Romancing the Bulldog Read online

  “It is,” she said with a frown. “But whatever.”

  Jason continued to stare at her. He never understood people like her. They have everything they need, but it’s never what they want. “Whatever is right,” he said, unbuttoning his pants.

  “Get in bed.”

  Liz rolled her eyes, but began removing clothes too, her halter top first. “When Daddy hears about this--”

  “He’ll thank me for my sacrifices.”

  “You are such an asshole!” Liz yelled.

  Jason grinned. “No, am I really?”

  Liz slung off her shirt and then stepped out of her mini-skirt. What remained were her panties and bra.

  Jason had to feign disinterest when he saw her lithe, beautiful brown body, although his loins began to throb. “All of it, kido,” he said, unzipping his pants. “The full monty.”

  “But this doesn’t make any sense. Why do I have to take off everything?”

  “It’ll be that much harder for you to slip out of here.”

  “But where am I going like this, in my bra and my panties, just tell me that?”

  “Okay, that’s it,” Jason said, moving toward Liz. “You’ve interfered with my sleep long enoItugh, young lady.” He rammed her against him.

  “What are you doing?” she protested as he turned her around, unclasped her bra in the back, removed it, and then turned her back around to face him, her large breasts dangling as he swung her around. Liz smiled when his eyes moved down and lingered on her chest.

  But she didn’t have time to lap it up because Jason kept going, slinging down her panties and then lifting her, causing her panties to drop to the floor, as he tossed her onto his bed.

  “You are such a brute!” she yelled, her small, naked body wiggling. “I don’t know how Daddy can stand you!”

  “Because he’s a brute, too,” Jason said, looking at her nakedness. “Because me and your old man understand each other.”

  When Liz saw that he was staring at her body, admiringly so, she pulled the covers over her and turned her back to him. He laughed. When she turned back around, lying on her back, and saw that Jason was unzipping his jeans, she wondered why did he have to undress, too.

  But she immediately forgot about the why and focused on the wow when he stepped out of his jeans and revealed the fullness of his own lithe body.

  Everything she’d imagined about him in the few times she’d see him was true, but so much more. And his supersized manhood, to her shock, just hung there like a dangling participle, getting stiffer and thicker the harder she looked at it. It wasn’t until she looked up and realized that Jason was looking at her, and grinning at her, did she angrily turn her back to him and lay on her side.

  Jason continued to grin as he got into bed. At least now she knew that she wasn’t dealing with any of those losers she hung out with. At least now she understood that he was a big boy, in every way, and she’d do well to stay on guard and forget about any plans she may have had to tip back out to meet up with that crowd. He was given an order, and he aimed to fulfill it.

  That was why he relaxed. With her lying here, naked beside him, gave him the control. Her plane was scheduled to leave at eleven in the morning. He’d already told Wilkes to be at his place by seven to pick her up, take her home to get her luggage, and then personally escort her to her plane. “And don’t leave,” he’d warned Wilkes, “until she’s safely in the sky and far away from us.” That would be the end of his promise to Hamp. And one thing about Bulldog Rascone: he always kept his promises.

  He lay quietly on his back, with the beautiful Elizabeth Morgan within reach of him. He couldn’t help but smile at the way she stared at his jonnie, as if she’d never seen the sight of a man with a hard-on before. Which, he knew, given her wildness, given the company she kept, was ridiculous. And equally ridiculous, he realized, was the fact that he did have a hard-on, and it got harder and harder the longer she stared at it. He liked the way she looked at him, the way her gorgeous, smoky eyes seemed to drink up every inch of him. He wondered how her perfectly puckered lips would feel around his thick . . .

  Nonsense! he said to himself. This was Hamp’s daughter, not some street corner whore!

  Hamp catch him even thinking about his daughter’s mouth on any part of his manhood and he’d be done for. Him and his career. Hamp was an old dinosaur whose influence was more on the wane than blazing hot, but a bad word from him still could bring an up-and-comer down.

