Page 64 of Her Wicked Hero

“And you got one thing wrong in that statement, Querida,” he said as his fingers traced her blush.

“What?” she asked breathlessly. Her eyes were staring at him as her body shivered under his touch.

“I don’t just like you, I love you with all of my heart.”

Two tears dripped down her face, and once again, Zed was tortured with the view of her even, white teeth torturing her bottom lip. She searched his face, and he waited. He didn’t know what she was looking for, but she must have found it. Marcia’s fingers fluttered over his neck before landing on his cheek.

“I’m in love with you too,” she whispered.

Zed felt a part of himself relax, a part of his soul that had been guarded and restless for decades was fulfilled by her words. “Thank fucking God,” he said, right before he claimed her mouth.

Zed opened one eye and pretended to scowl. Marcia giggled as she wiped up the drizzled chocolate sauce on his chest with the strawberry. She’d been giving him a hard time about cleanliness in the bed for the last four hours, thinking he would mind her shenanigans. She was wrong on all counts. As long as she was naked in his bed, he was a happy man.

He was really happy to see that for the last four hours, she had been totally unselfconscious about her appearance. Even after the first chocolate shower they’d shared, she hadn’t given a second look at her face, instead, she’d been more interested in his shaving routine.

“You do realize we’re going to have to shower again?” he asked.

Marcia popped the chocolate covered strawberry into his mouth, and he chewed.

“I bet I can make you not care,” she purred.

He bet she was right.

“You still haven’t stuck to your part of the bargain,” she said as she licked delicately at a drop of chocolate on his chest.

What was she talking about?

“Hmmm?” he asked.

“You were going to tell me about growing up in East LA.”

Looking at Marcia’s wealth of tumbling curls and thinking about her huge heart, he couldn’t help but smile. “My abuela would have loved you.”

“That’s grandmother, right?”

“Yes. She had my mother when she was fifteen, then my mother had me when she was sixteen. They looked more like sisters than mother and daughter.”

She stopped moving, her eyes overly bright. “Oh Zed, you’re talking about them in the past tense.”

“They’ve both passed,” he nodded. “It’s been years and years.”

She didn’t ask any questions, she just got out of bed, went to the master bath, and came back with a warm wash cloth, wiping the chocolate off his chest, then cuddled up next to him.

“When I was really little, we lived in a small apartment, and I remember a lot of laughter. Actually, a lot of singing too. And the food. My grandmother was a great cook. My mom? Not so much.”

“The arguing started when I was about six. Mom would leave for days on end, and when she would come back, she wasn’t the mom I remembered. Later, I realize she was either high or strung out, but to the eyes of a six-year-old, those rages just seemed like your mom all of a sudden hated you.”

Marcia’s hand clenched over his chest. She knew what it was like dealing with an addict. “What did your grandmother do?”

“Mom started to bring men back to the apartment. When my grandmother was at work, one of them knocked me across the room, then locked me outside. She found me on the porch. I’d never seen my Abuela so angry. She took me to a neighbor’s apartment and had me spend the night. I never saw my mother again, it was a couple of years later that she died.”

“I’m so sorry,” Marcia said. He could hear the ache in her voice.

“My Abuela’s name was Carmalita Margaurite Zaragoza, quite a mouthful, huh?”

“Zaragoza?”

“Yeah, mom was illegitimate, and so was I. Abuela would tell me stories about her family from Mexico.” His lips twitched. “When I went to school and started hearing fairy tales, I realized she had pretended fairy tales were really stories about her family. I never called her on it because by then, I was seven or eight years old and realized telling me those stories and having me believe good things about her family back in Mexico made her happy.”