Fix It Up: Torus Intercession Book Three, page 12
It was not something I shared with many lovers.
The men I’d slept with wanted to submit to me, begged me to use my size and strength to control them. I was good in bed. It wasn’t me bragging. I worked at it and made sure they were satisfied before I let go. I had never been accused of being selfish in the sack. Other places, God yes, but not there.
The thing was, I loved being manhandled and held down. I got off on it. Out of bed, I had to be in control of most everything, but in bed, my preference was to give myself over to someone else. So yes, from the start, I could say that Nick Madison, obviously, was beautiful. I understood why the legion of fans swooned over his gorgeous eyes, lush lips, sinewy form, and deep, sexy vibrato, but those things hadn’t affected me. Until now.
Now, crowded up against me, I couldn’t imagine pushing him away. He had guided me, physically, onto the plane, and I’d felt my body respond to that, flushing with heat even though my mind had sent up all kinds of warning bells.
“I like how this looks on your wrist,” he told me. “I think I need to get you something for the other, like some beads or a heavy cuff.”
“You don’t need to get me anything,” I assured him.
“We’ll see,” he said, his eyes flicking to my face, then away.
We landed, and as we made our way to the car rental counter, I was stunned that, with nothing more than a flat-top hat and a pair of Wayfarers, Nick Madison went entirely unrecognized.
“How do you think Clark Kent did it all those years?” he asked me in the parking lot when we reached the Land Rover he had rented.
“Get in the car,” I ordered him.
His snickering was good to hear.
“We really didn’t need anything this big,” I told him.
“I like to ride in luxury,” he explained. “And this way I can get in the back and take a nap while my driver does all the work.”
“Your driver?”
He fluttered his eyelashes at me. He was teasing, being playful, and for whatever reason, I had a weird hitch in my chest. It was so odd.
Amazingly, he could read in the car.
“You can’t?”
“No, I get really carsick,” I confessed.
“Huh.”
He was quiet for a bit, admiring the desert scenery as we got on the freeway. “Are you going to fire Brent?” he asked out of the blue.
“I’m leaning that way,” I told him. “Unless you think something different.”
“I think Brent is not happy helping, you know?”
“No. What do you mean?”
“He wants to be a star.”
“Everybody wants to be a star.”
“No,” he corrected me. “Think about Phaeton. He––”
“He’s named after a kind of carriage. Do you know that?”
“Listen,” he said, chuckling, “Phaeton doesn’t want to be a star, not how you think, not like Brent does. Phaeton is all about having people ask, ‘Who dressed Nick Madison?’ ‘Who thought about having him wear that earring or that shade of lipstick?’ ‘He looks amazing, I wonder if whoever created that look could create one for me?’ He gets off on that reflected glory, of being an innovator and being the expert. Phaeton wants to be the spotlight; Brent wants to be in the spotlight.”
“That’s not going to work,” I told Nick. “He kept Isai from getting into the party, thus putting you in danger. I don’t see how I can keep him on after that.”
“Well, I will defer to your judgment since I already fired him once.”
“Maybe it’s your judgment that we should listen to.”
“No,” he said softly. “I didn’t want you in my house, in my life, and I’ve never been so wrong about a situation or a person.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said, unscrewing the lid from a bottle of water and passing it to me before he went back to reading something on his phone.
“What’s so interesting?”
“That would be an email from Kara.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What does she say?”
“She said that Derek, that’s her ex,” he informed me, “got the shit beat out of him last night.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Derek,” he said clearly, “is a mess today.”
“Really?”
“Mm-hm.”
“I guess some guys experience karma pretty quickly.”
“Karma?”
“Yeah,” I said with a shrug. “Guy tries to hit his girl but doesn’t succeed only because her friend intervenes. I’m thinking he got what was coming to him.”
“That makes sense,” he agreed. “Though technically he didn’t hit her, and the friend, me, didn’t get hurt too badly either.”
“But not for lack of trying, and only because you got outta there before he could do worse than scuff you up a bit.”
“That’s also true.”
“So yeah, I’m going with karma.”
“She also said that when Frost and the movers went over to her place this morning to get her stuff, Frost was expecting to have some words with Derek, but he was at the hospital having his broken nose set.”
“For the sake of argument, do you think it’s possible that Frost took exception to Derek trying to hit his friend and––”
“I think since Derek has about fifty pounds of muscle on Frost, the chances that they went toe-to-toe and Frost lived to tell the tale are pretty slim.”
“Ah.”
“That’s it? Is that all you have to say?”
“Yeah. Why?”
He made a purring noise then, and my cock liked the low rumbling sound far too much.
“What was that?” he gasped as we swerved, changing lanes for a moment, which was fine since we were the only ones on the two-lane highway, as far as I could see.
“Tortoise,” I said quickly, clearing my throat. “I saved its life.”
“Apparently so,” he agreed. “It’s lucky you have such quick reflexes.”
I kept my mouth shut.
