Ruined: Loving An Alpha Male: BWWM Romance (18 page)

“Baby, you don’t have to tell me now.”

She nodded and looked at me, with tears forming in her eyes.

“Yes, I do, because I wanted to call you so badly. I know you don’t want me to protect you, but I was trying to do that. I felt myself blacking out as he was trying to force himself on me while his hands were wrapped around my neck. I kneed him in the balls and tried to run for my room, when he threw me down and kicked me in the chest and punched me. The next thing I remember is Mimi calling my name and screaming in the phone for an ambulance.”

I frowned.

“I called every hospital and even had Alex call a friend of his on the police force to see if anything had been reported with your name or his.”

She took a deep breath and then shrugged.

“Mimi’s dad is an ER doctor. I had her cancel the call. Then she took me to him directly. He signed me in as Mimi, but I didn’t report the attack. I don’t know why, but I just didn’t.”

“Don’t do that again, baby. No matter what, call the cops. Okay? That mother fucker could have killed you or raped you…Wait. He didn’t rape you, did he?” I felt my anger rising.

She shook her head frantically. “No, he didn’t. And I know it was poor judgment to not call the cops. But I thought it would make matters worse, and he would have come after me if I had him arrested. And I didn’t want to call you for my own selfish reasons.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mason, I knew if you would have seen what he did to me that day, you would have gone after him. There’s no telling what you would have done.”

“I can tell you what I would have done, angel. He would have disappeared without a trace.”

“Exactly, I didn’t want to lose you. I didn’t want you to go to jail or get into trouble because of me. So I figured it would be better to see me when I’d healed a little. Then you wouldn’t be that mad.”

I put her face in my hands and caressed her cheek with my thumbs.

“Baby, I want you to realize something, okay? I’ve been trained by the best these United States has to offer. I know how to get rid of someone without a trace, and no one is any the wiser.”

I kept my eyes on her for effect, and she said in a small voice, “Is that why they call you Reap?”

I smiled.

“In a way, yes. But you have to understand that you waiting to tell me didn’t save his life. I still could have killed him, baby. I could have chalked it up to cage fighting. I could have easily broke his neck and been done with it. It’s not unheard of, really. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.”

Her eyes got big, but she didn’t say anything else.

I took a few deep breaths and said to her, “If I thought Travis was a complete threat to you, then yes, I would have taken care of him. But I know he’s not, which is why I beat the shit out of him in front of everyone and then threatened his life. The fight was a warning, if you will. I’m giving him an opportunity for redemption.”

She smiled for the first time in a while.

“How admirable of you.”

I shrugged, amused at my own self.

“It’s just the kind of guy I am.”

“Well, wait. What if he would have won the fight? I mean, the way he had you on the floor…”

I leaned in to put a chaste kiss on her lips. “Angel, in no way was I in danger. I wanted him to gloat a little, to be cocky. When you showed up, he did just that.”

“What did he say to you?”

“I don’t remember really. Something about how he couldn’t wait for you two to celebrate tonight, that he was going to fuck you senseless; something like that.”

She looked at me skeptically. I really didn’t remember everything he said, but I told her what I thought he said. She asked me, as I knew she would, “What did you say to him that made him charge at you?”

“Oh, I don’t remember.”

I didn’t. Well, not verbatim, anyway.

Okay, maybe I did, and she knew it. “Bullshit, Mason. You are Grade A, macho-alpha male. You remember exactly what you said.”

I kissed her again. “Thank you, baby. But you’re giving me too much credit.”

“Come on, tell me what you said.”

“Oh, alright. I just told him that you belonged to me now.”

She looked at me and rolled her eyes. “You had to have said something far worse than that.”

“Okay,” I admitted. “I told him that I had already fucked your tight pussy so hard that, if he tried to fuck you, his little, pencil-ass dick probably would just fall out. Then I added for good measure, ‘Yea, she told me’…I’m paraphrasing, mind you.’”

I tried to hide the shit-eating grin on my face, but I was failing miserably.

“I can’t believe you told him that.”

She looked stunned.

I shrugged.

“Well, you said I was a macho-male sex God. What did you expect?”

She growled at me and then dove at me, making me fall back. Her lips were on mine instantly, and I continued my strategy of ruining her—just for me.

As time went on, Maxine started to heal inside and out. She went back to work, and I fought the urge to become her shadow. I knew Travis wouldn’t try to contact her. I knew what kind of damage I did, and it was all internal. I busted him up to the point that for weeks he was still pissing blood. I had meant every word of what I said I would do to him. I even had the place picked out to follow out my plan of a lifetime of torture.

When I finally made my way back to the gym, the guys all stopped what they were doing to watch me. Some came up to me and congratulated me. Others just watched me; appraising me. They knew I was now champion—so to speak—and they would have to fight me sometime during the summer. Some of the guys I actually liked, so I would probably go easy on them and let them tap out. But the others that I didn’t care for too much, or the ones that gawked at Maxine’s ass all day, I would show no mercy.

Maxine and I have stepped up our relationship drastically. When she comes to the gym, she comes right over to me and kisses me without me asking. She would stay around me and even stretched me right before she would help Stephen. Since we weren’t holding back, I made sure to fondle her every chance I got in front of Lou, Alex, and whoever else was watching. I took care to let everyone know who she belonged to.

When we went to my fights, she sat in my corner. When it was my turn to fight, I’d kiss her before I went in the cage. You can imagine I got a few fighters who made jokes about it or who told me what they were going to do to her. But that ended really quickly when I destroyed them. I mean, I was extra specific with it; theatrical even. I would use the cage to partly climb up it and throw a punch or a kick, sort of what I did to Travis. The crowd loved that shit, and it was embarrassing for my opponent.

