Shepard

3 - To good for me

Shepard

Lynette should have been the one I was with, not Celia. But Lynette was too damn young back then, just sixteen years old and way too fuckin.g young for me.

I didn’t know Lynette’s age when I met her, and I already had Tate with Celia. I thought Lynette was at least nineteen; she seemed much older, more mature than her sixteen years. It drove me crazy when I found out she was a kid. I felt like a damn pervert of the worst kind for liking her the way I did.

There’s no way on this earth I would have touched her back then. I would never touch a young girl in that way, no matter how beautiful she was. Touch a young girl, and my father will kill you. Period!

There’s an understanding in this place. You don’t touch what doesn’t belong to you. Lynette may not be branded as mine, but every brother knows she’s off-limits to anyone but me! I will put a bullet in their heads if they so much as look at her for too long! I had no damn right to go there, but it gives me a headache thinking about her with any of these fucker.s.

“Shepard? Can I get you anything?” Lynette asks again, snapping me out of my thoughts.

“How about a private dance?”

I may have had too much to drink already. However, seeing Lynette standing behind that bar in that tight red dress, hugging all her natural curves, has sent all the blood in my body to my fuckin.g coc.k. She’s the sexiest woman in this place, and she knows it.

I’m sick of fighting what I feel for her. Lynette is not a little girl anymore; she’s twenty-eight. However, something always stops me from claiming her.

She cock.s her head to the side with a smile on her face.

That smile does something to me. I’ve fucke.d many women in my time, but none have had me wanting them the way I want Lynette. Puss.y is puss.y at the end of the day. I get drunk and fuc.k whoever is on hand at the time; I don’t even remember half of them. But I’d never forget Lynette’s sweet little puss.y; should I get my hands on her for the night, that I do not doubt.

I fight what I feel for her every damn day because I put my boy first. Tate needs to be my number one, and he is, but even my father has been in my ear about taking Lynette for my own. Reckons she’s got a thing for me. He said he could see it in her eyes. He sees it in mine as well, so he said.

I don’t know; maybe he’s right. Celia has been gone for two years, and it’s time to move forward.

I’m VP; do I want to teach my boy that the only way to treat women is to use them to get off?

Never showing him what a real relationship could be like?

He’s at an impressionable age. I don’t want to mold my boy into a man who can’t form bonds with women because of his mother.

I won’t use Lynette for one night to get off. She’s worth so much fuckin.g more than that.

“If I thought you meant that. . .” Lynette’s voice trails off with a shake of her head.

She wants me. I can see it in her eyes. I finally understand what my dad has been telling me. Maybe I always saw it but just ignored it. I don’t give a fuc.k about the age difference between us anymore. She’s ten years younger, not fuckin.g twenty. Even then, it wouldn’t bother me, not anymore.

“You’d what?” I ask her, my eyes on Lynette’s mouth and those made to suck coc.k lips.

She swallows hard. “Shepard?”

Fuc.k this!

I jump over the bar, and she backs up against the mirrored wall behind her. Bottles rattle as if they’re about to fall. They won’t. I grab Lynette’s waist and pull her against me. She was made for me; she fits me like a fuckin.g glove.

“You’re driving me crazy,” I tell her while leaning in and breathing in the rose scent of her hair. “Every time you look at me, I want to tear your fuckin’ clothes off and fuc.k you senseless.”

“You do?” Her voice is husky, wanton.

That’s what I love about Lynette; she’s not a shy, timid little thing. She’s all woman, and she knows what she wants. If my dad is right and Lynette wants me, I know she won’t have said anything because she would never take my attention away from my son. Lynette knows Tate is everything to me.

I’ve seen how she, herself, is with him and how he clung to her when Celia first fucke.d off. The way Lynette took care of Tate when I couldn’t. The way she still does. My boy loves her, and I know she loves him.

I’m not saying I want a mother for my son, but I couldn’t think of anyone better if I did. Lynette’s daughter is her world, just as my son is mine. I know she’d never expect anything I couldn’t give, just as I wouldn’t expect what she couldn’t give.

I can feel her curves beneath my hands, and my mouth is watering!

“You’re so beautiful, Lynette, more beautiful than I’ve ever known. It should’ve been you, baby. It should’ve been you.”

It should always have been her. Celia and Lynette were friends. Celia met Lynette through a class she was taking at the local college in town. Of course, Celia was a little older than Lynette, seven years older, but she befriended her because Lynette didn’t seem to have any other friends.

Lynette was a sweet girl, and I liked her instantly. She was intelligent, funny, and with a moro.n, which bothered me like you wouldn’t believe. Lynette told me she was happy with the guy, and he took care of her, so I said nothing, even if my dad told me to keep an eye on the man. Something didn’t seem right with him, and my dad picked up on it immediately.

The only reason the club didn’t beat the shi.t out of the guy for sleeping with Lynette when she was fifteen was that, at first, she lied about her age and said she was eighteen. When she accidentally told Celia, we found out the truth, but then she asked me, no begged me, not to do anything to Jose because she loved him. She said he was the only family she had, and he was the father of her baby.

I should have known it was bullshit. I should have known that Jose was hurting Lynette. I should have looked out for her better. She was a good girl, always there to care for Tate when Celia couldn’t be bothered. The boy even slipped up and called Lynette Mommy one day.

I think that’s why Celia began being bitchy toward Lynette. It wasn’t Lynette’s fault that she was more of a mother to Celia’s child than she was.

Once I knew the truth about Lynette’s age, I pushed away any thought of her. Fuc.k, I felt like a damn pervert for lusting after her in the first place. Besides, I had something to keep my mind occupied. Celia already had my boy, she who bore my children, she who walked out on one child and stole the other.

Lynette isn’t a little girl anymore, and nothing is standing in my way now; I could claim her. I could make her mine. God, I want to make her mine.

I lean my forehead against Lynette’s, her face in my hands, hers clutching my cut, and I’m seconds away from kissing the life out of her right here in front of the whole damn club.

“Shepard, please,”

“Please, what, beautiful?”

“Don’t do this to me. You don’t want me; you’ve been drinking. I don’t want to be a one-night thing. I’m worth more than that. Isn’t that what you keep telling me? Isn’t that why you won’t allow me to. . .” I don’t let her finish. She’s right; she’s worth more than what I can give her.

I kiss her forehead and pull away from her.

She audibly groans as if not having my body against hers hurts.

“I’m sorry,” And then I’m gone.