by Lynn LaFleur
He’d thrown up a wall too high for anyone to climb. She might fail, but she had to try.
The anger seeped out of her. “Please, Rico. You’ve been through hell and I did nothing to stop it. I was young and I was wrong. I accept that, and I apologize. But won’t you at least let me tell you why?”
Silence hung between them. The wind picked up outdoors and whistled through the cracks in the shutters. In the kitchen, the cats stood again on hind legs, pawing at the closed door, meowing to be set free.
He narrowed his gaze, his body still and rigid. “What the hell can you say that will give me back my life? You want to apologize? Pardon me, but big fucking deal. I spent ten years, two months and five days in hell—because you were young and you were wrong? Saying you’re sorry is supposed to make it all go away? Lady, that might work better than the dog ate my homework, but it sure as shit ain’t cuttin’ it here.”
“Fine,” she snapped back. “There’s the door.” He started to turn away again. “But if you walk out that door before we’re through here, you’ll never be more than an ex-con, guilty or not.”
“What do you know about—”
“A hell of a lot more than you think. You’re so busy feeling sorry for yourself, you can’t see beyond it. What did you do when you got out, Rico? Look up an old girlfriend, try to reconnect with your friends, think about what you want out of life? Or have you spent the last year hunting me down?”
Mary Beth knew she’d struck a nerve. The color drained from his face.
“What are you going to do to punish me, Rico? Tell the world that it was my vote that sent you to prison? That I made you stand mute when you could have defended yourself?” She held her ground, toe to toe, her head thrust back so she looked him square in the eyes. “That at eighteen and three weeks out of high school, and ten years younger than the next youngest juror, only I had the power to set you free?” She grabbed the front of his sweater and shook him. “If that’s your story and you’re sticking with it, God help you. But if you want to grow up, if you want to be Rico the man, not Rico the victim, then for heaven’s sake, face the truth. You’ll never get on with your life if you can’t forgive.”
Tears stung her eyes. Pain seared her stomach and her voice trembled, but she couldn’t stop now.
“Listen to me, Rico.” She let go of his sweater. “Hate me if you like. Do whatever you need to do to get it out of your system. If you came here tonight to punish me, then do what you came to do and get the hell out.”
She turned her back. She didn’t think he’d harm her, but if that’s what he was bent on, she didn’t want to see the blow coming. “I can’t undo the past,” she said. “I can help you find peace, and you can help me to do the same.” Mary Beth turned enough to see his face. He hadn’t moved but stood less rigid. Some of the anger had gone out of him.
She walked to one of the leather loveseats and sat down. She patted the space beside her. “Come talk to me. Make me understand. Free us both.”
*
Rico wanted to blind his eyes, cover his ears. There were too many sights and sounds racing through his mind, too many memories. The call from his cousin at three that morning. No details, but he’d heard the panic in Tony’s voice. “I’m at Pia’s.” And after a gut-wrenching silence that dragged on forever, Rico heard tears in his cousin’s voice. “Someone’s hurt her, Rico. Bad.”
Rico had caught his first glimpse of Pia Marie Sarantella when he was thirteen and saving seats at Shea for Tony and Tony’s new squeeze. The sun shined so brightly, Pia’s hair glistened like diamonds and black onyx. She wore cutoffs that hugged her ass and pulled his eyes straight to her crack, and a halter top that turned a thirteen-year-old’s wet dreams to fire. He fell in love with her that instant. For the next six years, helpless and broken-hearted, he watched his cousin and Pia abuse each other in a relationship straight from hell.
That awful night Rico had sped through the dark streets. He reached Pia’s apartment, found the door open and Tony gone.
He’d never seen so much blood, not even in a movie. He’d thrown off his jacket and rushed to her. Knelt down to listen for any sound to prove she might still be alive. Her eyes had already swollen shut, although she must have felt his presence. She’d raised a hand to push him away. He took hold of her wrist. “Pia, it’s Rico. Who did this to you?” He saw her lips move. Once more he leaned closer to her mouth, listening for a name, fearing she might say Tony, never dreaming the nightmare that followed.
