Quarantales: The Complete Contemporary Romance Box Set, page 36
Whoever she was with before us didn’t treat her right. Didn’t know how to blow her mind or appreciate her the way Mitch and me did. But were we just as bad as him, locking her inside Jeb’s deranged version of a bedroom?
Did we just mess up the best arrangement we ever had?
Guilt curls in my gut. “If this doesn’t work, she might demand her money and cut out before the week is done. And I can’t say she wouldn’t be within her rights. What if Jeb….”
Mitch drills in the first screw. “Jeb wouldn’t hurt Goldie. You know that.”
Yeah, I do. But…“What if he drives her away?”
Mitch’s back stiffens. I can tell my words are getting to him. But then he says, “No, this plan is solid. Everything will work out.”
Mitch goes back to hang drywall, and I do too. I’m good at following his lead. That’s why when he’s called into play, nine times out of ten, they put me on the field too.
But after placing a few more pieces, I have to ask, “What if it doesn’t work out? What if she leaves and never looks back?”
Mitch doesn’t answer. Just loudly places screws around the perimeter of the sheet of drywall.
I watch him, waiting for his conscience to catch up with his pride. Mitch hates admitting he’s wrong. Maybe because his parents received thirty years apiece after they pleaded guilty. But he’s been my brother long enough to know I’ll wait him out.
And sure enough, after a minute or two, Mitch abruptly stops drilling in screws. He lets his head fall back and issues a frustrated groan of defeat. Then he says, “Shit. Let’s go check on them.”
We hear them as soon as we reach the hallway.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” she’s crying.
“Sorry ain’t going to cut it,” Jeb answers, his voice vicious and gruff.
“Fuck! I’ll get the key from the kitchen!” Mitch says at the same time I rush to the door we padlocked closed after depositing Goldie in Jeb’s bed early this morning.
The transfer had been seamless. He’d curled his huge body around hers so instantly. I’d been sure Mitch’s plan would work.
But now…
I pound on the door, “Goldie! Goldie! Are you all right?”
“Nico…is that you?” Her voice sounds muffled on the other side of the door.
“Yeah, it’s me, mija. Tell me you’re all right. Did Jeb hurt you?”
“No…” she answers just as Mitch arrives with the key. “He’s…he’s punishing me…again.”
I still. Not quite understanding until I hear something I didn’t before. A steady creak and muffled thump staccato. The bed frame hitting the wall.
He’s not hurting her. He’s fucking her.
It doesn’t take Mitch nearly as long to figure out what’s going on as me. He massages his cock through his jeans as he asks, “Why is he punishing you, baby? What did you do?”
Goldie whimpers. “I touched myself.”
I instantly go hard. “I told you not to do that.”
“I know,” she moans. “I should have listened.”
“Tell them what else you did, little girl,” Jeb commands, his voice hard and mean. “Tell them why I’ve got you ass up on the mattress.”
“I…I came without permission. And I called him by his name while he was inside of me. I’m only allowed to call him sir or daddy when he’s fucking me. I didn’t know.”
“No excuses,” Jeb bites out. “You know now.”
“I know now,” she agrees. “But I can’t stop coming. I’m sorry, Daddy—I keep on coming. And he keeps on punishing me.”
Holy… My cock is heavy and pulsing now.
Mitch unzips his pants. Pulls himself out. “Talk to me, baby. How many times did he punish you for being bad.”
Luckily, she’s not too far gone to answer. “I don’t know anymore. Five. Maybe six. I’m trying not to come, but I can’t help myself. And Daddy won’t stop fucking me.”
Mitch plants a forearm against the door and starts stroking himself at a furious pace. “What’s he doing now?”
“He pushed my face into the bed. And his dick…it’s in my ass. He said maybe that would keep me from coming. But…oh God, the sheets are scraping my breasts and clit…and, oh God!”
The play-by-play is Mitch’s thing, not mine. But my cock… I’ve never been this hard in my life. I have to massage it even as I ask, “Do you want us to unlock the door? Do you want us to make him stop?”
