“I’ve gained a few pounds,” Amy allowed. “But I still swim a couple of times a week and I walk. I mostly eat healthy except for Zeke’s. And caramel crumble.”
“I don’t care about a few pounds, Amy. It’s your heart you need to worry about, and your knees in later life.”
“So I’ll swim a few extra laps.”
“Although you burn calories doing the horizontal bop, too.”
She stared at Sandra’s back.
The other woman still busy at the sink.
There was amused acceptance in Amy’s voice. “Sandra?”
“The new Amy came for dinner. A hint of happy and fun. I worry he’s not the right guy, but for sure he’s bringing something out in you. I hope you get to know him beyond the sex.”
Sitting back in her chair, considering, she scraped up a little piece of caramel crumble with the tine of a fork, sucking the morsel into her mouth. Was she happy? She was happy when she saw a beautiful sunset, or saw a baby with a loving mom. Happy when she saw an animal loved and cared for. Happy to spend time with Sandra. Did Dean make her happy? The sex fulfilled her, nothing to fear, skilled and satisfying. It was fun to tease a little, be taken care of so intimately. And she was looking forward to seeing him later. But that was maybe just the sex.
“Quit thinking so hard, damn it. Quit analyzing. Just feel for once.”
Wowza, Sandra was pissed. And correct. Amy was, behind the scenes and away from her conscious thought, minimizing what had transpired with Dean. On the heels of that revelation came the shit-scared feeling he was doing the same thing and might not show up later. This considering a relationship thing wasn’t just tough. It sucked. Before she’d kinda moved right in with the guy, all casual and no second thoughts. No thinking period.
“It doesn’t suck. It’s just new,” Amy protested. And talking out loud to one’s best friend tended to get answers that were food for thought. She got up and gathered the rest of the dirty dishes to carry them over to Sandra.
“What time’s your shift tomorrow?”
“Seven. So I’m kicking you out by nine. I hate getting up so early.”
“Tell that to someone who believes you. You called me at seven this morning.” Amy gave her friend a little hug. “Make some tea, then and we’ll sip like old grannies and leave my sex life out of it for awhile.”
Chapter Four
Jeez. The buzzer pulled her from a deep sleep. She’d laid awake a long time since going to bed at eleven, having again worked haphazardly on the pending web design after coming home from Sandra’s, thinking about Dean. It was also curious how Mr. Zuchinski hustled into his house, abandoning his front lawn vigil, when she pulled in earlier. But she must have gone under the veil of slumber after checking the clock around one, and now was cranky from being interrupted in REM sleep.
The buzzer went again and she staggered into one wall in the hallway, feeling her way through the darkened living room to the front door. Reaching for the handle, it occurred to her the person with his goddamn finger on the buzzer might not be Dean.
“Who is it?” she croaked, wishing she’d thought to check the feed.
“Jesus, Amy.” No mistaking that voice. Or that tone. She disarmed the alarm and fumbled the door open and was nearly mowed down by a fast-moving male. The door slammed shut and her feet barely skimmed the floor as Dean hustled her into the bedroom. He stripped before her fascinated eyes, hopping on one foot to yank the laces open on his boots, shoving his jeans off, dragging his boxers along with them. He wore the same shirt as earlier and a couple of its buttons pinged against the floor as he tore it off.
“Fucking smelled you the whole goddamn time. Had a hard-on the whole goddamn time. Kept making people repeat themselves.” He muttered some more but she couldn’t hear him past the roaring of her arousal as her nightgown was peeled off and his weight bore her down onto the bed.
****
He had her on her knees, his arm looped around her waist, holding her close to his chest as he powered in and out of her from behind. His free hand pinched and rolled her nipples. He reached a different place in her from that angle, and was pushing her higher with every stroke. He could feel it, the little rippling sensation within her sheath. Their bodies slippery with sweat, the sounds of their coupling blending with the panting breaths sawing in and out of their chests.