What started to irritate me was when Max performed with Mimi and the girls. When she was half dressed and dancing seductively on stage, I couldn’t control myself. I would follow her backstage and fuck the shit out of her up against somebody’s wall or on any convenient flat surface. She turned me on that much.

She was my guilty pleasure, my heroin, my kryptonite. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. I found myself telling her everything I could about myself, which told me how she has gotten under my skin. I never talk about my life or myself in-depth, but I find myself spilling my guts to her.

One Sunday night, we were lounging around my living room listening to Pandora, when I got a message on my cell that my brother was trying to Skype me. Maxine hasn’t met Marcus yet. Most of the time when he and I spoke it was in some business meeting, or she wouldn’t be around.

I was upstairs for a minute, and I called him.

“What’s up, bro?”

“Nothing much. It’s just that we haven’t really spoken to each other in a few days. It’s always me being the mediator between your father and brother-in-law.”

For the past few weeks, we still have been arguing back and forth about a few investment opportunities that I wanted to buy into. But they were opposed and tried to fight me about them. They didn’t have a leg to stand on, mind you. It was all for show because I shot down their big Bernstein project.

I chuckled.

“Well, if you would just tell the bastards they don’t run shit like I do, you wouldn’t have to be the mediator.”

“Come on, Mace. They have made some money for the business.”

My brother is the level-headed one. As you can imagine, I’m not like that.

“Uh-huh…Well…”

He cut me off. “What is that? Can you turn down your radio? I didn’t know you were a Beyoncé fan.”

I started to chuckle.

“Well that, my brother, isn’t the radio. And that wasn’t Beyoncé.”

“Then who is singing like that?”

I asked him if he was in the man cave, and he said he was. I then called him on my smart TV. When his face popped up, I swiveled the TV toward the kitchen, so he could see Maxine in her finest. She wore a form-fitting tank top and short shorts. She just walked from the kitchen into the dining room, dancing.

I looked at my brother, and he wore the same expression I did when I first saw her performing. She had her headphones on, but she also had music coming through the iPod docking station. She saw me smiling at her, and she smiled back but kept dancing. It was obvious she didn’t pay attention to what was on my screen.

I believe she was dancing and singing to
XO
, one of Beyoncé’s new songs. When the song was over, my brother clapped, and she jumped when she realized I wasn’t the one clapping.

She threw a round wooden napkin holder at me, “You son of a… Why didn’t you tell me he was on there?”

My brother and I laughed at her embarrassment.

I said, while holding my gut, “I thought you saw him. I mean, baby, it’s obvious. You looked right at him.”

She wrinkled up her nose, and I couldn’t help it. I walked up to her and put my arms around her, resting my hands on her shapely ass.

“I’m sorry, baby. Do you forgive me?” I said softly, trying to have an innocent look on my face. “Or, if you like, you can punish me later; tie me up and have your way with me.”

She smiled, which made my heart melt.

She looked at me as if she was thinking it over and said, “Well, maybe I’ll do that, if you’re good.”

“Oh yeah? What if I don’t want to be good?” I asked her, as I pressed my lips against her neck.

“Oh for fuck sake, are you kidding me?”

I heard my brother’s voice behind me, and I started laughing. I looked in her eyes and saw the heat radiating from them. How can a woman control my body or emotions like this? I feel like a fucking pussy sometimes, like I need my manhood card snatched from my grasp. But then again, I sometimes wish somebody would. I took her hand and kissed her nose.

I said softly, “Later baby.”

And wouldn’t you know it? She whimpered.

“Marcus, I would like you to meet Allura. Allura, this is my annoying-ass brother, Marcus. No resemblance at all, right?”

She rolled her eyes at me and gave him that sexy-ass grin I love so much.

“Hello, Marcus. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

Marc looked surprised, no doubt because I called her Allura when I’ve been telling him about a woman named Maxine all this time. But he quickly recovered and gave her his most cover-page GQ smile.

“Allura, it’s nice to meet you as well. And your name; it’s beautiful. French, right?”

She nodded. If it was possible, her smile became more radiant. “Yes, it means the power of attraction.”

“Well, hell. I think your parents hit that name on the bull’s-eye,” Marc replied, appreciating my girlfriend a little too much.

Yes, that’s right. I said it; I said ‘girlfriend.’

“Stop eye-fucking my girlfriend, bro.”

Maxine smacked me and blushed. My brother, however, wasn’t fazed.

“Really? Isn’t that what you do to Marie every chance you get? Yeah, payback is a bitch.” He started laughing, and so did I.

Maxine just shook her head and plopped down on the couch.

“Unfreaking believable. You two are alike in every way.”

My desire to rip her clothes off suddenly came over me. I said to my brother, not taking my eyes off Maxine, “Well, I’m about to hang up on you and fuck the shit out of my woman, something that Marie told me you’ve been lacking.”

“Fuck you. You’re a fucking liar. I’ll go and get her right now and prove it.”

“You know, she’ll just lie for you,” I responded.

But at the same time, he yelled for his wife. I looked at Max, and she shook her head.

“Come on, Marc. I don’t want to see you have sex just to prove a point.”

I feigned disgust.

“Really, little brother, you don’t remember that time…”

I grabbed the remote quickly. “Bye, asshole,” and hung up on him as he started laughing.

I stared at the screen and mumbled, “Jackass” then pushed the television back against the wall. When I turned around, Maxine stared at me. “What?”

She smiled and shook her head, “Nothing
.
I didn’t say anything.”