Truck Stop Tryst

by Daniels, Krissy

  I dropped my arms, his lingered before he stepped back and offered Tucker a chin nod. “Tucker.”

  “Tito. Good to see you man. Beer?” Tucker laid Lucia down in her bassinet. She protested with a squeal before passing out again.

  I grabbed Tito’s hand and pulled him to the couch. He sat, knees spread wide, and threw one arm over the back of the sofa. “How you feeling, Mama?”

  “Honestly?” I sat opposite him, in the overstuffed love seat. “I’ve never been better.”

  His sad eyes raked the length of me, then hit me with a hard stare. His head tilted, only slightly, before he half-smiled and said, “Yeah. I can see that. There’s a different air about you.”

  Tucker joined us, handing Tito an open bottle of pale ale, and me an open bottle of mountain spring water.

  Tito mumbled, “Thanks,” and lifted his thumb to his forehead to scratch above his brow.

  Our eyes bet briefly before he dropped his gaze to the floor. A storm brewed behind the mask he wore.

  “Were you with him when he died?” I blurted, sensing Tito’s need to talk, as well as his hesitancy. He was hard to read. I thought I’d changed over the past few months. My metamorphosis seemed minimal in comparison to the man before me.

  Eyes glassy, and still aimed down, he nodded yes.

  “Did he suffer?”

  Another nod.

  “What happened, Tito? How did everything get so fucked up?”

  “Croatians.”

  “Marcovic,” I mumbled. I’d met the man. Had never considered him a threat.

  Eyes glazed, Tito lifted the bottle to his lips, paused, then threw back a long swig. He set the brew on the knotty pine coffee table, rested elbows to knees, and worked his jaw left and right before continuing. “We’d known Turner was an agent from the get-go. Fucker blew his cover the first week. Your pops wanted to let it play out. Get a feel for what the suits had on him. When Turner cozied up to you, I offered to take him out. Voltolini shut me down. Said there was a bigger picture. Wouldn’t say much else.”

  “Dad knew, and still let me fuck around with him. Why?”

  “I wish like hell I knew why. He shut me out, too. When I returned from escorting you to Whisper Springs, I started digging. Didn’t like the shit your pops was pulling. He should’ve eliminated Turner the night you stabbed him. Instead, he held him in the hole at the Poughkeepsie house.”

  “How does Marcovic come in to play?”

  “That’s the fucked-up thing, Princess. Marcovic had never been a threat. Not until your pops went deep. The last time I spoke to you, Croatians busted through my door. Sent ten fucking men. Busted me up. Demanded to know where Turner was. Didn’t kill me, though, which made no sense. So, I dug deeper. Took some time, but I found the connection.”

  Tito rubbed his hands over his face, took a deep breath, looked at the sleeping beauty sharing the couch with him. “Fuck. I fucking hate this shit.”

  “Tits. Just say it.”

  “Rafael Turner’s real name was Ricardo Auguste. He was born in Haiti, to a Rachelle Auguste. No father listed in any birth or medical records. However, Marcovic owned several properties in Port au Prince. One of which, where Rachelle Auguste was employed. Six months before Ricardo was born, Rachelle was gifted one of Marcovic’s properties. Security tripled around the home. Rachelle started receiving monthly deposits into her bank accounts, Marcovic’s visits to Haiti became more frequent.”

  “Rafael is Marcovic’s son.”

  “Yes.”

  The facts clicked one by one into place. “Rafael targeted me to join our families.”

  “To join. To eventually take over.”

  “But Luciano didn’t know about the blood connection,” Tucker chimed in. “So why keep Turner alive?”

  “That’s what I haven’t figured out. I drove to Poughkeepsie to give Luciano the information myself. The fucking Croatians followed me. That’s why they hadn’t killed me. They were banking on the fact I knew where Turner was being held.” His voice cracked. “I fucking let my guard down. Now your pops is dead. He’s fucking dead because I was careless.”

  I sensed there was more to the story, but I couldn’t stand to watch him breaking. “How’d you get out, Tits?”

  “I don’t know.” His eyes darted around the room. Wild. Unfocused. “One minute, I’m tied up in the hole, watching Rafael tear Mark Norton to shreds. The next, I wake up on the front lawn. Fucking flames everywhere.” Tito bent forward and covered his ears. “People were trapped inside the house, screaming. God, the fucking screams. They won’t stop.” He rocked back and forth, unhinged, and I feared, teetering on the edge of sanity.

