Unbeatable Love

by KaLyn Cooper

  Tori would bet a week’s pay that Marcus’s life had been filled with lots of boys and girls playing in the street, riding bikes to school, going to each other’s houses to play with somebody else’s toys. She inwardly shook down the envy.

  He ran his thumb over the back of her hand, the reassurance giving her strength to continue. With a weak smile she admitted, “I haven’t answered your question.”

  “That’s okay. You don’t have to.” He bounced their joined hands on his thigh as though he was nervous, or maybe in encouragement.

  “Nope. I started this game. You told me about Martina.” She could do this. She had to. “My first time…” She shook her head. What a young fool she’d been, believing Antonio had loved her. “…was just before my eighteenth birthday. We had been shooting for weeks, high end designer blue jeans, skimpy tops, and short shorts that barely covered my ass cheeks.” She inhaled slowly, resolved to get through this.

  “I can tell this is painful for you.” Marcus’s warm hand ran up her bare arm then back down. His caress was reassuring. “You don’t need to tell me anything.”

  “I want to tell you. I want you to know what you’re getting into by being my friend.” She shrugged then admitted out loud what she’d been afraid to even admit to herself. “I’m pretty fucked-up.”

  He scoffed. “Take a good look at me.” Pointing to the scars on his face, he shook his head. “I’m about as fucked-up as you could get.”

  “That’s on the outside. I’ve been shot twice. You’ve seen how ugly those scars are. I’m talking about inside.” She wasn’t getting through to him.

  When he started to protest, she put her finger over his lips. “Your high school years were what most would consider pretty normal. Mine were anything but. I’m sure you know I was a model, it’s not exactly a secret.”

  “I think someone mentioned that once.” He cocked his head. “How old were you when you started modeling?”

  “Fourteen. That’s why I didn’t get to do any of the fun high school stuff.” Like date, go to dances, socialize in the halls. Hell, she hadn’t been allowed to talk to boys until she was nearly eighteen years old.

  “Wow, that was young. What did you model? Children’s clothes?” He sounded really interested.

  “Yes. Mostly clothes for catalogs and advertisements. I’m sure you’ve walked through a mall and seen those huge pictures in the store windows. I was in more teen magazine ads than I could count.” She gave him a small smile.

  “Sounds like a pretty glamorous life for a teenager. Did you get to travel?” The one corner of his mouth turned down. “We never had much money for vacations. My dad worked in the steel mills in Cleveland and only got two weeks off a year. Once, during spring break, we went to Disney World in Florida, but usually we stayed home and spent time on Lake Erie.”

  “Sounds like fun.” She glanced away. Although there was lots of water around Detroit, she had never spent time on any of the Great Lakes or Lake St. Clair. No one in her neighborhood could afford boats or jet skis. She couldn’t hold his wonderful childhood against him, nor would she allow jealousy to taint what she hoped was a growing friendship.

  She had to get through this. “For the first couple months, most my shoots were in the United States. Someone at Ralph Lauren in Europe saw my portfolio and by the end of my freshman year they had me traveling all over the world. Mom and Connie, my manager, kept a real tight rein on me. I never got to see much outside of hotel rooms and wherever we were shooting. I always wanted to play tourist, but mom and Connie weren’t interested in seeing historical sites.”

  She smiled, glancing down at their joined hands. “In college, I had to go back to modeling to help pay for school. I purposely took jobs in places where I wanted to see the things I’d missed.” Her excitement grew as she talked about the historical sites she’d visited. “I’d been to Rome a dozen times before I got to see the Vatican museums, the Sistine Chapel, ancient Rome and the Coliseum. The catacombs were creepy but so cool. I had a couple weeks between jobs in the Mediterranean, so I went to Mount Olympus and the Acropolis in Greece, Ephesus in Turkey, and sunbathed nude in France.”

  Marcus shifted in the seat. Heat flared in his eyes before he blinked it away, and asked, “Something you said earlier struck me as odd. You had to go back to modeling to pay for college? I don’t want to be nosy. I’m just curious.”

