Fifteen
A nice lunch with my friend will help me be a lot less confused…
That shameless use of sex as a bargaining chip was what got me out of my sequestered status at Wick’s house, and at Sucre Noir sitting across from Blake. The man himself was sitting a few tables down, occupying a booth alone in the half-empty restaurant. That had been another condition – coming at an odd hour. The fewer people Wick had to keep an eye on, the better. And it was a condition I was totally fine with, as long as it meant being somewhere other than the house, and getting to see my friend.
Even if she was looking at me like I was crazy.
“You know,” I started, taking a sip from the blueberry lemon drop the server had placed in front of me before moving on. “I wanted to have this conversation with you, because out of everyone, I thought you’d be uniquely qualified to understand the awkward position I’m in.”
Blake lifted a carefully arched eyebrow, then sipped from her own cocktail. “Okay. You’re not wrong about that,” she admitted, once she’d placed the glass back on the table. “We’re in the “held on to a cheater” club together, sure. But… our situations are completely different, Monica. You have to understand that?”
“But I don’t,” I responded. “Or… wait. I do, but…” I closed my eyes, pushing out a little sigh. “Kellen had his faults. But he was still my husband, and I made the decision not to leave.”
“With damn good reason.”
I scoffed. “Was it though? I mean… think about how different my life could be right now, if I hadn’t just pretended Kellen and his mistress didn’t exist for damn near two years. If I’d just taken the time to find a lawyer and gotten this over with? All this time and energy wasted, simply because I… chose to just ignore it, and focus on my business. Which is how my marriage got where it was in the first place.”
“What have I told you about taking all the responsibility for that?” Blake asked, frowning. “I’m not going to sit here and blow smoke up your ass, tell you that your actions were perfect, or pretend that you couldn’t have been better at meeting your husband’s needs. You already know the deal with that. But you know what? Kellen had options, just like you did. He could’ve talked to you. He could have divorced you. He could have talked to a therapist, sought counseling. But he chose to step outside of your marriage. He broke your vows. So it doesn’t make sense to act like it was all you.”
I sighed again. “I know that part, Blake. But… Okay… I know I don’t talk about this a lot, but you remember me telling you about finally getting my mother to talk to me about my father?”
“Of course,” she nodded. “For lack of a better term… your mother was the side chick.”
I laughed a little. “Right. Not supposed to get pregnant, and definitely not supposed to have the child. But she did, and… that was the end for them. But not for me. She gave me his name, and I dug and dug until I got what I needed. An address. And I mean… I went.”
“You wanted to see him, Mon. That’s human nature. He was your father.”
“That is not how his wife saw it. As soon as she saw me, she knew. Told me I looked just like my whore mother. And I… how could I even be mad, you know? There I was, the clear evidence that her husband had a weakness.” I pressed my lips closed for a second, just remembering. “He didn’t know about me. I found that out, that day. He’d paid my mother to have an abortion, and instead of doing that, she just decided to stop seeing him.”
“Oh, damn.”
“Pretty much,” I said, with another humorless laugh. “But… the reason I bring this up, is because… after she wrote a check big enough to make me agree to stay away, she said something to me. Something that I’ve carried, without even realizing. I hadn’t even remembered that conversation, but she told me to choose wisely, or I would end up writing a check like that someday. She warned me. And you know… I was a kid, barely eighteen. I used the money for college, and I brushed her words off, because I thought I was so fucking smart. I would prove her wrong. Marry a man who would never put me in that position. That would never be me. Until it was. And it was something that I… I couldn’t face it.”
Blake reached across the table to grab my hand. “I get that Mon, I swear I do. You stay, because you don’t want to fail. You don’t want your relationship to just be another one that didn’t work out, and you don’t want people talking, and because you love his stupid, trifling ass. And because you want to believe that he can be better, and that you can be better, and that you can figure it out. You want to believe that it was just a mistake, or a whole bunch of them, but that you have something together that’s bigger than that. You want to believe he can go back to being the man you loved, or if he’s not, that he’s going to be a new and improved version that you can fall in love with again.”