  I crouched in front of him, pulled his hands into mine, and told him everything was going to be okay, despite fearing things would never be all right. Not for Tito.

  His eyes lifted to mine, so filled with pain and guilt, my breath hitched. “I tried to run back inside. I made it to the basement door before there was another blast.” He dropped his head to my shoulder. “I’m so fucking sorry, Princess. I couldn’t save him. It was my fault.”

  “Shh.” I rubbed his back, stroked his hair. “No, Tits. Not your fault.”

  “I took them all out. Marcovic. His men. Every last one of his men. I bled them for intel, then killed them all. I’m sorry I didn’t get to Rafael in time. Please forgive me.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.” And I meant that.

  Lucia started to cry.

  Tito lifted his face and looked at me like I’d have the answers to all of life’s mysteries. I ran a hand through his overgrown hair, curled my fingers through the dirty strands, and pulled hard, making sure he’d pay attention. “Tell me one thing. And don’t fucking lie.”

  He blinked.

  “You behind my fake death?”

  “No.”

  “You know anything about Aida Suarez. The real Aida Suarez?”

  “No.”

  I studied his dark, hazel eyes. I couldn’t find a lie through all the pain. “It’s over Tito Moretti. You hear me. None of that bullshit was your fault. None of it was my fault. My father chose the life. Lived it. Died by it. I don’t want to go that way. I don’t want you to go that way either.”

  Lucia’s wails grew louder, despite the fact Tucker was rocking her. My breasts tingled with the familiar burn of feeding time.

  I pressed my forehead to my best friend’s. “We’re free. It’s over. Tell me you’re with me.”

  He nodded. “I’m with you, Princess. I’m with you.”

  IT TOOK SOME DISCIPLINE, but Aida and I had impressively cut back on the profanities. Around the baby anyway. In the bedroom, not so much.

  Bambi let loose while she straddled my waist and worked my cock, bouncing her full ass off my hips and thighs. Curvy body. Throaty moans. Bad-girl vocabulary, and those damn eyes, dark and heavy with lust. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Not much more a man could say.

  I refused to look at her full, heavy breasts, bouncing and swaying in my face, fearing I’d lose my fucking mind and blow my load before Aida got what she deserved. Insatiable beast, my girl.

  She slowed, teasing her short, and acrylic-free, nails along the path of my scars, sending painful waves of pleasure through me. My hips bucked beneath her at the sensation. A salacious grin parted her full, moist lips. Damn, I wanted to hold her against me. Crush those luscious tits against my chest. Meld every inch of her soft curves to my hard planes.

  I couldn’t hold her. Couldn’t touch her. My hands were bound to the headboard with one of my ties, secured with an impressive knot, the kind they didn’t teach in Boy Scouts.

  “Aida, baby. I know I said I could handle this, but fuck. You’re killing me. I need to touch you.”

  “Shh.” She leaned forward, brushed my lips with her own, and stretched her arm under her pillow. When she pulled out her blades, I choked on a whimper.

  When she sat up and arched her back, ensuring I was buried as deep inside her as possible, I hissed in agony
. Torturing me further, the pussycat dragged the tips of her blades across her rosy pink, taut nipples. My balls tightened. My dick twitched inside her.

  “Not yet, Cowboy,” Aida said with a slow head shake. She lifted off me and rested her ass lower on my thighs. My raging cock fell heavy against my abdomen. Mother of Mercy, she was doing a number.

  Aida teased her blades down her throat, across her breasts, and lower to the insides of her thighs. Cold steel hit my skin, and swear to my Maker, I saw stars. When she drew the tips in light strokes along the path of each of my jagged scars, my jaw clenched, muscles coiled, and my body ignited in a series of shivers and spasms.

  My vision blurred. Lungs failed. I couldn’t form coherent words, or rational thought. But I could feel. Where our flesh touched. Where her blades taunted me. My skin, my nerves—hypersensitive.

  “You’re a work of art, Tucker. So beautiful. But something’s missing.” Aida moaned, set one of her blades across my chest, and lifted her hips to guide my cock back inside her soft heat.

