WickedTakeover (7 page)

Ah. His and Ricardo’s hug really made sense now. Lauren
folded her arms on the table, hungry for information about Dante. “You’re from
West Palm Beach?”

“God no. Little Havana. My parents, six brothers and two sisters
still live there.”

“Wow. Eight siblings?” That was hard to imagine since she’d
been an only child. “Where did you fall in the pecking order?”

“I’m the oldest.” He leaned back in his chair and rested his
hands on his hard belly. “That made me the boss.”

She laughed. “You’re never going to let me forget what I
said that first day.”

“I told you there’d be punishment.”

Lauren arched one eyebrow. “I haven’t been that bad.”

“Hey, you’ve been downright docile. Staying out of things.
Hiding in the office.” His smile hung on for a moment then faded. He wasn’t
playful any longer or open, masking whatever was going on inside his head.

Confused at his change in mood, Lauren asked, “What?”

Dante hesitated then asked, “How’s the job search coming?”

A sudden pang of sadness reminded Lauren of the reality of
their situation. This wonderful night was probably a one-time deal. Even if
they got together again during the next weeks, that wouldn’t come close to
being forever. She’d go on with her life. He’d move on with his. Not wanting to
talk about it, she shrugged.

“Your search for a buyer going as bad?” he asked.

Worse. “I’ve put out some feelers. The attorney who handled
Frank’s estate said he’d help. I’d only have to take on three jobs, if I could
get them, in order to pay his fee.”

Dante made a noise of disgust, matched by his deep frown.
“If you let it, fucking legal shit will steal your soul and integrity.”

His sudden anger surprised Lauren. He was the most laid-back
person she’d ever known. She wondered if someone had sued him and he’d lost
everything. If that’s why he didn’t seem to worry about money or covet it. He
knew it only caused problems.

“I told him I’d handle things myself,” she said.

“Smart move. You need to let the company pay you a salary so
you can survive until you sort things out.”

She pushed back in her chair. “The parlor’s barely making
it. I don’t want it to go into debt on my account.”

“Take what you need from my salary.”

“I can’t.”

“You could pay me back.”

“How? My job was outsourced. Every human resources position
I’ve applied to has dozens of candidates who’re scrambling like I am. The
multinational that’s taken over the internal HR jobs isn’t hiring. Even Walmart
doesn’t want me to run one of their checkouts.”

Dante sighed. “You’re making this worse for yourself than it
has to be. Frank gave you the place so you’d have something to count on.”

“Count on? Are you serious?” Lauren was so suddenly pissed
she crossed her arms and squeezed them to keep her anger in. “Clearly, you
didn’t know Frank.”

“I knew him very well.”

“No you didn’t. Not like I did—for the short time I knew
him.”

Dante’s expression changed. “Look, I didn’t mean to bring up
anything bad. I’m sorry. We can drop it.”

Lauren didn’t want to. All of her life, well-meaning people
had made excuses for Frank when he hadn’t deserved their support. They’d told
her there had to be a reason why he’d acted the way he had. That she’d
misunderstood or wasn’t giving him a chance. Screw that.

“I don’t want to drop it,” she said to Dante. “You need to
know what kind of man he really was.”

“Lauren, I—”

She interrupted, “Frank abandoned my mom and me when I was
five. He left for work one day but never showed up there and didn’t come home
either. Didn’t call. Nothing. My mom went nuts. She thought he was dead. Social
Security wasn’t as certain since there was no body, so there weren’t any
survivor benefits for seven years when he was finally declared dead. Since my
mom hadn’t been working at the time he’d taken off, there was no money coming
in. No savings either. She had to go on welfare so we wouldn’t be on the
street. She worked as many jobs as she could to take care of me. I turned six,
seven, ten, twenty, still no word from Frank.”

Lauren tensed, recalling those awful years, her own
confusion as to what had happened, how she must have caused it, her mom’s
initial panic then heartache over a man she’d truly loved.

“All that time we never knew if he was still alive or not,”
she said. “We guessed if he was still around, he’d changed his identity and
started a new life with a new last name. That was the dad I got. That was the
man I knew. He turned his back on his own child. He didn’t even have the
decency to come to my mom’s funeral. No way did he leave me the parlor so I’d
have something to count on. My guess is he was staring at his own mortality and
figured he better do something decent before he died so he wouldn’t burn in
hell.”

