by Jaci J
I wore my baggy sweats, sport bra, and cut off tee. My heels are in my bag. “I’m ready.”
Luna’s smile widens. “Great. I’ve got ladies coming in in about thirty. Want to warm up?” she asks, pointing me in the direction of her work space. It’s a big, empty room, with a large mirror on one wall and speakers in every corner.
Plugging my cell into the sound system, I scroll my playlist and find my music.
“Angel” begins to play.
I don’t do ballet, tap, or jazz anymore. In the last eight years, I’ve drifted toward contemporary, because it lets me express myself any way I want to.
Slipping on my heels, I get to work.
I dance until I’m sweating and breathing hard, until my legs shake and my feet ache.
It’s been more than six months since I’ve actually danced like this. I’m out of practice, but it feels so damn good.
A round of applause catches me off guard when my last song ends.
Twisting around, I find a group of girls standing in the double doorway, watching me.
“Damn, girl. I didn’t know you had that in you. Why didn’t you tell me you could do all that? You’ve seriously been wasting your God-given talents since you’ve been working here, and we’re going to change that today. Damn,” Luna whistles, eyes wide, so much excitement in her voice.
“Wow, thank you. I guess I forgot I had it in me.”
The girls file in and start to warm up, stretching out and slipping on their dance shoes.
This is my element.
Not Cruz.
Not the crazy.
But the crazy doesn’t stay away long.
Dancing, I look up and into the mirror hanging on the wall, where reflected in it is the street out front.
Cruz is out there.
My heart stops and I lose balance, stumbling.
Leaning against his bike, his cut on, he watches me.
I can’t see his face from this far away, but I imagine he’s frowning, his dark eyes hard and unforgiving.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I straighten, trying to regain my footing.
My heart is wild, beating franticly.
“You okay, Mia?” one of the girls asks, touching my shoulder.
Looking at her, I nod wordlessly, taking a deep breath.
When I turn back to Cruz, I find the side of the road empty.
He’s gone, and I feel the loss all over again.
Cruz
You won’t get an apology out of me because I’m not sorry for breaking into her house. Not even close to being sorry.
I fucking miss her.
I’d knock and she’d ignore it. And if she would have answered, there’s not a chance in hell she would have let me in.
She left me with no options.
Sitting in the dark, on her bed, I wait.
Mia yelps when she walks out of her bathroom and finds me sitting on her bed, dropping the towel she was drying her hair with onto the floor at her feet.
Her hand hits her chest and she doubles over, startled.
It’s only been two weeks, and I swear to fucking God, seeing her calms something inside of me, taming the beast.
The woman brings me to my fucking knees.
“What the fuck, Cruz! What are you doing in here?” she demands, looking around. I don’t know what she’s looking for, but she’s not going to find it.
“You okay?” I ask her, noticing the large bruise on her elbow.
Up and off the bed, I walk toward her, grabbing her arm and looking at the black and blue skin.
Jerking her arm away from me, she frowns. “I’m fine. Please go.”
I wish I could. Wish it was that fucking easy for me to walk away.
“I can’t go, Mia.”
“Yes, you can,” she seethes, pointing to the door. “You can leave the same way you came in.”
Mia’s got a little bite to her.
Wrapping a hand around the back of her neck, I lean down so I’m face-to-face with her. “I’m not leaving.”
Her frown deepens. “Yeah, you fucking are,” she grumbles, pulling out of my reach.
“You really want me to go?”
I watch her wrestle with her response, and that’s all the answer I need.
“You unpacked. You stayin’, baby?”
“It’s not because of you,” she huffs, giving me attitude.
She’s cute. “Didn’t think it was.”
Mia’s wearing nothing but a tight, white, cut-off beater with no bra, and white cotton panties. “It’s not fair, you wearin’ shit like that,” I tell her, watching her pretty nipples harden underneath the material of her tank.
“You know what’s not fair?” she counters, sitting down on the edge of her bed and grabbing the bottle of lotion from her nightstand. “Is you stalking me, showing up everywhere I am for the last two weeks and breaking into my house, and then refusing to leave when I ask you to.”
I watch her bend over, putting lotion on her long legs.
Jesus.
I won’t lie, pretend I haven’t been stalking her. I fucking have. I had to know she was okay, and I did it the only way I knew how. I followed her.
“That’s life,” I huff, my eyes glued to her body.
“That’s your answer for everything,” she snaps.
“It’s the truth.”
“Did you kill them yet?” she asks me, working on her other leg.
She won’t even look at me.
So easy, so cavalier as that question leaves her mouth. Is she suddenly okay with it? “You want the truth or an answer that’ll make you feel better after I fuck you hard and come inside you? An answer that won’t make you regret fucking me?”
Her lip curls and she chucks the bottle of lotion at me. “Fuck you.”
“That’s the plan, baby.”
“Jesus Christ, Cruz, do you take anything seriously?”
That question makes me mad. “I take you seriously. The shit I say, as nasty as it may fucking be, is true and you know it. You gonna sit there and tell me you’re not gonna let me fuck you right now?”
