Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Wine Cellar

I sat in my car, staring at Darius’s house, thinking what a nice house it was.

It was a mid-century square with a long overhang that went out so far, it shielded the steps up to a front door that was set off to the side.

That had to be handy during a snowstorm.

The front door was painted a bright red, but it was mostly windows and had two panels of glass on either side. All of this was set into a white frame, but the rest of the house was two-toned brick, red on the bottom, some sandy colored brick at the top, with a thick red brick line close to the roof.

It had an old bungalow to one side of it and a classic Denver square to the other.

There was something very him about it. The fact it was unusual, made a statement, but managed to do this in an understated way.

And there was something very not him about it. The fact it was established and had a big tree out front that was probably older than the house, a house which had undoubtedly been built in the late 50s or early 60s.

I’d never allowed myself to think how, or where, Darius lived without us.

And this realization was so uncomfortable, it was painful.

I wondered, in all that I wanted from him, if I ever really thought about him at all.

So yes.

This meant, even though I knew Liam was hanging with Tony and Kenneth at T&T’s house playing video games while Toni and Lena kept an eye and made sure Liam didn’t get in his brand-new Charger and head home (no, his father didn’t mess around, I got a text with a picture of his new wheels on day one back at his dad’s).

I was wearing a new dress, which was not conducive to our current fall weather, seeing as it was bright pinks and oranges with mustard yellow and greens all in a flower and leaf motif, an orange leopard head with yellow spots here and there. It had a smocked waistband that went from below my breasts to upper hips, long, puff sleeves, and a barely-there frill of a skirt that showed off nearly all of my legs.

I wore this with green strappy high-heeled sandals that Lena let me borrow and some big, real gold hoop earrings that Toni loaned me.

It was an outfit to wear at a resort in the Caribbean, not during the mission I was currently on.

What was I thinking?

I couldn’t go home and change now, as much as I wanted to use that as an excuse to get my behind out of there.

I had to do this.

I again let my eyes sweep Darius’s cool house.

There was a light shining out of the long bank of the windows just off the front door.

So he was probably home.

I should check, though, before I knocked on the door.

Right?

The issue with checking was that it looked like a three-story house, except the first floor was kind of built into the earth, the second was a little elevated, and the third was super high.

This was smart, if you didn’t want people walking by and looking in the windows.

My heels were high too, but it wasn’t like the windows the light was shining out of were normal height and I could just walk up to them and peek in, even in my heels.

But…the house had surprised me.

What if the inside was immaculate? Say, designed by an expensive interior designer?

This visit was important. I had to stay on target. I didn’t need to be blindsided by Darius’s fabulous décor.

“Right, yes, just go peek in, make sure he’s there and get the lay of the land. You aren’t chickenshit and delaying,” I told myself. “This is reconnaissance.”

On my pep talk, I got out of my car, again lamented my choice of dress when the blast of cold hit me, and as casual as I could, I strolled up his lawn, in the dark, in a cute, bright, flirty, sexy dress and high heels and ducked to the side in hopes there were windows there (there were).

And then I realized I was right. The windows were high off the ground. I had to reach up with my hands, curl my fingers on the ledge and try to pull myself up to see inside.

This, I did.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

I squawked, dropped, turned my ankle and would have gone down if Darius hadn’t shot forward and caught me.

I got my feet under me, pushed away from him, brushed my skirt in a nervous gesture since there was nothing to brush off, looked up at him and said, as nonchalant as I could, “Hey.”

“There’s a reason cat burglars wear black, woman,” Darius drawled.

God, how embarrassing was this?

“And they don’t sit in their car psyching themselves up for twenty minutes right in front of the joint they’re gonna knock over before they go do a job,” he went on.

Okay, we needed to move away from this. It was mortifying.

“Um…are you busy? Can we talk?” I asked.

He took a step back and did a top to toe.

As I mentioned, it was dark.

But that light was shining out of his window, and I could see all of him (and all of it looked good, just a red thermal (skintight) and jeans (that fit too well and had a fade mark that made me salivate a little), but it worked on me), so he could probably see all of me.

“You wanna try the front door?” he asked. “Or you want me to go in, open a window, come back out and heft you through it?”

All right, that was it.

“I was curious about your décor,” I snapped.

“Good way to find out is knock on the door and say, ‘Hey, Darius, got a second to show me your crib?’”

“Hey, Darius,” I said sarcastically. “Got a second to show me your crib?”

He threw an arm out for me to precede him.

The ground was cold, not frozen (even though my legs were close to that), the trek to the side of the house had to be on my toes so my heels didn’t sink in, as did the trek to the front door.

