THE DEBT BOX SET, page 62
If Rosa was here she’d tell me it wasn’t the neighborhood, it was her. Her father and brother could make anything dangerous.
I refused to let it happen to my apartment. I braced my hands against the door, looking out the peephole to see if that guy was sticking around, but there was nothing but the outdoor walkway and the night sky.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathed and put my head against the door. My heart was pounding like I’d run a race. I did not need this shit. Ari didn’t need this shit. We were working on a drama-free life. Routine and bedtimes and trips to the library.
Leave it to Rosa to somehow reach in a hand and make waves. Disturb the fragile peace I’d managed to build around us.
This was a place I was going to make my home. For Ariella. My life was starting now. And I’d be forever grateful to Rosa for what she’d sacrificed to make this happen.
But I was never going to forgive her for not coming back to us.
13
NOW
Rosa
Well, what do you know—I missed sex. I hadn’t thought I did. I had been living in a body that felt cold and distant and half dead. But as I walked out of the dressing room my first night at Diamond, it started to come back to life. It was all that skin, sure. The girls were beautiful. And they were strong and sexy. And the men watched them and pined for them. Longed for them.
Lust was in the air, thick like smoke.
And maybe the other girls weren’t aware of it anymore. That blatant smell of sex. The hum that seemed to vibrate through my whole body. I was mess. My body didn’t work right and I couldn’t make eye contact, but I also couldn’t stop staring.
It was shocking. And I didn’t want it. My entire life was built on not wanting anything. And suddenly I wanted to be touched. I wanted hands on my skin. A mouth on my neck. I wanted someone to be crazy to touch me, out of their mind.
And I wanted to be the same way.
But not just any hands. Marco’s.
My life couldn’t hold it. If I started wanting anything, everything would fall apart.
“Just give it a second,” Cindy said, reading my mind. “You’ll get used to it.”
I didn’t want to get used to, but I needed the job so I walked across the room beside her while she stopped and said hi to some regulars, kissed some of the girls working the tables on the cheek. Basically, made it seem like she was walking into a party and she was happy to be there.
And I walked through that place like I was coming out of a deep freeze.
The bartender, a beautiful black woman who wore her hair in braids piled up on her head, told me the specials and gave me a tray. Her skin glowed with gold glitter powder.
“Smile,” she said. “But not too much.”
Seemed like really good advice.
I tried as hard as I could not to look at the girls on the stage, and the eye contact I made with the men who ordered bottles of beer or double whiskeys neat was brief. Perfunctory. Like my smile.
My tips were terrible.
“Loosen. Up.” Cindy told me through her teeth.
A crowd of guys came in after ten. And the set of their shoulders and the shape of their bodies looked familiar. Construction workers. Broad shoulders, barrel chests. Strong legs. Sunburns on the backs of their necks.
They were so familiar the heat in my body became a blast.
Marco had worked construction for his father all through high school. He was young, so he did a lot of the heavy lifting and his body had changed, it seemed, right under my hands. From a boy to a man.
And I’d loved it. From the smooth curves of his biceps up over his shoulders. The muscles of his stomach down to the bulging strength of his thighs. Some nights, it’d been impossible to stop touching him.
“They’re regulars,” Cindy said, coming to stand beside me as I stared at those men and their shoulders. Their hands would be rough. For a moment the visceral memory of Marco’s hands on the skin of my thighs was so clear I couldn’t breathe.
“You okay?” Cindy asked.
“Fine. Who…who are they?”
“A work crew from the airport. They order a bunch of chicken wings and some pitchers of beer. One of the guys is dating Minx and they go upstairs and fuck—”
“Really?” I asked. Here? Though, honestly, who was I to judge? I’d only had sex in the back seat of a car. And once on a hotel bed.
Twenty-one years old and I was very nearly a virgin.
Cindy shrugged. “They’re good guys. Good tippers. I’ll split them with you.”
It was exceedingly generous. “Thanks.”
I walked around the group on the edge closest to the door just as Minx came onto the stage. Minx was hot. Like, it was just undeniable. She walked onstage and the air in the place went electric. She was a college girl and a trained dancer with legs and hair for days, and she knew how to work both.
“She’s something, huh?” a man asked.
I looked down at the man who was sitting in the chair I was standing next to, and in the strange lights and my horny haze he looked so much like Marco I nearly dropped my tray. Dark hair, dark eyes. Young. A crooked smile with dimples. His T-shirt, with the way he sat, clung to him, his legs spread in the chair like he needed room.
So masculine. Such a man. Like Marco had been. Was still.
I miss him so much.
Gasping, I looked away.
This place was going to make a mess of me.
“You all right?” the guy asked and I could sense more than see his hand reaching for my elbow. Like he was going to support me, but there were serious no-touching rules in this place and he dropped his hand.
And I didn’t know how I felt about that. Part of me wanted to see what would happen if someone touched me. Would I split open, a too-ripe thing? A too-ready woman?
Or would I close back up?
“I’m fine,” I told the guy.
He smiled at me and it wasn’t a come-on. It wasn’t anything but human kindness and it felt like more than I’d had in a long time. I smiled back.
