Page 7 of Dealing Dirty
I’m going to let loose, forget what tomorrow brings, and give him everything I’ve got.
Just for one night.
My lower body grinds against him, revealing my bare thighs inch by inch. Taking note, he reaches behind me to unzip my dress and pulls it over my head in one fell swoop. My long hair feathers over my shoulders as his eyes fall straight to my full breasts clad in a lacy black bra.
I laugh at the wolfish grin he awards me just before scooping me up to stand. Wrapping my legs around his body, I groan at the hot press of him against my center. I wriggle in his arms, teasing and arching my back and bringing my breasts closer to his greedy mouth.
“Is that an invitation?” His husky voice elicits shivers.
I moan when the scruff peppered over his chin gently pricks my chest. His mouth covers the swell of my breasts, sending tingles down every nerve ending. He surprises me by sucking the top of one of them hard, then the other, moving up to give the same treatment to my collarbone.
“Derrick,” I breathe, tilting my head to give him more access. He’s everywhere, yet nowhere close to where I need him.
Give me, give me, please!I want to shout, but when he swings around to toss me back onto the bed, the lights begin to flicker.
Blanketing me with his body, I hear the soft rustle of his shirt as he removes it. The searing heat of his chest presses against my own, but I panic when I suddenly lose my vision altogether.
“Derrick.” My whisper is weak to my own ears, deepening my panic, and then…
It’s lights out.
Chapter One
Juliana
Three and a half months later
My stomach churns, waking me before the alarm on my phone begins to ping. The sound starts low and quiet, then rises to an obnoxious volume. I slap at the device beside my pillow to kill the noise. A soft meow comes from the center of my abdomen, and I smash the fluffy white hills of my down feather comforter with my hand until I see piercing green eyes staring back at me.
Oscar, my feline companion, purrs from his makeshift nest, stretching his paws toward me. I tickle his little toe-beans as his butt climbs high in the air before he flops back down, offering me another succession of purrs.
“Good morning, goofball,” I coo, scratching the top of his head.
Crawling out from under the comfort of my snowy white blankets, I swing my legs off the side of my bed and stretch my arms toward the sunshine pouring through the window.
It’s fall and the bright green leaves of the surrounding trees have slowly begun their shift to orange and yellow. Texas is such a volatile state. Sometimes the winters are bitter and bone-chilling, and other times they’re mild and enjoyable. It’s already mid-September, and we haven’t seen temperatures dip below seventy degrees yet. I’m holding out hope that it’s a milder one.
Every day starts and ends the same. Each morning, I wake to the bitter memory that Bruce is dead to me. At night, I take sleeping pills to force myself through the nightmares. The familiar weight in my stomach is heavy and painful, and I slap at the tears already staining my cheeks.
I beg myself to stop doing this—to stop caring.
On the outside, I do my best to project the same silly Juliana everyone knows and loves, but it’s nearly impossible to keep up the charade. Bruce wasn’t just a boss to me and Cassidy; he was our friend and someone we had once considered family.
I grab my glasses off the nightstand, dangling them from my fingertips as I force my feet to carry my exhausted body to the fridge.
“Ah!” My vision blurs and sharpens as my dry eyes try to focus, and I grumble, “I’ve really got to stop sleeping with my contacts in.”
A quick pit stop in the bathroom to change them out and wash my face brightens my mood a bit. It’s ten o’clock in the morning, and I’ve got a few errands to run before starting my new position at The Pound this evening.
My phone pings from the counter, lighting up with several messages from Adrián. He called yesterday to let me know he’ll be in town visitingMamáandPapá, and it won’t be long before he tracks me down and forces me out of my cave.
The Ramirez family was once a tight-knit unit. There wasn’t a single day of my younger years that one of my siblings wasn’t watching over me or taking me out into the big wide world to corrupt me with sweets and spoiling me to no end.
A light smile touches my lips at the memories. Perks of being the baby.
Adrián and Isabel were the closet to me in age, even though my sister is twelve years older than I am. We were very poor, often eating whatever scrapsMamácould snag from the market, andPapáworked tirelessly just to keep our water running.
I’ve begged them both to let me help them move out of that old, worn-down house to somewhere closer, on the safer side of town, but they’re stubborn to a fault. They have a certain pride that’s associated with living in our family home. They’ve worked so hard to keep it intact, and once my siblings left, it was all they had left.
