Surrender to Love (4 page)

“Are you coming back to bed?” o
ne of the women asked.

Digging his fingers into his hair, Jon gave it a sharp pull then dropped his hands to his sides. “Not yet,” he told them as he crossed the room and sat his naked ass in a chair positioned in the corner. “How about you two play for a bit while I watch.”

Their eyes lit up with excitement at his suggestion, and he watched them with alarming disinterest as the blonde opened her legs and her friend leaned in to bury her face in her slick, pink folds.

Didn’t do a thing for him.

Normally, in a situation like this, Jon would be right in the middle of it all, fucking pussy while watching pussy getting eaten, or eating it himself. This whole damn thing just didn’t sit right with him.

As he hit
the back of his head against the wall with a thud, Jon closed his eyes and was immediately presented with Patti’s soft, round face. Wet sounds and constant moaning filled his ears, and Jon used the sensory stimulation to fuel his fantasy. He thought of Patti’s curvy body, her full breasts, and her smiling face, and then stripped her of all her clothes, placing her beneath him.

He tried to picture what she would feel like, how she would smell and taste, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to line up the details in his head. It was like trying to watch a movie with half the scenes deleted. He didn’t know anything about her, and he supposed that was part of the problem.
 

Still, he did his best, allowing the vague images to grow and adapt to his surroundings. He used the sounds of heavy breathing and
the groans of an impending orgasm to stir him back to life, and when his cock began to throb, bobbing heavily between his thighs, he wrapped his fingers around it and tightened them into a fist.

“Ah, shit,” he breathed, pumping his hand up and down. On the bed, one of the women started growing louder, telling the other one to fuck her harder. He used her words to fuel his fire, and pumped his fist harder. Patti’s pale
blue eyes stared back at him behind his closed lids, and when he heard the unmistakable shriek of a woman succumbing to pleasure, he tumbled over the edge with her, shooting hot streams of come all over the back of his hand and on his stomach.

He laid there for a while—
a lump of useless flesh sprawled out in a chair that wasn’t made for sprawling, and knew he was in trouble.

4

Patti glanced at the clock on the back of her stove and cursed low under her breath. She was running late! After snatching her purse and phone from the coffee table, she spent several more minutes combing the couch cushions and crawling around on the floor in search of her car keys. After finally finding them next to the toaster on the kitchen counter, she raced out the door with little time to spare.

Thankfully, it was Sunday and
a lot of people, like her mother, were either still in bed or sitting in a church pew. On this day in particular, she knew exactly where her mother would be.

“Good morning, Mom
ma,” she said solemnly, pressing the phone to her ear as she drove down the open highway.

Her mother sounded tired and withdrawn, which worried her a little. “Good morning, sweetie.”

“How are you?” Patti asked, concerned.

“Oh, don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I’m more worried about you. Are you still insisting on going up there?”

Patti’s jaw clenched. Every year her mother asked her the same question, and every year her answer remained the same. “There’s nowhere else I’d be,” she responded. She guessed they had both fallen into somewhat of a pattern over the years, and to be perfectly honest, it was somewhat comforting. Patterns were good. They were predictable. She didn’t have to guess what was coming next, which was exactly what appealed to her most.

Her mother sighed sadly. “I wish you’d let it go, sweetie. I don’t know what you expect to find there.”

“I don’t expect to find anything, Momma. It’s just something I need to do.”

There was a beat of silence,
where Patti drummed her fingers on the steering wheel while she waited for her mother to come up with some excuse to keep her away. To her surprise, she didn’t. “Okay,” her mother breathed in resignation. “Just make sure to take your mace and be aware of your surroundings.”

Patti rolled her eyes beca
use her mother was such a worrywart, but she couldn’t help smiling because it also meant her mother cared. “Sure, Momma. Got it right here in my purse.” She patted the black bag resting beside her in the passenger seat. Although, she wasn’t sure how handy it would be for where she was headed.

“Make sure to keep it on your person, Patti,” her mother scolded gently. “You won’t have time
to go digging for it if some crazy person decides to attack you.”

Turning off the main road, she steered
the car through a pair of tall iron gates. She had to work to push away the intense feeling of sorrow that spilled over her. “I have to go now, Momma,” she said in a garbled whisper.

When her mother responded, her voice was as strangled as hers. “Okay, sweetie. Be careful and…” She paused and took a deep breath. “And say hello for me.”

