Chapter 3
Terrence
Terrence awoke to the sound of pounding thunder and the chime of his doorbell followed by a wall-rattling knock at his front door. He frowned as he raised his head from his pillow. He pushed himself up on his elbows and stared out his partially drawn curtains at the torrential rain outside his window. Terrence turned, bleary-eyed, to look at the alarm clock on his night table. It was a little after one a.m., way too late for a visit and for someone to be making such a ruckus.
“Who the hell . . .” he grumbled as he threw back his sheets and staggered to his feet. He reached for his eye patch that sat adjacent to his alarm clock and quickly put it on. His new prosthetic eye shield floated in a solution on his bathroom counter.
The doorbell rang yet again, this time in quick succession, like someone was holding their finger on the button.
“I heard you!” he shouted irritably, though his voice was drowned out by the chimes.
Terrence took unsteady steps out of his bedroom and down the hall. His wobbly gait wasn’t due to the bad leg that he had injured in his car crash. With the exception of a barely discernible limp, he walked perfectly fine. No, it had more to do with the veil of sleep that was still hanging over him. He stumbled into the edge of his coffee table at one point, cursing to himself and grabbing his shin.
Finally, Terrence reached the front door. The person on the other side of the door was now knocking and ringing the bell simultaneously.
“This better be goddamn important!”
For a fleeting moment, he wondered if it had something to do with Dante again. Did someone try to kill that bastard a third time? He undid the locks and threw the door open. “What the hell is . . .”
When he realized who was standing in front of him, his lethal rant died on his lips. His anger dissipated. “C. J.?”
His girlfriend waved at him timidly and gave a small smile. “Hi, Terry.” She glanced down at his pajama bottoms and then raised her gaze to his bare chest. Her smile faded. “Oh, I’m sorry, honey! Were you sleeping?”
He chuckled in exasperation and tiredly wiped his hand over his face. “Of course I was sleeping, babe! It’s one o’clock in the damn morning! The way you were ringing my doorbell I thought something was really wrong! I thought you might be the cops.”
She squinted at him in confusion. “Why would I be the cops?”
“Forget it.” He waved his hand dismissively, not wanting to get into what had happened that day with Detective Morris at his brother’s home. “It’s a long story and not one worth retelling.”
“Well, anyway, I’m sorry if I scared you,” she said, shrugging out of her raincoat.
“You don’t have to apologize.” He gestured her inside his condo. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
“I thought I might surprise you. The thing I had to do today in North Carolina ended a lot earlier than I thought it would. I thought I’d drive up here . . . you know . . . stop by and visit you for a few hours since we haven’t seen each other in days.”
She stepped through the doorway, set down a small overnight bag on the floor, and handed him her coat, revealing a prim gray suit and pink blouse underneath. Her hair was done in a simple bun at the nape of her neck.
Terrence tried not to cringe at or comment on her conservative look. Instead, he turned and opened the coat closet door. The truth was he much preferred C. J. in a tank top and jeans or negligee and a thong, but she wore her church lady clothes all the time now to appease her family, or, more specifically, her father, the esteemed Reverend Pete Aston, a.k.a. the sanctified hypocrite.
“I thought I could make it here by nightfall,” C. J. continued, facing him after he hung up her coat. She stared at him sheepishly. “A bad traffic jam on the interstate and the rain kinda shut down those plans, though. Sorry.”
“I told you, you don’t have to apologize.” He closed the front door and locked it. He grinned. “I’m glad you’re here. I missed you.”
“I missed you too, baby,” she whispered.
They gazed at each other. He made a move to reach for her, to give her the kiss and the hug that he had been longing to give all week, but she lunged forward, spun him around, and shoved him back against the door before planting her lips on his.
“Goddamn,” he murmured against her hungry mouth as she wrapped her arms around his neck and seared him with one heated kiss after another. She tore her mouth away then licked his ear before nipping his ear lobe.
