by Cora Black
“So stop worrying about it and finish cooking my dinner.” He grinned, effectively changing the subject.
I didn’t mind. It was time to talk and think about something better. More positive. I felt so heavy with the weight of my burdens bearing down on me. How refreshing to let go. I realized then that I was starving, too.
“I just have to cook the spaghetti and heat the sauce. Go back and make sure my kid isn’t tearing the place up.” I smiled to myself as he walked away. I could hear the two of them talking in the living room—he asked questions about the show which had just come on. It was nice to hear a man’s voice in the apartment for once. I could almost imagine…
“Stop that,” I whispered, clenching my fists so hard they hurt. I couldn’t let myself go there. It was so tempting, though. What woman in my position wouldn’t want to hear their kid giggling and happy while a man paid attention to her? Who wouldn’t want to feel that they were part of a family unit again, even if it was a bit unusual?
I concentrated on finishing dinner, reminding myself as I did that I didn’t need a man in my life. Not Dom, not anybody. He was good for help, and I appreciated him, but that was as far as it went. I only hoped that Eric went away soon, so life could get back to normal.
***
“I’ve gotta say, these really are the best meatballs in the world.” Dom grinned at Emma, then tried to steal a bite from her plate. She giggled helplessly, pulling the plate out of his reach.
I didn’t say anything, preferring to watch and smile. I didn’t want to break up the moment by speaking. What would his buddies think if they could see him playing with a kid? I remembered the rowdy, harsh-mouthed men at the diner and had the feeling they’d tear him up if they had the slightest clue how quickly Emma had wrapped him around her finger. I wouldn’t have given up his secret for anything.
“They’re my mom’s recipe,” I said, taking another for myself. “She wasn’t the very best cook, but she had her specialties.”
“You mean Grandma?” Emma asked over a mouthful of food.
“Yes, young lady. Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
She swallowed. “I don’t like Grandma’s food.”
“She hasn’t gotten much better over the years,” I admitted.
“Her baked beans are gross,” Emma added.
“That’s not nice,” I chided. Then, I looked at Dom and nodded my head slightly. Her baked beans were, indeed, gross.
Dom snorted. “Hey, at least your mom cooked,” he said, shrugging.
“Did your mom cook?” Emma looked at him with big, wide eyes. So innocent. I glanced at Dom, wondering how he would react.
He looked chagrined. “No, she didn’t. She used to take me to the diner a lot, though.”
That got my attention. “The diner? Like, my diner?”
“Yeah. A long time ago. That was a treat, usually on Friday night. Sometimes for breakfast on Sunday. She would, uh, come home and take me for breakfast.”
Emma seemed enchanted by this idea. “Did your mommy work at night like my mommy sometimes does?”
Dom smirked, looking down at his place. “Something like that.”
Then our eyes met, and I felt an intense sympathy for him. It made sense, didn’t it? His mother was never around for him. She probably had a pretty wild life, and he had adopted that lifestyle for himself. Just like doctors and lawyers tended to run in the family. Who would he have become if he’d been born into a different family? I thought back to the way he commanded his friends to be more respectful of me. He wasn’t like Eric, who would have bullied and derided and made a big show of being the hero. Dom only had to tell them to lay off, and they had. He was a leader, respected. He could have been anybody he wanted to be.
Stop it! I took a sip of iced tea, wishing I could swallow back the thoughts swirling through my head. If I humanized him, it would be that much more difficult to get rid of him when the time came. And the time would come. It had to!
“I think I had enough,” Emma said.
“I should think so, seeing as how you cleaned your plate.” I tickled her, and she giggled again. It was music to my ears. I couldn’t remember the last time she had spent so much time feeling so happy. It was uncanny the way she picked up on the energy around the apartment. Which is why it’s a good thing you got away from Eric, I reminded myself. She would easily have picked up on the way he treated me. Who knew how badly it would have affected her?
I washed her up, then patted her bottom to direct her to the living room while I cleaned up. Dom sat back in his chair, looking satisfied.
“You remind me of Henry the Eighth after a binge,” I said, laughing at the way his hands rested on his stomach.
He smirked. “I don’t get food like that all the time,” he said.
“So you liked it?” I glowed with pride.
“Who wouldn’t?” He let out a loud, echoing belch to punctuate his words.
I shook my head in disgust, while Emma’s laughter filtered in from the living room.
“That’s gross!” she declared, though she still laughed.
“Well. Three-year-olds appreciate you,” I said. “That’s a start.”
“You’ll appreciate me one day, too,” Dom said. Again, the power and promise in his voice undid me a little bit. Like I’d been stitched up, closed off, and he pulled one stitch at a time. I didn’t want to be vulnerable, though. I fought against it.
