“And I took her away from you.”
“No, Louis Duval took her away. You tried to save her. And then you brought me here where I’m needed. You’ve made a family here, Rafe. You have your brothers and sisters. You have children. But you don’t have someone to sit by your side, hold your hand, and tell you that you’re doing a good job. You don’t have someone who can talk to the women and help ease their transition. You wanted to build a community and you’ve done it. You’ve laid the first bricks, but you need help. I want to be that help. It’s so much better than holding bananas for three hours for a fruit ad.” Her words tumble out in a passion I didn’t realize she felt. And I can’t keep turning her away if she wants to stay. I need her because she is the oxygen in my lungs, the blood that keeps my heart pumping, the spirit that fills my soul. I need her more than I need anything. I burn for her.
“You’re right,” I tell her, cupping my palms around her smooth, rounded shoulders. She’s a vision of ripe curves and shadowed valleys. “But you’ve forgotten one thing. I kill people for a living. That’s how I pay for all of this. My men and I? We’re killers. The hands that you want on you are stained with blood. I might not have pulled the trigger on Rose, but I’ve made that shot a hundred times before.”
She has to know the depravity we deal with to keep the heart of this community running before I fold her into my arms and accept whatever gifts she’s giving me. She turns away from the doorway to press a finger against my lips.
“No. You’ve saved people. Me. Those folks out there. All of us.”
“Oh, Ava,” I mutter and crush my mouth against hers. For some reason she has chosen to look at me and my life through rose-tinted glasses. And no matter how many times I tried to tear them off, she remains steadfast to her own vision of it. So be it.
I have given her every opportunity to leave. I have confessed the worst of my sins to her. She still remains. And I do realize that the gift of her acceptance and her love can only be turned away so many times before it is withdrawn completely.
I kiss her with all the passion I’ve been holding back. My desire is strong enough to stir the water into a hurricane. Her mouth mates with mine with equal ferocity. I grip her to me and stride over to the bed.
The only thing I’ve ever thought I could offer to anyone is safety. I couldn’t provide that to Ava but she still wants me. Still loves me. I don’t understand it, not fully.
Laying her gently on the mattress, I tear at the lace and satin and cotton that she so carefully chose for her seduction, until she is adorned with nothing but scraps.
In the dim light of the room, her eyes glitter as she delves one provocative hand between her legs. I watch with unfettered hunger as her fingers dip inside her honey.
“Want some?” The offering sets me ablaze.
I grab her fingers and suck every pearl of juice from her digits, and then I push her hand aside to go to the source. Her cunt smells like the tropics—full of sunshine and pleasure. I place reverent kisses all over her smooth skin and inside her thighs that are wet with her arousal. Even I know that this can’t be faked.
I lay the flat of my broad tongue against her warm core and drink. This is the fountain of life, I think. If I die tomorrow, it will be all right because tonight I have taken from the goddess herself. As I suck, kiss, and lick every pink-flushed inch of her, I feel invincible, nearly immortal.
Because no mere man should be allowed to touch flesh as exquisite as this and taste nectar as delicious as she produces. She begs for me to make her come, to shove my huge dick inside her until she screams. But I’m going to make her scream now, just from my tongue. I want the juice to flood my face. I want her to shake and quiver into my mouth so that when I’m standing around tomorrow I can still feel the pressure of her thighs as she squeezes my head and tugs at my hair. I want her to come so hard that with every swallow I still taste her.
“Fuck, you taste good,” I moan as I lick her over and over.
“More,” she pleads. “I need more.”
I work two fingers inside her, the passage tight even around my fingers and I marvel that she can stretch to accommodate my fat cock. I worship her pussy, jacking her with my fingers, tonguing her firm, aroused clit until her nails dig into my scalp and I feel her tighten and then explode under my touch. And it’s everything I hoped for, everything I imagined. She screams as she comes, a loud, long wail that the sirens probably use to lure sailors to their doom. Her whole body lifts off the mattress, pressing into my tongue, clutching at my fingers. And I drink it all down. Every last drop until the aftershocks stop and her shakes turn to tiny trembles.
“Oh, baby,” she whimpers when I withdraw. “That was too much.”
“No way. There’s no way you can have too much good in your life. You deserve it all. All these orgasms, every day of your life. I want to give that to you. I want to love you.”
“You do. I can feel it.” She reaches for me, but I move away.
With shaking hands, I grab the discarded handcuffs at the side of the table. “You’re moving too much,” I whisper hoarsely.
“Am I?” Her voice is coquettish and challenging. “What are you going to do about it?”
“This.” In one quick move, I tenderly grasp her wrist and latch the handcuff onto one of them—on the side opposite of her hurt shoulder, and then hook it to the bedpost. “I’ve spent a lot of years going without, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t had fantasies.”
I run my hands across her collarbones and down along the ridges of her rib cage. She feels like the most expensive silk the East has ever produced. “You okay? This isn’t hurting you?” Her shoulder is still tender.
