Chapter 1:  Avery

Seven years later

Her Nikes pounded the plush green land as sweat glistened, traveling down her caramel skin. Avery’s mind cleared as the tranquil scenery mellowed her mood, allowing her endorphins to kick in.

She sprinted over a tree limb, her body curvy but athletic, and then Avery spun around quickly.

The man behind her had dark eyes that were greedily drinking in the sight of her ample frame in tight shorts and sports bra.

She assessed him quickly. A windbreaker and pants couldn’t hide that he was built brick by brick of muscle.

Her dark brown eyes narrowed, and instantly her left leg came out. The man blocked the kick. He was well prepared. A nanosecond later, his forearm blocked another attempt as if he knew her thoughts and calculated her movements. Before those large hands could take hold of her, five-foot-five Avery lifted her knee. His hands quickly blocked the strike to his cock. The grin, and subsequent dimple that pierced his dark olive skin, implied he’d seen this move coming too.

Thick, kinky strands of hair whipped Avery’s face as he grabbed her tiny waist. He spun her too quickly. Her yelp vibrated through the vast oak trees. Then Avery’s back was forced against his rock hard body. His erection tested the durability of her Nike shorts.

A passionate kiss caressed the delicate pulsing of her neck. Avery wriggled away with a cocky smile and turned around. 

“I distinctively recall telling you not to sleep at the old estate, mi amor.” Salvador chided. 

“Mmmm,” Avery moaned, licking her lips. Salvador, a commanding six feet even, with shoulders as broad as they were strong, always made sure her safety came first. She lifted her hand. Her thumb played with the sharp contour of his jawline and the perfect amount of stubble. “I know, I know. We agreed that I wouldn’t sleep at my grandparent’s estate until it’s been fully restored. What if I say, I slept at home?”

She knew the detective in Salvador was skilled at reading body language, though he didn’t need it now. Avery’s expression, a grin revealing a row of straight, white teeth hinted to her deception.

“You know what, Avery? I have a notion to pull out my handcuffs. That mansion isn’t fit to be lived in.”

“Handcuffs? Here? I assumed you were the good cop.” She leaned against one of the expansive oak trees. “Besides, Detective, you investigate major crimes, not reprimanding little ol' me.” Avery cocked her head to the side while holding her wrists together. “Albeit, a bad cop does sound . . . good.”

“Bad cop, aye?” Salvador stepped closer to her. His Latin flavor filled her with desire. That intense, sable gaze pierced Avery. As he spoke, Avery’s eyes stayed focused on the lips that she found so pleasing.

“Miss Castle, it is my duty to uphold the law. If something happened to you . . .” His mouth stopped moving; pearly, teeth came down to bite the soft flesh of his lower lip. “There's no doubt that I'd do anything under the sun to avenge and keep you safe.” 

She had no idea what could ever happen to her, especially, on her own land. The area they lived in had the lowest crime rates around. But Salvador’s lips claimed hers as if sealing his declaration. Salvador. Would. Always. Keep. Her. Safe.

His kisses on her damp neck made Avery’s warm with desire. She wanted him, but whimpered, “I'm stinky. No fair.”

He pulled away. Salvador looked Avery dead in the eye. “You’re like the bad cop, and I like the dirty woman.” 

Before she could remind him that they were outdoors, Salvador was all over her again. Rationality evaporated from her mind, though she wasn’t truly worried they’d be seen since her family owned acre upon acre behind the vast old Baudelaire estate. 

Salvador bit softly at her flesh again. His large hands staked a claim on the fabric against her voluptuous ass, warning that there’d be no more discussion. With one quick swoop, Avery’s legs wrapped around his narrow waist. He leveraged her between his thick thighs and against the tree.

Realizing that it wouldn’t be easy peeling Avery out of her running shorts, a low grumble erupted from Salvador as he considered what to do.

Laughter bubbled from Avery at his frustration as she felt the vibration of his primitive moaning. In response, Salvador’s expression grew hard, sculpting it into pure sex. He readjusted her; his strong hands never leaving her chilled body. It was like he was addicted to touching her supple skin, and therein lay their problem—Salvador’s desire to continually caress Avery’s body. It could be disruptive. She pulled down her shorts and panties, using one heel to push them off. At the same instant, Salvador yanked his own sweats to his knees, exposing his powerful erection.

He pulled her back onto him, leveraging her against the tree. At the moment his cock greeted her dripping wet slit, she sighed, taking him in inch by inch.

“Oh . . .” She groaned, her pussy widening for him.

Avery’s glossy, lavender-manicured fingernails clenched into taut biceps. Her body hungered for more of his. She was so wet for Salvador that each plunge pushed her over the brink into delirium. Avery felt warm breath against her cheek and neck, as Salvador nestled his face to hers. An explosion erupted into her body, sending Avery’s pussy on a convulsing high.