We finally made his walk, and I breathed a sigh of relief I hadn’t made an even bigger fool of myself.

Once I hit the top of his steps, I stood aside so he could open the door.

He did but held back so I could go first.

When I did, moving through the entryway and into the living room, I really wished I had better sleuthing skills and upper body strength because I was blindsided by his fabulous décor.

I saw a boxy, creamy-beige couch with creamy-beige toss pillows with odd width black stripes running through them. Two square, low-sitting, black leather armchairs, and the leather looked soft and inviting. A massive fern on a stand. Interesting-based lamps. And a coffee table that looked like it was a slab shorn off a huge, gorgeous piece of wood, the top finished to a high shine.

There was a built-in low cabinet on the back wall on which was an African mask on a stand in the corner and an expensive-looking stereo with turntable in the middle. Over these was a triptych in blues and grays with a shock of white and some inlaid finished wood.

Last, there were stacks of hardback books everywhere.

“Meet your inspection?” Darius asked.

“It’s very…stylish,” I murmured my understatement.

“Yeah, Liam thinks it’s the shit,” he murmured in return.

I was sure he did.

I tried to decorate in gender neutral, but I’d pretty much failed (it was impossible, what could I say? I’d explained the dress I was wearing—I was all girl), and Liam had no choice but to live with it.

“Wanna see where he sleeps?” Darius offered. “He’s got the whole lower level.”

Every cell in my body which held the mother gene (which was every cell in my body) screamed, Oh God, NOOOOOOOOO! at the idea of my sixteen, nearly seventeen-year-old, who started casually dating last year, and now had his own car, having a whole level to himself.

I sounded choked when I asked, “Does it have its own door to the outside?”

“Yeah. It was once reno’ed to be an apartment. But he comes in the back, from the garage, like me, into the main house, and goes down the stairs.”

I cleared my throat since it was clogged with all the words I needed to say about our son with his own ingress and egress on a level of a house his father didn’t occupy.

“You need some water to hydrate since you’re burnin’ up so much fluid tryin’ not to tell me I gotta keep a closer eye on our boy who’s a teenager and probably pretty much lives for getting in pretty girls’ panties?” he asked.

I retched.

Darius burst out laughing.

I froze, staring at him.

I didn’t think I’d seen him laugh like that in seventeen (nearly eighteen) years.

When his humor died (though, not entirely, his eyes were still sparkling with it), he said, “One good thing about bein’ in the business I used to be in, Malia, not much gets by me. You don’t survive long in that world with people doin’ shit you don’t want them to do around you. Kinda like how I knew you were sitting in your car, psyching yourself up to come to my door and ask me to have a look at where your son spends every other week.”

I was surprised.

“I…that’s not why I’m here,” I told him.

His head cocked slightly to the side. “Then why are you here?”

“I…” I brushed at my skirt again and lost track of my thoughts.

“Baby, you can swipe at it all you want, it’s not gonna grow longer,” Darius said in a sweet, sexy, teasing tone.

A sweet, teasing tone (the sexy was new, he was young back then, he hadn’t developed that part yet) was so very Darius, every cell in my body that loved him (and that was all of them too) heated up.

Okay, I was there to talk, not jump him.

Talk, not engage in wild sex on his incredibly attractive Berber carpet.

“Malia?” he called.

Shit.

I tackled him.

His arms went around me as he flew back and landed in one of the low, black leather chairs, me on top of him.

I straddled him, knees in the seat and grabbed his head.

“Sweetheart—” he tried.

“We’re gonna talk, just after you give me the business,” I said.

He grinned.

It was cute.

I still kissed him.

He took over the kiss as, miraculously, he got us both out of that chair. He walked with me wrapped around him, his arm around me, one hand at my behind, all the while kissing me.

Then I was going down, Darius on top, in a bed.

God, I’d missed his weight on me.

I’djust missed him.

Only then did he break our kiss to lift his head and offer, “Fast and hard, or slow and sweet?”

“Fast and hard, um…first,” I whispered.

His eyes darkened but he said, “Been awhile since I tasted your sweet pussy, baby.”

“Okay, fast and hard after…um, that.”

I got another grin, a different one this time, one I felt right where he’d be giving me some attention, hopefully soon, then he dropped his head and kissed me again.

He left the dress on when he eventually went down on me.

But he got rid of it (though, not the shoes) when he fucked me.

Fast and hard.

But still.

It was all kinds of sweet.

* * * *

“What did you come to talk about?”

It was after.

I was lying on top of him, naked (he’d finally taken off my shoes). He’d pulled the covers up over my booty. And he was running the tips of his fingers up and down my spine.