I nodded. “Yes. All of that. Yes.”
“No.” Blake sat back, shaking her head. “No, Monica. Because it’s not enough for you to believe it, and want it, and crave it. He has to be right there with you. Do you know how many stupid bitches I got called, because I didn’t leave Mykel? And you were there, Monica, you know – that motherfucker took me through it. Embarrassed me all in public, hoes in my house, in my bed. And hell, maybe I was a stupid bitch, but I loved his dumb ass, and I wasn’t ready to go anywhere. Not until I hurt him first.”
I smirked a little. “Oh, I remember. The popular thing is “screw his friend, screw his uncle”. But you, my friend…”
An evil little grin spread across her face. “Ah, yes. That infamous trip with his biggest rival in NBA. And I didn’t even have to fuck Scott. I just posted pictures of me and him together in Miami, and Mykel cleaned his shit up quick. And I still made his ass chase me for two years before I took him back. But you know why that worked out for me?”
“Why?”
“Because Mykel wanted it to work. He wanted me. He wanted us. It wasn’t enough for just one of us to be there – we both had to be on the same page. I don’t mean this in an insensitive way, but… that wasn’t what Kellen wanted. And if someone has decided to check out of a relationship, all the wanting in the world isn’t going to make things magically be okay.”
“I know. I know. Trust me, I keep reminding myself that Kellen wasn’t… he wasn’t the same anymore. That layoff ruined him, in more ways than one, and it was just downhill from there. I know it’s not all my fault, and I know that by the time of his death, he was… lower than trash, to me. But as much as I hated him… there was…”
“Some part of you that still hurt, when he died? Some part of you that still loved him?” Blake shrugged. “Honestly, I would think there was something wrong with you, if you didn’t feel this way. Emotions are… complex. Maybe you hated “unemployed with a pregnant mistress” Kellen, but “handing out your polishes on the way to work” Kellen could still get in your panties. You still loved him because you still remembered who he used to be. The person he’d become hadn’t quite purged you of those memories yet. But… he hadn’t been that man for a long time, Monica. Emotionally, physically, he’d moved on, even if a court of law wouldn’t say the same. You’d been single in every way except on paper for damn near two years. His death doesn’t reset that clock. You get to move on. It’s time to move on.”
I shook my head. “His body isn’t even settled in the ground.”
“And what, pray tell, does that have to do with you?”
“I’ve been a widow for… hell, not even a month. And I’m already letting someone else touch me.”
Blake frowned. “Bitch, that man has been exploring your guts via webcam for at least a year, why are you acting like it’s brand new?”
“Because that was a fantasy,” I hissed back. “This… he is real. A real live man with real equipment. Not my fingers, his. Not a dildo, a hot, hard dick. I… Blake… nobody else has touched me. I lost my virginity to him, when I was a sophomore. Never did anything with anyone else. When we graduated, I married him. So for another fourteen years, no one but him. And now…”
“So, what… it was awkward or something?”
“No.” I pushed out a heavy breath, and closed my eyes. “It was… God it was amazing. And I don’t even think it was because it had been a while, I think he was just amazing. And I didn’t even think twice about it, Blake. I wanted him. I initiated it. And I loved every single second. And then we did it again, and I loved it more. But then… I woke up the next morning, feeling… alien. Like it was someone else in my body, someone else who’d let another man touch, and please them in such a way. It couldn’t be me because I just buried my husband.”
“Girl, let it go,” Blake groaned, sounding exasperated. “Wait – I do not mean to sound so blunt, or like I don’t see where you’re coming from, but honestly. Let it go. I don’t know that Chad is your “one true love”, or whatever the fuck. What I do know is that after he got arrested for fooling with you, claiming he wanted nothing to do with you, and so on… that man over there is… right over there. You feel me? Shifted his workload to make your shit his main priority. Rushed his ass to that hospital to see about you. Put you in his house to keep you safe. Keeps looking his sexy chocolate ass over here at you like he thinks you’re gonna disappear into thin air. This is behavior that you reward.”