  So both Liz and Jason tried to sleep, but neither could fully pull it off. Liz kept thinking about her father, which, she realized, was becoming more and more common after she had turned eighteen. Sometimes her father behaved as if he hated her. But what she couldn’t understand was why? What had she ever done to him? She did almost everything he ever wanted her to do, she just did it her way. He told her to hang out with rich kids, because they were supposedly superior to everybody else. So she did. Only she hung out with the ones that were wilder and crazier than any ghetto kid she’d ever met, but that was beside the point to her father, anyway. They were rich and well-connected and that was all that mattered to him.

  And although she wasn’t about to study business in college so that she could return home and work in her father’s businesses and remain under his total control, she never told him that. As far as he was concerned she was planning to follow right along in his footsteps.

  But he still showed nothing but contempt for her. Maybe if she went to Harvard and graduated top of her class. Maybe that would do it for him. But she wasn’t betting on it.

  Besides, she barely made it into Harvard. Finishing first in class at a school like Harvard was about as realistic as finishing at all. But that was a battle for another day, she thought, as her eyes grew heavier, and she finally began to fall asleep.

  Jason wasn’t so lucky. His sleep had been interrupted a little too completely. And besides, his naked body couldn’t stop thinking about the naked body lying beside him. He thought it would be a good idea, a way to ensure she wouldn’t try anything crazy. Now, as the reality of her presence beside him began to crystallize, he wasn’t so sure. She was young, she was only eighteen, but she had it going on in every direction. And every time he saw her, whenever, on those rare occasions, she stopped by her father’s office, his loins would pulsate. Literally throb in his pants. And the way she looked tonight. Her small, tight ass, her flat, ribbed stomach, her long, thin legs, her dark brown, magnificently gorgeous face. If she hadn’t been Hamp’s daughter, if she hadn’t been related to Hamp Morgan, he would have been all over her. But she was related to Hamp, she was his daughter, and that, for Jason, was all there was to say about it.

  The screaming came over an hour later, just as Jason was beginning to feel as though he might actually doze off. It was such a loud and guttural sound that Jason first sat up straight in bed, as if the sound was from outside of his apartment, not from within. But when he realized it was Liz, he turned quickly toward her and grabbed her to wake her up.

  “It’s okay,” he said, cradling her, as her frightened eyes opened and stared at him, tears already filling their beautiful orbs. Jason’s throat caught at the sight and he pulled her into his arms. “It’s okay,” he said again. “You were having a bad dream.” The tears came freely now for Liz. And she cried and cried. Jason held her, rocked her, and allowed her to cry. He leaned back against his headboard, and pulled her onto his lap, and continued to let her cry. He could feel her nakedness beneath him, and his manhood kept bumping against her, but he held her as if he was holding the most precious thing in the world to him.

  It took nearly five minutes before her shivering and crying completely subsided. When it did, a frown crossed Jason’s face. “What’s the matter, Liz?” he asked her.

  Liz wanted to tell him, to talk about it, but it was about her father. It was always about her father, and he was her father’s right hand man. How could she explain to somebody like him that the man he idolized hated his own daughter?
And that was what it was. Hatred. Not disappointment, not even dislike. But bald-faced hatred. Liz just couldn’t understand why.

  “I just had a nightmare,” she decided to say.

  “About what?”

  They were in such an intimate position that it almost made her more inclined to talk. But she knew she had to keep her guard up. Jason Rascone was loyal, she knew that. But his loyalty was to her father, not to her.

  “It was about, I don’t know, this man and this girl.”

  Jason hesitated. Was she talking about him, he wondered. “What about this man and girl?”

  “I don’t know, it was stupid. She did everything she was supposed to do but that was never enough for him and he stabbed her and kept stabbing her.” Liz said this and quickly looked up at Jason, to see his reaction.

  Jason was an attorney, a very good one, and knew how to hide his concern. But he was concerned. She wasn’t talking about her and him. She was talking about her and Hamp.

  “Why was he stabbing her?” he asked her.

  Liz looked away from him. “I told you already! Aren’t you listening? Because she could never measure up. She was a waste of a human being and he was taking her out of her misery.

  Jason found himself pulling her body closer to his. “But she wasn’t a waste of a human being, was she, because she couldn’t please some guy.”

