This, with Trey, was nothing like what she’d known before. If they stopped, it wouldn’t be fine. It was entirely unmarked territory, off the edge of her world.
And she was falling, falling, falling.
~oOo~
Eventually, they got up and took a shower together. They washed each other—another new experience—and Lara brought Trey to a shuddering climax with her soapy hands. Then they got dressed—Trey in his trousers and dress shirt, but without his vest, tie, and jacket, and Lara in fresh clothes she had here. Not her most favorite things, those were at her father’s, but her things, and comfortable enough.
Not having worked her way back to live here yet, she had no food in the house except for some canned goods and dry cereal, but no milk for that. But she had a tea kettle, and her teas, and sugar, so she put the kettle on.
He turned her so she leaned back against the counter, and he stood before her, framing her with his arms and legs. “We need to get something to eat. It looks like there’s a restaurant or something on the corner. Do they have food you’ll eat?”
She hadn’t expected him to dig into that wound, and she pushed him away and went to the end of the counter, putting space between them.
“Lara?”
The sentence that would deflect the topic and shut it down was queued up and ready to go, but instead, Lara decided to confront it. He knew what had happened. More than she did, maybe. Maybe he even knew the faces of the men who’d hurt her. There was no point in deflecting it. More importantly, there was no strength, no power, in turning from it. No sense in it, not anymore.
“That’s where I got grabbed. Outside the coffee shop.”
“Oh shit, babe. I’m sorry.”
“I’d just come out of there. It’s called The Ground Floor. Every Saturday, I went there and had tea and a bagel and sat at the window to read a book. I’d just finished and was going home, still reading my book—“
He came to her and grabbed her hands. “Lara, you don’t have to tell me this.”
“I do. Right now, when we’re at the beginning, I need to say it. It took me weeks and weeks to let the memories come back, and I’m still trying to get my life back. But I think this is the next step. You, and being here with you. You probably know everything that happened, but I need to say it. To you. I need you to hear me say it. Okay?”
“Okay.” He brushed her wet hair behind her ears. “Can we sit down?”
“The kettle’s going to go off.”
Turning back to the range, he turned off the burner. “Let’s sit.”
They sat at her dining table, and Lara told him the story of the day she was taken.
“I was reading, and I should have been paying attention. I always pay attention, but I was home. My home, where I was safe. So I was reading as I walked. The van pulled up and the door slammed open, and then hands were on me, around my waist and over my mouth, and they dragged me into the van and shoved a cloth into my mouth and a dark cloth bag over my head. They put zip ties around my wrists and ankles. Then they left me on the floor of the van for a while. It was moving, I could feel the road rolling under the wheels, and when we turned, or went up a hill, or down, and I tried to make a map in my head, but I don’t drive, and I hardly leave College Hill, and I just … I didn’t know. And I was scared, too scared to think. I tried to focus on figuring out who would take me and why, and prepare for what they meant to do, but it was too much. I could only be afraid.” She turned and looked at the window. Not out, because the shade was still drawn, but at it, checking for symmetry and balance in the way the shade sat in the window, the way the curtains framed it. “I wet myself. Lying on the van floor. I could smell that, and they could, too. One of them kicked me then.”
“Lara, babe.” Trey’s hand clenched around hers, but she didn’t look at him, not yet.
“They stopped at some point, and wherever they were, it was quiet all around. They’d barely talked, or not loudly enough for me to hear, but I knew it was more than one man, because the van had been moving when I was kicked. When the van stopped, that was when they went for me. They cut and tore my clothes off and put me on my knees. I remember that sometimes more than anything else—how badly my knees hurt. The metal floor had ridges that dug in. Then they shoved me down so my face was on the floor, too, and they … took turns. I don’t know how long, or how many turns. My brain didn’t want to keep track of that. I don’t know how many men. I think it was more than two.
“Three,” Trey gritted darkly. “It was three. Jesus Christ, Lara.”
