Sizzling Seduction (21 page)

“Patrick, wake up, honey. You probably shouldn’t stay the night. We don’t want Dil on getting the wrong idea.”

Patrick groaned, but he sat up and rubbed his face before looking at her. He seemed to study her for several minutes before he spoke.

“I don’t feel good about leaving you. What if Bil comes back? I’d feel better if I was here with you.”

“I think you scared him…for tonight anyway…. He won’t be back. And you can’t be here 24/7. So I’m going to have to learn how to handle Bil on my own at some point.”

“Okay, love. But I just want you to know that I am serious about both you and Dil on and I want to be a permanent part of your lives.” He reached out and cupped her chin, softly stroking her cheek with his thumb.

“Patrick, you see al the drama I have going on with my ex. We have such a long way to go before we can real y start talking about permanence.”

He shook his head. “Do you want to know why I have been cal ing you
love
since almost the very moment I met you?” He peered into her eyes and waited patiently for her answer.

“I don’t know. I figured it was some guy thing.” You know how you guys use
baby
and
queen
and
shorty
as the everywoman moniker so you won’t slip up and mistakenly cal someone the wrong name. Don’t worry, I’m not mad at you, playa.” She tried to lighten the mood with a joke, but he stil wore his serious expression.

He shook his head. “No, love, that’s not it by a long shot.

I have cal ed you
love
because that’s what I felt from the first moment I set eyes on you. It caught me by surprise and I knew you weren’t ready to hear that. You would have run for the hil s and I would have never gotten that first date.” He caressed her cheek again.

“But me being me, I had to verbalize it, I had to find a way to say what I felt, even if I couldn’t actual y tel you. I hope I’ve been showing you al this time, as wel . But every time I cal ed you
love
I’ve been tel ing you that I love you.”

Her mouth dropped open. He couldn’t real y be serious, could he?

“I love you, Aisha, and that is permanent. I love you and I love Dil on.” He kissed her on the forehead. “Sleep on that, love.”

She got up and walked him to the door, knowing she would probably be up al night thinking about what Patrick had said to her.

A
isha started a pot of chamomile tea, hoping it would relax her mind and help her go to sleep so that she could get some much-needed rest. Just as she sat down on the love seat with a blanket, her tea and this month’s book club selection she heard a knock on the door.

“Who is it?” she asked. She looked through the peephole and saw Bil .

Oh. Hell. No.

She swal owed and her heart played the conga in her chest. She patted her chest to try to calm the beating, but it was no use. She nibbled at her lip and stepped back from the door.

“It’s me. Open the door. We need to talk, okay? This is getting ridiculous.”

She could hear the barely control ed anger in his voice and she tried to figure out the best words to use to try to get him to just go home and leave her alone. Her hand went to her neck as she thought about the way he had used a hold on her neck to slam her into the wal today. Just as she’d known when he’d punched her in the face that he would hit her again if she stayed. She knew that if she opened the door to talk to him he would use his hands and not his words.

She wished that Patrick were stil there.

“Go home, Bil . I’m not letting you in here. Go home.” She hated how shaky her voice sounded, despised the slight chatter in her teeth. But she was afraid.

He started pounding on the door and kicking it. Soon she saw the door rattling and moving and shaking. She knew it would be only a matter of time before he knocked the thing off the hinges.

Aisha ran into Dil on’s bedroom and locked the door.

She grabbed her sleeping child and they hid in the closet while she cal ed the police and then Patrick on her cel phone.

Before she could finish tel ing Patrick what was going on, Bil had already made it into the apartment and was trying to break down Dil on’s bedroom door.

Aisha kissed her son on the cheek. “Stay in the closet, sweetie, and don’t come out no matter what. Okay, sweetie? Promise me, okay?”

Dil on alternated between nodding and shaking his head. “Okay, Mommy.” He grabbed her arm. “Don’t go, Mommy. Don’t go.”

