“Okay.” My death grip on the towel tightens without mercy. “This is your modus operandi? You pick girls' locks as an attraction maneuver? Because I've got to say, pal, that’s a creeper move.” My brows rise. “For the record, after the whacked out night I've had, coming home to you was the cherry on top of a freaky cake.”
Mick's eyes crinkle and he laughs, filling my small apartment with the genuine and wonderful sound.
“What's so funny?” My tone changes into clear suspicion.
His grin stays as he answers, “You.”
“Fine, you park out here like the rich stalker you are. When I come back, I expect a full explanation.”
“Yes, ma'am,” Mick answers. It sounds more like come and get me.
Or maybe that's my overactive imagination. I’ve been doing a lot of that since I met Mr. McKenna.
I slam the door to my bedroom, rip off the towel, and fling it into the corner. I stride to my dresser, tear open my top drawer, and hunt through my panties and bras. I pick, without shame, my sexiest matching set. They remind me of the outfit I threw away. That I can't afford to throw away.
The memory that sunset dress represents is worse than keeping it around to remind me. I slide the all-lace thong onto my body, the edges glowing like a deep burning sunset along my creamy skin. I throw my bra on with a vicious hook and twist, dumping my breasts into the wide lace. The thickest part barely covers my nipples.
I take a quick look in the mirror, the adrenaline from my escape the fuel to the fire of my eventual consumption by Mick.
I want answers. Why is he in my apartment? Why is he taking over my life?
Why am I allowing it?
I know why but can't admit it. Too many truths in too short a time. I feel as if a fuse in my brain has short-circuited. A trend where he's concerned.
Mick hit me with his motorcycle. Even I have to concede how weird that is. Mick knows a lot about me, but he doesn't know about my terminal illness. He doesn't know that Ronnie Bunce bought me for ten thousand bucks and never got his dance because of a fortuitous raid. What's with his relaxed attitude? Wasn't his “classy” Black Rose going to get tarnished now that his revolving lap dance club got nailed by the police?
Exchanging sexual favors for money is illegal. A spike of shame pierces me. It feels so real, the hot poker of my embarrassment is there regardless of my justifications for why I do it.
Mick would probably die a thousand deaths before he'd date a dancer. Unlike him, I know what will happen. My fate is set. My eyes slide down my body in the reflection, noting the healing bruises. The one high on my upper inner thigh is a pale gold smudge. The one from McKenna's bike is solid with the faintest trace of tread. I fight the urge to laugh, Mick’s ownership is a stark duality. I work at his club, and it bruises me; his bike hits me, and I bear his mark.
Bruised but not beaten. The final consummation remains.
An idea forms, and my lips twitch. I can taste whatever I was before drowning in my current reality. The truth sets us free.
I slip on a pair of shorts so skimpy the bruise from the bike is in full relief, a lash of purple against my leg. The proof of my occupation lays hidden where Mick can't see. Yet.
I want the pole bruise to show like the brand it is. I want His Hotness to be acutely reminded of how we met. Though I know he remains blissfully ignorant of that pivotal first meeting.
I'll never forget the way that filthy money felt as I clutched the damp bills.
I throw a pewter cami over my bra and turn slowly in front of the mirror. The soft pewter sweatpant shorts look like mist against my pale skin.
The color is a perfect compliment to the bruise, showcasing it. I slip on platform flip flops with a glitter thong of silver and walk out of the bedroom.
Project Guilt Trip is in full throttle. I want to provoke Mick. Shatter his reserve.
I'm shaking off my stepfather trying to resume abusing me. I'm moving toward my goal of spending my remaining life the way I want. People always think about what they'd do if they have no time left, but I surprise myself every day. My plans morph as time unravels.
I walk out of my bedroom and pause when my eyes catch Mick reclining on my couch. His long arms flow along the back, nearly spanning the length of it, and I gulp. Mick's sheer size moves me, makes my attraction to him more acute. I like the idea of being overwhelmed by him.