It had pained him to say it, but she was glad to have a new piece of the puzzle, and glad he’d known she’d want him to tell her. “When they were done, one of them pressed the fire on my chest. The pain made my skin tense up all over, and he laughed and pulled hard on my nipples. Then they left me alone, and I lay there while the van moved. At some point, they cut the zip ties and shoved me out of the van. They were gone by the time I had the hood and gag off, and I was standing naked in a downcity alley. It was dark and cold. They’d never asked me anything, not even my name. They hardly talked at all.”
She turned back to Trey. He sat there, white and rigid, his eyes wild with anger.
“They took me from my home, and I haven’t been able to get it back yet. But I’m getting close. It was important to know who did it, and why, and that they paid for what they did. And it helps not to be alone. Even with my dad, I felt alone. Dr. Rosen says it’s because he was part of what I thought would keep me safe, and I wasn’t safe after all.”
“We did this. The Pagano Brothers. It happened because of us. You should want nothing to do with me, or Nick, or any of us. Our chaos landed in your lap and tore you apart.”
That was a logical assumption, but mistaken. “No. That’s not chaos. That makes sense.”
“Lara, forget about it. Nothing about what happened to you makes sense!”
“A mother poisoning her own child, her only child, strapping her down so her leg muscles atrophy, because she likes the doctors and nurses and neighbors feeling sorry for her and her trials taking care of a sick child—that doesn’t make sense. What the Bondaruks did to me, it was horrible, and it broke me. But I can understand it. I was a message. They got it wrong, they didn’t know that I was what they really wanted, but that’s because they were supposed to think I was unimportant. So I can find a place to put what happened. Losing the safety of my world, that’s been harder, because I don’t have anywhere else to be. I had the cabin, for a few days. But I have to find a way to feel safe again here, and I’ve been trying.”
Trey was looking at her like she was entirely insane, and that, far more than all the things she’d just said, unsettled her. She picked up his hand and kissed it. “Here’s another thing that makes more sense in the underworld than the world where ‘normal’ people live. If the police had been the ones to investigate, if what happened to me had been in the hands of the justice system, I truly would not be safe. I didn’t know who’d taken me, or where they’d taken me. I hadn’t seen anything. They used condoms. The mark on my chest would have led them to the Bondaruks, maybe, but you and I both know that nothing would have come of it. Even if they’d made arrests, there would have been no conviction. It’s because of Nick that they paid for what they did. Danger is everywhere. In a world where a mother can hurt her own child, nowhere is really safe. But only in the underworld is justice guaranteed. Nick and you aren’t the danger. You’re why I’m safe. In my head and in the world.”
His tension had eased, and the rocky rigidity of his expression had softened. In its place was something like wonder. His mouth was even open a bit. Lara had the impression that she’d touched something bigger than her own story, something deep inside him.
And then he said, “My mom kidnapped me when I was four. My bio-mom. My parents were split up, she’d run off and left my dad and me when I was even littler. My dad was with Misby—my stepmom—by then, but they weren’t married yet. My bio-mom took me at
gunpoint and shot my Uncle Joey. She almost killed him, and she did fuck him up bad. He’s been disabled since. I don’t remember much about it, except whenever I think about her, I get this clench in my chest”—he rubbed his chest as if he felt it right then—“it’s like this sour kind of fear. It doesn’t last long, but it sucks. It happened almost twenty-two years ago, and I was too little to understand or remember, but that feeling never gets less.”
Lara found a centering calm in the chance to offer Trey some comfort. “Mothers are supposed to take care of their children. They’re supposed to protect them. When they don’t, that’s chaos. There’s no sense to be made of it.”
Trey smiled and leaned over the corner of the table to kiss her.
“You call your stepmother ‘Misby’?” she asked, when he rested his forehead on hers.