I rolled my eyes. “Reward? I should grant him access to my pussy because he’s being nice?”
“Uhh, cut the shit. He’s being quite a bit more than “nice”, and you know it. Stop playing. And, no, I’m not saying that you should use pussy as a reward, because pussy is plentiful – he can get that anywhere. I’m saying that, from where I’m sitting, it seems like a dead asshole – sorry – is being given more consideration than the live one with the big dick. And that doesn’t make a ton of sense to me.”
“Hold up,” I said, raising a hand. “I never promised you sense and logic, I said lunch, bitch. You get what you get.”
“I can tell,” she said, laughing as she picked up her drink for another sip. “Seriously though… Monica, we have watched you… shrink, over the last two years. It’s like when you walked in on him with that girl, part of you perished, and you shifted your focus solely to Vivid Vixen. Just, work, work, work, and if you weren’t working, you were half doped up trying to sleep, and if you weren’t wrapped up in that, you were… playing with your pussy on the webcam, or whatever you and Chad were doing.”
“Blake…”
She shrugged. “I mean… am I lying on you?”
Instead of answering, I just gave her a blank stare, which she responded to by smirking. “See? Exactly. Anyway,” she kept on, before I could interject, “My point is, I’ve seen you more since all of this than I had in like the whole year before that! And I didn’t even know you could fight, but you literally snatched that bitch in the beauty shop by her wig.”
“Wow,” I laughed. “That seems like a lifetime ago. So much has happened since then.”
Blake nodded. “It really has. Hate it took a murder and getting choked to see your ass, but here we are.”
“Blake!”
“What?”
“You’ve been spending too much time around Nubia. Entirely.”
“I… am not even going to deny that. The woman is a bad influence, but we love her,” Blake laughed. “But really, Monica. If you can… try to think of all of this as… a rebirth. I know you’re having to make some changes to the company, hiring new people, all of that. I think you should apply that to your personal life too.” She stopped talking to smile. “I still remember when the internet just exploded with news about Mykel and where he was putting his dick. While everybody else was allll over my back about leaving him, and not being stupid, blah, blah… you called and asked me what you could do for me. And then you came all the way to San Diego, and you got me out of bed, and did my nails, and my hair… you remember that?”
I nodded. “I do. I remember the headlines from those pictures when I took you out to lunch looking like new money too. “Blake Hollis Unbothered in La Jolla”.”
“Girl, Mykel was hot about it too!” she giggled. “But I bring that up as just… an example of what I mean when I say you are amazing. I know Kellen’s favorite thing to call you was bitter. Miserable. And… when it came to him, maybe you were. So fucking what? That’s over. It’s the past. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to smile. You deserve good dick. Okay?”
I laughed. “I… Okay. Okay.”
“Okay,” Blake repeated, with a triumphant smile. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to catch Mykel before he leaves to get on this plane. I’m ovulating, and he has to shoot up the club while it’s still poppin’.”
“Ah, still working on that baby, huh?”
“Yes. Fingers crossed that this is our month.”
“Your lips to God’s ears,” I told her, standing with her for a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Bye honey. Milk him dry.”
She laughed. “I certainly plan on it.”
Once she was gone, Wick didn’t waste any time abandoning his table to join mine.
“I know, I know,” I told him. “You’re tired of wasting away in this stuffy restaurant. I just have to get the check, and then we can go.”
He shook his head. “Actually, I love this place. I came over because we need to go. I want to take you by Fitness for another self-defense session before we go back to the house. And I’d like to get there before dark.”
“The gym?”
“The house. Part of protecting a client is being aware of my surroundings. It’s easier to be aware when it’s not dark.”
I chewed on my bottom lip for a second. “Okay, Mr. Professional. I don’t have gym clothes. What do you say about that?”
“I say that I definitely asked you to put workout gear in the bag I had you to pack.”
