Angel didn’t elaborate on his suspicions. As always, assured he knew everything about me, he replied. “Oh yeah, don’t look so surprised. I’ve told you that I know you. I know something is up with you. I can see it in your eyes from time to time; you’re worried about something. At first, I decided to let you handle whatever the fuck you need to before I got involved. I was trying to show I could be diplomatic. I was willing to let you show me you could handle your shit. But you haven’t said shit about it, so it’s time for me to step in. So fucking sue me. I moved you to safety for my own selfish reasons and for whatever the hell is going on with you.”
Now, what am I supposed to say to that?
Well, I won’t let him win, though. My stubborn streak was starting to rear its ugly head.
“I don’t need you to save me,” I told him. “I don’t need you to take it upon yourself to make decisions for me without talking to me first. This is my life, not yours.”
I started to say more, but I could see whatever I wanted to say to him was going to fall on deaf ears.
He doesn’t understand what he did wrong. He doesn’t think he did anything wrong. What am I doing?
“I need to go,” I said finally, knowing if I didn’t leave then, I would never be back.
“You’re running again then…”
“No, I’m not running. You don’t get it. You can’t make me do something that I don’t want to do.”
“So you don’t want to move in with me? Is that it? You don’t want to be with me? Start a life with me? Let me make sure that I understand you correctly because I don’t want to fuck this up. Is that what you’re saying to me?”
“That’s not fair. You’re turning this around and making this my fault, as if I don’t have a right to be pissed at you.”
“No, I’m just tired of the bullshit,” I answered. “I told you to be sure about this, about us, and you said you were. Make no mistake, Cara Mia, I want you. I want you more than I want to fucking breathe, but I’ll be damned if you think I’m going to play this game with you. Either you’re with me or you’re not. However, you have to make the decision and make it quick. The little patience I allotted for you is gone.”
I didn’t reply. I actually didn’t have a rebuttal for any of the things he just said. I did want to be with him. God knows I did. I just couldn’t stop the feeling of someone suffocating me. I didn’t like it when my father and brother did it and I didn’t like it when Angel did it. It didn’t feel right.
I mean, was I wrong for feeling this way?
The problem I was also having had to do with everything he’d said. God, he was right. I knew deep down in the pits of my soul that he was right. No one wanted to be controlled, but the way he commanded my body, how he could control me with just a touch or a smile or a look, told me that in some way, he was right. I did want to be controlled, but only by him.
God, I was so messed up.
Do you want to know how truly messed up I was?
Well, for one, I refused to give in. I refused to tell him that he was right. I refused to believe that he knew me that well. It wasn’t not possible. We hung out for a few months I know, and before I left for California, we talked a lot, but that was it. We never spent enough time together for him to know me this well, but he did.
And the other reason why I was messed up?
As we stood there, looking hard at each other, I couldn’t help but be turned on by his sheer power, and the raw truth about my feelings for him. I felt the throbbing between my legs intensify as we continued our staring contest. I didn’t want to tighten my thighs together, but I had no choice… I needed a release. I needed to feel this controlling, self-righteous son of a bitch between my thighs, however I refused to tell him.
Yet, he already knew. With the quickness, Angel moved to me, walking me against the pillar behind me. He placed one hand above my head and leaned closer to me.
“I should rip your clothes off and fuck you so deep and so hard that you won’t be able to sit for a week. I can see it in your eyes, you want it, need it.” He moved to the side of my neck, teasing me, but he never touched me. I turned my face from him. “I should give you what your body desires right now just to prove how much I know you. But I’m not.” He moved to the other side of my neck and whispered close to my ear. “No, the next time I’m in my pussy, I will make it my mission to fuck you in half just for giving me grief today. Before I’m done with you, you’ll be begging me to control you. You will submit. Until then, you need time to understand what’s happening between us. You have two additional days in that hotel, just in case you wanted to verify I grabbed everything. However, please understand me when I say, that’s all you have to decide. You come find me when you’re ready to stop playing fucking games. Hopefully, it won’t be too late.”
Before I could tell him to kiss my ass, he was gone. He just left the apartment, heading down to the basement of the loft. Just before he made his exit, I heard him say, “And go see your father. It’s time.”
What in the hell just happened?
I stood there trying to get my lungs to start contracting and then I took a few deep breaths. I wanted so badly to go find him and tell him to go fuck himself, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t seem to move from that spot. My legs felt like rubber, and I was afraid that if I moved right then, I was going to pass out. However, I was more ashamed that my thighs were soaked. Damn, I was completely turned on. I wanted… No, I needed a release that would probably cause me to scream at the top of my lungs.
He wanted to fuck me until I cried out my submission.
What in the hell?
Ugh, that man!
I walked back into my now so-called room, grabbed a few outfits and left the apartment.
As I drove to my hotel, I couldn’t help but think about everything he’d said, mainly the part about him knowing the real reason why I left Cali.