  The exuberance of all those wonderful memories dropped like a boulder tumbling off a cliff. No one knew her secret. She had kept the shame buried for years. She glanced at each of the women on her team before she returned her gaze to him. She could trust him with this tiny truth. In the greater scope of her life, this was really a small thing. “I’ve never told anyone this before. Not even my teammates know.” She gave him a small smile. “It’s kind of a long story, but it actually goes with our original virginity question. You sure you want to hear this?”

  He gently ran the pad of his thumb over her cheekbone. “I want to know everything there is to know about you, but it’s up to you to tell me what you want me to know.”

  Tori didn’t trust easily, least of all men. But he had been honest with her and she needed to tell him the truth. “My mother and Connie blew through almost every dime I made before I reached eighteen. They bought new houses. New cars. Shopped for hours while I was forced to stand in uncomfortable positions under bright lights or in the heat of the day. Not fun.”

  Most people had no idea how hard modeling could be. Those lights were damn hot, but you couldn’t sweat on their very expensive clothes. Drops of sweat running down your face could cause a delay for makeup which always pissed off photographers who took their temper out on the models. But Marcus didn’t need to listen to her whine about her mistreatment as a teenager. That was in the past and she had changed all of that as soon as she could.

  “The day I turned eighteen, I fired Connie and told my mother I’d had enough.” Enough of their overbearing control. Enough of the dressers complaining about her body type as they sewed her into clothes to fit perfect in the pictures. Enough of photographers telling her what to do, how to stand, which facial expression they wanted.

  Enough embarrassment. She couldn’t leave Rio de Janeiro…and Antonio…fast enough. Not that he would notice.

  “I wanted to go to college.” It was the reason she had given her mother and Connie. It was also the truth. “Since I was an adult, I had access to the money I’d earned in the United States. Thanks to child labor laws, they couldn’t touch that.”

  She turned her head toward the dance floor but didn’t see the happy people. She remembered the most difficult day of her life. “I had begged my mother and Connie for the day off. With Antonio behind the camera ordering everyone around, while ignoring me, the set was the last place I wanted to be.” Chronologically she was an adult that day, but she had grown up two days before. Fast.

  She shook her head. “It had been years since I’d celebrated my birthday doing something I wanted. Even something as simple as eating cake.” At the end of a long day of modeling in the blazing tropical sun, to celebrate her sixteenth birthday her mother had presented her with a carrot-flavored cupcake with a paper-thin coating of frosting and one blazing candle. They had totally forgotten her seventeenth…or ignored it.

  But on her eighteenth birthday, all hell had broken loose. “Even as a teenager, I was always professional. I’d worked that whole day starting before dawn. By the time the sun had set, I was exhausted and irritable.” Before she could talk herself out of it, she went on. “Antonio had completely ignored me for the second day in a row. His attention, and affection, had been focused on the famous supermodel who had shown up a few days early for the swimsuit photo shoot, so she could spend time with her current lover before she had to go to work posing for him. To all the young girls in the modeling industry, the sophisticated Italian beauty, Sophia Russo, was an idol.” To Tori’s young heart, she was the reason Antonio had dropped her the day after she’d given the man
her virginity, proving her mother correct…men only wanted one thing from a girl.

  “Holy shit,” Marcus exclaimed. “You worked with Sophia Russo? Is she as beautiful in person as she is in those magazines?”

  “No, and yes.” Tori hated to even talk about the woman who had caused her so much pain nearly ten years ago. “I wouldn’t say I worked with her. We’ve never been in the same shot, but we worked a few sets at the same time. And yes. She is stunning. And mature. One hundred percent sexy woman but she doesn’t flaunt it.”

  Not for the first time, Tori looked down her body, objectively, the way a photographer would. She still couldn’t hold a candle to Sophia’s smooth curves, the cultured way her body moved, the classic tilt to her head, and the sweet smile she gave crowds that always gathered when she was around. She was gracious and complementary to all the younger models, encouraging them at every opportunity. The woman was a class act.

