Marrying Mari (20 page)

She looked at the crowds, the staff, the throng of people still coming in the door at—whoops, nearly midnight on a Monday. She shook her head. “Amazing,” she said in his ear. “You have more people than this on weekends?”

He nodded. “Oh, yeah. We’re very popular.” He grinned at her.

“Hi, Gabe.”

The sultry voice behind them made both turn. A trio of women stood there.

“Jackie.” Gabriel’s voice was friendly but non-committal. “Lauren. Heather. It’s nice to see you. This is Mariella.”

She looked at Gabe, then at the trio just in time to step back as Jackie, the one in the center, squeezed between her and Gabriel. She looked up to see the other two girls, one a petite platinum blonde and the other a caramel-skinned brunette, study her from head to toe. Both had distinctly unpleasant looks on their faces. The brunette planted a hand on her hip and sneered at Mari.

Bored, she leaned back against the railing, remembering just in time that she was buck naked underneath the short dress. Instead, she cocked a hip and studied the two just as rudely. Then looked back in time to catch Jackie running a hand down Gabe’s chest.

“I haven’t seen you in weeks,” she pouted and licked her lips.

Mari lifted an eyebrow. Jeez.

“Jackie, I’m with Mariella.” He firmly caught the other woman’s hand and brought it back to her side.

“Who?” Jackie looked puzzled. She flipped her golden corkscrew curls and tried to capture Gabriel’s hand in hers. “We miss you, Gabriel.”

Mari frowned, then suppressed a laugh as she realized. All three? Well,
day-yum
. She covered her smile with one hand.

Lauren and Heather stopped glaring at her and chipped in, “We do.” The brunette beamed at him and the blonde flipped her platinum bangs in what looked like a very practiced gesture.

Gabriel glanced past them at her, frowned at her, and then said evenly to the three of them, “I’m with Mari. I’ll probably see you again Saturday.”

Jackie glowed. “Of course! At the ball.” Her tone suggested Saturday would be the Magic Kingdom, Oscar’s red carpet, and Princess Di’s wedding rolled into one event. “I’ll save you a dance,” she added coyly.

“I’ll be with Mari,” Gabe said easily.

A frown passed over Jackie’s face. “Who?” she asked again.

“Me,” Mari said clearly.

All three heads swiveled to her, then Gabriel, then back to her again.

“I’ll be his date,” she clarified, since they seemed stumped. “And Ethan’s too,” she added helpfully.

“Ethan
Stone
?” the blonde said, confused.

“Yes, Laurel. Ethan Stone.”

“It’s Lauren and I’m her.” The brunette cut in. “Wait. Ethan
and
Gabriel?”

Mari nodded.

Jackie turned and looked her over. “I don’t think so.” She turned back to Gabriel. “Did you explain to her that it’s a Col—private event?”

“He did, Jessie.”

“It’s Jackie.”

“Like Jackie Stewart?” Mari asked innocently.

“Who?” Jackie looked stumped, while Gabriel smothered a laugh.

“Like Jackie
O
,” Lauren, the brunette, supplied.

“
Oh
.”

The three glanced suspiciously between Mari, who kept an innocent expression on her face, and Gabriel, who looked on the verge of laughter.

Jackie tried again, this time speaking directly to Mari. “He can’t bring you Saturday because it’s a private affair.”

Heather added, “Only members can come.”

“I’m a member,” Mari said in a helpful tone.

Lauren looked doubtful. “You’re not.”

She shrugged, and the girls looked to Gabriel for confirmation. “She is.”

Jackie sidled up against Gabriel again, played with his collar, and gazed up into his face. “Gabe.”

Mari sighed, bored with the by-play. “Jackie, I’ll say this nicely the first time. Gabriel is here with me. He’s told you that three times. Take your hands off him. Move away. Take the other two Bananaramites and find someone else to play with. Someone available. Gabriel is out of circulation.” She stared at the taller woman. “
Capice
?”

Gabriel stepped around Jackie to stand behind Mari. He slid his arms around her waist. The three women stared, open-mouthed. When they didn’t move, he sighed and turned to her. “Shall we go and see the rest of the joint?” he asked.

