Including the one I believed I loved most.
* * *
In the debris, I once again tried to scurry to my feet, but everything ached. Eventually, my tears subsided as I embraced the mess I’d managed to get myself into. I visualized myself clawing out of the woods and emerging on the road to be picked up by a passerby. They would take me to a hospital where I would recover, but then what?
Jake still wouldn’t be mine.
So what was the point of even being found?
If my thoughts sounded macabre, it’s because they were. After three years of ups and downs, I finally knew what I wanted. And I couldn’t have it. I returned to sulking in the leaves. My cold, damp body shivered as the only warmth I had belonged to Jake—his lined leather jacket smelled like him.
It felt like him. I pulled it tighter around my body.
I thought I was losing my mind at first as I heard him—not in the jacket but the woods. “Anna! Where are you?”
“Jake!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Jake! I’m here!”
In the dense brush, movement rattled, and footsteps crunched. Feet covered in combat boots—feet belonging to the man I adored. Jake came back—for me.
He was going to be so pissed.
“Baby doll,” he mumbled, coming closer to me as I sniffled and wailed. My tears were so warm on my cold cheeks, they burned.
“Jake,” I cried out, “I’m here! Jake!” Within seconds, he swooped down and scooped me up into his arms. “I can’t walk.”
“I don’t care,” he barked, moving us off the incline to flatter ground. He laid my body against a tree.
“I can’t walk,” I whispered with fleeting thoughts of his carrying me from the clutches of vile darkness—my own. “I need help.”
His belt snapped as he growled, “I’m going to help you, alright.”
Laying his shirt on the ground, he plopped my bottom on the fabric and pushed my shoulders to the ground. My ankle throbbed, but I didn’t care as I splayed out before him. Despite not being able to see, I sensed his presence closing in on me. He quickly dropped to his knees and carelessly spread my thighs.
“I’m so sorry,” I said as tears plucked to the ground. “I didn’t mean to…”
He thrust hard inside of my wetness with a determination. I don’t know if he would’ve stopped if I had told him to. It didn’t matter. I wanted him—rough and rugged, grumbly and snippy. I knew he was an asshole, but what I didn’t realize until that moment was how much I needed that asshole in my life and my body.
What started as fucking quickly morphed to making mad love. My skin quivered beneath his ravenous touch. His hunt was over, and his taking of my flesh was his feast.
His cock was so magnificently hard and huge in my sex-starved body. I relished in every inch, every move, every grunt, and heartbeat. And when I least expected it, he ravenously kissed my lips as I’d never been kissed before. His tongue slathered against me in an erotic dance of wills—needing and wanting each other—as we erupted on the same page.
“If you ever leave where I put you again, I will never forgive you,” he grumbled as his famished mouth collided against my neck. “I needed to blow off some steam. I was coming back for you, baby.”
“I… I didn’t know that,” I slowly responded. “I’m sorry I ran off.”
“I’ll punish you later,” he snickered, nibbling at my lip. “I saw you at dinner—your nipples hard against your shirt—and how you were looking at Dane. I was so angry. I wanted you to look at me that way.”
“I was…” I argued as my hands gripped into his ass. I wanted to believe if I adhered my hands to him, I could keep him inside me forever. “Until you said you brought me here to study. Like I was some experiment for you…”
“No,” he chuckled, stopping his moves as he seated deep within my hollow. “I brought you here for you to study, Anna. I don’t want to study you. I don’t need to study you. I already know I love you.”
You what?
I gasped beneath the weight of his commitment.
“I loved you since I first saw you,” he confessed in the dark. “You were always mine, but I wasn’t yours. You had an agenda. A plan. A strategy to take over the mafia world. I couldn’t have told you no; you wouldn’t have listened. So, I did my best to protect you from everything.” He dropped his head to his chest as I understood how my actions had hurt him. “You aren’t easy to handle, Anna.”
“… You don’t say?” I giggled, knowing full well how difficult I could be. “I’m sorry I didn’t see how much you loved me.”
“Do you see my love now?” he questioned, thrusting slow. “Do you feel how much I love you now?”
“Yes,” I admitted as we intimately confided in one another. “Do you remember when Angelo hurt me? You took care of me, but you did nothing. I figured you didn’t care. I was just another broken showgirl who had it coming.”
He stopped moving again.
“Anna, I almost killed him. I met Luca that night when he pulled me off of him in an alley. I had my blade pressed to Angelo’s neck. Luca said I didn’t want to do it because if I did, I would be the enemy. I would be dead, and you would be without me. Luca threatened to pull out of the Gennaro deal if Angelo breathed a word.”
“… What?” Shocked by his admission, I reiterated, “You almost killed him?”
“Yeah,” he said, brushing his hand over my hair. “And after you pulled the stunt in playing all three, Luca told me to get you the hell out of the country. So I did.”
His secrets were all too much as the past bore down upon my soul. “… Luca told you to take me away?”
“Yes, Luca Raniero told me to take you away,” he said with conviction. “He saved your life and made me promise to look after you for the rest of mine.”
