The Brit

My climax is there, right there, just waiting for me to seize it.

But it seizes me. It grabs me and tears me apart with the force, and I cry out into his shoulder, my body hijacked by stabs of merciless pleasure. I gasp, I choke, my eyes fly wide open as it savages me. “Oh my God,” I pant, blinking rapidly, my nerves sizzling. The pull of my walls around him is natural and unstoppable, milking him on and on as he growls his way through his release. I’m dizzy, my world spinning crazily. Never before has helplessness felt so good.

Exhaling loudly, he rolls off me, falling to his back and throwing his arms to the pillow above him. The cool air that blankets me is bliss, but nothing like having him swathing me. I move onto my side and place my finger on his tummy, drawing over his abdominals, counting them as I do. Not that I haven’t mentally done it a dozen times. Eight. Danny Black doesn’t just have a six-pack. He has an eight-pack. I smile as my finger draws lines in the shadows between his muscles. “Can I ask you something?”

His head drops to look at me. “No.”

I give him a feigned filthy look and pinch the flesh over his ribs. Of course, he smiles. It’s beautiful. I might be pushing my luck, but that seems to come naturally with him. “Why are you unkind to Esther?” If I were her, I would have told him to go fuck himself. “She does everything for you. Washing, cleaning, cooking, and you’re so clipped with her.”

His face falls into impassiveness. Coldness, a coldness I’m familiar with, but now I get a strange vibe from it. It tells me he’s wondering whether he should say what he’s about to say. He inhales. “Isn’t washing, cleaning, and cooking part of what a mother should do for their child?”

For a second, I’m thrown by his statement, my brain unable to compute the connection. Then, like a lead balloon, realization drops. I recoil, my hand leaving his stomach. Esther is his mom? “I don’t understand,” I admit, floored by confusion and shock.

“She’s my mother.”

No. I’m clearly missing something here. “But you treat her so terribly.” I’ve obviously said something wrong, because warning falls like an iron veil over his soft eyes, hardening them. I retreat, heeding the threat, keeping my mouth under control before I unwittingly say something else to anger him. But I know him well enough now to know that these flashes of anger are actually pain.

I can see perfectly well that he’s working hard to contain his irritation, and though I wish it wouldn’t, it just makes my curiosity heighten. Eventually, he rips his steel stare from mine and breathes in. “My mother abandoned me when I was eight years old,” he says softly, though resentment burns the corners of his quiet voice. Something tells me that this isn’t something he’s talked about much, if at all. I honestly don’t know what to do, so I do what’s natural. I take his hand and hold it. My move, thankfully, loosens him up a bit, and he cracks the straightness of his mouth with a small curve, lifting our held hands to his lips and kissing my knuckles. “Carlo Black isn’t my biological father.”

My mouth falls open. “He isn’t?”

“I’m British, Rose. Carlo was American. How does that work?”

“Easy. Your mother could be British.” I frown. “Which she is.” I’m stumped.

“Come here.” He sits up and pulls me onto his lap, arranging my legs on either side of his hips while I continue to frown. “Remember I once told you that someone saved me?”

“Yes.”

“The person who saved me was Carlo Black.” He smiles at my shock, taking my hands and holding them on his stomach. “I was ten. It was two years after my mother abandoned me and left me at the mercy of her piece-of-scum boyfriend. It was the day this happened.” Danny points to his cheek with our hands, and my stunned eyes fall onto the beast of a scar that dominates his right cheek. “I’d been beaten black and blue for four years, starved and ra—” He stops himself, his gaze unlocking from mine. He looks past me into nothingness.

“Raped.” I utter the vile word, winning back his attention. “He raped you.” I feel sick. So fucking sick, I have to swallow down the bile building. Look at this strong, beautiful man. Just look at him. Raped?

The flash of vengeance in his blues is raw. And I get it. “So, you see, when Carlo put a bullet in my stepfather’s head, I didn’t shed a tear. I was mesmerized by Carlo—his crisp cream suit, his American accent, the two fifties he slipped me, and most of all, I was mesmerized that he had just killed my problem. Just like that. Gone. No hesitation.” Light flickers in his hard eyes, and though it seems inhumane to take pleasure from the death of a person, I can’t help appreciating how good it must have felt. I had a problem in Watson. And Danny killed the problem. In that moment, I felt a burden lift, and now, more than ever, I can’t help the hope building. The hope that Danny can erase all of my problems.