Ready for Love (12 page)

Pulling herself away, she eyed his throat and remembered how lovingly she’d kissed it the night before, how she let her tongue lave his Adam’s apple. And then she moved to his face, his handsome face. That honey tone with those hazel-green eyes that she swore could see down to her soul threatened to undo her every time she looked at him.

That was why she’d worked so hard to stay away from him this past year after breaking up with him. And then look at how quickly she had undone all that hard work with one romp in the sack.

“Just as I thought, you’re in here overthinking things and trying to backtrack. That won’t do.” Terrill shook his head as he frowned. He pulled her body flush with his and took her mouth in a demanding, take-no-prisoners kiss.

Her mouth opened as if it didn’t have a will or want of its own besides wanting to please him and willing to do whatever it took to make sure he was well pleased.

Their tongues tangled and dueled until hers was finally tamed and following his lead. A soft sigh escaped her lips before she could catch it and she had no choice but to wrap her arms around his shoulders and lean into him, pressing her body to his as if she were trying to mold him to her. His hands grasped and held her closer still until she couldn’t tell where he ended and she started. Her legs tried to tangle themselves up in him and he lifted her up and pinned her against the wall.

He pulled his mouth away from her and she moaned.

He grinned and planted seductive kisses all along her neck and breast.

“You can’t marry him, Maritza.”

She threw her head back, unable to fight the inevitable.

“I can’t marry him,” she muttered as she took a shuddering breath. His butterfly kisses were turning her insides into jelly.

“You don’t love him.” Terrill licked her then, sending thrills of passion through her in shock waves.

“I don’t. I don’t love him.” God, she didn’t love…

But what happened to the woman from just a day ago who would have asked, what does love have to do with it?

He lifted up his head and stared her in her eyes then. His gaze was so intent and intense that he didn’t even have to repeat his words from the night before.

You love me
.

She
loved
Terrill.

God help her, she did. But he hadn’t said he loved her. He’d just proclaimed that she loved him and she hadn’t confirmed or denied it yet. She wouldn’t, because her heart was too fragile and pink and girly where he was concerned.

If she allowed herself to love him, to publicly proclaim her love for him, and he didn’t love her back, it would break her into too many pieces to ever put back together again.

He picked that moment to thrust into her and she shattered from the inside out. Her body vibrated and her mind burst into a thousand points of light. And then all reason and rationalization were gone. All she could do was feel. And it felt so damn good to her.

He stretched her to the point of aching and then stretched her some more. His hips powered forward, thrusting as if he was trying to speak to her body in some kind of special code.

He rocked her.

He shook her foundations and her walls came tumbling down.

She cried out as her love for him came pouring out of her, making her shake and convulse and hold on to his muscular shoulders for dear life. The shower wall at her back couldn’t possibly be sturdy enough to hold her.

Only Terrill could do that. Only he could hold her together because he was the one tearing her apart.

She clutched his sex with hers and swiveled her hips, trying to answer the code his body was sending and what they couldn’t say, what they wouldn’t say with words became a mating dance as primitive as time. A discussion that the first men and women to walk the earth must have perfected got a remix in the shower and Terrill’s thrusts and Maritza’s swivels came together as one.

And when she cried out her last gut-wrenching scream and he followed her with a soul-stealing grunt, she realized she needed to find a way to contain this new and wonderful thing that Terrill had pulled her into before it consumed them both and there was nothing left…

Terrill eyed Maritza as they sat in her hotel room and ate the dinner they’d finally stopped making love long enough to order. She looked like she was going to take off running any minute. He didn’t know what had come over him last night. After a year apart, he would have thought that he would have been over her by now. But he was just as sprung as he was then and clearly she wasn’t any more ready to go public with him—but she was willing to marry another man.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he got.

“What are you going to tell Lace? I mean…you don’t have to worry about me saying anything to her, but if the two of you are planning to get married, then you probably should tell her that you had a moment of weakness or whatever you want to call it.”

“Lace Monroe? Who in the hell said I was marrying Lace Monroe? Do I look crazy to you or like I want to be a chapter in her next book? That saying ‘you can’t turn a hooker into a housewife’ comes to mind. That’s definitely not the marrying kind…”

You can’t turn a hooker into a housewife
… She had heard those hurtful words before and now she was hearing them from another man she loved. Sure, he wasn’t talking about her now, but what about in the future when he heard about something from her past?

