The gentle sway of my body pulled at the consciousness of my mind. I scrunched up my face a little in annoyance. I wanted to sleep a little longer. The past couple of weeks had me always clinging to the edge of exhaustion, "Quinta, wake-up..." The voice was smooth and soft. My body continued to sway and I let out a small rumble, hoping to get whoever it was to leave me alone. I needed sleep and to be left alone.
My eyes fluttered open as the rocking of my body continued, "Quinta. Wake up." The voice was firm now, sounding on the verge of a growl. I heard the familiar accent and my eyes popped open, the haze of sleep disappearing from my mind. I remembered myself and where I was. I must have fallen asleep while I had waited. I felt embarrassed that he had caught me in such a vulnerable state. He pulled back from me.
I stared up at Miles, forgetting myself for a moment. I simply feasted on the sight of him in his black t-shirt, leather jacket thrown over his shoulder with one hand. I hadn't realized how hungry I had been for him until he was standing in front of me. My eyes drifted to his lips and my stomach fluttered, remembering how they had felt, how they had tasted. It was the fact that they were pressed into a grimace that shook me from my ogling.
"Where were you?" The question tumbled from mouth.
"Out." He unlocked his front door and pushed his way into his apartment, stepping around me as if I was nothing but an obstacle in his way. I awkwardly rose up from the ground, following after him. I watched him throw his jacket onto the couch, never looking in my direction, "What are you doing here, Quinta?"
I sucked in a breath, preparing to give him the speech I had been practicing in my head while I had waited for him. I was hit with a distinctly feminine scent. My mouth snapped shut and my beast growled low as I took in another deep breath. He had been with a female, and from the smell of it not that long ago. White hot jealousy rolled through my veins, and I glared at the back of Miles head as he fished a bottle of water from the fridge.
"You stink." He turned to me with a dry look, and slight confusion. My beast wanted to track down the female he had been with and tear out her throat. I pushed back against her, curling my fingers into tight fists as I continued to glare at Miles, "You could at least have the decency to shower off before going into public, instead of subjecting other people to the stench of whatever over perfumed females company you keep."
"You really don't have a right to be upset." He remarked.
"I'm not upset. I was just giving you a tip for the future, you know if you cared to be courteous of the people around you." I shrugged my shoulders, trying to come off as though I didn't care but I did care. The stench of the other female hung between us like an invisible line drawn in the sand. My stomach twisted into knots. I could taste the venom of my jealousy on my tongue.
"Uh-huh." Miles twisted off the cap of his water, tossing it onto the counter, "You don't see me complaining about the stink of males on you. In fact, if I recall correctly the night we met, you were with one of your males. So don't start playing jealous now. It's not like you care anyway, right?" He gave me a pointed look before taking a long drink.
I ground my teeth together, eyes narrowing, "That's my job, prick. What's your fucking excuse?" He was being an ass. I wanted to turn around and walk out the door but I wasn't here for me. This was for the kids, I had to remind myself of that. However that didn't stop the niggling of guilt that entered my stomach. I hadn't returned to work but I had sidled up to my fair share of males, flirting and touching to add to the fantasy of the brothel, to keep all eyes off of me. I resisted the urge to smell myself to see if their scents lingered on me. I narrowed my eyes further, I still had a reason and he was out with some female like I didn't even exist.
His expression didn't even flicker as he stared at me, his eyes hard like flint and as cold as ice. "You have your work. I have mine and what I do for mine is of no concern of yours." His voice grated over my skin, no longer soothing and warm but harsh and freezing.
I ground my teeth together and my beast growled low. It was fair to say despite my jealousy, which was like a blade in my gut, twisting deeper and deeper, that Miles was right. I did what I did because I had too, and I couldn't fault him for the same thing, as much as I wanted too. It was a double edged sword and it pissed me off. We stared each other down, the tension crackling between us. This was bound to turn into a tireless argument and that's not what I had come here to do.
I forced myself to swallow all the angry words that sat on the tip of my tongue, "Fine. I won't say anything more about it, fair?" My words were anything but soft. I wasn't going to pretend that I was happy about the female scent that clung to him but I could shove my instinct back for the time being, long enough to have some kind of civil conversation. Right now, Instinct was telling me to go to Miles, and rub myself all over him until nothing of the other female remained. I didn't think he would appreciate that from the look on his face. Still it was hard to maintain self-control around him, which only made me angrier with him. I curled my fingers inward, nails pressing into the soft flesh of my palm.
"What are you doing here, Quinta?" His question came out more pointed, as he ignored my offer for a truce.
I waited a moment, releasing a deep sigh of annoyance before answering him, "I need you to come with me. The kids want to see you and they aren't happy with me because of how everything went down." I crossed my arms over my chest. I hated that I needed to get him, to ask him for help. I hadn't wanted that. I wanted to be able to do it by myself but I was at my wits end.
