NO SECRETS NO LIES (SIN CITY HEAT SERIES Book 3) (30 page)

    
When her tears kept coming, Darrell stood up, towering over her, and outlined
her face with his palms. "I'm sorry if I hurt you. I'm so sorry." He
gently kissed one cheek, then the other, using his mouth to dry the evidence of
her sorrow. "I'm sorry..."

    
His lips went to her lowered eyelids and delivered the lightest of touches over
each closed eye and whispered sweet, loving words, apologizing and telling her
how much he loved her. Once his mouth finally found its way to hers, the kiss
was more a gentle caress that spoke for him and relayed everything he couldn’t
find the words to say. The sweet overture of his mouth asked for her
forgiveness and initiated an opening for them to make things right, get them
back to the way they used to be.

    
But it wasn’t that simple.

    
Jerra returned the kiss for a few moments, powerless to stop herself from
falling into the same state of mindless, heady bliss she always surrendered to
whenever her husband touched her. It had been that way from the beginning.
Darrell brought out a side of her she never knew existed. She’d always had a
serious disposition. Having to deal with an alcoholic mother and then an
alcoholic stepfather, she sometimes felt like the parent instead of the child
while growing up. After the abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather,
the disciplined control she kept on her emotions only tightened. That strength
enabled her to move to a strange city at the age of fifteen, pregnant and all
alone. She'd gone through the horrifying ordeal of giving up her baby for
adoption and then determinedly gotten her GED and finished her education. When
the firm she worked for as a paralegal recognized her brilliant mind, they'd
harvested it and sent her to law school. With a focus that had been resolute
and steadfast, she’d made a promise to never depend on anyone but herself.

    
The night she met Darrell, he had changed all that. Darrell unleashed the woman
Jerra had kept hidden and stifled for years. The attraction between them
consumed them both until it was as if they were two parts of a whole. She'd
been one of those people who scoffed at the idealized notion of an undying
love. The only "love" she'd ever known had been, dirty, ugly and
evil. Darrell was the first man she'd allowed herself to rely on. She felt
safe. With him, she knew she never had to worry about any outside force coming
between them and what they shared - until now.

    
Hearing Darrell moan brought Jerra out of the thick, sensual mist that had
settled around them. His hands slipped down to cover her luscious lady humps,
as he teasingly called them, pulling her firmly up against the rigid flesh
filling up the front of his pants. Sparks of wanton, raw lust shot straight to
the very center of Jerra's femininity. She let out a soft purr of longing that
mingled with his deep growls. It seemed like forever since they'd made love and
their bodies were yearning to mate in the oldest dance known to man. It took
every ounce of Jerra's willpower to bring her hands up to his chest and push
him away.

    
"Mmph...Darrell...wait..."

    
She somehow managed to disengage their lips which were stubbornly welded
together, but when she turned her head to avoid the temptation of his mouth,
Darrell took that opportunity as an invitation to further drive her out of her
mind. He went directly to that spot on her neck that made sweet honey cream,
gush, and spew directly from her core.  This time, Jerra was the one who
curled and undulated her pelvis against his as if it were magnetized and
calling its pussy to come and feed. She placed her hand at the back of his head
and brought his mouth closer to the curvature of her neck, but when Darrell's
hand slipped between them and went to his belt buckle, she opened her heavily
lidded eyes and forced herself back to reality.
Their
 reality –
and right now it wasn’t a pleasant one. The ugly truth was he’d actually left
her to go to another woman. And not just any woman. Roni had his heart before
Jerra, and possibly
still
did.

    
"No..." Her voice was husky and weak, but when an image of Darrell
kissing Roni the way he was kissing her right now materialized in her mind, she
stiffened and pushed at the hard wall of his chest with all her strength. "No!
Darrell..."

    
Although the effort she was making to shove him back barely moved him, the
frosty tone of her voice finally penetrated. He lifted his head and stared at
her before his passion laden eyes dropped to her lips. When it seemed as if he
was getting ready to kiss her again, Jerra's voice became louder.

    
"I said
no
!"

    
Darrell blinked several times as if to bring her back into focus. "What do
you mean 'no'?"

    
Jerra's hands went to his arms which were still around her waist and pulled
them away.

    
“Jerra…”

    
With her breathing labored and heavy, she took a couple of steps away from him
to try and get her thoughts together. Even now, upset almost to the point of
hysteria, her body twitched as if going through a nicotine fit and was begging
for just one puff, one hit to ease the ache, but Jerra dug deep to remain where
she was.

    
"Were you kissing me just now but thinking about her?"

 
   Darrell stared at her for several long moments before he
closed his eyes and murmured a low curse under his breath. "Jerra -"

    
"No. I want to know. Exactly who are you thinking about right now because
I'll be damned if I stand in as a replacement for your ex-lover." Ignoring
the fierce glare he directed towards her, Jerra continued. "What was it
you said when you talked to Marcus? ‘If you had known she was alive, you two
would still be together?’ So what have I been all this time? A substitute? A
stand-in? An understudy who took over until the star of the show was well
enough to return?"

    
"That's enough," he snarled.

    
"Oh, I'm just getting started. Matter of fact, I'm beginning to wonder if
more happened than what you’ve told me. Was it just a kiss Darrell? Did it go
further?"

    
"I told you what happened." The warmth began to seep out of his eyes
and became wintry and piercing. "Don't mistake my actions for yours. I'm
not the one who manipulated a situation in my favor so that I could use it as
an excuse to keep it from you. I've
always
been honest with you about
everything!
 
I want us to get past this, Jerra, but I'll be damned if I let you make me out
to be the bad guy while you’re portrayed as bein’ perfectly innocent."

