I cover my mouth at the sight of a man with slicked back hair and a stately black suit standing alone beneath the Torii. “Deacon!” I scream, unable to contain my excitement. His eyes are glued on me as I leave Sato’s side and rush up the steps to greet him. All eyes are on us as he takes my hand, bowing to kiss the tips of my fingers.
“Your majesty,” he teases with a wink and smirk. “I’ve missed the fuck out of you, Lotus.”
I no longer care about my homeland’s customs or traditions as I wrap my arms around his body and close my eyes. “My grandmother died,” I whisper as my head lays against his chest. “And you shouldn’t be here with the enemy.” I blink to his denim-kissed blues, and he knows I lied about Durante Costa. “Does he believe it?”
“Yes,” he replies, offering me his arm as Sato strides toward us. “Shall I escort you, or do you need to be elsewhere?”
“The only place I need to be is with you.”
“Where would you like me, Ms. Nakamura?” Sato asks, deferring to Deacon’s obvious lead.
“On the other side of me,” I inform, scanning over the hundreds of people gathering for the funeral. “Reo Sato, this is Deacon Cruz.”
“Sato?” he asks, curiously.
“We’ll discuss it later,” I whisper. “After this nightmare.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Deacon,” Sato says, extending his hand. “You are Saintly.”
What does Reo Sato know about Saint Cruz?
They shake hands as Deacon leans into the taller Sato and warns, “If you allow her to be hurt, I will do the same to you.” With a hand on Sato’s shoulder, he fakes a smile, acting like old friends as the threat is met with a chuckle by Sato.
“I’ll dream of that pleasure.”
Deacon nods, unfazed. “Fair enough.”
I dart my eyes between the two, not expecting any incidents, especially from my two escorts. “I should go inside.”
The funeral and cremation is a lovely farewell but horrendously long. We say goodbye to everyone, but I am in desperate need of a nap. We return to the palace, but I don’t bother to eat dinner or remove any clothing. I lay down on the chaise and pass out until well after midnight when someone is demanding to be fed.
I undo the sash of the kimono, and it falls loosely open as I rush to the servant’s kitchen in my west wing of the house. My grandfather resides on the eastern side because he likes the morning sun. I have the sunsets to myself.
Laughter pours from the room as I find Sato and Deacon sitting at the table with over half a dozen empty Kirin Ichiban beer bottles. It seems they’ve been swapping stories for hours, when I loudly announce, “I am hungry!”
“Sit, princess,” Deacon says as they both get up to craft my baby something to eat. Soon after, I have a cup of tea, water, and juice as I watch the men in awe, tag-teaming an impromptu fusion dinner of thinly sliced steak, vegetables, and noodles.
I have two gay guys in my palace cooking for me. And that wouldn’t be strange except one of those guys belongs to my husband.
Not that Deacon would ever cheat on Sal.
Certainly not.
Every move Sal makes is manipulated, orchestrated to the most exquisite detail, and then I realize, he played them both. Reo Sato was appointed by Masa, who Sal is close friends with, and Deacon is the Capo’s favorite puppet on a very short leash.
“Fucker,” I mutter as they set down the plates on the table. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What, baby?” Deacon asks.
“He sent you!”
“Of course he sent me,” he excuses as I seem to have forgotten that Deacon Cruz doesn’t have a mind of his own. He is a Sal-minion. Nothing more or less.
“Why didn’t he come?”
“Why would he?” Deacon argues, sitting across from me. “You are pregnant with another man’s baby.”
“He truly believes the lie?”
“Yes,” he says as Sato slides his lanky frame into the chair next to Deacon. “Sal thinks you and Durante are having a kid. You won this round, but don’t fuck it up.”
I played him.
“How did you know?”
“I doubted it from the beginning. You are so in love with Sal, and you wouldn’t have done that with Durante. You are less predictable than Sal, but still, you have a distinct pattern.”
“He doubts my love,” I whisper, staring at my plate. “He doubts me.”
“No, Iris,” Deacon says, gripping my fingers. “He is under an extreme amount of stress right now. I don’t think you understand. And as for doubting you, that is exactly what you want. You want to shake his ground because if he finds out the baby is his, all hell will break loose.”
“… How can I understand the stress he is under?” I scoot from the table to get up. “He never truly talks to me!”
“Don’t you dare leave,” he warns, not messing around. “Sit your ass down and eat, girl.”
31
Tangled in an Angel
His Ride
“It was the only way I could push him far enough away to do what I must do,” Iris says as we stroll the gardens the next day. “You cannot tell him, Deacon.”
“You want me to lie for you?”
“If this is what it takes to destroy Delarte Cristos, then please, keep lying.”
I light a smoke and lick my lips. “It may destroy him and me.”
“I’ll put it all back together again,” she swears, not understanding the gravity of what she is asking me to do. “I know you love him, but I must protect him.”
I shake my head at the insanity. “You want me to look the love of my life in the eye and tell him the baby in your belly belongs to another man.”
“I do,” she eagerly responds. “Because at the end of this, Cristos will no longer be a threat to any of us.”
