by Ava Lore
“I feel stupid,” he said suddenly. “All those years wasted.”
The thick tension eased somewhat and I laid my head against his shoulder. “They weren’t wasted. It’s just how things happen. Wires get crossed and people get upset over things they think happened and the next thing you know you’re a bunch of hillbillies shooting at each other because someone forgot to return a casserole pan at someone else’s wedding in 1959 or whatever. There’s nothing any of you did wrong. Except Yago and Arturo, I suppose...”
As though the sound of his name had magic powers, Arturo suddenly blinked and turned his gaze to us.
“Tiana,” he said. His voice was hoarse, and now I saw the dark bruises around his throat where Yago had choked him during their fight and my desperate escape. I couldn’t help but feel deep gratitude toward him for aiding me, even though he thought I was someone else. I wanted to reach for his hand to give him some comfort, but next to me Manny stiffened.
“What did he just say?” he asked faintly.
Oh. Right. Somehow, in all the commotion, I had forgotten to tell Manny that his uncle had been in love with his mother.
“Um...” I said, but then Arturo’s gaze shifted from me to Manny and his eyes filled with tears.
“Miguel, Miguel,” he said, and one skeletal hand wrapped in papery skin reached for him.
For a second everything hung in the balance. The future. The past. The lies and the greed and everything that had reached inside this family and twisted it up beyond recognition. If Manny couldn’t move past those things, if he couldn’t reach back and try to find the truth, then he might never get the chance again...
Then Manny let go of me, sank down on the bedside, and took his uncle’s hand.
“Aquí estoy, Turo,” he said, and then the old man began to cry and his words spilled out.
I backed away, not wanting to intrude even though I didn’t understand Spanish very well, but Manny cast me an imploring look, so I merely moved around the bed to the other side and sank down on the mattress as Arturo Reyes spilled the beans to the brother he had lost, who had come back in the form of his nephew.
Manny listened for a long time, occasionally asking questions, then nodding at the answers, until at last Arturo collapsed back onto his pillows, clearly spent.
“Lo lamento,” he whispered as his eyes turned to me. The hand closest to me twitched, as though to rise from the bed, but he didn’t have the strength for it. I reached out and took his hand in mine.
The faintest of smiles passed across his face. “Tiana,” he said, and closed his eyes.
“He hated me,” Manny said suddenly. My heart seized and I glanced at him, expecting to see anger, but there was only an expression of sadness and compassion.
“Why?” I asked. My voice was low, and the hand in mine was skeletal and cold. Absently I rubbed it between my palms.
“Would you believe he was in love with my mother?” Manny said. “Tiana. He thinks you’re her, by the way.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know. When Yago tried to...to rape me, it was Arturo who stopped him because he thought I was her.”
Manny sucked air between his teeth. “God.” He turned away from me and sat on the side of the bed, his head buried in his hands. “He thought my father stole her away from him, and always resented me because I was my father’s child and not his, and then when they both died he blamed me for losing her, or...or something, I don’t know. And he took it all out on me. He says Yago was the one who suggested putting me away in a mental institution. They were hoping to get me put in jail, but...”
I saw him shake his head. “It’s so fucked up. He doesn’t recognize me, but he remembers what he did to me...Luis said he started deteriorating six years ago. And I didn’t know. He thinks I’m my dad, and he was confessing, telling me he was sorry, that he shouldn’t have done that, that he should have cherished me as a son, but his jealousy got in the way. He says he’s going to Hell, that he wants to go because he deserves it, but he wanted me...I mean, my father...he wanted my father to tell me that he’s...that he’s sorry...”
His voice broke.
In a flash I was on my feet and around the bed. Kneeling down next to Manny, I saw his beautiful face twisted in agony as tears spilled out from behind his hands, cascading down his face.
Oh, I thought, reaching up for him. This is what you hide behind your smile. And though I realized that I had wanted to know what it was all along, the only thing in the whole world I wanted now was for him to smile again.