“That,” she growls, pointing a pretty little finger at me, “is what I mean. Fuck.”
“Am I lying then?”
She sputters, not sure what to say, because she knows I’m right.
Mia
Is he lying?
No.
My panties are wet. Soaked through. I want him, bad.
God, I’m sick. There’s something wrong with me, letting his words work me up so damn much. He’s rude and nasty. He’s an asshole, but I fucking love him and I hate myself for it.
“Go home, Cruz,” I tell him, my words weightless, holding no bite.
“Not unless you’re comin’ with me.”
Standing up, I take a deep, cleansing breath, trying to steady myself and my words. “We’re getting nowhere arguing like this. You don’t understand that I don’t think I can deal with knowing you’re going to kill someone, and I don’t understand how you think it’s perfectly justifiable to kill anyone.”
“If you’re so about right and wrong, why didn’t you call the cops after what happened? Why didn’t you tell the hospital, huh? It’s okay to let them walk after what they did to you and after they fucking shot me, but not for me to hurt them?”
I don’t know. I don’t know what I think anymore.
But Cruz doesn’t let me answer. He just keeps going, walking toward me. “It’s because I told you I’d handle it and you trusted that. You were good with it, with not knowing the how or when. Good with no details. Good with your head buried in the sand. But once your pretty little head was full of the details, you were suddenly too good for my help. Who are you worried about here? Me or your conscience?”
Jesus. “So what? We fall in love, get into a relationship, and you what? Kill those guys, kill other people and end up getting caught and thrown in jail? Then what? What am I supposed to do?”
And that’s the real issue. I c
an’t lose him like I did my dad, my mom, and my grandma. I can’t lose him like I almost lost him.
“Then we beat the charges and I come home to you.” He says it so simply.
“That’s not how the justice system works,” I whisper, loving the way he grips my waist, pulling me closer to his body, but hating that I let him do it to me.
“That’s how it works when your man’s smarter than that.”
“But you’re not my man.” I know it’s a lie as soon as the words leave my mouth.
He was mine the moment he saved me.
Cruz chuckles. “Oh yeah? I wasn’t your man when I blew my load in you? Oh, and by the way...” he grins, happy with himself. “Unless you’re on birth control, there’s a good fucking chance my baby’s already inside of you now. You know, since you’re so worried about me and shit, figured I’d give you somethin’ different to worry about so I can deal with the other shit in peace.”
His words hit me hard.
Fuck.
I feel my heart stop and fall straight to my feet.
He’s right.
I was so caught up, being stupid. So fucking stupid.
Sitting back on the bed, my hand instantly goes to my stomach. I touch it lightly, wondering if it could be.
My stomach rolls with the idea. I’m not ready to be a mother. “Oh my God.”
I feel dizzy.
“Dammit, baby.”
“I can’t be pregnant.”
“That a bad thing?” he questions, his brow arched. He’s so cocky.
“We just met.”
“That means nothin’.”
“I don’t know you.”
“You know me, baby. You know everything there is to know about me.”
“I can’t be pregnant,” I say again, the word difficult to get out.
Cruz squats down in front of me, his hands on my thighs. “I just said that shit to shut you up and calm you the fuck down. If you’re pregnant then you’re pregnant. But listen to me, I don’t take hurting people lightly, but I also won’t let them get away with trying to take you and do bad shit to you.”
“Cruz...” I’m so fucking confused, my mind a mess. “A baby, though?”
“Angel,” he counters, realizing his words have hit me harder than he’d expected. “Told you that shit would get your mind off the other shit. Stop stressing.”
“You make a baby sound like I just bought a purse or something, and I’m not sure if I would want to keep it or not. This is a person, a baby we’re talking about.”
“I know what a baby is. I want kids, with you. I want whatever the fuck you want, whenever you fucking want it.”
This is moving so fast, but all I can think about is the fact that I want that too—kids, my man, a house together. All of it with Cruz.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me for wanting all that with him.
Cruz doesn’t ask for my permission, he just kisses me like he fucking owns me. Groaning against my lips, he puts his hand on mine, the one that’s on my stomach. “Baby or not, blood on my hands or not, me and you? This shit we’ve got ain’t goin’ away. I’m not goin’ away.”
“I know.”
He chuckles. “You know?”
“You broke into my house.”
“Now I’m trying to break into your heart and steal that motherfucker.”
I laugh softly. “You’re insane.”
“About you.”
“I’m a crazy person,” I confess, feeling every bit of what I claim to be. I feel out of control. I don’t feel like myself, but it feels right.
“Yeah, you are. Threw a fucking bottle at me.”
“It’ll probably happen again.”
“Yeah?”
“Most likely. I told you, I’m crazy.”
Cruz likes that because he smiles, something he doesn’t do much of.
“But Cruz?”
“Angel?”
“Can we take this slow?” I ask, knowing I’m going to need a little time.
“How slow? Like I can’t come inside of you anymore, like I gotta come on your tits? Or slow, like get the fuck outta my house and let me think about it?” He’s smirking, enjoying the heat that rises in my cheeks at his dirty mouth.
