Second Time Lucky (Club Decadence Book 5) (33 page)

“Let’s go before Wendy Walmart over there whose been drooling over you like a kid in a candy store decides she can’t take it anymore and begs for your banana in her bunker.”

She turned and walked away knowing he followed by the sound of his renewed guffaws and the rattle of the shopping cart. Of the hundreds available out front, naturally they picked the only one with the juddering wheel.

“It says it’s expandable so that your bunker will fit any size banana.” Again, he snickered, thoroughly amused.

“Yeah, did it say if it was unisex? Because I’m thinking I know exactly where to stick that bunker?”

“Ah, ah, your sass is showing. Do we need to make a trip to sporting goods and pick up a nice set of ping pong paddles?”

She spun around to protest, noting his teasing grin straightaway.

“C’mon. Where’s your sense of humor?”

“Sorry, I must have left it back on aisle fifteen with wanton Wendy.” Her back to him, she didn’t have to suppress her grin, but the giggle that shook her shoulders gave her away.

“Little imp,” he scolded playfully as he bent and nipped her ear.

As they walked to the grocery aisles, Sean took an abrupt left turn. “We need to go down here.”

Here was the baking section where he threw in vegetable oil and a small bottle of extract. She smiled; vanilla was her favorite scent and flavor. Now he was being reasonable. She changed her mind when he stopped in front of the baking utensils and picked up a long rectangular wooden cutting board with a handle. He hefted it, as if getting a feel for its weight and took a few swings in an underhand motion. He arched a brow her way as he placed her new paddle—no sense pretending it was anything else—in the basket with everything else.

An hour later they left with a cart heaped full of goodies and enough groceries to last a week.

* * * * *

It was nearly noon before they returned to the beach house, their home away from home for the foreseeable future.

“Whose place is this, anyway?” Mara asked, carrying the few light bags he allowed, while Sean hefted all of the rest, closing the trunk with his elbow and proceeding her up the walkway to the steps. At the bottom, he shifted the bags to his left hand while he pulled his gun from the shoulder holster beneath his jacket.

“It belongs to Sergeant Beckett, Joanna’s dad. This is his vacation home. No one will see the connection. He also has a fairly good security system already installed.”

At the bottom of the stairs, he ordered, “Keep close.”

She curled her fingers inside his belt, hanging on as they began to climb. At the top, he flipped up a covered keypad and punched a few buttons, studying the display.

“Constant green,” he commented as he keyed in another code.

“What does that mean?”

“No breaches detected since we left. Stay behind me just in case.” Setting the bags on the porch, he pressed enter and when the alarm flashed, he opened the door.

While he made her wait in the entryway, he did a quick sweep of the house. After giving the all clear, she helped him carry the bags into the kitchen and put the groceries away. With the coffee set to brew and the oven pre-heating for cinnamon rolls with Cinnabon icing, Sean’s favorite thing ever, she turned to watch him spread the $20 lot of kitchen gadgets across the kitchen table.

She walked forward, frowning. “There’s a lot of ouchie stuff here, babe. Good thing I had the foresight to buy a few fun toys.”

“Baby, your idea of fun is a foot long, the other nine inches.”

“And your point is?” she deadpanned.

He laughed in the middle of stowing the hardware items on the top shelf of the pantry. “My point is you love the ouchie stuff.”

She shrugged conceding the point. Seeing a produce bag that they’d missed putting away, she peeked inside. “Look who’s talking. When exactly did you sneak this in the cart?”

He eyed the bag holding the fresh ginger root and shrugged. “I also bought soy sauce, rice and chicken for stir fry. Your mind must be in the gutter.”

“Right,” she drawled.

The sexy tilt of his mouth as he grinned made her forget the ginger and think of his full lips and talented tongue instead.

“Mara-baby,” he began, pulling her close and licking up the side of her neck. “You know the game.” He caught an earlobe with his teeth, nipping it gently. “A sub serves at the pleasure of her Master. Thank fuck you get off on it as much as I do.”

She snorted as she picked up another overlooked item. Peppermint oil, not vanilla as she’d foolishly thought. “I think you’ve turned sadist on me. Burning oils and inflammatory roots up my ass are not in our contract.”

