1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Fourteen Page 8

  “I got…I gotta build my castle,” I told him mindlessly.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “But I can’t. I can’t build no more castles. I don’t got it in me.”

  I was unconsciously rocking.

  “Castles?”

  I shoved my face in his throat and kept rocking.

  “A moat. Big studded door no one can break through. Stone three feet thick. Keepin’ me safe. Keepin’ me safe.” I sounded like I was chanting but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t even aware of what I was saying. “I build my castles so they can keep me safe.” I swallowed, hard. It hurt and it felt like Marcus felt it too because his arms got even tighter and he took over rocking me. “Just in my mind. They were always just in my mind. So they couldn’t keep me safe.”

  “You’re safe now.”

  “I’ve never been safe.”

  He shifted, his arms folding me into myself so I was a little ball of Daisy held closely against him, “Okay, darling, but you’re safe now.”

  “I wanna believe that. I wanna believe in castles.”

  “You’ll believe,” he whispered.

  “I wanna believe.”

  “You’ll believe, Daisy.”

  I said nothing. His warmth and scent and arms around me, rocking me gently with his body, started penetrating and I pushed in deeper.

  The trembling was easing, my mind blanking, my eyelids heavy when I heard Marcus ask, “In your castle, did you have a prince charming?”

  And as I gave up the fight, allowed my eyes to close, I muttered, “There ain’t no prince charming for a girl like me.”

  With that, I drifted to sleep.

  * * * *

  My eyes opened and I saw daisies.

  But I smelled bacon.

  I dropped to my back in bed and stared at the ceiling, the night before washing over me.

  “Shit,” I mumbled.

  I turned again, to my belly, snatching up my other pillow and shoving my face in it.

  I smelled Marcus’s cologne.

  “Shit,” I repeated but it was muffled to come out sounding like, “Shfft.”

  I pushed the pillow away, rolled again, tossing back the covers and pulling myself out of bed.

  I wandered to my bathroom, flipped on the light, and went to the mirror.

  I looked into it.

  Well, at least that was good.

  As any good Southern woman should, I had a big head of hair. And like every girl who knew good hair knew, you didn’t wash it every day and with every day you didn’t wash it, the natural product God gave you made it look better and better.

  I was on day three. My hair looked full, the curls I’d set in it with my hot rollers were still bouncy but now a bit flippy, and it was cute. Not to mention, one of the only good things my momma gave me, radiant skin, looked just that (even if I had a nuance of dark circles under my eyes).

  I opened a drawer and grabbed some hair ties. Using them, I tamed my curls into pigtails. Then I went about my routine: brush teeth, floss, cleanser with exfoliation, brush out of lashes, and smoothing of brows.

  And even though I only had on a pair of silk pajamas (shorts with a deep, deep edge of hollow-out lace and a camisole of the same but a shorter edge of lace at the top and cute little cream bows at each hip, the rest of it all in the shade of pistachio), I walked out of my bathroom and right to my kitchen.

  Marcus was at my stove. He was wearing another V-necked sweater, this one light blue, and another pair of jeans that weren’t dark-wash but they weren’t faded either.

  His feet were bare. His hair was slightly tousled. And I wanted to say after the mortification of my drama last night that the sight of him at a skillet in my kitchen looking like that I didn’t feel in my coochie.

  But that was a lie.

  I totally felt the sight of him looking like that in my kitchen in my coochie.

  His eyes came to me.

  Oh yeah.

  Right in the coochie.

  I’d opened my mouth to say something, but at the look on his face, any words got trapped in my throat and I quit breathing entirely.

  “Come here,” he ordered gently.

  My feet took me right there.

  Still with a fork in his hand, his other arm wrapped around me and he pulled me close so my front was pressed to his side, his chin dipping into his neck to keep his gaze on me.

  “Okay?” he whispered.

  I nodded.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  I nodded again.

  “Good,” he murmured, giving me a squeeze and turning his attention to the bacon.

