by Emerson Rose
“Yes, maybe.”
My mouth pops open. I’m shocked that he agreed so easily. He lifts his finger to my chin, closing my mouth.
“Why do you look so surprised? I told you nothing could hurt us, as long as we’re together. I’ll do whatever it takes. What else were you thinking about? You said ‘one of the things.’” This one is a little harder to talk about, but if he’s willing to do whatever it takes, then so am I.
“I was… I was thinking that I haven’t really told you everything that happened when I was attacked.”
He wraps his long fingers around the back of my head, pulling it to him until my cheek is against his chest.
“You are the strongest woman I have ever known. You and my aunt, the obstacles you have overcome so far in your life would have crushed any other women. But you went on to build a good life. You’re successful, healthy, and stable; it’s a miracle you’re even here right now.
And you are my miracle. If you and my aunt hadn’t fought so hard, I wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t have you. You wouldn’t have been there in that ICU to save me. I don’t need to know the details of the horror you endured unless you want me to. I’m just grateful to have you.”
We stand awhile just like that, holding each other in silence until I make a decision. I pull away, and he lowers his gaze to mine.
“I want you to know. I need you to know. If we’re going to be together you have to know my fears and my limits.”
“Alright then, you can tell me anything and everything. But right now I have other plans for you.” He winks as he backs me toward the garden gate with amazing grace considering he’s on crutches.
“You do?” This conversation just went from deeply serious to flirty and sexy in a flash, something he has down to an art.
“Yes, Miss Jefferson, I do indeed, and they include you pressed against this gate, skirt around your waist with me between your legs, chasing away your worries.” He isn’t serious, is he? Right here, in the garden, in broad daylight?
“I can still read your mind, baby, and yes, right here, right now.”
How the hell did he do that? We step together until my back touches the cold iron of the gate. Without a single inch of us touching, he leans on his crutches and covers my mouth with his. The heat of his mouth combined with the cool fall air causes a shiver to race up my spine.
His kisses are tender at first, exploring, as if it were our first. But then again, every time feels like the first time with him.
His presses tiny kisses on the corners of my mouth alternating with deep, soul searching plunges. I move to touch him. I want to put my hands on his chest, but he takes my wrists and places them down on either side of me, wrapping my fingers around the iron bars of the gate.
“Stay,” he whispers. He returns all attention to my mouth before working his way down my neck. I whimper when he nips harder than usual, and he soothes the spot with another kiss.
He places his hands on my shoulders, and even through my thick wool coat and my sweater, his touch sets my skin on fire. He glides over my breasts to my waist and then to the hem of my dress where he bunches it in his hands, preparing to lift it up.
We’re really going to do this right here in the garden. My breath comes in quick pants as I try to express my concern about the public display of affection, but he stills me with his lips on my neck until I relax. His body communicates with mine saying stop worrying and let it happen. I hear him loud and clear and, to prove it, I thrust my hips toward him. I may have to keep my hands on these bars, but he never said anything about the rest of me.
“Mmm, you’re so responsive. Even through all these clothes I can feel how much you need this, baby.” He works my dress up, running his hands over my bare ass. I suck in a breath when the cold gate presses against my skin. Marcus leans harder on his crutches to reach down and slide his hand behind my knee. He pulls it up, and I wrap it around him eagerly.
“I’m going to fuck the worry right out of you, Miss Jefferson… up against this gate… outside in this garden,” he whispers. I don’t know if that was a promise or warning, but I’ll take it either way.
“Please…”
He squats down in front of me with his crutches leaning on either side of me against the gate. He is balancing on one leg with the other sticking out straight to the side of us. Instinctively my hands move to help him, but he shakes his head no, and I put them back.
With my leg draped over his shoulder, he trails kisses along the inside of my thigh until he arrives at the spot where I’m on fire for him. He moves my thong aside and buries his face between my legs, taking my breath away. He circles my clit with his tongue, expertly alternating the motion with long soft licks. I gasp and white-knuckle the gate until he brings me close to passing out from the overwhelming pleasure of it all.
The cool weather is more than welcome now. My skin is blazing under his touch. My hips thrust into his face, and I jerk against the gate, rattling it noisily with not one thought of knocking him off of his precariously balanced foot. I am so close to losing it when he pulls away and stands on his one good foot.
Everything around us falls away, and it’s just the two of us; no garden, no house and no staff, no ocean or gate, just Marcus and me.
He takes my face in his hands and bends until our eyes meet. When he has my complete attention with his eyes locked on me, he lets go to unbuckle his belt and free his stone-hard cock from his pants. He slides his length along my folds, teasing my core mercilessly.
“You want this, baby?”
I nod twice in quick succession, and he enters me with such force that the gate rattles loudly and echoes through the garden. My feet are momentarily lifted off the ground from the force of his thrust.
I moan and hold on tight as he slams into me over and over. The gate clangs with every thrust. He covers my mouth with his, and I can taste myself on him, salty like the ocean.
“I have no fucking control with you, Imani, I want to take my time but once I’m inside… the fucking animal in me takes over,” he says right before claiming my mouth so that we are joined together as much as two people can physically be.
