A Secret Vow: A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (12 page)

It occurs to me that that’s exactly what she is: alone. I don’t like the idea. I walk up behind her and press my hand lightly on her throat. “You shouldn’t be here by yourself,” I whisper, my lips touching her ear.

She jumps in fright, spinning around to see me. “Jesus, don’t do that!” she says breathlessly. “You scared the living hell out of me.”

I frown. “I don’t like you being here alone,” I tell her. “And you should have told me you were going to leave the house.”

“I can do whatever I want,” she snaps back. “I don’t belong to you.”

I catch her wrist as she starts to turn back to her painting. She needs to understand the stakes of what’s going on here. If she had only seen Grady’s face in that meeting, if she had gotten a glimpse of that thin, evil smile, she would understand that there is danger everywhere for her right now. “You’re wrong. You can’t do whatever you want, and you do belong to me. We made a pact, remember? You wanted protection. Well, that’s what I’m telling you. If you want to be protected, you need to do everything I say. And that means you can’t leave the house without someone around to guard you.”

She scowls, but she knows I’m right. She was with Grady long enough to know something about his temper. Hell, she’d probably seen more of it than I had. He wasn’t a motherfucker I trusted on the loose.

Kendra walks to a nearby table and starts fiddling with the scattered art equipment. She doesn’t face me as she talks in a rapid, low voice. “I don’t want to be a prisoner, Mortar. That’s not what I signed up for when I left with you.”

I take two big steps to cross the distance between us, seize her wrists in each hand, and push her back against the wall. I pin her hands to the wall overhead. “Listen to me,” I say. Her face is half-frightened, and half something else that I can’t quite make out yet. It might be anger. It might be desire. “Grady is a sick bastard. You’ve seen that. You know it. I swore I’d keep you safe. I need you to listen to me so I can do that. That means do what I say. Don’t go out alone. Don’t leave without telling me. It’s the only way I can fulfill my promise.”

She huffs a loose strand of hair away from her forehead. We stare at each other, intensity crackling like static between us. Then she sighs and relaxes. “Okay,” she whispers. “I get it. We can go. Just let me put a few things away.”

I drop her wrists and she walks slowly away to clean up. I let loose the breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding. My chest eases.

I don’t like yelling at Kendra, but I’m even more afraid of seeing her hurt. Until now, I haven’t quite grasped the extent of the protective urge I feel for her. I need to keep her safe, even more than I feel the need to obey the instinctive desire to protect myself. She is an extension of me, as essential as my own body. Soon, if she isn’t already, she’ll be carrying a piece of me, too. I’d lay everything on the line to keep my child and his mother safe.

I see worry in her posture as she moves around the studio, straightening things and placing items into rickety drawers. Her shoulders are drawn back, tense, loaded with years of constant fear for her own safety. I wonder if my anger triggered the automatic reflexes she’d developed during her time with Grady: cower, run, defend. I don’t want her to be like that with me. This whole arrangement won’t work if she doesn’t trust me. Most of the time, I believe she does, but there are still moments when I look at her and can’t help but ponder if she still harbors some deep-seated dread.

Kendra crosses over to a paint-stained sink and turns on the faucet. She rinses colors from her hands under the water. I walk up behind her and place my hands on her hips. Her mind may still be a mystery as yet unraveled, but her body has been a clear, pure note from the moment we met. There’s no misunderstanding our touch. When my fingertips alight on the sliver of skin exposed between her shorts and tank top, she pauses. There’s so much intention in the contact. So much sitting behind it.

I want this girl powerfully, essentially. I want to strip her in front of me and put her on display. Not for anyone else in the world, just for me and me alone. She’s a treasure, and now that I’ve made her mine, there’s no way I’ll settle for another man touching her ever again.

“Weren’t you in a big hurry to leave?” she murmurs over her shoulder.

“We’ve got time,” I say back as I work at the knot of her apron and send it cascading to the floor. She shuts off the faucet. The only sounds in the room are the swish of the ocean breeze through the window and the deepening rasp of our twin breathing.

I slide one hand around her front and up her shirt to hold her breast in my palm. Tweaking her nipple between my fingertips, I take her earlobe into my mouth and gnaw gently. I let the hot rush of my breath flow down her neck. She pushes back into me, slowly grinding her hips on my growing erection. I feel her slip a hand down my wrist to grip my thigh.

“Take me home,” she says. “I don’t want people on the street to hear.”

“Let them hear,” I tell her. “I want ’em all to hear us. The whole damn world should know what it’s missing out on.”

The only thing she can say back to that is a moan.

I push the shirt over her head. She raises her arms to let me pull it off her before I drop it on the floor to one side. She’s not wearing a bra, so her bare back presses against my chest while she works her hips in patient, steady circles, bringing me hard to life. I keep cupping her breasts, kneading the stiff peaks of her nipples, and kissing up and down the length of her neck and sloping shoulders.

