The Complete Tempest World Box Set

by Mankin, Michelle

  “That was fantastic!” Avery exclaimed as the prerecorded music faded out. “Dalty, I want a copy. Send it to my email and my brother’s too. I want him to hear it.” She touched my arm. “If it’s ok with you, of course?”

  “Sure.” I shrugged. “Why not? I’m just fooling around. I’m not territorial about it. It’s not anything serious.” I had nothing better to do. Though I had to admit, Mary had been spot on about the music. I did love it. It fulfilled the creative part of me, and it felt like second nature to be back inside the studio.

  “It’s seriously, majorly good,” Avery disagreed. “And it would fit in really well with a couple of the unplugged numbers Jus and I have put together.” My brows rose. My stuff with Avery and Justin Jones? I didn’t think it could possibly be on par with that. “Mary’s been pressuring me for quite some time about doing a solo project.” She sighed. “I tried, but honestly I don’t care for it. I’ve just been spinning my wheels and getting frustrated. With my life the way it is right now I don’t need the stress of doing anything that doesn’t make me feel good, ya know?”

  I nodded. I could certainly relate to that sentiment.

  “I’ve actually heard you working in here several times. I hadn’t wanted to intrude, but you and your music are kind of hard to ignore.”

  I didn’t know where she was going with this, but I listened without bias, something I found easier to do without the distractions of visual cues that were often at odds with a person’s words.

  “Raw emotion resonates with me. Some of your lyrics are painfully personal. I imagine they cut pretty close to the truth in your heart after what you’ve been through.”

  My fingers tightened on the handle of my cane.

  “I’m not trying to be intrusive. I’m only trying to say that I understand. I mean about music, how it can be cathartic. It’s been that way for me and my brother since our mother died, and our father started drinking and knocking us around. Lately with him being so sick and having so many unresolved issues to work through, I’m finding it even more so.”

  “I’m sorry.” My eyes filled. I could hear the pain in her voice. Going through so much turmoil in my own life had made me more sensitive to it in others.

  “Yeah life kicks you in the teeth sometimes.” She was silent a long moment. “My dad found religion after he got sick.” Her voice became reflective. My thoughts did, too. After falling off that mountain and coming so close to dying, my mind often wandered in that direction. “No that’s not exactly right,” the Brutal Strength guitarist self-corrected. “He would say he found faith. He believes in a God who works good from the bad, if we let him.” Sager and his Abuelita had faith like that. I had a lot of anger, less now than I’d had in the beginning, but certainly Avery had heard it in my music. Peace. Absolution. Hope. Those were things I wanted, too. But I knew to have them I would have to release my anger and overcome my fear. For Sager, I wanted to believe. Because of him I would consider it. “I don’t know if I’m at the same place my Dad is,” she continued. “I think we’re all on different journeys and have to walk those paths for ourselves. But I think it’s important that we determine if we’re going to focus on what we have, instead of what we’ve lost, on our way to wherever we’re going.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Sager

  In my hotel room overlooking the bay, I contemplated the portrait of Melinda that rested on the easel in front of me, determined to take advantage of the remaining light. My hands smudged in sapphire paint, my grip on the brush tight to the point of breaking the wood, I wanted to finish it before I saw her tonight. When I surprised her tonight. She wasn’t expecting me until the next morning, but I couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Pendejo.” King’s shadow slithered across the canvas. I turned my head to regard him. I could tell by his bloodshot eyes that he’d been hitting the weed again and drinking too much.

  “We’re on stage in less than a couple of hours. You really think it’s wise...”

  “Cállate.” He made an abrupt movement and pointed at the painting. “What the fuck? It’s done. How many more times are you gonna mess with it? Put the brush down. Let’s go get a drink.”

  “Nah, man. I’m seeing her tonight. I’m already too keyed up. I don’t need to throw alcohol into the mix.”

  “That’s why you need a drink. To loosen up.”

  I thought about it but shook my head.