He knows I’m close and he digs his fingers under my ass, tilting me just slightly until he’s repeatedly hitting that sweet spot inside that pushes me over the edge. My orgasm explodes around him in fits and spasms, and I hold my breath. I tighten around him until he follows, moaning and gasping for air.
“You can let go now,” he whispers in my ear. I watch a drop of sweat trickle down the side of his face onto mine.
“Oh…,” I release the bars and feel my hands tingle with the return of blood flow.
“I wanted to tie you to this gate, blindfolded, when I first saw you in that hospital room. You were dressed in those fuck-me high-heeled boots and that tiny skirt. It was the first thought that popped into my mind.”
“Well, that’s funny. The first thought I had of you when you woke up was ‘what a psycho.’” Marcus throws his head back and roars with laughter. I’ve never seen him let loose this way.
His smile lights up his entire face. His tiny crow’s feet crinkle on the outside of his sharp green eyes. It fills me up with more love than I ever thought was possible. “Sometimes that smart mouth of yours goes on hiatus, and I miss it!”
“Same goes for your smile,” I say. He holds me tight against his chest and gives me a chaste kiss on the forehead before sliding out and pulling my dress back down to a much more decent length.
He tucks his shirt back into his pants and grabs his crutches, leaning heavily on them. “You really shouldn’t be messing around off of your crutches,” I remind him.
“Are you complaining, Miss Jefferson?” he asks, raising one eyebrow high.
“Of course not, Mr. Castillo. But, as a nurse, I’m just informing you that standing on one foot and exerting that kind of energy isn’t good for either of your legs.”
“Well then, tell the nurse that she’s fired, and you can be
my girlfriend, who is fully satisfied with that stunning performance of strength.”
“Cocky much?”
“Love it much?” he shoots back, and I have to laugh.
“Yes, very much so.”
“Alright then. That pesky nurse Imani is officially gone, and girlfriend Imani is happy and satisfied.”
Ecstatically happy and very, very, satisfied.
Thirty-Two
I head to my room while Marcus returns to his office to finish working, convinced that he has fucked the worry out of me.
I guess I’m on my own again. On my night table I find a purple sheet of notepaper propped against my iPad. It reads, ‘Listen to me.’
The iPad is set to play one single song by Adele.
Make You Feel My Love. I press play and lie down on my back, staring at the canopy of gauze over the bed. Adele’s lyrics wash over me, and tears fill my eyes. I blink, and they spill over, running down my face and into my ears.
I turn my head to the side and see, propped against the pillows of the bed, that diamond-eyed bear. I grab her up and hug her to my chest while I listen.
He already knows how to love me. He doesn’t have to make me feel his love; I already do. I love him with every breath I take. I will never be able to absorb enough of him into my system, especially if he continues to do sweet things like this.
And why?
Why does he feel the need to convince me of his love? Maybe it’s the short time we’ve been together that brings out the insecurity in him?
The only thing I’m insecure about is the possibility of him losing his damned mind and vanishing from my life. I think that thought will always haunt me.
I don’t know how long I listen to the song on repeat but when I open my eyes it’s dark outside. I am positioned in the bed correctly with my head on my pillow and a throw over my legs. I’m still holding the teddy bear like a little kid waking up from her nap.
I roll over and examine her more closely, and those diamond eyes stare back at me. I wonder if…? Shit, are those…? They can’t be, but I think they are.
Real diamonds, as in a couple carats each, and the two-inch wide collar around her neck is covered with tiny diamonds, too. I turn her over to see if there is a tag or a brand sewn into a seam, but there’s nothing.
The gears in my head start turning, and my curiosity is at an all-time peak. How can I find out where this thing came from and if those are real diamonds? What am I going to do if I find out they are? Why is he giving me gifts like this? Lana is definitely rubbing off on me.
I need Google. After a few searches I come across a company that sells customized teddy bears that resemble mine, and they offer several gemstones for eyes but not diamonds. Well, that’s probably the place. From the look of the other merchandise, it’s obvious they’re capable of making anything happen for a price.
Could I be reading too much into this? I wonder what the Bear-Giver is up to right now. He must have checked on me earlier. I can’t believe he moved me. All that fresh air today, I must have been more tired than I realized.
My thoughts drift to earlier today in the garden. I can still feel the cold gate on my bare ass and Marcus’s hot body pressed up against mine; another erotic memory to add to my quickly developing queue. In just a few short weeks Marcus has taken my body to places I never knew existed. How could this happen to me, Imani Jefferson, formerly resigned to growing old in a house full of cats?
Only this intricate string of events could have led me to this place. In love with this man who is manically hard working, obsessively organized and neat, more beautiful than a Greek god, desperately lacking in manners, cocky beyond belief, generous to a fault, injured, vulnerable, and billionaire wealthy. He’s an audacious lover capable of fully satisfying needs that I didn’t even know I had. And contrary to popular opinion he is loving… limitlessly loving.
I don’t hear him approaching until he’s at the threshold of my open door.
“Well, good morning, beautiful. How was your nap?”