She got up and walked over to the window. She couldn’t look at him and get through this.

“This isn’t going to work, Terrill. No matter how many times we backslide and end up in bed it won’t work between us. I’m going to marry Andrew because he is a better match for me in all the ways that count. I need you to leave.”

The silence in the room was deafening.

“Back to this again, Maritza? Seriously? You really need to miss me with all this bull, because I am sick and tired of doing this with you.”

“You think I like doing this over and over with you? I don’t. This ended for me over a year ago.”

“Fine. You want to marry a man you don’t love and throw away what we can have, then fine. I’m tired of trying to prove to you that I am good enough for you, Maritza. If you think he’s the better man for you then by all means marry Speed-Lo.” He got up and walked over to her.

She didn’t turn around because she didn’t want him to see the tear trailing down her face.

“I have spent my entire life trying to prove that I am good enough. Good enough to be best friends with the Hightowers’ baby boy even though I came from a single-parent household and never knew my father. Good enough to take care of my best friend’s girl and make sure that no harm came to her even though everyone thought I had stabbed my best friend in the back. Good enough to make it through college even though I didn’t have the same amenities as my classmates who weren’t there on scholarship. Good enough to make it in the music business, to run the damn company and be the boss. I have to prove that I am good enough every day just by virtue of being a Black man. And even though you are without a doubt the love of my life, Maritza, I can’t keep proving I am good enough for you.”

She wanted to turn around and tell him that he was more than good enough, that he was too good and that was the problem. But she couldn’t do it. If she did, he would try and make her believe in what they could have, what they could be together. And she already knew.

You can’t turn a hooker into a housewife
.

“Just leave, Terrill. Andrew is the man I deserve.”

She heard his sharp intake of breath and it felt like a knife had been slammed into her own chest. The only thing she heard after that was him walking away and the hotel room door closing.

She dropped to the floor but this time she didn’t have any more tears left to cry.

Third Interlude
Ready for Love…

“W
ow. I always said Terrill seems like one of those guys that will be down for his woman till the end, no matter how jacked up she treats him.” Aisha Hightower had her hand covering her mouth and she looked like she was going to break down crying for Terrill any minute.

Since Maritza had long since developed a fondness for Patrick’s wife, the little miss goody-two-shoes, and since her heart was breaking for Terrill and the pain she had caused him as well, she only nodded in agreement with Aisha.

The look on Penny’s and Celia’s faces said everything she was feeling. She could feel the disappointment coming off of them in waves.

“You have to fix it, Maritza. You better fix it. You broke his heart.” Penny actually started crying. “He doesn’t deserve that. He’s a good man. He deserves to have all your love. How could you make him think he wasn’t good enough?”

“Because I wasn’t good enough for him and one day he was going to figure that out and leave me! Don’t you get it? Eventually my past was going to catch up to me and then he would have to leave me. I just wanted a piece of his love while I could have it and then I was going to let him go when he was ready. It killed me, but I let him go.” Maritza found herself screaming at Penny with just as much passion as Penny was throwing out.

“Terrill is like a son to me. And he’s a good man. He wouldn’t judge you by anything in your past. You were a coward. Don’t put that on him. He was ready, willing and able to love you. You were a coward!” Celia Hightower shored up her shoulders. She could barely look at Maritza. “Penny, I think we should all go to Terrill’s now. I’m sure he needs as many friends as he can get now.”

Carla hopped up off the sofa, trailing popcorn all over the place. “Y’all tripping. Brat, you act like you never messed up where a man was concerned. I know you’re not talking the way you and Terrill broke Jason’s heart all those years ago. And Celia, hmm…I don’t think Sophie pops all that nonsense without just a little bit of cause… Y’all need to back up off Maritza. She messed up, yes. But it ain’t the end of the damn world. People make mistakes!” Carla gave Maritza a hug.

“Keep your head up, mamasita! And remember Carla got yo back. If anybody questions that, they should know that I will sure enough set it off, set it off, Jada Pinkett!” All of five foot and some change, you would have thought that Carla was a heavyweight champion the way she was selling wolf tickets.

Maritza shook her head. And watched as the other Hightower women all got up to leave her house.