“Here, sweetie, take Mommy’s cel phone and use it in case the police or Patrick cal s back, okay?” She tried to be strong and put up a front for her child. He was shaking and so was she. Her chest felt as if it was caving in and her throat was so dry her words croaked out. She figured she wasn’t fooling anyone trying to be brave. But she had to try.

He continued to clutch her arm. But she loosened his fingers and left the closet to try to talk some sense into Bil .

Aisha stepped outside the door and put on as brave a face as she could. The fear from that afternoon hadn’t left her, but she knew she had to be strong.

She took a deep, gulping breath and then another. “Bil , our son is sleeping and I would appreciate it if you would keep it down out here. I don’t want you to wake him up.”

Bil appeared more crazed than she had ever seen him.

Before she could think better of her approach, he slapped her, knocking her to the floor.

“You don’t get to tel me what to do, you stupid, pathetic little bitch. Do you think you’re suddenly cal ing the shots because you’re spreading your legs for a fireman?” He kicked her and she tried to scoot away and block his kicks by flailing her own legs out and trying to kick him.

He just kept kicking and hitting her and screaming foul names. She drowned out his hateful voice and the pain by thinking of Patrick.

Patrick, who was nothing like Bil ; Patrick, whom she’d almost lost because she had let her fear control her.

Final y Bil stopped hitting her and started back toward Dil on’s room. Her heart stopped. Her child. Not her child!

She jumped up and grabbed his shirt to pul him back.

Tears were fal ing down her face so hard she could barely see. But she couldn’t let him get to Dil on. She just couldn’t.

Even if she couldn’t protect herself, she would protect her child.

“I’m not leaving my son in this whorehouse.” He made his move for Dil on’s door again.

“You’l have to go through me. You’l have to kil me to take my son out of here!”

The sick, evil expression that crossed his face let her know that he would gladly do it.

“Are you okay, little man? Talk to me, Dil on.” Patrick had never felt so much fear in his life and he never wanted to feel like this again.

“Yes. I’m fine. I’m just worried about my mom. He’s loud.

And he’s hitting. I can tel by the sounds he’s making. I want to go out and stop him.” Dil on’s voice sounded scared but brave.

Patrick knew the young boy would probably run out there to help. And he just didn’t know if Bil would end up hurting both the mother and the child. Any man who would put his hands on a woman in anger was capable of anything, in Patrick’s opinion.

“You stay put, Dil on. I’m on the way and my brothers, the police officers, are on their way, as wel . Your mom would be real y sad if something happened to you. You don’t want to see her sad, do you?”

“No, I don’t want her to be sad,” Dil on whimpered. “But he’s hurting her….”

Patrick broke every speed limit in the city and state, trying to make it to Aisha and Dil on. The guilt he felt for leaving them alone and vulnerable threatened to overwhelm him.

She lived only a few blocks away from him, but it seemed like hundreds as he raced to get there. He knew both of his police detective brothers were also on their way, along with other police officers. But he also knew that these kinds of domestic violence situations, where the abused spouse had left and moved on, often ended up with the woman dead because the abuser refused to leave the woman alone to be free and happy.

Even though Patrick was trying to keep a calm and soothing voice and tone for the scared little boy he had come to think of as his own son, he couldn’t help but worry that he and his brothers might get there too late.

Aisha knew the last thing she could do was let Bil go into Dil on’s room.

What would a sick abuser like Bil do, once he realized he could no longer control her with her fear for her own wel -

being? He would try to hurt her child. She knew he would, because he knew she cared more for her child than for anything else.

She grabbed hold of his arm and refused to let him go.

She had no idea she could grip anything so tightly. She tried her best to pul him away, but she managed only baby steps.

Bil laughed his ugly, harsh, hateful laugh and gave her one of his leering gazes. “What are you wil ing to do to save your little brat? You wil ing to spread them for me like you spread them for that fireman?”

Her grip loosened slightly and he snatched his arm away.