“Goddamn,” he moaned. She took a step back and began to unbutton her suit jacket. She tossed it aside, then yanked open her blouse, sending pearl buttons flying in all directions and landing on Terrence’s rug and hardwood floor.
He stared at her in amazement—and with sheer lust.
“I missed you a lot, Terry,” she said as she kissed him again, “so, so much.”
This time, he kissed her back just as fiercely, helping her take off her shirt while pulling down the zipper of her skirt.
“Let’s finish this in the bedroom,” he ordered huskily as he tugged her skirt over her hips and down her legs. It pooled at her feet and she kicked it aside.
“No, I can’t wait that long. Let’s finish it here,” she whispered back before tugging his bottom lip between her teeth. She then took his hand and led him toward his leather sofa.
Terrence cocked an eyebrow and allowed himself to be steered across his foyer and through his living room.
It was hard to believe that a little more than a month ago C. J. had been a timid, twenty-six-year-old virgin.
“I have to be eased into this,” she had told him then, and Terrence had thoroughly enjoyed doing just that, introducing her to every carnal pleasure that came with foreplay and eventually sex. Watching her now take the reins made him a proud teacher. It also made him a horny one.
She had stripped down to a black lace bra, thong, and thigh-highs, finishing the ensemble with prim high heels, a simple string of pearls around her neck, and her bun, making her look like a naughty librarian. His eyes focused on her plump brown ass as she walked, and he reached out and squeezed it, but she quickly batted his hand away while giving him a saucy wink.
“Ah-ah! Not yet. Sit down first,” she said, motioning toward his leather sofa.
This time he raised both eyebrows. “Are you asking me or telling me?”
Instead of answering him, she stepped forward and kissed him again, letting her tongue slide enticingly across his lips and inside his mouth. “What do you think?”
“I think I don’t care either way,” he said as she placed her hands on his chest and shoved him back onto the couch. He landed with his arms outstretched and with an audible oomph.
Her brow wrinkled with concern. “I didn’t hurt your leg, did I? Do we need to stop?”
“Hell no!” He reached up and pulled her down so that she fell on top of him, making her giggle. She straddled his lap and evidence of his arousal jutted eagerly between her thighs.
She kissed him again. “You know I’ve been fantasizing about doing this all day,” she whispered as she reached behind her and unclasped her bra. “I’ve played it out over and over again . . . the things I wanted to do to you . . . and for you to do to me.”
She languidly tugged her bra straps off her shoulders, removing the lace cups with a slow ease that was almost torturous before finally tossing the entire bra to the other side of his living room, where it fell near his coffee table. She sat in front of him, glorious, beautiful, and topless, and it took all Terrence’s will power not to throw her back on the leather cushions and shove his dick into her at that very moment.
“I thought about it even during the meeting at church,” she said as she ground her pelvis against his erection, subjecting him to yet another form of delicious torture. “Sister Walters started staring at me. I started to get paranoid that she could read my mind.” She held his face and lightly kissed his nose, mouth, and cheeks. “I was worried she’d put her healing hands on me to get the devil out.”
He gazed at her breasts, leaned forward, and flicked his tongue across one of her hardened nipples, making her moan. He grinned. “Well, I guess we better do everything you fantasized about so you don’t have those kinky thoughts in church again.”
He then took the entire nipple into her mouth and began to suckle her. He eased aside her thong and used his expert hand and fingers to make her wet between the thighs, massaging her clit with a mix of brisk and slow strokes. She let out a guttural growl that sounded almost like a purr, telling him he was definitely on the right track.
Terrence shifted his attention to the other breast, this time lightly clamping the nipple between his teeth, making her subdued moans become even louder.
C. J. may have been reserved in other aspects of her life, but she certainly wasn’t in bed. He figured his condominium neighbors had heard her screams enough times by now that they weren’t fazed by them anymore.
He felt her hips begin to move rhythmically against his fingers, much like they did whenever she made love to him. C. J. closed her eyes and arched her back, enjoying every second of what he was doing.