“Okay, Momma, I will.” Tucking her phone back in her purse, Patti followed the long and winding path to her destination, coming to a slow stop just under a large maple tree standing like a silent sentinel over the grounds and its many residents.

Patti stepped out of the car, taking in the expansive rolling green lawn, inhaling the sweet smell of freshly cut grass and soaking in the absolute quiet that came with being in a place like this. As she stood there, building up the courage to move forward, a cool breeze gusted up, weaving its fingers through her hair, and gave her a gentle nudge forward. Her feet carried her through the damp grasses to the spot that made her body tremble with grief, yet provided her with
a tremendous amount of comfort.

Dropping to her knees in front of the cold, hard stone that reflected her stricken image back at her,
she reached out a trembling hand and traced the etched lettering. “Hi, Daddy.”

***

Patti’s heart held a dull ache as she set herself back on the road and glanced in her rearview mirror at the retreating graveyard. She always felt a marked sadness when she left there, as though she were turning her back on her father. She knew that was ludicrous. It wasn’t as if he were really there, but even four years after he’d passed, she couldn’t seem to wrap her head around the fact that he was really gone.

Hoping to tune out the dark thoughts, Patti started up her favorite CD and scanned to the song that never failed to brighten her day. She blazed a path down the highway, the GTO growling fiercely as she fed it a little more gas. When her exit appeared in the distance, her good mood deflated a bit, but she turned up the stereo, determined to hold onto it a while longer. 

The line at the red light crept forward as the cars in front of her took turns pausing and going. When it was her turn, Patti continued to belt out lyrics along with David Coverdale as she turned her head to assess the oncoming traffic. Her foot had just left the brake when something slammed into the back of her. The force of the collision drove her body forward, and the lack of air bags ensured that she got a nice split in her lip when she face-planted the steering wheel. She moaned as she dropped her head back against the seat.

“Shit, are you okay?” The sound of a man’s voice
shouted outside her window a moment later, carrying over the blare of music and penetrating the fog as Patti lifted her head and touched her fingers to her swollen mouth. They came back red, and seeing the damage, the man’s eyes rounded and he wrenched her door open. He was in her face before she could blink an eye. “Here, let me take a look.”

Dazed,
Patti showed no reaction at all, not even an increase in heart rate at finding herself face-to-face with Jon. One would think, after witnessing such a beefcake walk away with a couple of bimbos on stilts for legs, she wouldn’t have remembered such a minor detail as a name, if only out of need for self-preservation. But no, Patti remembered everything about him. Why, oh why, did she always go for the uber sexy player-type? It must be a mental deficiency of some sort. It certainly wasn’t genetic, considering her mother’s obvious good taste in men.

So
, here she was feeling as if someone had attempted to punch her teeth down her throat, and all she could manage to do was stare at the beautiful man kneeling before her. As he inspected her face, she soaked in every detail of his. With the benefit of natural sunlight, she could see that his eyes were much more than the muted light color she’d observed in the darkness of the club, but were a gorgeous shade of aqua framed by thick, dark lashes. Short, dark hair turned nearly black by hair product teased his forehead, which was now marred by tiny furrows of worry. She could feel the tension radiating from him and she could see it in the firm set of his smooth, square jaw and the tight line of his full, very kissable lips.

“Can you hear me?”
Jon was saying. Patti blinked away the fog as best she could and realized he had turned those intense blue eyes on her. “Do you know where you are?”

“In my car,” she answered smartly as
she began to gather her wits.

His head tipped forward once in agreement. “How many fingers am I holding up?” He flashed two
, so she said four. His eyes grew wider.

“I’m just fucking with you. Two,” she said as she struggled to
sit up straight. As it turned out, the driver’s side of a car was only meant for one body at a time. With some annoyance, Patti placed her hands on Jon’s very nice, very wide shoulders, and firmly but politely shoved him away from her vehicle.

“I don’t think you should
move,” Jon said cautiously as he backed away and watched her climb out of the car. She stumbled a little and his hands shot out to catch her before she could fall, but she slapped them away.

“I’m fine,” she snapped. The last thing she wanted just then was a man touching her. She’d had enough of those for a while.
It didn’t matter if that fleeting moment of contact completely set her on edge, or that it made her stomach tumble to her feet. In that second she chose to follow the “Just Say No” motto.

Moving past him, she made her way to the back of the car and cringed as she got a load of the damage. “What did you do to my baby?” she screeched.

