Take My Heart: A Steamy Romantic Suspense Novel

by J. J. Sorel

Pointing, she said, “There’s Billie. My, he’s walking well.”

  Looking down onto the pavement, I had no idea who she meant, considering the many that marched forward, oblivious to our gawking.

  “He’s the one with the pale-blue slacks. Ha… he always dresses as if he’s on a Contiki tour.” She chuckled.

  “Contiki?” I asked.

  “Organized tours. Mainly for rich geriatrics with no sense of adventure in their decaying bones.”

  I had to chuckle at Aggie’s tone, which was as dry as the martini she sipped. “Okay. I see him now.”

  “Billie Washington. Related to the famous president, apparently. He has a penchant for leggy blondes. Although in our days he used to chase me around. I let him one night, you know.” The shine in her eyes told me there was more to come. When it came to smutty banter, Aggie could hold her own with a bunch of horny frat boys. “Tiny little penis. When he flashed it, I had to try not to giggle. You know how delicate men are about their dicks.”

  Having only ever seen one in my life, I just stared back blankly.

  “You’re inexperienced, aren’t you?” Aggie sucked on her cigarette, and as she exhaled smoke, she added, “Please don’t tell me you’re still a virgin.”

  “No. I’ve got a boyfriend.”

  “Oh yes, of course. What does he do?”

  “He’s a lawyer.”

  “Oh… one of those. Talks and talks endlessly about himself, I suppose. Can talk underwater with marbles in his mouth?”

  Laughing at that ridiculous image, I nodded. “He’s chatty.”

  She turned and faced me. Her eyes narrowed as they did whenever she burrowed into my mind. As though naked, I even unconsciously crossed my arms.

  “He doesn’t please you. You don’t look like a girl in love to me. Although I saw something in you when you arrived. But that’s someone else, I think. You’ve lost your heart to another.”

  “I haven’t,” I protested. My eyes traveled to her empty glass. “Shall I get you another?”

  “You’re being evasive. But yes, please. Have one too. It will relax you. I’m getting your anxiety.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was that transparent.”

  “There. I knew it.”

  What was I giving off? I asked myself while standing by the trolley pouring out two martinis.

  Careful not to spill anything, I took each step slowly back onto the terrace and set the glass down by Aggie’s side.

  I settled back into the comfortable Morticia chair and swallowed a little of the firewater, which made my cheeks fire up.

  Aggie watched me drink. “There, you look better already. There’s nothing that a good martini cannot cure.”

  “Would you like me to read?” I asked, mostly for my own sanity, because I didn’t feel like making my love life the subject of the moment.

  “No. Tell me more about whats-his-name.”

  “Justin.”

  “Yes. Does he pleasure you in that way?” Her lips twitched into a lopsided grin.

  “Well… Yes…”

  “He doesn’t, I can tell. Does he make you come?”

  My face heated up. “Look, Aggie, I have nothing but admiration for your sharp, inquisitive mind, but would you mind if we didn’t discuss my sex life?”

  Her eyebrows drew in. “But what else is there to talk about if one can’t talk about love?”

  “I don’t mind talking about love. I’m just a private person, that’s all.”

  “I understand. I promise not to mention it. But there is one thing I will throw in. It’s vital that a man learns to pleasure a woman. We’re subtle creatures. Our anatomy’s not as obvious or as big.” She looked up at me with one of her cheeky grins. “If you get my meaning.”

  “Would you like to meet a partner?” I asked, in a bid to shift the focus away from me.

  “Oh God, no. I’ve had one true love. No man will ever compare to Monty. I have memories.” She touched her heart. “Lots of them. In any case, I’m dry down there. Closed for business.” She raised a brow.

  That nearly made me choke, even though I should have been used to Aggie by then.

  “Monty was your true love?” I asked.

  The way her eyes misted over as she looked into the distance told me that I’d hit a raw nerve. I held back on further questions and sipped my martini instead.

