Maldeamores (Lovesick) (Heightsbound #0.5) Read online

  I look over to see Lucky seething with a heady mixture of lust and rage playing out on his face.

  “Just make her come, Jay, and then get the fuck out of her,” Lucky says, sounding steely.

  “Tell me what feels good, Belén, and push back onto my cock if you like it.” Jaylee squeezes the flesh of my ass so hard it leaves residual fire from his touch. Jeremy fists my hair and my saliva has thickened. I’m in some kind of strange zone mentally where I’m in awe of the human body and my own ability to want this with Lucky looking on.

  Jaylee’s hand finds my clit and he presses the heel of his palm down, sending a strange pressure into my abdomen. Then he uses the flat of his fingers to gently create some friction and I shove back into his cock.

  “Uh-huh, that’s the spot,” Jaylee says, all husky and graveled.

  I moan, but it comes out sounding pained because I’ve got Jeremy in my mouth. I add suction to his thrusts and that makes Jeremy speed up. I can feel him go stiff and then spasm into my mouth. The smooth skin of his cock makes my tongue feel rough. I taste his semen and it seems to heighten my senses. I smell nothing but men all around me and my adrenals release. What a powerful feeling to be surrounded on all sides, to have all three of them want me. Jaylee starts again on my clit and my whole body tightens. I buck back in pleasure and then he puts one hand on my shoulder and with the other grabs my hair.

  “I’m gonna fuck you harder, Belén. Think you can take it?”

  I nod my head.

  “Let me know if it hurts and I’ll stop.”

  He thrusts into me with more force and every time his hips slam into my ass, sparks fly all throughout my body. I turn my head to look at Lucky. When my eyes catch his, I get high off of our connection. I know that it’s Jaylee but all I feel is Lucky. All I can see is Lucky.

  I moan when I come, louder than I thought possible. I feel my muscles grip around him. They grip and release, pulsating, reluctant to let go of him. I collapse on the couch, face right into the pillow. I hear the snap as the condom comes off.

  “Baby, I’m just gonna come on your ass,” Jaylee says as he starts to stroke himself. I nod my head and sink my face deeper into the pillow. Jaylee jerks himself rapidly, then groans, and I feel his hot semen hit the back of my legs and my ass. I reach back and smile as I spread his come all over my cheeks. I saw it once on a porn tape from my therapist’s collection. From the way Jaylee breathes, it sounds like he appreciates the gesture.

  I look over at Lucky and he wears the same stern expression.

  “That counts as my first real orgasm!” I say, not moving my position. “Thanks for the lesson.” I giggle and I can’t wipe the smile from my face.

  “Anytime you want, girl,” Jaylee says. “I’ll hook you up.” He’s breathing hard.

  “Holy fuck,” Jeremy says, standing dazed in his shirt with his pants and boxers at his ankles.

  “Better get that cleaned up,” Jaylee says, pointing to a spot of his own come on the front of Jeremy’s polo shirt.

  “There another bedroom here, Jeremy?” Lucky asks, saying his name like a mouthful of marbles.

  “Yeah, right off of the kitchen there’s one. Why, you gonna crash for the night?” Jeremy asks.

  “’Cause that’s where we’ll be sleeping,” Lucky says, leaning down to peel me from the couch. He lifts my naked body over his shoulder like he’s hefting a floor rug. “Thanks for coming down, Jay,” Lucky says, shaking Jaylee’s hand. “See you in the morning, Jeremy,” he says, and walks us through the kitchen. He kicks open the door and sets me down on my feet. Lucky takes two steps to the small bathroom and turns on the water full force.

  “Into the tub, Len. I want to get you cleaned up.” He throws a washrag at me from the towel rack. “Wipe that shit off.”

  Lucky undresses and I watch him with so much affection. I’m intoxicated by my love for him and I can’t believe just how far he was willing to go for me. I think witnessing him with other women would have extinguished my heart. But Lucky took it like a man and sacrificed so much for me. I love him even more than I thought I could. He sheds his clothes and steps into the tub. I climb into the hot water after him and curl into his lap.

