“For fucks sake,” came Austin’s voice. “Can you two keep your hands off each other for five minutes? Dinner’s ready.”
They broke apart and Amanda stared up at Dallas, both of them panting. Her pussy ached to be filled by the big dick pressing into her and she bit her lower lip when he squeezed her ass. “Tonight, Amanda, tonight I’ll give you everything you ever wanted in a man, because, mi querida, you’re everything I ever wanted in a woman. Now come on, the food is ready and I don’t want my mom to come out here looking for us.”
Dazed with passion and feeling like she was floating on a cloud of lust, Amanda allowed Dallas to lead her back inside and wondered how the hell her heart was going to survive when the night was over and she had to quit her job and never see Dallas again.
Mrs. Ortega gave Amanda a final hug before she left for the night. “It was so good to see you, Amanda. I’m so happy Dallas finally has a good woman in his life.”
Flushing, Amanda hugged his mother back and felt a slight pang of guilt for lying to the older woman. “Well, someone has to keep him in line.”
“Mom,” Dallas said in an exasperated voice and tugged his mother away from Amanda. “You’re making her uncomfortable.”
It took everything Amanda had not to glare at Dallas, to tell him that if anyone was making her uncomfortable it was him. All evening he’d been playing the part of the perfect, attentive, caring boyfriend. But no matter how real it felt, it was all an act. She just hated that he was using her for not only sex, but to get his mother off his back.
She gave a small wave as Mrs. Ortega was finally escorted out of the house by Austin. He seemed to know something wasn’t quite right between them and he’d been giving her searching looks all evening. As he left he nodded his head in her direction, suspicion darkening his eyes.
Dallas closed the door and leaned back against it with a sigh. “Thanks for being so nice to my mother.”
Shaking her head, she crossed her arms and glared at him. “It’s easy to be nice to your mother. She’s a kind, caring, honest person who doesn’t deserve a son who lies to her. I mean really, Dallas, was all of that bullshit necessary? You have me for the night, but it’s not fair to drag your family into our mess. On Monday I’m gone, end of story. This, us, it’s nothing.”
His gaze locked on hers and fire snapped in his eyes. When he spoke his voice came out low and tense. “We are not nothing. We are everything.”
Her lower lip trembled at the way he said that, like he meant it. “See, yet more bullshit. I’ve watched you wind dozens of women around your finger with manipulation and charm. I won’t be used like that. You may have my body, but you can’t blackmail your way into my heart.”
Instead of yelling at her or reacting with anger he crossed the room and held her in his arms, ignoring her weak struggle to get away. While she’d like to blame the few glasses of sangria she’d had with dinner, in truth, being held by Dallas was heaven. No matter how pissed her mind was, her body was one hundred percent on board with getting naked ASAP. It didn’t help that he smelled so good, felt so good, and when he touched her like this it felt like he cared.
“I meant what I said, Amanda. I want you for more than this weekend.”
“Yeah, right,” she muttered against his chest.
He sighed and reached for her hair, slowly pulling it out of her bun with a gentle touch. “I love your hair. It is so long and silky. You have no idea how many times I’ve watched you, wondering what it would feel like to have all this glorious hair against my body while we make love.”
She tried to steel herself against the way his words made her heart flutter. “Is this how you get women in bed? Flatter them, tell them what you think they want to hear, treat them like they matter? No wonder your girlfriends get so pissed when you dump them for the next bimbo who throws herself at you.”
The slide of his fingers through her hair was heavenly, and she tried to keep from softening against him. “The last woman I had a relationship with was Tammy. I did date those other women, but that was it. Date, as in singular, one night only. After the number Tammy did on me I wasn’t in the mood for another relationship. Do you know why I broke up with her?”