Then chaos erupted around him. Sirens, the police, paramedics. And the words he would soon hear over and again—in the hospital, in the courtroom, in prison—“He did it. Rico did it.”
Now another voice called his name. “Rico…please let me help you.”
Even after new DNA tests proved with a 2,000,000,000-to-1 certainty that the semen found inside Pia did not belong to Rico, and a shitload of forensic evidence the police ignored that pointed to at least two other men, Pia still insisted Rico was the man who had raped and savagely beaten her.
“Rico?”
Maybe it was the tenderness in Mary Beth’s voice, or the way her cheeks still shined with the blush of her anger, or that he saw she fought tears. Or because she’d had the guts to turn her back on him while he silently raged. Something inside him changed in that moment. He didn’t know how to explain it, but for the first time since those awful early morning hours, he dared to believe there might be life forces beyond hatred and fear.
“Please come sit here.”
He shook his head, turned on his boot heels and in long determined strides, walked toward the kitchen. He knew she must have watched him with surprise and curiosity.
When he opened the kitchen doors, the cats ran for freedom. All but one raced toward the family room. The silver gray with the thick coat Mary Beth called Ruskie stayed behind. He wound in and out of Rico’s legs while Rico poured coffee into two mugs and slid the pieces of cake onto plates.
Carrying the mugs in one hand, and the plates and forks in the other, Rico found Mary Beth standing in the hallway, watching him. She held a kitten in each hand. “I see you’ve made a couple of friends.” She pointed to the kitten at his feet and Ruskie, who followed closely behind. “And what about these guys?” she asked.
“What about them?”
“You let them out. Do you want me to lock them up again?”
Hair balls with fish breath surrounded him. Instead of thinking of a hundred ways to rid the earth of them, Rico realized he was smiling. He felt his lips curve upward, his lids and the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkle, and his cheeks tighten. He stood two feet from a woman he’d sworn vengeance upon, surrounded by the nuisance of the animal kingdom, and for some damn reason, he was smiling.
“Nobody should be locked up,” he said. “Not them, not me. Not anybody.”
Mary Beth opened the sliding glass door that led from the family room to the small concrete slab where she stored her firewood. Led by Mom Cat and Ruskie, all eight felines trooped outside. While she saw to their freedom, Rico placed their dessert on the coffee table in front of the loveseat and flopped down on the cushion.
“Thanks for tolerating my family.” She sat down beside him.
He shrugged it off by handing her a piece of cake.
“And thanks for this too.”
He drove his fork into his piece and muttered something like, “No big deal.”
“Most of all…” She paused until he rested his fork on the plate and looked at her. “Thanks for staying.”
They ate quietly. Although she loved Synda’s Black Russian cake, she sipped her coffee more than she ate. Rico scarfed down his piece, and dumped what was left of hers onto his plate. It was gone in seconds. She made a mental note to remember he liked sweets.
How silly. She’d promised herself that when they’d said all they’d had to say, and the taillights of his motorcycle disappeared into the night, she’d make it a point to avoid seeing him again.
&nbs
p; She smiled at him. “Looks like you’re a member of the Clean Plate Club.”
Rico shook his head. “My ma used to say that.”
“Mine, too.” Mary Beth grinned. “My aunt used to pay her kid to eat—a quarter for each piece of toast.”
“Sounds like a con to me.”
“Too bad I wasn’t smart enough to think of it first.”
“I think you’re plenty smart.” He reached for her hand. That should have startled her. Instead she slipped hers in his.
His hand felt warm to the touch, the palm calloused, but gentle. Mary Beth didn’t think of herself as short, although at five-seven, she wasn’t a giant either. She had slender fingers. If she splayed them against his hand, she knew his would be a full inch longer. In spite of the size difference, the fit felt right.
Too right.
Rico spoke quietly at first, his words coming out in bits and phrases. He spoke about Tony, and the day he’d met Pia. About his Ma and Pop, as he called them, and the shock and joy of the first moments they learned The Innocence Project was taking his case. And the day he left court with an apology and a full pardon.