My hands touched his hair, and then his arms shot out, scooping me up into his lap where he buried his face in my throat and cried, letting the teen boy who had been visited with such tragedy finally, finally release his sadness.
For a long time I stroked my fingers through his hair, holding him close to my chest, humming aimless, soft tunes as I tried to soothe him. His body, wrapped around me, shook with his grief, but his arms were strong, and his heart beat like a drum against mine.
Sweet Manny Reyes, I thought. So strong to keep smiling, no matter what...
After a while his sobs turned only to tears, and then to soft, shaking breaths. My top was soaked through, but I couldn’t have cared less. I had finally seen the Manny beneath the smile, and now I could dedicate the rest of our time together bringing that smile back again and again.
Gently I stroked his temple with my thumb until at last he pulled away. His lashes sparkled with tears, but, damn the man, he even cried prettily. Leaning in, I kissed his tears, and he held me fast, his hands going to my scalp as he suddenly knotted his fingers in my hair and pulled me in for a heart-stopping kiss, a hungry kiss of dancing tongues and devouring lips.
My body immediately caught fire, then was doused almost as quickly as I remembered where we were. With great difficulty I pulled away, and he reluctantly let me go, staring up at me with those golden eyes, the evidence of his sorrow already fading. His mouth was pressed into a thin, harsh line.
Well, I thought, that won’t do. I brushed my hand through his hair. “You can’t kiss me like that here,” I said, my voice low and throaty from the lingering desire he’d stoked inside me, “unless you want this family reunion to get weird.”
He blinked at me, confused, and I jerked my head toward the third person in the room.
Turning, he looked at his uncle, and his mouth quirked. “Oh, right,” he said. “This isn’t social night at the nursing home.”
Despite myself I snickered as he helped me stand and then followed me. For a long moment we gazed into each other’s eyes. Out in the living room, things were sounding like a party was getting off the ground—and why not? The family was reunited. There should be a party.
“So what are you going to do?” I asked him after a moment.
His golden eyes twinkled. “Well, first I’m going to line up a home nurse for my uncle.”
I couldn’t help the widening of my eyes, but he just grinned at me. “I don’t have to be an asshole just because he was. In fact, I think he’s a major reason why I actively try not to be an asshole.”
I nodded. “Okay. Fair enough.”
“And then I’m going to get drunk with my cousins and catch up on the last eight years. Or is it seven? I can’t remember.”
“Alejandro makes a great home brew,” I told him.
“Does he now?” he said. “Well that just means that soon we’ll all forget how many years it’s been. Which reminds me: what are you doing here?”
Oh right. I still hadn’t told him about my ridiculous plan. My lips twisted and I couldn’t quite look him in the eye. “Maybe I should tell you that after you’ve had something to drink,” I said.
“That bad, huh?”
I couldn’t help but grin back at him. “Maybe after dropping some ecstasy or something else, too.”
His eyebrows shot straight up into his hair. “Jesus, Rosa. Now I’m not sure I want to know.”
I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the door. “W
ell,” I said, “then let’s get drunk enough that we won’t care.”
“Now that,” he said, “is what I call a good plan.”
Chapter Twenty
It was two in the morning. Or three. Or something. It didn’t really matter, and I didn’t really care, because Manny and I were stumbling along, holding each other up after too many drinks, and the ocean breeze was warm and the moon was bright and the stars twinkled and all that romantic shit as we traversed the beach near Manny’s house.
I was willing to just enjoy the night for what it was—a beautiful gift—but Manny was having some problems.
“Okay,” he said for the tenth time. “Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Okay.”
“Yes?” I said.
“Okay. What I’m trying to say is...you thought it would be a good idea to buy some illegal drugs...”
“Yes.”
“Walk up to my uncle’s house in a little fuck-me get-up...”
“Yes.”
“Chat up my cousins and then get video of them snorting chemicals up their noses...”
“Yes.”
“And then use it to blackmail them into...what?”
I huffed with annoyance. “Into convincing your uncle to sign the papers back over to you. Shit. How many times do I have to explain it?”
