Then he asked, "Is this a bad thing?"
"I don"t know," I began, watching him closely then whispered, "Is it?"
He stared at me, eyes widening in unconcealed disbelief. Then, quick as a flash, both of his arms were super tight around me even as he pressed his head back into the pillows and roared with laughter. About two seconds into his hilarity, he rolled us both, losing our connection as he did but settling with his weight on me, his hips between my legs and his laughter sounding against the skin of my neck where he shoved his face.
"Brock," I wheezed, "I... can"t..." he lifted his head and looked down at me, smiling huge as he planted one forearm in the bed taking his weight off me and curled his other hand around my neck right under my jaw. "Breathe," I finished.
His thumb stroked my jaw as he kept smiling down at me but he didn"t say a word.
"Um... I think I should get up and "
"Yeah, babe, you can get up in a second," he interrupted me. "But first, let"s get somethin"
straight, all right?"
I held his eyes and bit my lip.
He looked at my mouth and pressed his lips together as his eyes danced.
Then he unpressed them to say, "I intend to spend a lot of time doin" just what we did adding variations, positions, different locations and I"m gonna be creative."
Oh my.
I felt the walls of my womb contract.
He went on. "You ever," he dipped his face close, mouth and eyes still smiling, "ever lock onto your control while we"re enjoyin" each other, I"ll know one thing. And that is, I"m not doin" it right."
Oh my.
"Brock " I whispered but stopped when his face dipped even closer.
"Baby, that was f.u.c.kin" phenomenal. Nothin" you did, not one thing, I didn"t like and most of it I f.u.c.kin" loved. Mark this, sweetness, I like it wild and you... were... wild and I loved every f.u.c.kin" minute of it. I do not know what the other men you took to your bed taught you but whatever it was, it was f.u.c.ked. Lose that ghost in your eyes, Tess, because, baby, you"re a G.o.dd.a.m.ned natural."
Because his words made that warm gushiness invade my insides, I lifted my hand to his neck then slid it into his hair and then I lifted my head as I pulled his down to me, my head tilted, his slanted and I kissed him, wet and hopefully sweet then he gave me his weight as his arms wrapped back around me, he rolled me again to the top and he took over the kiss and his was also wet, his was deep and his was definitely sweet.
He broke the kiss but not the connection of our mouths so his lips moved against mine when he whispered, "Totally a natural."
I smiled against his mouth and into his eyes.
Brock smiled back the same way.
Then he muttered, "Shower," to which I did a full body tremble right on top of him.
He felt it and I watched close up as his smile got lazy.
Then he hauled us both out of bed, out of the room, into the bathroom and then into the shower.
After that, I made him coffee and toast and then later made out with him on my doorstep in full view of a waking neighborhood, my arms around his shoulders, my body pressed deep, our tongues tangled, his arms were tight around me with one hand carrying coffee in a travel mug and the fingers of his other hand holding a half eaten slice of toast.
Then he lifted his head, looked in my eyes and whispered, "I"ll text you the address to my place. Come prepared to spend the night. I"m doin" dinner."
"All right," I whispered back. "But I"m doing dessert."
His mouth twitched before he agreed, "You got it, sweetness. Now let me go before I do something we"ll both get arrested for like throw you on the lawn and give your neighbors a show."
I let him go.
He chuckled low, tipped his chin up at me, turned and jogged down to his pickup at the same time taking a bite of toast.
Then I watched him drive away and I didn"t give one s.h.i.t that I should have played it cool and walked right into my house and shut my door. I stood there and watched until I couldn"t see his truck anymore.
Only then did I go in.
Then I turned on my music and I didn"t turn on Fiona Apple.
I was an equal opportunity music lover and whatever struck my fancy normally didn"t unstrike it. So, considering "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" and "In America" were kicka.s.s songs, I owned the Charlie Daniels Super Hits CD.
And that was what I listened to while I got ready to face the day.
I couldn"t say it was all my gig but I sang "The Devil..." and "In America" out loud and one could not say "The South"s Gonna Do It Again" was not the s.h.i.t.
And dressed and ready to go forth and bake cakes, I got in my car thinking that was the best morning of my whole...
f.u.c.king...
Life.
Chapter Nine.
Dinner at Brock"s
I was sitting in my car looking up at the apartment building, scanning the numbers on the doors, looking for number sixteen.
Brock"s apartment.
I was trying really hard not to make a judgment about the state of his apartment complex, if one could call it that.
It was off the one-way section of Lincoln just up from Speer and perpendicular to the road.
There was a small spread of tarmac in front of a very deep, long two-story building, eight apartments on bottom, eight on top. The doors faced an exposed walkway. The stairs leading up to the top level on the ends of either side were iron, rusting and looked more than a little scary. And the two padlocked sheds off the parking lot, one smaller one with the stenciled word, "Laundry" and the other one bigger and maybe not too intelligently having the stenciled word, "Storage" on it did nothing for the feel of the place.
Sometime in the summer, someone clearly made an effort however they also just as clearly got sidetracked. In Denver, if you planted flowers, in the arid climate you needed to tend them and this tending mostly had to do with adding copious amounts of water but it also didn"t hurt to pull weeds. Now it was a still warm mid-October and in the two half barrels that flanked the short entry from Lincoln to the building and the four that "decorated" the top and foot of both stairwells had a riot of a green, healthy weeds, an equal riot of brown dead bits and some straggly, weak petunia blossoms which had obviously struggled valiantly against the odds but clearly should be put out of their misery and not only because autumn had settled on the Rocky Mountains.
