Mick Sinatra: For Once In My Life (8 page)

She smiled
too.
 
“Sorry about that.”

But Mick
shook his head.
 
“Don’t be.
 
I’m pleased you’re cautious.
 
There are real assholes out here.”

“But you
aren’t one.”

Mick was
quick to correct her.
 
“Yes, I am.
 
Maybe not Jeffrey Dahmer as you suggest,” he
said with a smile, “but an asshole nonetheless.”

Roz didn’t
know how to take his bluntness.
 
Maya
Angelou said when people show you who they are, believe them.
 
But although his tongue spoke harsh and
uncaringly, his actions were different.
 
He showed her nothing but kindness.
 
“Thank you for the lift anyway,” she said.

Mick gave
her a very slight nod of the head.
 
“You’re quite welcome,” he responded.

“Where to,
boss?” Deuce, sitting behind the wheel, asked over the intercom.

Mick looked
at Roz.

“Brooklyn,”
she said, and gave her address.

Mick pressed
the intercom button and conveyed that information to Deuce.

Roz looked
at Mick.
 
She was having trouble figuring
him out.
 
But he had already turned his
attention away from her, and to the rain outside.

But as the
limo began to move, Roz began to feel a combination of excitement and dread.
 
Hope and discouragement.
 
Happiness and sadness.
 
And she had the oddest sense.
 
She had a sense that her life was going to
change tonight, and it was going to change in a major way.
 
She just didn’t know if it was going to be
for good, or for ill.

But before
she could contemplate it either way, a car suddenly rammed the limo so hard
that it rocked them both, and then the out of control car began dragging the
limo sideways.
 
Deuce was losing control
fast as they raced, not straight ahead as they had been going, but across the
sidewalk, dodging nearly three different people.
 
Deuce was able to overcorrect, to avoid a hit
on Mick’s side on their collision course.
 
But in overcorrecting, in turning the wheel one way and then the other,
they went from speeding sideways to speeding head-on into the massive brick
wall of a Mom and Pop, fifty-year-old consignment shop.
 

As soon as
the limo was first sideswiped, Mick reached over and grabbed Roz from her seat
across from him, placed her on his lap with his arm around her stomach so
tightly that it hurt, and braced for impact.
 
The limo careened out of control and slammed into the brick wall so hard
that it nearly jarred Roz off of Mick’s lap.
 
It was a hard frontal hit, mangling the hood, but it had little impact
in the back.

Roz was so
thrown by the sudden turn of events that she could hear her heartbeat
racing.
 
She looked at Mick, who held his
arm around her as if she were his baby.
 
He was already staring at her.
 
“Are you okay?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she
said, nodding.
 
“I think so.”

Mick looked
at Deuce.
 
He was unbuckling his seatbelt
and preparing to get out of the vehicle.
 
Mick pressed the intercom button.
 
“Deuce?”

Deuce
pressed the response button. “I’m alright, boss.
 
I’ll check it out.”

Mick
continued to hold Roz.
 
But at the same
time, unbeknownst to her, he pressed a button and pulled a loaded gun out of a
side panel beneath the limo’s door handle.
 
He held the gun at his side, out of view.

But unlike
Mick, who wasn’t certain if this was an accident after all, Roz had more inward
concerns.
 
She was at war with her own
emotions once again. They had just been in a car crash.
 
A crash that could have gone terribly
wrong.
 
But here she was feeling like a
little princess in Mick’s big arms.
 
And
she loved the feeling!
 
And the way he
grabbed her so decisively, as if he was making the statement that if anybody
was going to get hurt, it wasn’t going to be her.
 
After their rocky beginning, she was
surprised by such a strong move and such a strong, unspoken statement.
 
It disturbed and pleased her all at the same
time.

Mick was
disturbed too.
 
Not so much by the
accident, although he was holding his gun and keeping his eye on the man who
had hit them.
 
The guy was out of his car,
seemingly apologizing to Deuce, as Mick’s eyes glanced around to make sure it
was no set up.
 
He saw nothing
suspicious, and was grateful for that.
 
But what disturbed him more was his reaction to Rosalind.
 
