Rapture 2: a BWWM, Alpha Male Romance by Perri Forrest Read Free Book Online

years and comes in with malicious intent, it gives you pause. And that’s what happened with him. I mean, he’s pimping, selling drugs, and a whole bunch of other shit—but inside my establishments. Kinda felt like his ass got bored and decided that he was gonna dedicate his life to fucking with me. But why?”
    “Yeah, well we see where that got his punk ass,” she laughed, then bent down to reach for the last of her drink. “Just give it to me, babe. You said there was a method to this fool’s madness. What is it?”
    The words rested on the tip of my tongue. They rested there because I knew what I was opening up—an onslaught of questions that I knew would be forthcoming. Ones that I didn’t even have the answers to. My mind wandered to what my daughter might look like. Did she have green eyes like her mother, or dark eyes like mine? Did she reach up a generation and have blonde hair? And was it curly, or was it straight? Was she smart? Would she like me? Did she think she’d been abandoned? Had she ever been told anything about me?
    “Rush…! Baby, come on!” she pleaded.
    I looked into her eyes trying to see into the future to see how she would take the news, but of course there was nothing there.
    “ Ru —”
    “I have a daughter, Alika. She’s nine years old, and her mother’s name is Janae.” I paused a few short seconds. “Janae is Jacob’s sister…”
     
     

SIX
    Alika

     
     
    He just said he has a daughter .
    I sat my glass back onto the coaster in slow motion. It felt like the day I had my first fight in fourth grade when the girl ran up behind me and punched me in the back with all her might and I didn’t even know she was coming for me. When that happened, my reflexes urged me to turn around, and I beat the dog shit out of her without mercy. But with this moment, all I could do was to be stunned. There was nobody to punch, and there was nobody to lash out at. There was just someone who needed me, and who in that moment…I didn’t know how to give myself to. Instinctively, I wanted to cry, but that would’ve been a very selfish act…an extremely selfish act. So I had to use every ounce of my internal strength to keep those tears at bay. It wasn’t the time. But fuck if I wasn’t dying inside. I couldn’t find the words to speak. I was hoping for Rush’s phone to ring, or for someone to knock on the door and break up the moment so that I could go somewhere and exhale as deeply as I wanted to, but none of that happened.
    “Alika…?”
    “Yes,” I said slowly. “I heard you.” Then I turned to smile at him, with great effort, and all I could do was nod my head. I had to let him know that I hadn’t tuned out.
    “I have Oscar trying to find her for me so that I can get all of the details. I don’t really have any.”
    Wow .
    “So is that why your sister was calling so frantically before we left for Disneyland? Does she know?”
    “Yeah, she knows. She called the house because she can’t call my cell. I’ve added her number to auto-reject.”
    “ Why ?”
    “Because she and her old man both knew about my daughter and said nothing. In fact, my father’s answer to it was to pay for her to go away.”
    “And the baby’s mother took him up on his offer,” I found myself saying, before I could keep the words from coming out. “I’m sorry, Rush.”
    “No, baby, it’s okay. You have every right to feel that way. I might too if I weren’t so concerned with how I’m gonna make this work.”
    “Yeah…” I said softly.
    My heart was shattering in a million pieces at the thought of what all of this could mean. What if he saw the child and instantly fell in love with the mother? I mean, realistically, she’s given him the most beautiful gift God could possibly create. And whether or not the baby was made out of love, which was something I was deathly afraid of asking, there now existed an instant bond between mother and father that might very well eliminate me from the