Mary Beth listened without interrupting him. Healing, forgiving words he needed to say and she needed to hear.
Later she got up to let the cats back in. He struck a match and set fire to the kindling she’d laid earlier. She kicked off her shoes and curled up alongside him, resting her arm on the back of the loveseat while he sat with his legs spread, his fingers laced and his arms braced on his knees.
She didn’t know how long they’d talked when it seemed so natural to let her fingers brush against his shoulder. She felt him stiffen, and then his muscles relax.
He leaned back, shifted sideways and ran a finger along her cheek, a touch as soft as the caress of an angel’s wing. She knew she should pull back, but it felt so good. A hint of aftershave lingered on his fingertips. She closed her eyes and leaned her face into his open palm.
She felt his weight shift again, onto the cushion beside her. She knew what was coming next. He leaned toward her. In a moment, if she didn’t do something to stop him, they’d kiss.
Too late, those wonderfully full, soft lips brushed against hers. Gently, gently at first, no more than a wisp of silk, but enough to raise gooseflesh on Mary Beth’s arms.
Stop him, now… Ohmygod.
She leaned into his embrace and slid her hands along the front of his sweater. She’d been kissed many times before, starting with hard, sloppy kisses from her high school sweethearts to the most sophisticated lovers, like Marty Trinidad. No one in her memory, except maybe her first kiss, ever affected her this way.
The stroke of his fingers when he caressed the side of her throat…a whisper of a tickle from his mustache…the lingering taste of chocolate and Kahlúa on his lips from Synda’s cake…a trace of aftershave that took her back to the scent the boys in school used even when they didn’t have enough of a growth to shave daily. All of it struck her at once, not as a jumble of fractured images but as a warm and safe place to start their journey.
“Rico, are you sure you want to—”
He deepened the kiss. That was answer enough. This might be the most foolish thing she ever did, and she’d probably—no, definitely—regret it in the morning, but their train had left the station and nothing was going to stop it now.
A soft caress. The gentle slide of wet flesh. A flick of tongue. Warm breath on her cheek.
Mary Beth immersed herself in all the sensations that Rico’s kiss sent racing through her. Mewling softly, she gripped his upper arms and parted her lips.
Rico inhaled sharply and slipped his tongue along the inside edge of her lips, alternately nipping at her bottom lip, then licking away the sting with soft strokes that sizzled.
Good god, where did he learn to kiss like this?
Mary Beth moaned when Rico covered her lips again. Slowly she let her hands travel over his shoulders and chest. Broad, firm, muscled. Her fingertips wandered down his flat stomach and around his waist. Muscles rippled beneath her touch. Most men would kill for a body like his, and women would jump at the chance to lie naked beside him.
This was her chance. Tonight was tonight. Tomorrow be damned.
Mary Beth leaned back against the side of the couch and abandoned any other thoughts except for the pleasure washing over her. Rico kissed her jaw, her cheek, the side of her neck. She tilted her head, giving him better access to the sensitive area beneath her ear.
Holding her waist, he pulled her closer. Her breath caught when he used his knee to part her thighs. There was no mistaking where things were headed, not once she felt his hard cock straining against his slacks.
“You want some of this?” he breathed into her ear as he shifted his cock from side to side. Each movement brushed her clit.
She didn’t get the chance to answer before he shifted his weight again. Mary Beth glanced down and watched him slide his hand under her sweater while his mouth headed straight for the diamond-shaped cutout in the front. She’d worried it exposed too much when she looked in the mirror. Now she was glad she’d worn the sweater. Even before the first graze of his fingertips, her nipples hardened.
He ran his fingers up and down her sides. “Do you want me to stop?”
She shook her head.
Again Mary Beth held her breath until Rico unlatched the little piece of lace and fluff.
His warm palm cradled her breast.
She sighed and shifted to give him more room, although she’d rather he just ripped off her sweater and gave her breasts the attention they begged to receive.
