His for the Summer: 50 Loving States, Florida Read online

  He wished he could look down and see her eyes as she did this. He wanted to look into their pretty brown depths as she took him deep into her mouth.

  He loved what she was doing to him. But he also couldn’t abide it. She had too much power over him in this position. And Gus Benton nee Gus Martinez wasn’t a guy who could deal with feeling powerless. It reminded him too much of the scared boy he’d been before. The one who’d completely and utterly failed her.

  “Stay away from her.”

  He could still see her brother, Bruce Jr., in the passenger seat of his car, wearing khakis and a button up. Looking as out of place as a modern cup holder in his old Chevy Impala.

  Bruce Jr. had been less than happy to walk into the kitchen and find “his new friend” sitting there with his little sister. Drinking a glass of orange juice, but watching her over its rim.

  Gus remembered trying to play it off like Bruce Jr.’s sister hadn’t hit him like a frat boy’s first taste of cocaine in the French Quarter.

  “Relax. We was just talking, homes.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen you talk to a lot of girls, homes,” Bruce answered, his complete lack of a street accent making the word sound like a teacher’s chastisement. “That’s why I’m telling you to leave my sister alone. She isn’t like those Ninth Ward girls you’re used to dealing with.”

  Bruce Jr. had been right about that. She wasn’t anything like those other girls. He’d always considered talking to be part of the game. Something you did to get girls into bed sooner than they might have if you hadn’t hit their ears with a few honeyed words about how good they looked. But chatting with Bruce Jr.’s sister in her kitchen had been different. He’d actually wanted to talk to her and keep on talking to her, despite the raging hard-on in his jeans.

  “Stay away. Got it. No problem,” he'd said to Bruce Jr. Knowing it was a lie even as he swore it-

  The memory cut off as he pulled up on her head. Made her stop, even though her hot, wet mouth felt like something slightly above this side of heaven.

  “You didn't like it,” she said, sounding disappointed. He could almost hear her biting back another apology.

  He wished he could answer. Wished he could tell her how much he'd liked it. That it had to do with him and his fucked up power issues, not with her.

  Instead he hauled her back up. Laid her across his body, treasuring her softness as he nuzzled his mouth into the top of her head. Hoping his actions were enough to communicate what he couldn't say out loud. That was literally a fantasy come true. But I just couldn't let you. Not now. Not like this.

  Maybe she understood because she sighed against his chest as if she had just decided to accept the situation for what it was, without further protest.

  But then she quietly said, “I know I'm not your girlfriend. And I know you're not my boyfriend.” Her hot breath fanned against his scar as she spoke. “But I really loved doing that with you, and I wish you'd let me finish. I wish we could be like that. Without the blindfold. Waking up every morning like this. Instead of…whatever we are.”

  Gus went still again

  She was too honest. Too damn honest. Had been from the start. That was what had kept him coming back. Knocking on her door, fifteen—sometimes thirty minutes before he was scheduled to meet up with her brother at their house. Even though he knew better. Even though her brother warned him to stay away from her.

  But he wasn’t a seventeen-year-old boy with a defective heart anymore. He was a man and he knew better.

  CERA CURSED HERSELF nearly as soon as she said it. She’d let the warm fuzzies lull her into a false sense of security. And before she could stop herself, she’d made her wish out loud. Because when he held her like this, it felt like maybe it was something he might want, too. Like maybe he was becoming just as uncomfortable as she was with how insanely seedy the details of their arrangement were. Like maybe he wanted to be seen by her, truly seen by her as badly as she wanted to see him.

  But she’d been wrong about that. Terribly wrong.

  One minute they were lying there in tentative peace, and the next he was getting out of bed. No words, no reassuring squeezes. Just fumbling, rustling. Loud slide of the closet door. Fainter click of the bedroom door…then eventually there came a short knock on the door.

  “Ah, Cera, it’s Hank. I was told to let you know you could come out for breakfast whenever you’re ready. You want the usual?”

  Grapefruit and a bowl of cereal. What Hank made her most mornings.

  Except this one.

  “No,” she answered. She took off the blindfold and blinked against the now very harsh light of day. “I’m—I’m not hungry.”

  “Okay, let me know if you change your mind.”

  But she already knew she wouldn’t. Her stomach had become a cauldron of expired milk, thinking about how stupid she’d been to say what was on her mind.

  A shower. That was what she needed. Something to erase the dirty feeling of Benny running away from her like she was some kind of Venus fly trap. She winced as she got out of bed, the body that had felt so delicious just a few minutes ago, now aching with regrets.

  She was his whore, she thought to herself bitterly. That was what he’d hired her to be, and that was she all she’d ever be to Benny….even if he occasionally indulged a few of her girlish requests.

  Best she remember that. For the sake of the job she’d been paid to do, and also for the sake of her own sanity.

  “I’M NOT YOUR BOYFRIEND.”

  The message appeared on Cera’s smart phone’s screen. Terse and plain. Two weeks after she’d seen Benny last. And about an hour after she’d decided to go back to her old neighborhood to get some vaca frita de pollo. As much as she loved Hank’s cooking, she’d been dying for some comfort food. Plus, she was sick of feeling like a goldfish in that luxury fishbowl apartment, waiting for her owner to return.