He was enjoying it just as much as she was, feeling her tense and squirm against him, watching how he was pushing her to the edge. Even from the early days when he first started tutoring her about lust and desire, checking off the long list of sexual pleasures they could enjoy together, he had always loved watching her face and her body at moments like this, seeing her lose control just before she came.
And he had every intention of letting her come, of seeing her ride the wave as he guided her to climax, but she turned the tables on him. She reached down, pulled back the waistband of his pajama pants, wrapped her hand around his dick, and began to stroke him. The move caught him completely by surprise.
Terrence’s breathing deepened. His heart began to thud wildly in chest and his blood started to whistle in his ears. He stopped massaging her, no longer able to focus on pleasing her anymore. Instead, he sank further and further into the haze of pleasure she was giving him.
“I thought about this all day, Terry,” she breathed into his ear. “Show me what I was fantasizing about. Don’t hold back,” she urged before nipping his ear again, then trailing her wet tongue along his neck. “I can take it.”
And that’s when he lost it—lost the measured control he had been tenuously holding on to.
He shoved her back onto the adjacent cushion and sat himself between her legs, kneeling on the carpet in front of the sofa. He tossed one of her calves over his shoulder and wrapped the other leg around his waist. He then roughly tugged the crotch of her thong aside before plunging inside her over and over again.
Instead of being taken aback by his roughness, C. J. grinned with naughty delight. She began to move her hips again, meeting him thrust for thrust, lifting her bottom so that it was almost completely off the couch cushion. She keened and moaned.
“Is this what you wanted, baby?” he asked, driving even harder, grabbing onto her hips and pounding into her, loving the warm, wet feel of her around him. “Huh? Is this what you wanted?”
She couldn’t answer him. She could only respond with another strangled moan and a shout that made him smile.
He could see she was almost there, and thank God she was, because he didn’t know how much longer he could hold this pace before he came. Her back began to arch even more and her thighs began to wobble. Her calf fell off his shoulder and her leg dangled limply to the side. He watched as her eyes rolled to the back of her head, as her mouth went slack before she shouted his name.
He came seconds later with a euphoric rush. He lowered his lips to hers as he did it, and she captured his groan of bliss and agony with her mouth. After a few more pumps of his hips, he wilted on top of her.
* * *
“Don’t you dare fall asleep on me, Terry!” C. J. ordered an hour and a half later as they lay on his California king, sweaty, satiated, and snuggled beneath the Egyptian cotton sheets. “I haven’t seen you in almost a week. I don’t want to lie around watching you snore!”
Terrence chuckled and opened his weary eye. “It’s three o’clock in the morning, and we just had sex three times in less than two hours. A man’s allowed to be a little bit tired.”
She shifted so that she was lying on top of his chest and gazing down at him.
At that moment, she might look like an absolute mess to some but she seemed gorgeous to him. Her makeup was smeared and hair was no longer in a neat bun but was now disheveled, like she had been in a windstorm. And they had been in a bit of a windstorm—or at least, it felt like it from all the enthusiastic sex they’d enjoyed.
“Talk to me!” she whined playfully, making him laugh again. “Tell me what you’ve been up to. What’d I miss?”
He sighed gruffly. He just couldn’t say no to this woman.
“Not much,” he said with a yawn. “I almost got arrested yesterday.”
She frowned. “You’re joking, right?”
“Not really.” He tucked his hands behind his head and reclined on the down pillows braced against his leather headboard. “Some asshole detective came to Evan’s house, questioning us about our brother Dante, thinking he could bully a black man into saying something. I guess someone tried to kill Dante again.”
“Really? A second time?” she asked, raising her brows, her face now alight with keen interest. “Are they closer to having a list of potential suspects for the first attempt or are they still just putting out feelers at this point?”
He rolled his eye heavenward. “Slow your roll, Lois Lane! Remember, you don’t work at the Chesterton Times anymore.”