“What can I get you?” I asked.
“Bottle of Bud,” he said and I turned.
It took me a second to recognize the man standing there behind me, wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt with a flannel shirt over top. Not just because he was here, in a place I’d never expected to see him. But because I hadn’t seen him this close up in over four years.
“Rosa?”
“Marco.”
14
NOW
Marco
I wasn’t going to go.
That was what I’d told myself all week, but to some extent I knew I was lying. Because I didn’t throw the damn paper away. I put it on my fridge and I felt it there, even when I wasn’t home.
And then I told myself I was only going to see her. To see how she was. To maybe prove some point to myself that I was better off without her. To see that she wasn’t the person I thought she’d been. That prison had changed her so fundamentally, the woman I knew wasn’t there anymore.
I didn’t know the address was a strip club. I just plugged it into my phone and drove there. Even sitting in the parking lot, beneath the pink and silver sign, I didn’t believe it.
Rosa. In a strip club?
She’d been raised by her mom as Catholic as they come. When she lived with her dad her only religion had been staying safe. And so she’d hidden her body beneath baggy clothes and modesty for as long as I knew her. Seeing what she looked like beneath the hoodies had felt like a gift she’d given me. I couldn’t believe how lucky I’d been.
And now she was standing here. Four years older. A woman, not a girl. Her breasts spilling out of a gold vest and her long, long legs in fishnet stockings and boots.
It was Rosa like I’d never seen her. Sex personified. It was strange and a little off-putting.
But I’d never been so turned on in my life.
Rosa. Her body…her skin. So close I could touch her. After all these years…
I shoved my hands in my pockets so I wouldn’t grab her. Haul her up against me so I could feel her. There were times in the last four years when missing her had been such a physical pain, it was like I’d lost a limb.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, yelling a little over the techno beat of the dancer’s music.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Working.” She tossed her hair back.
“Where have you been?” I asked. “The last six months.”
She was silent, her eyes everywhere but on me.
“Tell me,” I said, stepping closer. “Right now.”
“What? Tell you what?” she asked, angry as if she had the right.
“Were you ever planning to come back to us?”
Her mouth fell open and I knew before she said it that she was going to lie. She was going to pretend. That there was something she was hiding.
“No. I was never coming back to you.”
Yeah. She lied.
“Then why do you come to the park?” I asked. “Why do you watch us from behind the dugout?”
She was silent. Mutinous. Four years and six months of doing this all on my own and holding onto the dream of us… and she couldn’t give me a straight answer.
Anger and lust and hurt battled it out in my chest. And I tried so fucking hard not to look below her neck. But then I realized the man she’d been talking to was looking her up and down and I wanted to pull his eyes out of his head.
Whatever, I thought. The point of the place was to look. So I did.
After four long years, I took her in like a man dying of thirst in the desert. Goddamn it, Rosa, I thought. Goddamn it. She was gorgeous, all tawny curves and long legs. That sweet belly that pushed out under the vest that could barely contain her breasts, and the short pants that clung to her hips, and that beautiful place between her legs.
She was the same in so many ways and somehow more than she’d been. All that promise realized.
And I didn’t even try to hide my rage.
Or my lust.
“Marco—” I saw her lips move but I couldn’t hear her voice. Too quiet in this loud place.
“How much?” I snapped at her.
“For what? A drink—”
“A dance.”
Her face went white and then red. “You’re a stripper, right?” I asked. “How much for a dance?”
“I don’t—”
“Want to dance for me?” I snapped, stepping closer, close enough I wasn’t yelling. Close enough I could hear the ragged edge of her breaths. Close enough I could smell her. I could see the slow roll of a bead of sweat across the slope of her breast and I was assaulted by the memory of her body against mine. It hurt, that memory.
And infuriated me.
“Guess what? I don’t care. For once I don’t care what you want. I want a dance—”
“Is there a problem?”
The guy she’d been talking to, the guy who couldn’t take his eyes off her ass, stood up like he was going to be a hero.
“Sit down,” I told him, without taking my eyes off Rosa. Her brown eyes were filling with tears and her chin was set in a very familiar way.
“Man, maybe you need to take a walk.” The guy stepped closer and a few other people were turning from the dancer to watch us.
“Marco,” Rosa said, and then she did the insane. The impossible. Her hand with my grandmother’s old garnet ring sitting on her ring finger, touched me. Pressed, just a little, against my chest.
Four years since she’d touched me. Four years and I’d convinced myself I didn’t care anymore. That I didn’t miss it. Miss her. Us.
One touch of her hand and it was all lies.
One touch of her hand and I was hard.
I put my hand over hers on my chest and felt the tremor of her fingers. Heard her gasp like she’d missed my touch, too.
“Walk away, man,” I said to the guy. “This is between me and my wife.”
Rosa
He was so mad. I could feel it in the air. Like ice. Like razors against my skin.
“It’s okay,” I told the nice guy behind me. “It’s fine.”
I pushed Marco back and caught Cindy’s eye. She was at my side in a heartbeat. “You need me to get JJ?”
