October 2024 Newsletter
THE MANE EVENT
“Christmas Pride”
Available now!
Unedited/Unproofed
He came around the corner, slowly moving into the secretary’s office. One more door and he’d reach Missy’s office or, as he liked to call it, “Destination: Hell.” He could hear his sister dressing down someone behind the closed office door and he didn’t envy the man, but he had something much more important right in front of him. He had her.
She stood in front of the window overlooking Columbus Circle with her back to him. She didn’t seem moved at all by the yelling coming from Missy’s office. She radiated calm. Her energy centered. Her arms folded in front of her chest. Not nearly as tall as the women in his family, she stood no more than five-eight or so. But curvy. Ripe. A brick house. She filled out in all the right places. She’d cut her auburn hair so it brushed thick against the collar of her leather jacket. As he glanced down the length of her sumptuous body, he could see the woman armed herself better than most SEALs. A gun holster bulged large behind her leather jacket, and a smaller ankle holster on her right leg under her black slacks. It also looked like her left leg sported a holster with a small blade, which he seriously doubted any other cop in the state would consider legal.
Her phone vibrated against her hip. She easily slipped the small device out of its holster, glanced at the caller ID, and answered. At that point, he almost dropped to his knees and crawled to her. That voice. That goddamn, fucking voice. Like ten miles of bad road in the hot desert but she’d somehow tamed that brutal Bronx accent. A bit of a disappointment, though. He loved that accent on her. She used to wear it like an old leather jacket. Now she kept it muted, controlled. Kind of like her. He smiled and wondered what it would take to get back that Bronx girl he knew and still loved. Thankfully, though, there was nothing she could do about that voice. He closed his eyes for a brief moment and let her voice roll over him like a rough wave.
“I thought you’d never call me back. You won’t believe where I am.” She laughed and his balls tightened. “Missy Llewellyn’s house…no, I’m not lying. How could I make that up?”
She scratched her long neck. The desire to lick the same spot nearly strangling him. “Jesus Christ, don’t you read the papers? One of her people was killed in Battery Park. A couple of joggers found him. What? Nah. So, any message you want me to give her?” Her body began to shake as she stifled a laugh. “Well, I don’t think I’ll give her that message. Geez. And you said I hold a grudge.”
After a few more moments, her body stiffened. “No. I can’t. I’m working that’s why. Yes. Even on Christmas day. Besides, I hate Christmas. I have moral issues with celebrating it.” He frowned to keep from laughing. She had “moral issues with” celebrating Christmas? The crap she could come up with still amazed him.
“Look, I gotta go. No, I’m not arguing about this.” She closed the phone and slipped it back into its holster.
Dear god, the woman was still beautiful. After all these years. All this time. And he bet he could have her pants off and be inside her in…he glanced at his watch. Thirty seconds. Yeah. That would work.
*****
Desiree MacDermot stared out the windows of the secretary’s office and waited. Well, waited and fumed. Leave it to her oldest sister to ruin her moment in the sun. Here she stood in their archenemy’s house, moments away from throwing the rich heifer’s ass in the back of a squad car and what does her sister say? “Are you coming to mom and dad’s for Christmas dinner?”
Why of course I am. I also plan to remove skin from the most sensitive parts of my body and rub salt into the open wounds.
Because isn’t that what the holidays are all about—letting your family make you wish you were an orphan?
Dez shook off her sister’s clear attempt to make her miserable. How could she be miserable when she had grand plans of making Missy Llewellyn cry? Missy, who seemed to love nothing more than to make the MacDermot sisters’ lives hell. Apparently, it wasn’t enough that all three of them had earned the right to be at the exclusive Cathedral School of Manhattan by earning top-level scholarships. Or that their parents worked damn hard to get their daughters the best they could afford. No, to Missy and the other Llewellyn sisters, none of that meant shit. They only cared about one thing—the fact the MacDermots were poor, Puerto Rican-Irish girls from the Bronx. And they wanted to make sure they never forgot it.