Instead of answering, she cries out, “I’m sorry, Daddy!”
And I listen to the familiar sound of her falling apart. Beside me, Mitch’s back caves, and he shoots a load into the door.
My brain feels like it’s on fire with a chemical burn of lust, surprise, and crazed emotions. But somehow, I find the wherewithal to remember the original mission. “Back away from the door, man. We’ve got to let her out.”
Mitch comes to his senses too. He puts himself away and brings out the key to undo the industrial-grade padlock.
I yank the door open just in time to see Jeb pull out of her ass. And the sight of Goldie stops me cold.
Jesus, she’s a mess. She said she’d come without permission a few times, but there’s so much cum dripping from her ass and pussy, it’s obvious Jeb released too. More than once.
She’s twitching on the bed, obviously still orgasming. And Jeb looks more animal than man. His eyes are glittering with crazed lust, and despite having just come, his cock’s at half-mast. Like it’s getting ready for another round.
“Take her out of here,” Jeb commands, his voice rough and demented. “She’s right. I can’t stop fucking her. I won’t stop if you don’t take her away.”
He doesn’t have to tell me twice.
I scoop Goldie up and carry her back to Mitch’s bedroom.
The decent thing to do would have been to take her directly to the shower. But unlike Mitch, I didn’t shoot my load. I’m so hard, I barely make it all the way to the bed before falling on top of her.
And she’s so slick that I slide right in.
I can’t be honorable. Can’t be decent even. I rut her like an animal.
And to my shock, she responds. “Oh, God, you’re in me so deep. I’m coming again. I’m…”
I catch her scream with a kiss as I explode inside her, releasing another stream of cock juice into her as her pussy contracts around my dick.
“Hey, Saint Nic, raise up. Let me have her. Get her cleaned up.”
I don’t realize I’ve collapsed on top of Goldie until I hear Mitch’s voice above me.
I roll away and Mitch picks her up to carry her the rest of the way to the shower. I feel guilty and ashamed as I watch them go.
But a few moments later, her cries ring out from the bathroom along with the sound of the shower.
This woman.
She’s enchanted all of us.
And as happy as I am that our plan worked, I can’t help but worry about what will happen when our time is up.
Chapter Sixteen
GINA
I wake with a start in Mitch’s bed, in a room filled with bright sunlight.
Was it all a dream? I blink several times. Maybe I’d been so agitated by my argument with Jeb, I only dreamed that he’d taken me over and over. That I’d come for him again and again, then again under Nico, then again with Mitch in the shower.
For a moment, I dare to hope that out-of-control slut wasn’t really me. But then I move, and everything hurts.
My pussy. My thighs. My arms. There’s even a crick in my neck. My body feels like it completely shattered yesterday and then somehow fused back together again. And my stomach feels like an empty cave. Probably, because I hadn’t eaten since…oh God, dinner last night.
There’s a Death Buddha shirt on the edge of the bed. I sniff at it. It’s clean, so I put it on and make my way to the kitchen. Food first. Then a bath to soothe my aching muscles.
I’m grateful to hear the sound of hammers coming from above when I emerge from the room. Luckily the guys are working upstairs today. That means I won’t have to do the walk of shame this morning—
“There she is!” Nico calls out when I reach the kitchen’s open doorway.
He’s at the counter, making sandwiches.
I stop. Too mortified to look him in the eye as I ask, “What are you doing down here?”
“I’m making us sandwiches for lunch,” he answers. “I was just about to go knock on your door to see if you were up.”
“I slept all the way to lunch?” I ask, cheeks burning.
He chuckles. “You slept all the way to lunch, through dinner, through breakfast the next day…Mitch and Jeb were worried you weren’t ever going to get up. But I told them to let you sleep. I know we wore you out. Here, take this first sandwich. I got nitrate free lunch meat delivered, so it’s safe.”
