“Shit, what do you keep in that damn thing, your kitchen
sink?” He held up his hand. “Never mind. I don’t really care. What the fuck do
you want, Lexi?”
She pulled a box out of her bag with one hand, and tossed
her ropes of hair over her shoulder with the other. “I need to give you this.
It’s from Britt.”
His pulse spiked. He bolted into an upright position. “From
Britt?”
Lexi giggled in a low and throaty tone. “Well, that sure
perked the dude up, eh?”
He reached for the box, cradling it in his hand with wonder.
His heart raced in anticipation. Diego couldn’t think of what Britt could be delivering
to him, and at this time of the night, at that. He studied the box. With its
plain cedar-hinged lid, it didn’t reveal even an inkling of Britt’s purpose.
Suspicion reared its ugly head.
“What, is this a cruel joke or something?” he asked, his voice
sounding surly to his own ears. “Is it going to explode in my face when I open
it?”
Lexi’s smile faded. She reached up and held his cheek in a
genuine, tender manner. Her sherry eyes searched his for understanding and
forgiveness. “No, honey, it’s not a joke. I promise you, you’ll love what’s
inside. In fact, it just might cause an…explosion later. So as soon as I leave,
take a good long look. But before I go, I want to say something to you. I’m
sorry. Real sorry. I mistrusted you from the get-go without even giving you a
chance, and I tried my damnedest to manipulate her away from you. It was wrong.
I was wrong, and I hope you can forgive me some day.”
Diego shook the surprise from his brain. “Whoa. Wasn’t
expecting that.”
“I know.” A mischievous smile curved her full lips. “And it
was damn fun seeing the shock jolt in your gorgeous eyes.”
“I…goddamn, anyone ever tell you you’re a fucking cyclone?”
“All the dang time.” She patted his cheek, stood and
strolled to the door. With her hand on the knob, she glanced at him over her
shoulder and winked. “Have at her, you hoodlum biker dude, you.” She pulled the
door open.
He halted her steps with, “Lexi?”
“Yes?”
“I admire your loyalty to her, and I’m glad she has a friend
like you. So I guess you’re forgiven.”
He thought he saw the faintest glitter of a tear in one eye.
“Thank you. I was very wrong about you. You’re a good man.”
“I appreciate that. And maybe I was wrong about you too.”
“Maybe.” She winked again and shrugged. “Maybe not.”
He chuckled, continuing to hold the box. “I still don’t know
what this is all about.”
“You will, Diego. You will. Just open it and you’ll start to
understand.” She slipped out into the night as quickly as she’d blown in.
If it hadn’t been for the hard wood of the box in his hand, he’d
have thought what just happened had been a dream. His pulse thrummed while his
stomach knotted with a jumble of excitement and dread. He leaned back into the
couch cushions and stared at the box. But curiosity got the better of him.
He lifted the lid, the strong scents of cedar and roses
filling his nostrils. He gazed down at the contents in puzzlement. With its
switches and small antenna, the white, oblong contraption appeared to be a
remote control of some sort. It sat on a bed of pink rose petals, and the
subtle message of that brought an image of her to mind. Not a photo, but a real
image of her bound while lying on pink rose petals right where his feet rested
at this moment, so pretty and breathtaking, so soft and pliable in his hands.
He shook the fantasy from his head and studied the box. A
folded piece of paper peeked from behind a slot in the lid. He drew it out, his
heart skipping a beat when he saw his name scrawled on the outside in the very
same feminine script he’d seen on the envelope of photos.
Britt’s sexy handwriting.
Lifting it, he waved the paper beneath his nose and inhaled.
He smiled. It pleased him that she’d thought to add that perfumed touch of
herself to the correspondence. He drew in the aroma, starved for her unique
scent. Ah, it filled his lungs and conjured more torturing thoughts of her, the
throaty sounds she’d made when she’d reached climax, the pursing of her pink,
plump lips, the musky fragrance and flavor of her sex.
On an exhale, he groaned, “Okay, get a hold of yourself,
Mansini.”
He fidgeted, trying to readjust his pants against the
thickening of his cock.
With his hands shaking, he didn’t delay any further. He
unfolded the paper and read the note.
Diego,
I’m so sorry. It seems I’ve been a very bad girl and am
deserving of a spanking. Can you ever forgive me? If so, please go to Club
Swank on the north side of Tampa at nine thirty tonight. Bring the remote with
you. I’ll be waiting. Waiting to whisper “Pink” in your ear.