  Tori, on the other hand, knew exactly what she was. A tough kid raised on the wrong side of Detroit, trained with the skills of the special operator. No one would ever call her sophisticated.

  “So, I take it Antonio was your first?” Marcus’s words brought her out of her past.

  All Tori could do was nod. She sipped her wine hoping to relax the knot in her throat. “He seduced my mother as much as he seduced me. It took him almost a year of ten minutes here, twenty minutes there, an hour alone together as we dashed out for coffee in a very public street café.” He’d built the sexual tension with kind words, light touches, and gentle caresses that had finally led to deep passionate kisses.

  “He had convinced me that I was special to him.” Tori had thought she was in love. “He wanted to take me out to a fancy supper for my eighteenth birthday but because of the shooting schedule, we went out a few days early.” She had finally given in to Antonio.

  “Thankfully, the crew was staying in a different hotel than the models so afterward we went to his room. He made sure it was good for me.” He had taught her about her body the way only an experienced man could, showing her that ecstasy could overcome the pain of a first-time joining. Then he’d introduced her to many types of physical pleasure before he’d walked her back to her hotel room and lightly kissed her good night in front of her mother.

  Her cheeks heated as she gave him a sarcastic smile. “My first date, ever, and I put out. I guess that set the stage for every date since.” She was well aware of her reputation. She liked men. She liked sex. Rarely had there ever been a repeat.

  “So, is Antonio the reason you went back into modeling in college?” Marcus encouraged.

  Tori shook her head. “Fuck, no. He’s part of the reason I quit as soon as I could. My mother had been relentlessly hounding me to sign an exclusive contract with Connie’s management company, which, surprise, surprise, had hired my mother to oversee my career. No way in hell was that going to happen.”

  She rolled her lips inward, biting down to counter the pain in her heart. She was supposed to be able to trust her mother. “About a month before my birthday I got to talking to a female attorney who represented a couple of the models on that shoot. I hired her. Over the next month, she discovered that my mother and Connie had mishandled most of my money. Marnie was so angry for me. She wanted to sue my mother and Connie, but I talked her out of it.”

  Tori shrugged. “It was money that I had never seen, and I had enough to go to college, that’s all I cared about. Even though I was mad as hell at Mom, I couldn’t sue my own mother.” She looked away. This was the part that got ugly.

  When her gaze returned to him, her face was frozen in anger. “Those two bitches had gotten a lawyer who was able to freeze what little assets I had left. They had misspent millions of dollars and still wanted more. My own mother sued me.” Anger radiated from her every pore at the memory.

  “So, you went back to modeling.” His words were soft, understanding, and he had no idea how much that meant to her.

  “Yeah, but this time I was my own manager.” She heard her strength and determination in each word. “I did it on my terms. I didn’t want my face plastered on billboards or full-page ads, so I became a body model.” She lifted a hand elegantly and posed it. “These fingers have worn millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds and jewels.”

  She wiggled her butt. “My jean-clad ass has been plastered all over the world.”

  Lifting her leg, she saw heat flashing in Marcus’s eyes. She instantly thought of how she had teased him earlier about her panties. She hoped she could maintain his interest long enough for him to find out for himself. “The French make the softest nylons I’ve ever worn. For years these babies were pictured above displays all around the globe.”

  “You have the most beautiful legs I’ve ever seen.” He stroked his hand over her calf. The sensations ran straight to her core. It felt as though he had stroked her clit. She closed her eyes to help hold in the shiver.

  “It’s no wonder you were chosen to represent their line of stockings.” At his words, she opened her eyes and looked into his. The outer gold ring was little more than a bright fine line encircling several shades of brown with scattered green flecks. He had the most beautiful eyes that were now filled with lust. This was truly what she wanted from him, just not yet. They had to make it through the reception first.

  Tori decided to lighten the mood so she looked at him in fake surprise. “And here, I thought you wanted me for my brilliant mind.”

  “You’re right about half of it, I do want you.” His voice was rough and touched something deep inside her. When she lowered her foot to the floor, she realized she was wet for the first time in months.