The thought of having Bil ever touch her in that way again sickened her to her core.

After knowing what real love and caring felt like in Patrick’s arms, she knew she would rather die than let Bil get close to her intimately again.

Just as his disgusting, creepy hand reached out and cupped her breast, he was snatched back and placed in handcuffs. Lawrence Hightower threw Bil against the wal and Jason read him his Miranda rights. Two uniformed police officers were also with the Hightower detectives.

When Patrick appeared seconds later, it took al four of the other men to keep him off Bil . Even with them holding him, he got off two solid punches to Bil ’s jaw.

“Dammit, Patrick, chil . You don’t want this fool to get off on a technicality,” Jason said and he pul ed his brother away.

“And we don’t want to have to take you in for assault.

This lowlife isn’t worth it. Go see about your woman and her child,” Lawrence stated.

Aisha felt numb and weary, but at least she had kept that monster away from her child.

The uniformed officers took Bil away, and Jason and Lawrence took her statement while Patrick comforted Dil on.

The bruises and blood on Aisha horrified Patrick. It took everything in him, every single nurturing instinct that he didn’t even know he had, to remain calm while he rocked the scared Dil on to sleep.

“Thank you, God, for keeping him safe.” Patrick threw his head to the sky and whispered a prayer.

He only wished that he could have just a few minutes alone with the bastard. Once he put Dil on to sleep, he went back into the living room to check on Aisha.

“Thank you so much, Lawrence and Jason, for getting here when you did. I don’t know what I would have done without my cop brothers. No more firemen-are-better-than-cop jokes for a month at least.”

“It’s al good, Patrick. Just take care of her and Dil on We’l catch you later.” Jason gave him a hug.

“Love you, man. Keep them safe.” Lawrence hugged him, too, and they both left.

Aisha went to the bathroom to wash her face and check out her bruises.

Patrick fol owed her to the bathroom. “Maybe we should take you to the hospital and have a doctor check you out.”

“I’m fine.”

“We need to take photographs of the bruises. We’l need them to build a case against him. Documenting what he did, along with the police report, should help get a restraining order and get his visitation rights revoked.”

He would have felt better if she had gone to the hospital, but he didn’t push it. He could tel she was trying to put on a brave face, and that made him love her al the more.

“I have a camera in the hal closet.”

He got the camera, then proceeded to take pictures of each and every bruise. As they stood in the bathroom and he photographed the bruises on her face, back and arms, his anger boiled and his heart ached with each one. He had never felt so helpless in his life. What he wanted to do he knew he couldn’t, or else he’d be in jail and useless to Aisha and Dil on.

He knew there was no way he could go on the way they had been going. The courtship was taking too long. He had found his family and he wanted them—his future wife and son—now.

Wrapping his arm around Aisha, he led her to the living room and they sat for a while in silence. Al he did was hold her.

She began to cry and he let her get it out. Each tear she shed made him want to cry himself, or, preferably, kil Bil Mil er.

When she had spent al her tears, Patrick pul ed her tightly to him. “Look at me, love.”

Her red, blurry eyes were swol en and one seemed as if it was getting the beginnings of a black eye, but she stil looked like the picture of beauty to him.

“I love you. I don’t want to spend one more moment without you. Please, love, take a chance on love just one more time and be my wife.” He rocked her slowly in his arms and felt the tears fal ing down his cheeks.

She couldn’t believe that he had actual y asked her to marry him. She knew without a doubt that she loved him.

But marriage seemed like something a long way away.

Something for when they had been dating a long enough time…

“I love you, too, Patrick. But maybe we should just take it slow—”

“Love, that’s not an option. Believe me when I say I don’t want to pressure you, especial y not now after what you’ve just been through. But I have plans for you, me, Dil on and the little brothers and sisters we’re going to give him.” He brushed his lips softly across her swol en ones. “I’m not leaving tonight. I’m not leaving the two of you unprotected
ever
again. Marry me, love. Marry me.”