Manny laughed. “Until it makes sense, Rosalita. Until it makes sense.”
I gave him a shove, which sent him veering off course and stumbling in the sand, but in the physics of drunken debauchery I also sent myself staggering. Luckily we both managed to right ourselves, and I squealed indignantly.
“It made sense at the time,” I told him.
“Maybe,” he said. “It might have worked. But it’s still an awfully freewheeling plan for you. Don’t you normally have this shit more figured out? I mean...blackmail! Drugs! Seduction!”
I shot him a glare.
“Or something like it,” he amended. “I know you wouldn’t have done anything, but you have to admit...”
“Admit what?” I demanded.
He gestured drunkenly at me as he veered closer. “That outfit is hot. I can see your ass. And those thighs. And those hips...”
“And the lack of chest,” I said.
“And the gorgeous, saucy breasts that would fit perfectly under a lei.”
I snorted, but was secretly pleased. “I guess,” I said.
“But it still doesn’t sound very well-considered.” He was coming closer, his strong thighs and rock-hard calves pushing him through the silvery sand toward me, and in the moonlight his golden eyes were unearthly. The wicked smile curved over his lips made me think of all those vampire and werewolf movies that had been out lately, and I shivered. Manny as a werewolf? Why did I find that so hot?
Because you want him to throw you down and have his wicked way with you, dumb-dumb.
Then he was beside me, taking advantage of my distraction over his beautiful body and arresting gaze, and I had to admit I was trapped. He reached for me and I leaned into him, my arms going around his solid, but trim waist.
God, he felt good...
Then my foot caught his and we were falling, tumbling to the ground, both of us squealing like little girls until we hit the ground. Manny had managed to maneuver himself beneath me, cushioning my fall, and I pushed myself, somewhat unsteadily, back onto my hands and knees, relieving him of my weight.
“Sorry—” I started to say, but at that moment his hands, as fast as striking cobras, latched onto my hips and pulled me back down.
The breath left my lungs as his warm, hard body slammed against mine, and I only barely avoided clonking heads with him before he lifted his face to mine and his searing hot lips brushed against my mouth.
I gasped. “Manny,” I murmured. The world suddenly seemed to tip sideways, to become surreal and strange, as though the moonlight had revealed a whole new space unseen in sunlight. The gray sand, the silver-tinged waves, the moon hanging plump and full in the pressing darkness of the sky...all of it seemed suddenly like a dream somehow.
I closed my eyes as Manny’s lips began to work mine, and a molten hot stream of desire plunged through my chest and into my belly. Is this a dream? I wondered. It seemed like a dream. It all seemed like a dream. Too beautiful to be real. Too good to be true.
Manny’s tongue flicked over the seam of my lips.
With a moan, I opened for him, completely and totally, my thighs spreading, my arms stealing around his neck, my hips grinding against his pelvis and finding, to my infinite delight, his rock-hard erection pushing back.
My mouth parted and suddenly our tongues were warring, each of us stoking the other into a frenzy. My grinding hips were met, thrust for thrust, by his constrained cock rocking up into the empty, aching space between my legs. My clit rubbed against the seams of our jeans and I whimpered into his mouth.
The sound inflamed him. Suddenly he was on top and I was lying beneath him, the rushing of the waves filling my head, the soft sand cradling me as though it had been made to hold me, the weight of his muscled body bearing me down into the earth. His lips abandoned mine then, trailing up the line of my jaw as my fingers found his hair and wove themselves into it, my nails scratching against his scalp. Sharp teeth nipped my earlobe, and then his tongue was traversing the shell of my ear as his hot breath filled my head.
“Rosalita,” he moaned, and I couldn’t contain my need. Desperately I surged upwards into him, grinding my cunt into his cock, begging for him to come inside me. My fingers raked down his back, through his t-shirt, and the strangled sound he made as he bucked against me was all I’d ever wanted to hear.