“I took a break from the Chesterton Times,” she clarified, nudging his shoulder. “I didn’t quit! And it’s not like I’m whipping out my notebook, pen, and recorder, Terry. I’m just . . . just curious, that’s all.”
“Uh-huh,” he replied dryly, knowing how her reporter’s “curiosity” had caused friction in their relationship in the past. “Look, I don’t know if they have any potential suspects, but the detective seemed to think we knew something. . . well, that Evan knew something.”
She squinted. “Why Evan?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
But that wasn’t completely true. Terrence could sense, just like the detective, that Evan was hiding something about the shooting. He didn’t know what it was, but a gnawing part of him suspected it was bad, very bad. He just hoped it wasn’t something that could land his brother behind bars.
“That’s odd,” C. J. said, still frowning. “I hope it doesn’t turn into anything.”
“It won’t. We both had alibis. Evan was with me at the ocularist’s office. We were there all morning and most of the afternoon. We were there when that thing happened to Dante.”
“Oh! Your appointment!” She broke into a smile. “I can’t believe I forgot to ask about it. How did it go? Did you get your prosthesis?”
“Yeah.”
“Well?” She pushed herself to her elbows and sat up in bed beside him. “So let me see it then! Show it to me!”
“Babe, I am tired as hell. Can’t we just—”
“Please, Terry. Just for a minute?” she asked, clasping her hands together and poking out her bottom lip. She then gave him the full blast of doleful puppy eyes. “Pretty please?”
Terrence hesitated. He was reluctant to put on the prosthesis, not because he was tired, but because he still wasn’t sure what C. J.’s reaction would be when she saw him looking so much like his old self. Would her insecurities and worries about him and their relationship come back?
When they first started dating, C. J. reminded him of the man he once had been: a shallow, rich playboy who had literally walked right past her one day, almost hitting her with a door because he was more concerned with the model type he had on his arm. But the car accident and its aftermath had humbled Terrence. It had pummeled his ego and made him into a new man—a man he was finally proud of. He knew he had changed on the inside, but how would C. J. react if he looked like the old, shallow playboy again? Would she think they weren’t compatible anymore? Would she seriously consider dumping him?
She laughed and placed a light kiss on his shoulder. “Come on! If you put it on, I won’t ask you for anything else tonight. I’ll leave you alone and let you sleep. I promise!”
After a few seconds, he reluctantly pushed himself up from the mattress and rose to his feet. “All right. Fine,” he said, tossing off the bedsheets. “I’ll let you see it. I’ll be right back.”
“If it’s better than the view I’m looking at right now,” she joked as she stared at his sculpted backside, “then I bet it looks amazing!”
He returned to the bedroom a minute later and when C. J. saw him, she gaped.
“Baby,” she whispered breathlessly, pushing herself off the bed and walking naked across the room toward him. She raised her hand to his face and tenderly rested her palm on his cheek. “It looks so good!”
“It does, doesn’t it?” he asked, relieved to see her happy.
“The doctor did a great job!” For some reason, tears were in her eyes. She cupped his face and kissed him. “I’m so happy for you, honey.”
“You are?”
“Of course I am!” A lone tear trickled onto her cheek and down her chin, and he quickly wiped it away with his thumb. “Why wouldn’t I be? I know you wanted this. I’m happy for you!” She sniffed and linked her arms around his neck. “We should celebrate!”
He gave her an impish smile and wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her flat against him. “Give me a few hours to regain my strength and we can do that.”
She giggled and shook her head. “Not that kind of celebrating! I mean the kind of celebrating that involves wearing clothes, maybe eating some dinner over candlelight.”
“Okay. How about this coming weekend? I can make reservations and take you out to a romantic dinner, and we can come back here later and celebrate my way.”