  “Look.” Aggie pointed. “There’s Edith. Oh my, she’s using a walker. Poor girl.”

  Girl? Edith looked close to a hundred years old.

  “Would you like to go out sometime? We could go for a walk in the park. I could even read for you there,” I asked.

  “Oh God no. The only time I’ll be leaving here will be on a stretcher.” Aggie lit another cigarette. I noticed her hands shaking a little. That earlier comment about Monty had changed her mood.

  “You don’t like the street?”

  “I love the street. I wouldn’t live anywhere else. I just don’t like people seeing me like this.”

  “But you look great. You have great style, regal posture, and you’re so agile for…”

  “For an old girl?” Aggie chuckled. “So I come across as queenly, do I?”

  I couldn’t tell if she was joking or offended.

  She tapped my arm. “It’s okay, dear. Just playing with you.” She studied me for a moment. “You look better. See, there’s not much a martini can’t cure.”

  I smiled. “Is that the only reason why you don’t wish to go out?”

  “You’re asking too many questions, Ava. Remember, no questions.”

  My mouth turned down. “Sorry.”

  Her face relaxed a little. “I have this phobia about people. I don’t like moving amongst them. Once upon a time, I loved socializing, but now, I’m happy to engage with one other, like yourself or my cook. Apart from that, I have memories to keep me company.”

  There were so many questions I wanted to ask. Aggie fascinated me. Instead, I bit my tongue.

  We spent the rest of the day talking about the people walking by, mainly about their clothes. Aggie had this thing for fashion. And at the end of our session, I was taken aback when she handed me a plastic bag filled with clothes.

  “What are these for?” I asked, assuming they were destined for a charity shop.

  “They’re for you, Ava. Take a look.”

  I opened the bag and ran my fingers over silky fabrics. Digging in deep, I discovered skirts, pants, and a couple of floral dresses. When I read Christian Dior and Pierre Cardin on the labels, my jaw dropped.

  “They should fit. You’ve got the same figure as I did. Big breasts and ass.”

  Lost for words, I bit into my cheek.

  Aggie added, “I’ve lost a lot of weight. But when I was your age, I had your figure.” She nodded with a slight smile. “The boys liked it. That’s for sure.”

  Being one of those rare women that didn’t think much about clothes, I found my breath stuck in my throat as I touched the smooth silk, velvets, and quality cottons. I pulled out an outlandish long-sleeved dress printed in purple flowers and sporting green buttons.

  “I wore that with white boots. I loved the buttons. It came with a matching belt. That should be in there somewhere. I bought that in Paris in 1970.”

  Stunned, I looked at the array of clothes that the city’s fashion-conscious would have broken a sprinting record to possess.

  “Are you sure you want me to have them?” I asked.

  “What? You don’t want them?”

  “Well, yes. I mean, they’re stunning. I’ve never worn anything like that before.”

  “I’ve noticed. You could do with a little more color.” Aggie’s cool observation reminded me of the tendency I had to dress without much fuss. Unlike Cassie, I didn’t think about my wardrobe. Most of the time, I got around in loose jeans and T-shirts. The looser the better. Because, as Aggie had pointed out, I wasn’t slim, and therefore clothes didn’t hang elegantly on me like they did on Cassie.

 
I slid the clothes back into the large plastic bag. “They’re amazing, Aggie. Thank you. You’re really generous. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to give them to a family member? A granddaughter or something?”

  “I don’t have any family.” Her matter-of-fact tone suggested a lack of concern.

  Despite chronic curiosity, I remained respectfully silent.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BRONSON

  I paced about like a tiger in a cage. This time it wasn’t bars holding me in but a desperate, almost crippling urge to get back at my asshole brother. Seeing his smug face again had fired me up. I needed to breathe because my revenge had to be subtle but painful nevertheless, because the last thing I wanted was to be locked up in that hellhole again.

  It was five in the morning. I hadn’t slept. The girl at the party had made a big appearance. And I mean big. Painfully so.

  Ava.