He gave a rather low and rumbling sounding chuckle that had me looking at him warily. "You want my help? You want me to help you after everything you said and did?" His words were amused but his eyes were cold and hard as they bore into mine. "I don't fucking think so. They are your family and your problem, remember?" I had to hide the sharp hurt I felt as that poison was thrown back in my face. "You made my position quite clear, Quinta. I'm just playing by the rules you gave me." There was a hostile edge to his tone that made me want to shrink into myself. "Coming to ask me for help? Unbelievable." The look he gave me made me feel almost dirty and disgusting and I sucked in a sharp breath and took a half step backwards before I steeled myself.
"I came to you because they miss you, because they want to see you and they are treating me like shit because of it!" Tears burned my eyes. My family was falling apart and I was terrified I wouldn't be able to put it back together without him. I resented him for that. Before he came along everything had been fine and now it was falling apart at the seams.
"Not my familia, not my problem. You said it yourself, Quinta." The words nearly crackled with the ice that coated them thickly. I pressed my lips together as my chin trembled against the coldness he was showing me. This is what I had expected of him in the beginning but now I had forced him into it by my own hands. I watched him move towards his living room window, as if completely dismissing me.
I found myself following him. "Please, Miles." I couldn't help the pleading that came out but I would beg him on my hands and knees if it meant I could fix what had been broken in my small family.
"I opened up to you, Quinta." His tone was empty as his long fingers traced several oddly shaped rounded stones that sat on his window sill. "Told you about mi amour and what happened to her. I told you that so you would look at me and and know I would fight to protect you and your familia as long as there was breath in my body." I pressed my lips together tightly as his thumb gently and lovingly brushed over the surface of the small stones. "You threw it in my face." His words were harsh and painful to my ears. I didn't want to be reminded of that, reminded of his pain. What had happened to him had been horrible and I could never imagine losing one of my siblings like he lost his sister.
"I-I..." I didn't know what to say to that. I didn't know how to respond.
"Give me a reason." The words were said low and I swallowed hard as he tucked his hands in his pockets, his shoulders a stiff line with tension.
"What?" I didn't understand.
"Give me a reason to want to go because you needing me is not enough. It won't ever be enough again." His words squeezed my heart tightly, sending pain through me at what had become of the bond between us. What I had turned it into. He had been there simply for me, because he wanted me, and I shoved him away and now that I needed him he no longer wanted me.
Be careful of your words and actions, Quinta. Once they have been burned they are twice as shy. Wasn't that what my father used to say? I could barely remember now.
I felt exposed like a raw nerve, unsure what I could do and what I could say to convince him. He slowly turned around as stared at me, with a cold glare, waiting for me to move or speak. He had tried to gain my trust by sharing something personal, something precious with me and I had responded the way I had. I tried to put myself in his shoes. How would I feel if I exposed the deep core of myself to a person only to have them shut me out completely and entirely? How would I feel if I told someone my darkest secret and biggest regret and they turned their back on me? I understood his anger towards me, and I deserved it.
I wrung my hands nervously in front of me, understanding I was going to have to take a chance. I was going to have to repay his vulnerability with my own. It was hard for me, but I knew I wasn't special. It had to have been hard for Miles to share that piece of himself with me.
"My mother sold me to a pimp to pay off her debt to one of her many dealers." I blurted it out unceremoniously. I waited for him to speak but he remained silent. He wasn't going to stop me. I squeezed my eyes shut as horrible memories of that day coming up from the dark places I had buried them in my mind, "I was thirteen. These men came and dragged me out of the house, ripped me away from my family. I was still just a kid. I was scared. I was confused." My voice shook and my lips trembled. The pain of that day never went away, it faded but the scar of it remained and some days it ached.
He said nothing, his eyes guarded and his expression unreadable. Is that how I had looked at him? Is that how he had saw me when he told me of the baby sister he loved and lost? If it was then I could understand the anger, it felt horrible to expose myself like that and have that unreadable expression in reply. I shoved it away. I needed to keep going or it would never come out. My insides shook and I strained hard to keep the shaking on the inside. I didn't want him to see me like that. I wanted to be strong.
"They dolled me up, dressed me in some trashy lingerie that didn't leave much to the imagination and shoved me on a stage with a bunch of other girls that had taken from the slums. It was auction. We were a commodity, no different than their food or drugs. These pimps had seen an opportunity to make marks off of us and took it." Still thinking about the fact that my mother had conspired with a pimp to give me over to take away some of her debt, burned me. It was something I could never forgive. It was also something I had constantly feared for my sisters. I never wanted them to know the pain, and fear that I had felt that day. There was no betrayal worse than that of a mother forsaking her child, knowing exactly what was to happen. She had known and had still given me away.
"If it hadn't been for Mama..." I blinked hard, trying to keep back the urge to cry. I wanted to be strong, "If she hadn't been there that day, I don't want to think of what would have happened to me." I knew I would have probably ended up like my mother. A drugged up whore, looking for her next fix to help numb the pain and horrors of what that life brought. "She bought me from those men, saved me for a horrible life. Still, even though I love her as though she were the one who had given birth to me..." And I did. I loved Mama. She saved me and given me so many opportunities to make a better life for myself and my siblings. Those were things I could never repay her for. "I didn't want this life. I do what I need to do to survive. I do what I do to make a better way for the kids. But this is not the girl I wanted to be. This is not how I wanted to live my life. I never wanted to be someone's property." I thumped my fist against my chest, my voice shaking.
