Overcome (Cunningham Security Series Book 2)

by A. K. Evans

  Actually, he did.

  He went near it.

  Very close to it.

  With his hands, his lips, and his tongue.

  But he never touched me there.

  My hips were writhing, my body on fire, and Cruz was content to take his time teasing. He opened the fabric of the nightie that was tied behind my neck and removed it from my body. Up to that point I thought all of the kissing and touching was erotic. It was, but it didn’t even come close to being nearly as stimulating as it was to be there in his bed, unable to get up, watching him as he looked at me.

  Like I was meant to be treasured yet devoured.

  Like I could grant his every wish just by allowing him to claim me this way.

  Like I was not only a princess, but also a warrior.

  When he finally stood up beside the bed and removed his jeans and boxer briefs, I thought I was going to explode.

  “Tell me what you want, Lexi,” he ordered as he began rolling a condom on.

  “You,” I replied, my voice full of desperation.

  “You already have me. I want to know what you want from me.”

  I moistened my lips with my tongue as Cruz’s eyes drifted to my mouth. Then, I answered, “I want you to hold my hips in your hands while you power your cock into me, hard and fast without any inhibitions, until I come.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at me and asked, “What if I didn’t want to do that?”

  I pouted.

  And I didn’t care one bit.

  Cruz laughed and wondered, “What’s wrong, Princess?”

  I squeezed my legs together, frantically trying to relieve some of the sexual tension. Cruz saw it and wrapped his hands around the backs of my thighs. He separated them and settled himself between them.

  When I whimpered at the aching pulse, he questioned, “Is that how you really want this to go? With you delivering your own orgasm?”

  I shook my head, wiggled my hips, arched my back, and begged, “Please, Cruz.”

  Cruz brought his hand to my core, found I was more than ready for him, and finally, gave in.

  And he did it exactly like I had asked.

  Hard.

  Fast.

  Without any inhibitions.

  I was so worked up it only took a matter of seconds for me to come and it was one of the most powerful orgasms I’d ever had.

  Cruz didn’t relent as I came down.

  “Did you like that?”

  “Yes.”

  Continuing to power into me, he went on, “You’re going to do it again, Lexi, ok? You want that again?”

  “Yes,” I panted. “Please, yes.”

  From there, Cruz worked me hard and it built. He moved with such abandoned power. With no ability to use my own hands to get us there, I relished the feel of his hands cradling my hips, his fingertips digging in as he worked to help us both climb higher and higher.

  And I knew in this moment that I never had to be afraid of anything with Cruz. I knew he’d always be that support not just for me, but for the two of us together, doing whatever was necessary to take us where we needed to go. And because I trusted him, I’d allow him to continue to steer my ship.

  The physical sensations coupled with my emotional state had me on the verge again. I cried out, “Oh, Cruz.”

  My body trembled in his hands as his pace grew quicker. Suddenly, one of his hands left my hip as he fell forward and reached for my hand. He planted himself to the root and claimed my mouth. Cruz groaned through his orgasm, while I committed the sound to memory. He pulled his mouth from mine, as the pleasure moved through him, and buried his face in my neck. I felt his body still above me, fighting to regain his breath, and I knew, for as long as I lived, I’d never forget what this experience did for me.

  What Cruz did for me.

  I was so overwhelmed with joy and happiness that I never dreamed I’d have again, that a sob escaped.

  Cruz immediately lifted his head and worried, “Are you ok?”

  I nodded through my tears and barely got out, “Perfect.”

  His hand left my hip and came up to wipe away my tears while he pressed tender kisses to my cheek.

  “Love you, Warrior,” he whispered in between two of them.

  “Love you, Captain.”

  Cruz pulled himself from my body and immediately moved to release my wrists. Once they were free, he brought them to his mouth, where he delicately kissed my palms and my wrists.

  “Be right back,” he promised before he got up from the bed and moved to the bathroom to dispose of the condom.

  When he came back into the room, he fell to his back in the bed and I instantly curled my body into his. I needed to touch him. He left me to it for a long while.

  “This meant everything to me, Lexi,” he divulged.

  “Me too.”

  “If all we had was what we had before this, I would have been a very happy man. Having this, knowing you trust me with your mind and your body like this, means something I can’t even begin to describe,” he added.

  The arm I had draped over his abdomen gave him a gentle squeeze and I shared, “You earned it. You were patient and helped me get back so much of myself that was missing, so much that I couldn’t get back on my own.”

  “I know you think that I did something incredible, but it pales in comparison to what you gave me. Other than your love, there’s no greater gift.”

  “Cruz,” I rasped.

  He just squeezed me a little tighter in response.

  For the next half hour, we stayed there with our naked bodies pressed against one another. I broke the silence and called, “Hey, Captain?”

  “Yeah?”

  I lifted my cheek from his chest and looked at him when I asked, “Can we do that again some time?”