“We don’t have a contract yet and since you love warming gels and oils, burning roots and inflammatory oils are the next step, so they won’t be excluded when I write it. As always, you’ll have a safeword if things get too hot.”

She snorted at his little play on words.

He kissed her nose before taking her hand and leading her to the adjoining living room. “Before we get into any of that, we need to talk.”

Groaning audibly, she dragged her feet, earning her a frown. The words, ‘we need to talk’ were becoming synonymous with Mara spilling her guts or Mara saying something incredibly stupid, or Mara agreeing to do something crazy like testifying against Victor Mendoza. With them back together, she was convinced in the future, it would also mean Mara gets a paddling over Sean’s knee.

“Can’t we have breakfast first, or coffee at least? I’ve been up for three hours and I’m going into caffeine withdrawal.”

“Stop exaggerating, we’re talking first. When did you get to be so obstinate?”

“About three hours ago when you dragged me out of a warm bed to go grocery shopping and denied me coffee. FYI, that tends to make me grouchy.”

“Thanks for the warning. I’ll have to remember to use one of our brand spanking new anti-grouch implements before we leave next time.”

Arriving at the sight of their obviously preordained
tête-à-tête,
he settled onto the plush looking couch and pulled her astride his lap.

“And, do I need to remind you we had to go shopping for coffee before we could make it?”

“No.” Glancing down, she smoothed out a non-existent wrinkle in his shirt, doing anything to keep from looking at him. “I’m sorry for being such a grump, but our talks haven’t been very pleasant lately. I’m being avoidant, not obstinate.”

“The perfect reason to do this and put it all behind us.”

“What exactly is ‘this’?”

“You’re going to tell me a story, an autobiography to be exact. Let’s call it
The History of Mara
. Afterwards, we’ll clear the air with a spanking, which will be therapeutic for us both.”

Mara could only focus on one thing at a time, so she zoned in on the scarier of the two. “Except for one sweet chapter I had with you,
The History of Mara
is a horror story, Sean. Dark and ugly.”

Her fingers idly toyed with his buttons, straightening his perfectly straight collar as her mind raced to figure a way out of this. Stilling her nervous fingers with one hand, he captured her chin with the other and brought her head up, staring intently at her as though he could see straight into her soul.

“Don’t you think it’s about time I know the whole of it? Keeping it to yourself is what kept us apart.”

She nodded, swallowing discernibly. “I don’t know where to begin.”

“Tell me about your parents.”

“You mean my alcoholic mother and the unknown sperm donor who inseminated her. Or do you mean the revolving door of daddy wannabes who wanted to get into my pants more than my drunk mother’s?”

He flinched. She not only saw it, but also felt it like a roundhouse kick to the gut.

“I told you it was dirty, Sean,” she whispered. “That’s why I never wanted you to find out.”

“I know it’s not easy, baby, not by a long shot, but if we’re going to move forward I need to know. I want to help you cope with the shit storm you’ve been dealing with as much as to eliminate the secrets that have been keeping us apart.”

“I don’t want you to know the rest. You heard me in Cap’s office. Isn’t that enough?”

“Tell me how you got mixed up with Victor Mendoza.”

She glowered at him. “Now who’s being obstinate?”

The hand cupping her face slid around to the nape of her neck and pulled her face closer. With his forehead pressed against hers, he intoned low and stern, “Talk to me, Mara.”

“Fine, you want to hear about how bad things got?” A bite of anger crept into her voice and she didn’t mince her words. “It went downhill after step-dad number three nearly raped me while mommy dearest was passed out on the living room couch.”

“Is that when you ran away?” He spoke in a controlled murmur, although she heard the telltale vibration. This wasn’t easy for him either, but he felt strongly that he needed to know. With that knowledge and sensing the control he was exerting over his rage, she cut the crap and got to it.

“I couldn’t stay, but running didn’t make things any easier.”

“It rarely does.”

Her eyes came up to meet his. Running from Sean had only made matters worse.

For the next hour, he held her in supportive silence, his arms locked like iron bands around her, lending her his strength. She revealed all of her filthy secrets. About stealing a wad of cash, nearly five hundred dollars it turned out, from step-daddy’s wallet after she cold cocked him with a lamp. She told him about living on the streets of D.C. frightened and alone for weeks until her money ran out, how Victor had found her and took her in, fed and cared for her, promised to protect and love her, and how like the naïve girl she was, she believed him.