  His lips flattened. I noticed a smudge of frost pink along the outer edge of them. I mentioned it and showed him the location by gesturing toward my own face. He drew his shirt up and wiped it off with the underside of his tee. He stared at me moodily.

  “You dead set on giving her that tonight?”

  I nodded.

  “She takes one look at that and she’s gonna know she owns you, mi hermano.”

  “Yeah, probably.” I allowed. “I’m past the point of playing it cool with her, Juaquin.” He knew that. The guys knew it. Seemed like everyone did but her.

  “I don’t get it. She ties you up in knots. She calls all the shots.”

  “I love her.”

  “Then love’s like getting fucking kneed in the balls, man.”

  I barked a laugh, my eyes watering as I nearly choked on my own saliva.

  “I’m going down to the lobby.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “You might not need a drink, but I do. I gotta get good and drunk if you expect me to drive you to your doom.”

  “I thought I’d find my own way there,” I countered.

  “Suit yourself.” He shrugged. “Take the Hummer. What’s mine is yours. You know that’s never going to change.”

  I nodded and would’ve scrubbed a frustrated hand through my hair except my hands were covered in paint. “I hate this distance between us, Juaquin. I’m telling it to you straight. I wish you’d give Melinda a chance.”

  “My stance hasn’t changed.” He lifted his chin and his eyes flashed. “Until I see proof that she’s making you the priority in her life, I’m not gonna trust her. That’s me as your brother giving it back to you just as straight.”

  • • •

  Melinda

  “Hello,” I answered tentatively, the ring tone generic.

  “Puta.” I sat up straighter on the bench outside the front door of Mary’s house. Suddenly the gurgling of the fountain no longer seemed soothing.

  “Juaquin,” I acknowledged, my fingers curling tighter around the plastic casing of my cell, a pincushion of anxiety “Sager. Is he…” I trailed off and gulped imagining a whole host of worrisome scenarios. I expected Sager to come by the house in the morning. I had no idea what was going to happen after that. Why was King calling me? With the song vaulting up the charts, I felt like it was only a matter of time before the facts surrounding my condition became public. Had Sager somehow already found out the truth? Had he changed his mind about coming?

  “Not gotta a lot of time.” I heard the loud steady roar of a crowd in the background.” We’re going on in a few.” He sounded funny like he had a mouth full of marbles.

  My brows drew together. “Are you drunk?”

  “Not drunk enough.”

  Shit.

  “Cut him loose.”

  “What?”

  “You know what I’m saying. Stop stringing him along. Put him out of his misery already.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Chinga de madre. The hell you don’t.”

  “You think I’m playing him?”

  “Yeah. While mi hermano is out here working and making all the sacrifices, you sit on your ass talking to your psychiatrist, feeling sorry for yourself and doing who knows what else. Probably stringing along some other guy who thinks your pussy is made of gold.”

  I stiffened more in response to his insensitivity than his vulgarity, but he wasn’t through.

  “He laid it out how he felt about you a long time ago. You’ve got him strung up tight and cross as shit. He won’t even look at anyone else. Beli
eve me, I’ve tried to get him to let off a little steam with the groupies, but he won’t do it.” I heard tapping like he was drumming on a wall with his sticks. “You’re keeping something from him. Lying through your teeth about whatever it is. Every time he gets close to it you put him off, and he flies off the handle. Tell me that’s not the way it is.”

  “It’s not what you think. There is something, yes, but I have to tell him in person. It isn’t anything I can say over the phone.”

  “Bitch,” he spat when I flattened my lips and went silent. “I knew it. Lying pinche puta. What is it? Your psychiatrist tell you having a Southside guy with a rap sheet is bad for your future? Or is it just your daddy twisting your little delicate arm again?”

  “King,” I heard War say. “Get the fuck off the phone and get your ass on stage.”

