by Kira Graham
Because, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, I like him, and that like may have fewer i’s and k’s, and more o’s and v’s, in the middle. Shit!
“Chill out? You want me to chill out? Have you two been watching the news?” he demands, waving at the muted television that I keep on at all times, just in case I hear something more from people than what a raging murderer I am.
I mean, it could happen.
My smile drops when Zeus turns up the volume, and my mouth curls into a sneer when I hear a reporter talking to members of Mom’s church. It doesn’t shock me all that much when I hear most of them say that I have always been considered an unhinged, homicidal maniac. To be honest, I’ve cultivated the dislike that most people have for me, because I don’t like or want their esteem.
What has my blood boiling, though, is the smiling face of my archenemy, one Mindy Marcy.
“Oh, no. No. I don’t agree at all. Rosetta Sweet is a good woman who wouldn’t hurt a fly,” she says into the camera lens, her eyes solemn and sympathetic. “I don’t believe it, Rose, not one word of it, and I want everyone watching this to listen. Last year, when the Senior Center was losing their funding and in danger of being shut down, Rosetta singlehandedly organized an event that raised enough funds not only to save the center, but also to install much-needed upgrades for the wheelchair-bound elderly. She helped the church settle a property dispute concerning the shelter run by St. Vincent’s, and she also assisted The Ladies of Charity in implementing a program to sponsor orphans. This woman may not always be sunshine and roses, but she isn’t a killer,” Mindy insists, ignoring the reporter who keeps trying to cut her off.
“Well, that’s all interesting, but—”
“What’s more, we down at Mindy’s Marvels are setting up a Free Rosetta movement, and we will do everything we can to ensure that Rosetta Sweet isn’t prosecuted for a crime she didn’t commit.”
Well, fuck! How the hell am I supposed to hate her now? I ask myself, a snarl curling my lip before I drop my head and sigh.
“What are you complaining about? She said nice things,” I mutter, still shocked by the kindness that I just witnessed from a woman that I have loathed all my life.
I don’t know why I loathe her, but I just…you know when you were in high school, and there was this one tagalong that just couldn’t be shaken, no matter what you did? That was Mindy. She’d pop up out of nowhere and just insinuate herself into our little clique, jabbering constantly. She’d wear the same things that we did, and memorize little catchphrases that we said, and one time, she even dyed her hair red, just so that she could be one of the Five Reds.
It used to drive me nuts, and I guess that somewhere in there, I developed what could be called an unfair dislike of a perfectly nice person. God, I think I just vomited in my mouth.
“Only she said nice things! Everyone else compared you to a heartless shark who’d kill your own mother to prove a point,” Zeus snarls, muting the TV and tossing the remote onto the desk. “They’re making you look like a lunatic.”
To be fair, I am, a little. I’ve threatened, cussed out, and intimidated enough of those church people to have earned myself a special spot in hell. It’s worth it, though, because I cannot stand sanctimonious assholes. That shelter that I helped fund? They don’t take in unwed mothers or pregnant teens, because they don’t want to promote a bad example.
That’s where our paths diverge, and that’s why I don’t like some of those holier-than-thou idiots. So, no, they wouldn’t like me much, but that’s their damn problem.
“Calm down, Zeus. Their opinions don’t matter,” I say tiredly, rubbing at my temples, where a headache is getting worse the more he glares at me.
“Calm down? The fucking mayor just released a press statement and told half the damn country that he’s backing the DA. Goddammit, Rosetta. This isn’t looking good,” he murmurs, coming closer to take my hands in his as he kneels in front of me. “We should go somewhere, maybe lie low until we find something.”
“Like that cabin you borrowed a month ago and tried to lure me to?” I quip, smiling knowingly. “I’m on to your game now, Hart. I’ve got your number, buddy,” I tell him, regretting my refusal to go.