He has shed his jacket. His cufflinks glitter on the bare glass of my coffee table. As I move toward him, Mick studies me with eyes that stand at half-mast. He appears casual, but I'm familiar with pain and anxiety. It's how I gage how much torture my physical therapy patients can endure.
I smile when I see how I'm playing him perfectly. His eyes roam my form and skitter to a pulse-freezing stop at the large bruise. Mick takes a cleansing breath and the exhale shudders out of him in an empty echo.
“Okay,” he relents, “let's talk.” His eyes don't move from that mar against my pale skin, heavy and damning.
“Go ahead.” I sit down across from him. I cock my head, my long hair sliding over my shoulder, and I watch him lick his lips. “After all, the burden is on you. Every bit of it.”
“I'm sorry, Faren.”
“You spend a lot of time apologizing.”
His eyes narrow, deepening to dark chocolate. “You know, you're goddamned rude sometimes.”
I nod. I don't know if that's the truth but it feels right. “Yes.”
“Fine,” Mick says, non-plussed. “As long as you know it.”
I lean forward, pushing my elbows into my sides, the motion driving my breasts forward and Mick's speech is arrested, his gaze pegging my assets as surely as the sun rises.
“Listen,” I begin, “you hit me with your bike.”
His eyes return to mine and a flush takes hold of his face. It's subtle, a heightening in the color across his cheekbones. It spreads as I watch, lighting the top of his ears slightly. I watch Mick fight his emotions.
Bingo.
If there's one thing lap dancing's taught me, it's my value. My body is a powerful tool. I've given up chunks of who I am in exchange for control over others. It's evil.
It's also a terrible necessity.
I put his feet to the fire. “And you more or less called me a whore. You implied that I was faking innocence.” I lean back, and cross a long leg, so utterly not innocent.
Mick watches my movement with a look I can't read.
“And now”—I throw my palm vaguely toward the door—“you've shown up in my apartment through entry of dubious means. I think the weight of explanation lies firmly with you.
That color that rose to the surface of his skin fades. “Fair enough. But you might not like what you hear.”
We stare at each other as my heart drums a rhythm that's fierce and insistent, reminding me I'm alive. That reminder is brutally beautiful.
“Fine. I'd rather have the bald truth. It's better than lies through omission,” I say.
His dimple flashes and disappears. Mick plows a hand through his hair, and I take in the edges of a sleeve tat. It’s been hidden all this time underneath custom tailored shirts, tethered by precious metal. Now he has rolled up his sleeves, folding them halfway up a bulging muscled forearm and I'm struck anew by his physique. He has the body of someone who's known physical labor. A man honed by honest work.
Not the privilege of the wealthy. The honest part is up for discussion.
That can't be. Rich guys like Jared McKenna have people who do all the work. They just delegate. Like the old story about Henry Ford pushing a button from his desk. An expert would come in and answer whatever question Ford couldn't answer.
Mick leans forward, his legs spread while his knotted hands dangle between his knees. He sighs, looking at me. “I've misunderstood you.”
He has no idea.
Mick stares at me, and I make my face blank. Easy to do when he's not touching me. I stay on my side of the coffee table, and he stays on his.
Mil
es separate us, and nothing does. Thinking about it makes my head ache. I feel the heat and magnetism between us like a living vapor twining and seeking entry into me.
“You asked me why I want to date you. Can it just be that I find you attractive?” he asks and I answer a question that might be rhetorical.
“No.” I hold his gaze. “You're mega-rich. You can have any girl you want. I'm not flattered.” Yet.
“True.”
I laugh and fold my arms. The arrogance.
“You told me you wanted honesty,” Mick defends simply when he sees my expressions morph in a myriad of emotions.
I nod. “Yes.”
“When I hit you with my Harley...” Mick dips his head, and his hand massages the back of his neck in a frustrated swipe. He lifts his eyes to mine, and his hand falls.
Mick's gaze seeks the bruise on my thigh, on perfect display against the backdrop of my gray shorts and peaches and cream perfection. It's ugly.
A battle scar.
He moves forward. “I had to make it right. Here's a young woman, so distraught she doesn't look where she's going, and I barely stop in time to...”