“Please,” she said, and without looking back at the threesome, she took his hand and walked away.

Gabriel led her down the ramp and back toward the original, blue neon bar. There, he took the glass from her hand and lifted her to sit on a barstool. He rubbed his hands over his face. “Jeez,” he muttered.

“Hmm, I can’t believe one of those three isn’t your top candidate for mate,” she said conversationally. “Incredibly fucking charming.”

“You’re mad,” he said.

She shook her head. “No. I am not mad. Damn, Gabriel, I was only kidding about the stud thing, but damn.” She shook her head again. “All three of them? At least tell me it wasn’t all three at once—oh, my God.” His expression and wry shrug set her off. “You did them all at once?” She covered her face.

“Look,” he stopped when he realized she was laughing behind her hands. “What?”

She laughed, harder when she saw the tinge of red on his cheekbones. “Stud.”

Gabriel looked away, then back at her. “Look, I’m not a kid. I’ve been with a lot of women,” he stopped, looked around. “I can’t explain this here. Let’s go.” He helped her down, formal all of a sudden.

She touched his arm. “Gabriel? I was just joking. I’m sorry.”

He ran a hand over her cheek. “No, I’m sorry. Just wait, okay. Stay here and I’ll be back in a couple of minutes, and we’ll get out of here and talk.”

She nodded.

He looked at the bartender. “Mandy, make sure she’s okay, yeah? This is Mariella. This is Mandy, our best bartender. I’ll be back in two minutes.” He stroked her face again and disappeared.

“Can I get you anything?” the woman asked.

Mari shook her head. “No, thanks.” She leaned against the bar, unsettled. What did he have to say to her that made him look so sad, so distant, she wondered? She didn’t like it.

It was more like ten minutes, and another ten before they were actually in the car going uptown. Eli drove, and Gabe had put the privacy panel up between the front and back seat.

“What I’m going to tell you, only Ethan and a couple of other people know. I mean the real version, lots of people know the gossip version. Hell, everyone in the Colony knows the gossip version. And you should know it too, before Saturday, because sure as hell someone will tell you.” His voice was grim, and she reached out to comfort him. “No, don’t touch me right now. I have to tell you this and having you touch me would make it too hard. I don’t want to lie to you, to sugarcoat it, and I would be mighty tempted.”

She ached for him, hearing a harsh note in his voice she couldn’t identify. “All right. Whatever you want to tell me, I’ll listen. But it won’t make me feel any differently about you.”

He smiled, without mirth. “I wish I could be sure of that, sweetheart.” He blew out a hard breath. “I was always tall for my age, but the summer I was sixteen, I filled out. Everywhere. Once I did, girls started paying more attention. And not just girls. One of Angelica’s friends—Angelica is my mother—paid a lot of attention to me. She was a little younger than my mother and very glamorous, I thought at the time. I let her seduce me. She was married but I didn’t care. Neither did she. Every afternoon I’d sneak into her pool house and we’d fuck. After a month, she told me it was over, that she was going on vacation with her husband. She was nice about it and I hadn’t thought we were in love, so, okay. The day after she left, another of Angelica’s friends made a pass at me, a really obvious pass. She told me Carla, the first woman, had told her what a great lover I was. I was flattered and yes, seduced. By the end of the summer I had fucked five of my mother’s friends. Of course that had nothing to do with the fact that I hated Angelica to the bone.” He stopped, his tone hard and self-mocking. He stared out the window, then began again, in a calmer tone. “When I went back to high school that fall, the older girls noticed me. By that time, I didn’t feel so awkward. I’d discovered that I was good at sex. A natural. I liked women, they liked me, and everyone enjoyed themselves. Ethan had the same ‘problem’, so he helped keep me grounded. I mean that the older girls were after him too. He dated a few, I played around. But I didn’t tell him about the women. That was my secret, and I thought theirs, too, since they were married and, as we said, no divorce in the Colony.