“The bag you had me pack for the car, in case we had to go on the run?”
He smirked. “The bag I asked you to pack because I knew I wanted to take you to the gym after lunch.”
“Oh.”
“But, for what it’s worth, you should definitely keep a bag with a few passports, at least two handguns, a hundred rounds of ammo, and a sturdy knife handy… in case you have to go on the run.”
I sucked my teeth. “You’re playing with me.”
“Am I?” he asked, wearing an expression that made it hard to tell if he was serious or not. “Anyway – the check is already taken care of, so we’re good to go.”
“What do you mean, it’s already taken care of? As in you paid it?”
“Yes, as in I paid it.”
“No one was expecting you to do that. I just wanted you to bring me, not to cover it.”
He shrugged. “I knew that. And if you’re about to go all independent woman on me, save it. You can definitely pay me back if you want to, cause you and your friend went a little loose with those twenty-dollar cocktails, and the shit wasn’t cheap.”
“Uh-uh, Big Money,” I teased, grabbing my purse. “You got it. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said from behind me as I led the way to the front of the restaurant.
Once we reached the front doors, he amended our positions, keeping me just behind him, with a firm grip on my arm until we made it to his Tesla. Inside, the heated seats had the car comfortably warm versus the bitter cold outside, making it easy to settle in for the ride across town to the gym. There was quiet between us for most of the ride. I couldn’t say what was on his mind, but I was deep in thought, turning Blake’s words over and over in my head.
She was right.
Kellen’s death didn’t – or at least shouldn’t – reset the proverbial clock on whether or not it was okay for me to move on from our relationship. The fact was that our relationship had been over for at least two years, that I knew of. Who knew what was really going on in Kellen’s head when we were going through the motions of counseling? When he was playing along with the purchase of a home he never had any real intentions of being the man of, or letting me believe that maybe we really could work things out?
He was already checked out.
It made no sense for me to be worried about if anything was “too soon”.
Hell, it probably wasn’t soon enough.
Maybe I was making too much of it. Timing aside, I was a single woman, and could do whatever the hell I wanted – including my temporary bodyguard. And that brought me to another thing I felt was being lost in all of the chaos – Wick had earned a place in my life before the nonsense even started.
It was funny that Blake brought up that trip to see her when she lived in San Diego – it was on that trip that my online identity had been forged, and when I first found out NoRestForTheWicked even existed. A simple response to a post on a message board – about where to get the best drunken noodles in the city – had ended up spinning off into a friendship that had helped keep me sane over the next five years, and something I’d treasured pretty deeply for the last two. He’d listened without judgment, soothed my tears, made me laugh… helped me sleep. All while the man I’d taken vows with was laid up with another woman.
And this was no one-sided thing.
As Blake had so easily noted, despite Wick’s cold treatment and harsh words when he was still fuming about his arrest, he hadn’t been able to stay away. Before he and I even spoke again, he’d dug in his heels and started the work of helping me, like the friend he’d already proven himself to be. Hadn’t been afraid to apologize, or express his own hurt to me. And when all of this confusion came to a point of me needing to be protected, he’d been the first to step up – had insisted on it.
When it came to choices for “moving on”, I could do much, much worse than Wick. And after four years of personal stagnation, while I allowed the dregs of my marriage to emotionally drain me, it was important – no… crucial – that I actively work to surround myself with people that made my life better.
Wick was qualified to be in that number.
“Aiight gorgeous, let’s get to it,” he said cheerfully, oblivious to the dissection that was happening in my head. “I think we’ll have plenty of time.”
Inside the gym, he showed me to a private area I hadn’t seen before – a series of rooms with padded floors, with heavy bags of varying size hanging from the ceiling. Looking around, I quickly noted that we were alone, with no sign of Naomi to be found.
“Um… are we early?” I asked, accepting my bag when he handed it to me. “And why is the class back here today, instead of that room up front?”