For a while after, Avery listened as birds chirped; the sunshine shimmied its way through the pine trees to kiss their dampened skin. Eyes closed, head nestled against the tree, Avery smiled in contentment. These moments were what life was made of.

Salvador pushed her spiraled, disheveled hair from her face with his callused hand. She glanced at him. A lopsided grin appeared on her face. Well, now, what was better than a morning run?

As they came down from their natural high, Salvador and Avery pulled on their clothes. 

She couldn't stop taking subtle looks at him. They'd been dating for almost two years now. Salvador had just made detective. She knew the next step . . . marriage. There was no doubt in her mind that Salvador had already chosen a ring. One that was just within reach of his pay range but closer to what he hoped would be acceptable by her father’s standards.

But Avery knew that, to her father, Alexander Castle, there was no such thing as acceptable or standards. The rich didn’t conform. They set the bar. Grandiose was just the beginning of it all. You want it; you get it. Entitlement was king.

As they walked in silence, Avery considered the timeframe for Salvador’s pending proposal. Would he ask Alexander first? Marriage should have been something to be ecstatic about, but Avery wasn’t feeling excited about it, she was no longer a romantic. Avery continued to remind herself that she was just twenty-four.

As they walked the few miles back to the old estate, she wished Salvador wouldn’t follow the tradition of requesting her father’s permission for her hand. Anyway, Alexander was more than an ocean away. Avery stopped dead in her tracks.

I should have Salvador propose to me now. That way, he will not be able to ask my father.

Of course, the engagement would last another two years, but by then her father would have had to agree to the nuptials, so Alexander could hightail it back to one of the countries he enjoyed frequenting. Yes, it would take time; time was key when convincing her father to allow this or that. A two-year engagement would suffice for her mother as well and provide Avery with the chance to tell her father in her own time.

Salvador stood before Avery, his sex-laden, dark eyes connecting with hers. “You know, Miss Castle, I have no qualms with screwing you along each and every tree.”

Avery noshed on her bottom lip, which still held a hint of Salvador’s taste. He leaned down and kissed away the worry that he did not know plagued her because she was a master of concealing her apprehension. His butterfly-light kisses traced her top lip then her bottom lip, at last, consuming Avery’s entire mouth stilling her brain.

No, Salvador didn’t have to be forced into a proposal, even if she didn’t want him to ask her father for her hand. As thoughtful as he was, whatever he did would be perfect. Avery knew she’d be revealing “how he proposed” at many of her parent’s extravagant galas, and she knew he did too. Salvador’s enchanting notions would captivate her family’s lofty friends, well, the females at the very least. Women loved romance.

The remedy of Salvador’s lips pulled away. “When is your father returning?”

“In two weeks? Longer, sooner? He always prides himself on being the closest black man to the president, you know . . . Alex and his power trips. So, who knows when he will be back, who cares?” Avery shrugged as if her father’s ever-changing itinerary meant nothing.

If her heart were set up to hate a single soul, her flesh and blood would be the one. But she didn’t. People always considered Avery as too nice for her own good. She did too.

“You are my little bird” The words from the man she once loved came out of nowhere, whispering across her skin in a voice that made her flesh burn with desire and her heart flood with love. Sometimes, it felt as if Donavan were nearby, which would feel like having her heart snatched out all over again.

Avery forced herself to breathe, wondering why, out of all times, she thought about him now. Why now! I should get married. I should be happy. Marriage . . . would make me happy.

“Avery . . . Avery . . .” Salvador cocked an eyebrow.

“Oh, I . . . look.” She nudged her chin toward a monarch butterfly, taking flight from the tall grass.

He nodded and smiled. “Yeah, good luck for us then. What I was saying was, Alex invited me to dinner the next time he’s in town.” 

Avery paused, eyebrow arched. Even though she was observant, her man was a body language expert by trade. Avery put on a poker face. The detective didn't need to know that she knew that he intended to ask Alex for permission to marry her. Her father only went by that name with good friends. Mr. Castles’ flock of friends were high ranking officials in the army or judges and senators. And even better, he controlled the top ten percent of the rich in America that dealt with the financial economy regarding war. Calculating men who basically made money off war. But Avery had no desire or need to understand the aspects of her father’s carefully selected “friends.” She only cared about Salvador and what the use of her father’s nickname meant for him. She hid the shock she felt. My father hates everybody, but I guess Sal is growing on him.

Avery nodded slowly. “Dinner? Hmmm well, in two weeks or so, we will have a very nice dinner, I guess.”

“Let me take you out tonight?” He pushed tendrils of hair behind her ear.

Eyes narrowed in mock paranoia, Avery smirked. “Um-hmmm, it seems that you just want to make sure I don't stay here tonight.” She cocked her head toward her great-grandparents extravagant-sized home that had seen grander days. 

