Authors: Cheri Lewis
He grows still and answers with a confused tone, “Yes.”
“Then why haven’t we done you know-what yet.”
I feel his lips on the back of my head and I swear I could feel him smiling then he says, “Well your momma said I wasn’t allowed to have the milk without buying the cow.”
I shoot up and spin around, and then I close my eyes completely mortified. “Please tell me she didn’t.”
I peek out of my right eye and his sexy smirk lets me know she had and I lean over and bury my face in his chest. “How embarrassing.”
“I thought it was funny. I’ve been waiting to tell you that for a while. But that’s not why we haven’t. Believe me I could right here right now.”
“Well, what’s stopping you?”
“I wanted to make sure you would respect me in the morning.”
I slap his stomach. “Quit being a smart ass I’m serious. I’ve begun to think you don’t find me attractive or maybe you’re hanging out here for Jessie.”
“Ohhh ho ho ho ho. Now who’s being the smart ass?”
“What else am I supposed to think?”
He reaches up and rubs my cheek and I lean into it. “Do you like me?”
I nod. “Some days I more than like you,” I finally admit in a junior high way.
He closes his eyes and says, “I made a promise to my first wife when I married her and I had planned to keep my promise no matter how miserable I had gotten. The last few years were the worst. You were right what you said before. She hounded me constantly nagging me to quit the job I loved and I wouldn’t do it. For one thing, it paid the bills and another, it’s all I know how to do. She ended up hating me and I didn’t find out until later to what extent.”
I grab his hand and hold it. “I don’t think your job has been an issue yet for us, do you?”
He shakes his head and gives me a tender smile. “When Suzie and Margie were murdered I said a lot of things, terrible things, yelled at God, and made promises I intended to keep at that time.”
“Margie was your daughter’s name?”
He nods and my heart aches at hearing his daughter's name for the first time. “Suzie wanted to name her after her mother. I wasn’t so thrilled about it but she said I could name our next child so I gave in.” I turn around and lay down next to him on the couch resting my head on his chest and he continues, “Before Margie was born I would work a lot and sometimes I took on extra work so I wouldn’t have to come home. We needed the money and that’s the excuse I used. After their deaths I obsessed with finding out who killed them.”
“I would think that would be a natural reaction, same with the anger. I would probably say things I would regret later.”
“It wasn’t just because of their deaths. I found out things. Things that went on right under my own nose. Some big shot detective I was. It made me doubt myself. I had found her journal and at first I wasn’t going to read it but curiosity got the best of me and part of me wishes I hadn’t, then part of me is glad I did. It helped some with the guilt.”
I don’t say anything I just lay there listening to his heart beat and feel his chest rise and lower as he breathes in and out slowly. He gently runs his fingers up and down, caressing my back. He finally continues, “She had been cheating on me for years but you know, it wasn’t really even the cheating. Don’t get me wrong I was pissed about that but there was one line in her journal that I’ve never been able to shake. It’s like it is burned into my brain. She wrote, ‘My lover just left and Tatum came home and lay on the sheets that we just got done making love on and he doesn’t have a clue he laid on another man’s come.’ She found humor in things that almost drove me over the edge.”
I freeze and am at a loss for words. Tears hit my eyes.
How heartless, what a bitch.
“Please tell me you’re making that up,” I whisper.
He kisses the top of my head then continues, “I tore up every bed we had ever slept on including the sheets, pillows, anything in my path. That's one reason my dad had to replace that mattress downstairs. I destroyed them all. Sometimes I have trouble forgetting that. Sometimes those words used to run through my head nonstop.”
“Did you ever find out who her… who it was?”
“No, but I have the son of a bitch's DNA. Of course that didn’t do me any good with nothing to compare it to.”
I rub his arm that is wrapped around me. “I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m sorry you were treated that way.”
“I often wonder if I had come home more if that would’ve made a difference but I don’t think so. She was miserable, too. Apparently for years, but she didn’t want a divorce. Said her mother and father wouldn’t permit it. I didn’t want a divorce because of Margie. I thought it was the right thing to do. Now looking back, who knows what was right.”
“Is that why you sleep on a couch?”
“Yeah.”
I look up and kiss the bottom of his chin then his neck. I pull my arm out from under his and run it down his face. “How did you get this scar?”
He lets out a soft laugh. “I was drunk, bad drunk and I picked a fight with the wrong guy. I think I did it on purpose. I wanted to die. I wanted the pain to disappear. He pulled out a knife and cut me from top to bottom. It took a lot of stitches to fix me up.” I shiver thinking back to Cootie pulling the knife on me.
“And your knuckles?”
“My knuckles are from when I saw myself in the mirror and I began punching. All of this was right after they were murdered and I was drinking a lot then. I don’t drink much anymore. Alexander helped curb that. He threatened me in the beginning. He was going to pull out on his part of the business if I didn’t give it up and get my shit together. At first I didn’t care but the more he came around, the more I began to focus on actually working on jobs again, and the more I seemed to straighten out.”
“Thank God for Alexander then.”
“Yeah, thank God,” he says softly. He exhales. “Suzie and I met at college; she was high class, untouchable and very beautiful. So when she seemed interested in me I jumped right on it and now I wish I would’ve let her pass on by. We weren’t ready. Her parents hated me, I wasn’t good enough for their daughter, working to make an hourly wage and having to wear a uniform. Sometimes I think I was just a toy to help her win her battle against her parents. They’d always had their thumb on her.”
“Well they seemed to have lightened up. Her father seemed to really care when he stopped by that day and so did her mother.”