“You’re horrible.”
Kissing my lips, he counters with, “The worst,” smiling against my mouth.
“Slow, like let’s get dinner and maybe watch a movie. Try doing this the right way.”
“I’ll buy you dinner and watch as many movies as you fuckin’ want, baby. But I make no promises that I’ll keep my hands to myself while we’re Netflix and chillin’.”
I laugh, and I laugh hard. He’s funny.
“Netflix and chillin’, huh?”
“Netflix and fucking you six ways to Sunday.”
“Food first, then the chillin’?”
I’m giving in, letting him back in, and I want to hate myself for it, but I don’t. I want Cruz, there’s no denying it.
“Anything you want, Angel.”
Cruz
I’m trying real goddamn hard not to act like a fool when I watch Mia walk out of my shop and toward that little dance studio she’s been spending her evenings in.
I’ve got to rein in it and not grab her ass up and toss her over my shoulder.
I’m jealous, and I make no bones about it.
I want all her time. Her time and her attention belong to me.
But I let her do her thing. It makes her happy, and when she’s happy, I’m happy.
It’s been a few weeks, and those gangbanging little fucks have gone deep into hiding. It makes the chase that much more fun, because once I get my hands on them, they’re gonna die painfully for making me hunt.
Mia doesn’t want to know the details and that’s fine. I wait until she’s gone, dancing, before I go hunting.
In the shop, welding back together a cherry old Harley, I feel hands come up my back and wrap under my arms, hands on my chest.
Mia.
Lifting my welding helmet, I turn around and jerk back, not happy with the hands that are on me.
Maria.
“The fuck you doin’?” I growl, pushing her hands off me and stepping away from her.
“Hey, Cruz,” she purrs, leaning back against my workbench, pushing her tits out toward me. “Wanted to see how you were.”
This bitch is bad news. She’s trouble, and not the good kind. She’s the nasty kind. The kind that’ll trap a man with a couple of kids or a nasty case of herpes.
We fucked for a while, years back, and she’s been hanging around ever since.
“I’m still alive,” I tell her, pulling off my leather welding gloves and dropping on the seat of the Harley I’m working on.
Maria smiles at me. “That’s good. I’ve been missing you lately.”
“Why are you here? Other than the house call.”
“You don’t miss me?” she asks, her lips turned down and her eyes fluttering.
“You know the goddamn answer to that. I’ve told you, more than once, we fucked a long time ago and that was it.”
She licks her lips. “But it was so good.”
Good? That shit’s a joke. She was a hole, a body. “It was nothin’.”
Maria hops off the tool bench, her lips curled in an ugly frown. “You’re an asshole, Cruz. I thought we had something.”
I can feel her. Mia.
Fuck.
She’s standing in the doorway, listening.
Maria must notice her too, because she spins around. “You’re the bitch from the hospital.” Maria turns back to me. “What, is she your girlfriend or something?”
Before I can say anything, Mia speaks up. “Or something.”
“So he’s fucking you now?”
“Get the fuck outta here, Maria. Me and you, we’re nothing.”
She huffs, her face turning red. “Fuck you.” She turns and stomps out of the shop, telling me I’ll regret not choosing her.
The only thin
g I regret is ever putting my condom covered dick inside of her.
I watch her walk out, turning toward Mia when she’s gone. “Jesus. Sorry ’bout that shit, babe.”
Mia gives me the side-eye, her eyes narrowed playfully. “So that’s what you do when I’m dancing? She’s the chick from the hospital, isn’t she?”
“Like I told you, she’s just someone I used to know. An old friend.”
“An old friend you fuck?”
That makes me growl. “Hell no. The only female my cock goes anywhere near is you.”
Mia gives me a dubious look. “You sure?”
Mia’s too trusting, but I don’t use that shit against her. She’s sweet, and I want her that way always. I like her innocent and naïve.
She hops up on my tool bench and I take the invitation to step between her thighs when she lets them fall apart and nods me over. “So you’re not fucking her? Really?” She’s more serious this time.
I step into her, and she throws her arms over my shoulders.
I’ve never loved anyone in my life, not the way I love this girl. So goddamn intense and consuming, she’s all I fucking think about and that shit’s scary.
“I’ve never lied to you.”
“Okay, so you’re not fucking her.” This time, she says it less like a question and more like a declaration.
“You know me, busy fucking my way through the phone book,” I tease, trying to put her at ease.
Mia throws her head back and laughs. “The phone book? Are those things even still around?”
“You sayin’ I’m old, baby?”
“Super old.”
“So what’s up? Why you in my shop, smiling and grindin’ that sweet pussy against my dick?” I ask, looking between us where she’s got her ass on the edge of the workbench, her legs hooked around my waist.
“I need you to do something for me.”
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her, and she knows this. She doesn’t have to butter me up or work me over. “All you gotta do is ask me.”
“Will you build me a platform?”
“For?”
“The studio.”
“What are you gonna do for me if I build it for you?” I tease her.
She kisses my neck, her teeth scraping my skin. “Call Maria back over here to suck your cock while you work.”