Chapter 20
Twenty
Live, laugh, and don’t be a stupid fuck.
—Inspirational quotes to live by
Romeo
“You’re going to make a move on that, right?”
I looked at Mable brushing out Shadow and shook my head. “No.”
“What?” Apollo’s incredulous words as he loaded his belongings into his rental car’s trunk had me turning to survey him.
“Why do you sound so shocked right now?” I asked.
“Because I am,” he admitted. “You’re telling me that you’re not going to pursue what you clearly can see is the best thing that’s ever happened to you?”
I grunted.
“Romeo, seriously.” Apollo closed his trunk and crossed his arms over his chest. “She’s literally everything you could ever want in a woman. She adores you. Everyone can see that you adore her right back. Why are you hesitating?”
I snorted sardonically. “And what? Tell her nothing about the first three and a half decades of my life?”
Apollo punched me in the shoulder. “No one said you couldn’t give her something.”
I swallowed past the bad taste in my mouth. “She deserves it all from me. And I can’t give her that. Her family has done nothing but lie to her for her entire life. What kind of person would I be if I continued that trend?”
Apollo sighed. “When you put it like that…”
“I’m right, and I know I’m right,” I said. “I can be a great friend to her, though.”
“A friend that wants to fuck her brains out. A friend that’ll likely snap the moment that it gets too much. Then feel bad because you’ll have slept with her, liked it, but won’t pursue it because of some misguided idea that you have to tell her everything.”
I sighed. “I won’t fuck this up, Apollo.”
“Sure,” he scoffed.
I watched him round the car and then fall inside. Only when the vehicle was started and the window was rolled down did he add a parting comment.
“But think about this,” he suggested as he started to back out.
“What kind of person does that make you to deny her you? It’s clear that she has feelings for you.
It’s also clear that you care about her.
You’re not a bad person, Romeo. Just because you fucked up once, doesn’t mean that you should pay for that the rest of your life.
You both can live long, happy lives with each other while keeping this one secret. ”
He was right.
But I still couldn’t do it to her.
“Drive safely, Apollo,” I murmured. “And give my sister a kiss for me.”
Apollo winked. “I’ll do more than that.”
I had a ball of snow aiming toward his face for that comment.
He had the window mostly rolled up, but still a little bit got inside.
Apollo laughed as he continued to back up.
He flipped me off, then whipped the vehicle around and took off like there wasn’t six inches of snow on the ground.
“I can do it,” I said to myself as I saw Mable sneak Shadow a second apple. “This will all work out just fine.”
Those were famous last words.
I couldn’t do it.
I didn’t do it.
In fact, it really was my subconscious at first doing all the doing.
I was sleeping rather soundly for the first time in what felt like forever.
I woke to the twist of a bottom against the curve of my lap.
And like it always did, my dick took notice the first thing in the morning.
At first, I wasn’t quite conscious of what I was doing.
Then, when I was conscious of what I was doing, I couldn’t stop myself from giving one last grind of my hips against hers.
Which was what woke her up.
“Romeo?”
Just that voice was enough to do me in.
Her husky, breathy whisper of my name was all it took to have me making decisions that I swore I wouldn’t make.
“Mable,” I whispered.
“What are you…” She trailed off when she realized the compromising position we were in.
“I’m sorry,” I croaked as I went to push away. “I’ll get it under control.”
There was a hesitation there before she replied with, “Why?”
Why indeed?
“Mable…”
Then, my brave girl twisted so that she was facing me.
I got to gaze into her sleepy eyes, which was why her question took me off guard at first, and I blurted out my real answer before I could get a handle on my tongue.
“I want this. I want you.” She filleted me with her gaze. “Do you not feel the same way?”
I barely contained the snort that wanted to escape from my lips. “Don’t play dumb with me, Mable Louise. Only an idiot wouldn’t feel the same way.”
She surprised me by climbing on top of me, her legs straddling my waist, and leaning forward. “Then you like me?”
I couldn’t stop myself from bringing up my hand and curling her wild hair behind her ear. “I more than like you, Mable.”
She studied my face for a long moment before saying, “Then what are we waiting for?”
What were we waiting for?
I was quickly forgetting everything that I’d reminded myself over and over to remember when it came to her. She was a good woman. She deserved the god’s honest truth.
And I couldn’t give that to her.
“I…”
Before I could say a word, she leaned forward and gently placed her lips on mine.