He sauntered over to a wall lined with boxing gloves and other gear, selecting a protective headpiece before he answered. “I didn’t say you were coming to class. I said we were having a session. There’s a partition back there where you can get changed.”
After he said that, he held up the headpiece, comparing it to the size of my head before he nodded, putting it down on the table against the wall as he scoured for one for himself.
“Uh, excuse me… so… you’re going to be my instructor today?”
Wick turned to me, eyebrow raised. “That gonna be a problem, Stuart?”
He looked me right in the face, daring me to challenge him – a dare I had no interest taking him up on.
“Not at all,” I told him, then turned with my bag on my shoulder to go to the area he’d pointed out in the small room – a tiny corner, cordoned off by a wall. All that was on the other side was a chair and a few hooks, so there was little distraction as I traded my blazer and boots and jeans for sneakers and workout gear. Still, by the time I came around the wall to get back to Wick, he’d already changed and picked out protective gear for both of us.
“Okay,” he said, giving me an approving nod. “Let’s get to work.”
The first thing he did was run through the basics with me again – the stuff I’d learned with Naomi three days ago. Using the heel of my hand to strike an attacker under the nose, a quick neck chop, or eye-gouging, all intended to cause enough pain or disorientation that I was able to get away, and try to run. Those were all easy to remember, as well as fairly easy to execute, so we moved quickly from those, into what to do to break out of certain holds.
I focused hard on what he was telling me, especially when he started explaining what to do if I was being choked. Going through the motions of it brought back ugly memories, but by the time we’d gone through his whole list, I felt convinced that even if I was overpowered, I wasn’t going down without a fight. If someone tried to mess with me again, I would at least be leaving a mark.
“So… how do you feel?” he asked, as if he’d been reading my mind. “Confident, I hope. You’ve been doing well, between here and the gun range.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I feel pretty good. In theory, at least. In practice, I may end up just screaming in the attacker’s face, or fainting or something.”
“Nah,” Wick laughed, shaking his head as he approached me. “You hit me with a decent headbutt the other night – I would’ve been fucked up if you’d actually had the leverage to put some force behind it.”
“That’s how I got loose from the guy who attacked me at my office too, only he was behind me. And… still caught me… and choked me… so… I’m not that sure any of this stuff works, but at least I feel like I can do something.”
“It definitely works… under the right circumstances, with the right conditions. But you said something key – you feel like you can do something, and that’s half the battle. Anything you do with confidence is always going to get a better result than the shit you do while going about it like you’re scared. You have power. Don’t be afraid to use it.”
I smirked. “Yeah, I hear you with all the motivational stuff, but um… I was expecting to get to punch something. I’m supposed to be using my power, right?”
Wick smiled. “So what, you want to do a little bit of sparring or something?”
“As in, hitting each other?” I cackled. “Have you seen your arms, man? No thanks.”
“No, as in, you trying to hit me. I’ll be doing something else.”
My head dropped, eyes narrowed as I looked at him. “Something like what?”
A different, mischievous sort of grin spread across his face as he walked away from me. “Oh, you’ll see.”
I watched, curious – and a little concerned – as he went back to the wall containing all the boxing gear, and lifted the tabletop, which apparently housed a storage compartment. I frowned when he turned to me holding two bright blue sections of pool noodle.
“Okay, you ready?” he asked me, and I immediately shook my head.
“What? No, I don’t even know what’s happening.”
“I told you already.” He switched the pool noodles to one hand, then grabbed a pair of boxing gloves before he approached me. The pool noodles dropped to the ground while he helped me into the gloves, and after he bent to retrieve them, he stepped back. “Try to hit me.”
“What?”
“Come on, Monica. Imagine I’m… I don’t know, a chipped manicure. Take your best shot.”
Feeling completely awkward about it, I planted my feet how I was supposed to, and tried to jab him – an action that was immediately met with a swipe from the pool noodle. The lightweight foam didn’t hurt at all, but the fact that he’d blocked me with it was strangely… infuriating.
So I jabbed again.