We walk through the evergreens to her favorite spot—the waterfall. “I would have married you in a heartbeat, Iris.”
“I know, Deacon.”
“I would have given you everything I had and raised that baby like my own.”
Tears well in my eyes for all that we cannot see.
We are blind, bound into the fleeting flight, until a new clarity glides into view and our perspective shifts. We shoot the arrows, trying to hit the target and narrowing the scope, but all we see is the innocuous pinprick of blood on the skin.
A simple cut in the water as we tread to a different space only to realize we cut our limbs off to save our souls. Our spirits are too shattered, our eyes are too blind, and there is not enough time to rectify…there is not enough time to change.
And on the shore, we fear the fires burning in those woods. We feel the rain, hoping to extinguish the pain, but it is too late.
“Deacon,” she says, drawing my attention. “What are you thinking about?”
“The damage is already done.”
“It was done long before we were ever breathing,” she professes. And I know she is right. God, how I don’t want to know, but I do. We’re trapped by the insensitivities of the former generation, sculpting our shape into some form unable to fit amongst the current.
We’re awkward and sloppy and human.
“You should have just told me,” I callously reply. “I would have killed him for you.”
“What motivation do you have?”
“The same ones you do,” I acknowledge with a smirk. “The battles of you are the battles of me. The only difference is I know who first showed him how good winter was.”
“… Delarte?”
Crossing my arms over my chest, I nod. “I cannot forget that fact. He wouldn’t quite be the mess he is without the drugs.” With many reservations, I mutter, “I’ll agree to help you, on one condition.”
Her hand curves under my bicep. “I’ll do anything.”
“I want eggs.”
“I’m sure we have some in the kitchen,” she says, being hospitable. “I can have the chef…”
“No,” I interject, looking down at her confusion. “I want your eggs to have a baby of my own.”
“… You want a baby?”
“I don’t know if I do or not, but what I do know is I don’t have eggs. Give me the one thing I don’t have.”
She peers out to the water with a distraught expression as her hand lays on her belly. “I can’t give them to you right now.”
“I’ll take a promise.”
“I’ll do it within a year.”
“Fair enough,” I say, not knowing what I am going to do with them. That’s not the point of this exercise though. The point is to see how far she is willing to go. Telling a lie is one thing. Lies slip off everyone’s tongues daily. She is agreeing to have a child with me. “If I am going to harm Raniero like this, I need to be able to have at least one of you.”
“Deacon…this isn’t the end.”
“Yeah, baby girl, it is,” I confide the truth she fails to see. “We are never going to be able to go back to where we were before. Not ever. You inflicted scars on Sal that aren’t going to heal.”
“It was bad?”
“Did you think it would be easy? Did you think this would be fun?” I won’t beat around the bush with her or blow smoke up her ass. I’m not the guy to look her in the eye and tell her—it’s okay—when the whole fucking forest is full of zombies looking to feast. “What are you going to do when the truth comes out? Did you and Durante think about that? Muerte is going to be fucking pissed off, so you best have a shovel.”
“A shovel?”
“You’re going to need an underground escape route to get away from this one. You didn’t only sign Delarte Cristos’ death certificate; you signed your own. But you can’t see that. You won’t see that. All you can see is red, killing him, to make amends for shit that happened years ago. You are just like Sal and dammit you two deserve one another because you are both fucking blind as bats. All he sees is the big picture, and all you see is under the microscope. And both are flawed, distorting the reality of the present. You are pregnant with Sal Raniero’s child, he is your husband, and you should be with him.”
“He is off killing people, Cruz!”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” I shout as my wind and her water fuel the embers on our feet. “We are on death’s door, and you don’t even know. You haven’t the faintest clue.”
“Did you want me to stay at the chateau and bake cookies?”
“Fuck! Yes!” I yell. “Because do you know what Immortal will put on their table?” I light another smoke, angry with her, with him, and the situation. “You. They will put you on the table just like they did her.”
“… Who?”
I shake my head and look away. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Deacon,” she softly coaxes. “Who?”
“Jaid.”
His Butterfly
After spending the day at odds with Deacon, I have come to the conclusion that he has no desire to remedy my aching lust. He isn’t in Japan to fuck me, but to make my life a living hell. I have dinner alone in my room, and I am restless, pent-up with anxiety, and worry that I did the wrong damn thing. I want to call Sal, but he won’t answer.
I head to the kitchen for a cup of tea and note the corkscrew left on the counter. Deacon and Sato must be outside drinking. I’m somewhere between broken and ballsy as I open the side door to the courtyard. I tiptoe outside, but there are no signs of them. I walk to where the sidewalk ends and glance around the yard. I spot a light on in the shed.
Stepping into the dewy grass, I trod over to the building and hear voices—more than two. “You have to get these nice and tight. She’ll open right up for you.”
With wide eyes, I peek around the corner to Deacon covered in grease with Masa and Sato watching on like eager students. I back up and breathe a sigh of relief, fearing what acts I might witness.
Thank fuck.
“Do you boys commonly drink two hundred dollar bottles of wine while tearing down a motorcycle engine?”