It was a very chaste kiss.
There wasn’t anything too seductive about it.
Just a press of her lips against mine. Hesitant. Testing.
And I spiraled.
Every piece of me that knew this was wrong took a back burner to the here and now.
To the way she felt straddling my hips. To the way her pussy felt pressed against my hard cock. To the way her breasts pressed against my chest as she leaned forward, her hair curtaining both of our faces.
I couldn’t have come up with the moral high ground if I tried.
Not when every piece of me was screaming to pull her to me and show her what a real kiss should feel like.
Not any of that pecking bullshit.
No, I wanted her mouth on mine. Her tongue dancing with mine. I wanted to breathe in the air she was exhaling.
I wanted…
It was like she read my thoughts, because she pressed forward again, grabbing my face in both of her tiny hands, and kissed me. For real this time.
She was the aggressor at first, licking and sucking, sipping at my mouth with lots of tiny kisses in between caresses of our tongues.
Then my control snapped.
My hands went to the back of her head, holding her to me, as I deepened the kiss, showing her exactly what I wanted from her.
She moaned, her hips pressing down harder against my cock.
I twisted us so that she was underneath me, twisting my hips so that I could fall between her spread thighs, and deepened the kiss until we were both breathless.
Her fingers tightened, pulling the strands of my hair and bringing me back to reality.
I pulled away at the hint of pain, horror washing over me at what I was about to do.
She held on tight, her fingers in my hair not giving me an inch.
“No, Romeo,” she begged. “Come back.”
I stilled and stared into her eyes, every single ounce of morality warring in my body with the need to take her. To possess her. To make her mine.
“You deserve the world, baby.”
She looked deeply into my eyes before saying, “You’ve become my world, Meo.”
Her words set off a chain of events inside me. I’d been trying to rebuild those walls, to remind myself that she didn’t deserve the kind of crap that I was bringing to the table.
But she was battering those walls down just as fast as I could build them.
“There are things that I can’t tell you, Mable.”
“Are those things like you’re a rapist?”
I recoiled, the bite of pain as her hands stayed glued to my hair not enough to stop the horror. “Absolutely not.”
“Did you kill someone?”
I remained silent.
I might not say the words, but I wouldn’t out-and-out lie to her.
The guy that I’d beaten to within an inch of his life had died while I was in prison.
Not to mention I’d killed a few more while I was on the inside.
“Did this person deserve to be killed?”
I thought back to the man who’d stolen my freedom.
Had he deserved it?
Yes.
He’d been a terror to the people in my neighborhood growing up. Passing out drugs to anyone who wanted them, let that be man, woman, or child. Young or old. Everyone got something from him if they showed interest.
Some even that didn’t.
And that wasn’t including the stranglehold he had on the members of my community, scaring them into doing his bidding whether they wanted to or not.
I’d spent years trying to extricate him from my life. Just as I’d pry one claw loose, he’d hook another one in somewhere else.
That somewhere else being my ex-wife.
She unthreaded one hand from my hair and cupped my jaw over my beard. “Not a good person.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Have you stolen from the elderly?”
I frowned. “No. Why would I?”
“Have you beaten any dogs?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No, never.”
“Killed any cats?”
One small shake of my head.
“Hurt any women and small children?”
Again with the single shake of my head.
“Don’t tell me that one thing,” she whispered. “Keep that part of you separate if you feel like you need to. But give me everything else.”
She wasn’t real.
There was no woman alive who wouldn’t demand answers.
At least, I thought that.
The universe proved me wrong when she widened her thighs and my lower half sank even deeper into the curve of her hips.
That’s about the time when all my hesitations left me. I couldn’t focus on anything but the taste of her. The smell of her. The feel of her.
Her hands seemed to be everywhere, too. Exploring my neck and chest. The dips at my hips. The wide span of my shoulder blades.
There wasn’t a single place that her hand hadn’t touched as I explored her mouth. Then her neck. The valley between her breasts.
She paused in touching me to rip her nightgown off over her head.
That damn nightgown.
It’d been taunting me for a week straight.
We’d slept in the same bed since we’d found out about her sister.
It’d been the best kind of torture seeing her walking to bed wearing the white satin nightgown that covered her from neck to ankles.
But what it was concealing…
“Fuck,” I growled as I took her in.
She had the perfect breasts. Small and perky, the perfect handful. She had dusky-brown nipples, and they were peaked as they waited for my touch.