“Thanks, Carla. I appreciate it.”

“That said, I’mma head on over to the mansion with them because you know I want to stay in that big ol’ mansion of Terrill’s. This is cute and all, but I’m trying to live in the lifestyle that I want to become accustomed to living in. Y’all wait for me.” She took off after the other women.

Soon the only people left in her house were Maritza and her mother.

“So you danced in some videos, maybe had sex with a man or two that you regretted. Tell me why the hell that makes you think that you aren’t good enough for Terrill?” Sharon Morales was gone and the protective mama bear was in her place.

Maritza didn’t know what had kept her mother quiet for so long, but she was happy for it. The last thing she wanted was for her mother to curse out Celia or Penny.

“Our soror was right. She didn’t have to say it like that, but she was right. You have been a coward, baby girl. And all I want to know is what turned you into a coward. Now I think it has something to do with whatever happened to you when you were in college and your brother Victor came out here to visit and ended up moving here to protect his baby sister. He said you would never talk about it, but it had something to do with a lowlife named Herbert Jackson. After some digging around, your brother found there were rumors around about Jackson drugging video girls and setting up gangbangs, all kinds of horrible things that no one could ever prove because the girls were always too traumatized or too threatened to talk about.”

Maritza closed her eyes and tried to move away from her mother. Sharon grabbed her and held her close.

“No, Mom. I can’t do this. Please, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t have to talk about it with me, baby girl, your reaction is enough to tell me our suspicions were right.” Sharon’s voice choked and she held Maritza tighter. “You don’t have to tell me and you don’t have to relive it. But you have to stop letting it get in the way of your happiness.”

“Mom, I was living so wild and I thought nothing could touch me. I didn’t do drugs like the other girls. I didn’t even drink a lot, but I didn’t let a man I liked get past me without trying him out, letting him buy me things, take me places, share my body with him. I was so casual about my body because I thought I could control everything. All it took was one slip and trusting the wrong person once to have it all come crashing down around me.”

“Bad things happen to good people all the time. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, baby girl. You are stronger than what that monster did to you. And you need to stop letting that run your life. You need to tell Terrill everything. And if he is half the man we think he is, he is not going to hold it against you. Don’t be a coward. Grab for your chance at happiness.”

Maritza rocked in her mother’s arms and thought about what she was saying. She didn’t know if she could really bare it all to Terrill. But she knew she owed him the truth. He had been hurt enough because of her.

After all of the Hightowers had gone to bed and the Morales men left Terrill’s house, he sat with a glass of brandy in his study just thinking about the day’s events.

How he could have played things differently…

If he should still try and get Maritza to take a chance on them and not marry Speed-Lo…

Everyone said they could tell Maritza loved him, even her own father and brothers. When the women came back, they all said that there was more to Maritza’s story than he knew and that he shouldn’t give up. But could he be the only one fighting for them?

No. He couldn’t.

If Maritza wanted them to have a relationship, she would have to make the next move.

He chuckled and shook his head. There wasn’t a chance in hell of that happening.

No sooner had he thought that then there was a tap on the door to his study. He looked up to see Maritza walking in.

He rubbed his eyes to clear them and cursed when he aggravated the black eye.

“Sorry, I called Penny and she let me in. I had to see you and didn’t want to wait until tomorrow or some other day. I needed to see you now so that I can try to explain what happened. Why I’ve been the way I am.”

She walked over to him. She was really there. He couldn’t believe it.

She softly trailed his black eye with her fingertips and he would have sworn all the pain went away with her touch.

“I’m so sorry they hurt you. I’m so sorry I hurt you. I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I hope that I can one day earn it.” She took a deep breath. “Can I stay and talk with you for a little while? I just want to try and explain. I’ll leave as soon as I’m done.

He nodded.

He was too shook-up to talk and didn’t trust how his voice might sound.

She came.

Maritza took a seat in Terrill’s study and twiddled her fingers as she tried to think of the best place to start.

“I never thought that you weren’t good enough for me, Terrill. I don’t know where you got that from…but it was always the opposite. I always thought that I wasn’t good enough for you. You are a good man, a hard working man, a self-made man, a man that any girl would be proud to bring home to her parents. Hell, my parents and brothers already like you more than any guy I ever dated and they didn’t even know we were dating.”