  He was shifting it around in the skillet and I was watching him do this in a weird haze.

  But the haze, as hazes are wont to do, even ones you had standing in your kitchen pressed close to a hot guy, cleared.

  I tipped my head back and started, “Marcus—”

  The instant his name passed my lips, he again dipped his chin into his neck and I clamped my mouth shut at the new look in his eyes.

  “I have a man looking for him. I’ve hired a private investigator to look for him. And two of my colleagues are looking for him. When one of them finds him, they will not take him to the police. They’ll bring him to me. And I’ll be dealing with him personally.”

  Oh.

  My.

  “How’re you gonna do that?” I asked softly.

  “I’m going to put a bullet in his forehead.”

  Oh my!

  I stared up at him.

  “In the meantime,” he went on like he didn’t just tell me he planned to assassinate my rapist, “although I figure you know this now, you are not unsafe. You’re watched twenty-four-seven. I have a man on you at all times. When you’re trying on shoes. When you’re grocery shopping. When you’re up in this apartment watching movies. No one you don’t want near you will get near you.”

  After delivering that, he looked to the bacon and flipped it.

  I watched him do this wordlessly.

  When he was done, I felt his gaze come back to me and I gave him mine.

  “Is that understood?” he asked.

  “Uh…yeah.”

  “Right. Excellent. Next topic. I want you to move into my condo with me.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Uh…no.”

  “Daisy—”

  “Honey, you’re bein’ all kinds of sweet. You’ve been all kinds of sweet. Even after I was a bitch to you and you didn’t deserve it.”

  “You’re going through a good deal.”

  “You still didn’t deserve it.”

  He inclined his head, conceding the point like only a gentleman would.

  Lord.

  “And I appreciate it,” I continued. “Last night wasn’t good. But it happened and now I can get a lock on it. I promise. Swear. It means a lot to me you stepped up when I called. I feel bad I did that, pullin’ you from your bed in the middle of the night, but it felt good you stepped up and did it so sweet. But I’ll get a lock on it. That’s a certainty. So I’m good now and I’m not movin’ in with you.”

  “Then I’ll move in with you.”

  “Marcus—”

  He slid the bacon off the burner, switched it off, set the fork aside, and then turned fully into me, wrapping his other arm around me.

  “Last night wasn’t not good, Daisy. Last night was bad. The time it took for me to get to you, I could tell with one look at you in that corner, you were in hell. After I got to you, it didn’t get much better. I’m not allowing that to happen again.”

  “But, now it’s happened, I can—”

  “I have a guest room. It’s nice. You can stay in there. Alternately, if you prefer to be in your own home, since you don’t have a guest room set up, I’ll sleep on your couch if that’s where you wish me to be.”

  “This is—”

  “And you need to talk to someone about what happened to you.”

  I felt my eyes get squinty. “Will you let me finish?”

&nbs
p; “Not if you say things that, I’m sorry, darling, aren’t smart. You’re not looking after yourself. You’re not letting Smithie and LaTeesha look after you. And since you’re not, I’m stepping in.”

  “You been gone a week,” I pointed out snappily.

  “You needed time, and I assessed from our last conversation, space. I gave it to you. You curled up, terrified in a corner, I’m done doing that.”

  “You don’t get it.”

  “No, I don’t. You’ve attempted to explain and I still don’t. Mostly because I never got the concept of bullshit and I still don’t, even when a beautiful woman is trying to feed it to me.”

  Honestly?

  I couldn’t take any more.

  And because I couldn’t, something snapped in me.

  It snapped inside and it snapped me right out of his arms.

  I took a step back but lifted my hands and planted them in his chest, shoving him.

  He rocked back on a foot but I retreated three, lifted my hand, and jabbed a finger at him.

  “You don’t get it!” I shrieked.

  “Then give it to me,” he whispered.

  The change in his tone didn’t register on me. The look on his face.