“Who says I don’t appreciate you?” I asked, turning my back to him. I rinsed the dishes, running the garbage disposal—one of the apartment’s only amenities—wishing I had an excuse to splash myself with cold water. That wouldn’t have been enough. I needed an ice-cold shower.
When I flipped the switch, turning off the roar of clashing gears in the sink, I realized Dom had gotten up and stood behind me. I jumped a little when I turned to find him there. How I didn’t feel him without seeing, I didn’t know. The heat radiating from him was almost searing.
“You’ll appreciate me one day,” he repeated, his mouth only inches from mine. I whimpered softly, the naked need inside me overriding my good sense. My heart nearly stopped in anticipation of what was to come.
Nothing happened except for Dom’s derisive snort. He went back to the living room, leaving me burning and quivering and mad as hell. So that was the game he thought he could play. He had another thing coming.
Chapter Thirteen
Dom
It was almost too easy. Hell, if I have to spend the night breaking my back on a sofa, I might as well have fun. And it was fun to see her practically melt in front of me. She needed time to cool off and think about the way she treated me.
My phone rang before I could sit back down with Emma. Chase. I had almost forgotten to call him. Where was my head?
“Where the hell did you go?” he asked. “I thought you were just gonna go to the diner. That was hours ago.”
“Sorry.” I went into a tiny little room with a set of bunk beds. Emma’s room. “Things got a little outta control here.”
“Where’s ‘here’?”
I rolled my eyes, knowing the shit storm he would rain on me. “I’m at her apartment. The girl’s.”
“What? Why? She okay?”
I gave him the rundown. “She’s living like a prisoner here. But I think she’s right. This guy sounds like a seriously sick fuck. She’s scared to death to let the kid out of her sight, or else he might take her. And if she goes to work, he might follow her there.”
“Shit. How the hell do you get yourself into problems like this?”
“I’m gifted.”
“Yeah, at making your life a mess.” He didn’t sound happy—he wasn’t even jokingly giving me shit. He really meant it.
“What’s wrong? Who pissed in your cereal today?”
“I’ve been sitting here, doing a little research into this guy. This Eric asshole.”
“Yeah?” I looked to the doorway, making sure Emma didn’t wander in. If I closed the doo
r in a little girl’s bedroom, it would just look like I was doing something sick. “What did you find out?”
“He’s like the town’s darling, the little shit. I’m sitting here looking at a picture of him, and I wanna beat the hell out of him. He looks like the typical wife beater.”
“Funny,” I said. “People would say the same thing about you and me and everybody we know.”
“That’s different. I don’t need to hit a woman, and neither do any of us. He needs to hit a woman because he’s afraid of them.” I thought he was pretty much dead-on.
“You should hear some of the stuff she told me about him. I wish I could find him right now and kill him.”
“Yeah, well, hold on. Like I said, he’s the big-shot you told me he was. Committees, councils, boards, you name it. He’s like a whore, just spreading it around.”
“Cute,” I said, smirking. “So you’re saying I can’t touch him?”
“I didn’t say that exactly,” he said.
“So what, then? What exactly?”
“Nobody’s as clean as he pretends he is. I mean, he’s abusive, yeah. But do you think he only acts like that with women?”
“I don’t get it.”
Spike growled. “He’s gotta have a secret out there. Something he did wrong that didn’t have to do with his marriage. He’s a finance guy. You really think he’s not hiding something? Some sort of money thing?”
My eyes went wide. If I couldn’t get him one way, I would get him another way.
“I’m gonna make a few phone calls,” I said. “Meantime, I’m staying here.”
“With her?” I could almost hear the laughter he barely tried to hold back. I could imagine him sitting there at his desk, feet up, still wearing those aviators. Maybe with a cigar hanging out of his mouth.
“Yeah, with her. And her kid. We’re not talking orgy here,” I said. “I’ve gotta be a good boy.”
“And if I know you, you’ll be a good boy right up until the minute the kid goes to bed.” He laughed, then hung up.
I was still shaking my head as I dialed Jax’s number. He was one of the younger guys in the club, better with computers than an old man like Chase. He thought he was savvy just because he knew how to use Google.
“What’s up?” It sounded like the party for Rat still went strong. For a second, I wished I were there. Nothing like a party to welcome a new member. There were always at least a dozen girls, maybe more. The girls who wanted more than anything for one of the guys to make them an old lady. They were always good for some fun at the end of the night. I could be sitting there, drinking, laughing with my friends, getting my dick sucked if I wanted to. Instead, I was standing in a little girl’s bedroom, wondering whether she slept on the top or bottom bunk.
“Sorry, man. You’re in the middle of it. I’ll call you up tomorrow.”
“No, it’s cool. Where are you? I thought you were coming back. Evie and Layla are here, waiting for you.”
I stirred in my pants. Two of my favorite on again, off again hookups in one room and I was at Kara’s. I deserved it for making a decision without thinking it through first.