Safe…
I take the sandwich, but hungry as I am, it tastes like dirt in my mouth. It’s too hard to eat in front of Nico. I feel so ashamed.
After swallowing down the first bite, I open my mouth to tell him I’m just going to eat in the room.
“Hold on,” Nico says before I get the words out. He heads toward the stairs at the back of the kitchen. “I was going to take the sandwiches upstairs, but I know Jeb and Mitch are going to wanna see you.”
“No, Nico, don’t—”
“Hey, Jeb! Mitch! Goldie’s up!” Nico calls up the stairs before I can finish telling him not to.
The next thing I hear is the rushing stomp of work boots.
Jeb hangs back when they come into the kitchen. But Mitch grins at me, sly and wide. “There you are. We wondered if you were going to sleep all day again. Thought you were supposed to be Goldilocks, not Sleeping Beauty.”
“Sorry,” I mumble, not knowing how else to respond to that.
I glance at Jeb, but he’s not even looking at me. Is he angry at me for the way I acted yesterday?
Tommy, who’d been mostly quiet until now, starts shouting in my head. You think any decent man’s going to want you. You’re lucky you tricked me into falling for you. No other man’s stupid enough to put up with a worthless slut like you.
“So, do you agree to the new terms?” Mitch asks.
“What?” I blink. Tommy was so loud in my head, I didn’t hear what he said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t listening.”
“She’s still not fully awake. We should do this later,” Nico says to Mitch. While frowning at me.
“Later when?” Mitch asks. “She slept through her last day.”
“What deal?” I ask, utterly confused.
“The deal about your car. Craig’s saying he still hasn’t been able to find the engine and the other parts he’d need to fix your Chevy Nova. Quite frankly, we’re all surprised that piece of shit made it as far as it did. You came here from Georgia, right? That was what was on the plates.”
He’s looking at me so intently, I know he’s fishing for information. Information I’m not willing to give. But more importantly than that, “Wait, are you saying your mechanic can’t fix my car?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what he saying,” Jeb says behind Mitch. “Not that it was worth fixing in the first place.”
These are the first words he’s said to me since coming downstairs. And my head swims. Desperate to have it not be true. Desperate to get out of here.
“I need my car,” I tell them.
“That’s what we’re trying to talk with you about. How about we buy you a new car? A nice one. In exchange for another week.”
Their offer makes me want to throw up. “No…no! I can’t stay here. I’ve got to get to Canada.”
All three of them visibly jolt.
“What?” I ask.
Nico and Mitch just exchange looks, leaving Jeb to tell me. “If Canada’s your final destination, that window’s closed. They shut the border down due to the pandemic.”
“What?”
“Yeah, yesterday, while you were sleeping,” Nico tells me.
His voice is a lot gentler than Jeb’s, but his words still hit me like a punch to the face. “You can’t get in now unless you’re a citizen.”
I’m not a citizen. All I have is my passport and a birth certificate with my Canadian mother’s name on it. That might have been enough before. But now…oh God, I was so busy slutting it up yesterday morning, I missed my opportunity.
“Don’t be upset,” Nico says in the distance. “You keep on performing like that, you can stay here as long as you want.”
My whole body curdles with shame at his words. Tommy’s not just shouting in my head now, he’s screaming.
“No, I can’t stay here. I’ll take a bus to Cynda in Missouri—no, I can’t do that. A motel. I’ll get a motel.”
I don’t realize I’ve spoken out loud until Mitch asks, “Who’s Cynda?”
I shake my head at his question. I’ve already said too much. “I should go. Just give me the money you promised me, okay?”
They all still.
And I add, “Please.” Whispering as Tommy screams at me.
“Listen, Goldie. How about if we buy you a car and give you fifty more thousand on top of what we’re already going to pay you?”
Mitch takes a step toward me. And I stumble back.
I can’t talk about this with Tommy screaming in my head. Can’t look at them. Can’t be here. I run from the room, my entire body ablaze with fear and shame.