“Get yourself off, sweetheart,” he gritted.
Feeling her reach to work her clit, knowing she was working it hard by the way her channel responded, her release still blindsided him and she shuddered with the intensity of it, taking him with her. Setting his teeth in the point of her shoulder he groaned through the pleasure. The fine links of the chain she wore caught in the stubble on his jaw and he vaguely wondered about the significance of that stylized C.
Pulling out to deal with the condom, he watched as she burrowed into the bedding, snuffling into her pillow. He drifted the sheet over her cooling body; she was out like a light. It felt strange to be smiling as he cleaned up in the bathroom, then returned to take the side of the bed he usually slept on. Bonus.
Lying beside the woman who just rocked his world, Dean forced himself to stay awake. Amy breathed sonorously, clearly exhausted. He’d lost track of how many times he got her off, after the hard, urgent fuck as soon as he crossed the threshold. He delighted in her responsiveness, the resilient strength of her incredible body. Rarely did he sleep with the women he hooked up with unless he was inclined for more in the morning. After the past twenty-four hours he doubted he’d have any inclination for sex in the morning, probably not until the afternoon, but he wasn’t going anywhere. He rolled to spoon against the satiny feel of Amy, his cock daring to make a distant, lewd objection about waiting until the afternoon.
****
“Are you going to tell me what you do?” Amy bit into a piece of toast, the tip of her pink tongue flicking out to snag the tiny bead of jam from the corner of her mouth. Dean wanted to feel that tongue anywhere on his body again in the very near future.
“I own a variety of businesses around the city. I own some of them as sole proprietorship, some as part owner. I’m a silent partner in others. I don’t run any of them. I have people for that.”
“Uh huh.” She hopped up to get the coffee pot, topping his cup without asking. It felt domestic, although how he even recognized that feeling… But she was giving him a look he recognized as disbelief.
“What?”
“And you hold court with … who? Other investors? Your partners? They looked like muscle to me, the ones at the club.”
Fuck. He knew she was smart and didn’t miss anything. He answered a question with a request. “Tell me what you do.”
“I thought I had. I design and build websites, monitor them. I have a small client base, enough to pay the bills.”
“You have a considerable chunk in savings and investments too, sweetheart.”
Her cup crashed to the counter and her eyes narrowed on him, the pure violet darkening to gentian. “Have you done a background check on me?”
There was no sense in sugar coating it. “Had Randy do it when I decided to come over yesterday. He’s my right hand man.”
The ominous silence was abruptly broken. “And whatever it is you do, you need to know who you’re fucking?”
“No, Amy. I need to know who I’m spending more than one night with. Don’t push me.”
She worked a hand through her mass of hair and sighed. “I got money from a settlement. From my life back in Vegas. He settled out of court.”
Dean’s chest constricted. Amy’s voice had softened, becoming distant. He recognized a defence mechanism. “Randy didn’t say anything about a settlement.”
Shrugging, the movement causing her breasts to shift under her pink robe, she answered. “The record is sealed. I signed a non-disclosure. Rich boys with rich fathers can get away with murder. Didn’t get that far, lucky for me.”
Fuck. His vision darkened and narrowed, fists clench
ing. He hardly recognized his voice. “Who?’
“Can’t tell you. I’ll get sued and as you know from having Randy check on me, I don’t have much more than my car, the nest egg and the income from my web design business. I rent this place.”
“You can tell me who he is, Amy.” He strove to keep his voice calm.
Staring at him, she rested her chin on steepled hands. “No.”
Dean dropped it. She’d have her reasons aside from a non-disclosure agreement. He’d put Randy on it and ferret the information out. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what the asshole had done to his woman that stopped short of murder, but also necessitated a fair chunk of change as a settlement. Her beautiful face showed no signs of violence, and he didn’t recall any scars on her body, aside from a few tiny marks. One marring the smooth expanse of her belly, another near her left breast, one at her navel. He conveniently ignored the fact he’d just called her his woman. If she could tell him what happened, he’d listen.