  The fact I remembered her name surprised me. But then, there was a lot about her that stuck well and truly in my head, and below. Ava’s beauty had stolen my breath, though, from the second I fell into those big blue eyes and followed that natural sway of hips. She was a real woman in the true sense of the word, with curves in all the right places, the thought of which flooded my groin with heat. After that little chat we’d had, I’d walked away scratching my head trying to figure out what an intelligent woman like Ava saw in that asshole, Justin.

  But I needed to focus. Ava was my weapon. I’d fuck her. That should piss Justin off big time, with that big fucking ego of his.

  I’d always gotten the girls. That was why he hated me. Especially after Sandy, the girl he’d spent a whole year chasing, had ended up in my room at one of our parties. And I was the one who ate her cherry. That said, the animosity wasn’t just about us as horny teenagers chasing pussy though. It had begun from the moment I walked into that family aged five. Justin, who was my age, did everything he could to terrorize me. Horrible fucking pranks like placing dog shit in my bed, or he’d make a mess and then point the finger at me. But I kept my mouth shut because the thought of returning to that stinking dump that had been my home before Justin’s dad adopted me scared the shit out of me.

  But now that we were adults, the game had changed. This was serious. Justin had to pay big time for shitting on my reputation. All that bullshit about being innocent. He was the only person who could have stashed the drugs in my backpack because I’d seen him with the bag of white powder earlier that night.

  Sleeping with his girl was one thing, but I needed more than that. My ultimate goal was for Justin to go through what I’d been through. Being a pretty boy, he’d have a hell of a time fending off the cocksuckers in jail. Despite possessing a big mouth that fired missiles of hot air, Justin couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag. The hungry fuckers in there would know how to put that big mouth to good use, and it didn’t involve sucking lollipops either. My kickboxing youth had come in handy. After I bruised one asshole’s cock with my knee, they all kept away. The cash my art and furniture generated also helped, in that the prison officers made sure I was left alone.

  I stared out the window, which had become a favorite pastime of mine since being released. The view was not pretty, though, from that fourth-floor shithole I’d recently moved into. My eyes rested on the other equally sad buildings facing a seedy alleyway that probably had enough DNA stuck on its grimy path to fill a prison.

  I had to visit Harry, my old boss, later that morning. He’d promised me a job on one of his building sites. Having done time when he was young and foolish, Harry was more of a buddy than anything else.

  Moving away from the window, I lowered my body to the ground and pumped out a hundred pushups, followed by stretches that I’d picked up while in prison. Becoming an exercise junkie had been the only good thing about being in prison for a year. I liked how it made me feel. And along with drawing and woodwork, it was the only thing that kept me sane.

  I wiped my face with a towel, after which I decided to go for a run.

  When I got to the ground floor, I exited the cracked glass doors and, as always, stepped over spilled garbage. The alley smelled of shit, as it always did. Watching my step, I noticed soiled, torn panties, which only added to the alley’s grunginess.

  As with every morning, the park, which was close to my place, wasn’t exactly a picture of beauty either. Empty bottles and cartons lay strewn all over the grass, suggesting a big night for those sleeping rough.

  I clutched my arms. The air was sharp. Just as I was about to start jogging, I stopped when I discovered there were bodies scattered about, in what was a sad sight. As a cold hand gripped at my soul, I raked through my hair, wondering if that could have been me had I not been saved by Elliot Lockhart, my late adoptive father.

  How my life had changed. Two years earlier, on my way to carving out a better life, I’d started an architecture degree at Columbia. And then that fucking party, from where I left handcuffed while being pushed and shoved by cops as I pleaded innocence until my throat became raw.

  A dog scrounging for food looked up at me with big, sad eyes. I opened my arms. “I haven’t got anything, buddy.”

  I headed for the pavement and ran my heart out. That was my way of dealing with shit. Exercise. It had started with playing football. I became addicted to the high it delivered, which was better than any drug I’d ever taken. Not that I’d taken many; only weed on occasion. And then there I was in jail, doing time for an apparent coke habit. Even fellow inmates couldn’t figure me out, especially when I passed on deals that were taking place right in front of me.

