Her frown was calculated and he laughed, swatting her ass on his way past.
“Very nice try. I promise to show you just how nice in a bit.” Asa pointed at the couch. “Sit.”
“This sounds ominous.”
He settled in next to her. “No reason for that.” He took her hand. “Earlier tonight you told me Courtney had revealed some of the details from my childhood, but you wanted to hear them from me, so you waited.” Asa swallowed hard. “That meant something to me. Well, more than one thing. But let’s start with the trust you showed me, even when I didn’t show you the same. I apologize for that. Honestly.”
There was no reason not to accept a genuine apology. She wanted him to know why it was particularly upsetting to her. “I accept your apology. But, Asa? This is a problem for me. I need for you to understand that.”
“I’m not going to promise to never be an idiot again. I will. I’m fucked up in a hundred ways. But I can promise to do my very best not to hurt you.”
That was a good answer.
“Tell me one of those hundred ways then. Help me understand you.”
“My mom was fifteen when she had me. She’d dropped out of school to follow this loser to Dallas. Estranged herself from her family. And then when my biological father got sent to prison for five years, his parents stole me from her. I lived with them until I was nearly seven. They punished her for her sins by keeping me away from her influence.”
PJ shoved pity as far away as possible. If he saw any hint of it he’d close up. She didn’t dare move and spoil the moment. So she waited and hoped he continued. After he was finished, later, when she wasn’t in his presence, she’d have her full reaction to this story.
“We both had to be reminded of our nature, you see. That was Mr. Jeter’s favorite. I needed to be beaten when I made the slightest infraction. It was the only way to cleanse me of the things my mother had done.”
He shuddered, his gaze gone far away.
“Their mistake was to underestimate my mom. They thought continuing to dangle time with me was a way to keep her in line. Figured her obedience to those dictates meant she’d given up. She was a teenage girl with no education and no resources, while they were respected in their church and community. But she never gave up. She just did what she needed to do to keep her visitation rights, to see me. All the while she worked multiple jobs, got her GED, and saved to get an attorney to fight back.”
PJ was really beginning to love Pat Barrons.
He licked his lips and she took a risk, linking her fingers with his. He let out a long, shuddering sigh and pulled her closer. She couldn’t see his face.
Maybe that was easier for them both. She closed her eyes and leaned into the solid, comforting muscle of him.
“I was seven by the time I came to live with her permanently. She had Lettie about five months after that. Their dad, Lettie and Courtney’s, stuck around awhile. He was okay at first. Or maybe he wasn’t, but what I’d been used to was being forced to kneel for hours at a time in a closet while I prayed to be forgiven for my sins. I guess most people would have been okay in comparison.”
She couldn’t stop the snarl that ripped from her lips. There she was whining about her family and look at what he’d gone through.
“When she was pregnant with Courtney he walked out and never came back. Lettie was right around five. It took her a week to notice her dad wasn’t around. That’s how involved he’d been in her life. The state tried to find him to get him to pay support, but they never did. So my mom just stepped up and handled it. There was nothing else to be done. She worked her ass off, to the point that her health suffered, and she did it because that’s what you do when you’re a parent and she couldn’t rely on anyone else to do it for her.”
He buried his face at the nape of her neck, breathing her in and then biting hard enough to leave waves of goosepimples in his wake. “So when your father, who has every fucking privilege and opportunity handed to him, is a shitty, hateful creature to a child who only wants his affection, it really gets to me. And it gets to me because it’s you.”
She turned to face him, taking his hand again.
“There are a handful of people in the world I’m irrationally protective of. You’re one of them. I can’t shove it away when an asshole like Gary Weston humiliates you the way he did.”
Uh-oh. “Tell me,” she said on a sigh.
The war between sharing and keeping whatever he’d done quiet ran riot over his features.
“I’m going to tell you something. Not because I am sorry for it, but because I heard what you said tonight and I want to live up to my promise.”
She narrowed her gaze at him.
“I punched him. Maybe twice. Not more than three times. But he said stuff, so there were mitigating circumstances.”
“Elaborate.”
He grinned and it lit his eyes. “I love it when you get mad. Goddamn.”
“Don’t try to eye fuck me. Just tell me what happened.” But she couldn’t hide the way a smile threatened at the corner of her mouth.
“I didn’t go to his shop. I went to a bar I heard he drank at. I tried to speak with him. It got emphatic. He tossed some insults. I’m a gentleman. I handled that. He won’t be speaking about you in public ever again. Trust that.”
While she was horrified, at the same time it wasn’t so very hard to admit part of her was comforted and, yes, titillated. He’d protected her. In a very elemental way. It was flattering and silly. And yet, once she’d experienced it she’d begun to crave it.
“You went there, he said I was a mouthy whore or whatever. No talent but a nice ass. You took exception and planted a fist in his face.”
“The first was a kidney shot. Then he called you a whore and I popped him twice more, square in the face. He dropped like a stone. When he recovered, we discussed what his expected behavior was. He accepted how serious I was. I’m positive this won’t be an issue. You don’t need his shop anyway.”
“No. I don’t.” PJ cupped his cheek and petted his beard. “But I do need you.”
He stood, pulling her to her feet. “Thank god. Come upstairs with me.”
Chapter Twenty-two
He pulled her upstairs to his bedroom as the energy between them tautened, heated, zinging along her nerves. PJ couldn’t wait for whatever he had in store for her.
“Strip.”
He sat, caressing her with his gaze.
Over the time they’d been together, she’d learned him. Taken cues from his reactions. Because she knew he liked to look at her, she took her time, meticulously stepping from her shoes and placing them in the corner.
Then she pulled the pins from her hair and it cascaded down around her face in waves. Each button down the front of the dress she wore opened with a twist of her fingers, exposing a little more of her skin until she shrugged from it, letting it slide off before stepping free.
“I’m really glad I had no idea what you were working with under that dress. More than your normal gorgeous body, that is.”
She looked up at him through her lashes with a smile. “Do you like? I saw this and thought it might hold appeal for you.”
Appeal.
“That’s a tame word for what it holds for me,” Asa said.
It wasn’t just that she wore stockings. She’d already worn them when they started seeing each other, but once it was clear how much he liked them she wore them more often, making sure to buy the French heels he thought were so sexy.
That night she wore an all-new ensemble. She tended to wear blues and pinks, which worked on her skin so well. Right then she was wrapped in black silk. The front of the garter belt laced up like a corset with deep green ribbons, echoed in the matching push-up bra with green accents.