“Fuck, Rose, you drive me crazy,” he hissed. “Absolutely fucking nuts.” His arms stole under me and held me fast to him as he bent his legs until he was truly kneeling between my thighs, my legs wrapped high around his waist, begging for him to take me. My hands reached for him, grasping at whatever I could hold, whatever came to me. He had been there when I needed him most, and I had tried to do the same, and now all I could do was tell him with my body how much I wanted him to be as free and happy as he pretended to be.
He leaned over me, the moonlight gilding his black hair silver, his face in shadow. His breath was hot and close, the breath of an animal about to pounce, and I again thought of him as some sort of man-creature, and then I realized that he was one. He was a shape-shifter, a trickster who hid everything behind a smiling mask.
But here on the beach, in the dark night of paradise, I could see beneath the mask. It was breaking, cracking. His light demeanor of playing during sex was suddenly missing, and I felt him, powerful and raw and needing, just beyond my reach.
“Manny,” I said, my voice barely above the waves, “I need you in me.”
His hands, still on my waist, dug into my ass as his hips flexed, and his clear desire swept against me, sending my head spinning. “I want to be in you, too,” he said. The outlines of his cheeks morphed, and I realized he was smiling. “Do you want to go all in? Stick our legs in the water? Here to Eternity or whatever? Old school?”
My legs, still hiked around his hips, flexed, pulling him closer. “Won’t that be cold?” I asked.
But he shook his head. “I’m going to fuck you until the whole ocean boils over.”
“Wow,” was all I could say.
“Real apocalyptic end-times sex,” he said, his voice rougher. “I’ll be inside you when the world ends.”
Oh, Jesus, I thought. How was this possible? I shouldn’t have ever landed a man like this. Not me. Not stodgy old Rose. Even my name was an old lady name.
But I’m not so stodgy now, am I?
I shifted, wiggling closer to him, my calves cramping as my toes curled in anticipation of what Manny would do to me, and he scraped the rough calluses of his drummer’s fingers up under my tank top, catching my skin and setting fire blooming across my body. The flames licked me up and down, around my waist, over my breasts, curling up around my cunt, and Manny wasted no time in removin
g my top. It tore in his hands in his haste to get it off me, and I whimpered, thrilled and almost wary of the intensity of his passion. His hands descended upon my breasts, still encased in my bra, and my body arched like a bow, my pussy aching and empty. It was going so fast—maybe getting in the water would cool us down?
“Manny, please!” I cried. “Let’s go to the water...”
I could have sworn his eyes glinted at my words, but in a flash he had me in his arms and he was rising—so strong, so damn strong, and fierce beneath his smile—cradling me against his chest as he took us to the water’s edge and set me down.
My feet touched the sand. Cool. The water washed over me. Lukewarm. I could take it. Reaching up, I wrapped my arms around Manny and pulled him back down to me for a kiss, but what happened was that he opened his mouth, hungry, devouring as his fingers found the clasp of my bra and had it unhooked in record time. His fingernails scraped over my arms as he dragged the offending piece of material from my body and flung it away.
I’ll never find it in the dark, I thought dimly, but then one hand roughly cupped my breasts, squeezing, working them, and a slick, wet ache slid through me, curling in my belly, making my knees quiver and falter.
But Manny didn’t let me fall. He would never let me fall, I now realized. We were...we were something. I was something. Something to him. To the man who never seemed to care about anything.
He laid me down gently in the sand, and the water tickled my toes. I shivered at the contact, but Manny just smiled down at me and proceeded to disrobe. Off came his tight t-shirt, off came his cargo khakis, off came his boxers, until he stood before me, completely naked, his body a banquet for a starving woman. I loved the way the moonlight snaked over the hard lines of his body, how his muscles shivered and moved as he knelt down in front of me, how his cock, so huge and ready, pulsed with the rapid beat of his heart.
“Manny,” I whispered. I reached for him, and he came into my arms, his hands snaking down to my waistband. I still wore my cutoffs, and I remembered suddenly that Yago had taken them off, and I stiffened.