  “Thank you, Lucky,” I whisper into his neck.

  “Anything for you, Len. Anything. There is nothing wrong with you. Don’t ever think that again,” he says, pulling my head in as close as possible and brushing my hair from my face.

  I feel so right in his arms, I never want to leave them.

  “You can always think of me to get there, Belén, if that’s what it takes. Everybody is allowed to think whatever damn thing they need to think that takes them to that place. Don’t be ashamed to use me, or what just happened out there. Everybody has to fucking think of something and I’d be honored if what you thought about was me.”

  I feel my own heart sigh; it contracts and expands in my chest. I want to cry but something is blossoming instead. Love is a life force and I can feel his all around me. I hear a deep choked-up sob, but it’s not coming from me.

  “Then every time you come, Len, I can be with you, in a way.”

  Lucky

  I can feel her feisty heartbeat against mine and her clean, scrubbed body lets off so much heat. I’ve been sleeping next to her ever since I can remember, but tonight I can’t get any fucking sleep. I get myself sick worrying that she thinks I’m a pussy. That I don’t want to fuck her. Nothing could be further from the truth, but I think it’s time that I told her. I never thought it was okay for Tía Betty to lie about her dad. The lie turned it into a dirty secret, like something about Belén herself was bad. But part of the reason I reject her is because I’m scared it makes it worse. And I don’t want to carry on the fucking legacy of falling in love with your own goddamn family.

  She shifts against me and I get the sweet Belén-smell of soap and shampoo laced with a little musky scent that is particularly hers. I run my fingers through her hair, which has curled up after the bath. She bats my hand away and throws a leg up over my hip. I immediately get hard. I didn’t come earlier tonight and thinking about her giving her skin like she did—it guts me and makes me crazy but despite all that, it makes me so fucking horny. I fall onto my back and groan and grip my shaft in my fist.

  “Fuck, Belén. What you do to me. I don’t know if I’m man enough to take it,” I say to the ceiling as I shake my dick and try to convince it to calm down.

  “Are you okay, Luciano?” Belén asks, suddenly sitting up.

  “Fuck, Bey, you scared me. Yeah, everything is fine. Just telling my cock to take it easy. You got the sexiest thighs and you were rubbing them all over me.”

  She smiles at me in the dark and I can feel my body relax.

  “I could give you a hand job, Lucky. I mean, if you think it’s okay. I’ve never done it before, but I’m a quick study.”

  “Thanks, Len. I love your hands on me, but I hate to say, we got to talk family stuff.”

  She looks at me apprehensively and shrinks back a bit. “You never want what I have to give. It always makes me feel ashamed. Like you think I’m disgusting for wanting you.” Her face looks so pained.

  It destroys me to make her feel bad. “Lenny, I want you more than anything in life. More than money, more than the Marines, more than I ever wanted the drugs. I don’t know how to convince you. But I can’t touch you like that and there’s some shit that I gotta tell you.”

  She sits back and pulls her knees into her chest. We’re squished together on the bed but I can tell she wants to keep her distance from me. She’s putting up walls before I even start talking. And I don’t blame her. Everything about me and Len hurts just as much as it feels good. We push it away but we can’t stop wanting it.

  “I won’t tell anybody what happened. I don’t think Jeremy would talk. He’ll probably be m
ore embarrassed than anything.”

  “Len, nothing bad happened tonight. Everybody was in the right—so get that out of your head. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. Nobody will talk.”

  “Then why are you upset?”

  I lean my head back and rub my fingers up my neck and over my jaw. I’m fucking frustrated as hell, enough to punch a hole through the wall.

  “Len, I need to tell you some shit about the family. It’s part of why I don’t make love to you and they shoulda told you from the get-go.”

  I pull a knee in too and wrap my arm around my leg; I crack my neck while I’m talking, trying to loosen up my body. “I don’t even know why I know. I guess my Ma musta told me or some shit and then they pulled me into the story young. I didn’t even get a choice about lying to you, it was more like they fed it to me.”