Love,
Britt
Diego shot to his feet. “Holy son of a bitch.” A thrill of
anticipation ripped through his loins. Just looking at her handwriting and
smelling her perfume had started his cock to throbbing, but her
words…motherfucker, she may as well have been sucking him off.
He glanced at the clock. It read nine ten. A curse of alarm
tumbled from his mouth. He raced to the shower, adjusted it to ice-cold,
stepped in and soaped himself up.
Almost time to finish what he’d started. And yet he knew
he’d never be done with Britt Malone.
Britt sat at the bar and glanced at her watch for the
fiftieth time. Nine forty-five. Her heart sank. He wasn’t coming. She’d pushed
him to the limit with her mistrust. She deserved to be stood up.
Resigned to her fate and prepared to drown herself in her
tears and a Long Island Tea, she slid her glass across to the bartender.
“Another one, please.”
He nodded and went to work on preparing her drink.
“I prefer to make love to a woman who’s slightly buzzing
rather than hanging her head over the toilet all night.” The deep, raspy voice
slithered into her ear and went straight for the punch, right down to her core.
Her clitoris throbbed against the thin strip of her G-string. She couldn’t see
him yet since he stood behind her, but she could sense him, the warmth of his
big body, his crackling aura.
“Diego.” Her voice came out breathy, almost climactic, as if
by that one sentence he’d made her come.
“Hi, babe.” The scent of spicy aftershave and soap filled
her nostrils a second before he slid onto the barstool at her right. To the
bartender he said, “Whatever you got on tap, please.”
She flicked a sidelong look at him. He wore crisp jeans and
a brown shirt the very shade of his eyes. Short-sleeved and ribbed, it hugged
his sculpted body and made her hands flex with the urge to touch him. It was
the first time she’d seen him in anything but a t-shirt, leather jacket or bare
skin. She loved the rougher Diego, but this version of him gave her a thrill
she hadn’t expected. Her gaze moved upward. She studied his strong profile, the
somewhat crooked nose, the full lips and long hair.
So hot and handsome. She yearned to crawl right over on top
of him and kiss him silly.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
“Oh, I’m going to come all right.” He shifted his gaze to
her, the look smacking of a certain arrogance that gave her a decided charge.
“I’ve been without you for a whole damned week,” he snarled, glancing away
again, “and if my balls get any bluer, I’m going to be a big ink spot on the
fucking map. In fact, I think my safe word should be ‘blue’.”
She laughed. He didn’t have to tell her he teetered on the
edge of restraint. It had been apparent from the moment she’d sensed his
presence. She wouldn’t begrudge him that either. She deserved his wrath and
would take it until he’d unloaded all the resentment on her.
She grinned.
In
her.
“I’m sorry, Diego. I screwed up. Really huge.” She twisted
the barstool around and faced him. Britt wore a miniskirt and she made sure her
bare legs touched his clothed ones. Soft rock music played on the overhead
speakers. The volume on the TV behind the bar had been turned down, but old
punk-rock videos played on the screen.
The bartender set their drinks down. She picked hers up,
sipped as she spoke. “I know you didn’t enter the photos in the contest—well I
know it now, anyway. Lexi found out for me. She got a friend to hack into the
magazine’s list of entries. Your name was nowhere to be seen.”
“Hm.” He nodded, as if to ask, “And when are you going to
tell me something I don’t already know?”
Determined, she went on despite the jumping nerves in her
gut. “I hope you can forgive me for not trusting you, for suspecting you of
such a despicable thing. It’s just at first I didn’t know you that well. All I
got from you were these dark, mysterious vibes and then I had both Doris and
Lexi’s influence. And then that picture I found didn’t help.”
“Yes.” He stroked his goatee and nodded, his lips compressed
in a tight frown. “Vibes from a hooligan, a goon, a criminal. I can understand
that.”
She sighed.
He stared straight ahead, his gaze fixed on the television,
and drank his beer with indifference.
“Please, Diego, will you at least look at me?”
He swiveled his head back toward her. His eyes blazed with a
mixture of rage and pain. It tore at her heart, and she recalled the vulnerable
side of him, the side she’d seen at his son’s graveside. This was a tortured
man, but a good man. A man she’d almost let walk right out of her life. She’d
do anything to repair the damage she’d done.