“Mm, good.” I stretch out long and arch my back with my arms over my head for a few seconds. “I can’t believe you covered me up. I don’t even remember you coming in.” His eyes grow dark and his expression turns to confusion.
“I wasn’t in here, Imani. You must have covered yourself.”
“No… I don’t think so. This blanket wasn’t on the bed, and I fell asleep on the edge, listening to your song. Thank you, by the way. It was beautiful.” I smile, but his mind is elsewhere.
“What’s the matter?”
“I want to know who was in here, touching you. I haven’t given anyone authorization to enter your room this afternoon.” A muscle twitches in his jaw and his knuckles whiten around the handles of his crutches.
He’s back in full-control freak mode right now, and it’s kind of frightening.
“Come with me,” he says with a sternness that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Something bad is going on here.
I climb off the bed and follow him through the house to his office. He waves a hand over a sensor on the wall and a door slides open behind his desk. The door is camouflaged, and I never noticed it before.
I glance around as we pass into a cold unfriendly room filled with computer monitors. This room is not just a run of the mill security room; it looks like mission control at NASA. There is an entire wall of monitors, each one focusing on a different room in the house, the grounds, garages, bathrooms, garden… oh my God, the garden.
At the center of the room with a view of every monitor is an ostentatious leather chair for whoever mans this elaborate ship. “What… what is this?”
“I told you I have very good security. I want to look back through the video to see who was in your room with you.” I watch him perch on the edge of the captain’s chair and reach for a huge tablet-sized remote.
I move in silence to his side as he maneuvers the video to different monitors until my room comes into view on the large center screen. It’s eerie seeing myself lying in the position I fell asleep, on my back with my feet dangling off the edge of the bed.
Suddenly, a small figure appears in the room and stands next to the bed. The slight person is dressed in black with a hoodie pulled up close around his face making it impossible to see.
A panicked breath fills my lungs, and Marcus stiffens in the seat next to me. I rest my hand on the tightly wound muscles of his shoulder and lean forward to see better as he forwards through the video.
The person in the room stands next to me for a very long time. He, or she, disappears for a moment, returning with the blanket, the same blanket that I was covered with when I woke up.
The disguised figure gently positions my legs onto the bed and tucks a pillow under my head. When I’m positioned correctly, he covers me up before stepping away.
That’s when I see it, and so does Marcus. There is a glimmer coming from the intruder’s left hand, and when I lean closer, I see that it’s a knife. It’s not just a kitchen steak knife. This thing is huge; it looks like a hunting knife. Why in the hell would somebody want to stab me in my sleep? And who?
Marcus roars Mr. Black’s name as he launches himself out of the chair. He is moving at a pace I’m sure no person ever has while on crutches.
I follow on his heels quietly. He’s angry and scared enough for the both of us. So much for letting him worry for me.
There was an insane person in the house, in my room, touching me, and they had a fucking hunting knife in their hand! I’ll be worrying all by myself now, a lot.
Mr. Black comes rushing down the stairs to meet us in the foyer, panic-stricken and out of breath.
“What is it, sir?”
“Someone was in my fucking house, that’s what!” he yells, his voice echoing off the walls of the empty foyer.
“Sir?” he says, cocking his head to the side and narrowing his eyes.
“Fuck, Black, you’re supposed to be in charge of security. How the fuck d
id someone get in here? Someone was in Imani’s room. They touched her and they had a fucking hunting knife!”
For the first time since I’ve met him, Mr. Black looks shaken, flustered, and embarrassed. So, he’s head of security, huh? I want to tell him he’s doing a bang-up job of that, but Marcus is teetering on the edge of his sanity as it is.
The two men are standing nose-to-nose, every muscle in their bodies shaking with an adrenaline rush. I’m scared Marcus might hurt him. He could easily pummel him with a crutch. I’ve never seen anyone as angry as Marcus is right now.
“I had no idea we had an intruder. All of the alarms are set, the cameras are on and recording, there’s a guard at the front gate, and Nick was on monitoring.”
“Nick? Where the hell is he? He’s certainly not in the fucking monitoring room, I’ll tell you that! I’m gonna fucking kill him when I get my hands on him.”
Shit, maybe his staff is used to him acting this way but not me. I need to get him calmed down before he blows that brain tumor all over the foyer.
“Um… hey?”
He swings around wildly with his eyes flashing a bit of psycho. This is a man I don’t know at all.
“I think we should all calm down just a little bit, and by ‘we’ I mean you.”
I feel like I’m in foreign territory, dealing with an enemy instead of my protector. He’s scaring me, and he realizes it when he hears the fear in my voice. I step back out of his reach, and he transforms before my eyes.
His face changes from warrior terrorist to compassionate lover. The tables are turned now, and he speaks to me like I’m the jumper on the ledge.
With his hands out in front of him, palms up, he steps toward me. “Baby, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten. You don’t shrink away from me. Come here.”
I take a hesitant step toward him. The Marcus I know would never hurt me, but I’m not sure that the man I just witnessed was my Marcus. He wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me in tight against his chest.