He couldn’t possibly know. There was just no way. If he had known, there would have been quite of few bodies dropped in California. I also knew that he and I would be no more. I just knew it. This was why I hadn’t told him yet. I didn’t know how he would respond. What I was afraid of most was his rejection.
Instead of heading to the hotel, I changed direction. I really needed some therapy. Five minutes later, I pulled into Lou’s. I’d been going to the gym whenever Angel let me up for air. I had even become cool with Max, the girl that I met the first day I was there. She told me during a few of our workouts that she sung at some bar on South Street. Angel and I had gone on a day that she was performing just to check her out and find a different place to hang out besides his dive bar.
Max was unbelievable. First, she was a knockout with a body to boot. You couldn’t tell she had kicked out two sets of twins. I mean, she was flawless, her voice was flawless, and her performance was flawless. The night that Angel and I saw her performance, she’d sung Jazmine Sullivan’s “Bust Your Windows.” She was wearing a leather catsuit that left nothing to the imagination. She sat in a chair on stage, and as her backup singers sung and danced around the chair they were sitting in, she kept her eyes on her husband the whole time that she was singing.
I noticed that Mason was a cool customer. There was his hot ass woman was on stage, looking phenomenal, singing about busting his car windows because she’s caught him cheating. He was leaning in his chair with a smirk on his face watching her. His eyes never left hers, just as her eyes never left his. I swear, I watched this energy between them electrify that whole bar. Max was drawing us in with her sexy penetrating voice and her heat for her husband was simply contagious.
Max and her girls seductively chair danced, and I saw Angel drool a little, as most of the men around me were doing. I wasn’t jealous at all. Hell, I was wondering if she would teach me some moves so maybe I could tease Angel from time to time.
The best part of the night was after Max’s performance, when we saw her husband jump up and head backstage.
Angel leaned into me
and said, “Your friend is in for it.”
I frowned. “Why? He knows all that was for show.”
Angel smiled and shook his head. “No, Cara Mia, he’s going back there to fuck the shit out of his wife, reminding her right now exactly who she belongs to.”
I leaned closer to him and grazed my finger along his shoulder, down his arm and smiled devilishly, “Is that what you would have done if I was on that stage?”
I felt Angel grow stiff under my touch. His gray eyes going through their signature change to darkness with each passing second. I actually backed up slightly from him, no longer wanting to play around with him.
Knowing that I was moving away from him because of the look in his eyes, he moved closer to me, saying, “Raquel, baby, if I ever see you dance that way in public without me close to you, the shit storm that would rain down would be compared to a fucking nuclear bomb.”
“Angel,” I responded, voice soft and, honestly, a little shaky. “It’s just dancing. There’s nothing-”
But he cut me off with that murderous look of his. “Baby, dancing like that will give someone the idea that they can touch you. That will never happen. No one will put a hand on you… ever. No one will touch you, and if I see anyone put their hands on you or even thinks about it… let’s just say they would think twice about just touching themselves after I’m done with them.”
I shook my head and brought my hands to the sides of his face. “Leo, you can’t be serious. I mean, I understand someone trying to harm me, but…”
Angel laced his fingers with mine and brought one of my hands to his lips. He closed his eyes and kissed the back of my hand softly before he said, “The thought of anyone’s hands on you other than mine makes me…” He shook his head and opened his eyes. The blaze coming from them made me shiver. God, there’s no telling what this man was capable of doing.
I made a note to myself never to put him in the situation where he would have to make true on his words. Since I thought I was the only woman that had a scary man in her life, I asked Max a couple of days later what happened to her that night. What she told me definitely proved that I wasn’t the only one.
“Mace goes all caveman on me every night I perform. He literally picks me up and carries me out of the back door. Or if he can’t wait until we get home, he’ll rip my clothes off backstage.”
I asked her, “Doesn’t that bother you? He should know that you don’t want anyone but him.”
She nodded. “Yeah, and he does know that, but for him, the thought of anyone touching me or looking at me in a way that he doesn’t approve of makes him crazy. He told me it was either allow him to fuck me silly or he would beat up everyone in the bar, women included.”
I was stunned, but all Max did was smile, shiver, and blush. I think the both of us needed our heads examined. The men we were attracted to and the things that made us weak made us no better than our significant others.
As I walked toward the bags, I saw Max taping up a fighter’s hand with her husband not too far from her, watching.
I chuckled and shook my head. When our eyes met, I nodded toward Mason and she just shook her head. As I started warming up, my thoughts went back to Angel. Maybe I was crazy for arguing with him. I admit that I did know things about him that I was sure no one else knew. The few times I interjected when I knew he was about to lose his mind should have told me all that I needed to know.
I knew how to make him feel good. I knew when to let him be, and I will admit I knew when he needed me. I think that’s what scared me the most.
He had been calling me “Cara Mia” more frequently. It meant “my darling” or “my beloved.” But there were times when he would say other things in Italian that when I questioned him about it, he’d ignore me.
He always kept me close to him, touching and kissing me. It made me feel cherished and the center of his attention all the time. Therefore, I should have been overjoyed, ecstatic even, that we were together. I was getting what I’d finally wanted, right?