Kendra turns to me and eases my own shirt off. “God, your body is incredible,” she gushes. “You’re a work of art.”

I laugh. “That’s your specialty.”

She presses her plump lips to my chest, leaving wet imprints all over the lines of the tattoos crisscrossing my skin. Her breasts hang heavy in my hands as I continue to caress her entire body. Their weight is perfect, but the thought of them engorged with milk adds another layer of thrill to the sensation.

I drop a hand to her shorts and ease the button loose. They sag down her hips. I let gravity do the work, and they fall down to the floor, leaving her clad only in a skimpy pair of red panties. Her body is so warm and small in my arms. I shelter her against me as she bathes my chest in kisses and the teasing tip of her tongue.

I’m the one thing standing between Kendra and the maniac thirsting to kill her. It’s not a responsibility I take lightly, and it’s not one I’m willing to shirk. Promises are steel. As long as I’m alive, she’ll be safe.

Kendra loosens my belt and pushes my jeans down. She encircles my girth with both hands as I lean forward to kiss her. Our mouths are wide open as we taste each other for the thousandth time. It’s every bit as delicious as the first.

Breaking the kiss for a moment, I peel her panties down her legs and help her step out of them. Seeing her without a shred of clothing will never get old. I step back to soak the image in. Her body is one smooth plane of ebony glass, molded to perfection, every curve and stretch of skin as flawless as the last. She bites her lip when my gaze meets hers.

I step forward and pluck her off the ground. She’s feather-light, hardly enough weight for me to even notice. Pivoting on my heel, I move towards the open window.

“Not there!” She giggles breathlessly. “I don’t want people to see.”

“Too bad,” I retort. “They’re gonna see it all.”

On the street below, pedestrians stroll by, unaware of the heat ratcheting upwards in the studio above. I bite Kendra’s lip, drawing it into my mouth as I set her down on the windowsill. Her bare back is exposed to the sunlight.

I grab her chin in my hand and tilt her face away. I want to taste her skin. Licking down from her jawline to the tip of her breast, I nibble on each nipple. She sucks in a hard breath when I keep going and run my tongue across her clit.

I stand and kiss her deeply as I use one finger to slowly tease at her opening while my thumb continues to shower her clit in tender attention. She locks her heels behind my knees to draw me closer. With one hand, she grabs the shaft of my member and strokes. The other hand plays with my balls.

We work each other to the next plateau—me softly rotating her throbbing clit, her pumping my cock up and down. I dive my finger deep into her. She is wet and wide, her pussy ready to be entered.

I feel her let go of me and wrap her small fingers around my wrist. Bringing my hand up to her mouth, she sucks the finger that had been in her between her lips, tasting her own juices. Her eyes sparkle, never leaving mine.

I grin and grow harder. This girl is perfect for me.

I take a half-step forward to push the head of my cock up against her slit. She responds by squeezing my neck to kiss me and pull me into her in one motion. I part her lips as I slide into her sheath. It is hot and soaking, eager to tighten around me.

We rock slowly back and forth, taking our time with each long stroke. Our fingers press hard indents into each other’s skin. Our eyes are locked, foreheads pressed together. The sun is hot against us, but I barely notice. I’m consumed by the sensation of her cunt on my cock, working me closer and closer to climax in tiny, jerking contractions.

Our bodies slide together in tune, never missing a beat. I’m almost there. Kendra moves her hips faster to slam into mine. She’s dangling halfway out the window, but with my arms wrapped around her back, there’s not a shred of fear in her eyes.

She trusts me.

Her hair forms a curtain around our heads. I’m fucking in and out with a quickening rhythm. Skin slaps on skin, the moistness of mingling juices simmering below, and then she opens her mouth to say the last thing it takes before I submit to the need to come.

“Fill me, Mortar. Fuck your baby into me.”

Hot cum flies from me inside her. She holds me close until there is no more. The kiss when I have finished and pull out from her, sticky and softening, is perfect.

Part of me hopes that someone below saw what just happened. It’s almost unfair that I’m the only one who gets to enjoy a girl like this.

Then I reconsider. Fuck the rest of the world. She’s mine.

We kiss again, and I take her home.

Chapter 7

Kendra

Mortar’s arm around my shoulders is such a reassuring weight. It feels like a real barrier between me and everything out there that wants to hurt me, Grady being the chief among them. He’s asleep, so I don’t want to wake him up, but I can’t stop myself from reaching out to skim the barest edge of a fingernail along the winding path of a vein on his forearm.

His chest is rising and falling with long, deep breaths. When he’s asleep, his face loses the hardened set of his jaw that marks his waking hours. His life must have been awfully harsh to shape a man so determined to do things on his own.