JJ was the bouncer and he was already at the door, watching us like he was ready to break this scene up, and I didn’t need Marco in trouble.
“No,” I said. “Can I take Marco in a back room? Just to talk. Just…for a second.”
“Sure.” Cindy looked worried. “But do you want to?”
“Yeah. It’s just a minute.”
“If he pays you anything you have to give half of it to the house.”
It wasn’t going to be like that, but I nodded. “Of course,” I said.
“Go. I’ll cover your tables.”
When I turned back to Marco he had to drag his eyes up off my ass to look into my face and it felt…uncomfortable. Uncomfortable because it was hot. In the time that I’d worked here I hadn’t felt degraded. But the man I loved looking at me like that…yeah, it was degrading.
“Follow me,” I said over the thump of the music, and I led him back to one of those private rooms. The third room was the smallest and it was empty. I opened the door, letting him walk in first.
His shoulder brushed my breasts, grazed my nipples, and I swallowed my gasp. My skin in my clothes was ultrasensitive and every shift of my body under the vest or in the hot pants made it worse. I ached with a thousand things.
I closed the door and flipped the lock that turned a light on over the door in the hallway that let everyone know it was occupied. And then my heart was pounding in my ears and I didn’t know what to say or do. After all these years and all the speeches I’d written in my head—full of apologies and gratitude, full of all the love we used to feel and the longing—they were gone and I just wanted…I just wanted to be touched. With kindness. And love.
The way he used to touch me.
I’m so lonely.
“So?” he said.
I turned and he was sitting in a leather chair. Arms on the armrests, his legs spread like he was a king.
His face full of an old anger that had turned to disdain.
“Marco—”
His lip curled and he shook his head. “No,” he said. “No talking.”
“I don’t…I’m not a stripper.”
“You sure about that?”
He lifted his hip and pulled his wallet out of his pocket.
“Don’t,” I whispered, closing my eyes so I didn’t see him taking money out to pay me to dance for him.
There was a long silence and then he swore quietly under his breath. When I opened my eyes the armor of his anger had fallen off him and he sat there, so familiar to me and so dear.
He stood, shaking his head. “This was a mistake,” he said and stepped toward me. “I don’t know why the fuck I came.”
“The same reason I go to the park every Sunday.”
He looked at me across the room and slowly shook his head. “I don’t want to love you,” he said.
“I know.”
“Half the time I hate you.”
“I know.”
He looked away from me, his hands in fists, and I could feel the tension across the room, the fragile control he had on himself. How he was barely holding on. And I knew that he would never hurt me. The thing he was trying to stop himself from doing was touch me.
“I’m leaving,” he said and crossed the room in three angry steps. Everything in me told me to get out of the way. To let him go. But I didn’t. I stood right in front of the door in my gold vest and hot pants.
His face was flushed. “Get out of my way,” he said, and my mouth was full, my throat closed, and I shook my head. “Don’t make me,” he said. “Don’t make me touch you.”
It was exactly what I was doing, because I would take his touch any way I could get it.
“Fuck, Rosa,” he groaned. “Fuck you.”
And he put his hands around my arms and pulled me up and into his body so my breasts touched his chest, and between my legs I felt the hard pressure of him. I gasped and he turned. I expected him to let me go. I expected him to shove me away but he didn’t. Oh god, he didn’t. He lifted me off my feet and took two steps forward, pushing me against the wall. Not gently. But not rough. And then he leaned against me, his entire body against mine. And I was electrified. Every inch of my skin burned where it touched his.
I burned so hot I burned right through all the years. All the pain fell away and it was just us. Marco and me and the desire so pure it kept changing the course of both our lives.
He held himself so still, so carefully, and he was going to walk away. I knew he was. He would walk away and this moment would never happen again.
“Please,” I begged, because it was all I had left. No more pride. No more distance. I was only need.
I wrapped my arms around his big strong back, his body against mine so familiar. So perfect. I arched into him, pressing myself against the long, hard length in his jeans. And then just a little, I rubbed against him. Gasping as my clit got the pressure it needed.
“Fuck,” he said, and I rejoiced in the surrender in his voice. Mine, I thought. He was mine again, just for a few minutes. Just for now. Whatever happened next it was worth it to have him to myself. They way we’d been.
I turned my head, trying to find his mouth, wanting his kiss. His taste. His breath in my mouth, but he leaned back. Shaking his head. “I won’t kiss you,” he said. “And I won’t fuck you.”
“Okay,” I whispered. And then I realized what he was going to make me do. What he wanted. And it would have been great to have enough pride to toss my hair and tell him to find some other girl to suck his dick. But I didn’t want another girl to do it. I didn’t want any other woman to touch him.
And, fine, he wanted to use me like this. I felt the pain of that.
But I also felt the pleasure.
Pleasure and pain. If that wasn’t me and Marco I didn’t know what was.
“Sit down,” I told him, and he breathed in hard through his nose, the nostrils flaring. I pushed him for good measure. His body was hard and big and I felt powerful in my boots and wet between my legs and he stepped back once and then again. Staggered into the chair. The power, for the moment, shifted in my favor.