   
All signs of desire were erased from Jerra's face and replaced by a white hot
anger. She held up a finger. "One: Yes, I should have told you about
Giselle and going to see Robert, but it wasn't as if I ran off to have a
clandestine meeting with an old boyfriend. I went to try and clear a way to see
my
daughter
." She held up another finger. "Two: Don't try and
use that as an excuse for leaving your
wife
at the drop of a hat to fly
to another country to see your ex-girlfriend. If you love me so much, love
shoulda kept your ass home with your family instead of traipsing off to the got
damned Caribbean!"

    
Darrell rolled his eyes. “What, another movie quote? Just how many men bashing
shows did you and your girls watch tonight.”
     Jerra ignored his condescendingly mocking tone. She
knew he was trying to deflect the issue at hand, but she wasn’t going to let
him do that. Jerra was a woman hurting and crying inside, but she was also a
lawyer with a brilliant mind, and right now, she was in her element.

    
A third finger shot up to join the other two. "And three: I've never even
thought
about or wanted anyone else since I met you! I guess that's not the case
with you, though, is it? Not only do you leave me to go to her, but you
actually
make out
with her? Have thoughts of
sleeping with her?
Then
you run back home like nothing ever happened!
Are you crazy??
"

    
"That's not fair, Jerra. You punishin' me for keepin’ it real with you?
For being honest with how I was feeling at the time?"

    
"And that's supposed to make everything okay?? Newsflash: it doesn't!
Wait, you know what?”  She brought the first two fingers of both hands up
in the air and curled them twice as if drawing quotation marks while delivering
the next sentence. “Let me just ‘keep it real for
you
’, a’ight?” Darrell scowled when she twisted her neck and mocked
him with a sneer. “I won't let you just waltz back home as if it's your right
to go off and test the waters with Roni  before deciding you want to be
with me. What happens the next time she calls? Huh? Are you going to just drop
everything again and go running off to see what you can do to ease her
discomfort? If you think I'm going to sit around while you go back and forth
between us, you have another 'think' coming! I refuse to be in a marriage where
I have to share my husband with another woman, whether it’s physically or
emotionally!"

    
Jerra saw the flare of anger that sparkled in his eyes and the way his body
tensed, but she gave less than a damn. She wasn't backing down. She held his
fierce, biting glare until he took a deep breath. When he slowly exhaled, his
thick lashes dropped like long, heavy curtains, hiding whatever thoughts his
mind was methodically processing. Finally, he lifted carefully guarded eyes and
stared at her.

    
"What do you need?" Although the anger was still in Darrell’s voice,
genuine sincerity could be heard as well. "What do you need me to do to
fix this?"

Chapter
37

    
Jerra swallowed and visibly relaxed a little when she saw he was willing to
make an effort to reassure her that she was indeed the most important person in
his life. "I want you to just...just listen...really listen while I tell
you what I was going through. I'm not making excuses for what I did, but you
were so angry that you didn't really give me a chance to explain
everything."

    
Darrell nodded. "Okay. What else."

    
Pain crept into Jerra's expression, but she said the next words anyway. "I
want you to talk to me...about...Roni. I need to know exactly what it is you
feel for her. I need to know where I stand with you…where you stand in this
marriage." She held her breath, a little unnerved by the intense way his
eyes stayed on her face, and waited for the explosion she was sure would
follow, but again, Darrell only nodded.

    
"Alright..." His timbre told her he was waiting for the rest. He knew
there was more.

    
"And...I...I, um..."

    
Darrell's eyes narrowed at her hesitancy. His wife was rarely at a loss for
words – as she’d just proven. Granted these were circumstances they'd never
encountered before in their relationship, but she'd always said what she meant
without a problem, whether it upset him or not.

    
"You...what?"

    
"Until we get some of the issues standing between us settled, I think we
should take sex out of the equation for a little while." The words came
out in a tumbled rush, but when she finished she lifted her chin and looked him
in the eye. "I need to know that I'm the woman you really want to be
with."

    
"You're my wife. My commitment has always been to you and our
family." Darrell pushed out through his teeth. "Plus, I think you
understand me well enough to know if I didn't want to be here - I wouldn't
be."

    
Jerra lifted a shoulder. "Do I?"

    
"Fine, Jerra, just...fine." He glanced at the bed. "What do we
do, put pillows between us to keep our distance?" When Jerra only stared
at him, Darrell's expression froze. "Wait...are you saying....you don't
want me in our bed?"

    
"I think that would be best..." She continued even as he unleashed a
string of colorful profanity laced sentences. "Just for a little while.
You know as well as I do we'll never be able to keep our hands off each other
if we're in the same bed. I don't care if there's a mountain of pillows between
us. But I really feel that sex shouldn't cloud the issue. Just...just for a
little while," she trailed off.

    
Darrell snorted and slowly moved his head from side to side. "You're
serious."

    
"Yes. I don't
want
to, but you asked me what I
needed
- and
this is one of the things I need."

    
The seconds turned into a long drawn out minute before Darrell broke the
silence. "A'ight...a'ight." He chewed at the corner of his mouth
before a cunning expression covered his face. He knew his wife well and knew
her sexual nature was strong. They hadn't had sex in a week. First, she'd been
on her cycle and she was always horny as fuck that time of the month. Then, the
events of the last couple of days happened to turn their lives upside down. She
had to be wanting it just as much as he did, knew her body was aching for it
the same as his. He'd give her a day - two tops - before she came to him.

    
Until then, he'd do as she asked. They'd talk. He'd listen. And he'd wait.