The family home had once been a beautiful plantation. Now, the few shutters that were still hanging on the faded white walls were barely holding on. The mansion was in shambles.

“Well, my request is threefold. Primarily, keep you from staying here until the contractors have completed basic work is my top priority. Avery, when you get a project going, you have no breaks.”

“Nope. Not one.” She shook her head. 

“Second, I'm so damn addicted to this ass.” He shrugged. 

“Third?”

“That ass, of course.” Salvador took off at a jog, but not before Avery saw a megawatt smile spread across his face.

“Hey, where the hell is my Latin lover going? I want sexy accents and endearing words that soak my panties.” She called out to him as Salvador reached into the front driver side of his brand-new, unmarked Impala.

With a cocky grin, he held out the keys to her car, and she knew that Salvador had gone into her grandparent’s deteriorating home this morning. That meant he saw the sleeping bag in the middle of the ballroom floor. Even if the mansion were falling to pieces, the ballroom would forever be the place that she could sleep soundly. Its walls were almost as high as the great trees mother nature saw fit to grow outside.

The marble floors, scuffed with over three hundred years’ worth of festivities; the Venetian walls, cracked and showing the signs of their age. Avery found the ballroom enchanting. In Salvador’s opinion, it was fit for a historical horror movie.

With a smirk, Avery grabbed the keys dangling from his index finger. “Whatever, I’ll go home now.”

Avery backed away toward her iridescent-white luxury coupe.

“Sure, you need a shower,” Salvador quipped.

She gasped, then leaned her chin against her collarbone while taking a good sniff. Salvador laughed and slid into his car. Avery delighted in such a beautiful, strong Cubano that made life worth living—if only she could hear the sound of his laugh.

