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“No one outside these walls will grant you mercy, baby.” I take two steps back and crook a finger. “Up.”
“You’re going to pay for that, Javi.” And there’s my girl. Focusing on me. On what’s important. Grinning like the Cheshire Cat, Mariah brings her two hands up to block my attack while balancing her core, feet planted firmly on the ground. Much better.
But there’s still an opening on her left and I strike toward her thigh, not giving her the full force of my blow but enough to cause her to stumble back. She catches herself, arms never lowering and when I go for the right rib area, she counters and lands her punch.
My stomach contracts, but I keep a proud smile on my lips. “Think you can knock me down?”
“Bet you two hundred bucks I can.”
“I won’t go easy on you.”
“I’d be pissed if you did.” This time when she charges, Mariah changes position at the last second and kicks the back of my knee. My weight drops, but before she can get me down I return the favor, chuckling as her leg buckles.
“That was good, but not enough.”
“You’re a jerk.”
Before she can continue to berate me, I tackle the brat and cover her body with mine. “Never claimed to be anything but an asshole, sweetness.”
“That’s what you want others to think, Javi, but I see you.” Those words pause me, and she takes the distraction as her opening, flipping our position with a hard buck of her hips, turning us so I’m on my back and looking up. I’m left marveling at the cheeky grin and the bright eyes of this incredible woman. “No one else has bothered to make me talk about shit I hate. No one else pushes me to deal with what I feel when ignorance is an easier solution.”
“Muñeca, I—”
“I know you pay attention. I know you care.” Mariah lowers her face to mine and kisses the tip of my nose, then each cheek before pecking my lips. “You’re so much more than what I thought, Javier. Thank you.”
Bringing a hand up, I cup the back of her neck, keeping her lips hovering over mine. “For what?”
“For doing more for me than those who were supposed to love me. Those who called me princess,” she spits the word out with so much venom and tears in her eyes. This is her letting me fully in. A beautiful olive branch. “That was Dad’s nickname for me growing up, and Lane adopted it. It wasn’t meant to be loving, more demeaning as he thinks all women are beneath the men in their lives.”
“I’m not them.”
“I know.” Another soft smile. A sweet sigh. “You have the possibility to be my everything, and that scares me.”
“I’d never hurt you.”
“And I don’t think I’d recover if you ever did.”
***
17
“WHAT TIME ARE you getting off?” Javi asks, pulling into the Asher building parking structure a few minutes before two in the afternoon. I’m in the passenger seat and fighting back a giggle, keeping my face neutral after the semi-argument we had outside of the women’s shower where he all but demanded to drive us in today. An exchange I lost after the jerk jutted his bottom lip out while sweaty, chest glistening and those damn joggers hanging low.
I could make out the outline of his thick cock, and it made getting my point across a near impossibility. Couldn’t think straight when he twitched and grew, and I had to yell out a yes before disappearing inside to take a cold shower.
Turning the ignition off, he sits quietly and I follow suit. His spot is next to my empty one and two down from the ones Malcolm keeps for certain clientele. We never host more than one family at a time, and no more than four members of their organization are allowed upstairs together.
A precaution for them. For us.
“Should be out by five. I left everything he’d need today on his desk before logging off last night.”
“Any plans?”
“No.”
“You do now,” he says simply. Just like peppering the weather into any conversation.
But more comical is that I nod and inspect my nail polish. The one nail that I chipped a corner of. “What are you in the mood for? I can stop on my way home and—”
