Ready to Roll (8 page)

It wasn’t the easiest of feats, standing from her position wedged between Miguel and his table, but Janice was agile. And she had the control over her limbs it took to pick up his serving bowl and their plates and carry them through to the kitchen. Never let her mama accuse her of being a rude dinner guest.

Janice had stashed her wallet and phone on a side table while she and Mami were talking. Didn’t take but four extra steps for her to grab them up and slide them into her pockets. It was sadly ingrained that she couldn’t just walk out, never mind Miguel throwing cold bleach water on her poor miserable froglets. So she turned with a hand on the door. “Thanks for dinner, it was delicious.”

“
Dónde coño vas?”

“Home.”

“Bullshit.”

And this was why Mama despaired of her manners. Janice lashed right back at him. “No, Miguel, it’s bullshit that you command me to come over here and, and kiss me! And then you burn my dinner and play with your niece and act like this sweetheart family man. This man who could understand and accept the crap I went through and why I got out and not ridicule me or tell me I was wrong and an ungrateful bitch and a waste of decades of my mama’s investment in me. And you even prove it, you
prove
you wouldn’t force that life on someone because you go and respect your daughter—your daughter, this stellar girl you’ve been hiding from me but I don’t hold that against you, and I respect that you let her make her own choices, which is parenting I never got myself, but then as soon as you know what an ungrateful bitch I am —”

“Shut up.”

She was never going to be a tall woman, but Janice reckoned when she drew herself up straight and glared, she could reduce any man to a pile of ash and bones. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t judge me lacking without letting me speak, and you don’t talk about yourself that way.”

“I don’t talk about myself that way? I should just sit back and let others talk about me, straight to my face, but I’m not allowed to speak about my own self?”

“Not if you say those same things, no.”

“I can say whatever the hell I want to about myself.” Especially when she’d heard it so often from others it was always on the edge of her brain. Words she hadn’t meant to spill to Miguel, but ones she’d nevertheless long ago accepted as true.

“Bullshit. You don’t go around disrespecting yourself. You’re too good and too strong and too full of power, and passion, and fight. The Janice I know, the real Janice—I know that Janice inside out, and there’s no ingrate there. There’s humor and generosity and acceptance and love. That’s your soul. That’s what you say about yourself, Janice.”

She would not move a muscle, so help her. Hypocrite man, forbidding her to judge herself, then proclaiming he knew all about her. Dictating, that’s what he was doing. Dictating that he knew her soul. As if she’d ever let anyone see her soul.

Just look at the ridiculous things he was saying about her soul, about her. If he really knew her inside and out, he’d never call her strong and generous. Passionate. Powerful.

That wasn’t her.

She backed up the step she hadn’t realized she’d made towards him. Groped for the door handle. Of course, it was locked. He’d shut them in, shut the world out, after his niece left. Kept everything contained between just their two selves.

And brainlessly, she’d fallen for it. Let loose that lonely kid who never got to befriend anyone, in case they distracted her from practice. And it turned out that Mama had been right all along. She should only rely on herself.

She tried to glare at him. “You’re wrong.”

He crowded her, cornered her. Questioned her. “What am I wrong about?”

“Me,” she croaked out. “I’m not those things. You saw me wrong, Miguel.”

“¿Verdad?”

It hurt, his standing so close to her but not touching. If he thought she was all those things, he should want to touch her. If that was her soul, he would hold on to her. She slid further into the corner, away from him, from his eyes that wouldn’t leave hers, from his limbs that wouldn’t brush hers.

“I think I saw right,” he said quietly. “I think you’re the one in the wrong here, sweet Janice. Those judgmental words, I don’t know who said those things to you, but I will be delighted to go tell to her face how wrong she was. I will show her what a remarkable woman you are, and how very, very worthy you are to be invested in.”

It had been Janice’s mama and aunt, mostly. But she didn’t have the ready breath to explain that.

“Hours aren’t enough,” Miguel said, at last reaching to her. A light finger landed on her clavicle, then, as she swallowed, traced her throat and the tender underside of her jaw. He gently pressed her chin up. “Days, weeks, still not enough.”