  “Alright, pendejo. Un momento. I’ve got one last thing to say.” His reply to War was muffled as if he had covered the receiver with his hand, but he was crystal clear when he spoke to me again. “I don’t know what it is that you’re hiding, and I don’t really give a fuck. Sager might be so into you that he can’t see things for what they are, but I don’t have that same problem. Just know this. You’ve used up your last chance with me.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Melinda

  In that suspended place between wakefulness and slumber, I dreamed. Warm lips, perfect lips, my favorite lips. They skimmed softly like butterfly wings dipped in the morning dew over the creamy softness of my cheekbones and down the sensitive skin of my neck. I sighed sinking deeper into the vision imagining the two of us together in a forest glade where the real world couldn’t intrude, behind a curtain provided by the fronds of a weeping willow tree.

  “Blue,” he whispered. In my dream, he leaned against the trunk, my head was resting on his lap and we were both naked. It was that kind of dream. I turned over on my other side away from the bubbling brook whispering its solace and toward the man who made me whole. The lush grass beneath me a satiny smooth sheet, I lifted my head and gazed up at him from between my lashes while he stared down at me. The adoration I craved more than anything in the world shone like a thousand twinkling bright stars from his espresso and gold flecked eyes.

  “Sager.” His name was my breath, his touch my life. The pads of his fingertips with a hint of callous slid over the swell of one breast on the way to the other. I arched in greedy anticipation, my body shimmering with warmth and coming alive with need as if he were the sun, and I an exotic flower that he had coaxed into blooming.

  “Beautiful, babe. I had forgotten how you respond to me, or maybe it was just too painful to recall,” my appreciative lover whispered. Those same fingers seemed more urgent and hotter against my skin as they rushed across the taut peak of my other breast.

  My eyes flew open to inky blackness.

  “Sager,” I whispered. “I was dreaming. A wonderful dream. Are you really here? Please. Please be real.”

  “I’m here. I’m real. You’re wonderful. And it’s no dream.” It felt like a fantasy, his touch in the darkness. Sensations took on new depth without my sight. His heavy respirations. Cardamom, wood and leather along with the heady musk of his arousal. His body framing my side, his thick cock hot, hard and insistent against my hip. Who had let him into the house? And how had I missed the door to my room creaking open and him disrobing at my bedside?

  “Dreams of you and this moment were all I’ve had for weeks. The reality is so much better.” Questions about logistics scattered as he suddenly shifted. The mattress dipped on either side of my head and lower down around my thigh as his hard masculine thigh straddled my feminine one. I drew in a sharp breath, nerve endings sizzling with heat when he slid his knee up and rocked it between my legs.

  “Oh, Sager,” I praised, feeling a rush of warmth, my clit swollen already and throbbing with a sweet ache. Not being able to see or anticipate what he might do next made everything he did feel even more erotic.

  “Blue,” he replied. “My sweet sexy Blue.” His voice seemed closer, the mattress dip deepening as he leaned more weight onto his hands. “I found my rosary on the nightstand right beside your head. Thank you for keeping it safe for me.” I felt the edge of the cross drag along my skin. A strand of my hair caught under one of his hands. I felt a pull and sting for a brief moment, but the pain drifted away in a blissful tide as Sager’s mouth touched my own. Warm lips. Perfect lips. My favorite lips making sweet beautiful love to my mouth.

  I brought my hands up to his face, stroking, caressing and relearning with my fingertips his mesmerizing features in a new way. The scrape of his stubble. The warmth of his skin. The sharp line of his jaw. The thoughtful crease between his brows. I focused on him as if this time together might be our last.

  He lifted his head but only to take in a breath and adjust the angle of his mouth so he could deepen the kiss. I slid my hands into his silky hair. He parted my lips. I touched my eager tongue to his. The kiss turned desperate, the matching movement of our frantic limbs. Feverish skin to feverish skin. My pulse hammered with need. I felt the desperate ache to be joined to him everywhere even within the deepest part of my yearning soul.

  He hummed his pleasure into my mouth. My entire body vibrated like a tuning fork in response. My fingers grew more restless, abandoning his hair, skimming the breadth of his wide shoulders only to dig in deep into the firm slabs of muscle.

  “Sager,” I cried, feeling like my skin was on fire but knowing that I didn’t want the flames to be extinguished. I wanted him to fan them higher and higher until they consumed us both.