Deacon grins—a genuine, loving smile that I haven’t seen since he arrived. He swaggers over and kisses me on the cheek, careful not to stain me. “I’m giving lessons and learning a few things myself.”
I smile as he welcomes me into the boy’s club. He pulls a stool out from the bench and eyes my belly before shaking his head.
“Not a good idea.” I giggle as he grabs a chair for me. “Thank you.”
“You want some water?”
I shake my head with a smile, unable to contain my joy for being allowed to stay. I clasp my hands around my belly and wait to see if they can continue in my presence. It’s important to know who I can be comfortable with, but Sato gives Deacon a disgruntled look and points over by a workbench. “There should be a footstool on the bottom shelf.”
Before Sato finishes talking, Deacon finds the worn, plastic thing and places it near my feet. I put my feet on it as he stays squatting and glances up to me. “Better?”
“I was never bad.”
“You’re pregnant.”
I blush at his pointing out the obvious as the boys busy themselves. I’m not sure why it matters that he is pampering me, but it does. Perhaps because I haven’t had the chance to do all of the things I had hoped to do. I didn’t think I wanted to be doted on, but the look of proudness in Deacon’s eyes as he cared for me made it all worth it. I’ll never have that from Sal during this pregnancy. I am in Japan; he is in Italy.
And I told a lie.
I skipped over his heart and feelings to accommodate my voracious desire to inflict consequences that maybe could’ve waited. I wanted to believe I could compete with his level of protection that he gives to me. I needed to think I could outsmart the best and do something blue ribbon worthy, but maybe I already did.
The baby kicks my hand as I shed a single tear.
“I was in it until Peru,” he said, telling stories of how he managed to wrangle Amber. I laid against his chest in the bathtub. His arm draped across my breasts as I played with his bracelets. “At some point, you have to trust someone. Even if it’s someone you might not like. Amber will fuck with my game, to challenge me, but she’ll take a bullet for me, too.”
“Should I trust her?”
“Carefully,” he muttered against my neck as he fondled my nipples. His mighty erection pressed against my back. “Don’t give her too much.”
I rolled over in the water, hearing the splash hit the hotel floor. “I’m going to ride you.”
“Please do,” he whispered, laying his hands on my thighs as I guided his cock to my entrance and slid him deeply inside of me. “Love me forever, Iris.”
“Sal,” I moaned as my hair tumbled from the clip with each long stride upon his ridge. “I will never hurt you.”
“I know, Darlin’.”
“And if there comes a day when you doubt me, remember this moment. Remember this love.”
His hips rocked up into me as we flew past the clouds to the stars. In his eyes, I sat on the crescent moon because he believed in me that much. He believed I could do anything.
“I am going to come soon, Angel. It’s just too much. It’s too good. It’s too perfect, tight, and wet.”
With every thrust, the water spilled from the tub as the droplets extinguished the candles lining the tub one by one until we were left without fire…until we were left in the dark…and in the pitch-black darkness of the night, we found love. We found one another. And we melded together in the dousing of his flames and waves of my seas.
“Do it Lucas…do it!” I screamed, clasping onto his guns and digging my nails into the muscle. “Fuck me faster. Make love to me, harder.”
And then, he stopped, holding my orgasm on the precipice of the cliff where I would swan dive into bliss and ecstasy, and I cursed his name in vain.
“This is my ride, Dandelion. You sail when I blow and not a second before.”
“Deacon!” I lament, wailing like a siren for the fires to melt my froze
n heart. I scream, “Help me!”
God, I fucked up.
32
Pendulum Swinging in a Stolen Shrine
The Master
On the floor of a hotel room in Rome, we lay in the morning light with our heads together and our feet on opposing sides—sixty-nine-ing with our minds.
“Do you love her?” she asked, touching my hand. We were back to back, confessing the secrets of our lives over a bottle of whiskey. We couldn’t do it facing one another because the truths were too painful. And staring in another person’s eyes made it easier to hide. “Be honest with yourself.”
“I’ve loved her since before I married Kaci.”
“Dear God, Raniero.” She took the bottle, ignoring the glass, and returned it to the spot beside our hips noticeably emptier than before. “You have to tell Iris.”
“She is pregnant with Durante Costa’s baby.”
She swiveled away and flopped on her back with her head by my thigh. “You are kidding, right?”
I ran my fingers through her pretty hair. “No.”
I eased down onto my back and stared at her face upside down. She had gorgeous lips with a smattering of freckles over her nose and light green eyes that contrasted the darkness in mine.
“So, we are drinking ourselves into a stupor on a hotel room floor because Iris cheated?”
“And I need to deal with these feelings for Jaid,” I said, cracking my knuckles. “Because she just had Cruz’s baby.”
“You already said that when you called on the phone,” she snapped. “I didn’t need to hear it again.”
“Iris is out. Jaid is out. Deacon is out.”
“Jesus fucking Christ Raniero…”
“And the saddest part of the whole thing is that I am your best solution,” she assessed, gazing back at me. “You may be my best friend.”
“Because you know I have a big dick?”
“No,” she said, “Because I don’t think you have it in you to hurt me.”
A Dark Place (a Tomb of Ashen Tears Book 5) Page 25