His lips sought hers again instead. He sipped at them, his tongue caressing while his thumb and forefinger continued to tease and taunt her firm nipple.
She loved his kisses, and his playful attention to her breast drove her higher. She wanted more. The damp spot spread between her legs. She couldn’t wait for him. She tried to sit up and when he made no move to allow it, she whispered, “Take off my sweater…please.”
Mary Beth didn’t wait long. In a moment the sweater lay on the floor with the wisp of lace and fluff following close behind. The coolness of the room and the soft grazing of his lips sent shivers all through her.
“You have great tits,” Rico said and pulled her under him. He stayed on his knees while he straddled her. She glanced down and gasped. Maybe it was the position in which he knelt, but she’d never seen a bulge so thick, nor one that ballooned the front of a man’s trousers that much. She licked her lips and gulped. The thought of it set her nerves on fire. She had to touch it, couldn’t wait to taste it.
A small grin lifted the sides of Rico’s mouth. “Not yet.”
“Why?”
“You’re not ready.”
“Are you kidding?” She grabbed his hand and shoved it between her legs. “Do you feel that? I’m sopping.”
Rico leaned back and in one deft move pulled Mary Beth onto his lap. Her crotch landed exactly where she wanted it. He placed his hand on the small of her back and began undulating his cock firmly against her mound. “Do you feel that?”
She rested her palms against the back of the loveseat to brace herself. “Oh yes. Mmm.”
“I didn’t bring any rubbers.” His voice sounded ragged.
“I have some in my room.”
“Feels better without a rubber.” He looked directly into her eyes. “I’m clean, Mary Beth.”
“So am I.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
She’d promised herself long ago she’d never make love without protection unless she was in a committed relationship. Tonight could not have been less committed.
“We can argue, or we can have fun.” She kissed him soundly. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go away.”
Rico stood, adjusted his fly before his cock strangled, and watched Mary Beth hurry from the room. He wondered if she’d come back still dressed or naked. He raised his hand and drank in the smell of her pussy that lingered on his f
ingertips. Even through her jeans, the musky fragrance of a woman ready for sex came through.
He walked to the fireplace and piled two fresh logs on top of the ones smoldering in the grate. A few pieces of kindling would send the flames leaping, and the new pieces burning hard.
Just the way he planned to fuck Mary Beth.
He’d been such a naïve jerk when he’d entered prison. He’d lost that naiveté within hours. He had to be a realist to survive. He learned to fight dirty, took whatever he could, and gave back only what he was forced to return.
He knew Mary Beth wanted him. He’d seen the desire in her eyes this morning, and again tonight. She had a great body, and he didn’t doubt she’d feel great beneath him. That’s where he’d keep her. Let her think he was just some lowlife on a hog. He didn’t have her education, he didn’t live in her mansion, but he’d grown up tough and strong enough to survive in conditions she couldn’t begin to imagine. If it made her feel good to apologize, fine. If she intended to throw him a bone—dinner and a good fuck—all the better. He’d leave satisfied, leave her wanting more. And that, he promised himself, would never happen.
He turned when he heard her footsteps approaching. She’d shucked her jeans and had thrown on an oversize T-shirt that skirted her pussy. His body responded immediately, his cock swelling again. In her hand, he saw the edge of a foil packet, or maybe two. She dropped them in his open palm.
“Three?” he asked, surprised she’d brought that many.
“You can’t be too prepared.” She tugged on his sweater until he moved closer. She rose up on tiptoes and whispered into his ear, “My pussy is dripping.”
The next instant, Rico’s lips swooped down on hers in a ravishing kiss. He held her jaw while his tongue dove into her mouth. She drew it deeper, sucking it the way he’d make sure she soon sucked his cock.
“My god, you’re hot,” he growled.
With his mouth still plundering hers, he nudged her backward until she met the resistance of the loveseat. She slid onto it, hitched the heels of her feet on the edge of the cushion and spread her knees wide. Her pussy glistened with anticipation.