“He ruptured my spleen, fractured my left cheekbone, gave me a concussion when my head hit the wall, broke my left wrist, my jaw, three ribs, and apparently raped and sodomized me afterwards. I don’t remember that.” She spoke as though it happened to someone else.
“Fuck!” He’d never felt so furiously impotent. “Why?”
“Because he wanted to, and because he could. He paid for me, and I suppose he saw me as a disposable toy. Boys play with and break their toys.”
Dean went to her, wondering that he could even make his body move without exploding in violence against a faceless enemy. Her eyes were dry, calm and untroubled–unnaturally so. She willingly went into his arms however, huddling against him as if for comfort. A wave of possessiveness left him feeling hollow, and he rocked with her in place, resting his lips against her temple. His eyes closed against the picture she’d painted. A brave, hopeful survivor, and he’d thought to treat her like the other women he fucked—he’d never allowed himself to get to know any of their stories. But this was Amy. Rich boy was going to meet someone, or two someones, in a dark alley a time in the future, and whether he lived or died depended upon how nicely he begged for his miserable life.
“Go put some clothes on, Amy. I want to sit and talk with you somewhere besides these uncomfortable stools. Not your bed. It makes me think of other things.”
She stepped out of the circle of his arms and reached up to touch his cheek, a drifting gentle contact that tugged at the middle of his chest. At his heart. She went.
****
The lounge featured some comfortable privacy booths and a fully stocked bar. Music played softly. It was early afternoon—they’d both required several hours of sleep to recharge. Amy refused a drink, accepting some water with lemon, and curled into his side. He was relieved that booze wasn’t something she used on a customary basis. A few regulars passed by and nodded to him, their eyes drifting to Amy. He knew they attracted attention; anything he did out of the ordinary would be whispered about. It didn’t matter to him at that moment, he wanted to talk with Amy and not drag her off to fuck her in new and enticing positions. At least not until they talked.
“You were a call girl?” He didn’t want to think of her in that profession.
She laughed, but the sound was devoid of humor. “No. I hadn’t quite gotten to that level, but close. My parents died in a car crash when I was just over two. Both were only children, with few surviving relatives, and I guess with no life insurance the initially interested ones decided sixteen years of parenthood, after raising their own kids, went beyond family loyalty.” There was no bitterness in her voice, simply acceptance, and Dean knew she’d dealt, because he’d done the same thing.
“I grew up in the System, foster homes at first, a scrawny, miserable, little kid crying all the time for her mommy, or so I recall being told when I got older. Wouldn’t bond with any of the foster moms, so got shuffled around. My file was like a horror show to read, but it was as if it happened to someone else, you know?”
Dean didn’t know. He hadn’t dissociated his experiences, and he wondered which approach was better, or if people just did what worked for them. He made a noncommittal sound.
“Then group care, which was really juvie, because of a youthful mistake. Mistakes. I tended to accept dares and the judge frowned on several counts of public mischief. I got out and was on the street at sixteen. Don’t know how I stayed clean, away from drugs. Booze never really appealed. Until I discovered margaritas.”
The look she slanted his way had his cock stirring. He’d make sure to have the ingredients for her favorite tipple available from time to time. Drunk sex with Amy promised to be a lot of fun.
“It wasn’t a stellar life, but fortunately, I was a late bloomer and really lucky no one bothered the gangly, skinny kid. I panhandled, worked as a waitress, lucked out with a government sponsored computer course for the homeless, such a joke, but I took advantage and excelled. Problem is you can’t find that kind of job without money to start with. You have to have a place to live and the right clothes to be interviewed.
“Then I woke up one day and discovered my best asset. I had bloomed, so to speak, and was starting to attract unwelcome attention. So I walked into a casino, took my clothes off and got a job as a show girl. Once I got comfortable with wearing something on my head and nothing on my ass or boobs I was good with it.”
