The door to the bathroom popped open. A white towel wrapped around her body, my queen emerged in a cloud of warm steam. She had never appeared more regal in my eyes than she did right then.
“Hey.” Gaze on me but looking a little shy, she crossed directly to me. I threw my arm around her, brought her into my side and pressed my lips to her temple. “Sorry for all the drama tonight.” She tipped her head to her friend to include him in her apology. “For the past two weeks really.”
“Nothing to apologize for.” Her best friend stepped toward her and stroked the back of his hand gently down her cheek, the way I liked to do. I had to suppress a possessive snarl. When it came to her, I was a total caveman. Everyone seemed to be a potential rival for her affection. I wanted all of it, all of her, all of the fucking time.
“Anything I can do?” He stepped back, his gaze searching. “Anything you need before I head to bed.”
“No.” She glanced at me. “I have everything I need right here.”
“Ah.” He smiled. “That you do, MJ. That you certainly do. And my everything is waiting for me in the bedroom.” His smile widening, he winked at her and turned the opposite direction. His softly whispered goodnight drifted over his shoulder.
“Reina.” I shifted to take her firmly by the shoulders. I wanted her facing me. What she had just said to her best friend made me feel like my feet weren’t touching the floor anymore. But what she had decided at the club needed to be noted. “I am so fucking proud of you right now.” My fingers flexed deeper into her damp skin. I wanted to lift her up in the air to float there with me, but I didn’t want to spook her. She had made a huge step tonight. I wanted to be sure she understood how monumental it was. “Many, many times you have made me proud. But tonight ranks up there with the best of them.”
“How can you say that?” Her brow scrunched together in confusion. “I fell flat on my ass. I cost the club tons of money. And I made a fool of myself.”
“I saw it a little differently. I saw you being brave enough to take that stage. I saw that type of bravery from you from the beginning. Making friends with a guy with a known short fuse like me. Encouraging me about my poetry. Pursuing me, recognizing better than I did that the spark of what we had was worth the risk of rejection, worth the aggravation, the challenges, worth risking it all. Even if it recently meant sacrificing yourself to a dangerous criminal.”
“You are worth all those things Juaquin.” She moved closer and brought her hands up to frame my face. A soft, delicate, nonsexual touch, but it still sent a jolt of desire through me along with a whole host of other emotions. I found it difficult to refocus.
I covered her hands with my own, brought them down between our bodies, threaded our fingers together, and pressed them against my chest. I glanced up, peered deep into her pretty eyes and began again. “I’m worthy if you think I am. But it’s going to take me a while to get past the number of times I failed you.”
“You did not fail me. You saved me, protected and defended me. Where you see failure, I see only my own mistakes. I should have told you Campanella was threatening me and you. I should have told a lot of people. Things might have turned out differently if I had.”
“Love blinds us to a lot of things. Fear, even.”
“I do love you, Juaquin. But I’m so messed up. It’s me that’s not worthy of you. You’re the one whose brightness gets diminished when you link it to me. You’re the one who rushed in to rescue me knowing the danger that I had unwittingly stumbled into. I might have a flicker of good in me, I’ll grant you that. I would do anything for the people I love, but that good is buried beneath layers and layers of dysfunction. It’s going to take a lot of excavation work by a really good therapist to get to it and bring it out into the light.”
“We’re more alike than different, Reina. We hurt. We hide. But you didn’t hide tonight. You weren’t weak. You were incredibly strong. True courage isn’t lifting someone into your arms who has fallen. It’s enduring the unimaginable. It’s being brave enough to ask for help when you’re most vulnerable. Sometimes it’s just taking the first step in the right direction. It’s you, Reina. Just you. All that courage is you.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Miriam
“Hi.” I entered the therapist’s office hesitantly, but more confidently than I would have because of Juaquin’s words of affirmation from the previous night.
“Hello, Miriam. It’s nice to meet you. Have a seat.”
