Zariah
Did I even get a chance to blink? Nope, not at all. The air felt cool against my skin, for it to be a warm summer morning, the air literally chilled against me as swiftly as Vassili had me on my back. He doesn’t even snatch off my thong, nor does he take off his clothes. His boxers and basketball shorts are pulled just over his ass, as he slams inside of my pussy. His hand claims the headboard like mine had just done a second ago.
“Ooooh, shit,” I scream, as his cock batters my insides, assaulting my g-spot. He reaches between our bodies, his thumb finding that tiny bulb of mine that always makes more of my cum rushing against his cock. He works my clit with his thumb while pumping in and out of me. My left leg goes over Vassili’s hip, and he bangs my back.
Missionary never looked so good.
Our hearts drum to the same beat as his cock glides in and out of my wetness.
“Vassili,” I ground down on his dick. “I’m gonna—”
“Fuck,” he growls like the incredible hulk. “Shit, I’m coming, Zariahhhhh.”
My eyes close and my head kisses the pillow. The raw tension dwindles down and a euphoric calm claims my body as I welcome Vassili’s steel body on top of mine. I can’t breathe, but I’m content. I press my arms around him, holding him against me. Delighting in his heaviness, strength, and power. He starts to roll over.
“Not yet,” I moan. “Stay.”
“You can’t breathe.”
Damn, it’s a feat to give him a ‘give a fuck’ look that he likes to dish out on occasion. “Don’t need to,” I finally murmur.
Everything about him is heavy. His paws feel heavy as he rubs my face and kisses my forehead tenderly. “Ya nikogda ne otpushchu tebya—I will never let you go,” he murmurs in Russian. Wetness instantly burns my eyes. I love the instances when he declares these kinds of words. Vassili rarely says them, but when he does our eyes connect, and it’s more powerful than wishing on a star as an innocent child.
My husband is confident. Let him tell it, and he’s invincible. He’s fearless. I’m becoming fearless and shedding all worry and doubt. And in this moment, we are so very connected with each other.
My alarm goes off.
“Aw, no,” I pout. It’s not that I don’t really want to go to work. God has blessed me with a career I enjoy, so Billingsley Legal isn’t ‘work’ for me. But I love these moments. These moments that are solely for us.
“Turn it off,” Vassili says, getting off of me.
I reach over, grab my phone and turn off the reminder. His thick bicep engulfs my tiny waist—well, it was tinier when we met—and pulls me closer. “We can stay in bed today.”
“What about Natasha?” I ask.
“We can stay in bed until she bullies us to get out.”
“Oh, she’s a bully now? Like someone I know.”
“When hungry, dah. When her pull-up is too wet, hell yeah. She,” he nods, “is a bully. So, call in, and we will stay in bed until we’re both punked.”
I nuzzle my head beneath his chin. Something deep within my being just loves being so close to this man. I can be literally standing on top of him, breathing his air, and never be close enough. He’s my slice of perfection, flaws and all. Thank you, Jesus, for my husband.
While I’m thankful for my blessings, I’m totally aware of someone who needs God’s love.
Mrs. Noriega and her children cling to my cognition. My eyes close and I breathe in the sweaty sex of us. Then, even though it hurts my heart, I rise into a seated position. “I have to go to work, Vassili.”
“Why?” He barks.
My bottom lip drops, my eyes narrow. “You know what, Vassili, you’re a fucking asshole.”
“Choice words, girl,” he growls, sitting up, too.
“Don’t throw the finger, Vassili, you just dismissed the hell out of my career. Tell me that my job isn’t as important as playing the Neanderthal for … a lot more money, while all your doing is ancient human grunting and tossing fists in the air.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “Okay, Zar, maybe I am being a bit of an asshole, I was born this way. But sometimes you work from home. We’re having the best fucking day, girl. Can’t we just have this day?”
I glance into his dark gaze. It’s genuine. Something tells me that in retrospect, somewhere down the road, I’m going to wish I had set aside everything… life, for more moments with my husband. We live in a busy world, and the guilt I have for staying with my father, at my mother’s insistence during the last year of high school still pervades my mind at times. Top that with me wishing I had the guts to try and go upside my father’s head, starting back when I was four—the first instance I saw him hit her. Intuition told me it wasn’t right, even at such a tender age.
I’m saving Felicidad Noriega from Juan Noriega Senior. I am.
“I can’t, baby.” I offer a weak smile. “I have a meeting this morning, it’s unprofessional to call off, okay?”
Should I hand the case over to Tyrese Nicks? It’s true. He came through on my way home, calling during Vassili’s many texts, about having an immigration attorney push around her schedule to be able to meet this morning. Nevertheless, even though Mr. Nicks is more than capable of handling the situation, Felicidad requested me. And dammit, I keep seeing my mother through her eyes.