“This weekend?” She grimaced and removed her hands from around his neck. “Sorry, baby, but I can’t. Daddy has this thing on Saturday that I—”
Terrence sucked his teeth with annoyance, stopping her midsentence. He dropped his arm from around her and took a step back. “Damnit, C. J., when the hell are you not down there?”
“Terry, we talked about this,” she began calmly, annoying him even more. “I told you my father was running for office now. Because of that and his church publicity crisis, I have to be in Raleigh more. You think I don’t want to be here with you? I do! But I promised my family that I would—”
“But why can’t you tell them no sometimes? I mean . . . Goddamn! You have a life, too!”
“Why are you yelling?”
“Because I’m trying to make a point! You need to stand up to your family, dammit!”
“Well, do you ever stand up to yours? Do you tell your family no? Of course not! You Murdochs always stick together!”
“Don’t bring up my family! Don’t turn this around on me! You know this shit is different!”
“No, it isn’t!”
“Yes, it is! You know what your family—your father is asking you to do. They’re asking you to put on a fake smile and those ugly-ass church lady clothes and pretend to be the perfect preacher’s daughter, to be part of the perfect Christian family! And you know it’s all bullshit! What else are they gonna ask you to do, C. J.? Huh? When are you finally gonna put your foot down and say no?”
She bit down hard on her bottom lip, looking bewildered and hurt. “Terry, I didn’t . . . I didn’t come here to argue with you. I came here to see you, to be with you. I missed you, baby! Why are you trying to pick a fight with me? Why are you so angry?”
He lowered his head and rubbed the tense muscles along the back of his neck.
The truth was that Terrence wasn’t angry at C. J. as so much as he was angry at their circumstances.
“Sometimes people grow apart, Terry,” Evan had told him today.
Terrence didn’t want to admit it, but he could feel the distance growing between him and C. J., and that distance could be measured in more than the miles between Chesterton, Virginia, and her family’s church in Raleigh. It was a lot wider than that. Things were changing. He was healing and getting back into the swing of things, regaining his old life. She was drawing closer to her old family circle, her old church, and more specifically her ex-fiancé Shaun Clancy, who still worked at Aston Ministries, serving as assistant pastor at the flagship church and functioning as one of her father’s right-hand men.
C. J. hadn’t mentioned Shaun tonight, but she had in the past, and every time she did Terrence’s jaw would tighten. He would unwittingly clench his fists at his sides, like he was preparing for a fight. He just couldn’t help himself.
C. J.’s father had been the one to coax her into dating and getting engaged to Shaun six years ago, and he had almost succeeded in bullying her into marrying Shaun, too, until she finally woke up, rebelled, and fled the prison her family had constructed for her. Terrence worried if C. J. wasn’t vigilant, if she didn’t keep her guard up this time around, her family could play the same mind games and convince her to hook up with Shaun again.
That’s not something she would do, Terrence would tell himself whenever that worry entered his mind. Give her more credit than that!
C. J. wouldn’t fall prey to her family’s manipulations again. She loved Terrence and he loved her. No one could come between them, no matter how much distance they had from each other.
So why did he still worry so much about the prospect of losing her?
“Do you want me to leave?” she now asked quietly, gazing up at him. “If we’re just going to fight, I can go home . . . really. I don’t want to—”
“No!” He took a deep breath, telling himself to get a grip. “No, I don’t want you to go. I’m . . . I’m sorry,” he whispered, taking her hand in his own. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. I don’t want to fight with you, either. It’s just . . . it’s just been a long day. I’m tired.”
She nodded. “Okay, let’s go to sleep then.”
A few minutes later, they were nestled beneath the sheets again. C. J. placed a series of butterfly kisses on his neck and his chin before she burrowed into the crook of his arm, resting her head on his shoulder.
“’Night, Terry,” she said before closing her eyes.
“Good night,” he replied, extinguishing his night table light and dropping the bedroom into darkness. He told himself that his doubts would disappear and he would feel better when he woke up in the morning, but he knew in his heart that probably wasn’t true.