It was horrific. Worse than anything she had ever seen. The bumper was buckled in on itself and the paint job was completely trashed. Okay, maybe not the worse damage she’d ever witnessed, but it was a fucking tragedy to her.

“Damn shame,”
Jon said, his eyes sweeping over its sleek body appreciatively. “But it could always be worse.” His mouth turned down in a frown as his eyes fell on his own car. “Besides, you’re not the one calling a tow truck.”

Patti glanced at his car and the smoke and various fluids leaking from under the hood. “Well, that’s what happens when you drive foreign pieces of shit.” Logically, she knew she was one to talk since she owned a Toyota, but from her point of view, that was her crap car.
Nothing beat good old American-made muscle.

“Piece of shit?”
Jon’s face screwed up in offense. “Lady, that’s a BMW. Do you have any idea what that car costs?”

“More than I could hope to make in a lifetime, I’m sure,” she
complained. “But even if I had the funds, I’d never waste them on something like that.” With a sad shake of her head, she went back around to the driver’s side and leaned inside. David Coverdale was still going strong, but his ability to soothe her had faded for the moment, so she twisted the volume all the way down before reaching across the console to open the glove compartment.

“Is that…Is that a
disposable
camera?” Jon stood back, observing her as she moved around the joined vehicles and snapped picture after picture with a small smirk on his face.

“I’m glad you find this so funny.” Kneeling down, Patti took several pictures of the fender bender,
and then backed up to get a few from a distance so there couldn’t be any confusion over who was at fault. “By the way,” she said as she peered down the lens. “How did you manage to plow into me in the first place?” She lifted her head to take his measure. “You don’t look high or drunk. Are you blind or just plain stupid?”

Jon’s
eyebrows lifted and he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his slacks, mulling over her words. “Wow.” He huffed a disbelieving laugh and his tongue poked out to swipe across his bottom lip. “I got a completely different impression of you the other night.”

Camera in hand, Patti crossed her arms over her chest and popped her hip out. She narrowed her eyes dangerously. “And what
impression would that be exactly?”

He
opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it as if thinking better of it. He dropped his head to mask his smile. “Just forget it. Forget I said anything.” Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out his wallet. “We should exchange information. For insurance purposes,” he clarified when she continued to stand there, staring holes through him. “Unless you don’t want your car fixed?”

Grudgingly, Patti skirted by him to dig into her purse for her information. As she rummaged around in the old saddlebag, her phone went off. She grabbed her wallet and made her way back to
where Jon stood waiting for her as she answered the call.

“What do you want, asshole?” she barked as she held out her insurance card.
Jon’s blue eyes lifted to hers quizzically as he took it. She ignored him.

“I’m coming by later to get my stuff,” Kyle told her.

“Yeah, that’s not going to work for me,” Patti said as she jotted down the license plate and insurance I.D. on a piece of scrap paper. Kyle had wisely left her alone the first couple of days after they broke up, but he’d been blowing up her phone since late last night. She hadn’t bothered to listen to any of the twenty-seven messages he’d left, figuring she didn’t owe him a damn thing. Now, she was in a hellish mood, and who better to direct it at than the ex-boyfriend.

“Why not? I got a key. You don’t even need to be there.”

“Because I don’t want you in my house, that’s why,” Patti snapped, and then cursed, scribbling out the mistake that he’d caused her to make and started rewriting the numbers. “Look, give me a day or two and I’ll box your stuff up and drop it by your place while you’re at work.”

“Sorry, that won’t work for me,” Kyle said, tossing her words back at her.

All he accomplished was inciting her rage. “You know what doesn’t work for me? Seeing my boyfriend screwing some bitch with mile-fucking-long legs!” Jon was staring at her now. Shifting enough to keep him in her peripherals, she leashed what she could of her anger and spoke cheerily through clenched teeth.

“
Fine, I changed my mind. Go ahead and come over later.” And that’s when the leash snapped and she lost her tether on sanity. “You can pick out what’s left of your shit from the burning pile of rubble on my front lawn!” She ended the call and squeezed her eyes shut, taking several deep, cleansing breaths to calm herself. She really wasn’t an angry person. She was actually quite nice, docile, even. It wasn’t her fault that the men in her life always seemed to draw out her inner bitch.

“Boyfriend?”
Jon asked warily as she stuffed her phone in her jeans pocket and thrust his card back at him.

“
Ex-
boyfriend,” she growled, returning her card back to her wallet.