No Quarter (NOLA's Own #2) (49 page)

Bands of muscles contracted along my ribs. I didn’t have a picture of him at work.

“But you’re so much more than that. Your beauty goes beyond what everyone can see. It’s soul-deep, and that’s all I really see. Your light is a blaze of whites and greens and blues and fills me with so much of everything…”

Both of his hands slipped beneath the water, caressing over my rear, pulling me even closer. I held the blunt up for him, and he took another hit.

“The very first moment I saw you, I knew I was yours,” I told him. “I knew that, no matter what, one day, I would belong to you. I thought it was just the mind of a fantasizing teenager, but even then, my inner voice was your voice.”

His breath hitched in his chest.

“I heard you speak to me when my mother was ill and in the hospital. I thought maybe my weed had been laced.” I laughed. “But you spoke to me the day she died, too. The morning before I went to class, I went into deep meditation. You told me to hold on and be strong.”

“Oh God…
Baby
…” he whispered. Grabbing the blunt, he dipped it in the bath and tossed it on the floor. Sitting up, he wrapped his arms around me and crushed me to him, his mouth slamming down mine.

I rocked and took him deep.

“I’m your slave. You own me completely,” he promised, punching his pelvis, pushing as deep as possible.

“Never leave me behind again,” I whispered against his mouth.

“I won’t, Kenna. Never again.”

Phil

Beyond heaven.

When all I had given her was a reason to fuckin’ fear me and a streak of lightning-hot pain, she still had it in her to receive me with an open heart and a head full of understanding. My Baby Girl, so cool in the face of my rage, had taken the punishment I doled out, knowing it wasn’t her I was fuckin’ punishing. She had taken it, all of it, in every way I fuckin’ dished it.

Looking back now, I thought I had wanted to scare her a little, wanted to see if she’d run, screaming from the demons in me. I hadn’t realized I was testing her, not until I sank balls deep in her tight perfect ass. Not that it would’ve mattered if she had failed in any way. I would never let her go. I just knew I’d have to find another way to exorcize my fuckin’ demons the next time I went apeshit.

She’d never fail me. Kenna wasn’t made to fail.

Calm and cool, with a hint of her secret smile, she’d asked for water and weed.

Leading me into the tub and further into temptation, she had taken me inside her again but not to leech out my pain. She had done that beautifully already.

To let me come home. To let me marvel at the wonder that was
She
.

Fuck, I love her. I love her, I love her.

When she held me close, when she squeezed me hard and made me explode, taking all of me…
I’m lost in her, yet I know right where I am.

After we left the tub, we climbed into bed and I held her, her back pressed to my chest, her ass snuggled against my dick that never really went down whenever she was near.

It’s fuckin’ bliss.

It was late…or early. I couldn’t give a shit which. She was in my arms. After all this time, I was still in awe of that fuckin’ fact. She was here with me. After the times I had prayed for these very moments, had despaired I would never have them, had hated myself for dreaming of them, the real deal was so much better than any fuckin’ dreams I had ever had.

“You have to go,” she said, her husky warm voice on the edge of sleep.

She stretched, her ass leaving me, my lap feeling cold.

“I’ll get my phone tomorrow,” I told her, pulling her ass back into me, warming my groin like it was made to do. “You feel too good.”

“You need to talk to your dad,” she insisted. “You won’t feel right until you do.”

I glanced at the clock on the other side of the room.
Two fuckin’ twenty-seven.

“Come with me?” I begged, not wanting to be without her for a single second.

I was never free when she wasn’t around. I had fucked up, telling her to leave me the fuck alone.

“No,” she replied, wiggling her ass on my dick.

That’s her punishin’ me now.
I smiled, thinking of all the ways I loved being punished by her. She was a diabolical little shit, and I loved what she inflicted on me.

Caressing my mouth down her neck, I tasted the sweet cream and salty goodness on my tongue. She always tasted so fuckin’ good—like real butter, not that fake shit. I hadn’t known the difference between the two until she opened my eyes to it. She’d opened my fuckin’ eyes to a lot.

“Please?” I made my voice deeper, hoping it’d hit that spot in her that turned her into mush.

“No.”

Heaving a sigh, knowing I was defeated, I sat up. I really didn’t want to leave. She was love, light, and freedom.
What sane fucking person would want to leave that?

“You aren’t the least bit curious?” I hedged, hoping that would persuade her.

“You’ll tell me when you get back.” She yawned. “It’s
you
who needs it. I accepted it a long time ago.”

Breath blown out in a huge gust, I got to my feet and started yanking on my clothes. Cargoes and a T-shirt. Didn’t even bother with boxers.
I’ll be coming home and shoving myself back up in my sanctuary, so what did it matter?

But no matter what, I wouldn’t be punishing her. I’d fuck her the way I loved best—chest to chest, her long legs wrapped around me, my eyes full with her face.

Dressed, I crawled back into the bed and pulled her into my arms. She yelped and laughed, always so enchanted that I could do this, toss her around and lift her as if she were nothing but feathers and air. Kenna was the perfect size, the best weight. She was soft and hard in all the right ways. Strong enough to take my shit and give it back.

“I love you,” I told her before I ate her face.

“I’ll be here,” she replied when I had had enough to take the edge off.

“Too fuckin’ right.”

Calm and cool.