So why do I still feel like shit?
I talked with Max for a little while, then worked out by myself for about an hour. Afterward, I headed for my hotel and took a shower. I collapsed on the bed and everything finally hit me. All of it hit me at one time; what happened in San Francisco, why I had to leave, what went down with my father and brother, and what had been going on with Angel.
The tears came first. Slowly moving down the side of my face as I laid there, staring up at the ceiling. Shit had gotten out of control in my life and Angel’s words kept swimming in my head.
“You need to be controlled.”
“You lash out at your enemy to hurt and destroy.”
“You are a loose cannon.”
I chuckled at the last one. Yeah, I’d definitely heard that before. I smiled at the memory, then the tears fell more.
I am a mess.
I allowed myself to be as vulnerable as I wanted and for as long as I needed in order to get myself together. Once I did, I reached for my cell and… I called my father.
It was good to hear his voice, but I only told him that I would be stopping by the office to see him in a few hours. We needed to talk in person. I took a shower and got dressed quickly, throwing on a pair of jeans and fitted “I love Reap” t-shirt and flip-flops, and started getting my emotions back under control.
When I walked past my old colleagues and co-workers, the whispering started. I didn’t care, though. I did give quite a show when I left. I nodded to Bridgette, my old assistant, and headed for my father’s office.
When I got to my father’s office door, I paused and took a deep breath. I knew I needed to make this right with both him and my brother, and I knew it was going to be hard. What I didn’t expect was for me to turn into a blubbering idiot the moment that I opened the door and saw my father’s face.
Let me first tell you that my father is a very handsome man. He is about six-foot-three and two-hundred and something solid pounds. He has short gray hair that tamely laid on his head. He has dark rich brown eyes that twinkled when he smiled and hardened when he was pissed. My father is a catch, but I didn’t understand why he never remarried after my mom passed. But when I’d asked one day, he told me that my mom was the love of his life and that no other woman would ever love him the way that she did. I didn’t understand that back then. Now, though, I understood completely. For some reason, when the heart wants what it wants, there’s no substitution.
Anyway, the moment my eyes fell on my dad, I ran quickly into his arms. We stayed like that, hugging and mumbling our apologies to each other for a while before we sat on his couch and talked about everything that happened between me and my brother, why I left three years ago, and just how it was for me growing up. I’d always understood how much pain my father went through losing his wife during childbirth and having this little girl, that he said reminded him so much of his late wife, to now take care of. I was a handful. But one thing that made me feel like a complete ass was when he told me, “You have so much of your mother in you. No one could ever keep her, tie her down, or control her. She was free spirited and lived her life the way she wanted to.” He then took my hand in his and said, “You grow more and more like her every day.”
I’ve always felt my father was disappointed because I was like my mom. The stories he would tell me made me feel she and I were as different as night and day. He just proved that wasn’t the case. Maybe if I would have asked more about her, instead of trying to run away from her ghost and their memories of her, I would have learned how much alike we really were.
He and I talked and laughed for at least an hour before things got touchy. The change in my father’s demeanor, as well as his tone, was palpable when he asked, “What’s going on with you and that Leonetti boy?”
I sighed and leaned back against the couch, but my father didn’t wait for my response. “Raquel, I understand that being with a bad boy can be exciting and interesting, but, sweetheart, that man...” My
father leaned closer to me as he continued, “…he’s worse than any boogie man story I can tell you. He’s capable of anything. And I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I don’t wish that type of man on my worst enemy.”
He sighed and leaned back against the couch. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt and, with him, it’s going to happen. I know it doesn’t seem like it and that you can handle anything, but you don’t know men like him. They aren’t capable of loving anything, especially if it comes between their interests.”
I stood and moved toward the two windows looking out on the north side of the city.
My father suddenly appeared next to me and he put his arm around my shoulders. “Sweet pea, they just aren’t like us. They live by a different set of rules, rules that can get them killed or in jail for the rest of their lives.”
“Dad…” I started, but my father turned me to face him.
“Look, as much as I would hate this, maybe you should go back to San Francisco and try to work things out with Ira. Victor did say Ira called here for you a few times.”
What?
I moved back from my father, trying my best not to freak out. “Ira called here for me?”
Surprised by my sudden change in behavior, my father nodded with curiosity in his eyes. “Yes. You’ll have to ask Victor when he called and if he left you a message, but Victor did say that he called.”
I could feel my heart rate increasing and panic was starting to take over my body. “How many times did he call? When did he call? Was it today? Yesterday?”
This can’t be happening.
“Is everything okay, Raquel?” My father moved toward me, but I backed away.
Okay, girl. Calm down. Maybe he just wanted to see if you made it home safely. Yeah, but if that was the case, he would have called your cell. You’ve been home for almost three months now. He should’ve made that call weeks ago if he gave a shit. No, it’s something else. Damn it.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and freaked. I grabbed the fingers of the hand that touched me, twisted and spun quickly, pushing my attacker in the back and away from me.
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