  The shabby looking office suited the paunchy, middle-aged P.I., who didn’t exactly strike me as someone ready to pounce on facts. If anything, he looked like he’d slept less than me. And that was saying something, since thanks to acquiring insomnia in jail, I hadn’t had a good fucking night’s sleep in ages.

  “Okay, take me through it,” he said, slouching back in his chair.

  “It’s not a long story. While my parents were away, my brother threw a party. By midnight, after the neighbors complained, the cops came around. They scrounged about and found a bag of coke in my backpack.”

  “So let me guess, one of the guests planted it there?”

  I nodded. “I know who it is, too. It’s just that I can’t pin it on him.”

  “Then what do you want from me?”

  “Follow him. He doesn’t hide his coke habit.”

  “That’s easy enough to do. But then how’s that going to connect him to the crime?”

  “Good question. Just get me some photos for now, and I’ll fill in the blanks as I go.”

  He pushed a clipboard with a form on it toward me. “Here. Give me as much detail as you’ve got. The more the better. Then leave it to me. I charge double on weekends.”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  “Good. I’ll need a deposit before I start. You’re good for that, I suppose?”

  “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” I bristled at his implication that because I’d been locked up, I wasn’t to be trusted.

  Frustration bit into me—was that how I would be defined from there on? Ex-convict scum, and not that guy with a promising future in architecture.

  “Just asking. How long were you in?”

  “One year.”

  He let out a long breath. “That’s tough. At least you’re a strong-looking guy. I’m sure that helped.”

  My lips twitched into a mock smile, recalling the showers and the hungry looks coming from some of the inmates who’d been locked up for ages, men who hadn’t even known they liked dick until they were caged. The worst were the weedy ones, in there for white-collar crime. They’d seemed the hungriest.

  “I punched my way out of trouble. Years of martial arts helped,” I answered.

  He scrutinized me for a moment. “All right. Stay in touch.”

  That night, I went back to my family home. It was my mother’s birthday. In spite of my reluctance, given that I’d
only rubbed shoulders with the clan earlier that week, I attended out of respect for her. Carrying a small coffee table, a gift for my mother, I took a cab back to my old life in Brooklyn.

  As I peered at familiar landmarks that I’d walked past for nearly twenty years, I relaxed. Things weren’t too bad, in that at least I’d landed a job starting straight away. Having a ton of projects on the go, Harry needed someone with my carpentry experience, and he was so desperate I could virtually name my price. I’d never had a problem finding money. And I liked to work hard. One thing was for sure, I needed to clear out of that apartment as soon as possible. The late-night antics from the floor above were keeping me up—loud orgasms or someone being battered about, the thought of which stressed me out. I’d even contemplated investigating but had to stop myself, given that it was the type of place where people played with guns for fun.

  The cab dropped me off at the brownstone, two-story home, which had been my home from the age of five. Before that, it had been one institution after another, each just as creepy as the prison I’d just left. In fact, they were so frighteningly similar that the first week of being locked up, I couldn’t stop throwing up.

  I placed the small table on the street when a couple of girls walked by and whistled at me. I returned a smirk. Why not play up to it, I thought. I hadn’t been with a woman for over a year and craved the taste of some pussy.

  “Cute table,” one said.

  I grinned back.

  After climbing the stairs, I pressed the bell despite owning a key.

  My mom opened the door and stepped out of the way for me to enter.

  She hugged me. “Darling, I’m so glad you came.”

  “I made you this,” I said, setting the coffee table down in the hallway.

  “Oh, it’s lovely. You made that?” Her eyes shone with admiration at the oval-shaped mahogany table. It was one of the many pieces I’d made in prison. Even though the officers had taken almost everything I made, I’d managed to keep the best one for my mother.

  I nodded.

  “You’re such a clever boy, my darling. Come on. Let’s get you a nice cold beer.”