  A simple bowl of rice and shredded chicken seemed like the perfect cure for both issues. She’d been about to sink her fork into the tasty dish, when the message came through. Dragging her down from her recently lightened mood, like a stone around her ankle.

  She picked up her phone and typed back: “I know.”

  “Don’t ask me for things like that.”

  “Okay. I won’t.”

  She didn’t say sorry this time. Mostly because she knew he didn’t like when she apologized. But she was sorry she’d overstepped the bounds of their deal.

  She also didn’t tell him she’d missed him. That despite this just being a business arrangement, her body had ached for him every night he’d been gone. Her heart silently praying for him to come back, even as her mind insisted she should be grateful for his absence and just serve out her time.

  “How are you?” she typed in an attempt to change the subject.

  “When are you going to deposit the check for August?”

  She blinked at the question, because after last time, she wouldn’t have thought he’d be so keen to pay her that much money just to stay through August.

  “I don’t know,” she typed back.

  “Where are you?”

  At a restaurant called Mama Abuela’s in my old neighborhood.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s one of my favorite places to eat. They do a really good chicken and rice. You should come here some time. You might like it.

  This time she carefully avoided any language that might sound too intimate. Though of course if it were up to her, if she was the one in charge of arrangement, she’d bring him here. Show him her version of Miami. Crowded streets with bustling markets and corner restaurants where real abuelas made all the food from recipes they carried around in their heads.

  “Hank’s really good at Cuban food, too. That’s one of the reasons I’ve kept him on.”

  “And that was enough of a resume plus because you’re Cuban, I’m guessing?” Leading question, but she couldn’t resist.

  Dot-dot-dot

  “I’m about to b
oard a plane back to Miami. I expect you to be at the apartment when I arrive.”

  Asked and once again not answered, she thought with a sigh, as she typed: “Okay, no problem.”

  Long pause, and she was about to put down the phone, thinking maybe that was it, when a new message appeared.

  “My name is Gus, and I’m half-Spanish, half-Cuban.”

  Her hand floated to her throat, and her stomach went from grinding stones to fluttering.

  “Hi, Gus,” she typed with a happy face emoticon. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Don’t call me Benny. Ever again. Especially during sex.”

  So that had bothered him. And despite her resolve to be professional, Cera typed: “Okay, you want me to call you by your real name. It’s important to you. But you’re not my boyfriend.”

  Another long pause, followed by a few gray dots. But only for a couple of seconds. Then they disappeared all together and this time, no further messages came through.

  Not until a couple of hours later when Cera was on the balcony, watching all the beautiful people and families, swim, tan, and play volleyball on the strand below. Happy to be together in South Beach, playing in the sun.

  That was when her phone dinged inside the little leather over the shoulder bag she’d bought in Little Havana that day. And when she pulled it out, she found four words:

  “Put on the blindfold.”

  14

  She shouldn’t have left Gus’s apartment today.

  It was the third week of July, muggy to the point that she was zero percent surprised when warm rain began to pelt her as she jogged up the walkway toward her old lime green apartment unit. She was already regretting her decision to leave the relatively cool confines of the fishbowl in order to collect her mail.

  But if she didn’t do it now, she had no idea when she’d have the chance to get over here again. Gus had left for a short work trip the day before and would be returning tomorrow morning. This being the last week of July, she had little doubt she’d be going out much after he returned. Plus, August was up in the air even now. She still hadn’t deposited the cashier’s check, but it remained in her wallet, tempting her every time she opened it. Like something that glowed.

  Gus wasn’t her boyfriend, but as little as she’d seen him in June, he’d spent every night but one with her in July. He’d had to fly “to deal with his family” on the Fourth of July. But had returned like a soldier from war the very next morning. And then he hadn’t allowed her to leave the white bedroom for the rest of the long weekend. Keeping her in the blindfold and making them breakfast, lunch, and dinner until he had to go back to work on Monday. This was her first whole weekend in the blindfold cave, but not nearly her last. She learned after that to get whatever required her eyes done during weekday work hours, because come the weekend, she’d be confined to the “cave” again.

  Not that she’d ever complain about being made to come over and over again by her extremely talented lover. Sometimes it felt like she should be paying him for his services, not the other way around. But he wasn’t her boyfriend.

  He wasn’t her boyfriend, but he sexed her silly every night. And it wasn’t ever a case of him getting his and leaving. No, these were long, sensual sessions that he seemed to prolong purely for her pleasure. Followed by the deepest sleeps she’d ever enjoyed, wrapped in his arms.

  He wasn’t her boyfriend, but at least three times a week he oiled her entire body from head to toe. Turning her muscles into butter, even as he took it to the very edge of pleasure, rubbing her in spots that made her core tighten with aching need.

  He wasn’t her boyfriend, but more often than not, Hank would put lunch somewhere random. Like out on the balcony, on the coffee table, the bed in the room she shared with Gus, Gus’s home office. Soon after, Hank would head out and a few minutes later, she’d receive a message from Gus to put on her blindfold.