  Leaning forward, their faces only inches apart, she wanted him to kiss her. Hell. Maybe she would just kiss him. She had no problem being the sexual aggressor, but for some odd reason, it was important to her that he make the first move.

  He stopped moving and she saw the hesitation on his face.

  Dropping her hand to his thigh, she whispered, “There is nothing I want more, right now, than you deep inside me as I scream your name and we shatter in ecstasy.”

  “Fuck.” His single syllable word was drawn out, lasting a full two seconds. Marcus slid his fingertips over her throat to the back of her neck and started to pull her in.

  The music stopped.

  The room erupted in joyous clapping.

  Tori and Marcus held their positions, captured in their own silent moment of need.

  “Ladies and gentlemen.” The DJ loudly interrupted, breaking the spell.

  They quickly separated and stood, jubilantly clapping as the newlyweds entered the hall, Alex and Katlin right behind them.

  “Rafe and Harper have decided to skip the formal receiving line.” The microphone squealed as the exuberant MC continued. “They’d rather visit each table while the buffet line is getting set up. Mama Carlucci and her staff are putting the finishing touches on everything, and I’m taking requests.”

  “I’m so damn glad that’s over.” Katlin collapsed in the chair next to Tori’s. “I hate having my picture taken and would have refused, but it’s Harper’s wedding.” The pretty blonde with porcelain skin smiled over at the gleaming bride. She sighed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Harper this happy.”

  “Me either,” Marcus agreed. “Katlin, you look stunning as ever.”

  Tori had to agree. Her team leader and good friend looked beautiful in the navy-blue dress that fell to midcalf after outlining her luscious curves. Her blonde hair curled softly past her shoulders in stark contrast to the V neckline that accented the sapphire and blue diamond necklace given to her by her father. It matched her blue diamond engagement ring that today she wore on her left hand. During missions, she wore Alex’s ring on a titanium necklace, next to her heart, for safekeeping.

  Katlin’s fiancé handed her a glass of white wine. “Stunning. A perfect description.” Alex’s bright white smile gleamed against his light tan skin, much like Marcus’s when the two men ta
pped beer bottles. Both were gorgeous Latinos, Alex second-generation Cuban and Marcus’s family had immigrated from Venezuela nearly a hundred years ago.

  Conversation was never a problem when the Ladies of Black Swan got together. Add in four significant others and topics and comments ebbed and flowed across and around the large table. Tori caught side glances from Marcus, but she missed his touch, especially as her gaze swept the table noting how often the other couples affectionately touched.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” a short Italian man in a tuxedo spoke into the DJ’s microphone. “I am Francesco Carlucci and on behalf the newlyweds Mr. and Mrs. Rafael Silva, I would like to welcome you to the Knights of Columbus hall. My beautiful wife, and restaurant family, are ready to serve as soon as Monsignor Callahan administers the blessing.”

  Thankfully, Katlin’s uncle kept the prayer short and sweet. Until that moment, Tori hadn’t realized how hungry she was. Harper and Rafe had been shuffled to the front of the line. As current and former military officers, no one from their table moved. They had all been trained to assure that everyone else in their presence had plenty of food before they were served. Since it had been a small wedding, within minutes everyone at the table stood.

  Heat emanated from the small of Tori’s back where Marcus had laid his hand. It didn’t move even as they lined up with their friends, the conversation and banter never ending. Only when they picked up plates and began piling on food, did he remove his hand, but he stayed close enough for her to feel the heat from his body.

  Tori was shocked to return to the table to find Rafe and Harper seated and eating. She looked around for the traditional two-person table in the middle but saw only large rounds surrounding the square wooden dance floor. One was occupied by Rafe’s family, Top Cooper and his wife held court over several large, lethal men who obviously worked at Guardian Security with Rafe. Another table held men and women who probably worked with Harper at the ATF. At the last table, Katlin’s Uncle Tom, deputy director of the CIA, sat with several men Tori recognized from their training at that agency, and a few she couldn’t identify. She figured they were friends of Rafe’s since he had worked there for many years.