“Thank you.” I glanced around. I saw a couple of options. Two comfy looking reclining chairs in a Southwestern pattern near him and a large leather couch on the opposite wall. I chose the latter.
“That’s where I might sit, too, if it were my first visit with a psychiatrist.” He smiled not unkindly, swiveling his office chair away from a small writing desk.
“Why’s that, Dr. Claffey?”
“Reece.”
“What?”
“I actually prefer Reece if you feel comfortable being on a first name basis. I guess some might argue that it’s not professional, but I’m really not much older than you. Besides, Dr. Claffey still feels kind of stuffy to me.”
“Reece,” I allowed, and his warm smile widened.
“I might choose the couch like you did because I don’t yet know you or I might have a cautious personality. Or maybe I might have reasons to distrust people in general. Those kinds of things. Identifying the reasons for why you are here and the best and healthiest ways to move forward after we do is what I aim to do. Pretty simple and not too scary. Right?”
“I guess, not.” I nodded.
“Then let’s get started.” He leaned forward his hands clasped together. “It’s going to sound cliché, but tell me about your childhood.”
* * *
“How’d it go?” Juaquin asked, flicking off the television with the remote as I dropped my purse on the easy chair beside the sofa where he was sprawled. I tried not to notice how he looked in a tight black tank, but his sexy body was as impossible to ignore as was the fact that he had been looking out for my return. I had seen him at the window when I pulled up into the drive. I’d taken a big step when I chose to go to a therapist, but he had also taken one, allowing me the breathing room to go there on my own. Campanella’s thugs had stolen a lot of things from us. Some things we could get back with a lot of hard work that I had started today. Other things like being able to take one’s safety or state of wellbeing for granted were gone forever.
“It was mentally exhausting, but good I think.” I took a seat directly beside him, being totally incautious.
“What did you talk about?” He shifted to turn more fully into me, his bare leg in ragged hemmed grey sweat shorts bumping mine.
“My childhood. Mostly.” I made a face. “That’s why I think I’m so tired. Strolling down memory lane when it runs through the worst part of Southside to a single parent family in public housing isn’t exactly the stuff of fairy tales.”
“I can understand that.”
“I can see how you might.” I sighed. I didn’t really want to rehash. Once was beneficial. Therapeutic even with Dr. Claffey’s, Reece’s, insightful observations. Like how my father’s verbal abuse had affected us all though we each certainly handled it in our own unique fashion. My mom tried harder to provide for us to compensate for his shortcomings. My brother became overprotective because he no doubt felt guilty about not shielding me from my father. My sister escaped into her studies and books. I pretended my father’s rejection and harsh words didn’t hurt, developing a thorny outer layer very early on. Burying our feelings was something Juaquin and I certainly shared.
We hurt. We hide.
Yeah, he had gotten that right.
“Why are you in different exercise gear than you wore this morning?” I asked him. “Are we going running again?”
“Not running. No.” He raked his hair back from his head. “I was thinking of going to the gym, the boxing one. I have a membership there, and I
was wondering if you might want to go with me.” He seemed nervous.
“Sure. Got nothing else to do.” I certainly wasn’t going back to Sexxy and dancing for exercise. Not that it was an option. I’d been fired. Anyway, I was rethinking everything. I had lost my enthusiasm for being in front of an audience with my clothes off especially since Dr. Claffey had questioned what it was that I had liked about it so much in the first place. He’d asked me to consider what I’d been looking for out there on center stage with all the men watching me. What need was I trying to meet?
* * *
I found out in pretty short order why Juaquin had been nervous.
“I don’t need self-defense classes, King.” I put my hand on the center of his rock-hard chest. The tank he wore was soaked. We had only been at the gym for an hour, but he had already jumped rope, done the speed bag, and pounded the heavy one in that amount of time.