  Nothing.

  “I forgot my lip gloss. My lip gloss!” I screamed. “Not my tips. Not my phone. Not somethin’ important. My…fucking…lip gloss.”

  “Okay, honey,” he said gently.

  “Went back for fucking lip gloss.”

  “All right, Daisy.”

  “Out of the blue,” I swung my raised arm wide and dropped it, “he jumps me. Do you know how it feels to be somewhere you think you’re safe, doin’ something you got every right to do, and some asshole jumps you?”

  “No.”

  “It doesn’t feel real good,” I shared.

  Marcus didn’t say anything.

  “I can take a slap. I can take the back of a hand. Daddy taught me that. Not to mention a number of Momma’s other men who had that kinda thing honed real good.”

  I watched his jaw get hard, a muscle shift up his cheek, but that didn’t register on me either.

  “I can even take a punch. More than one asshole I let in there gave me that lesson.”

  “Christ,” he bit out.

  I ignored that and the emotion behind it.

  “But that, that, and what he gave me after he gave me my beating, that I hadn’t been taught.”

  “No woman needs that lesson.”

  “Well, I got it,” I snapped.

  “And he’ll get his.”

  “Right, with you puttin’ a bullet in his brain?”

  “Precisely.”

  I cocked my head to the side, feeling my hair move with me, and ground out, “You barely know me and you got that much feelin’ for me you’re willin’ to take that on your soul?”

  “Yes.”

  At that, the firmness of it, the simplicity, I rocked back like he’d shoved me.

  “You don’t want me to do that, he didn’t rape me. That’s your call,” he stated. “I’ll have him brought to the police. You don’t give a fuck about that asshole, he’s dead. At my hand. And I won’t take pleasure from it. But it cannot be denied, when it’s done, it won’t give me satisfaction.”

  “Now you are tryin’ to scare me,” I accused.

  “No.” He shook his head. “In my world, actions have consequences. You are far from dumb, Daisy. You know the world I live in. You might not know the rules but you know there are rules. And no one breaks them. If they do, they suffer retribution as decreed by the laws of the street. He violated my turf and I mean that in the sense I own part of Smithie’s. But he violated something that’s just plain mine and for that, he suffers the ultimate reckoning.”

  Lord.

  He was killing me.

  “I’m not yours,” I whispered.

  “Honey, please start paying attention.”

  At that, I shut up.

  Marcus didn’t do the same.

  “That’s the man I am, Daisy,” he declared. “And that’s going to happen regardless of what I say next. Which is, right now, you have one chance. If what I just shared scares you. If it turns your stomach. If it’s something that you don’t want in your life, I’ll walk away. You can have all the bacon and you’ll never see me again. But if you don’t say…right now…that’s something you can’t take, then we’re sharing the bacon, the eggs I’m going to make, and a whole lot more when the time is right.”

  At the thought of never seeing him again, I wrapped my arms around my stomach and kept my eyes glued to him.

  Marcus didn’t move. He kept watching me. He did it silently.

  And as he did it, something settled in him, in his frame and in his face.

  It was a sight to see. A thing of beauty.

  And it scared me spitless.

  After a while, he spoke, his voice just as firm but a whole lot more gentle.

  “In terms I hope you’ll understand, darling, in fairytales, the prince vanquishes the wicked queen. The evil stepmother. The malicious goblin. In real life, Daisy, to avenge wrong done to his princess, if the need arises, the prince puts a bullet in somebody’s brain.”

  Yes.

  Killing me.

  Without me telling it to do it, my mouth whispered, “Why?”

  “I just explained why.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Why me?”

  I asked and Marcus didn’t hesitate even a second to answer.

  “Because my mother left me when I was six. She wasn’t a loss. She left me with my father, who was a decent enough father, a good man, but a stupid one and very weak. We didn’t have much because he wasn’t capable of giving me much, but there were more reasons. We didn’t live in squalor. However, the little we had wasn’t much better. Then, when I was ten, he’d gotten himself under the weight of a debt he couldn’t repay since he made dick but he also liked to play the ponies. They busted out his knees first. Then they took his thumbs. After that, they took his life.”