“So anyway, Derek’s bodyguard, Vinnie––”
“Who is Derek again?”
“Derek Connelly,” he said, like that should have been enough.
“Who?”
“He’s a very famous DJ, as well as a record producer.”
I grunted.
“Anyway,” he said, drawing out the word, “Vinnie said––”
“Vinnie?” I repeated.
“Yes. Why?”
“Everybody you know has a weird name.”
He squinted at me. “How is Vinnie a weird name?”
“Whatever. Go on.”
“Well, Vinnie told Frost that he didn’t see anything.”
“Didn’t see anything when?”
“When Derek got beat up.”
“He’s not a very good fucking bodyguard, then,” I affirmed, changing lanes to pass a slow-moving minivan. “If he had been doing his job, he would have intervened.”
“Frost told Kara that he thinks Vinnie intentionally let Derek take a beating after Derek tried to hit her. Furthermore, Vinnie told Frost to apologize to Kara for him not being around when she showed up at the house last night.”
“He sounds like a good guy.”
“Yes, he does.”
We drove in silence for a few minutes.
“You have nothing else to say?”
“About what?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he mused, and I could almost hear his mind working. “Perhaps something about Derek taking a beating last night?”
“I certainly have no idea.”
“No?”
I shook my head.
“So your contention is that the one person who hit me ends up having to go to the hospital, and that’s just karma.”
“Must be,” I said, shrugging. “What did Derek say?”
“Derek is hiding and not saying shit. Kara is telling the story all over social media about how he tried to knock her out, and I stepped in.”
“Well, that certainly makes you look good.”
“It does, yes. But I wonder who Derek is afraid of.”
“Yeah, I dunno, since you and I were on our way home.”
“Look at me.”
“I’m driving.”
“Then pull over.”
“I wanna get there,” I explained. “Don’t you? Aren’t you hungry?”
Heavy, aggrieved sigh.
I glanced over at him and found him staring at me. “What?”
“You have an antiquated idea of justice, Locryn Barnes.”
“Sometimes,” I began slowly, “you have to let other people know what their limits are, and that if they stretch them, nothing good will come of that.”
“Is that right?”
“It is,” I assured him. “Take Derek for example. He mistakenly believed that he could strike a woman in front of her friend, and when that action was interrupted, that he could then lay hands on the friend instead.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“No, listen. If you’re Derek, now you’ve had that assumption corrected. So next time he goes to knock the crap out of someone, he’ll probably flash back to this and think, huh, I wonder if this person I’m about to hit has someone around who will care that I’m hurting them.”
“Then it’s certainly lucky that whoever beat him up gave him that life lesson.”
“It certainly is.”
We were silent for a while, looking at the miles of cactus-covered nothing.
“Thank you for being my champion.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Have it your way,” he said, reaching out and putting his hand on my thigh.
He didn’t move it for the rest of the drive.
I think he was expecting a house like his, more like a resort, but when I turned in and there was a cattle guard and a fence with a gate that I had to get out, unlatch, and swing open, he was taken aback. Once we drove across, I had to stop, go back and latch it, and then return to the car.
“There’s no security camera?”
“No.”
“What about farther in?”
I shook my head.
“But I googled her,” he told me. “Your mother has a huge following; she’s a bestselling author, so how is she just out here without any security?”
“I think you have to be like Margaret Atwood big or Stephen King or James Patterson or a much bigger name to have gates and people separating you from the rest of the world. And I know people who’ve seen Stephen King at the gas station, so I really do think that your definition of famous and my mother’s popularity are two totally different realities.”
“Huh.”
After a few minutes, he pointed at the lampposts on either side of the drive, like something you’d see on a Christmas card. “Are those for security?”
“I think they’re mostly decorative, but they do light the property some at night,” I said, and then clarified. “It’s still not great, they’re not like floodlights, more like big lanterns on poles.”
We had to stop for a family of javelinas, then a couple of coyotes, and he marveled at all the trees—not cactus, but trees.
“It’s because of the water,” I told him.
“There’s water?”
“A creek and, yeah, you’ll see,” I assured him. “From her back patio you can see Cathedral Rock, and her property borders national forest land, and that’s impressive, but Oak Creek—the fact that it’s right on the water is really something.”
“Drive faster,” he prodded me.
When I pulled up in front of the house, we both got out, and he stood there staring at the large farmhouse with the wide porch and a riot of plants and flowers, the birdbaths, bird feeders, bee feeders, hummingbird feeders, and windchimes of every imaginable size and shape. The glass and wood double doors were standing open, and you could see straight into the house and out the other side.
He did a slow pan to me. “You have to insist that your mother get some kind of security for her home.”
I grunted.
“Sweetheart!”
Turning, I saw her walking toward us, having come from her rose garden, the wide-brimmed hat as ridiculous as the first time I saw it, and a basket hanging from her arm, her dogs running alongside her.