“She’s my mom now. She adopted me. But yeah. Her name is Sabina, and my dad calls her Bina. I guess when I first met her, he told me to call her Ms. Bina, and then, I guess when I decided she was mine, I gave her a new name. Ms. Bina, Misby. I’ve never called her anything else.”
“She adopted you. So your bio-mom is—“
“Dead. Pagano Brothers justice for taking me and hurting Joey.”
Lara nodded. That made perfect sense. “That’s the world that balances.”
“You’re right. For years, I’ve been trying to explain to my dad and my whole family, even myself, why I want to be in Nick’s world. I think just now I really understand why I know it’s where I belong. My life makes sense on this side of the pews.”
She didn’t understand the reference. “Please? What’s that?”
The smile that twitched up one cheek seemed shy. “It’s a family thing. We all go to the same church, but Nick and his people sit on one side of the aisle, and my dad and uncles and everybody sit on the other. It’s like some weird tradition since my grandfather and his brothers. I sit with Nick now.”
It was too soon for her to open the puzzle of his family dynamics. She would have to; he was obviously close with a huge family. She had challenges of her own that she’d have to navigate before she could find a place to fit in his world, if what was between them became life-changing.
Of course, it already was. For her, at least, nothing would be the same.
But she still had healing to do. Before she could become part of his life, she had to find her way back to her own.
“Trey, will you help me with something?”
“Anything.”
“Will you walk down to the corner with me? Have breakfast at the coffee shop with me? Help me have that back?”
He stood and pulled her to her feet. With his hands cradling her face, he stared into her eyes—and Lara saw age in their green depths. A wisdom beyond his years. “I’d be honored.”
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it.”
“We’ll do what you can. I’ll give you the help you need.”
Yes, her life was changed already.
~ 15 ~
Trey stood in Lara’s claw-foot tub, resting his arms on the high windowsill, and let the hot water of the shower wash over his back. He was fucking exhausted. The hour-or-so commute between Providence and Quiet Cove wasn’t wholly unreasonable—hell, his father, with an architecture firm downcity, had made it just about daily for most of Trey’s life—but over the course of the two weeks of this new relationship, he’d combined several long nights of Paganos work with his regular gig at the shipping company, plus all his free time and almost every night with Lara.
She still couldn’t be alone overnight in her apartment. Trey was fairly sure he was making that problem worse, not better, by spending every night with her. But he wanted to sleep with her, and fuck her, and just be with her when he could. He wished she’d come to the Cove. Her schedule was much freer than his, and most of his work was there.
No dice, though. Not yet. She’d worked for weeks to become comfortable again in her tiny home world, those few blocks in College Hill, and she wasn’t ready to expand her borders. And he hadn’t figured out how to help her be ready.
A big stumbling block was his family. Her family had always been tiny—just her and her sicko mother, and then just her and her father. And her time with her mother had been endless torment wrapped in false love. She’d told him that she ‘didn’t like’ women, and he’d ascertained that she meant she didn’t trust them and, even more troubling, they frightened her. He didn’t have the first idea how to bring her into his big, bustling, woman-filled—and, frankly, woman-led—family.
He hadn’t yet even told anyone in his family, besides Nick, that he was in a relationship, mainly because he hadn’t had time to see them in the past two weeks.
So he made the commute, even when he didn’t get to her until midnight or later. When he was that late, he picked her up at her father’s, and they went to her place together. And then in the morning, he got up early enough to make it back to his house to change for the day.
Lately, dawn patrol was nothing but a memory. It was the middle of summer, and he hadn’t gotten wet in three weeks. Already, only two weeks into this relationship, Trey knew it wasn’t sustainable, not without some change. Lara hated change.
Behind him, the shower curtain slid back, the metal balls on the rings jingling. He smiled over his shoulder as Lara stepped in behind him, an unexpected treat. Usually, she slept later than he and he woke her before he left in the morning. She averaged more than twice as many hours of sleep a day as he did.