“It’s just a suggestion, Reina. A way to let off some steam.” He gave me a look. Yeah, we both had a lot of repressed sexual tension. What signal he was seeking from me to finally end the abstinence between us, I didn’t know. If it were as simple as me taking the first step to get better, we’d have already had sex. Despite the fact that I’d invited him back into my bed, he still hadn’t made a move.
“Knowing ways to mess guys up has its value, though of course it wouldn’t have changed anything that happened while you were held hostage. That wasn’t your fault. It’s totally on them. Worse than pussies to hit a woman in handcuffs when she’s on the ground pleading for them to stop.”
“How did you know all that detail?” I could feel the warmth of shame on my cheeks. I hated that I had begged.
“Campanella sent me a video link.” He lifted his hands, gloves on, and framed my face between them before I could manage to turn it away. Warmth was now the heat of mortification.
“How much did you see?” I whispered.
“Everything.” His amber gaze burned with twin fires of anger. “I would have gone down and stayed down after the first one. But you’re too strong. Too stubborn. Too incredibly proud for your own good.”
I brought both of my hands up to his chest and tried to push him away. I didn’t budge him an inch. He was an irresistible force and just as unmovable.
“Chiquita pero picosa, I like your spice. It turns me on. I don’t want to take that away from you. Only maybe use your heat to learn some techniques to protect yourself when you wave that red flag in front of other bulls, bien?”
“Oh.” I got it now. What he was trying to do. To empower me rather than put me down. Respect rather than sympathy. “I love you.” My eyes burned with fire that differed from his, though they were just as bright. “When I said that it means I get you. That you can let me go now. That I’ll do it.” He wasn’t as versed in the nuances of read-between-the-lines-Miriam as Mike was.
“Not yet. Not till you kiss me.”
I smiled. Then I kissed him. It had been so long since I had felt the firm press of his lips against mine that he had to move his arms to catch me. My knees had gone out from under me from the sheer pleasure that had rocketed through me. Mouth to breasts to core pleasure.
“King.” I breathed his name in awe, my eyes wide and my back bowed to try to arch all those aching parts into him.
“So I’ve been called for more than one reason.” Lips curving into a slow grin, he set me back from him, not awkward at all even with his gloves on. “Go to your class, Reina. If you work hard, and I get a good report from your instructor, I might show you one of those reasons later.”
* * *
King
I’d had a hard-on since that kiss at the gym. Yet the one night I wanted to eat something quick so I could eat something else slow and leisurely, her best friend had decided we all four needed to go out again together. So here I was while he and Alex were at the pickup window. Across the picnic table from Miriam, I watched her lick the ice cream from her red plastic spoon when I would rather we were both somewhere private with her licking something else.
“Don’t you like your ice cream?” she queried as my butterscotch sundae melted beneath the heat of my indifference.
“It’s alright. Not flan for sure. But that’s not really it. I had other plans for tonight.” I gave her a look.
“Oh.” Cheeks flushing, she squirmed in her chair.
“She gets it.”
“Um, no. She has not gotten it. Not in a long time. But she will.” Miriam licked her spoon again, darted her pink tongue out and swirled it.
I groaned. She was doing that on purpose.
“Hey,” Mike said, and took a seat beside her. Alex plunked down beside me. “We were thinking about a movie. Would you like to join us?”
“No!” Miriam and I both replied at the same time.
“Alright then.” Alex grinned knowingly.
Mike smiled. “We had lots of alone time while you two were at the gym. It’s your turn to have the house to yourself.”
“Excellente. Make it a double feature, and I will personally see to it that your flight to LAX to househunt gets upgraded to first class.”
“Change of plans,” Alex said.
“Yeah, we’re not going to LA just yet.” Mike swiveled toward Miriam and shared a bite of whatever chocolate ice cream concoction he had chosen. “I’m not the only one with a best friend in our growing little circle. Alex has Shaina. She’s in Seattle right now with War for Sager and Melinda’s engagement party, so we’re heading there first.”