She’d spoken quietly, no doubt so the other diners wouldn’t
overhear, but her body trembled with outrage and a lifetime of hurt.

If Frank had been here right now, Dante would have slugged
him for causing Lauren so much pain. No father should do that to a child no
matter how fucked up the guy’s life had been.

Dante had known that when Frank had confessed his past. At
the time, Dante had already liked the guy and wasn’t sure what to make of what
he’d done to his family. It was so surreal that Lauren hadn’t even fit into the
equation. She’d been no more than a name, an abstract concept. Not a
flesh-and-blood woman whose sorrow now tightened his gut and stole his breath.

He would have gathered her in his arms to let her know it
was okay to be pissed—she certainly had the right—but Ricardo took just that
moment to return with the beer, water and appetizers. A tray of
bocaditos
,
deep-fried wedges of pastry filled with a variety of beef, ham, chicken and
cheese, or any number of other combinations spiced to perfection.

“
Disfrutar
,”Ricardo said. Spanish for enjoy.

Dante wanted that for Lauren more than anything. Once his
cousin was out of earshot, he scooted his chair closer to hers and rested his
hand on her thigh. “You okay?”

“No. Yeah. I don’t know.” She uncrossed her arms and laced
her fingers through his. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone off like that.”

“Hey, it’s all right.” He squeezed her hand gently. “You
have every reason.”

Her shoulders slumped. “I want to hate him. I mean really
hate him, but I can’t.”

Dante figured if there was consciousness after death and
Frank was listening now, that was the worst punishment the man could have
gotten. To realize what a fine woman his daughter was and that he’d missed out
on knowing her. “He wasn’t a perfect man by any standard,” Dante murmured. “But
he did talk about you quite often. How he regretted what he’d done.”

Her eyes widened. “You knew?”

“He told me after he learned he had heart problems. I
suggested he get in touch with you. He was too afraid. I know what I’m about to
say is no excuse,” Dante added, “but when he took off, leaving you and your
mom, he didn’t know how to be a man. How to love. He went through a lot of
shit, mainly drugs and living on the street, before he cleaned up. By the time
he did, a lot of time had passed and he thought it was too late to go back or
to be Frank Simms any longer. He started a new life, just as you’d suspected.
New last name, identity and all that. During his last years, he tried to make
up for everything he’d done earlier, even making arrangements in his will to
pay back the survivor benefits you and your mom got so you wouldn’t be burdened
with it. Frank didn’t have any illusions about making peace with God. He wanted
to do that with you.”

Lauren’s mouth trembled. “The attorney sent me a note from
him along with the others papers. I still haven’t read it. I’ve refused to.”

“It’s okay.”

“No it’s not.”

“You can read it when you’re ready.”

She smiled sadly. “I don’t want to talk about this any
longer. I’m ruining your meal. This was supposed to be fun.”

“Who said it won’t be? We’ll talk about whatever you want or
we don’t have to talk at all.”

“I don’t mind talking. What is that?” She gestured to the
bocaditos
.

Dante didn’t comment about her change in subject. Wanting to
make her feel comfortable, he smiled. “Something good.”

He selected one with white cheese bubbling out of its
corners. His guess was it also had chicken inside. He lifted the treat but
stopped before giving it to Lauren. Frowning, he said, “You did say you like
meat, right?”

She moved their hands from her thigh to his, near his groin.
“Depends. What kind we talking about?”

He leaned closer and brushed his lips over hers. Lauren’s
breath spilled out on a wanting sigh. Dante murmured, “You have a dirty mind.”

“You have no idea.” Her lips moved over his with her words.
“I’ve fantasized about you for weeks.”

Surprised, he pulled back. “Really?”

“Why do you think I was holed up in Frank’s office so much?”
Pausing, she glanced around. Dante noticed that Ricardo wasn’t anywhere near
and the other diners were busy with their own conversations. Turning back to
him, Lauren spoke just above a whisper, “I was masturbating.”

He laughed softly. “You were not.”