  I look up and Belén is cowering away from me. She’s shaking and tears are running down her face and she’s as white as the pillowcase.

  “Len, hold up! What’s wrong? What did I say?”

  “Luciano, are you my brother? Please don’t tell me you’re my brother!” she screams and covers her face. Her whole body shakes with sobs and I pull her into my arms. She fits next to my body so perfectly, it’s like she was made for me to hold.

  “Shhh! Baby girl, it’s okay,” I say, rocking her and stroking her head. “Shit, it ain’t that bad. But it is about incest in our family.”

  And I tell her about that heat wave in the Bronx the summer I was born. How my ma’s apartment building burnt down and she had to arrive out of the hospital with a newborn to her uncle’s house, a man she hardly knew but who was willing to take her in. How Betty was already living with him. He drove a livery cab and had nice clothes and always took Betty out dancing on the weekends. Betty and Awilda were young and clueless and pretty dependent on their deceased mother’s only sibling. Betty fell in love and she fell for him hard. She was just nineteen when she arrived and he was already a big man of New York. He swore up and down he’d take care of her and the baby. But what they didn’t bank on was all of the neighbors gossiping. Luis had introduced Betty as his niece when she’d arrived and now she was pregnant and Awilda had a new baby too, but no one ever saw their boyfriends—so, soon the whole neighborhood was talking. They said that Luis had taken advantage of them—the poor ignorant girls from the island. Somebody call the authorities, call the police, get Luis arrested before he corrupts all of our daughters. You know how they talk, Bey. It turned into hell for all of them. When really, my ma’s man had ditched her to go back to Puerto Rico and Luis was paying for all of my diapers and Similac and even the doctor’s appointments. And Betty, well, she was in love. Luis didn’t cheat on her and he stayed away from the gambling and drinking Brugal to save up for her bassinette. They were both really excited about the baby. They knew she would be a girl and Betty could already tell that she’d be smart from the way she felt inside her.

  But the neighbors talked trash and they cornered Betty and Awilda in the hallway. Told her the baby would be deformed and that it would come out retarded. They got Luis so on edge, he started hitting the bottle. Then he crashed the fancy Cadillac and lost the medallion. Got himself a summons and a deportation letter to boot. He pulled all the cash out of his sock drawer and the wad from his wallet. Kissed his nieces goodbye and got on the next flight back to Santo Domingo.

  Betty was so messed up she went into early labor. The beautiful baby girl was born and they named her Belén and took her home screaming from the hospital with a healthy set of lungs. They laid her in the crib next to me and they started figuring about how they would pay the rent and what they could do for work to support their babies. They swore to help each other out and overcome their circumstances. They also decided to hide the truth about Belén. Betty was brokenhearted because Luis was the first man she ever loved. But they didn’t want the bad luck to follow them around. So they made up a man who came from PR. Who romanced Betty blind, got her pregnant and fled. They made him up so well that even they believed the story.

  “So you and I, Belén, are related even more than you thought we were.”

  Belén watches me with her face drawn, her eyes dark and distant. She rubs the bottom of her nose and nods her head, but she’s looking off into space. I reach out my hand to her.

  She looks up and takes my hand and I pull her into my lap again. “You okay? It’s a lot of story. But I thought you needed to know the truth.”

  “Thanks for telling me, Lucky. I can’t believe she never told me,” she says, but she seems to be fixed on the distance and not really in the room with me.

  “She was trying to protect you, Belén. She loves you so much.”

  “She should have told me! It’s not okay to lie to your kid about who their father is. Maybe she’s ashamed of me. Maybe she wants to lie to herself because I’m something she’s ashamed of.”

  I didn’t tell her to make her hurt more. I told her to try to explain why I try to keep my distance from her.

  “I love you, Len. I always have. Nobody is ashamed of you, you’re the very best part of us. You’re the jewel, Bey. The whole rest of us are just a bunch of amateurs trying to keep up with you.”