We could have been like this weeks ago, whatever this is, I think, still confused by what I feel. Though I know that I really like Zeus, I think, looking at him with clear eyes brought on by…God, so many things. His help. His constant support. His kindness and loyalty to the point of criminality. Nothing says that a man cares about you more than possible jail time and his willingness to take the fall if things go bad.
It suggests feelings that I’m not ready to look too closely at. But this I know. Zeus Hart is exactly the kind of guy that my once romantic heart used to fantasize about. Too bad I was so blind and willful, and too bad that I could be facing life in prison, the bitch of some heavy lesbian.
Time, I think. It’s the one thing that I took for granted, and the one thing that I seem to be running out of.
“That was a mad idea born of desperation. Before I realized just how crazy it would be to kidnap you. Ahem, you know, after what you and Cleo had been through,” he admits sheepishly, his cheeks flushing when I laugh.
“You can kidnap me anytime you want, Z. Just not to evade the law. I’m drawing the line there and telling you right off the bat that I will not run away. I’m no coward, and even if I have to go to prison, I won’t run and give this guy what he wants. He’s trying to pick us off one by one, and, by God, that’s not how we Sweetharts roll.”
“Hallelujah!” Chilli pipes in, his smile falling into a pout when we both glare at him.
“We were having a moment!”
“Have your moment after you’ve untied me and let me run. I am not sitting here watching you and this big-dicked freak fuck after you forget that I’m here.”
“Oh, my God. I can’t believe that I was into you,” I mutter, giggling when Zeus growls and bites at my neck, where he’s burrowed his head.
“That’s fucking right, baby. A moment of insanity,” he grunts before he sighs and rises to stalk over to Chilli, the letter opener held high in his hand.
“Well! Now that we’re all friends again, I think that we should talk about something I stumbled upon before you pulled me into guard duty,” he chirps as Zeus frees him.
“Hey! This was supposed to be a private interrogation. What part of ‘I need answers before Zeus’ didn’t you understand?” I gripe, glaring when they both shrug and give me that “man look” that I hate so much.
“The part where you’re in charge of any investigation. No offense, Rosie, but you’re likely to just make things messier, what with that red-faced temper of yours. Now,” he says, clapping his hands together once he’s untied, “do you know of a man named Lucky Parker?”
Chapter Ten
Zeus
“Oh, my God. That’s the spot!” Rosetta groans, her hips thrusting back to meet mine, slamming our bodies together as her tightening sheath unleashes the very last of my control.
We’ve been ravaging each other for hours, only stopping for the odd shower or food-and-water break, and then falling back together again, determined to make the most of what I am hoping aren’t our last hours together.
“You don’t come until I tell you,” I hiss into her ear, slowing my strokes just as she starts to tighten around me, her wet, tight sex fluttering wildly before it goes liquid around me, and she yells her anger into the mattress.
“Z!”
“Nuh-uh, little spitfire. I told you, we’re taking this one slow,” I purr, my balls going tight when she clamps down around me and widens her legs, pressing her round ass flush against my belly.
Seeing her this way, so open and in need of me, is a sight that I never take for granted, especially now that her trial is about to start. It’s the fastest progressing conviction that I have ever heard of, and instead of taking months to gather evidence and make a case, the DA has fast-tracked this whole th
ing, using the media and the mayor’s outspoken views to give it momentum.
People are picketing outside our apartment, protesting outside our offices, and boycotting the business after Adonis announced her instatement as the legal head of Hart Inc.
Rosetta protested that announcement, but Chilli, Adonis, and I wouldn’t budge. We wanted our support and belief in her to be as public as possible, and we left nothing unspoken. The company will survive a little lost business, but what it won’t survive is losing her. The woman is brilliant at what she does, and an asset that I hope to keep—not only as a partner, but also as my wife one day.
That’s why I’m using sex to damn near exhaust her. Before I bring out the big guns: a ring that I’ve had nestled in my pocket since last week, when we went to Ma’s and Pop’s to celebrate Paris’s birthday. Pop gave me his great-grandmother’s ring, a little ten-carat beauty surrounded by emeralds that he’s been keeping for me for years. The ring that Adonis gave Cleo is a new acquisition that matches the ruby that Dad kept for him. According to family tradition, the five rings are something that he held on to after his Nan passed away, always intending to give them to his sons one day.