"I've spent my life knowing that I am not free, that I might never be free. I've always been a commodity that people could buy with enough marks, whether it has been my time or my body." It burned, so deep and strong in my stomach. The one person who I should have been able to trust completely had sold me for a way to continue feeding her addiction. How could I trust anyone after that? "That should have never happened, my mother should have loved me, protected me. I never should have known this world but because her drugs were more important to her than me, here I am." I couldn't stop the tears now, they were flowing freely down my cheeks. I couldn't see through the blur my vision was and I wiped at my face, wanting to stay strong but it was so hard.
I was pulled into strong and warm arms arms without a word. I couldn't hold back the sob that broke in my throat. I simply pressed my face into his chest, and let myself fall apart in his arms. I could remember the first couple of weeks I had been in Mama's care, I had cried myself to sleep almost every night. It was during those nights, when I had longed for my siblings and for familiarity, that I slowly built a wall around my heart. I never wanted to feel as broken as I had. I never wanted to let anyone close enough to betray me as she had.
Now, I was seeing how lonely it had left me. I was still that young confused and scared girl in my heart. I had never given that part of me the chance to heal from what had been done. Instead, I had snapped and snarled at anyone who had gotten too close like wounded animal in cage. I didn't want to keep living like that. I could see now that it wasn't only hurting myself but it was hurting the kids. I was keeping them from experiencing the good things because I was so afraid of the bad things. I had hurt Miles. I had hurt the kids. I had hurt myself.
"I'm sorry. I am so sorry." I sobbed, clinging to him, not sure I could stand without him there and He tightened his grip, holding me close. I was terrified of what trusting him meant, of what that would mean for me. He had the potential to hold my entire world in his hands and how could I trust him not to drop it? To not crush it or destroy it? My mother had destroyed my world once, how could I trust anyone after that?
Heaving sobs escaped me and I held his shirt tightly in my hands, unwilling to let him go because despite the swirlign emotions within me, despite the pain I felt and the years of sadness I was unleashing, he was my calm port in the storm. He was my rock i clung too while the ocean around me threatened to drown me underneath massive waves. The longer I clung to him the less frantic and horrible the ocean seemed. My sobs slowly trailed off and he continued to hold me, his grip never moving and never faltering.
"Her name is Ginessa." His voice was a low rumble that vibrated against me and I closed my eyes tightly, wanting to hold onto the feeling of safety and comfort but it was hard when the female's scent filled my lungs a it hung off his form. "She is my friend. I stayed at her place because I couldn't come back here without the kids." Realization dawned on me at his words. He hadn't been with another female, he had been staying with a friend. "It was too quiet and empty without them." His voice was even and calm and I sniffled, slowly letting go of his shirt as I wiped at my face. I felt embarrassed that I had broke down, that I had rumpled his shirt.
"You didn't...you know." I felt stupid wanting the reassurance but he didn't seem bothered by it, in fact his lips twitched upwards.
"Bonita, Ginessa is fucking loco. Moon help the male paired with her." The nickname made me practically slump towards him. He was no longer made of ice, no longer cold towards me and there was an intense sense of relief that came with that thought.
"I haven't... I haven't slept with anyone you know." I swallowed hard, unable to look at him. "Since we met, I haven't taken any clients. I have flirted but I haven't had... sex with any of them." I didn't want him to think I was like that. I didn't want him to think I was hypocritical in my jealousy.
"I know." The two words nearly shook me to my core.
I looked up at him, searching his gaze with my own, looking for a lie but not seeing anything. "You did?" He just gave me a slow nod before his eyes narrowed a fraction.
"I can go with you, Quinta, see your siblings but we can never go back from that." His gaze was intense on my own and I swallowed hard, a familiar fear crawling its way up from where it had hidden itself. "If I leave with you to see them its because you accept my position as your mate. I won't take this back and forth anymore, being allowed to see my familia one moment and then being cruelly denied them the next." His expression let me know that he wasn't joking, he was truly giving me something that felt like an ultimatum. Accept him or turn my back on him again to go it alone.
I swallowed hard, my heart thumping hard in my chest, its pace frantic. Choose to let him in where I hadn't let anyone in since that moment my mama bought me, or tell him no and never with with him again. I had a feeling Miles wasn't one to give me another chance if I turned him down and it scared me. I felt so terribly frightened. I didn't want to be hurt like that ever again but I knew that there needed to be some trust between us for anything to work.
I opened my mouth but my voice failed me so I just nodded. I struggled to find my voice in the tightness encasing my throat but it was hard, nearly impossible because there would be consequences to letting him in. I knew there would be. I closed my eyes and nodded once more as I tried to breath, pressing my face back into his chest.
I would try. He grasped the back of my head, holding me close and resting his chin on my head. I let out a faint and shuddering sigh at how right it felt to be in that position. I would try because without him the world seemed so bleak and lonely and I didn't want to go back to that. Not again.