I still haven’t decided if I can truly accept him at face value. I trust him—that’s not the issue. I trust him to keep me safe from Grady and whatever else might be out there. I trust him to push my body to discover things I didn’t know I could feel.

But I don’t know what he thinks of me. Am I just a fuck toy for him? Or a test tube to breed his baby? Am I nothing more than a means to an end?

It’s hard to say. I’ve known guys like him, guys who use girls as pretty baubles on their arms or something warm to stick their dick in at the end of the night. He has the same arrogance as the playboys who’ve tried to use me for those purposes, the same self-assured spark in his eye.

But everything he says and does contradicts that. When he holds me, I’m so close to believing that there’s something real between us. I want to be something more than a plaything for Mortar. I want to be more than a surrogate. I want to know that when he says he will protect me, it isn’t for the same reasons as a selfish kid who doesn’t want to share his new toy.

He’s as impossible to read as ever, even in his sleep. I study his face. Every angle looks like it was drawn with a ruler, so straight and flawless. The stubble roaming over his chin is blond in the morning light. I extend a fingertip to stroke his jaw, but just before I touch him, he grumbles in his sleep and rolls away, caught in the middle of some dream.

I turn onto my side away from him, facing the white stucco wall of his bedroom. I can feel my stomach growling under my hand. Is there something brewing in there? Am I pregnant already? It could take months or it could already be underway—there’s no way for me to know. The prospect is scary, yes, but there’s something breathlessly exciting about it, too.

Being pregnant with Mortar’s baby is an enigma unto itself. I try to picture what our life will be like, whether we will be partners in a business arrangement or something closer to true parents. The sex is mind-numbingly good, but is that enough of a basis for a real relationship? Just like with the question of my pregnancy, I can’t be sure.

So much is at stake here. Not just my future, or Mortar’s, or the baby to come. There’s the studio, too. It’s like my soul is invested in the space itself. I know it’s just a plain old room, nothing magical about it, but for some reason it speaks to me. It’s not just any place—it’s my place. I can’t let Grady take it away from me. I need Mortar to promise me that much.

I feel a hand touch my hip. Mortar pulls me into his embrace. “Good morning,” he purrs.

I don’t say anything.

“You okay?” he asks me.

“Yeah. Fine.” There are too many questions and not enough answers. I feel like I’m losing myself, running off course, a train car with no more tracks to follow. When did life become so overwhelming? It used to be simple, one job only: keep Grady happy. But with that weight lifted off my shoulders, I’ve just been stumbling around from one objective to another, never sure what I want or how to get it even if I did know.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he says.

“A lot of stuff,” I admit. “Grady. The baby. The studio.”

He pulls back. I can tell he wants to have sex, not to deal with the tornado in my brain. I love the sex, of course, but I can’t keep delaying these thoughts. These are issues that need resolution.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

I whirl to face him. My heart is thudding. “About what?”

“About the studio.”

“What about it?” I ask threateningly.

“We need to explore the options.”

“There aren’t any options,” I hiss. “You promised you’d save it. That’s the only option there can be.”

“We might need to sell it. Use the money to start over. Buy a new place.”

I fall back against the pillows, aghast. If that promise goes out the window, how can I trust anything else he tells me? It feels like an important thread between us is fraying at high speed.

“I can’t sell it. There isn’t another place that will work. That’s the only one.” I know I’m being stubborn, maybe even ridiculous, but there’s no other way to explain it. That’s my space. That’s my art. I can’t let it go. If I let that slip away, then I don’t know what else I’ll have left. It’s the last thing tethering me to a life before Grady. The last thing tethering me to who I am.

My eyes are filling with tears. I don’t want Mortar to see me cry, so I leap out of bed and run into the bathroom. He’s calling after me as I go, but I ignore him, locking the door behind me.

I turn on a shower and let the water run over me, as hot as I can stand it. The tingle of the scorching flow is exactly what I need to distract me from this hornets’ nest of thoughts.
Just let it all wash away,
I think.
Down the drain like soap suds.

When I come out, Mortar is dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for me. His hands are on his knees. He doesn’t look angry or brooding, just concerned. He stands up as I walk over to him with a towel wrapped around my chest. Stepping forward, he pulls me into his arms.

“We’ll make it work. I’ll find a way. I promised. And do I break promises?” he asks me.

I look him in the face. This big, handsome man took me away from my hellish life on the back of a motorcycle and promised me a new one. He promised freedom from the abuse that had been my every day. He promised me a fresh start.

He hasn’t failed me yet.

“No,” I tell him, “you don’t. I trust you.”

He smiles. I rock forward onto my toes and leave a soft kiss on his lips.

* * *

I watch as he drives off down the road, then rounds a corner out of sight. The sun overhead is pearly and warm. I decide I want to go to the studio. He told me to stay here, but the studio is just a short stroll away. I’m sure it’ll be fine. I can walk on the beach to clear my head before I go upstairs to work.