“The next summer I was working at the country club, so it was easier. I was a lifeguard, and they came to the pool. I was pretty cocky, thinking about all the pussy I was getting. High school seniors, more married friends of my parents. It was all good. And the women were great. I mean, I thought it was, I don’t know, not just fucking. It wasn’t love, but I liked making them laugh, making them feel good about themselves when their husbands ignored them, all that bull. And then there was one woman I really liked. Janis was different, I thought. I felt something for her, beyond the basic stuff. I stopped seeing the other women, the girls, and put everything into being with her. It was a crush, I guess.

“Then one day I overheard her in the women’s locker room with Carla, the first woman who seduced me. And they were talking about what a stud I was. Carla said I was the hottest young stud service she’d ever had, and Janis agreed, saying my cock was the best, the hardest, the most eager she’d ever fucked. They traded stories. They agreed my technique was improving. And I realized neither of them cared about me, just my ‘technique’. It was humbling.” He laughed softly. He laughed again, but Mari’s heart was breaking for that seventeen-year-old boy. Looking and acting like a man, but still a boy, hearing himself talked about like merchandise. “I took a bottle of my father’s best Scotch down by the river and proceeded to get shit-faced drunk. Ethan found me and brought me home. To his home,” Gabe clarified. “The next day he kicked my ass. I told him everything. Everything I hadn’t already admitted in our drunken walk home, I mean. And then I figured it out.”

“Figured what out?” she asked softly, watching the streetlights play over his strong, angular face.

“That I still liked sex. And I still liked having sex with older women as well as girls my own age. I still planned on having a lot of sex with women, and the best way to do that would be to avoid getting hung up on any individual woman. Keep it light. Singles, doubles, triples. Great sex, fun and games, no emotional tangles.” He laughed, a genuine laugh this time. “And it certainly made me focus on the rest of my future. That was when Ethan laid his plan on me, his plan for getting out of the Colony. Sure sounded good at the time.” He rolled his head to look at her. “I’m not apologizing. Don’t think that. I’ve had a good time. And yeah, I fucked Bananarama, altogether on one long weekend over a year ago. But even then I knew.”

She whispered, “Knew what?”

Gabriel reached out and touched her cheek, her lips, the bow on her neck with his fingertips. He spoke just as softly, “That I was waiting for you.”

Her heart melted, and she threw herself across the car seat into his arms. He pulled her close. “So when you called me stud tonight, it just—I’m not ashamed, Mari, I just wish there was less colorful experience between the boy I was and the man I am. Less junk I was bringing to this relationship.”

Mari held his face between her hands and looked deeply into his eyes. “Don’t ever apologize to me for your past. It brought you here to me as a pretty damn fine man, as far as I’m concerned. I love your body. And your technique. And those stupid girls don’t mean anything. They’re not between you and me in any way.”

He smiled wryly. “They might not agree. And there will be more of my ex-partners at the thing on Saturday.”

“Yeah? So what? You’re not with them, you’re with me. And if we’re going to do this mating thing, they’ll never be between us again, will they?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Okay then. Because I would kick your ass. And
that’s
it.” She kissed him on the lips firmly, sealing their promise.

Ethan looked up from his book when they came in and grinned. “How was it?”

“Loud.” She plopped down on the bed. “Great.”

Ethan frowned. “Are you naked under that dress?”

“Oops.”

He looked at Gabe. “What happened to her panties?”

“Casualty of the moment.” Gabe shrugged. God, he felt great. It had been a huge relief to tell Mari everything. And then for her to accept it—there was a peaceful place inside him for the first time in a long time. He hadn’t lied. He wasn’t ashamed of the long string of other women. He’d always been straight with his lovers after his “awakening”, as he called it, and he’d never intentionally hurt any of them. He’d enjoyed sex in all flavors, vanilla, strawberry and rocky road. But he’d known those women were just passing through his life, so he’d never invested in any of them much. Never really cared about them beyond the short term. But Mari, he cared everything about her. Beyond Ethan and the Stones, Mrs. W, Tosh and the long-timers at Insatiable and Crave, he’d never cared about anyone, really. He certainly hadn’t cared about his parents since he was a kid, since he’d gotten wise to their game.