Anything.
“I almost didn’t come. Got my shower, got dressed and then I
thought, what the fuck am I doing?” His jaw clenched. His eyes searched hers
and she fell in love all over again. “But you’re in my blood, Britt. I could no
more
not
come to see you than I could stop breathing. And that pisses me
the hell off.”
“I’m sorry. The last thing I want is for you to be mad at
yourself because of me.”
“I’m embarrassed to admit it, but do you want to know what
I’m really guilty of? Of behaving like some stupid-assed, wet-dream-ridden kid.
I became obsessed by a gorgeous woman in all that kink—in pictures given to me
by mistake.”
“No, Diego, no.” She reached for his hand and placed his
palm on her cheek. Even though she did it for him, it felt so damn good to have
him touching her again. “You did nothing wrong. Nothing. I should have been
flattered by your infatuation. I should have trusted you more. I’m the wrong
one, and I can’t say I’m sorry enough. But I still don’t understand how the
picture ended up in your desk. I know there’s a perfectly good explanation, but
I’m just curious…”
He took a long swallow of his beer, set it down and held her
gaze. “Pure accident, same as how I ended up with them in the first place. One
of your negatives must’ve fallen out on my desk and somehow ended up shuffled
back in with the copies of my pictures that I gave to Carolyn. She got doubles
made from the negatives. Yours—luckily just that one pose—came back in the
packet.”
She choked on her drink, speaking through coughs. “C-Carolyn
saw it?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, babe, I didn’t know it got mixed in there,
but I take responsibility for my negligence in it ending up in her packet. She
brought it to me that night she showed up. I didn’t even know until then. But
it’s still my fault. You have every right to be pissed and never speak to me
again.”
Britt rubbed at the condensation on her cocktail glass and
continued to hold his cheek with the other hand. “No, I… Wow. It’s hard to
swallow and kind of humiliating, but it does corroborate Lexi’s claim that you
had nothing to do with it. Which I believe with my whole heart and soul.”
His hand curled around the back of her neck. He drew her
close so their noses were just two inches apart. By that one little move, hope
flourished in her chest. “So where do we go from here? Why did you ask me to
come here? Why are you torturing me like this?”
“Because if you’ll forgive me and give me another chance, I
want to show you just how sorry I am. I want to tell you.”
A dark eyebrow winged up. “Really? Show and tell, huh?”
She took a long drink of her cocktail, held the liquid in
her mouth until it warmed, swallowed. She had to get her nerve up for what she
was about to blurt out. The liquid settled balmy in her belly. Or could it be
the heat from his gaze making her feel all fuzzy inside?
“Yes, but let me tell first before we get into the showing
part. I…” Her tongue tangled inside her mouth. She glanced away, but he drew
her eyes back to his by hooking a finger under her chin and turning her face
toward him.
“You what?”
“I…” She swallowed the knot of tension clogging her
windpipe. “I know I didn’t behave much like it, especially toward the end, but
I…I’ve fallen in love with you.” Once the words were out, her bravery
strengthened. “I love you, Diego. I think I’ve loved you since you first
knocked me off my feet in the drugstore. Right after you returned the pictures
to Lexi.”
His hand fell away from her. She struggled to ward off the
chill. His face went pale, almost pasty. “Y-you love me?”
The look of horror on his face told her she’d made a
terrible mistake. Vulnerable and saddened by it, she murmured, “Yes. Yes I do.”
He shot to his feet. “Do you realize what you’ve just done?”
Britt’s mind scanned and searched, but for the life of her
she couldn’t come up with any reason why her words of love would make him react
with such panic. Except that he didn’t love her back and he felt she’d just
done the equivalent of tightening a noose around his neck.
“Uh, no. What have I just done?”
He stood with his hands dangling at his sides, as if he
didn’t know what to do with them. “There’s no turning back.”
“Turning back?” She started to reach out to him, but changed
her mind. Her stomach kept getting tighter, sicker. “Diego, please tell me
what’s wrong.”
He reached for her hand and yanked. She tumbled from the
barstool and into his arms. Closing her eyes tight, she inhaled his earthy
scent and slid her arms around his waist. Still unsure of his mood, Britt
didn’t know how long this would last, so she took while she could.