How he knew that he’d have five sons, I don’t know, but that’s not my point. I have a ring for my lady, and I fully intend for it to adorn her finger when we walk into that courthouse tomorrow morning. I also haven’t wrapped up my cock once since we started making love, something that both Rosetta and I have left unspoken, because I know that she realizes what I’m doing.
Making a claim on her and telling her without words that, no matter what, we will be together and raise any child that we create. Together. Regardless of whether that’s here, or somewhere that no one will ever find us.
“Stop thinking so hard, and do me!” Rosetta wails when I don’t move, my dick twitching inside her with the need to release.
I hold off, though, because this is it—the moment that I’ve been waiting for, when she’s in that place of such need that all she can do is think of me.
“I love you, Rosie-mine,” I breathe into her ear, taking in the way she stiffens and then melts beneath me, her back rippling against my chest with every minute movement. “I’ve loved you since the moment you waltzed into my life with your never-say-die attitude and crazy stalker tendencies, and I haven’t ever stopped. You’re beautiful and smart and nuts and perfect for me in every way that I can think of.”
“Z—”
“I wanted you way back when, when you were stalking my brother, sending people death threats, and telling anyone who’d listen that you had this dream of the Sweets and the Harts coming together. I don’t know if that’s going to happen for the others—hell, I don’t even know if it’ll happen for poor Adonis, what with the way that Cleo keeps sabotaging their wedding—but I do hope that it’ll happen for us. So, what do you say?” I murmur, reaching beneath the pillow to pull out the ring that I have stashed there. “Will you marry me?”
As proposals go, it’s not the most romantic one that I could have pulled off. Flowers, champagne, and the Eiffel tower, or something else just as sappy, would probably have made it better. But right here and now, it’s just the two of us, together and as close as we can get.
Rosetta stiffens beneath me again, her body going so tight that I groan when pressure surges around my cock. She feels like a block of ice, and, to be honest, her reaction isn’t anything near what I was hoping it would be.
Sighing, I manage to twist her around beneath me and then join us again, my gaze blazing down into the wide orbs of her eyes. She looks frightened, startled, and on the verge of tears as I hold the ring up, silently asking her to take it. She doesn’t. Even being the strong man that I am, that makes me want to weaken and pull away. Hell, I even feel my dick soften the slightest bit inside her, going from ready to blow, to just barely hanging on to an erection.
No guy wants to propose and have his girl turn him down, and, like most men, I feel as vulnerable as hell as I force my eyes to stay on hers and keep still instead of pulling out and storming away. I stay because I know my Rosie, and also because…where else would I go? She’s the sun I orbit, and has been for so long that if you checked my safe, you’d discover a shameful number of photos that I’ve taken while watching her like a creeper and following her around.
“Say something, baby,” I whisper, my smile shaky and full of discomfort.
“Zeus, honey, I…you know how I feel about you, and you know that I would never want to hurt you, but—but proposing to me the night before a trial isn’t exactly a good idea,” she says gently, her eyes liquid pools of misery.
“It’s the best time. It’s the best possible time, when all the chips are down, and everything is against us,” I counter, giving her a soft kiss. “It’s a covenant that we’re making to each other, babe, a promise that we will be even tighter,” I say, groaning when she presses closer and tightens her muscles around me, awakening my arousal again and pushing it further when she reaches down to stroke her clit, all while keeping eye contact.
I want to come so badly that it hurts me to hold off, but I do. Things need settling first.
“Finish it. Let me feel you filling me, and then—oh—then we’ll talk,” she gasps, her eyes going wide when I press my groin down against her hand and push in all the way, using my growing girth to keep constant pressure on the pleasure spot deep inside her.