I finish for him in my head. Not kill her.
“It's an Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, Faren.” His molten whiskey eyes never leave mine, and the intensity of that gaze pins me helplessly against my chair. His eyes caress me as he speaks. “I never meant to fall down that hole, but once I made sure I’d taken care of your needs and you would live without permanent damage...” He lifts those broad shoulders and claps. “I found out what I needed to. His eyes don't waver as he pierces me with the heat of his confession. “I know you take care of others. Then, I wondered why you chose to be a physical therapist. So, I googled you.”
I feel a slow tumble of muscled limbs as Mick rotates down that unknown tunnel that is my life.
Oh my God, he googled me. Goosebumps rise, fleeing over my skin and I shiver, thinking of what he knows.
His expression frightens me, it darkens like the promise of a storm bent on staying awhile, cleaning the corners of everything it touches and scattering it to the wind.
“And that bastard who called himself your father.”
I watch those large hands of his separate, clenching and flexing. They remind me of my own bad hand. My eyes stray to my isometric device, and Mick follows my glance.
He nods. “I know how difficult your recovery was. I know what he did.”
“You don't know everything.” My stomach burns even though he does not mention Ronnie by name. My mother's beating and subsequent hospitalization was sensational enough to be easy pickings on the internet.
Mick shakes his head. “I know enough.”
I can handle him knowing, I can compartmentalize his hotness, his wealth. It doesn't have to affect me. It's something for me to experience as my punchcard for this life fills as I sit here with him.
What I cannot stand is his pity. I can't bear the compassion in his eyes. I won't be some kind of mercy case.
I want to know, just once, what real sex is before what I do makes me indifferent to what sex can be.
And my heart has made up my mind for me. My intellect screams that I should just find out about sex with an anonymous Joe. Hell, there're a million laps that would take what I offer.
I don't want those. I want Mick. He knows it. I know it.
For the first time in my life, I'll have what I want on my terms.
I stand, and he does too. His fists are still clenched, ready to pound someone. Those few seconds of introspection I force on myself were mine alone. Mick still wants to avenge me from the phantom mugger.
I scare myself with how badly I want him to hurt Bunce. Feeling that way doesn't help me with my most pressing goals. I need to keep my shit together. I can't allow things to get all jumbled.
Ronnie will turn up. My mom needs me. I need the job that's under Jared McKenna.
And I want to be underneath him as well, losing something precious
Not stolen by the thievery of men who hold value only for their wants.
~ 4 ~
Mick takes my left hand as we impose an artificial and calculated distance between us. He raises it to his lips and kisses the hills of each knuckle, lifting his eyes to mine between the valleys of my left hand. My hand spasms in his grip, and his eyes tighten.
I'm embarrassed and try to snatch it away.
“No, Faren,” he says.
I can't make the damn thing cooperate. My lip rolls into my teeth, and I hold it there, worrying the supple flesh like a dog with a bone. Mick turns over my hand, and his deep brown eyes run over the fine scars that map where the doctors played Humpty Dumpty.
Putting me back together again.
I gasp as he lays his mouth against my shaking hand. It quiets under the heat of his lips, and a sigh escapes me. His touch commands a visceral reaction from my body. It's sensual when he doesn't mean for it to be, tender and resolute, taking me by surprise.
An unguarded moment, but not unwanted.
“He did this to you.” Mick’s tongue flicks over the uppermost knot of scar tissue, a peak in the center of my palm.
The press of his hot tongue undoes the yarn of my memory and the ball unwinds. I try to hold it back, but like all memories that hold savagery, this one runs like uncontainable water.
I see the knife stab my hand, pinning me to the carpet. A matted pool of blood congeals under me, binding me and cooling me. I can't move. Bunce gets close. He twists the knife. My fingers flinch involuntarily, movement where none was meant to be.
“Gotcha,” he whispers in a foul vapor of stale beer and unwashed teeth.
I scream deeply, my voice a hoarse shriek. Mom lays unblinking, one side of her face frozen. The other eye slides to her daughter crucified on the floor.