Janice swallowed again. She could run five miles without a water break and her mouth wouldn’t be this dry. Perhaps all the frogs had stolen her internal moisture to rehydrate themselves, because they were certainly hopping madly within her chest.

Unless that was just her heart.

Miguel pressed forward, which was a good thing, because Janice needed shoring up. “Sweet Janice,” he breathed against her ear, then caught her lobe in his teeth.

She jolted, moaned.

He kissed her neck, her cheek, her ear again. “Querida. It would be any man’s greatest honor to invest decades in you.”

Each kiss brought her
entire body closer to his. Legs first, her knees bumping his calves. Then hands, hers so small, really, compared to the heat they spread through each place she touched. Finally, torsos. Her pelvis against his thigh, his pressing into her stomach.

“Miguel,” she breathed, and because it had been entire minutes since she’d nick-named him, his next kiss was the most ravenous yet.

“You wished to leave?”

She thumped into him, rough and firm, raking her nails along his scalp.

It was perhaps the most primal moment of his life, knowing this woman wanted him, as he wanted her. His body pulsed for her, but the longing wasn’t confined to the sensual. Taste, yes, and touch. Definitely touch. Scent and feel and, yes, also the heavy sounds of their breath, their moans.

And beyond that, the pulse of his heart. The over-the-edge thrum of having admitted his feelings, his admiration and longing and respect and more. Perhaps even admitting to love, a love that had grown with each puzzle piece he fitted, with each moment of sorting out frustrations at work together, of arguing about schedules with her, of laughing over happy hour beers and watching her return from her lunchtime runs.

Of sharing Sophie with her. And never mind her spitting it at him, but her acceptance of his mermaid girl, her generosity in honoring him as a parent, her willingness to entertain and beguile his intrusive relatives, both young and old.

His body pulsed for every facet of Janice, and he gloried that she had at last let him tear down her ramparts to meet him as an equal on the battlefield. It had broken a part of Miguel, hearing those hate-filled words that had scarred his Janice’s heart. But once she’d released them he’d strapped on his armor and gone to fight at her side, shoring up where she was broken, working within Janice’s barricades to expel the intrusive words which had hurt her for so long.

Yes, he wanted a more detailed sharing of their pasts. He wanted to see her first dance studio, and to look her mama in the eye. He wanted her beside him next time he drove up to visit Sophie. But those things would happen in time.

“You’re staying tonight,” he told her, shaping his palms to her hips.

She pulled away enough to meet his eye. “Is that so?”

“Si.” He nodded down the hall. “Do you need the facilities first?”

“Pretty happy right here for the moment,” she challenged.

“This moment is over. We’re moving to the bedroom now.”

He couldn’t, in truth, find the fortitude to step back so she could pass, but keeping hands on her, he managed walking them together back down the hall. By the time they reached the kitchen he had the necessary control to send her the dozen steps further to the bathroom. She used that dance walk again, the one that mimed hands on her ass, and spun to show him her laughing face before shutting herself in for her ablutions.

Humming half under his breath, Miguel went to darken and secure the front half of his house. As he was clearing the dining room, Janice stuck her head out of the bathroom.

“Miguel?”

“Si?”

“Sorry I accused you of thinking bad of me.”

She was poised to duck away again, watching his reaction, a playful smile toying with those luscious lips. “Oh, querida, I have many bad thoughts.”

She was wearing just her socks, which probably made it easier to spin two full pirouettes before retreating.

But not for long.

He had no intention of letting Janice retreat for any length of time, ever again.

Hurriedly he went to scrape clean the dishes so he could stack them in the sink. There, in his kitchen bin, were her orange tulips. He plucked a still-intact bloom from the top and twirled it, smiling. His sweet Janice had been flustered by his very first kiss. He throbbed with eagerness to watch her react to the rest of his plans for the night.

Tucking the bloom into his back pocket, Miguel waited, listening to the water run in the bathroom. He had instructions ready on the tip of his tongue. And then she opened the door, and she was wearing nothing but panties and a camisole. And those socks.