“Oh yeah,” she breathes out. I smooth my hands down her arms, testing to make sure that she’s comfortable. My hands move up to cup her tits, and my thumbs rub her nipples, which have hardened into tight points. “Pinch them,” she says.
I do as she tells me and she shudders. “More?” I ask. She nods and I pinch harder. Her legs squeeze together and then release. No fantasy has ever been this good.
“I want to suck on those tits and fuck you with my cock while you’re handcuffed to the bed. You good with that?”
“Yes, please.” Her sweet cunt clenches again in anticipation.
I palm her ass in one hand and grip myself in the other. She widens her legs and we share a gasp as I position the broad head of my shaft at her wet entrance. She’s always so wet for me, so ready.
“Now?” I ask.
She nods, lip caught between two rows of perfect teeth. I slide into her carefully, pausing at each juncture to make sure she’s comfortable, that this is the right side of pleasure for her.
“Keep going, baby. I have to have you in me now!” Her demands cut through the straining tether of my self-control. I slam the rest of the way in until my balls are slapping her ass. She cries out but by now I recognize that high keening noise as one of utter fucking delight. “God, I feel everything with you. Everything. Hurry now,” she orders and then pushes up, grinding her hips against mine.
I let her fuck me, using me as I latch onto one nipple. Lightly restrained, with my big paws clamped around her hips and my mouth devouring her tit, she owns me completely. She rides me with abandon, grinding her clit against my pubic bone, shafting herself on my cock until her head lolls back because it’s too heavy for her to hold it up. I take over then.
I thrust into her, jacking her until her tits are bouncing, her hair is swinging, and her entire body is one jagged erotic motion. I fuck her until there are stars in my eyes and the whole of my heart detonates like a bomb. She’s not the last hope in the world; she’s the only hope for me.
EPILOGUE
AVA
It’s been a month now, and I’m still coming to terms with Rose’s death. I catch myself wanting to call her to tell her a funny joke, or I see a dress on one of the island ladies and think, oh, that would look great on Rose. Then I remember that my best friend is dead, and there�
�s no getting past the pain. Maybe there’s never a way past the pain.
Rose is in my dreams, though. She visits from time to time, and she’s always smiling and happy. Maybe because that’s how I saw her in life, that’s how I choose to see her in death. It’s all right, though. Someday, those dreams are going to disappear, so I cherish them while I have them.
I’ve been on the island for a few weeks, and every day feels like . . . well, to be cliché, it’s paradise. I wake up to freshly made, delicious food and the scent of the ocean on the air. I wake up in the hard, muscled arms of the man who fucked me six ways from Sunday the night before. He kisses my brow and touches me all over, and we usually have sex before we start the day, because we can’t get enough of each other.
One month isn’t enough time to get tired of Rafe Mendoza. One year, one lifetime—it’ll never be enough. He’s like an addiction to me, and one I find I crave more as the hours pass. His smile is better than any narcotic, and when he holds me under him and pushes so deep inside me, I feel . . . everything.
I’ve come to love life here on the island. It’s weird. When I was in New York City, I was the den mother to a bunch of skinny models who wanted to smoke all day and talk about the food they wouldn’t eat. I didn’t think twice about it; I just stepped into the role and took care of them.
Here on the island, I’m the den mother to dozens of ladies who have been used hard in life. They come to me for all kinds of things, from small complaints about laundry soap to bigger issues like sickness and babies and romantic advice. Because I’m Mendoza’s “lady,” I’m the leader of the women here. I’m den mother all over again, except instead of herding a bunch of skinny chain-smoking models, I’m herding a bunch of young women with tired eyes who have seen too much life. I’m handed babies and asked advice about cooking, laundry, nutrition, and a million things I’ve never considered before, but which are now of grave importance. These women on the island are bringing themselves up from nothing. They are starting over, or trying to, and they need help.
It’s become my new goal to bring joy to their faces. To make the world a safer place for them. To give them hope.
Because that’s what Rafe Mendoza has done for me. He’s given me a new world to live for, and new hope every day. He’s given me a new family that welcomes me with open arms. They don’t care that I had the world’s silliest job in the past. What’s important is that I’m here now, and I want to help.
And Rafe? Rafe is amazing. He’s the best man in the world. I don’t care that he’s a contract killer and that’s how these men make a living. I don’t care that sometimes Rafe has to leave in the middle of the night to mete out justice. That’s how they make the money to save these women and men that are in hiding here. I like to believe that the good that they’re doing far outweighs the bad, and when I’m handed a crying child that was born to a once-crack-addicted mother from a whorehouse? When I look into that baby’s eyes, I see the life we can give it. The hope we can give it. This child isn’t going to grow up on the streets selling itself to pedophiles to make its mother enough money for a drug hit. It’s going to grow up here in an island paradise made safe by men who risk their lives to make their new family one worth coming home to.
Because the Tears of God is all about hope. And to me, Rafe is about hope. He’s my life, and my love. I look into his eyes and see the hungry way he looks at me, and I know I’m looking at him the same way. And I can’t regret a single moment, a single hour, a single minute of our time together.
Rafe’s my life, and I’m his. May we go on forever this way.
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