“How could you think you weren’t good enough for me, Maritza? How could you not know how special you are? How special you are to me?”

A tear trailed down her face and she willed it to stop. She could not break down crying before she told this man the truth. Before she apologized properly and let him know everything that went in to her not allowing herself to love him the way he deserved to be loved.

“What you said about Lace Monroe, you can’t turn a hooker into a housewife? Well, I have heard that or some version of it before in reference to myself. I lived a much wilder life during my video model days than Penny did. She had you looking out for her and I was going through a really late-onset rebellious stage. I have a pretty wild past—”

“We all have a past, babe. I have one. There are things in my past that I am not proud of either. I would never hold anything in your past against you. And you and Lace have nothing in common. Whatever you did is in the past. That woman came on to me in very inappropriate ways just a few weeks ago and I had to tell her that it would be a conflict of interest for me to date her because she is a client of New Images by Keys and Morales and I’m a silent partner. Then she tried to drag your name in the dirt and started saying if I could date you then I could give her a chance. Trust and believe me when I say I have never had any interest in that woman.”

Maritza just shook her head. “It’s not about her, really. The fact is there isn’t that much difference between me and Lace, at least not as far as I can tell. She is way more scandalous, yes. But we both have less-than-stellar pasts and made some unwise choices. She just decided to cash in on her past and make a name for herself as Lil’ Freak. While I decided to cash out and change my life earlier. The fact is, if she is a hooker based on her past, then I am, too. And the last thing you need is a woman that you can’t even bring to company functions because you’re worried about who else she might have been with in the past.

“I didn’t want that for you, Terrill. I never did. You’ve worked too hard to get where you are to have your poor choice in women mess that up. From the first time I met you I knew you were too good for me. And I pushed you away even though I was so attracted to you. And then you kissed me and I thought maybe I could steal a bit of joy, take some good memories from an affair with you. But we see how that ended.”

Terrill got up and pulled her into his arms. And even though she knew she didn’t deserve to seek any comfort there, she couldn’t help it. She let him hold her.

“That’s because we were not meant just to have an affair, babe. You and me are meant to last forever. I love you. I love you, Maritza. And you are more than good enough for me. You are the best thing that ever happened to me.”

She had to keep going. He had to know everything.

“I was raped. I was drugged and gang-raped by Herbert Jackson and some of his flunkies. That is the only thing that stopped me from becoming Lace Monroe. If that hadn’t happened to me, I would have probably still been taking chances with my body, with my life. Thank God there were no lasting repercussions. But it took that to wake me up, Terrill. Could you really see yourself being with a woman who allowed herself to get in that situation?”

Terrill held her even tighter and tears started falling down his face. He rocked her back and forth and soon she was crying, too.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you, babe. But I know you are a smart woman and you know what those disgusting, sorry excuses for men did to you has nothing to do with you and the person you were or the person you are. It wasn’t your fault, babe. But I will tell you this much—Herbert Jackson will be destroyed if it is the last thing I do.”

“No. Promise me you won’t do anything to jeopardize all that you have worked for in order to avenge me. I couldn’t take it if my bad choices hurt you even more than they already have.”

“Maritza, as far as I’m concerned, the only bad choice you made was not trusting in our love and trusting me enough to tell me earlier what was holding you back and stopping our relationship. And I forgive you for that, babe. I forgive you.”

He kissed her then and kept kissing her until he was sure she believed him. Before she knew it her clothes were coming off and she was straddling him on the chair. She took him inside of her and rode him until she couldn’t any more. Then he stood and carried her over to the sofa and continued. They rocked each other, whispering words of love and forgiveness until they both reached completion.

They snuggled on the sofa when they were done and he pulled a blanket over them.

“I hope you realize this means you are not marrying Speed-Lo.”

She laughed and it felt like the first real laugh she had in years.

“Yes, I realize that I am not marrying Andrew now. I can’t marry him when I love you, Terrill.”

“And I hope you know that means you have to marry me as soon as possible. We have wasted three years already. I’m not wasting any more time.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?” Terrill kissed her on the neck.

“Yes, I will marry you, Terrill. As soon as possible.”

“And I—”

“All right, Mr. Bossy. You have gotten all you’re going to get tonight.” She kissed him and smiled when she felt his erection growing. “Well, maybe not all….”