Maybe God would decide to smile down on her and she’d be able to piss off Missy so much the woman would do something stupid. Oh, if Missy would only hit her. Then Dez could handcuff the bitch and dump her butt in a holding cell for a few hours. Maybe the hookers would make her cry. Like she made Dez cry all those years ago on that muggy late-August day.
“You’ll never be good enough for him.”
That’s what they told her as all four sisters circled her like a pack of wolves. She never forgot those brutal words, but she never let them hold her back either. Far from it. She probably should thank Missy. Without her inherently evil nature, Dez may not have had the guts to become a cop. She decided then and there to prove Missy Llewellyn wrong, and as far as she could tell, she had. Dez realized now these people, with all their money and connections, weren’t nearly good enough for her.
Desperately fighting the smile that threatened to spread across her entire face, she suddenly realized all her fantasies seem to be coming true at one time. The thought of putting Missy in a squad car actually made her nipples hard.
Nope. This was quietly turning into the best day ever. Like someone hit her in the head with her Christmas gift four days early. It almost brought a tear of happiness to her eye. Nothing would ever beat this. Absolutely nothing.
“So where the hell have you been?”
Dez shuddered. Man that voice sounded familiar. She only knew of one person with a voice like that. A freaky little kid who had to be the smallest fourteen year old she’d ever remembered seeing with the lowest voice she’d ever heard. She spun on her heel…only to be faced with a god, if she did say so herself. Big. Like some kind of beautiful linebacker. A shaved head with a serious five o’clock shadow issue, and gold-colored eyes. Eyes that, at the moment, were staring at her like a slab of prime rib. No. This couldn’t be Mace Llewellyn. Her heart dropped. True, this man was pretty but she saw pretty every day. The Mace she remembered wasn’t pretty but he always knew how to make her smile. She learned over the years that was a hell of lot more important than looks.
“Well…answer me.”
Uh-oh. Nut case alert. How come all the good-looking ones were insane? “I’m…uh…sorry. Do I know you?”
He crossed big arms over a big chest and smirked at her. “Take a minute. Let it come to you.”
She blinked and tried to remember all the exits out of the room in case the gorgeous nut case went postal.
“Still waiting.”
It hit her. Like a slap to the forehead. But…no. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t humanly possible. But that superior tone. That haughty expression. That damn smirk. That killer voice that had deliciously matured with age. All together, they really could only belong to one person. The one person she’d been waiting more than twenty years to see again.
What happened to the boy she remembered? Apparently, this…this…man replaced him. Oh, and what a man!
But no matter how different he looked, she still knew. Maybe those freaky gold eyes gave him away. Or those gorgeous full lips that, even at fourteen, she hadn’t been immune to.
Or maybe the way he stared at her. Like he spent every waking moment imagining her naked.
Only one person ever looked at her like that. Well, only one person ever looked at her like that where she didn’t have the overwhelming desire to rip eyes from sockets.
“Oh my god—Mace?”
*****
Time had done wonders for her. Some women never looked as good as they did in high school, especially at thirty-six. But she did. Better. She still had those killer eyes. Grey with flecks of green. He used to stare into those eyes during biology class as they faked their way through the experiments. Of course, that’s when he wasn’t staring at that beautiful face with that cute little pug nose or that incredibly hot body. She’d been an early bloomer, wearing a healthy “C” while the other girls were just moving from training bras. All of that didn’t matter, though. Not to Mace. That was just the cherry on top.
For him, it had been more than her big tits and luscious mouth. Dez actually liked him back then. Just the way he was. Ninety pounds soaking wet, barely five-three, a head of hair he couldn’t control, and the attitude of a giant. Most people didn’t like Mace. Dez, however, found him funny and smart. Even his sisters never saw him that way. To a fourteen year old that meant everything to him.
Then she left him. Walked out of his life and never came back. At the moment, Mace was completely ready to push her up against the wall and demand she tell him how she could leave him like she did?