She glossed over the specifics of the three years she’d spent hooking for Victor, like the interminable line of nameless men wanting to get off with a teenage girl while their wives minded their own children at home. One man had the gall to show her a picture of his wife and three teenage daughters. It had made her sick that he saw no correlation. She didn’t disclose all of that to Sean, what was the point of him knowing all the gory details of the ugly business of teen prostitution.

While she told her ugly story, Sean held her quietly, his hand stroking gently, but beneath the surface, she could feel his rage simmering, maintaining control for her sake but ready to boil over at any second. She spoke without stopping, knowing if she did, she would break down and not be able to finish. If one thing was certain, she was going to finish. She wanted the retelling done, unwilling to go through this ever again.

Mara explained how she’d tried to get away only to have him haul her back, beating her for her daring. The one time she’d gone home her mother had been sauced. Her stepfather on the other hand, had a different reaction. Unlike Victor, he hadn’t merely threatened the cops; he’d actually called them the moment she stepped on the porch. She’d left that day—running again, her standard M.O.—leaving behind the only home she’d ever known, crap as it was, and never looked back.

After that she fell silent, feeling drained, the need for coffee and food having long since vanished.

“How did you get away from him, baby?”

Her head came up at the strange hitch in his breathing. His cheeks were wet with tears. She gently wiped them away with her fingers. “Please don’t cry, Sean. It was a long time ago.”

His hands came up and caught her wrists. “It’s as fresh in your memory as if it was yesterday. Isn’t it, nightingale?”

“I try not to think of it.”

“But you do. All the times I found you staring off into space with a creased brow or a pained look on your face, you told me it was nothing, but you were remembering, weren’t you?”

She nodded. “Sometimes something entirely benign jars a repressed memory loose.”

“It haunts your dreams.”

With her face buried in his chest, she nodded again. The nightmares had lessened as the years passed, infrequent during the time she was with Sean, only to reemerge in the time they’d been apart.

“I want to rip his fucking head off, but that’s too good for him, too easy. He needs to suffer. To go to prison and become the bitch of someone named Luther or Bubba and learn firsthand what it’s like to be violated, repeatedly and not be able to do one damn thing about it.”

The idea of a burly convict making Victor his main squeeze made her smile, and despite the violence of the rest of his remarks, a small huff of amusement escaped. That would be payback, which they say is a bitch, as Victor would be to big, bad Bubba.

“Thank you for the visual, babe. It was one of the bright spots in my day.”

“Tell me how you got away from the bastard.”

“I had a guardian angel named Joanna Baker. Didn’t you hear me tell Cap that part?”

His arms tightened further as he turned his face into her hair. “I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t hear much beyond your bastard of a stepfather being unable to keep his dick in his pants and Victor Mendoza was your pimp. The rest of the conversation was a bit fuzzy.” His fingers flexed on the nape of her neck. “You shocked the shit out of Cap, too. He couldn’t recount all the details.”

“That was quite a grenade I launched. I didn’t intend to spill it all, but Cap can be a real ass. He stood there with his arms crossed, staring at me with those dark eyes and that scary look on his face. I folded and told him everything.”

“He’s good at what he does, baby.”

“He didn’t do anything. Come to think of it, he didn’t say much either, it was all me.”

“He gave you enough rope to hang yourself, didn’t he?”

She stiffened, realizing that was exactly what he’d done. “I didn’t intend for you to ever know.” Her arms around him contracted in a desperate hug as if she could meld herself to him so they’d never be apart.

“Tell me about Joanna.”

Damn! He was relentless. She pushed herself to tell the rest. “I met Joanna not long after I started—” She paused before the word hooking came out of her mouth again. It was the harsh truth, but it was an ugly word and made Sean react strongly every time. She planned not to repeat it. “After Victor brought me back the first time, he beat me and I ended up in the ER. Joanna was there, helping some other abuse victim. While I was waiting, we got to talking and she slipped me her card. I wish I could have gone with her that first time, but child services would have been called in. With theft charges, it was the same as going home and both those roads led to juvie. Victor came to pick me up pretending to be my uncle. I was afraid not to go with him.”