high or strung out, but to the eyes of a six-year-old, those rages just seemed like your mom all of a sudden hated you.”

  Marcia’s hand clenched over his chest. She knew what it was like dealing with an addict. “What did your grandmother do?”

  “Mom started to bring men back to the apartment. When my grandmother was at work, one of them knocked me across the room, then locked me outside. She found me on the porch. I’d never seen my Abuela so angry. She took me to a neighbor’s apartment and had me spend the night. I never saw my mother again, it was a couple of years later that she died.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Marcia said. He could hear the ache in her voice.

  “My Abuela’s name was Carmalita Margaurite Zaragoza, quite a mouthful, huh?”

  “Zaragoza?”

  “Yeah, mom was illegitimate, and so was I. Abuela would tell me stories about her family from Mexico.” His lips twitched. “When I went to school and started hearing fairy tales, I realized she had pretended fairy tales were really stories about her family. I never called her on it because by then, I was seven or eight years old and realized telling me those stories and having me believe good things about her family back in Mexico made her happy.”

  “She sounds wonderful. What happened to her?”

  “She died of cancer. I just thank God it happened after I pulled my head out of my ass.” Marcia’s head shot off his chest at the vehemence in his words.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Abuela worked as a seamstress. It paid better than housekeeping, and she made sure we had enough to more than get by. In my old neighborhood that meant she was able to take us from an apartment to renting a house, so we weren’t in the thick of the gang territory when I was nine years old. Don’t get me wrong, at the school I was in, we were surrounded, but I was a big kid for my age, I didn’t have to be pulled in like some kids.”

  Zed thought back to the summer he joined Las Nuevas Espadas. They’d been trying to recruit him for over a year. He’d been fourteen. All he was going to do was a few small things, just enough to spend time with some of his friends who were part of the gang and have money saved for a kick-ass car when he turned sixteen. He wouldn’t cross any hard lines. He justified everything. By the time he had his money, he’d have already quit, and Abuela would be none the wiser.

  He unlocked the door to the little house. He didn’t smell any food cooking.

  “Abuelita?” Zed called out. The little house was dark, all the drapes were pulled, blocking out the California sun.

  “I’m home,” he hollered out again. His grandmother’s car had been in the tiny little drive beside the house. Where was she? Zed flung his backpack on the couch and went to the kitchen. He was hungry. Maybe there were some leftovers in the fridge.

  He found some foil wrapped tamales. He grabbed those as well as an orange soda.

  “What?!” He almost dropped everything on the floor when he turned to find his small little grandmother standing in front of him. She was dressed entirely in black with a black shawl over her head.

  “Abuelita? What’s wrong? Who died?” He dumped the food and drink down on the counter and pulled her trembling hand in his and walked her over to the small kitchen table. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?” Zed had only seen her dressed like this when they had attended Mr. Fuentes funeral.

  “You know what is wrong, Dante,” his grandmother said in Spanish. She never called him Dante. He noted the rosary beads in her hands. It was at that moment, he knew, somehow, she knew. She had found out about his meeting with Red Blade, the leader of Las Nuevas Espadas.

  How could she have found out about something that had just happened three hours ago? He looked at her, astounded.

  “Are you going to try to lie?”

  Yes. Hell, yes, he was going to lie. Zed looked wildly around the kitchen, anyplace except at the woman who had raised him. The woman who somehow knew things. He was so fucked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re talking crazy,” he said.

  She gave a slow regal nod, almost as if she’d been expecting those very words.

  “You are still a child, Dante. You may live under my roof. Do not let your new ways taint this house. You have until the day you are eighteen before your decision will make you dead to me. You know better than this.”

  He looked at her, trying to grasp her words. “Abuelita,” he started.

  “Since I was never married, the proper form of address is Señorita Zaragoza,” she said as she stood up. “Do not leave this until it is too late, Dante.”

  It was on the tip of his young, smart-ass tongue to tell her to call him Señor Zaragoza.

  “I would advise against it,” she said as she swept out of the room.

  Zed dropped down onto the kitchen chair she had just vacated and picked up the rosary beads, then dropped them back down on the table. He sat straight up.