Though his touch was still gentle, she could easily hear the pain in his words. She remembered Tammy, the leggy redhead with the perfect runway figure and the face of a porcelain doll. He’d broken up with her around a month before Amanda had started working and there had been rumors about some infidelity, but at the time the only thing Amanda cared about was that she had a good paying job for the first time in nine months. It was only after that she’d gotten settled into her office that she had to deal with what seemed like an endless parade of beautiful women coming into and going out of Dallas’s life. The phone calls with the women pleading for Amanda to make Dallas call them back were the worst and just the memory made her stiffen in his arms.
“You cheated on her, right?”
He pushed away from her as if she’d slapped him and for a moment she actually felt guilty for the pain she’d no doubt put on his face. “What? You think I cheated on her?”
Uncomfortable, she shrugged and looked at the Spanish tile beneath her bare feet. “It’s none of my business.”
“No, I didn’t cheat on her.” His voice was cold and she looked up in surprise, realizing she’d really offended him. “I would never cheat on a woman, not after I saw what my father’s constant infidelity did to my mother. You think that after growing up, watching my mother’s heart being broken over and over again by that bastard I’d do it to any woman? You really think I’m that big of a piece of shit?”
Blinking in shock she took a step towards him. “Dallas…I—”
He shook his head and turned his back on her. “Save it, Amanda. I thought you knew me better than that. I would never force a woman to do something she didn’t want to do. I thought… Well it doesn’t matter what I thought. You obviously have no idea who I am and I obviously have no idea what kind of judgmental bitch you really are. Of course you’d never stoop to date someone like me. I’m not cultured and educated like you are. I don’t always have the right words to say or the right things to do. You’re perfect and I’m a fuckup. Feel free to leave. I’ll set you up two months severance pay and a job with one of my friends, but don’t bother to come into work on Monday.”
The hard thump of her heart seemed to roar in her ears as she watched Dallas walk away from her, stunned by what had just happened.
Chapter 5
Dallas sat on the edge of the dock looking out over glowing lights of Miami reflecting off the water with unseeing eyes, his mind wrapped up in the past. His father had been one of the most selfish people God had ever created, a man solely devoted to his own pleasure and happiness. When Dallas had been young he’d worshiped him, seeing him through the eyes of a child as a hardworking salesman who managed to make it home to his family once or twice a month. His mother had always made up excuses for his father’s absence, always reminding the boys how lucky they were to have a dad who provided for them.
His mother, bless her heart, always wanted to believe the best in people. They’d lived in a somewhat safe section of Chicago, but as the years had gone on Dallas had realized that every time his dad returned home from a “trip” with presents and expensive gifts, he was actually bribing his mother, not giving her things because he loved her. Then, when Dallas was eleven, he’d gone through his father’s suitcase, looking for a present, and had instead found pictures of his dad having sex with dozens of different women. It had sickened him so much he’d lost his mind and had tried to kick his father out of the house.
Instead of leaving, his father beat him and, for the first time in his life, his mother had stood up to his father, telling him to get the hell out and not come back. Soon after that the financial support dad had given them vanished just like the man and his uneducated mother from a small town in Texas had found herself alone, raising three teenage boys who had more than their fair share of anger. Luckily they belonged to a good church which not only gave his mother a job, but a few of the men who belonged to the congregation also took Dallas, Austin, and Huston from then on, acting almost as surrogate fathers. One of them, an old black man with a face as wrinkled and dried out as a raisin, ran a boxing school in their neighborhood. It was there that the Ortega boys had learned to fight, learned to channel their bottomless anger into something productive.
But tonight his anger had slipped its leash and he’d lashed out at the only woman who’d ever made him feel complete.
He was such a fuckup.
Dallas must have said those words aloud because a moment later Amanda’s voice came from behind him. “Well, I don’t know if you’re a total fuckup. Maybe just a little bit.”
Disbelief filled him and he had trouble taking a deep breath as she sat down next to him and swung her legs over the edge of the dock. Her hair was still down and it floated about in the soft breeze coming off the ocean. He wanted to tell her he was sorry, that he didn’t mean what he’d said, but his usual easy charm had vanished, leaving him silent like a tongue tied teenager.