“You’ll never know, will you?” She wrapped her free hand
around his, tongued the bocadito into her mouth and let out a lusty moan at
what he sensed was the pastry’s flavor.

If this was how Lauren ate when she let loose, Dante
couldn’t wait until she was on her knees between his legs, loving his boys and
cock. His rod stiffened as she licked pastry flakes from the corners of her
mouth. She wore a look of dazed delight, just as she had when he’d been
pounding his rod into her sweet, tight cunt.

He lifted another
bocadito
to her mouth, teasing the
seam of her lips with it. A look of carnal and physical hunger flooded her
face. She cooed, “What’s inside this one? The same as the other?”

“Let’s find out.” Dante bit it in half. The taste of beef
and onions made his taste buds sing. “Meat,” he sighed then covered her mouth
with his, transferring the food.

Lauren moaned delicately this time, probably so the other
diners wouldn’t hear. Easing back, she chewed and swallowed then leaned toward
him again to lick his lips.

They fed each other, washing the bites down with beer and
water, until the tray was empty. When it was, Lauren sucked his fingers clean.
Dante did the same with hers. Then they simply stared at each other, smiling
frequently for no reason at all. Or maybe there was one.

Dante sensed Lauren felt as comfortable with him as he did
with her. The night was magic. More than he’d expected. An instrumental with
castanets, drums and Spanish guitars played, the beat torrid, thickening his
blood. The humid air didn’t cool it, nor did Lauren. She’d toed off her
sneakers and ran her foot over his toes.

“I like eating with you,” he said.

Lauren gave him a kittenish look. “We haven’t really eaten
that way, have we?”

She was talking about them nude and stretched out, her head
facing his feet so her mouth could caress his balls and rod, while his tongue
took care of her cleft and clit. “We will. In a way you won’t be able to
imagine.”

Even with the subdued lighting, Dante saw her pale skin
flush. She breathed, “Yeah?”

“I hope you’re hungry,” Ricardo said, suddenly at their
table with their entrees.
Boliche
, which was beef roast filled with
hard-boiled eggs and chorizo sausage, accompanied by a mound of Spanish rice
and beans.

Lauren stared at her plate as if she were having a religious
experience. Dante could only wonder how many meals she’d skipped in order to
pay her bills.

“You need anything else?” Ricardo asked.

A little privacy. Lauren looked reluctant to dig in while
Ricardo hovered over her. “We’ll let you know,” Dante said. “I’m sure you have
other tables.”

His cousin got the hint. He snickered quietly and took off.

Dante handed Lauren her fork. “Go on. Eat. All of it. I want
that plate cleaned. If it’s not, there will be hell to pay.”

She ran the tines of her fork over his arm. His hair stood
on end.

“Are we talking about another spanking?” she asked. “You
tying me up? Doing it in a public place?”

Clearly, she hadn’t lied about fantasizing. “That’s not
hell,” he assured. “That’s heaven. If—and that’s a big if—you get it. I see
anything left on your plate and you—”

“I’m eating.” She shoveled a forkful of the
boliche
into her mouth, chewed then moaned so loudly the couple closest to them looked
over. “Oh my god,” she blurted, “this is so good.”

It was. Watching her obvious pleasure increased Dante’s
appetite, physically and sexually. They ate, talked, laughed and smiled at each
other. The moment she was finished, he ordered another plate for her, ignoring her
protests. Lauren finished half of it before pushing the rest away.

“I can’t eat another bite.” She sagged in her chair and
cradled her belly. “I wish I could, but I can’t. Damn.”

“Relax. Ricardo will bring you a doggie bag. No biggie.”

She sighed. “You don’t worry about anything, do you?”

“Not now.” There was a time when he’d been where she was.
Pressed against the wall by life, not knowing what to do next, chasing a dream
that hadn’t really been right for him at all.

Lauren looked as though she wanted to ask what he’d meant.
Before she could, Ricardo was at their table again. Dante handed his cousin her
plate. “Pack this up so Lauren can take it with her.”

“You got it.”

“Wait. Did Tomás make his
brazo gitano
and
turrōnes
today?”

“A whole stack. We got a few left.”

“Throw all of them in a bag for Lauren.”