* * *
Years ago, I sat on an old cedar fence rail kicking my feet out as I watched my father breaking a horse. “You got to have patience, Anna Rebecca, but you also need to know when to show your teeth. If you can do those two things well, you’ll find joy in all you ever do.”
My father never said very much, so those words meant a lot to me. I couldn’t have been more than five or six, but I never understood the true meaning until I had a love of my life between my legs. My father didn’t want me to be a pushover, and neither did Jake.
My actions in Vegas showed me to be a pushover.
And when a mob boss was given an inch, they took the whole country.
I had managed to be owned, not by one, but three. As I sought to juggle and work them against one another, I fell into the trap of greed. I could see it now—away from the blinding lights and excessive noise. I sold my soul to the devil with a promise of a cracked halo and shredded wings.
I deserved better.
I deserved Jake.
Something about our making love felt different like I earned his respect. Like this love—this sex—meant more to us. Our lovemaking was the culmination of years worth of caring and devotion.
“… You love me?” I asked as he started to move inside of me. His cock still deliciously erect and protected in the shelter of my flower…my petals…les pétales…
Do not hurry in love; enjoy the journey of falling.
“I love you more than the beats in my heart and the breath in my lungs. You are my girl, my soulmate, my one true love,” he whispered, bucking faster into my body as we accelerated out of friendship and into the place of lovers. I closed my eyes, unable to restrain the emotion of what his body was doing to mine. Jake Ballister was my lover, and I was his.
With everything I had ever been and grown to become, I nuzzled his neck and replied, “I love you, too. Please don’t leave me after this. I don’t want to have shown you my heart only to have it trampled to sludge. I won’t ever recover from you, Jake.”
“I’m never leaving you, baby.” His thrusts were intense and full of passion as he pulled out to the very edge and plunged back into me. I was slicking, coalescing upon
his dick, and when I thought I might come, he would change the score. From deep love to a rolling dance, we fucked in a transparent air to an eternal place of love amidst the night song. We were ensconced in our bubble, unable to be harmed. I was his girl and he, my guardian.
My skin was cold, his back clammy with sweat. I could no longer feel the cuts on my arms or the bruise on my ankle as the love in his dick throbbed with blood and lust. Jake was the only thing I could feel. And he was pure ecstasy. I was high at the moment. My love seized by the capture of his.
I learned balance.
And love—so much love.
We were not alone in our pairing as the love we held for one another became a being of its own. I watched it emerge and tether us together, fresh from its paper-like shell, as it laced spindles of soaked dew around us. We were wrapped to the love and one another.
“I’m going to come inside of you,” he mustered out. “And it will not be the last time, but I will be the last one.”
“Yes, Jake!” I screamed, lifting my hips to his rhythm as we ran closer to the edge. “Take me. Fuck me. Love me.”
His grunts echoed through the trees as my arms and legs tightened around him. He was so perfect, so imperfect—so mine. “I’m going to…” I gasped as the waves of my orgasm splashed against his cock. He submerged, deep in me, with short pulsing taps until exploding in a thunderous moan.
Dropping his head to my shoulder, he kissed my skin as we recovered. “I love you, Anna. I love you so much.”
“I love you,” I cried tears of joy.
“But I’m going to punish the hell out of you when we get home.”
I giggled and grinned. “I hope so, Sir Jake, I hope so.”
My Romeo
CHAPTER 9
Though we would both say our relationship began in 1955, we didn’t admit the secret we shared—our love—until the romantic night under the canopy of leaves. The incident in the woods shifted our relationship from one of angsty friction to absolute bliss.
After carrying my busted body from the forest, Jake carefully placed me on the back of his bike and drove us home. Upon our arrival, he tenderly bathed and clean me up in the safety of his fourth-floor bedroom suite. Jake called Sir Dane to wrap my severely sprained ankle, and he advised me to stay off of it for ten days.
Staying in his room, I found comfort in the small things—the smell of his sheets, his clothes in the room, and the books he read on the nightstand. He brought up a small television and radio to help pass the time, but I savored the uninterrupted reading time, which I had little of prior to the incident.
For the next ten days, I read all the books I wanted to get my hands on in the library but never could. I requested them by title and author to Jake, and he retrieved them without complaint. At night, he would read to me.
I counted down those days as they were the best I had ever had. I slept with Jake. He would bathe, dress, and feed me. I was his broken girl, and he tended to me with a caring hand. In the back of my mind, I understood my days of freedom in confinement were limited.
I had a serious debt to pay—not only to Jake but Wilma Manley. I was reminded this on the fourth day when she brought me flowers from the garden. After she sat them on the nightstand, she grazed her hand over my cheek and said, “You are lucky to have Jake, but you still have detention, Miss Ford.”
How lovely of you to remind me.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said with a smile. “I’m quite aware I still owe you time at the chalkboard.”
“Oh, Anna, you are well beyond the chalkboard now.”
Her words cut into my soul with the sharpest of blades. I thought of her as an unrelenting bitch at the time, but that was a common theme with Wilma Manley. She was either helping me move forward with a maternal grace or punishing me in the most humiliating of ways.