  “What’s that, Bambi?” I half-groaned, half-growled, overcome by the sensation of her liquid, silky insides gripping me tightly.

  Fully seated, she leaned forward and brought our lips a hairsbreadth apart, a small smile playing on her face. “Trust me?” she asked, doe-eyed and sinfully delicious.

  “Fuck yeah,” I managed to moan through labored breaths.

  “Close your eyes,” she ordered. “Don’t open them for anything. Promise.”

  I nodded.

  “I want you to feel. To smell. To anticipate.”

  Fuck, I was in trouble.

  “Close them.”

  I did.

  Knives in hand, Aida laid her fists on my chest and began a slow, calculated rock, back and forth, sliding her heat up and down the length of my erection.

  “Feel me, Tucker. How wet I am. Mmm. I love the way you swell inside me, getting harder,” she taunted, still working me with slow strokes.

  Her hands lifted from my chest. The rocking continued. My muscles ached with the need to touch her.

  “You’re going to feel the sting of my blade, Cowboy. Don’t open your eyes. Trust me,” she said, almost purring. “Focus on how my body feels, focus on the sounds of our fucking, the smell of our sex. Focus on me. How deep I take you.”

  The tip of her knife, cold and sharp, poked my left side, enough to shock, but not to hurt. Aida, still riding me, manipulating, controlling, dragged the blade down my ribcage, pushing deeper, threatening to pierce my skin, to draw blood between each rise and fall of my ribs.

  At the same time, her other blade drew slow circles around my right nipple. She’d circle, then flick my pebbled flesh with the tip of her knife. Circle. Flick. Circle. Flick. Each time I heard the drag of steel across my skin, I anticipated the sting. The burn. I was on fire.

  Sensory overload. Aida on top of me, her blades manipulating, teasing. Circle. Flick. Drag. Poke. Heavy breaths. The slap, slap, slap of her body pumping mine. Throaty moans. Sweat. Sex. That musky tang of naked bodies primed for mating.

  The blade at my ribs poked harder and stayed put, painful yet strangely erotic. Aida rose and fell, panted, groaned. Harder. Harder. Lifting slow, slamming back down, twisting her hips, grinding into me before rising again.

  “I’m going to come, baby. I’m going to come so hard all over your beautiful cock. Do you feel me? Do you feel what you do to me?” The blade sunk deeper into my ribs. “Tucker.” She stopped the rise and fall, now rocking, rocking, rocking, our bodies fused together, her hips thrusting forward and back. I bucked my hips, seeking more, out of control, out of my mind, so close, so fucking close to ripping the bed apart to get to the tiny little spitfire, to get my arms, my body, everything around her small little body, so full of power, so strong, and sensual, and soft, and dark, and all fucking mine.

  “I’m coming, Tuck. Oh shit, oh fuck. Oh, God.” Her pussy tightened around my dick in violent convulsions, and I was helpless to do anything but follow her over the edge. Aida leaned forward, her breasts smashed between our chests. I felt the binds at my hands fall loose, and I slammed my arms around her back, pulling her closer to me while I jerked, and cursed, and pumped, and spilled my seed deep inside the perfect, dark, wet, and wild woman on top of me. Aida was limp, her full weight against me while I continued to thrust, to fill her with everything I had, until I collapsed beneath her, my mind a fog, my body boneless.

  Aida lay on top of me until she caught her breath. I’d never catch my breath around my girl. When she tried to move, I held her steady. “No. Not yet.” I needed more time to absorb her heat, her weight, her energy.

  I closed my eyes and fought back a sucker punch of emotion. This woman. God, this woman. My lady. My Bambi. So small. So full of life, of energy, of love and lust and danger, and so mine. So fucking mine.

  “I love you, Aida.”

  She laughed. Then pressed a kiss between my pecs, before planting her palms on my shoulders and staring me down.

  The smile that graced her flushed face was hands-down, the most playful, proud, and devastating expression I’d ever witnessed. Gutted me. Rooted me. Humbled me. Terrified me.

  “I hope so.” She dropped a kiss on my mouth, and sat up. “Because I’ve branded you.”

  “You branded me the first time I heard you laugh,” Tucker said, voice raspy and deep.

  “I know,” I replied, the memory of our first kiss warming my insides. “But that’s not what I meant.”

  Holding his gaze, I tapped the dots of blood that’d formed over the wound I’d inflicted.