  “It wasn’t just any guy, you make it sound like it’s just anybody. It’s was, he was, not just anybody.” Then she dismissed it all. “But bump it.”

  And that was all she would say about it. Bump it. Jason wanted to say more, a lot more, but he held his peace. Hamp was a hard man when he wanted to be, he knew that much about him, and he knew he could have done a whole lot better by Liz. He gave her every material thing she could have wanted. But where was the love, Jason wondered now that he was looking back. Hamp had nothing but great things to say about his son Malcolm. But when it came to Liz it was always something negative. She runs with the wrong crowd. She’s sleeping around. She’s got a big mouth. She’s too out there. Jason used to believe that Liz was the problem, that she didn’t know what good she had. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  He looked down at her, at her flawless dark skin, her beautiful big, bright eyes, her lips.

  Those infinitely kissable lips. Lips he now had to kiss. He leaned toward her, to see if she would allow it, and when she didn’t pull back, when she didn’t resist his tease, he did it. He kissed her. Chaste at first. He didn’t want to scare the woman. But then he drank her up, almost uncontrollably, terrifying her.

  But he couldn’t stop himself. He moved her closer to him and kissed her harder, longer.

  She allowed it, but he knew he was being too rough. But he couldn’t stop himself. When he stopped and looked at her, and she looked those big eyes up at him, his control broke again.

  He laid her on her back and began kissing her again. Even longer, even harder. When she wrapped her arms around him, he was beyond help. He wrapped her into his arms tighter and kissed her and kissed her and couldn’t stop kissing her. Her mouth, her cheeks, her neck, her breasts. He kissed and sucked and kissed and sucked her breasts until he was practically out of breathe.

  But he still didn’t stop. He kept kissing her. Her chest, her stomach, her thighs. He wanted to go between her legs. Desperately he wanted it. But he had to get in a different way, and he didn’t know if he could wait another second. He saddled her, reached into his drawer, and put on a condom. He stared at her as he put on the condom, to make sure she wasn’t resisting.

  She was scared, he could see fear in her eyes, but he saw the lust there too. Unbridled and ready. And that was all he was after. Some kind of consent. He parted her legs, as wide as they could go, and entered her. When he realized he had touched the essence of her, he plunged on in.

  “Oh, baby!” he kept saying as he ravaged her. And Liz held him. She wanted him. She wanted him to make her feel better. All she wanted was to forget her father and feel better.

  And she did. It felt exhilarating. Until he plunged in further, and further still, and broke her, and suddenly her eyes flew open as she began to feel the pain.

  Jason was stunned when he pushed in further and realized what he was dealing with. She was a virgin? This wild child? This nightclub hopping bad girl? He thought for sure she was experienced. The way her father talked, she was anything but virginal. She’d acted so sure of herself every time he’d see her at the office, and would flirt with a few of the younger associates right in front of her father’s eyes. How could she have lasted this long without giving it up? But she had.

  And Jason, to his shame, to his inability to control his own base emotions, was taking it. He couldn’t stop. He should have. But he couldn’t. It felt too good, and too tight, and too juicy for him to stop gyrating her and pumping her and doing all he could to drink her dry. He wouldn’t look at her. If she was crying, it would melt him, because the one thing he never wanted to do was to hurt her, yet it might have been the very thing he was doing.

  Liz felt the pain of his large manhood deep within her, and the further he plunged, the more painful it felt. But she was able to bear it. It had gone from pleasurable to painful, but somehow she still didn’t want it to end. Her virginity was important to her and she had hoped, in truth, to wait until she had a full commitment, a marriage, before she went there. But her life never worked out so neatly. She personally doubted if she would ever get married, anyway. Who, she wondered, would want to take her on? Her own father hated her, how could she ever believe that anyone else would love her?

  Besides, she couldn’t turn this down. Not Jason Rascone. Not the man every woman in her father’s club wanted to have for herself. And he was here now, big and pulsating and gorgeous, wanting her. She was tired of pretending that she could ever win her father’s love.