For years, a part of him kept expecting to see her again. Although he always wished he could forget about her. Lose himself in some of the other women he met since he last saw her saddle shoes walking down the school hall and out of his life. But he never could. No matter how hard he tried, he could never forget about her. Hell, he still dreamed about her. She was older in his dreams, thank God, but his dreams didn’t do justice to the woman now standing in front of him, an NYPD badge hanging on a chain around her neck.
“Mace Llewellyn? Is that you?”
So, she did remember him. Good. Now he could tell her what a bitch she’d been for leaving him. For breaking his fourteen-year-old heart into a million pieces and stomping on it with her saddle shoes. He geared himself to do it too—until she smiled at him. A smile that practically knocked him on his ass.
After all these years, the woman leaped beyond perfect. Especially when she literally threw herself at him, her arms looping around his neck.
“Jesus, Mace! I can’t believe it!”
His eyes almost rolled to the back of his head when she pressed her curvaceous body against his. Without even thinking about it, he wrapped her in a bear hug and lifted her off her feet. She actually squealed, which sounded strange with that voice of hers.
“I don’t believe it, Mace!” He didn’t either. How did anyone smell this good? How was it humanly possible?
She laughed. “Stop sniffing my neck!” She pushed against his shoulders and leaned back, but he wouldn’t let her go. “I can’t believe you’re still doing that.”
“You smell good.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
“So?”
“So, what?”
“Answer my question.”
“Your question?”
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Aw, Mace. Gimme a break.” She tried to pull out of his arms, but he held fast. “Are you going to let me go?”
“I’m comfortable. Answer my question.”
“My family moved, Mace. To Queens. My sisters and I went to a different school. I assure you it was nothing personal.” He stared at her. “It wasn’t!”
“Did you write me?”
“No, Mace.”
“Did you think about me?”
“Oh, come on!”
“What? It’s a valid question.”
“You know, you come from one of the wealthiest families in New York. You could have tracked me down if you really wanted to see me that badly.”
“I was in military school.”
Dez tried not to laugh, but it was a sad, weak attempt. “Sorry. I guess I just have a hard time imagining you taking orders from…you know…anybody.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on, Mace. It’s me.”
He gazed down into her face. “Yeah. It sure is you.” Their eyes locked and, for several moments, they did nothing but stare at each other.
Dez shook her head. “Okay. Put me down.”
“Why?”
“Mace!”
He dropped her, forcing Dez to rock back on her heels. This, of course, forced him to grab her ass to steady her before she fell back.
“Hands off, Llewellyn. Or I’m turning your nads into a necklace.”
He smiled as he released her. “Well, you haven’t changed.”
“Neither have you. I see Captain Ego still lives.”
No other woman existed who he let get away with calling him that. He glanced down at himself. “I haven’t changed? Not even a little?”
“I don’t mean physically, you idiot.” She punched him lightly in the shoulder, blinked in surprise, and suddenly felt the bicep under his leather jacket. “I definitely don’t mean physically.”
He grinned at her, enjoying that his body seemed to have her so distracted. “You doing all right there, beautiful?”
“Oh, shut up.”
“At least tell me you missed me.”
She nodded as her voice softened. “Yeah, Mace. I missed you. You were my best friend.”
Best friend? He never wanted to be her best friend. He wanted to be her boyfriend. He wanted her parents to catch them on their couch making out. He wanted to buy her one of those tacky ID bracelets with his name on it. He wanted to tattoo “Property of Mace Llewellyn” on her forehead.
“Stop frowning, Mace.” She reached up and ran her hands over his brow. A move she used to do a lot in school. Often the only thing that kept him calm back then. The only thing that kept him from tearing idiot jocks and rich assholes apart with his newly sprouted fangs. “It’s been over twenty years, Mace. Let it go, bonehead.” She ran her thumb down his nose, spreading her hand out so her fingers cupped his cheek. He leaned into her hand and she smiled that smile.
Even after all these years, she knew just how to handle him. How to contain the beast within his heart without even trying. Oh, yeah. This woman was destined to be his. And nothing would get in his way now.
“What the hell do you think you are doing with my brother?”
Mace growled and wondered how much prison time a man would do for tossing his sister into the East River.