  A smile formed on his face. “I prefer when your hands are free to touch me, but if you want to be restrained again, we can do that on occasion. That said, you can expect wild and uninhibited on a regular basis, Princess.”

  Now it was my turn to smile.

  With that, Cruz instigated round two. It was soft, gentle, but filled with just as much passion.

  It was after when I realized just how lucky I was to have met him. A few months ago, I knew I would have gotten nearly every part of myself I’d lost four years ago back. But there was that one missing piece, that one thing that I wasn’t sure I’d ever have again. And while I knew that Cruz believed I gave it to myself, I could diminish the role he played in it. Not just anyone would have been up to the task. I felt truly fortunate that he chose to walk down a difficult road believing I was worth it.

  In the end, I gave him my not just my body, but also my trust. And in doing that, I couldn’t help but to give him my heart. Luckily for me, I knew that Cruz would stand beside me no matter what was ahead and together we’d overcome any obstacle that came our way.

  One Year Later

  “It never fails,” I muttered under my breath to myself as I pulled into the driveway at my house.

  I’d been trying, and failing, for more than a year now to get Lexi to pull her car into the garage whenever she was at my place. There were many occasions when she’d arrive here after work ahead of me; however, she refused to pull her car in. And every single day she refused, I would get home and do it for her.

  At first, it pissed me off. This was mostly because there was so much happening around us when we first got together that I didn’t want her safety at risk. Of course, I didn’t expect there would be any trouble at my house, but I also knew you couldn’t ever be too careful. As the months went by and she continued to park outside, I was no longer pissed off about it. I’d grown to love that stubbornness.

  I parked my truck, got out, and went inside.

  Finding her where I always did, sitting in the oversized chair in the family room after having finished a workout and showered, I bent down and kissed her. She was always sitting there. Sometimes, she was hard at work on her laptop focusing on last-minute details f
or a client’s upcoming project. Other times, like today, she’d just be watching television.

  “Keys?” I asked when I pulled my mouth from hers.

  “On the island,” she answered.

  “You really need to start pulling your car in, you know?” I repeated the same thing I’d said to her every other time before that.

  Just as she always did, she looked up at me with her almond-shaped, brown eyes and pointed out, “No, I don’t. I have you.”

  At that, I stood up and moved back to the kitchen to get her keys. After pulling her car into the garage, I closed the door and came back inside.

  I went back to the family room, picked her up, and settled her in my lap in the chair. She cuddled in to me and we watched the rest of whatever show she was watching. I wasn’t really paying attention, though, because I was considering what I was preparing to talk to her about.

  When the show ended, she pulled her head back and looked at me. “How was work?” she asked.

  “Nothing exciting to report,” I remarked.

  She gave me a nod and continued, “Are you ready for dinner?”

  I dipped my chin in acknowledgement and said, “Yeah, but first, I need to talk to you about something.”

  I felt her body tense.

  “Nothing is wrong,” I started. “But I really need to discuss this situation regarding the car in the garage.”

  She rolled her eyes at me.

  “It’s not a big deal, Cruz.”

  “It is to me,” I maintained. “All winter long you refused to do it and then had to trudge through the snow whenever you got here just to get inside. I don’t like that.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “I love how chivalrous you are, Captain, but I’m not taking your spot.”

  “Princess, in case you hadn’t noticed, I haven’t been parking in the garage for more than a year now because I keep pulling your car into your spot.”

  “This isn’t my house,” she returned softly.

  “Why the fuck not?” I pushed. “You’re here practically all the time as it is.”

  She jerked back and murmured, “Oh. I just…I like being here with you.”

  Damn it.

  “Lexi, I didn’t mean it the way you took it. I just meant that this house is just as much yours as it is mine. I love having you here.”

  “But it’s not mine and I’m not going to park there. If you put my car there, that’s different,” she reasoned.

  I sighed. “Then I guess that leaves us only one option.”

  “Which is?”

  “We’re going to have to move,” I stated.

  “Move?” she questioned.

  “Move,” I repeated.

  She stared at me, a bit shell-shocked. “You want us to not only officially move in together, but you want us to do that while buying a house that we’ll own together?”

  I looked at her a bit suspiciously and wondered, “Are you thinking there’s someone else out there with whom you’d rather buy a house and live?”

  “What? No,” she rebutted.

  “So why are you even the least bit surprised right now?”

  Her head moved slowly back and forth before she answered, “I just didn’t realize we were at that point in our relationship.”

  “You love me and you want to be with me, right?”

  She nodded.

  “I love you and want to be with you,” I noted. “I’m not sure if you think there’s some appropriate amount of time that needs to pass before we can get serious about our future. I’m happy to discuss it now, though.”

  Her face got soft and her voice was sweet when she asked, “You want a future with me?”

  “Lexi, I bought you a ring two months ago,” I blurted. “I was going to wait until we went on vacation to propose, but I’m just as happy to put it on your finger right this minute if that helps you realize how serious I am about spending the rest of my life with you in a house that you don’t constantly refer to as just mine.”