  All of her life she had been trying to win him over. Now she was going all the way to Harvard to win him over. Harvard! She didn’t want that. She had wanted to go to the historically black college in town, to Edward Waters College, but her father insisted on Harvard. The best to impress, he’d called it, when Liz didn’t care about impressing anyone. The only reason she even applied to Harvard was to gain his approval, when all she gained was his rebuke, his you should have graduated valedictorian then this wouldn’t be so difficult, after she graduated third, not first, in her class , and it was beginning to look like Harvard didn’t want her, either .

  She needed this!

  And she was getting it, from a playboy like Jason Rascone, a man who probably wouldn’t know a serious commitment if it bit him in the butt. But she wanted him to keep giving it to her. She wanted him to never stop. That was why she held on, as his massive manhood shoved in and out of her, in and out, over and over, the sweat from his body so perfuse that it was sticking her to him. And she tried to give as good as she got, meeting his plunges with her own little wiggles and lifts, something that caused Jason to scream her name. And plunge even deeper.

  When it was all over, and Jason had struggled to re-regulate his breathing and then rolled off of her, Liz lay still. She didn’t quite know what to make of this. Jason, however, was pained.

  Was he out of his mind? This was Hamp Morgan’s daughter, you idiot! And she was a virgin!

  Jason looked at her. And exhaled, a frown creasing his face. “I’m so sorry,” he said, heartfelt.

  “For what?” Liz asked with irritation in her voice. She never understood why people always felt she was wild, but then treated her as if she was fragile. “You didn’t do anything I didn’t let you do.”

  Jason grinned. This kid actually thought she had this all in control. Then he stared into her eyes and his smile left. Because she very well might, he feared, if they ever did something this wonderful again. He lay on his back beside her, a sense of dread overtaking him. But it wasn’t about the fact that he’d just branded Hamp’s kid. It was about the kid. Her. This naked, cocky, beautiful ball of innocence lying beside h
im. She was leaving within hours. To go to Harvard of all places. And this moment would eventually become just another night for both of them. But that wasn’t the fear for Jason. The sense that it would mean so much more to him, and there was nothing he could do about it, was the fear.

  Liz, however, refused to go there. The last thing she needed right now was some hot and heavy love affair. Especially with her father’s assistant! Especially since she knew that neither one of them were in love. This was lust pure and simple, great sex with a great looking guy, a one-night stand, and that was all, if she had anything to say about it -and she did, it was ever going to be.

  ONE

  Ten years later

  The speeding limousine flew through a puddle of standing water and splashed Liz Morgan so violently that she nearly lost her balance. She inhaled, as the sudden splatter of cold, muddy water chilled her to the bone, and then slowly moved her arms away from her wet body as if they weren’t soaked, too. She looked down, at her solid white pantsuit that now looked polka dot; at her blue and white shoulder bag that was mud-covered too; and instead of becoming angry, instead of lashing out at anybody or anything, her heart grew faint.

  She was on the sidewalk in front of an auto repair shop in the northwest end of downtown Jacksonville, on a dreary, overcast afternoon, and already it had been the kind of day that made her wonder if she had some sort of a mark, some sort of a sign on her forehead urging all to slap her, to just knock her silly.

  First, her car broke down. She was heading across town for a meeting when it sputtered and then stopped. She called the wrecker and rode inside of the tow truck to the nearest repair shop, some place called Manny’s. While Manny was doing his diagnostics on her old Ford Mustang, she went outside to catch some fresh air. And to steel herself for a repair bill that she knew was going to require the kind of money she just didn’t have.

  That was bad enough. But then some crackhead in Reeboks came upon her before she even realized he was anywhere near her, and attempted to snatch her shoulder bag. She held on, as he grabbed and ran, and she ran with him. But he was younger and faster and her hands became entangled in the shoulder bag straps. She couldn’t turn loose at that point even if she had planned to, which she had not. She lost her footing, she was fast but was no match for a fleeing teenager, and was dragged along by the thief, on her side, for several feet. It wasn’t until the thief noticed some men from across the street looking to come over did he give up on snatching her purse, and took off running. It all lasted a matter of seconds. Liz, not to mention her suddenly aching body, felt as if it had been hours of torture.