“Yes,” she said. Too handsome for his own good. Or hers.
“What color eyes?”
Sonny looked down into her coffee cup, having seen the rich, dark color before she added cream. “Blue,” she said, changing the tone of the conversation. Standing, she took the picture from her pocket. “Here he is. Take a look.”
When her mother saw the photo of Arlen Matthews, she gasped.
Sonny sat back in her chair and drank more coffee. It was going to be a long day. “Why did you never tell me his name? Why would you keep that from me?”
Still reeling from shock, Anita remained silent.
“What did he do to you?” Sonny asked.
Anita looked out the window, across the flat expanse of land in the distance. In the eerie predawn light, the harsh surface of sand glowed gray-white, as ethereal as moondust. “Nothing that hasn’t been done before. Or since.”
“Was he the worst?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
“Why?”
Anita stood and washed her cup in the sink, drying it carefully before she set it aside. “You never understood. The men in my life have not been perfect, this I know. But they were not deliberately cruel.”
Rage licked through Sonny’s body, quick and hot, like a burst of flames. “Everett Moore wasn’t cruel?”
Anita regarded her with sad eyes. “No. He was sick.”
Sonny laughed, but the sound held no humor.
“Your father was cruel,” she said.
A hard, cold ball settled in the pit of her stomach. “Oh?”
“Some men have wicked tempers,” she continued. “Arlen did not. He would hit when he was in a good mood. He would just strike out, lightning fast, while he was watching a ball game, in midsentence. He would do terrible, unmentionable things, then light a cigarette and tell me to move out of his way, because I was blocking the TV.”
Sonny believed every word of it. And felt herself go dead inside.
Anita covered her mouth with one hand, remembering. “One day I came home from work early. I found Rigo curled up in the closet.” She choked back a sob. “Arlen had beaten and tortured him. He was only six years old.”
Sonny’s heart went out to her brother. He’d never told her. “What did you do?”
“I threatened to press charges if he didn’t leave.” Her expression was troubled, her mind far away. “After he was gone, I vowed to never mention him again.”
Sonny couldn’t help but stare. A new idea occurred to her, one more painful than her memories of Everett. “Is that why you hated me? Because of what my father did?”
Her mother’s face wilted with sorrow. “I never hated you,
Sonny found those words impossible to refute. Yet how could she believe them when confronted with so much evidence to the contrary? Too many times, Anita had chosen a man over her own daughter. Too many times, she’d looked the other way.
Sonny rearranged her face to hide her emotions, something she’d become very good at. “What name was he going by then? Arlen what?”
“Diels,” her mother said softly. “Arlen Diels.”
CHAPTER 14
James opened the door for her, his hair sticking up all over the place, a fleece blanket around his thin shoulders. He rubbed his eyes in a measured lack of concern to see her, returned to his comfy spot on the couch, and proceeded to snooze.
Sonny tiptoed upstairs to Ben’s room. Finding the door unlocked, she entered quietly, determined not to wake him up. She was feeling too raw for sexual intimacy anyway, too emotional to look him in the eye.
But she needed something only he could give her.
After visiting her mother, she’d turned off her cell phone and disengaged the GPS. Grant couldn’t call her and he couldn’t track her. When he caught up with her, she’d be reprimanded, at the very least. Until then, she was going to treasure every stolen moment.
Ben slept like the dead, obviously. He was sprawled out on his back, one arm flung across the bed, the other lying on top of his chest. The comforter hung off the side of the bed. One leg, dark and hairy against the white sheets, was completely exposed.
She unbuttoned her jeans and let them fall to the floor, then hesitated at the hem of her T-shirt. Would he expect something from her if she came to his bed naked? Mired in self-doubt, she stood there, legs shaking, until fatigue overcame her. Pulling the T-shirt over her head, she crawled across his bed, succumbing to it. And to the overwhelming desire to explore his body, while he was asleep and vulnerable.
Very carefully, she pushed aside the comforter.
Beneath the dark blue cotton of his boxer shorts, his penis lay soft and thick, clearly outlined, impressive even in repose. He stirred, kicked the comforter off the bed completely, and rolled over onto his stomach.
The man looked as good from the back as he did from the front. His shoulders seemed to span more than half the width of the bed, his deltoids were well defined, and his butt was the stuff female masturbatory fantasies were made of.
She knew that paddling and swimming kept his upper body tight and right. Obviously, maintaining balance on a surfboard also required well-developed lower body muscles, all working together in perfect harmony.
Sonny imagined some of those muscles working, with him on top of her.
Unable to resist, she pushed down his shorts and eyeballed his sculpted buttocks like a voyeur. Below the waist, his skin was a shade lighter than his sun-browned back, and that paleness endeared her even as it added an illicit thrill. Sliding her palm over that masculine curve, she snuggled against him and fell asleep.
When she awoke several hours later, she was still lying on her side, her face pressed against his smooth back.
His body was tense. He was awake.
Moving her hand over his hip and down the front of his shorts, she discovered that he was not only awake but fully aroused. He must have been having some very sexy dreams, because so was she. The points of her breasts tingled, and between her legs she was already warm and moist, pulsing with sensation.
Even in sleep they turned each other on.
Instead of letting her explore, he took her hand and placed it over his flat stomach, covering it with his, stroking her fingers. Making a sound of longing, she placed a soft, openmouthed kiss between his shoulder blades, and he turned to face her.
Feeling vulnerable, Sonny ran a hand through her disheveled hair. She wished she could smooth over her emotions the same way, rearrange her face to show confidence and allure.
His eyes were hot on her skin, her breasts, her belly. From the set of his mouth and the hunger in his expression, she knew that he’d been awake and wanting her for a while.
Too nervous to speak, she hooked her thumbs in her panties and pushed them off. Lying back against the pillows, she offered herself to him in a gesture that needed no interpretation.
He reached into the nightstand and came up with a single condom. Suddenly as awkward as she, he stared at the foil-wrapped package as if it were a totally foreign object he had no idea what to do with.
Sitting up, she took the wrapper from him, pressing her lips to the throbbing pulse point at the base of his throat. He closed his eyes, struggling with some inner demons, and she saw that he was shaking.
His uneasiness calmed her as nothing else could have. She stepped into the role of nurturer, soothing him as well as herself.