And got blocked again.
Fuck!
This time, I aimed low, only to get blocked again, and to add to my annoyance, Wick bopped me right upside the head with the other noodle, and then grinned.
Oh, it was on now.
I launched myself at him, pouring all my energy into one jab after another, trying my best to land even a single blow, but I couldn’t. By the time I stopped, bent at the waist with my gloved hands against my knees, trying to catch my breath, I was soaked with sweat and had gotten bopped on the head, neck, shoulders, even my ass, a good fifty times.
Wick wasn’t even panting a little.
Sonofabitch.
“What’s wrong, gorgeous? I thought you said you wanted to punch something,” he said, still wearing that stupid ass grin.
“Shut up.”
He chuckled. “Why I gotta shut up? I’m just saying I expected more out of you, but you’re in here playing games, wasting time. You gonna get up and do this or what?”
Okay.
Without warning, I straightened up and launched myself at him again, determined this time to at least get one hit.
“Oh, shit,” he laughed. “Here we fucking go!”
“Ugh!” I growled, his laughing only making me more frustrated, only making me go after him harder. I could literally feel the energy draining from my body with every blow, and knew I couldn’t keep it up much longer. Something flashed in my mind – something he’d just told me, not even an hour ago.
It’s either you or them – you use whatever move you have, but you take their ass down.
Okay.
Wick’s eyes went wide as I took a step back from him, and then reared back, putting my weight on just one leg as I aimed a kick in his direction.
“Oh, okay Ronda Rousey,” he laughed, again, easily deflecting that too. “That’s right, give me everything, give me all you got! You’ve had a fucked up last few weeks, I know you’re pissed. Let it out. Come on! Come on!”
“Ahhhh!” I screamed, right in his face, throwing punches, jabs, kicks, everything I had left, and he deflected it all, over, and over, and… over. There was no triumph for me, no moment of victory where I finally landed a blow, and I wasn’t sure if I was pleased or pissed that he wouldn’t let me win.
Finally, I stepped back and didn’t step forward again, completely spent after digging into my last reserves of energy.
“Ah, man. That’s it?” he asked, dropping the sticks to amble up to me. I was bent over again, wheezing as he leaned to put himself at eye level, looking me right in the face. “That’s all you got? Damn.”
I didn’t even think about it.
It was something like a reflex that had me pulling my arm back, then aiming my glove straight at his face. I didn’t even feel the impact of my fist, I felt in my elbow, in my wrist, reverberating all the way up to my shoulder.
And then I realized I hadn’t hit him at all.
He’d caught me by the wrist, with my glove barely an inch from his face. Once I processed that, I swung with my other hand while he was still holding me, only to have him easily snatch the power out of that jab too.
His next move happened so quickly that I didn’t even realize he’d done anything until I was hitting the padded floor, falling flat on my back. And then he was on top of me, wrists pinned up by my head, legs caught between his, and his head far enough back that my “signature” headbutt was out of range.
There wasn’t shit I could do.
“You know, I’d be pretty pissed at your attempt at a cheap shot… if I wasn’t so fucking proud,” he said, but made no moves to let me up. “I told you to do whatever it took. Good job.”
I let out a huff. “You’re up there, I’m down here. How is that a good job?”
He grinned. “Monica… I have no problem letting you be on top. Just say the word.”
“Let me on top.”
“Cool.”
“Ahhh!” I squealed, closing my eyes as he easily flipped us over so that he was the one on his back, leaving me to fall naturally into a position where I was straddling him.
“Yeah. This is much, much better,” he teased, hooking his hands behind his head as he grinned up at me. “Do your worst. I can take it.”
Ugh!
I couldn’t keep a smile from forming on my face, so I shook my head. “Whatever. The moment has passed.”
“Ah, don’t tell me you’re mad at me now. What did I do?”
“What did you do?” I sucked my teeth, then twisted to awkwardly pick up one of the pool noodles between my gloves, pressing tight to hold it firm enough to wack him upside the head a few times, like he’d done to me. “Not fun, is it?”