Her hands slid up his back and arced across his shoulders, following the trail of his one and only tattoo. She did that often, letting her fingers trace the thick black lettering. Sempre Famiglia. Family forever.
He needed to bring her into his family. Close that eternal circle, make himself whole.
“Morning,” he murmured and turned to slide his arms around her. He moved her so she got the spray, and she tipped her head back, soaking her hair. With her eyes closed and water rushing over her face, over her small body, her neck and back arched as they so often were when she came, her bones showing like delicate carvings on her skin, the morning sun filtering through the frosted window and making her glow, she looked like a mythical creature, like a water fairy. What were they called? Naiads, or something like that. Yeah, Naiads.
Steel-hard, he leaned over her, into the spray, and kissed her. Her arms looped around his neck, and her body fitted itself to his, arching up against his erection, letting it dig into her belly. When her arms tightened and she began to lift herself up, to climb him, Trey groaned and locked his hands over her hips, keeping her feet on the floor of the tub. They didn’t fuck in the shower, because he needed a condom, and their water-based escapades ended up being a whole lot of foreplay and then a whole lot of fucking. He did not have that kind of time.
“I can’t, babe. I gotta be in the Cove by eight-thirty.” Nick was meeting with Vio Marconi today and wanted Trey there. Marconi was a friend and ally, so the meet was friendly, but Trey knew he was expected to be at the top of his game. Since their talk outside Dumas’s house in April, every job Nick gave him felt like an audition—and probably was one.
“I know,” Lara answered and dropped her arms so that her hands slid over his chest. Even after two weeks, she still studied him like a museum specimen when she touched him. He dug it—it was exhilarating to be seen so completely. For his every freckle, scar, and follicle of hair to be known.
She saw him inside just as clearly, he thought. When her eyes locked with his, he could feel her dive into him, and he didn’t have anything he wanted to keep from her sight. That felt good, too. To be understood.
One hand left its study and picked up the bar of soap from the little ceramic bowl on the sill. She lathered her hands and set the soap back.
As her hands moved over his chest, his arms, his belly, making his nerves flex and flare beneath the skin she washed, he gathered her hair, darkened and made heavy by the water, and wrapped it in a dense coil around his hand
. He watched as she cleaned him, soaping her hands again and swirling them over his hips, around to his ass, back over his sides to his belly, scrubbing lightly through the narrow column of hair beneath his belly button. She liked to play with that little bit of hair.
And then she moved lower. Her soapy hands wrapped around his cock and slid along his full length, and his body spasmed at the touch that had in the past few minutes become crucial to his existence. She left her examination of her hands’ work and smiled up at him. “You like that?”
She knew perfectly well how he felt about it. She liked getting him off, and any lack of experience she might have had, any gap in her skill, had been overcome in these past two weeks. She was a genius, after all. She learned fast.
He smiled back and tugged on her hair. “You feel amazing.”
Clenching her hands, slick and hot, snugly around him, she slid back and forth, a perfect approximation of their sexual tempo, slow at first, increasing as his need elevated. Each time her hands pushed to his belly, her fingers stroked his balls. Trey pulled her hair and clamped his other hand onto her shoulder, and he watched her hands drag the orgasm out of him.
“Fuck, babe. Now, shit. It’s now.”
She jerked her hands over him, squeezing and pulling so hard it hurt, but not in any way he wanted to stop. Yanking her to him, slamming her body to his, he came, his incoherent shout echoing against the tile walls.
He sagged sideways against the wall, dizzy and panting. Lara got out of the shower without a word.
“Babe?”
The door closed, and he was alone in the bathroom.
~oOo~
After Trey was dressed, he found Lara in the kitchen. She wore one of his t-shirts, which swallowed her whole, to her knees, and she’d braided her wet hair. She was fucking adorable. “What was all that about in the shower? You jerked me off and just left.”
Simple Faith (The Pagano Brothers Book 1) Page 19