After Salvador drove away, Avery pressed the unlock button. Her mind drifted. She was considering an attempt on a new composition on her piano once home. Or maybe not. She sank into the soft, creamy-white leather seat. She looked down at fingers that would only play a certain kind of tune. A song for another . . .

~~~

The drive from her grandparent’s estate allowed the sweat and sex to become a delicate salting on Avery’s skin. She took the back roads to her parent’s mansion about twenty miles away. Instead of driving past the Spanish-style mansion and heading toward her own four-bedroom house on the same lot, Avery pulled into the U-shaped driveway of the main home, parking between her mother’s shopping spree convertible and her Mother’s Day spa luxury coupe. She spotted her little brother tiptoeing from the showroom garage that housed their father’s fleet of custom luxury cars. Her eyes narrowed as she got out of her car.

“Antonio! Get your ass over here,” she ordered.

His back was to her. The teen’s shoulders tensed. She imagined him cussing her out as he turned around. “What?”

“You've been out all night, haven't you? If Dad comes home to a “natural” fragrance in his car,” she said, using her fingers as quote marks while glaring at the pothead before her, “your little bad ass is going straight back to boarding school. Maybe so far as Europe this time.”

He glared.

Avery snatched the hood of his jacket from off his head and pulled the Beats earphones from his ears. The little gremlin hadn’t even heard her. Placing the earphone against her palm, she studied the vibrations. “Rap? Seriously, you’d listen to something that would degrade your mother, your big sister! We used to be so close.”

“Yeah, and then you went backpacking around the world for a few years, no calls, nothing.” Antonio’s nostrils flared, although he appeared more disappointed than angry.

“I didn’t go back—I—I just had to get away from home, you know?” She lied. Their parents weren’t big fans of telling anyone—not even her brother—that their only daughter had lost a child and ended up committed due to major depression and, more importantly, extreme delusions.

“Humph, I understand completely. Our parents are crazy. It’s Kendrick Lamar,” he huffed, signing the words.

“Ken who?” Avery’s eyebrows furrowed. Since the death of her only son, she didn’t keep up with current music, not if she could help it.

She almost felt like telling her brother, the one person in the entire universe who meant the most to her these days, what had actually happened. But her eyes narrowed, as she assessed him further. “Boy, stop smoking weed. Your eyes are blood red.” She smiled curtly at the sixteen-year-old. “You really want to go to boarding school, don’t you?”

“Whatever. I'll run away again.” Antonio’s tone and expression said he could not care less. “They only care about the special child anyway.”

Antonio was being a little douche. Avery hated to be called special. She preferred regular or mundane any day of the week.

Her dark eyes sent daggers into the pest. There was a time when Avery would watch her brother for her parents without arguing like other teenagers would about preferring to be out with their friends. She and the boy she once loved didn’t mind Antonio being the third wheel. They’d go anywhere and everywhere together.

She followed her brother into their family home. Its exterior was made from top of the line red clay tile, and its interior intricate Ebony woodwork. Their mother, Verdrena, was descending the left staircase with an ageless mask on her face. Avery almost turned around. The French mask cost an arm, a leg, and a big toe too, but it stunk.

Even with the putrid green mask on, Verdrena Castle was a sight. She had the softest, darkest skin in the universe. Verdrena’s mother could have passed for white when she was alive, especially with her French upbringing, but Verdie’s genes had reached way back down, and instead, took that of the French master’s best girl—and not the one who lived in the big house.

While mother and daughter were both exercise nuts, Avery would bulk up with muscle if she didn’t watch herself. On the other hand, Verdrena’s body stayed slim, although softly curved. Verdrena was a hand and foot model when she was younger, although she was very beautiful and could have been a runway model. Her back and shoulders held the same erect stature as before. Time, in Verdrena’s case, ceased to exist.

“Avery, tell me you didn't sleep at my family home last night?” Verdrena asked.

Before it was given the lofty term Estate, the large home and vast grounds had once been the Baudelaire Plantation. The talk of how free slaves ended up with it still disgusted Verdrena, since she knew they were the rightful heirs.

Her great-great-great grandfather had also passed for white, and that ensured him getting the land instead of the master’s barren wife. Verdrena hated the soil beneath her feet as a child, and like her mother fled. But instead of running into any man’s arms like her mulatto mother, the gorgeous Verdrena’s networking as a model kept her away. She’d send money to her grandparents to help with the upkeep of a place she’d never loved. But they were the sort that took nothing and put it all in savings for Avery and Antonio.

It was funny, though, when they had acquired the Baudelaire land, the home was too taboo for Verdrena. Noting Avery’s wistful attraction to the humongous shack, Verdrena had it willed straight to Avery once her grandmother, Francis, died. Verdrena shunned the home, without so much as hiring a caretaker for it until Avery could care for it herself.

“If you prefer another answer, I can say that I slept at home.” Avery tried. 

“You just moved back from New York. Why not move in with Salvador?” Verdrena asked, eyebrows wriggling. It was something to be said, in her mother’s opinion, for Avery to have gotten her claws into a Cuban man—a dominating man. But Avery didn't feel like her man was one of those creepy, domineering alphas her mom read about in romance novels. With Salvador and Avery, they were equals in everything that counted. Sure, he didn't want her to stay at her maternal family’s estate, but other than that, they made decisions together.

“I am not moving in with Salvador out of wedlock,” she said, following Verdrena into the airy kitchen.

Her mom looked back, a perfect eyebrow arched. She turned around to gather Avery’s attention. She and Antonio were the only family members who had taken the time to learn sign language. Verdrena enunciated every word as she signed, “Why not? You are a Baudelaire-Castle, Avery. Your snickerdoodles have too much sugar to be free. Look you can have it your way, but when the time comes, make sure he signs a prenuptial agreement.”

“Why?” Avery grumbled. “Mom, I'm poor as dirt.” 

“Blasphemy!” Verdrena said, and they both laughed. 

But in Avery’s mind, she really was broke. The child protégé hadn't composed a piano symphony since the age of sixteen. Those scores were all about her broken heart. She had believed Donavan was dead. Their son was dead. She’d declined a world tour when her composition was being praised by the masses. It had been easy to push aside the worldwide acclaim because she’d been at Sunnymead Resort for the wealthy psychotic. Now, the royalties for CDs were all but gone. The present only solidified her fears of failure. Well, perhaps her father’s fears of her as a failure since Avery chose never to compose again.

The world didn’t have to know though.

After she got out of the crazy house, or as her father would call it the therapeutic resort, where she obtained her high school diploma and started attending classes at New York University online, the symphonic world wondered why she never composed again. Once she completed her degree at NYU, she did the unthinkable. She became a piano instructor at a non-profit in Harlem’s inner city. To Avery, her life was perfect and returning home was for the holidays or Salvador if he couldn’t come visit her. Now, here she stood, living in one of the guest houses on her parent’s vast acres of land. It wasn’t too far from the grand princess-style bedroom she grew up in, but the three-bedroom guesthouse was her own for now.

The death of her mothers’ grandparents had dug its claws into Avery, uprooting her happy-go-lucky life, and transported her back into the former glamour of her childhood. She had only returned because she wanted to restore her grandmother Franny’s estate, not to be thrust back into her parent’s world.

Freshly baked bread, any woman’s diet kryptonite, was baking in one of the many wall ovens. Avery opened one and took a deep breath.

“Have you had any tunes swarming around in that genius head?” Verdrena asked, bypassing the carbs for a crystal bowl filled with sliced exotic fruit.

Avery shook her head. When she went for a freshly baked croissant, her mother’s hand pounced, smacking it out of Avery’s hand.

“I'm not a baby.” Avery gasped.

“Go write a song or two.”

“I only have one melody weaving through my mind, Mom,” Avery replied. She quickly grabbed the cream cheese croissant and bit down. The sugary confection lifted her spirits, so she didn't have to think about the tune . . . or Him.