Bunce never sees her roll in a graceful turn of feral fluidity, the instinct to protect her child the only one that matters. The heavy glass sphere in her hand hits his head with a meaty thwack.
He's unconscious when I tear the knife from my palm. The metal slides and grinds as it sucks out of my flesh. I gasp in pain, swallowing it like the deeply bitter pill it is.
“Run, Faren!” Tannin Mitchell screams.
I stagger to my feet and stumble out the door and down the steps that led to our perfect house. Like a spoiling cake, the interior had rotted while the frosting remained pristine.
My call for help came too late to save my mom.
“Faren.”
I hear my name through my fog of recollection, a soupy existence on a plane only I know. My private hell.
My eyes open to Mick cradling me.
“Come back to me,” he says.
“I'm here.” My mind still floats in the horrible memory, suffocating me. I went away for a little while when he kissed the remnants of that battle for my life.
Mick folds my body against his. “I'd kill him if I could.” His face contains thunder.
For the first time in my lust-filled dilemma, I wonder who the real Jared McKenna is.
I come back to myself as Mick watches my personality fill the vacancy of my eyes. I see the truth in his. Mick doesn't want easy. He might even believe in fate.
I've never believed in fate more than I do in this moment. “I know,” I say, answering him.
His eyes search mine. “I really am sorry.”
I nod. His strong hands wrap around me. Then, inch by painful inch, he sets me away from him. Our bodies silently cry out for each other, and he actually winces.
Mick continues to gaze at me, seeming to come to a decision. Maybe it was him watching me battle a memory he can't know anything about. Maybe it's my recent close call with danger.
“I have something to confess.” A smile ghosts his full lips and I find myself licking mine in unconscious response.
Oh no, what now?
“I want you to know how I made my money.” His weighted eyes land on mine.
I shrug.
Nothing he
can tell me will bring him down to earth for me. I'm living a rare existence measured in breaths, not years. He can't affect me with his background, though I am curious. My heart races from remembered tragedy, from his nearness to me.
“I—I invented something.” The way Mick says it, he sounded as though he's admitting something embarrassing.
That’s not what I’d thought he would say. His words peg me to the floor as my mouth hangs open, begging for flies to catch. He chuckles, nervousness threading through his attempt at a light confessional.
He explains his invention, giving me the layperson's rendition, I'm sure. I fold my arms under my breasts as I get up and walk to my couch. I stare at him. The calloused hands, the muscles too striated for words make sense now. Those muscles don't dance before my eyes because he's a mirror lover in his thousand-square foot gym of glass and exercise equipment I imagine is at his disposal.
“Let me get this straight... You invented a fuel cell for airplanes? That’s ground-shattering technology. What, do you have an incinerator for the money in your mansion?”
Mick doesn't deserve my sarcasm. I can tell he told me that to normalize himself in my eyes. I scan his expensive clothes. His shirt is worth more than a quarter of my monthly pay.
His face hardens. The beautiful cleft in his chin is a dark spot like a period on the end of the sentence of his anger. “Listen, I never had money. I did the same thing my dad did, but with a twist. He was an auto mechanic, and when I was a kid, I dreamed of planes.” He stuffs his hands into his pockets, stares at his Italian shoes, and frowns. “I wanted to fly planes, but at the time, pilots needed perfect vision. So I became an airplane mechanic. I went through school, working full time, and I found I had a knack for making a leap of logic. Several, as it turns out.”
I don't miss his double entendre. My ear has been to the ground since the minute I lay on that cool street, his hand in mine as his bike rumbled in the background.
Mick meets my eyes. A trick of light makes them look like low burning embers of raw emotion and conviction. “It's not only planes. The part I conceptualized to advance fuel economy has given me the means to do more than I’d ever imagined. I've used those means to grow an empire of holdings. But in the beginning, I was just a kid with a dream who used what he'd been given.” His eyes bored into me. “With a ton of sweat and determination, I made my life what it is now.”
Blood Enchantment Page 30