  “Oh my God,” I breathed.

  “He had a daughter from another relationship, my half-sister. She grew up with her mother and she didn’t have much either. The good in my dad, he made sure my sister was in my life. As much as we could be, we were close. When Dad was killed, she was all I had left. And she had a choice. Take me on or let me go into the system. She took me on. She was twenty. And she put a roof over my head, food on the table, and a lot of love in my life. But the first two things she gave me, she did it stripping.”

  Understanding dawned, I felt my body jolt and then I felt my face set.

  Marcus didn’t miss it.

  “Stop right now thinking what you’re thinking,” he clipped out.

  “Hard not to, sugar,” I returned.

  “She married a man twenty-five years older than her when I was sixteen. It was a love match. They haven’t slept a single night without each other since their wedding and they retired to Florida five years ago. He was definitely a good guy and definitely decent. But he didn’t have much either, though he did his best. They retired to a four-bedroom house with a pool that’s in a development that has three top-notch golf courses because I worked my ass off to make certain that would be the way they ended their years together.”

  I ignored all this, no matter how hard that kind of beautiful generosity was to ignore, and I did it in order to ask cuttingly, “You savin’ your sister in this fairytale of yours that you’re corrallin’ me into, Marcus?”

  “No,” he answered immediately.

  But he wasn’t done.

  “I had a mother I barely remember, a trail of women my father couldn’t keep, and a sister who loves me maybe more than the three kids she had with Doug because we toughed it out together. We had bad times. We had lean times. We had everyone around us treating us like shit because they thought they knew who we were by what she did and how my father was. We had interfering teachers telling themselves they were doing the honorable thing by trying t
o take me away from her. Most important in all that, we had a family. It was just the two of us but she loved me and I loved her and that was all we needed. She gave me a great deal. And right now, what you need to know that she gave me is the understanding of exactly the kind of woman I would eventually claim as mine.”

  “And what kind is that?”

  “One who’s beautiful. One who’s smart. One who’s kind. One who’s strong. One who doesn’t give a shit what people think about her. One who’d do what she could for anyone who asked no matter if it isn’t convenient or easy. One who knows what having nothing feels like so she knows what matters and to appreciate it when she gets it.”

  “And you think that’s me?”

  “No. I know it’s you.”

  “You’re sure,” I scoffed.

  He looked around the kitchen and then back at me, lifting up his hands at his sides, and sounding exasperated when he asked, “What do you think I’m doing here?”

  I knew what he was doing there.

  Just, for his sake—primarily how much more awesome all that he was telling me made him—no matter how damned stubborn he was being about it, I knew he shouldn’t be.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that in your life,” I said with feeling. “I get it and I’m not thrilled to learn that we got a lot in common with the shit we actually got in common, sugar. But just to say, that woman is not me.”

  One second, he was four feet away.

  The next second he was in my space, both hands cupping my cheeks, his eyes all I could see.

  “I’ve been waiting thirty-five years for you to come into my life, Daisy,” he whispered fiercely.

  And again I stopped breathing.

  But Marcus didn’t stop talking.

  “You can twist it into me wanting to save my sister from the life she had to lead to take care of me. Into me wanting a piece of your ass. Into whatever the fuck you want to try to twist it into. But since I was a kid, I knew what kind of life I intended to lead and that was to be so far away from the life I grew up in with my dad, I wouldn’t even remember how that felt. And I knew I’d do whatever I had to do to get it, without doubts, without indecision, without remorse. And last, baby, I knew the woman I’d have by my side when I got there. So twist it whatever way you want. I’ll find a way to untwist it because something else I know, when I find what I know without a doubt I want, without remorse, I’ll find a way to get it.”