Chapter Seventeen
JEB
The perfect fit. That’s what Mitch called Goldie yesterday when we were discussing how crazy she made us. And how to keep her.
Mitch is the one with the business sense. And he assured us that the drug dealer approach would work.
“You saw her this morning…the way she took Jeb and us on top. I guarantee you we can get her as addicted to us as we are to her. And if Nico gets her talking, maybe we can solve whatever problem she’s hiding from us. One more week. That’s all we need.”
They talked like it would be as easy as my tryout for the Wisconsin Bears. All I had to do was play along and keep my mouth shut.
But I’d had misgivings from the start. First of all, I knew what she was running from, and it wasn’t the kind of thing money and cars could solve. Unlike Nico, my ma was still alive. And unlike Mitch, the Wisconsin incarceration system didn’t have anything to do with why she hadn’t seen me in fifteen years.
No, my ma was bitter, and living in the same apartment child services yanked me from. And she still refused to have anything to do with me. Her mind was so broken by that bastard she didn’t even pick up the phone when I made a pro-team.
Goldie wasn’t like Ma. We’d established that. But she was one helluva contradiction. Pliable and game for anything we threw at her. But also skittish with one foot out the door. She reminded me of the cat I used to feed out on the fire escape when I still lived with my parents in Milwaukee.
She’d nibble at your food carefully, but you had to keep still if you wanted to pet her. Any sudden moves and she’d run away. It didn’t matter how good your food was.
I hadn’t liked the situation from the moment we stepped into the kitchen. There were dark circles under Goldie’s eyes, and her skin was ashen. And instead of smiling like she always did and saying hello, she looked nauseated. Like she was trying not to throw up.
Regrets. She had a few. I could see that written clearly across her face. And only one factor had changed between today and all the others when she woke up as sunny as could be. Me.
She wasn’t going to take the deal. I suspected that before Mitch started talking. And I knew it for damn sure when instead of jumping up and down like a Price is Right winner, she ran out of the room.
My gut cramps, and my heart sinks like a stone. I’d fucked it up for Mitch and Nico. Again.
Mitch looks pissed. And Nico, who never did learn to keep his emotions to himself, looks crushed.
But me. I just go after her.
“No, Jeb, don’t!” Nico calls behind me.
He grabs one arm, and Mitch grabs the other, trying to hold me back. “Don’t make things worse.”
I yank my arm away from Nico and shove Mitch into the closest wall. Then I don’t stop again until I come to his door.
I shove it open. Then freeze.
Goldie’s sitting on the edge of the bed. Sobbing.
Fuck, fuck, fuck…
I’m not the one. I’m not the one who’s supposed to deal with this shit. Ever. But something won’t allow me to back off and let Nico take over.
I drop to my knees in front of her. And for the first time in the thirty years I’ve been living on this earth, I apologize to a woman. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry I came at you like that. Sorry I scared you. It can be just Nico and Mitch from now on. Take the deal. I won’t be a part of it.”
Her huge brown eyes widen. “You think this is about you?”
I shake my head at her. “I’m the one who was too rough with you…and after everything you told me. I shouldn’t have ever touched you. I’m sorry, and it won’t happen again.”
She grabs on to the wrist of one of the hands I have cupped around her face. But not to push me away.
“No, no, this isn’t about you,” she tells me with tears in her eyes. “It’s about me. I can’t believe I acted like that yesterday. It was like everything he said about me was right. There’s something wrong with me. I’m nothing but a stupid slut.”
A new rage rises inside of me at her words. “Don’t say that. I can’t stand to hear anybody talk about you that way. Even if it’s you.”
And I can easily guess who “he” is. “That sonofabitch was wrong. Everything he did to you was wrong. Everything he said to you was wrong. All we been talking about for the last twenty-six hours was how beautiful you are. How fucking perfect. We never had a woman respond to us like that. We’d pay you double what we agreed if you let us. That’s how amazing we think you are. We want you here. We want you to stay. That’s the only reason we offered you that car, so we could get more time with you. That’s all we want.”