As soon as he felt that hit, his heart hammered
at the thought of her being injured.
 
He
grabbed her so fast he nearly tore a muscle.
 
And now that he had her close to him, he felt an even stronger emotion.
 
That connection he had felt the first time he
saw her had returned, as if there was a string that was binding them
together.
 
But it disturbed him mightily
because he wasn’t at all sure if he wanted that kind of bond.

What was
even more remarkable was the fact that he was beginning to get an
erection.
 
In the middle of a car crash,
and he was getting a fucking erection!
 
What the fuck was wrong with him?
 
He was no sex starved teenager!
 
But there it was.
 
He was rock
hard and well aware of every inch of her tight ass on his lap.

That fact
wasn’t lost on Roz either.
 
She could
feel that hardness beneath her as if she was sitting on a steel rod.
 
If she were to remind herself about his
earlier proposition that so offended her, now would be the time for her to get
off his lap and put an end to this once and for all.
 
And if he hadn’t grabbed her, and protected
her from what could have been harm, she would have quickly done just that.
 
She never cared for guys whose only
attraction to her was her body.
 
But Mick
had protected her. He had looked out for her.
 
She remained right where she sat.

But when Deuce
came to the window and Mick was about to press the button to roll it down,
Roz’s attention turned from Mick’s arousal to what she saw in her
periphery.
 
It looked like a gun at his
side.
 
When she realized it was indeed a
gun, she looked at him with concern in her expressive eyes. “Is that a gun?”
she asked.

Mick looked
at her.
 
He would have preferred that she
hadn’t seen it, but it was too late now.
 
“Yes,”

Roz had
heard about white boys and their need to always have a gun handy, but she’d
never seen it this up close before.
 
It
was a mentality she didn’t understand.
 
“Why would you pull out a gun at a car wreck?”

Mick
attempted to smile and play it off.
 
“To
protect you,” he said.

But when she
didn’t bite, when she remained serious, he got serious too.
 
“You can never be too careful,” he said, and
then pressed the button that allowed the window to roll down.

Deuce had
the umbrella unfurled to cover him from the still hard rain.
 
“The police are on the way, sir.
 
But there shouldn’t be any problems.
 
The guy is accepting all blame.”

Mick was
pleased to hear that.
 
“Anybody hurt?”

“No
one.
 
Thank God.”

“We will
have to be towed, yes?”

Deuce
nodded.
 
“I’m afraid so, yes, sir.
 
I’ll call for a backup car, but that could
take some time.
 
I don’t know what you
want to do.
 
I can hail a cab if you
like.”

Mick looked
at Roz.
 
“How were you planning to get
home before we happened upon you?”

“The
Subway,” she said.

“Is it near
here?”

“There’s one
four blocks away from the theater.”
 
She
started looking around.
 
“But it’s just a
block away from where we are now.”

“You prefer
the Subway?”

“Me? Oh,
yeah.
 
New York cab drivers will gouge
you every time.
 
They don’t get a penny
from me.”

Mick
considered Roz.
 
It was no secret to
either one of them that his cock was still hardening as her ass sat on top of
it.
 
But oddly enough, it wasn’t sex that
was driving his interest in her.
 
That
connection he felt for her was.
 
That
sudden feeling that no way in hell was he going to let her ride some grimy
Subway train, or even ride a smelly cab, alone.

“Let’s go
catch us a train,” he said, and Roz, pleased, finally got off of him.
 
She glanced at the package between his legs
as Deuce helped her out of the limousine.
 
It was still so aroused, so thick, that she began to feel a tingle in
her vagina just from looking at the size of it.
 
She glanced into his eyes as she moved out of the vehicle.
 
They both felt the heat of their attraction,
which led Roz to wonder how she was able to turn him down so easily
earlier.
 
But she trusted her earlier
instinct more.
 
Right now, just after
something as traumatic as a car accident, they were in the fog of war.
 
She trusted nothing in fog.
 
She got out of the limousine.

Mick was so
aroused that he had to wait a few seconds, to go back down a tad.
 
Then he secured the gun on his person, and got
out too.

Deuce
immediately placed the huge umbrella over both Mick and Roz, but Mick took
possession of it.
 