  He winced. I laughed, then held up my soiled finger for him to see.

  “What the fuck?” Tucker pushed into the sitting position, eyes wide. He inspected the newly carved letter A and repeated, “What the fuck?”

  “Now you’re mine,” I said, throwing his possessive words back at him.

  “What?” He inspected the small carving. “When did you? How the hell did I not feel that?”

  “The fine art of distraction. First, I used my mad bedroom skills to turn your brain to mush, then I used one knife to command your attention, while I marked you with the other.”

  “Fuck.”

  “That a good fuck? Or an I’m pissed fuck?” I asked, bending to kiss him, my lips hovering over his in offering.

  “You branded me.” He slapped my ass hard. Then he gripped the back of my head and pulled me close for a punishing kiss. When he came up for air, eyes burning, cheeks blazing, he slapped my ass again. “I should be pissed, but…” He shook his head. “Damn, that’s fucking hot. Branded. Like livestock.”

  “Well, Cowboy. You are my prize bull. You’re certainly hung like one.”

  That comment earned me a chuckle. God, I loved his laugh.

  Lucia started to cry. My breasts did their tingly, burning thing. I loved the sensation. Tucker untangled his fingers from my hair. I dropped one more kiss on his wet mouth before pushing off him and retreating to the bathroom to clean myself. When I came out, Tucker hadn’t moved. He lay, sated, and stretched across the tangled sheets with a lazy grin on his face. “I left a bandage and ointment on the counter in the bathroom.”

  Tucker huffed, pushed to his feet, and pulled me close to whisper, “Fucking branded. You evil, little, doe-eyed nympho.”

  “I’ve wanted to do that since the first time you called me Bambi.” Whether we’d realized it or not, he’d claimed me that day. Our first tryst. He’d marked me with our first kiss. I wanted to mark him, too, in a way that no one else could, in a way that was permanent.

  Tucker’s cell phone rang as I made my way to Lucia’s room. I heard him answer and shut himself in the bathroom. My little angel was red-faced and screaming by the time I lifted her out of her crib. We settled into the rocking chair, and, as she latched on, a peace washed over me.

  I turned my head to gaze out the window. Daunting gray clouds rolled across the vast sky. The sun made a valiant effort to break through the dismal pa
tches. I couldn’t wait to see the property in springtime. Lola barked somewhere below the window. I couldn’t see her, but I had a sneaking suspicion she was warning off a squirrel.

  Heavy footsteps padded into the room. Tucker kissed my forehead, then Lucia’s before settling into the rocker next to mine. He held my gaze for a long spell, as if gauging my mood, before saying, “I need to leave tomorrow. Have some business to take care of. Be gone two days, tops.”

  “Hunting?” I asked. It was an innocent question. Tucker had worked from home since I’d moved in, and he hadn’t gone on a “run” in ages.

  “What?” he asked, swallowing hard, then shaking his head. “No. Flying out for this one. Georgia. Securing a new account.”

  Yeah, right. “Why aren’t you catching a ride with one of your drivers?”

  He reached over to stroke Lucia’s fuzzy locks. “Don’t want to be away from my ladies any longer than necessary.”

  His eyes liquefied while he studied our daughter.

  My heart swelled. “Do you miss it?”

  “Miss what, baby?” he said, directing his attention to my breast, then my face.

  “Hunting.”

  “Truth?” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.

  I nodded.

  “Not sure if I miss it so much as I feel like I’m letting the girls down.” He offered a sad smile.

  “I wouldn’t mind if you continued to help them.”

  “No.” He leaned forward, elbows to knees. Sucked in a breath. Shook his head. “Not leaving you and Lucia alone so I can go play hero.”

  “It’s not playing, Cowboy. You’re saving lives.”

  “Look at you, Bambi. You care. You care about those girls as much as I do. God, I love you.”

  He was spot on. I cared. It sickened me to think about how many girls, hell, women of any age, were forced into the sex trade. Slaves. And had I not had Lucia to worry about, I would’ve insisted Tucker take me with him on his hunts. “Will you think about it?”

  He scrubbed a hand over his face, then nodded at me. “Sure. I’ll consider it.” He stood, turned his rocker to face me, then sat again. “I asked Mom to come and stay with you while I’m away. Hope you don’t mind.”