“They know the truth. They know what she did. I’ve never told anybody about the affair or the journals well, outside of her family. You’re the first. I didn’t tell anybody out of respect for her family even though they didn’t deserve it, but mainly for Margie. I didn’t want her mother to be remembered for who she was behind closed doors. God, I loved that little girl.”
“You’re a good man.”
“Other people would argue different.”
“I don’t care what other people think. I know what you are to me and I know how I feel about you. I love you sex or no sex.”
“Oh, there’s going to be sex. I just couldn’t let history repeat itself, I had to be sure. You’re too good to be true…. …Beautiful…sexy….smart…caring…and your family is amazing.”
I smile and inch my way up the couch where I can kiss him properly on the lips. He lifts his body up and I move over. He settles on top of me and begins kissing me slowly. Then says softly, “I want to make love to you when we have no chance of being interrupted.”
“I’ll hang a sock on the door,” I say in between kisses.
He begins laughing while his mouth is over mine. “Your sense of humor is so sexy. I know Jessie will be back soon and I swear to you, if you will give me one more night, when we have the house to ourselves I will take care of every need or want you’ve ever had.”
I blow up a breath of air. “Fine, one more night but I just hope I don’t explode.”
“You won’t.”
“Will you stay the night with me tonight?”
“Do you promise to behave yourself?”
“Never mind, you can go home.”
“Yes I’ll stay if you want me to.”
“I always want you to but you always leave.”
“Because I knew what would happen if I stayed and I can’t I won’t survive if it happens again, I don’t want you to ever hate me.”
I reach up and put my hands on his cheeks “I swear I’ll do everything in my power to never betray you.”
He leans in and kisses me. “I know. Besides you’ll have your mother to deal with if you do.”
I sigh and shake my head. “So I guess you do see this going somewhere.”
“I see this going all the way. Just promise me, that you’ll keep being you, tell me what you’re thinking, and I don’t want this to ever go south.”
I can’t help but smile at his statement and I want him bad, I put my hand over my heart and animatedly say, “I promise!” I then grab him by the shirt and pull him to me and begin kissing him hard and he doesn’t hold back, our hands are roaming. I pull his shirt up and run my hands over his back. He kisses my lips, my cheek, and then slides down to my neck.
My body is ready for him and I practically beg. “Can’t I just call Jessie and tell him not to come home tonight?”
He lifts his head and a sexy smirk is already on his face, his hazel eyes burn as he asks, “Do you think he would?”
“Oh, he’d better.”
Tank sits up on his knees between my legs. I lean over and grab my phone off the coffee table and send Jessie a quick text. “Stay at your parents tonight, PLEASE.”
He replies, “Get ya some girl!”
I throw my phone back on the coffee table and it slides off the other side. I sit up and begin to lift his shirt. He reaches up, grabs his shirt over his shoulders and pulls it over his head. I begin kissing the top part of his abdomen. He runs his fingers through my hair gently massaging my head as I trail kisses down his stomach. I stop at the top of his pants line. He rubs the hair back out of my face as he mutters, “You’re so beautiful, I don’t deserve you.”
I move my hands around to the front of his pants and pop the buttons loose, I smile and lean forward to kiss the newly exposed skin. He pulls away and then gets up from the couch. He reaches his hand out to me and I take it and stand. He gradually leads the way to my bedroom where he steps inside and I cringe when he trips. “We will definitely have to do something about your floor if I’m staying over here.”
I flip on the light switch and grin. “Kick you a path and before you lay down, shake out the comforter.”
“Really?”
“Yes, because when you leave me every night I have to read to make myself fall asleep.”
He walks to the side of the bed and pulls back the comforter and there are two books, two magazines and a candy bar wrapper. “I thought you were kidding,” he says as he looks up from my bed.
I wrinkle my nose and shake my head, and then I hold up a finger indicating I’d be right back. I run into my bathroom and grab a condom and come back out. “Hope you don’t mind.” I wave it slightly in the air.
He doesn’t say anything at first, and I begin to get a little worried. “We’re going to need more than one. Grab the box.” I smile and turn right back around and grab the box.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hands and Hooves and Flame
The next morning I wake up tangled around a naked Tank. He’s lying on his back and I’m lying halfway across his body, my leg wrapped around his. He lightly caresses my back letting me know he’s awake. I lift my head and rest my chin on his chest and ask, “Were you able to get any sleep?”
He look so sexy with his bed head and stubble. You can hear the tiredness in his voice when he says, “A little. Mostly I watched you sleep.”
“Did I snore?”
He laughs. “No, you slept so peaceful I was jealous.”
I lie my head back down on his chest and run my finger around doing various shapes on his stomach. “I really don’t wanna have to go to work today, but I have a meeting with Mr. Samford we have to go to,” I say and then blow out a breath.
“It would be nice to stay here all day but I have stuff I need to take care of as well.”
I look up at him. “Will you stay with me again tonight?”
A sexy smirk emerges then he runs his fingers through my hair. “I can’t think of anything that could keep me away. Now give me a kiss.”
“Nu uh, I have morning breath.”
“So, I have McKinsey breath. Now kiss me.”
My jaws flies open in shock and I push on him. “That’s so dirty, when you say stuff like that.”
“Oh, but you like dirty.” I squeal when he rolls over on top of me and I have no choice but to kiss him.
After Tank leaves, I lay in bed replaying things from last night in my head. I happen to notice my alarm clock and realize I’m running thirty minutes behind. I jump out of bed and race through my morning bathroom routine. When I leave my bedroom I skid to a halt. Tank’s leaning against the wall holding my travel mug and my lunch bag in his hand. “I figured this would get me another five minutes to kiss you.”
My heart leaps and I beam with a huge smile, “I gotta feed Prima first.”