“Oh,” Nick said, seeing the nine dogs that made up her pack, all Dobermans, some with their ears cropped and tails docked, some not, but all looking equally intimidating. She had gotten them all from a rescue, having a real affinity for the breed, and had failed at fostering many times because when it came time to surrender the dogs, she couldn’t let them go. She was doing better, judging by the fact that her brood had only grown from eight to nine since I’d last seen her two months ago.
The new addition, Bruja, my mom informed me, held back a bit, so I dropped down to one knee, and when she took that as the signal to greet me, they all flew forward at once.
“Hey, guys,” I greeted them as they swarmed me, whining, jockeying for position to be rubbed and petted, wagging their tails like crazy. “Take a knee, Nick.”
He got down on both, and they were all over him, smelling him, licking him, and when Louie, the big male, the pack leader, knocked him over, the others took that opportunity to stick their noses in his ears and eyes, lick his mouth, smell his hair, and make nuisances of themselves. Bruja had given me the once-over, decided she liked me, and tried to sit in my lap.
My mother was laughing as she reached us, and I stood up to greet her, feeling the calm wash over me just looking at her.
“Why are you gray?” she asked me seriously, making a face. “I couldn’t tell at all on the video chat that you were gray.”
I groaned, grabbed the basket, set it on the hood of the rental car, and then hauled her forward into my arms. I squeezed her tight, lifting her up off her feet, and she looped her arms around my neck and hugged me back just as tightly.
“I’ll fix you up,” she crooned softly, her sigh long. “You just need to eat and lie in the sun and, well, I’m not going to lie, there are some tiny little things that need to be looked at.”
The list of things that needed to be repaired was always long. I really needed to find her a good, reliable, honest handyman to see to things between my visits.
Putting her back on her feet, I turned to Nick, who was still chuckling after his escape from the dog onslaught he’d been subjected to.
“Mom, this is Nick Madison. Nick, this is my mother, Sherri Barnes.”
He was beaming at her, tousled, a bit sleepy, and now rumpled from being mauled by her mutts. Instantly, he held out his hand to her.
She ignored that completely, brushed it aside, and walked into his arms, lifting to her toes to put her arms around his neck. He bent quickly, since she was shorter at five-four, and after a moment, I heard her whispering to him but couldn’t make out the words. He was nodding, though, biting his bottom lip, and when he released her, she did the same. Always, my mother was good about that. She never let go first; she let whoever was hugging her make that decision.
“Well,” she said, smiling at us. “Grab your stuff, come inside. I made non-alcoholic micheladas, guacamole and empanadas, and of course, my world-famous spicy chicken taquitos.”
She whirled around then and headed for the house.
When I turned to look at Nick, he looked sad. “What’s with the face?”
“You told your mother I couldn’t have alcohol?”
“Sweetheart.” Nick looked to where she was standing in the doorway. “I don’t drink, love. Alcohol makes it hard for me to interpret my visions and to be one with the goddess. I didn’t want you to be disappointed that you couldn’t get your drink on, so that’s why I announced that there was no alcohol in them.”
“Oh,” he said with a sigh, looking at me. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay,” I assured him.
He grunted then, looking back at my mother. “I keep screwing up where your son is concerned, ma’am.”
“Well, the important thing is to clear the air,” she declared. “And please, for the love of whatever deity you hold dear, do not call me ma’am. You can call me any endearment you like except old lady or sugar, never liked either of those,” she said, her voice dipping low. “But you can call me Sherri, Cher—like the singer—or Loc’s mom, even though that gets tedious; or Selene, because, well, mother moon; or Gidget or Gidge, because that’s what my grandfather called me; Rhiannon, because of the goddess and, of course, the Fleetwood Mac song; Mama Charlotte, because I love that name; Regina, meaning queen, of course; or Mele, which means song or poem in Hawaiian, because my goodness, isn’t that just lovely?”
Nick turned slowly to look at me.
I shrugged, and he returned his focus to her, because she wasn’t done.
“Also Iona, which was what my father wanted to name me, or…oh, you know what, I think that’s it.”
“I’ll go with Sherri.”
She made a face and grunted. “It’s a bit dull, but all right.”
When I went and opened up the back of the Rover to grab our luggage, he was right there with me.
“I think she’s disappointed,” he said, looking distraught.
“No, she was just hoping for the Gidget or Gidge thing. Her grandfather liked that movie, and they watched it together more than a few times. I’ll use it at some point while we’re here, and that’ll make her happy.”
He was staring at me.
“What?”
“No, nothing.”
“Spit it out,” I demanded.
“Okay, but there’s no way to say this and not sound like a dick.”
I grinned at him. “Lemme guess. ‘You seem so normal for having her as your mother.’”
“No,” he said, clearing his throat. “I was wondering how you came out so boring with her as your mother.”
Flipping him off, I grabbed my bag and turned to head for the house.
“I’m kidding,” he teased, slipping in front of me, hands on my hips, moving his head to try and get me to look at him. “C’mon, Loc, I’m kidding.”
I growled at him.