She recognized a slow classic-rock song from his collection
when it started to blare from the overhead speakers. Patrons trickled onto the
dance floor, merging together by pairs, hands racing over bare skin, bodies
becoming one. Diego pulled her closer, his arms tightening around her so that
her body molded to his. Her breasts pressed into his hard chest, while the tube
of his soft manhood snuggled against her abdomen.
“Britt, ah Britt,” he rasped in her ear. She shivered,
savoring his warmness, waiting for his next words. “If you really mean that—
really
mean it—then there’s no turning back. You’ve just bound yourself to me
forever.”
Ah-ha, she understood his panic now. He warned her that if
she dared to cross the line he’d drawn, he’d never let her return without him.
He’d never let her go. The realization of it sent her soaring on a wave of
giddiness. She buried her face in the curve of his neck and pressed her lips to
his warm skin. His pulse leaped against her mouth. She tasted the delicious,
salty flavor she’d grown to love, and knew she could never be without it,
without him, again.
She pulled back, capturing his gaze with hers. “I do mean
it. I mean it with every beat of my heart. I was miserable without you, and
even before I knew for sure you weren’t the one responsible for the magazine
pictures, I still loved you, and I no longer cared what you’d done. Oh, I
thought I knew why you’d done it, so I understood it. In fact, I even started
to be glad I’d helped, you know, as if something positive had come out of
posing for those kinky pictures.”
“Helped?”
“Yes, I know it turned out you didn’t enter them in the
contest, so it’s a moot point, but when I thought you had, I started to assume
you’d done it to make money for Tyler’s expenses or Carolyn’s medical bills.
And I couldn’t blame you, because I think I would have done the same thing if I
had a…a…”
“A son?”
“Yes,” she whispered, taking his face in her hands, boring
her gaze into his. She shook his head gently, her words strong and resolute.
“And I’m so sorry about that, about him. It tore me up to see you there at his
graveside, to see the pain and courage and all that selfless love. I just
didn’t know
how
to go about reaching out to you,
when
to do it,
if I should impose myself on you after not trusting you like that. I didn’t
want to interfere, and I was so afraid of you rejecting me.”
“I could never reject you, baby. Never.”
She smiled, pleased by his words. “Do you know how much I
admire you for what you did for Carolyn, and for being such a good daddy to
your son? Oh Diego,” she murmured, ignoring the occasional brush of a waitress
passing by or patrons sidling up to the bar, “I want to be there for you when
the pain becomes unbearable. I want to grow to love and know your son too. I
want the chance to love you and to make you happy.”
“With another son?” His eyes glowed with hope and happiness.
“Yes.” She nodded, smiled, kissed him and let a tear fall
down her cheek. “Yes, oh yes.”
She didn’t think her heart could take any more emotion, and
yet she longed to pour it all out to him, and to hear everything he chose to
unlock from his soul.
“Ah, Britt,” he choked out, his arms drawing her closer,
“that is the single most beautiful thing any person in this world has ever said
to me, to want to grow to love Tyler, and to give me another son.”
She basked in the strength of his embrace. Her palms
explored his long, hard back while her eyes searched his. “It’s true
because…because he’s a part of you, the man I love.”
At that poignant moment, something changed in him. His eyes softened,
and she could swear the volatile energy she could always sense inside his
personal space had calmed. His big, muscle-packed body relaxed. She sensed the
heavy weight being lifted from his shoulders, burdens held in check for years
now released from his soul.
He raced a hand down her arm and twined his fingers with
hers. It felt so right, so comforting. He dug in his pocket, pulled out a few
bills and tossed them onto the bar.
Drawing her toward the dance floor, he said in a deep, sexy
tone, “Dance with me, doll.”
With his free hand tucked into his pants pocket, he took his
time escorting her through the swaying couples to a spot along the far mirrored
wall. Diego stopped and spun her around to face him. He combed his fingers into
the hair below her temple and petted her cheek with the pad of his thumb. His
gaze moved around her face in a warm caress, touching and exploring, as if he
yearned to etch every line and curve on his brain.
“Come to me.” He held out his arms and she settled against
the wall of his chest with a sigh. The music played as their bodies started to
move as one. Multicolored club lights blinked in time with the slow beat.
Occasional rounds of laughter could be heard coming from an area beyond the bar
where men joked and shot pool. Fresh air burst from the ceiling grates, cooling
the crowded dance floor.