  Lexi stared at me a minute before she dropped her face to my chest and clutched the side of my shirt in her hands. I wrapped my arms tight around her back. It was quiet for so long, I started worrying that maybe I shouldn’t have thrown so much at her at once.

  “Where’s your head right now?”

  She pulled her head back and I saw the tears that were spilling down her cheeks. I brushed them away and asked, “Why are you crying?”

  “You’ve given me everything I never knew I wanted anymore.”

  “Is that a ‘yes’?” I asked.

  Her head dropped to one side as she countered, “Well, I’m not sure there was ever a question asked.”

  I immediately shot back, “Will you marry me?”

  “Yes.”

  I framed her face in my hands and added, “You are my whole world, Lex. I’ll love you forever.”

  “You better,” she threatened. “Or there will be consequences.”

  I grinned at her before I kissed her, long and hard. It got hot between us pretty quick and Lexi moved to lift my shirt over my head. Sitting in my lap, it was easy for her to remove it completely. She had just barely gotten my shirt off when I sprang from the couch, with her in my arms, and yelled, “Lexi, are you crazy?!”

  She burst out laughing. “I’m sorry,” she giggled. “My feet were cold.”

  This was an ongoing thing with her. If it wasn’t her hands, it was her feet. They were always ice cold and she insisted on warming them up by putting them on me when I least expected it.

  I shook my head at her and wondered, “What am I going to do with you?”

  She shrugged her shoulders and reminded me, “Apparently, you’re just as crazy. You just asked me to marry you.”

  I held her in my arms and returned, “Yeah, I did.”

  This time, she leaned in to kiss me.

  “Come on, Princess” I urged when I pulled my mouth from hers. “Let’s go upstairs, get my ring on your finger, and celebrate.”

  “Ok, Captain.”

  With that, I carried my fiancée up the stairs, where I put my ring on her finger and followed it up with a celebration.

  The next day, we started looking for our home.

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  The clock on the microwave indicated it was just after eleven-thirty at night. I had just crept down the hall to the kitchen to find something to eat. There was one can of chicken noodle soup left in my backpack, but I wouldn’t be able to cook it without running the risk of waking my mom. I prayed I’d find something else in the house.

  Opening the refrigerator, I saw it had nothing but beer and two-week-old leftover Chinese food inside of it. That food wasn’t mine. It probably belonged to one of her men. I knew better than to take the food that didn’t belong to me. The cabinets were bare, other than a few canned goods. My mother didn’t keep the house stocked with food. Any money she had was spent on keeping her drunk and drugged up, which she apparently preferred over making sure she and her daughter were fed. When a man came over and they got their fix, sometimes he’d bring food. If there was enough, she’d eat.

  I couldn’t remember the last time she went to an actual grocery store. She might occasionally take a trip to the corner store to pick up a few things, but even those were rare.

  So rare that I was in this predicament again.

  Hungry.

  No food in the house.

  A mother who didn’t care.

  Sadly, I had grown used to the growling and the empty feeling I always felt in my belly these days and it looked like tonight would be anoth
er one of those nights I’d go to bed with nothing in my stomach. I hadn’t had anything since lunchtime yesterday at school, which was mostly my own fault.

  On that thought, I quietly made my way down the dark hallway back to my bedroom. If I hadn’t spent the last two days after school at the library, I would have had enough time to come home and make the soup before my mom got home. I hated being here, so I stayed at the one place I had that gave me just a shred of peace and happiness.

  The local library.

  I guessed that most parents would have been worried sick if their child hadn’t come home after school, but I learned quickly that the less my mother and I were around each other, the better. Wanting to avoid her after the encounter we had two nights ago, I figured it was best to just wait until I knew it was safe to come home. Thankfully, being able to sit down in a clean, comfortable chair at the library and spend hours reading never felt like a chore.

  As soon as I arrived there, I quickly got any homework I had to do completed and then I spent the rest of my time reading. I consume books of nearly every genre, but my favorite is romance. I dream that one day I’ll find a love like I read about in those books. That there will be a good man with whom to spend my days. That he’ll stick around, unlike my own father, who walked out before I was even born. That he won’t leer at young fifteen-year-old girls like the men who come around to see my mother do to me. That he’ll love me, respect me, and protect me. I hope he’ll make me feel like I am special. Most of all, I hope to be able to have a home with him that’ll be unlike what I’ve lived in to this point.

  That thought settled in me as I closed my bedroom door. Bedroom doesn’t quite seem like the right word for it, though. There isn’t even a real bed. Instead, I’ve got a small mattress thrown on the floor in the tiny room. There’s a thin sheet covering the old mattress and a tattered, torn blanket for me to cover up with. Aside from that, I’ve got my backpack, a small dresser with some clothes, and a pair of worn-out sneakers.