“That? No. But the way you’re rocking your hips to hit me…goddamn,” he grunted. “That, you’re going to have to stop.”
I narrowed my eyes and then pushed backward, landing so that I was right on top of his dick. And rocked again. “What? That? What are you going to do if I don’t stop?”
“Why,” he asked, easily sitting up, with me still planted in his lap, “Are you messing with me, knowing you’re… confused?”
“Am I?”
“Aren’t you?” he countered, meeting my gaze with a stare so intense I had to look away.
“Can you take these off for me?” I held up my gloved hands with my eyes still averted, and he undid them without a word, tossing them onto the mat beside us. “What?” I asked, finally giving him my attention again, when I could still feel him looking at me. “You have something you need to say?”
“Need to say? No. Want to say?... maybe.”
“That’s not a maybe kind of question,” I told him, trying my best to remain unaffected by the feeling of him between my legs. That was the problem with teasing a man, you ran the risk of getting yourself hot and bothered. Even with the layers of our clothes, it was prominent – thick, and hard, and bringing back memories that made me involuntarily clench.
The grin he gave me made it clear that he’d felt it.
“How is that for you to decide?”
I scoffed. “Maybe because I asked the question.”
His eyebrows went up. “Oh. I guess that makes sense.”
“What was it that you wanted to say?” I asked, trying to bring him back to what he was clearly attempting to deflect.
The glitter of amusement left his eyes, replaced by… something else, as he shrugged. “I was just… wondering where you were, mentally, with all of this. With everything. Trying to get a gauge on how you’re feeling. You haven’t said much.”
“Excuse me? I feel like talking is all I’ve been doing.”
“Not about… you. We’ve talked about the shit that’s been happening, talked about me, talked about Kay, talked about our friendship, and so on, but… there hasn’t been much about you. Are you okay?”
Maybe I was just still a little sensitive from my conversation with Blake earlier, and then getting hit with that goddamn noodle a million times. Or maybe my emotions weren’t buried as deeply as I thought.
Whatever it was, that question brought hot, immediate tears to the backs of my eyes, and I blinked hard, trying to clear them away.
“Um…why do you ask? Do I seem like I’m not okay?”
“Do I seem like I give a fuck what you seem like? Cause I don’t. I asked if you are okay, not if you seem to be.”
I let out a huff. “Well. Um…” I shrugged. “Honestly, not really. I have someone trying to destroy my company, and maybe kill me, and I don’t know who I can trust, and my husband is dead, and I can’t sleep in my own bed, and… I mean… I’m managing. But I… no. I don’t think I’m okay.”
Those last words came out in a rush, each one tumbling over the next as I tried to hold back inevitable tears. Embarrassing tears, that I tried to hide by removing myself from Wick’s lap, to get away, but I was barely off of him before he pulled me back, closing me up in his arms.
It felt just as I’d imagined.
All those nights he’d talked me through my tears about my husband, I’d dreamt about this. That should have been when I knew I was in trouble, that I was taking it too seriously, that I was too invested. Fantasizing about sex was one thing – fantasizing about being held, being comforted… that was a whole other.
Instead of holding back, I let loose, sobbing into his shoulder to release all the tears I’d stored up in the time that had passed since I swore I wouldn’t cry about any of this again. It had been completely random, a promise I’d made myself in an attempt to be strong.
Being “strong” hadn’t helped.
At all.
For these few moments at least, accepting my own vulnerability was… relieving.
Wick didn’t say a word. He just held me, letting me bury my face in his neck as my tears soaked his shoulder. When they subsided, he eased me backward, so he could see my face. He used his thumbs to clear the residual moisture from my cheeks, and I didn’t even bother trying not to smile when he leaned in, kissing me on one cheek, then the other, before he brought his lips to mine.
I closed my eyes, letting myself get lost in the soft pressure, feeling like it was exactly what I needed. An instinctive moan left my throat as he left a gentle nip at one corner of my mouth, and then the other.