  “So that’s the reason you won’t sleep with me, Lucky? Because if we slipped up, we’d create something terrible?”

  “It’s more than that, Bey. If I took you once, I’d never let go. I’d go smash Jeremy’s head in for even looking at you and I’d seriously fuck Jaylee up for touching you.”

  I pull her in closer and caress lightly by her temple. She’s frozen and distant and it seems like all hope drained right out of her.

  “You deserve the kind of life where your man parades you around and cares for you openly. You deserve to have kids and be proud of your family. Our love would be rejected by everyone we know—our family, our friends, the whole fucking neighborhood. What’d we do? Go into hiding and never see no one?”

  I kiss her sweet forehead.

  “Loving you, Bey, should not be something that’s hidden from the world. Your love should be a privilege, not a dirty secret. I want you to have a happy life, one that you’re proud of.”

  “I just want you, Lucky. I don’t care about anything else,” she says and buries her face in my neck. She doesn’t cry; she’s a strong girl. She just holds me tighter.

  I’m so sure of these things in my head but when I got my arms around her I can feel my will breaking. I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore. I just know that Belén feels so good I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to know what it’s like to face a life without her.

  Belén

  We stay locked in an embrace as the sun rises and the light changes in the room. There is nothing more frightening than letting him go. Not just back to the base or back overseas again, but really letting go—like stopping my infatuation with him. Did we resolve all of my problems last night and now it’s time to move on forever? I marry some guy and picture Lucky between my legs whenever I’m in bed with him? I scream someone else’s name but it will always be Luciano who I’m thinking about.

  I make Lucky coffee in the kitchen while Jeremy’s still sleeping.

  “Tell me about your deployment—where did you go?”

  “Iraq, Len. I’d rather not talk about it.”

  I turn and look at him over my shoulder as I butter some toaster waffles I found in the freezer.

  “Was it really bad? Traumatizing?” I ask him.

  “Nope. It was mostly boring, but I learned a lot of new skills over there.”

  Lucky is watching me with pain on his face. I’m confused because I thought we’d moved past something last night, I thought we were okay. His eyes seem to wander to the couch where the scene from last night played out.

  “Are you thinking about what happened? Did you lose all respect for
me?”

  “No, Bey, never. You know how many times I used sex to make myself feel better? Without giving a fuck about how the girl felt or what she hoped to get out of it? How can I disrespect you for wanting that release?”

  “Then why are you so pensive and quiet?” I ask, putting breakfast in front of him.

  “’Cause every time I see you I get scared it’s the last time I’m gonna hold you. Not cause I’m gonna die on a tour or any shit like that, but we’re getting older, Bey. Things are changing. Things changed last night.”

  “Because of what you told me?’

  “Naw, because maybe that was a breakthrough for you. Maybe you’ll move on and get married and I’ll see you on holidays. Jeremy’s whipped, but I doubt some husband of yours is gonna let you sleep in my bed or make out with me.” A little sad smile flashes across his face.

  “There’s a way to avoid that, Lucky. All you have to do is say it.”

  He takes a sip of his coffee and pulls my hand into his. He looks into my eyes and there is a spark of fire there. I know I’m in love with him but I can never really tell how Lucky loves me—if it’s the kind of love that makes your heart soar, or if it’s an obligatory love, like the love of brother.

  “What would happen if it didn’t last? Would we turn our parents against each other?”

  “We would be adults about it, move on with our lives.”

  “I’d never get over you, Bey. I don’t think that’s something I could recover from.”

  I look up and Jeremy is standing and staring; he slept in boxers in and a T-shirt and his hair is all messy. I pull my hand out of Lucky’s and hide it in my lap.

  “Hey Jeremy, good morning. Would you like some coffee?”

  He looks smug, like he caught us red-handed. But if Jeremy didn’t already know that there was something between Lucky and me, you’d think last night would have clued him in. If he’s still in the dark it’s because he’s walking around with his eyes closed.