The wet sand squelches between my bare toes. I weave between sunbathers spread out on towels and surfers headed towards the water for the next break. Families are distributing snacks from coolers stationed beneath big umbrellas.

It’s good to walk with no destination in mind, just putting one foot in front of the other, listening to the seagulls’ cry and the innocent chatter of people with nothing particularly important on their mind. I let their thoughts become my own, hoping my concerns will get picked up and carried out to sea like an empty shell, no longer useful to its former owner.

A baby runs a few steps ahead of its mother, right across my path. It stops cold and looks up at me. The little boy has one finger in his mouth. He’s slobbery and adorable, all pink, fleshy folds and the brim of a sunhat pulled down low over his round eyes.

He points at me and waves. “Hi,” he gurgles. I smile and wave back at him.

“Hi, cutie,” I say. His mother comes waddling behind him and scoops him up. He giggles hysterically. I see that she’s maybe six or seven months pregnant. Her beach-ball stomach is stretching the mesh of her sundress to the limit. She follows her son’s finger to see me standing there, looking at him while my heart swells.

“He’s so cute,” I tell her.

“Thanks. Another one on the way, too,” she laughs, patting her stomach. She winks and carries him off to play in the water.

That could be me soon
, I think. Then I shake my head to make the thought go away. I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around that concept. I look down at my flat stomach and picture it growing. I’m not quite sure what the word is to describe the feeling that image gives me.

I walk for a little while longer before I reach the studio. I unlock the front door and step through carefully, desperate not to knock it off. The second I enter the staircase, I notice something is off.

There’s a strange, acrid smell in the air. I sniff at it. Then I realize: smoke. Dashing up the stairs two at a time, I’m forced to cover my face when I reach the top. There’s a stream of black ash issuing from a pile of burning canvases in the corner. They’ve been dragged into a haphazard stack. I know I didn’t leave them there, and I certainly didn’t leave out anything flammable.

Someone’s been here.

The room is filling with smoke. I fight through, coughing my lungs out and stumbling over loose objects, until I find the fire extinguisher buried in a corner. I rip it from the wall and tear out the pin before I start spraying in every direction. Gradually, the smoke begins to ease as the white foam spurts out to cover every surface in sight. The fire dwindles and dies, though smoke continues to leak out in thin tendrils.

My throat is scraped raw from the hacking. I open the window and settle down to a seat beneath it. My eyes are rimmed red and teary. I can barely hit the buttons on my cell phone as I fumble to call Mortar.

Ring. Ring.
He’s not answering.

“Please, please pick up!” I whisper into the phone. My pulse is thundering. I don’t even want to think about who might have done this. The room is still hazy. Smoke winds between teetering stacks of old sketches.

Ring. Ring.

“Hello?” Mortar’s voice. I heave a sigh of relief. “Kendra, is everything okay?” he asks.

“Mortar, hurry, please. Someone came in and set a fire in the studio. I put it out, but I’m afraid it might have been—”

Grady.

He steps from behind a heaping pile of broken equipment, leering like a maniac. His police uniform is ragged and messy, like he hasn’t cleaned it for days. Both eyes are bloodshot and his mouth hangs loose ravenously.

“Well, well, talk about timing!” he caws. “I figured I’d get your attention, but I didn’t think you’d come so quickly.”

I let the phone fall from my grasp. It hits the floor with a clatter. I feel the creeping fingers of another panic attack threatening to take hold, but I have to fight it off. I need to be here. Breathe. Stay calm. Mortar is on his way.

“What do you want?” I ask him. I rise slowly to my feet, holding onto the windowsill for purchase. Just yesterday, Mortar and I had been making love in here. Now, it was a smoke-filled furnace occupied by the last man in the world I wanted to see.

“To see you, of course,” he says. His voice is dripping with sarcasm. He’s sauntering towards me, one languid step at a time. His hands are hooked in his belt. I notice with a sickening gulp the gun and baton strapped to him. He could hurt me very badly if he chose to.

“I don’t want to see you,” I tell Grady. “You need to leave.”

He raises his arms in mock surprise, looking around the room. “Why would I need to leave? I own this place.” His face contorts into a feral snarl as he jumps towards me. He wraps a hand around my throat and slams me into the wall. “And I own you, too, you fucking bitch.”

I scramble at his hand, clawing at him. I draw blood, but he doesn’t budge. His eyes are bugging out of his skull. “Get…get off…”

“How could you run away, you whore? To fuck that biker piece of shit?” He slams me into the wall again. My head knocks against the plaster, sending stars spinning through my vision. “Are you trying to fucking embarrass me? Well, I’ll embarrass you. I’ll show the whole world what a slut you are.” He drops me. I crumble to the ground, holding my head and trying to make everything stop spinning.