  Despite being insanely busy doing whatever he did that made him able to afford a South Beach luxury fishbowl, he often came home for lunch. He’d feed her by hand and then afterwards make slow, lazy love to her in the bright light of the Miami sun. But he definitely wasn’t her boyfriend.

  She still hadn’t seen him. Didn’t know much about him beyond the name he’d unexpectedly given her toward the end of June. She knew nothing of his voice other than the hoarse yells he’d sometimes let loose when he came.

  But they texted all the time. About their days and, occasionally, about deeper things, too. At least on his part. Once he texted her about how even though he’d only met his brother a couple of years ago, he’d already become the most important person in his life. He told her he hadn’t known how much he’d needed a brother until he got one.

  They had this in common. At least she thought it was something they could talk about. She’d written back to him about her sister. The one she hadn’t even known she had until her strung out mother had shown up one day, demanding money for the love child she’d been keeping secret for four years. Dana was messed up, according to the woman who seemed to need a lit cigarette just to handle having a conversation with Cera on the front porch of the house (which would soon be seized now that her father had committed suicide).

  Cera told Gus about how she had been supposed to go to college the following fall—her college fund being the one thing the government hadn’t been able to touch because it had been set up in her name.

  But she’d taken one look at the four-year-old child morosely sucking on her thumb, and decided right then and there that she’d do anything for this little girl. Her sister. The only family she had left. So she’d taken a big penalty and withdrawn all the money from her college fund in order to get Dana’s mother to sign a new custody agreement.

  Cera thought Gus would have more to say about this story, seeing as he had a surprise half-sibling, too. But he’d just written: “You’re a very good person.” Then quickly changed the subject to safer topics. Like what plans she had for the day, what they’d be having for dinner, and how he’d be eating it off of her tonight, like he had the night before.

  Judging from that exchange, and a few others, she soon figured out the deal. Gus liked hearing about her future plans, but had little to no interest in hearing about her past—especially if it involved her autistic sister or anything else that might be considered tragic or bittersweet. In other words, he didn’t want to hear about all the deep stuff she would have shared with him if he was her boyfriend. Because he wasn’t.

  Yet he texted her all the time. Little messages to ask what’s up and see how she was doing. He’d also shown an interest when she told him about her dream to start a charter school for autistic children one day. Going so far as to have Hank scrub one of his old laptops and give it to her, so she could work on putting together a charter petition without being hamstringed by the ancient operating system on her own PC.

  Over the past month, he’d sent her so many links to resources for starting your own charter, she had to wonder if he was using all of his down time at work to research her big dream.

  In fact, her smartphone dinged right as she got to the little rectangle of concrete her landlady had rather generously called a porch.

  “Check this place out,” the message above a long hyperlink said. “Perfect place for your charter school, right?”

  She clicked on the link. Darn, it was perfect. An old garden estate house. Two stories of white stone, broken up by what looked like well-insulated plantation windows. Thanks to a cadre of volunteers, it had been kept up over the years. But now the small botanical society that ran it was looking to sell because of dwindling membership numbers and the recent opening of a much bigger, and way more modern, botanical garden that had opened nearby.

  But the place would be perfect for a K through 6th charter focused on giving higher-functioning autistic kids of all backgrounds the skills they’d need to eventually mainstream into their respective junior high schools. There was even a greenhouse on the property. Cera thought of all the
Reggio-Emilia training she’d received during her practicum at the Lighthouse Center. She bet she could get all sorts of grant money to set up a gardening program for her kids.

  Her kids.

  Cera shook her head. Look at her. Already making plans for an estate she couldn’t possible afford.

  As if reading her mind, a new message from Gus came through.

  “Already crunched the numbers. No, you can’t afford to buy it outright. But if you deposit the August check, you’ll have enough for a down payment and to secure financing with enough leftover to make your payments until you can get your grants lined up.”

  She hesitated, her finger hovering above the touch keyboard.

  “I don’t see why it’s taking you so long to answer. This is what you want and it’s not going to stay on the market long. Don’t let some asshole who just wants a greenhouse steal the place from under you. Deposit the check and I’ll start making arrangements to secure the location for your school.”

  What he said made perfect sense. And it wasn’t like she’d consider it a hardship to spend August in Gus’s bed. Even with the blindfold. But…

  Her heart sank. The truth was she wanted the money. Heaven knew how long it would take her to raise that kind of money on her own. Literally a decade, most likely more. She could be in her fifties before she realized her dream of founding a public charter school for children with autism.

  But she’d needed the June money in order to make Dana’s dreams come true. She could compartmentalize taking that money in exchange for sex and tie it up in a little box marked, “the things I did for Dana” inside her mind. Same for July. But her stomach churned at the thought of Gus paying off the student loans she’d accrued. Money it would have taken her nearly a lifetime to pay him back on a teacher’s salary.

  And that was why she couldn’t bring herself to cash the August check. She wanted her own dreams to come true, too. Of course she wanted that. But not like this. Not in exchange for remaining DTF with absolutely no strings attached for August.