“I know you’re tired,” he said, in his rich, soothing tone. “Let’s get you home.”
I wanted to protest, but he was right – I was exhausted. I climbed off his lap and then let him help me to my feet before following him to that table to spray and wipe down all the gear we’d used, and put it all away.
When we were done, I hesitated. And he must have caught whatever vibe I was putting off, because he stopped too, looking down like he was waiting for me to speak. But… I didn’t have anything to say. Not with words, at least. I reached up, grabbing two handfuls from the front of his shirt to bring his mouth down to mine.
We were definitely on the same page. Because no sooner than our lips had touched, he was grabbing me by the hips to ease me backward, then picking me up to seat me on that table. He stepped between my legs, bringing his hands to my face to keep me where he wanted me as he dipped his tongue into my mouth, tasting and exploring.
“Mmm. Pull your pants down,” I moaned, closing my eyes and letting my head fall back to give him better access as he trailed kisses down my neck.
I shivered at the sensation of his laughter against my skin as he came back up to my ear. “No protection on me, gorgeous.”
“I couldn’t have your babies if I was trying, handsome. And no one but you has touched me in two years, and I’m pretty sure you’ve done full background checks on any booty calls. We don’t need it,” I told him, with my fingers still wrapped in his shirt. “Pull your pants down.”
His hands went to his waistband, and my hands went to mine. In just a few seconds, we were both partially disrobed, just enough to make the connection we needed to make.
Yes.
Needed.
I bit down on my lip, relishing the slow, delicious friction as he sank into me, then grabbed me by the thighs, hiking my legs around his waist. He leaned in, capturing my mouth with his as he planted his hands on either side of me and pressed in.
“Goddamn,” he grunted, then sucked in a breath before he locked eyes with me. My mouth fell open, but I didn’t drop my gaze – I was spellbound by the intensity in his eyes as he deliberately, meticulously stroked me, burrowing so deep that it held an edge of gratifying pain.
So, so good.
Good enough to forget everything except how good he felt, with his tongue in my mouth and his hand up my shirt, cupping my breast and squeezing my nipple, and his dick buried to the brink. I dropped my hands to his ass, pressing my nails into his firm glutes, encouraging him to go deeper, if possible, and goddamn, it was.
I didn’t give a shit who heard – I let out a gasp that was exactly as loud as my body wanted it to be, followed shortly by a steadily streaming chorus of his name.
“Ah, fuck,” he growled into my mouth, and then kissed me harder, cutting off my ability to make a sound, or hell – do anything – with the notable exception of taking everything he was giving me.
And he was giving me plenty.
Soon, the training room was filled with the distinctive sounds of our connection – our shared moans, the creaking legs of the table, and the loud, sensual smack, smack, smack of skin on skin as he stroked me faster.
Deeper.
Harder.
Until I couldn’t take it anymore, and he couldn’t either, slamming into me with one last growl as he emptied himself into me, and I clenched around him.
We stayed connected for several moments, panting together until our hearts slowed back to a normal pace, and we could breathe. I glanced down, really noticing for the first time that I hadn’t even gotten my yoga pants and panties all the way off – they were still halfway on one leg, twisted and dangling around my foot.
Wick followed my gaze, and chuckled, though he had no room for a laugh at my expense, not with his sweats and boxers still caught around his knees.
I closed my eyes as he kissed me again, suddenly. He pressed his forehead to mine, then carefully slid out of me.
“I’m guessing you made it past that confusion, huh?” he asked, bending to pull his pants back up around his waist. I started to reach for my own, but he stopped me, grabbing the unoccupied pant leg to untwist them for me, and then pull both sides up over my feet.
“Thanks,” I said, as he helped me down from the table, so I could pull my pants up all the way. “And… Somewhat.”
“Anything I can do to turn that “somewhat” into a “completely”?” he asked, and I smiled as I looked up at him, right into his handsome face.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “You’re already doing it.”