I was gooey and warm and sated and happy, and his bedroom was even better than his living room (he had plaid wallpaper behind the bed and gold lamps and a tan leather bench at the foot of the bed with a buttoned top, and best of all, super soft sheets, and obviously he took care of his twists, the pillowcases were silk).

“Everything,” I mumbled into his skin.

He had a smile in his voice when he asked, “Everything?”

I tipped my head back, stacking my hands on his chest, resting my chin on them and looking up at him.

My breath stopped.

His head and shoulders were propped up on some pillows and he was gazing down at me like I was the most beautiful girl in the world, and he was going to shelter me from every storm until the day I died.

“Everything,” I whispered.

He pulled me up his body and rolled me so he was on top.

“Our boy is gonna be home soon,” he reminded me. “And we haven’t cracked the surface of this everything you need to go over, and I don’t think either of us are ready for him to see us together, so why don’t you whittle that down to your top two priorities.”

“I never knew where you lived,” I admitted. “Lena had to tell me.”

“I didn’t let it be common knowledge.”

“I never asked. I never even thought about it. All I could think was that I wanted you to be with us.”

“Ah,” he murmured.

“I worry I was being really selfish,” I said, my voice soft with shame and guilt.

His brows drew together. “Because you loved me and wanted us to be a family?”

“Because I didn’t think much about you. Just about me.”

“And Liam,” he added.

“Yes, and Liam. But also me.”

“And me, because you loved me.”

“Well, yes, and you, because I loved you. But it was a lot about me.”

His lips quirked. “You’re pretty fuckin’ determined to make yourself the bad guy.”

“Darius,” I warned.

He touched his lips to mine, lifted his head, and said, “Baby, this is what we got. We got a boy who wants us to be together, so you can be happy, and I can be happy, and we can be a family, which will make him happy. We gotta get our shit together so we can give him that. And we got two houses. I like mine, I suspect you like yours, and I hate to break this to you, but Liam likes mine way better than yours. Though he digs his bedroom.”

He smiled.

I rolled my eyes to study my eyebrows.

I felt his body move with his laughter, and since I didn’t want to miss it, even if it wasn’t audible this time, I rolled them back.

Yes.

Totally worth getting over my mini-snit.

“But that’s all we got,” he declared. “Don’t invent more garbage and slights and worries and bullshit. It’s just not there. We got enough to figure out so we don’t fuck this up. Because I don’t ever want to hurt you again. And I want our boy to grow to know how solid we are. That it never ended, that we were always a family, even if we couldn’t be together. It’s just now, we can be together.”

“You’re right.”

His gaze moved over my face, and something moved over his when it did.

“Do you forgive me?” he asked.

“For what?” I asked back.

“Any of it. All of it. Lying to you. Keeping us apart.”

I put my hand over his mouth. “I thought all that just wasn’t there anymore.”

He pulled my hand away and said, “I need to hear the words.”

I shook my head on the pillow. “There’s nothing to forgive. You, me, our families, we were all just doing the best—”

I stopped talking when his body got tight.

Then I stilled when he pulled the covers up to my chest.

The door opened and I heard, “Dad? Mom’s car is—”

Darius looked over his bare shoulder toward the door.

I realized, belatedly, that I’d left my purse, with phone, in the car.

Seriously, I was terrible at this.

“My eyes!” Liam shouted then I heard a thud like a body hitting the wall. “My eyes! I’m blind!”

Darius started laughing.

I took hold of the covers and pulled them over my head as I slunk down the bed.

“Don’t go that way, baby,” Darius whispered.

I groaned in mortification but stopped moving.

“I’ll never see again! And I’m okay with that!” Liam yelled.

“Boy, get downstairs,” Darius called, his voice filled with humor. “Your mother and I’ll be down in a minute.”

More thuds and, “I can’t…find the stairs,” Liam lied.

Did we go upstairs?

Boy, Darius could kiss really, really well.

I knew that already, but…yeesh.

“Open a bottle of wine for your mother,” Darius called. Then to me, “Red or white?”

“I’m not here,” I told him. “I’ve been swallowed by the black hole of humiliation.”

“Then whose warm, silky skin is this?” Darius asked, his hand going up my belly to my…

I batted it away. “Stop it.”

“Red!” Darius shouted. “Open a red! From the reserve!”

I pulled the covers from my face and tucked them to my neck. “The reserve?”

He looked down at me. “The lower floor isn’t only Liam’s space. There’s a wine cellar down there.”

Darius had a wine cellar?

“I’m totally moving here.”

It was after I said that when I saw the most beautiful thing I’d seen since my son came out of me bawling.

The happy, carefree, sweet, tender loving smile of Darius Tucker.