“Okay.” His broad shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. “Tell me about this new case while you get dressed, though.”
For a moment, I’m silently weighing the pros and cons. Can I handle this case? Will fighting Juan Noriega place my life, my child’s life, in danger? Receiving help from a Resnov would be more beneficial than speaking to my father. Hell, I’m not even entirely sure my dad is interested in being bothered with me. But, Vassili will not have it. The instant I mention Juan Noriega, I will lose more than this case. My husband will bully me into the stay at home career he’s always desired for me. Safety first…
With a heavy heart, I do what a lawyer does best… I lie.
The case regarding Sarah Versa, who cleaned herself up from alcohol, when her grandfather, Edgar Versa, was stricken with cancer and became his caretaker, becomes this fresh, new assignment. “Felicidad use to be the black sheep of the family. Her mother and father spent so much money on rehabilitation centers in the past in order to help clean her up. Felicidad told me that she met Lindsay Lohan, and listed off celebrities who she partied with, rehab was like a slumber party for grownups.”
“Oh, daddy’s little rich girl?” he asks, as I head to the dresser to pull out clothes.
“Yeah. Her parents had finally removed her from their own will, which, in a sense is connected with the paternal grandfathers, who owns Versa Home Improvements, it’s like Home Depot but with top of the line stuff.”
“Dah, I know them. I thought about having you a home built, in Calabasas, but your mother chose this one. And there was no fucking way I’d have it completed by our first Christmas together.”
I snatch out a pair of undergarments and glance back at my husband. He sure knows how to make a person feel guilty for lying to him. With a smile on my face, I subtly gulp down the lump of remorse in my throat and head for the walk-in closet. “Felicidad hardly got by the past few years, because she receives a small trust fund from her grandmother, who died years ago. She had a career of attending college, it was a requirement for her to live a meager life,” I say, snatching out a pair of burgundy pants. “And I mean meager as in she owns a home in the hood, and spent the rest of it on alcohol.”
“Resnov Water?” He says from the bed.
In my shame, it hurts to chuckle at his joke. “Boy, I don’t know. But she told me she got so bad with her drinking habit that she also had to panhandle. So, when grandpa got sick, Felicidad set aside the bottle and moved into his house in The Hills.” I wipe a stray tear from my face and take my time with choosing a pair of shoes. Meaning, I’m numb to the lies I’ve told, and stare at the sea of designer stilettos for a few minutes, taking deep breaths.
“The good life returns for Ms. Felicidad,” he says as I enter the bedroom. “Until her grandpa died?”
“The good life?” My eyebrow arches. “Felicidad isn’t… living the good life now.”
“I bet she’s not. You watch too many lifetime movies. I’m guessing her family doesn’t believe she cleaned up to help grandpa, out of the goodness of her heart.”
“That’s right. They’d gotten him to reconstruct his will in the past when she was estranged from everyone. The man had her last on his will, underneath various charitable organizations. But a few days before he died, Edgar Versa reinstated the previous clause in his will regarding Felicidad. She gets more than her parents.”
“You have to prove he wasn’t coerced?”
“Yup.”
“Sounds like a hard case,” Vassili says, grabbing my pillow and placing it against him.
“Yeah, this sort of litigation can be difficult. But I know what you mean by hard case, Vassili. You like me to debrief you regarding my cases because you worry that any of them has the potential to put me in harm’s way. And no, I went to school entirely too long to become a housewife.”
He holds out his hands as a sign of peace, and my heart begins to cry. Vassili is playing ‘nice’ while mentally considering how ‘difficult’ the Versa family can be. Little does he know how bad I feel for manipulating him.
***
Tyrese’s dimples are deep and enchanting as he peeks into my room. And then he steps inside, holding a Harry Potter book. My eyebrow rises. “Good morning. So it’s not coffee but sorcery that gets your day started?”
“Actually, I asked Lanetta if she had a few books to spare on her way into work. She picked up a few Spanish to English illustrated kid book for Rosemary from the library down the block, and a stack of her son’s very own Harry Potter collection.”
I blink twice. Well, damn, I learned not to ask her to file anything for me before ten am. And I sure as heck get my own coffee on the way to work, so the hoops she’s jumping over, darting around, and army crawling through for Tyrese amazes me. “Oh, okay. Thanks, you can drop them off.” My gaze returns to my laptop screen.
“The meeting with Mrs. Lopez is in an hour.”
I smile my acknowledgment.
“My car or yours, Zariah,” his tone is crisp. “I’m not allowing you to handle this one solo.”