With her strict focus, there was no wiggle room or margins of error or understanding how important it was to chase after Jake. No gray areas where she could embrace both her sides. I tried to adapt to her ‘one way or another’ mentality.
In retrospect, Wilma Manley did more to chisel out my future career than anyone else. Where Jake would provide lessons, Manley instilled a rigorous discipline in me, and without it, I don’t think I would have weathered the impending storms as well.
An important fact to remember that in the late fifties, the sexual revolution hadn’t fully started. For the most part, I was an outlier—trailblazing and charging full steam ahead into what seemed counterproductive to the feminist movement, but it was there—on my knees before Jake where I found happiness.
And if it hadn’t been for Manley, I would have quickly dissolved into a blubbering mess of a submissive with cutting edge—dare I say, blasphemous— ideas. But I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew in the bedroom that day was Manley was a harsh, uncaring old biddy, and I wanted to change the rules in how Les Pétales was run.
We did not see eye to eye.
Jake brought me a notebook that night for which I started scribbling ideas of what I believed should change. I didn’t show my outlandish thoughts to him as he laid at my feet reading from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I listened carefully to the tale of unrequited love and endless war and compared the story with my own.
On the sixth day, Manley appeared again with my lunch. I didn’t know where Jake was. She pulled the chair close to the bed, and I slurped at the soup. Picking up the copy of Romeo and Juliet, she asked, “Are you enjoying it?”
I swallowed and replied, “Jake has been reading to me.”
“Answer the question, Anna,” she said with a smile as I had the spoon in my mouth.
I wiped my lips on the napkin. “I’m of mixed emotions about it. I think things could have been handled differently to a more promising outcome.”
“Things don’t always go the way you want or hope though,” she replied, crossing her legs. “Sometimes you do not have a choice.”
“Then I suppose you have to make a different choice.”
“You’re a bit of a spitfire, Miss Ford,” she remarked as I took another bite.
I grinned. “Yes. And Jake wouldn’t have me any other way.”
“You do realize the structure in conformity?”
“I do,” I acknowledged, savoring the flavor on my tongue. “But I also understand change is good.”
Her eyes sparked with intrigue and a proudness. “I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.”
“I know you do,” I whispered.
She heartily chuckled, “But it doesn’t change your punishment.”
“I’m not expecting that it would.”
Scraping at the bowl, I considered asking her a personal question. She must have seen the befuddlement on my face as she said, “Speak your mind, Anna.”
“Your school in England. Is it like this?”
“It’s different. We teach high protocol. Old school. Formal. Competitively.” Pausing for a moment, she elaborated, “We are far less concerned with the erotic elements than L’Académie will be and more discerning when it comes to presentation.”
“I wouldn’t qualify,” I giggled.
“Don’t ever underestimate yourself and what you are capable of achieving. You can do anything you put your mind to,” she reminded, taking the tray from my hands. “Redefine your Juliet to be whoever you want her to be, Anna.”
* * *
On the ninth night, Jake brought roses from the garden to me. He fed and bathed me. I imagined we would resume our reading. I had already made my way through Fanny Hill and Tropic of Cancer.
At night, he would pick up where I left off during the day and read passages to me. We were going to read Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which was a hotbed with words like fuck and cunt. I was well acquainted with the words and even used them with Jake as I begged for his love.
“Please fuck my cunt…”
He had denied me all week—citing my swollen ankle as an excuse. Fearful we were headed downhill from where
we had been, I made every attempt to bridge the widening gap between us. I didn’t want to be side swept and forgotten. I believed our love was worth more than a one night stand in the woods.
“Are you ready?” he asked, fresh from the shower and wrapped in a towel.
I asked as I brushed my hair through hundreds of strokes. “For?”
“The rest of our story,” he said, gliding around the bed. He took the brush from my hands and ran the bristles through my locks. “We aren’t done, Anna,” he said, clicking off the light. His towel hit my foot as it fell to the floor. My hands eased up over his belly and found their way to lips. They were full and kissable—a generous pout to soothe my desire.
Despite feeling better and being able to put some weight on my ankle, I ached from being in bed for a week. Jake had helped me walk around the last two days in preparation for getting up.
I had yet to see this man naked in the daylight, but in his shadows, I found great moments of discovery without lust-filled images consuming my thoughts. I had to learn to use my imagination, my fingers, and mouth.
He ran the brush over my shoulders and arms. It gently prickled. “Turn over, Anna.”
I bit my lip. “What for…” I quickly covered my mouth with my palm, not believing I had said it. I knew better than to question.
Touching my legs, he snickered, “Whatever it was for, it will be double.” He sat down beside me. “Come here, bend over my legs.”
With my body shaking, I crawled onto his lap—face down—with my sex pressed against his. He wasn't fully erect, but I was bringing on a flood. I wanted him to fuck me—hard and long as he had done before. “I apologize.”
“You need a new safeword,” he mumbled as his hand moved over my bottom. “I’m not going to have you screaming out Parvati during a scene with me.”
Giggling, I teasingly said, “Okay, Romeo.”
Bad Girl (Les Pétales) Page 9