She laughed again, this time for real, tilting her head to the side, eyes looking up and to the left, clearly remembering those experiences. He’d never thought about it, never considered how it might be for a woman to present herself to the public like that. Mostly to men.
“They had a spa on tap for waxing, lasering, all that kind of stuff, and every girl wants to learn makeup. It was fine, because I discovered I’m a girly girl. I strutted with the rest. It wasn’t until I got older that management gave me the option of going to the parties. The guy who hired me knew my age. Nineteen isn’t exactly a big number in Vegas. He took a chance but wasn’t going to risk the law, so he waited. I might get away with it as a show girl at the actual performances, but not the parties. He was a good guy.”
Dean doubted she met many good guys. He was just relieved for her sake she hadn’t prostituted herself, that her issues with quick hookups were a result of poor personal choices. Although that might not say much about him, he thought wryly. They were indeed a fucked up pair. “But not like a call girl.”
“Nope. You could hang out, have a good time, sometimes the guys would leave you money. I won’t say I didn’t sleep with some of them, but nobody had any expectations, or if they did I wasn’t pushed. But show girls who can’t sing and dance, who just strut, get replaced by fresher stock.”
It was an altogether depressing comment on the vagaries of men and societal expectations. Dean dreaded what was coming next, but he needed to know. And he was going to have to share something, too. He wasn’t certain which was worse.
“I became an escort. I didn’t have much else to fall back on, although I kept up my computer skills. Again, my choice if I slept with the client. They weren’t actually looking for that, if you can believe it. They needed camouflage or distraction from what they were up to. It was me looking.” The painful chuckle belied the composed way she now talked about her past. She was getting close to the difficult stuff. Her face had lost some color and he could feel her beginning to tense.
“They wanted somebody on their arm to pull the eye while they worked the tables or did their deals in the rooms. I went out on countless calls for a few years. I made lots of bad choices in men when I wasn’t working, some who used me for sex, lived off me, smacked me around when their lives weren’t going well. Those I lost in a hurry. Not much different than the way I was treated in foster care. But I took the emotional shit they slung my way to heart, for some stupid reason. I’ve learned I don’t have to take that anymore.” Was there a warning to be detected in that last statement? Dean replayed it in his head and decided to take it at face value.
“You ever go to the cops about the domestic violence?”
“No. For all the obvious reasons. Women like me don’t get a lot of sympathy from the men in blue.”
He shoved his fingers into her wealth of hair and dragged her head back, forcing her to meet his eyes. “Don’t. Don’t demean yourself. Ever. Or sell yourself short. I won’t allow it.”
Staring back assessingly, she finally nodded. “Do my best, babe. Old habits and all.”
Settling back against his shoulder as he sifted through the strands of her hair, she continued, swirling the straw in the glass of water. “I went out on one last call, although I didn’t know it was a last call at the time. Rich kid from … another state, asked for a big blonde. He dragged me from casino to casino, lost a ton of cash, tried a whole lot of fondling to establish his man-about-town status. I avoided most of it without making him look bad, and when it got time to shut it down, and we were back at his hotel, he asked me to stay the night. I refused and he let it go. Just like that. Disarmed me, really, because I sensed he was pure asshole.
“He sucked back a couple more drinks, said he’d walk me to a cab. But he was unsteady on his feet, seemed really drunk, so I took him up to his room. Thought I’d just dump him on the bed and leave, you know? I’m not stupid. I enlisted the help of one of the guys who scan for people using the elevators without cards and we went up together. But once we got to the room, just opened the door, the security guy’s radio went and he had to go.”
Dean tried to control the tremors of rage permeating his control. Amy looked up at him and ran her fingers across his cheek, easing the tightening there, soothing his jaw. She was still tense, but it seemed to dissipate as she reached out to him, violet eyes soft.
“It’s done, babe. But you wanted to know. Do you still want to hear it all? I mean, you already know the worst of it.”
Forever (Eternity #1) Page 8