Well, in my surprise of how thoughtful Tyrese was being this morning regarding books for Mrs. Noriega’s children, I hadn’t yet brought to his attention my concerns about the case, and I would’ve readily agreed that handling it alone against the best interest of …well, my livelihood as a lawyer, at the very least. Vassili would blow up if he even knew I consulted regarding Juan Noriega. But Tyrese beat me to the punch, inserting himself as co-attorney on this assignment.
With a smirk, I close the laptop and determine to finish the memo I was currently working on later. “How about you drive? I’m sure that makes men feel like they’re in charge, right?”
He offers up the sexiest chuckle he can muster. Pitiful fucker, there are plenty of other pairs of panties that need help getting wet. Mine belong only to my husband. “Alright, Zariah, I’ll drive, and we can readdress the misconception that you have of me.”
Well, damn! He’s taking the wheels this morning. “I don’t think so.” I grab my purse from the bottom file cabinet next to my desk and arise from my chair.
“I rubbed you the wrong way. You’ve always been easily set off.”
“On the way to the immigration attorney, we need to keep our minds sharp.” My gaze darkens, and he seems smugly satisfied that he’s gotten a rouse out of me. “You don’t know me, Mr. Nicks. It would behoove you to refrain from such talk about how I’ve ‘always been’ this or that. Consider what you see as the new normal.”
“Okay, too soon. I get it.” He steps aside, and waves a hand, allowing me to exit the room first.
***
Later on, Tyrese and I are speaking with Mrs. Lopez as her assistant takes photos of Felicidad Noriega. Though the immigration firm is tinier than our own, there’s an interpreter that assisted myself and Tyrese with understanding the discussion between Mrs. Lopez and Felicidad. Mrs. Lopez speaks English but wanted to streamline the entire interview by adding the interpreter to facilitate the meeting so that she could continue to speak with Mrs. Lopez, who reiterated her son’s previous statement. Her relationship with Mr. Noriega is quite the love story. Apparently, he was a good guy in the past. Offering the standard ‘honeymoon’ phase in your typical domestic violence scenario. But even better, because as a lucrative criminal, Juan Noriega gave her shiny diamond rings with said shiners.
However, now, Juan Senior’s not only a member of Loco Dios but his reasoning for being in the gang was to help him in the drug trade. He isn’t the frontrunner for the cartel that the gang assists in Southern California, but he was running a drug mule operation and has quiet the intelligence. Noriega and a few others from Mexico helped connect the Cartel with the Loco Dios gang when the gang was at its weakest. Their alliance has started an army.
We are fucked.
“I don’t want to know where you’re keeping Mrs. Noriega,” Mrs. Lopez says, “but I pray to St. Michael for protection that it is somewhere her husband will never get to her.”
“Should we send her out of state?” Tyrese asks.
I had thought the same thing while the two women chatted. “Witness protection would be nice.”
“You can do that,” he tells me.
Mrs. Lopez has all her attention on me. “Do you have a connection that will ensure the Noriega’s family’s safety in another state? I fear shipping her back to Mexico will only increase the chance of corruption. Because it’s either we hide her from Loco Dios in Los Angeles or hid her from the Cartel back home? These are trying times, Mrs. Resnov.”
Shit, we have better luck sending her to Russia than me asking my father. I know, I know, I said I’d speak to my dad about Noriega. But Felicidad just dropped a nuclear bomb on us regarding the depth of his involvement with both entities.
“I can try.”
“Without jeopardizing Mrs. Noriega’s safety? She believes some of the LAPD are connected to the Loco Dios gang. These days, I’m inclined to agree.”
“I can inquire without telling of her identity,” I huff.
I step out of the room. Across the way, in another immigration attorney office, little Juan is reading the words to Rosemary. Due to my awareness of some of the keywords she’s speaking in Spanish, I believe, he’s being quite the good brother and allowing her to stumble through a sentence in Spanish before he reads it in English. I smile. The girl is smart to be able to read already.
I slip out my cell phone and call my father. “Hello, princess,” he grits out.
“Hi, Dad. Do you have time for lunch today?”
“No, it’s Berenice’s birthday. What can I help you with?”
Oh, so he still doesn’t have time for his one and only daughter? Leaning against the wall I spit venom for his venom, “You can help me by setting aside your bitch, I am your daughter. I don’t care if this is the day that she dedicates herself to our Lord and Savior. I need an hour of your time.”
He breaths into the phone. “Very uncouth you’ve become, my daughter. But like I said, it’s Bernice’s birthday. We’re in Temecula. Take this into account, Zariah Washington, it is you who has pushed me away. And I would love to be there for you, but unfortunately, I cannot in person. Is there something you’d like help with over the phone?”
“No. When will you return?”
“Two days. Where’s Sammy? He’s the one you run to these days when you need fatherly advice, right?”
I bite my lip. Samuel is at a conference in Washington. And I don’t need him aware of the case I just picked up. He’d tell Vassili…