My woman had given me that. I drove with a quiet head, the fire in my heart dampened by the sweet pools I always saw when I looked into her soul. Whatever it was that was in her, it gave me peace. I could talk to my dad without wanting to break his fuckin’ face.

I still felt the anger, but it wasn’t out of control. She had let me take it out on her, and fuck me…that had been fuckin’ intense. I knew I had been too hard on her. I had felt it in her. I’d practically heard her head screaming out our safe word. But in the end, my woman had taken that shit.

Three in the fuckin’ morning. All the other houses around the neighborhood were dark, but there were lights on in my dad’s house. I parked the truck. I had driven it ’cause my Baby Girl liked it best.

Danielle was sitting with the fuckin’ traitor in the kitchen when I walked in. She lifted her puffy pretty blues up to mine, and for a split second, I wondered how my parents had made that little piece of perfection and then wound up making my massive ugly ass after. Danielle was too fuckin’ pretty to be allowed. I knew because I’d spent a lot of my time in high school beating on the fuckers who had thought dirty about her, my fuckin’ friends included. After I had gotten big, it had been too easy.

The traitor turned his eyes up to mine, too. He had gifted my sister with his eyes, but the rest of her was Mom.

“Where’s Martin and the kids?”

“Home,” Danielle replied.

I had no fuckin’ clue how they did that, just slept away from each other like that. I’d go apeshit if Kenna willingly went home to sleep alone. There was no way I’d allow her. She was fuckin’ stuck with me, willing or not.

“You stayin’ here?” I asked, tossing my keys on the island.

She shrugged, like it was no big deal. “I’m heading to bed then,” she said to the traitor.

Dad just nodded, not taking his eyes off me. Danielle got up and tugged on my shirt, so I’d bend down and let her kiss my cheek.

“You cool?” she whispered.

“Yeah, Pint-Size.”

She grinned at my nickname and headed for the stairs.

My dad waited until we heard her hit the top step. “You bring some green?”

“As a matter of fact…” I replied, digging Kenna’s ancient silver cigarette case out of one of my many pockets.

She had told me to take it in case I needed the extra help.

“Let’s go out back,” said Dad.

I wished I could hate him, but I was damp inside from my woman. She had put out my raging inferno.

He stood up and headed for the sliding back door while I made my way to the fridge and snagged a cola. Kenna would’ve given me the evil eye for it, but she also would’ve kept her mouth shut. I liked making her happy, so I wouldn’t drink the poison in front of her.

Dad grabbed an ashtray from behind the bar. We both sat at the round glass patio table, across from each other.

“Philip…” my dad said and nothing else.

So, I took out a spliff—
fuck, even her vocabulary had penetrated me.
Only geezers and dirty old fuckin’ hippies called a joint a spliff—and sparked it up. After a few hits, I handed it over to him.

“Have you seen Kenna then?” he asked me quietly.

I liked the sound of his voice. It was comforting and deep. He had given me his voice, only I had given the sound the quality of a beast.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“Is she upset, too?”

“No,” I told him honestly.

Dad’s chest deflated as he exhaled. He nodded. “That’s good.”

“She doesn’t need answers. She’s just happy we’re together at all,” I told him.

Danielle slipped, unheard by either of us, onto the patio. After making us both jump, she eyed the cigarette case, and I pulled out another spliff—
there it goes again
—and handed it to her. She turned without a word and headed back inside. Her bedroom window was above the patio. She’d sit up there and listen, smoking her own joint.

“I wanted to tell you, Philip,” Dad said. “Laurie called me on Kenna’s eighteenth birthday to tell me that you two had finally met after all those years…
by chance
…” He sounded as though he didn’t believe that. “She had always known.”

“Known what?”

Dad shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me,” I said, sounding a bit harsh. I knew about Kenna’s mom.

“Let’s just say, Laurie was special, okay? I don’t even understand half the shit that went on in her head, and she was my best friend my whole life.”

That surprised me. “Really?”

Dad nodded. “She knew that her daughter would be my son’s one and only. She knew before either of you were a thought. When we were kids, she used to tell me that our children would define love. At the time, I thought…I thought she had meant the children I would have
with
her.”

The surprises were out in droves tonight. “You were in love with Kenna’s mom?”

Dad nodded. “Everyone was in love with her.”

“Well, that’s not vague or anythin’,” I grunted.

He passed back the joint and sighed. “That’s not what you’re here for, in any case. When Laurie called me, she was ecstatic the two of you had found each other, but then she told me she didn’t have long to live. She didn’t want to have to fight with a love that defined love over her last moments with the child she had lived to bear.”

“Come again?”

“Laurie had a bad heart,” he said.

I nodded. I knew this.

“And her whole life, all she wanted was Kenna, even at the expense of her health.”

“Oh.”

“She told me the two of you hadn’t had enough time to exchange phone numbers, that you didn’t even know Kenna’s last name. But she could see it in Kenna’s eyes that the girl was in love, and she wanted me to hold off from telling you until she had…” Dad took a deep breath, and I knew he was fighting the floodgates. “She just wanted a little more time with her baby, Philip. I promised her I’d wait until she was gone before I would tell you.

“When you told me you had found the girl of your dreams, it was so hard to hold on to my promise. To see you like that…I knew that you had a touch of the madness that had consumed your mother—”

“What?” I gasped.
I’m not
that
fuckin’ mad! Am I?