  “Yeah, babe.” A puff of breath ghosted across my swollen lips. “I feel it too. I want you so badly. Hold that thought.” I heard the rip of a foil packet, and his torso twisted before he returned his mouth to mine again, melding our lips together while reaching down between our bodies, his grip firm and sure as he parted my thighs and positioned his hips between them. I felt his cock, the engorged head poised at my entrance. I was already wet and aching for him.

  “Please.” I opened my legs wider and lifted my hips.

  “Yes.” He aligned and then filled me, a smooth deep glide.

  “Mmm.” I moaned.

  He circled his hips giving me a moment to readjust to his size, giving us both a moment to savor being joined together after being apart for so long.

  I glided my palms and urgent fingertips over his shoulder blades, along the desire dampened skin of his spine, grabbed his taut ass and lifted my hips at the same time to draw him deeper inside.

  “Babe.” He groaned. “Yeah just like that. I can feel you gripping me.” He withdrew slightly only to return a moment later, the rigidness of his cock sliding over me, providing the perfect friction.

  “Yes,” I hissed sharply as my need spiraled higher and hotter.

  “I like that too.” He glided in and out slowly. He felt so hard and so good. I lifted my hips in response to his rhythm.

  “Beautiful,” he praised, and heat tingled my scalp, curled my toes and licked my spine as he began to thrust harder. I pressed my breasts into his chest, my tight nipples scoring his skin, his rosary beads and cross imprinting on mine, the way his soul was imprinted on my heart. I dug my fingers deeper into his ass. I felt his muscles flexing beneath me as he rocked in and out of me. My heart pounded. My body pulsed with need. I wanted to hold out, to prolong the pleasure, but I knew that I was past the point of return.

  “Melinda.” He cursed darkly under his breath, not in protest but in raw violent need. “Babe.” He stroked in and out through my welcoming heat. “I need.” He started to hammer into me, rapid thrust after rapid thrust. I lifted my hips to meet each one. The ache. The desire. The crest was just within reach.

  “Sager. Yes. Oh, yes.” I shuddered and convulsed with fevered need.

  “Blue.” He stiffened within me. “Oh, fuck.” I felt the thick hot heat of him as he erupted inside of me, the pleasure slamming into both of us at the same time. Warm. Perfe
ct. Bliss. My favorite bliss. We rode the wave together until nothing remained but languid ripples.

  “I love you,” he groaned into my ear, collapsing his weight onto me, the hot skin of our bodies meshed together.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Sager

  “I love you,” she whispered, her cheek pressing deeper into my own, her hands slowly sliding up to my shoulders and digging into my skin as if to bind me to her.

  I understood her intensity. It had been too long. I couldn’t handle this kind of separation. Commitments needed to be spelled out. She was going to have to visit me on the next tour, or I was going to have to fly out to meet her. Time for that either way would have to be factored into the schedule.

  I captured her lush lips, stole one last cherry flavored kiss, pulled out, tucked her into my side and reached for the switch on the lamp. I wanted to see her all sated and glowing from our lovemaking.

  “No.” She grabbed my wrist, her fingers wrapping around the leather cuff she had given me. I hadn’t taken it off. It seemed apropos to be wearing her gift to me as well as the rosary that represented answered prayer, the miracle of her life, the miracle of our love. Light flooded the room. “Please...I need another minute. I want...”

  I stared down at her face not understanding at first the tension that had suddenly seized her. She stared back at me, only...not quite. Her sapphire eyes as beautiful as ever only seemed to gaze into the distance. As I searched them, and she failed to reflect my questing, a wave of cold realization crashed over me. Her tension immediately became my own.

  “No,” I rasped. “No.” Surely she wouldn’t have concealed something of this magnitude from me. But I knew in my heart even before putting the clues together that she had. I remembered the sunglasses at the hospital, and how she had tried to push me away. The white cane that lay beside her bed. I had knocked it over earlier when I had slipped out of my clothes and snagged the rosary. In the dark I hadn’t realized what it was.