Sadie was telling us how since she’d had Bronte, she’d been suffering from cramps worse than before she had her, so I was telling them about the tampons I had with CBD—cannabidiol—in them that’d made that time of the month easy for me.
My forehead almost hit the dash when Sadie slammed her foot down on the brake, her arm the only thing that saved me from having another area trying to kill me. Unfortunately, the momentum of the sudden stop also had my vagina skimming across the seat, making bursts of light shoot off behind my eyelids.
“You shut your lying mouth. No way do those things exist,” she snapped as I bit down on my fist.
When I was finally able to talk again, I took in a shuddering breath and then blew it out. “They do exist, and they work like magic.”
Santana’s head appeared from the back seat. “Really? I’m going to need you to send me the link to the website. I’ve never tried CBD even though my parents swear by it, but if it’ll help me get rid of those pains…”
“Me, too,” Sadie agreed, looking like I’d just told her the winning lottery numbers. That was what period pains were like, though. The second someone told you of a way to get rid of them, you grabbed onto it with both hands and both feet. “The CBD doesn’t trigger your medication issues?”
“Nope.” I shrugged. “It’s a natural thing, and it’s not like the tampons make me feel spaced out or incapacitated in any way.”
Sadie went to pull back onto the road, but I dug my nails into her forearm before she could do it. “Just to say, woman—if you do that again and add to the pain you’ve caused in my jing jang, I’ll find a way to tie you down, and I’ll buy three pots of the wax you glued yourself shut with.”
Her eyes flared and then narrowed at me. “You play a mean game, Valtolina.”
Yeah, fucking right I did, especially after today.
It wasn’t until we pulled up in front of Marcus’s house that Santana finally spoke again. “You might want to also add that if this gets you laid, you’ll send her flowers.”
Sadie raised an eyebrow at me at her suggestion, and I had to admit she was right.
“Fine, I’ll send you flowers.” I hopped out carefully, wincing when it felt like I was scraping sandpaper over my crotch. “But they’ll be angry red ones with venus fly traps in the bouquet because that’s how it feels right now.”
Sadie just blinked, but Santana leaned in and said gently, “If your vagina can kill flies, you might want to see the doctor. You might also want to check in on that chick who just ripped the life out of it to make sure she’s okay and not glowing in the dark tonight.”
Okay, in the grand scheme of things, these two women were nuts. There was no other way to explain it. But they’d also been crucial in me getting through what’d happened. They’d kept me distracted and had stopped me from plummeting into self-pity after it all with the amount of laughter they brought to the table.
I may just have gone through a new form of hell, but I still threw my head back and burst out laughing, until I lost my balance and the material of my shorts rubbed over my injuries.
I’d planned a mini-vacation over a year ago to Orlando on a whim, needing a break from work and the stress it’d been bringing me for a while. Not once had I ever thought that vacation would bring me a whole new life. One where, regardless of how stressful life or work was, I could handle it because I was happier than I’d ever been, thanks to Marcus and my new friends.
It was also thanks to them that my parents and siblings were able to return to their lives and commitments a week after the kidnapping, knowing full well I was safe and that Marcus would protect me.
After what’d happened when my drink was spiked, I wasn’t sure my parents would ever not worry about me more than Dan and Adia. But now they knew they didn’t have to because he’d move mountains to make sure I was okay.
What woman or man didn’t want that in their life?
Feeling appreciative in a way that I needed to show him, I planned on wearing a set of the sexy lingerie I’d ordered online just before the ‘incident’ the next night. Hopefully, by then, the whole area would have dialed down from volcano hot to typical human body temperature levels of heat.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Marcus
Giving Addy time to heal hadn’t been hard at the beginning, but now? Yeah, it was hard and constantly staying hard.
Ever tried riding a horse with a hard-on? Hammering a nail into something and your mind not straying to what else you could be beating? It was all a constant form of torture inside my head and on my body, but I wasn’t going to push her before she was ready. Her getting better outweighed me making love to her.