  Dammit, he was old enough to think for himself. He knew what he was doing.

  * * *

  Zed looked down at Marcia whose eyes were wide.

  “How did she know? Had someone told her?”

  “Not often, but occasionally, the Zaragoza’s would know things. I remember once, there was a little girl who came to our house with her dad, asking if we had seen her dog. My grandmother told her her dog was over at the animal shelter across the city. The man just laughed. Two days later they came back and thanked my grandmother because that’s where they found the little girl’s dog. I asked my grandmother how she knew. She just shrugged her shoulders and said sometimes, she just knew things.”

  Zed waited to see how Marcia would respond to that. He’d only told four people that story in his entire life, Marcia now made five. She kissed his shoulder and smiled.

  “You can do that too, can’t you?”

  He didn’t answer directly. “Why do you say that?”

  “I like numbers. I mean I really like numbers,” Marcia’s eyes twinkled.

  “Okay. I have absolutely no idea where this is going.”

  “Occasionally, when I’m looking at something, a really complex problem, I know the answer. I mean a problem that’s going to take me four hours of calculations to come up with the answer, but I know what the answer is. All my calculations are going to do is just confirm what I already know. It’s weird, Zed. It’s spooky and otherworldly and even though we just talked about loving one another?”

  He started to smile and nodded.

  “So, even though I love you?” she said in a voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t know that I ever would have admitted the whole math voodoo to you if I didn’t know you have voodoo, too.”

  Zed burst out laughing and rolled her over, so he was looking down at her.

  “I love you, Marcia Price.”

  “Tell me how you pulled your head out of your ass. Did you do it before you were eighteen?”

  “I’d moved out by the time I was sixteen,” Zed shook his head. “I was a lot smarter than she was, just ask me. I did a lot of stuff I’m not proud of, but there were lines I never crossed. I thought I had gotten away with it because there had been so many turf wars going on. I thought I had slipped through the cracks. I thought I was smart, but I was so fucking stupid.” Zed rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. Wisdom came at a high price.

  “What happened?”

  “Because there had been so many little turf wars that had come along, I had skated along without having to kill anyone.”

  “Ki
ll anyone?” she breathed out. “You were a kid.”

  “I was in a notorious gang, and I was a punk. When Luis gave me the gun and told me what I needed to do, he made it sound like I would be doing the world a favor by getting rid of this guy. To this day, I regret I considered it, just so I could stay part of something I knew was wrong. But Luis had also made it clear if I didn’t do it, not only would I die, but so would my family.”

  When Marcia whimpered, he pulled her close and pressed a kiss to her temple.

  “How d'you get out of it and protect your grandmother?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, then grinned down at her.

  “That’s a lot of faith you have in an eighteen-and-a-half-year-old screw up.”

  “Zed, I’ve seen you in action.”

  “Luis was supposed to watch it go down. I was supposed to tell him the time and location of the drive-by, so he could report back.” Zed sighed. “I set him up. I tipped off the other gang, and they were waiting for Luis and his men. It all spiraled out of control for two weeks.”

  “What about your grandmother?”

  “With all the crazy going on, we had a week to get her packed up to visit relatives down in Guadalajara. By the time I got to her house, she had a telephone number of a Navy recruitment officer.”

  Zed kept that piece of paper in the same frame as the picture he had of Señorita Zaragoza. Marcia’s fingertips teasing through his hair brought his focus back to her.

  “When did she pass?”

  “Two weeks after I received my trident,” Zed smiled. He just wished she could have been alive to have met Marcia.

  13

  “I won’t be put off by fantastic sex again. As a matter of fact, it is off the table until you tell me what the hell is going on!” Gah! Couldn’t the man even look slightly unsettled when she yelled at him?

  Zed looked up from his laptop, then closed it.

  “Good to know it’s fantastic sex.” He reached out a hand, and she slapped it away.

  “Absolutely not, buster. You got out of bed in the middle of the night, and I hear you out here talking to Kane, but you haven’t been keeping me informed of what’s going on. I don’t like it one bit.”