“Miss Graham and I
will be riding the Subway, Deuce,” he said to his driver.

Roz smiled
at the prospect of a man like Mick taking the train, but Deuce looked
alarmed.
 
“The Subway, sir?”

“The
Subway,” Mick said.

“You mean,
to be clear,
she
will be riding the
Subway, sir?” Deuce asked.

Mick
smiled.
 
He knew it had been years, decades
even, since he rode anything except an expensive car or a limousine, but he was
no pampered idiot.
 
He knew his way
around.
 
“I mean, to be clear,” Mick
responded, “
we
will be riding the
Subway. She and I.
 
You stay here, deal
with the police, and call me when you’re done and backup has arrived.
 
I’ll alert you to my location at that time.”

Deuce
couldn’t believe it.
 
Mick Sinatra on the
Subway?
 
Wait until the guys heard about
this!
 
“Yes, sir,” he said.

And Mick
pulled Roz closer as they began to make their way toward the station.
 
They could hear police sirens drawing nearer,
as they walked away.

And Roz
couldn’t help it.
 
She felt like a queen
walking beside Mick Sinatra.
 
He held her
close, with his hand on the small of her back, as they braved the rain with
brisk steps.
 
He was even able to handle
the umbrella magnificently.
 
It didn’t
balloon upwards not one time.
 
She was
impressed.

She was also
extremely aware of his closeness.
 
From
the press of his strong hand on her back, to his wonderful cologne scent, to
the way he walked with such swag, she
felt
him.
 
And the way women were giving him
that assessing look as they walked pass, as if he was definitely the grand
prize on these streets, made her feel special in his presence.
 
She was still a little peeved with him, but
at least she got the chance to explain where her anger was coming from.
 
She felt good.

When they
arrived at the station, paid for tickets and made their way onto the platform,
all eyes seemed to be on them.
 
Roz was
reasonably certain they weren’t staring because she and Mick were an
interracial twosome.
 
This was New York,
after all.
 
But they were staring, she
believed, because of Mick.
 
A man who
dressed like him, a man who had his look and style, a limousine man, rarely
rode the Subway.
 
It wasn’t impossible,
and it did happen, but not usually.
 
Add
to that the fact that Mick was drop dead gorgeous to boot, and Roz knew he was
the center of their attention more so than she.

But when
they got on the nearly-packed train, it was Mick who had the exact opposite
impression.
 
Instead of noticing the
ladies assessing him, he couldn’t stop staring at the guys, all of them, who
were assessing Roz.
 
After finding her a
seat, sandwiched between a guy and a girl, he was forced to stand some distance
away, near the back.
 
And from his
vantage point he saw guy after guy check Roz out as if she was a leg of lamb
they were craving.
 
He understood why.
 
Just looking at her from a distance made him
ever more aware of her attractiveness.
 
And not just the fact that her brown skin was so chocolaty smooth and
unblemished, or her breasts looked so big and imposing beneath that shirt she
wore, but it was in the way she carried herself.
 
She smiled, she was polite, she seemed
entirely approachable to anybody watching her.

Too
approachable, Mick felt, as visions of her alone on this train at night, and
some real murderous psychopath following her home and doing heaven knows what
to her, disturbed his peace.
 
He didn’t
like that worried feeling that just the thought created in him.
 
He didn’t like the fact that those men were
eyeing her, some even openly salivating over her.
 
And he especially didn’t like the fact that
any of it bothered him.
 
But it did.
 
It bothered him mightily.

And when
they had bounced and jugged their way to Brooklyn, and the train stopped, he
became particularly concerned.
 
Because
Roz stood, indicating that this was their stop, and one guy, the guy who had
been sitting behind her, stood up and pinched her on her small, tight ass.
 
Mick quickly began moving people out of his
way as he hurried toward her, ready to knock the shit out of that man, but Roz
beat him to the punch.

As soon as
Roz felt the pinch, she took her satchel and slammed it against the pincher’s
head.
 
“Do it again, creep!” she yelled
at him, staring him down.
 
And it was
enough.
 
That snake of a pinching man
slithered off of the train, suddenly in a massive hurry, as soon as the doors
flew open.