She comes fast, both from my shallow strokes and her own hand, her spasms pulling me over so that I release with a roar, my eyes hooding to slits but still remaining fixed on hers. I feel every hard beat of her climax as her body sucks wetly at my cock, and I watch as she savors the warm flood of my release, her moans turning to sighs as I shake off the last drop of seed, all the while praying that it finds a home within her.
The aftermath is filled with a languorous kissing session while we catch our breaths and caress each other’s sweat-slicked skin, and then it’s time to finish it as I push myself back up and give her a last kiss.
“Please. Don’t make me beg. Even though I will. For you, I’d do anything,” I say hoarsely, meaning every word. “But I hope that you won’t need me to. I love you—”
“And I love you! Of course I love you, you big, spoiled fool. You saved my life, and you’ve given me something to cling to, a hope to harbor even as my life is falling apart around my ears,” Rosetta murmurs, fat tears filling her eyes. “Of course I love you. But now is not the time for any of this. What if—”
“Don’t say it,” I growl, pulling away with a groan when her body releases me with a slurping kiss that makes my cock twitch all over again.
“Why not? It’s more than a possibility, Z, and it’s something that you and I have to face,” she insists, sitting up and grabbing her pink silk robe—one that I got her—from off the floor. “I’m standing trial for three murders. Three murders that have made international headlines. I get hate mail, death threats, and bomb scares whenever packages arrive out of the blue. I have no clue who Lucky Parker is, and even less of an idea about where to start looking for the man who may or may not have perpetrated these crimes. And then, even if I somehow miraculously find this guy, how do I prove that he did it?” she asks, throwing her hands up into the air.
“We don’t! That’s what I’m saying, Rosetta. Goddammit! We’re no closer to solving this than we were a month ago. You and me, we’re a team, and we need to make decisions as a team, not as separate people. I can’t watch you go to prison, knowing that there’s nothing I can do to save you. We need to fucking leave!” I rage, losing my temper.
I’ve always said that Rosetta gets to make her own choices, and I still hold firmly to that belief. We’re equals, two halves of one whole. So she has a right to make decisions about her life—but not without considering me, and what losing her will do to me.
“And go where? My face is all over the news. I get hate mail from China, Zeus. From a wrinkled, eighty-year-old bag who can’t speak English fluently, but who kno
ws enough to tell me exactly how I should die, and how long I should burn in hell. Where would we go? To Mexico? To Europe? To Alaska? Maybe you want to book us a flight to the Australian outback, and we can go and farm kanga-fucking-roos out there in the blistering heat! Listen to yourself! That is no life to live—not for me, and not for you. What happened to you heading up the charity division at Hart Inc. while finishing your history degree? What about your family—and mine? We’d never see them again,” she whispers, her eyes going hard even as tears spill out and roll down her bright red cheeks.
A clear sign that she’s beyond angry.
“Anything is better than letting you take the fall for this. It’s better than losing you. That cannot happen! Do you hear me? It took me months of stalking and watching your every step to even get close to you. I almost lost my fucking mind waiting for you to finally fall for my charms, woman. You think that I waited all that time just so I can lose you now?” I ask, yelling the words as I toss the ring onto the bed and watch it bounce over the comforter. “You need to stop thinking with your legal brain, and start thinking in terms of absolutes. It is absolutely possible that this fucking DA is going to rip you to shreds and lock you away for life. It’s absolutely possible that we will never find evidence to exonerate you, and it’s absolutely fucking clear that, if that happens, it’ll be too late for any contingency plans. If we leave now, our families will learn to deal, and we’ll learn to deal. Just don’t ask me to let you go, because that’s what this refusal is, Rosetta; it’s you saying goodbye to me!” I rage, finally saying the words that I’ve been keeping in for weeks.
It’s all been unspoken, but, according to Chilli, it’s something that she’s been aware of, so I can’t say that Rosetta doesn’t understand where I’m coming from right now. She knows what I’m trying to do, and she’s fighting me, as I knew she would.