Oh well, whatever. He was a man. A single man. A single man with a Harley Fat Boy and a beat up pickup truck that Martha was right about, it needed to be traded up and that trade up should have happened around a decade ago. This wasn"t a big surprise and, truthfully, I might be concerned if he had a picture perfect house in a suburb that looked like Ada haunted the place.
That would be bad.
I was turning to gather my overnight case, purse and the white bag with the robin"s egg blue ink stamp of hummingbirds and hibiscus blossoms around the words, "Tessa"s Cakes"
when my phone rang.
It was probably Brock though why I thought this, I didn"t know. He said be there at six and although I took time out for my kick-boxing cla.s.s and extended that with a side trip to the mall, I still left the bakery early to go home and get ready. The kids that worked for me were good and the shelves, displays and cake stands were stocked with plenty of goodies to see them through so I didn"t have a problem doing this and did it often. So it was now two to six.
I wasn"t late. I was actually, if you got down to it, early.
Maybe there was a change of plans. In the four months we were seeing each other, this happened. Not regularly, Brock didn"t usually miss seeing me and if he had to change plans, it usually meant he had to see me later or leave early but it was rare he"d cancel.
In fact, thinking about it, I didn"t recall that ever happening.
Therefore, curious, I pulled out my phone and saw it said "Unknown Caller".
I touched the screen as I felt my brows draw together, put it to my ear and greeted, "h.e.l.lo."
"Yo, b.i.t.c.h. You got Elvira."
I blinked at my dashboard.
Then I said, "Uh... hey."
"Uh... hey right back at "cha. Listen, your homegirl gave me your number "cause I called her "cause Gwen and me were doin" a little lookin" around in Cherry Creek durin" my extended lunch break and we saw you in the lingerie section of Nordstrom"s."
"Oh," I replied. "Okay."
"So?" she asked and I felt my brows draw together again when she said no more.
"So?" I asked back.
"So, what gives?"
"What gives?"
"Yeah, what gives? You were drinkin" cosmos with us in Stepford country when we were talkin" "bout your bad news boy and I do not think it bodes well two days later that you"re in the lingerie section of Nordstrom"s," she stated then announced, "This here"s a phone intervention."
"A phone intervention?"
"A phone intervention. See, I work for Hawk Delgado and Hawk"s Gwen"s man which, incidentally, is why I"m allowed to take extended lunch breaks in the lingerie section of Nordstrom"s with the company credit card. But, anyway, Gwen pumped Hawk for intel about your bad news boy and so did I and we put our heads together. Hawk... well, he says your boy is bad news, not that we didn"t know that already. But Hawk agreeing, considering he"s Hawk, confirms it."
d.a.m.n it all to h.e.l.l.
It was only me who could run into a well-intentioned but nosy, inappropriately meddling and slightly frightening black woman at a really bad baby shower and it was only Martha who would give her her number and then, in turn, give her mine.
"Elvira, I... well, thank you for... I mean, I don"t really know you but thanks for looking out for me but it"s unnecessary. It"s all good."
"Just you sayin" that means it"s all bad. We"ve decided its cosmos at Gwen"s. Trace and Cam are in and so is Martha. Tonight. Eight o"clock. Don"t worry about eatin" "cause I"m doin" boards."
"I can"t make it because I"m having dinner with Brock."
This was met with a moment of silence then a muttered, "Oh boy."
I looked through the windshield and up to the top floor and saw it. Apartment sixteen, on the end next to some tall, bushy pine trees that meant if he had side windows, those trees would block out the light.
Then I pulled in a light breath.
Then I looked at my dashboard and whispered, "I left my husband the day after he raped me." I heard her suck in breath and hers wasn"t light. "This was after eight years of a not great marriage then two years of him hitting me, not regular, but when he did it, he did it hard. This came out during the questioning at the Station and Brock was observing. When he heard me say I"d been raped, he threw a chair. I heard it. I heard the crash. He threw a chair and they had to drag him out so he wouldn"t interrupt the questioning to get to me."
Elvira, for once, was silent.
I, for once, was not.
"His sister was raped as was an old girlfriend. His father jacked his mother around and he a.s.sumed the role of man of the house at seven years old. When a woman means something to him, he takes care of her. He told me this and I believe him. I mean something to him. I don"t know what you"ve heard or who this Hawk guy is but I know who Brock is to me. Now I"d love to have cosmos with you and the girls. But I won"t listen to anyone trash talking Brock because he also means something to me and only he and I know what"s going on between us and all that other s.h.i.t, well, Elvira, it just doesn"t matter."
She, again, was silent.
I, again, was not.
"Honey, you"re the third person in six years I told that to. Martha just found out last night.
Brock heard me say it and he"s unfortunately got experience with this kind of thing and he knew I"d buried it and he"s helping me to move on from it. This is not a man you don"t trust.
He has my back, he has my front and he"s handling me with care. Trust me."
"All right, girl," she whispered.
"And thank you again for being cool. Any other time with any other guy when all this other stuff isn"t happening, I"d appreciate it. But this isn"t what it seems, it"s something a whole lot different."
"Okay," she said quietly.
"Okay," I whispered.
"We didn"t mean " she started but I quickly cut her off.
"I know you didn"t, honey."
"I won"t say anything to them about, you know," she a.s.sured me and I closed my eyes.
Then I opened them and told her, "You don"t have to keep this secret. I did for too long. I didn"t do anything to be ashamed of so there"s no reason it shouldn"t be in the open."