“Yeah, well, I can’t make it. You’ll have to take care of ’em for me. I know you’re heartbroken.” They wouldn’t mind. Jax looked like a GQ model with his blonde hair and deep blue eyes. He was the pretty boy of the club for sure, although I didn’t do too bad myself. Far from it.
“Yeah, you’re breaking my ass.” He laughed. “So what do you need? Everything cool?”
“I’m gonna need your help in the next few days,” I said. “I need you to do a little digging on somebody for me. I can tell you more about it tomorrow—you know, after you recover.”
“Yeah, well, you might not wanna call ’til the afternoon. Layla’s eyeing me up right now.”
“Oh shit. You’re gonna need a lotta time to recover.” I laughed. “Enjoy, man. Oh, and be careful. She likes to stick a finger up a guy’s ass when she’s sucking him off. I don’t know where she got that idea from. It was a surprise the first time she tried it with me. I almost kneed her in the face, I was so shocked.”
“How do you know I don’t like that?”
I was laughing when I hung up. Jax was a whiz with computers. He knew how to find things when nobody else would know how to start. I wanted to go after Chase’s idea. He was right—Eric was probably just as much of an asshole in business as he was in the rest of his life. Men like him didn’t pick and choose where to be a dick. They were just dicks in general.
Careful, Eric. You think you can get away with ruining people’s lives. Not for long.
***
I wondered what Kara would think if I had a new couch rush delivered to her house the next day.
First of all, my feet hung over the end. They didn’t build it for tall men like me. I thought all couches should be built for men of all sizes to fit on, for when their women made them sleep in the living room. It only made sense. I wondered if I could cash in on that idea if I ever decided to stop riding and go legit.
Then there were the lumps. And the sagging. I considered saying fuck the sofa and trying the floor instead. I was practically on the floor already. It didn’t matter.
I sighed, wishing I could fall asleep instead of having stupid thoughts. And I could have been sleeping it off with two gorgeous, curvy, sexy women. Instead, I suffered endless hours on a piece of shit sofa in a piece of shit apartment that reminded me way more of my childhood home than I liked to admit.
And there was Kara, only a room away. I wondered what she wore to bed. I wondered if she was asleep. I wondered if her bed was any more comfortable than her sofa. Maybe that was why she looked so tired all the time.
I wanted to be in there with her. Not just because anything would have been better than the piece of shit I was trying to sleep on, either. I was tired of playing games with her. When I saw what I wanted, I took it. I wanted her. What was stopping me? Maybe I didn’t want to take advantage of somebody who was already so hurt. It would’ve felt like stealing from her.
I heard a noise and jumped up like somebody set fire to me. Was it Eric? Did he finally show up? I couldn’t wait to make him pay. I almost hoped it was him.
It wasn’t.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t think I would wake up,” Kara whispered. All I could see in the shadows were the outlines of her curvy little body. She wore a tight top and stretch pants. I saw so much, but not nearly enough. I wanted to touch her, feel those curves.
I shook myself a little. “You didn’t wake me. I wasn’t sleeping.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It has to be so uncomfortable there.”
“Yeah, well, it was my idea.”
“I have extra quilts and things, if you’d rather make up a bed on the floor.”
“Eh, maybe I’ll send one of my guys out for an air mattress or something. No big deal.” I followed her into the kitchen. She flipped the light switch, which let me see even more of her. I wished she hadn’t, almost, because actually seeing how much of her shoulders, arms and chest were bare was too much. The tank was a little too short, too, so a strip of her stomach was visible, too. I balled my fists in my pockets and willed myself to stay soft so she wouldn’t know what I was thinking. I looked at Emma’s drawings on the fridge instead of staring at her.
“How many nights do you think it will be?” she asked. I heard rather than saw her fill a glass of water at the sink.
“I don’t know. As many as it takes.” How many nights would I be able to control myself? I hadn’t counted on her being so fucking hot. Most women didn’t look sexy when they went to bed unless they meant to. I didn’t think she was the kind of girl who would mean to. She wanted me far away from her. She wasn’t the type to seduce me.
“You’re pretty stubborn, huh?” I heard the smile in her voice, and turned around. She leaned against the counter, arms folded. I groaned inside, wondering if she would think it was weird if I asked her to uncross her arms. All she
did was push her tits up and out, like she presented them to me. What man in his right mind wouldn’t want to grope them, test their weight, squeeze them? My willpower faded fast.
“Yeah. Stubborn and fucking insane,” I muttered.
“What’s that mean?”
I couldn’t help myself. She was so gorgeous and standing right there. Every instinct screamed at me to take her. She had to be mine.
I went to her without saying a word, taking her waist in my hands. She flinched, just a little. But she didn’t ask me to get my hands off her.