Her hair was pushed behind her ears, her face open, and again, Miguel thought of love. She was a beacon and he was drawn to her radiance.

“Did you forget them already?”

He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Forget?”

Janice’s smile broadened. “Those bad thoughts. Did they run off into the sunset without you? I can try to chase them down, if you want.”

Miguel switched off the hallway light, leaving her backlit. “Si, gracias. They went that way.” He tilted his chin towards his bedroom.

“You sure? Maybe they’re hiding out in the front room, waiting for us to get distracted so they can affect their escape.”

“You wish to play chase in my living room?”

“Well. Only if it would help you locate your bad thoughts.”

Her teasing brought him back to the plans her near-nudity had temporarily set aside. With a performer’s honed skill, Janice had cocked a hip and thrown an arm up along the doorframe, letting the light behind her limn a sensuous curve that Miguel took the time to inspect from fingertips to toes.

Then, galvanized, he grabbed her other hand and brought their joined fingers to cup his cojones while wrapping his other arm around her waist. Together they palmed his shaft while he explored her compact ass and bent to suck one of her taut nipples through the camisole.

Her gasp of surprise became an imprecation as he lightly bit his way up her torso to her mouth. She tipped back to meet his kiss, her tongue thrusting into his mouth with the same beat of her hand on his rod.

Janice’s arm no longer rested insouciantly on the doorframe. She clutched his hair, pulling him down for more oral pleasure, but he evaded her.

When they touched nowhere except their interlocked fingers stroking his length, Miguel tipped his chin at the bedroom again. “I told you to go in there.”

She was breathing as hard as he, but her reply came out steadily. “You did?”

“If you want the realization of those bad thoughts, yes. Wait on the bed; I’ll be there in a moment.”

Deft fingers untangled from his and released the button on his jeans. “There, saved you some time.”

He pinned her to his chest, rotating them so she was in the hall. “Don’t take off any more clothes. On either of us. It’s not time yet.”

She ground her pelvis into his thigh, but didn’t argue. Much as he loved Janice’s army-general ways at work, he felt a surge of triumph that she was accepting his carnal dictates. His months of strategy were paying off; now that she was meeting him as an equal, they could give and take on the field of sensual battle. But just to solidify his position as a man who would not always let her be the victor, Miguel was intent on keeping her off-kilter and following his lead during this first sexual encounter.

After that, she could issue any number of carnal commands. But Miguel resolved that her first orgasms would rip through her precisely as he orchestrated them.

Janice bounced lightly
on the bed. Having shoved her socks and all those fluffy white covers to the foot of the bed, she knelt on the fitted sheet, legs spread, and bounced as she waited for Miguel. She could hear the water run as he brushed his teeth, and her fixated brain couldn’t move past the sense-memory of those same teeth on her nipple. So she bounced. Her breasts weren’t large, and her chest muscles were strong, so they sat firm and high and moving gently as she bounced. It wasn’t the scraping pressure she needed just then.

Miguel had said not to take off clothes, but had no rules about touching herself under those clothes. And he was taking too long. So she shoved both hands up her cami and rubbed her nipples, moaning with pleasure, and bouncing a little faster, eyes closed and heart racing.

“Detente.” His voice brooked no arguments.

Janice stopped. She took her time about it, soothing her breasts and righting her head before opening her eyes. As she took in the sight of Miguel, shirtless, fly button still undone, her hands fell to her inner thighs and she spread her legs wider, inviting.

Begging, really, when she owned the truth of it. She thought about informing him, her bossy Miguel, that he could get her to beg for sex just at the moment. Not that she needed to beg. There was a condom sticking out of his pocket, and she could see that he was still as hard as she’d found him in the hallway.

Janice rolled her shoulders, nerve-wracked. Obviously they were going to have the sex now. It was what she’d been waiting for, but sometime in the waiting, things had changed. Not the fact that she was wet and throbbing and had fantasies about how they’d be having sex soon; that was very much a fixed point the rest of her was swirling around.