Chapter Fifty
Miriam
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me your brother was getting married?” I stomped inside the house, the rubber soles of my tennis shoes not ringing enough irritation on the tiles as Juaquin tracked directly behind me. The door slammed closed behind him.
“I can’t believe you’re truly upset about this.” His hands fell on my shoulders. “I already explained in the Hummer on the way back from the ice cream place.” His grip firm but gentle, he turned me around. “We were in Seattle. It was after my dad’s bypass.” His expression reflected his exasperation. “I had a lot of other things on my mind. It’s a nonissue.”
“It’s an issue because you kept something from me,” I pouted. “Something important.” Slipping out of his grasp, I turned and tossed my purse down onto the chair in the living room.
“Ok, I apologize. Problem solved.” He moved close, bringing our bodies together, his front to my back, his warm hands skimming the outline of my tits and his erection prodding my ass. I went from mad to madly turned-on. “Now let me fuck you, por favor.” He brushed my hair aside and stamped his warm lips to the skin below my ear. A shiver of pleasure rolled through me. “We’ve got the entire house to ourselves,” he reminded me. “For several hours, and it’s me and you. Let’s not waste the opportunity.” His hands finding my hips and gripping them tightly, he pressed a soft, coaxing, lingering kiss into the hollow between my neck and shoulder.
“I wasn’t seeking an apology.” I leaned my head to the side to give him better access to continue moving his lips across my skin, my mouth parting to accommodate the kicked-up pace of my breathing. Each subsequent warm raindrop-like kiss he gave me making my heart beat a little faster. “I just want you to agree not to keep things from me. We’re supposed to be a team.”
“Alright, I agree.” He licked my skin. I shivered and then moaned a moment later when he pulled me backward and caressed my hips, his hands gliding down toward where I already ached before moving back up again. “Do you forgive me?” He rocked his groin against my ass, letting me feel how deliciously hard he was while doing that sexy motion with his hands again, plunging them low, then sliding them back and forth just above my pussy.
“Oh yes,” I replied breathily, unable to remember what we had been talking about or why it had even mattered.
“Bueno.” Good. Another burst of his breath preceded by a hot stream of air that he blew into my ear. My bones melted. Drumming need pulsed inside t
he flaming fire he had stoked. His fingers at my hips seeming to flex with the same driving urgency for completion, he pressed his mouth below my ear and suctioned the delicate skin.
“Oh my,” I hissed as he swirled his wet tongue, stirring the heat and making me hotter. “Do that again.”
“Absolutely.” I felt the tip of his tongue draw another circle before he glided it upward and slowly lapped at the lobe of my ear.
“Mmm.” That felt so good, and it definitely wasn’t the only place I was wet.
“The only thing of importance I’m keeping from you is my cock. Bend over,” he demanded abruptly, taking my hands as soon as I complied and moving them to the back of the chair. “Hold on tight. This is going to be a hard, fast, dirty ride.” He yanked the yoga pants I’d worn to work out with him down to my ankles. I was completely naked underneath.
“Oh fuck, I love your sexy ass.”
“Stop talking.” I could be demanding, too. “And give me that cock you keep bragging about.”
“Mamasota picosa.” He ran a finger that he must have wet with his tongue down the cleft in my ass, making me draw in a sharp breath before he grabbed me by the hips, yanked me backward and rammed his hard cock into me.
“Ahhh,” I exhaled in a savoring rush, imagining I could feel every beat of his heart with his cock so deep completely filling me.
“Are you ok?”
“Yes,” I replied immediately, understanding why he was checking. He was worried he had been too rough with me. “Everything’s right. Everything’s wonderful. I love you like this. Love you wild. Love feeling you inside me. Oh King!” I exclaimed as he began to move, pulling all the way out and slamming back deep inside me again. “Yes!” I gripped the edge of the chair tighter and pushed backward into his next thrust.
Scandalous Beat (The Tempest Rock Star series Book 6) Page 26