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“You buried me. With your secrets and your hope and your promises that you can never seem to keep and then you come back here after four years of silence and expect me to be thankful that you remembered how to find my grave?”
I’ve never told anyone the whole story, not even Ter or Van know, so getting it all out is a struggle. A constant battle to keep opening my mouth, to keep letting the ugliness of my father’s words come out, but I get through it, only hesitating when it’s time to tell her why I decided to stay away.
“She was going to leave him, Mal. She was going to leave and take me and RJ with her. We packed bags and hid them in RJ’s closet. Reese was going to go out of town, some conference that would take him out of the country and give us enough time to settle into our new life with Margaret. But before he left, I ended up showing him the bags, telling him everything. I’m the reason he was able to hurt her. And I’m the reason he was able to hurt you.”
That was the simple answer. The more complicated one involved a detailed recollection of the years I spent in therapy, working through my apparent hero complex and accepting that no matter how he spun it, I wasn’t responsible for the terrible things my father did. His sins were his, and his alone, and I couldn’t spend the rest of my life paying penance for them.
“I’m sorry about your mom, and I sincerely hope you’ve found a way to forgive yourself. You deserve happiness, Chris, but it won’t be with me. It can’t.” She rises up on her tiptoes, pressing a soft kiss to my cheek that knocks us both off kilter. Her movements are noticeably less smooth as she lowers herself back to the floor and drops her hand.
There’s a thin layer of heat coating her words that makes me turn serious. Mama lost Daddy when Eric and I were babies, and I’ve never so much as seen her look at another man. He was her first love, her everything, and when he died, she put all her energy into raising us. I always thought she would seek love out again, never heard her say that she wouldn’t until now. “You really mean that, huh?” I ask, taking in her gentle, but serious, expression.
“I do.” She nods, a dreamy, far away glisten to her eyes. “Your daddy was the only man I could be me with. It’s like the moment I was in his presence everything in me just…relaxed. There was no pretext with him, no pretending or hiding, just the quiet, rare perfection of being known, of being seen for exactly who you are and being loved anyway.”
“Oh, baby girl. You know it’s not too late for you two, right? There’s still time for y’all to heal what’s been broken.”
“You and Chris,” she says simply. “He told me that you’re angry with him, that you have every right to be, but he’s determined to make it right. He moved back here and laid down roots in the place that’s most important to you to do just that.”
There aren’t many things I’m sure of in this world, but I am sure that I was made to love Mallory Kent, to guard her secrets and her truths, to kiss her scars, and ensure that nothing, not even me, causes her pain again.
The young lady nods. “Yes, I know. Most of my marketing is focused on the origin of the product recipes. My nana crafted each one herself, made them in her kitchen for years, and used them on my mama, aunties, and all her grandbabies.”
She raises her hand, gesturing toward her crown, which makes all the women around her smile. Hair is a sacred thing among Black women, a language they all speak and understand.
God, I want to touch her. To reacquaint my palms with the temperature of her skin, to relearn the scent of her breath when it’s laced with desperate desire and long-buried secrets I was born to unearth.
“Your thighs around my ears.” I take a step forward, invading her space, and she moves back. “The sound of your moans filling our bedroom. A whole week to stare at you without clothes, so I can note all the changes to your body since the last time I had the honor of seeing you naked.” She shifts on her feet, and I wonder if it’s a result of her agitation or an attempt to hide her reaction to me. Either way, it draws my attention away from her face, down the curves of her luscious thighs and shapely calves, to the black strappy heels shortening the distance between her mouth and mine. “We’d
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“You could.” She shrugs, doing her best to appear nonplussed. “But you’d be wasting your breath asking for things you’ll never have again.” “Neither of us believes that, princess.”
Usually, I’m good at it: establishing new habits, developing new routines designed to help me adjust to whatever changes have been thrown my way. I did it after Trent broke my world apart with his bare hands, when a drunk driver stole my brother from me, and both times Chris left me with a knife in my gut and a hole in my chest where my heart used to be. I’ve done it so many times, I used to consider myself something of an expert, but not anymore.
So here I am, back at Club Noir, buying Sloane drinks because we decided a long time ago that post-break-up drinks would never be paid for by the one who just had her time wasted by a man. Over the years, I’ve been the one consistently on the receiving end of this rule, putting a dent in Sloane’s bank account with round after round of tequila, never once considering that there would come a day when I’d get to repay my debt to her.
“These two are spoken for.” The two men in front of us turn toward the sound, and Sloane does the same, her brow furrowed as her brain works to understand the interruption. Since I’m the one who called Nic, I’m not as surprised as everyone else is at his sudden appearance. What does shock me is the man standing next to him. The man that helps Nic edge the other two men out of the way, so they can slide into the booth with Sloane and me. The man whose honey and bourbon eyes find mine from across the table while Nic settles beside me.
I’m making a mental note to talk to him about not making her feel weird about finding her happiness after losing the love of her life when my gaze snags on Chris’. He’s been staring at me intently this whole time, not at all interested in whatever is happening with Nic and Sloane, and the moment we lock eyes, I see exactly what he wants from me.
Scorching kisses, life-altering orgasms, shattered inhibitions.
My pulse kicks up, every part of my body responding to the primal call he’s put out. His eyes drop down to my chest, studying the skin left exposed by the straps of my olive green halter dress, clinging to the hollow space at the base of my throat where he used to make a habit of dipping his ...
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I’m going to fuck Christopher Johnson tonight.
Lmaoooo period
The crowd engulfs my body on all sides, and I wade through it, finally allowing myself to tap into the part of me that loves to be pursued by Chris. My heart starts to pound, slapping against my rib cage as I think about him somewhere behind me, his long legs eating up the ground I’ve just covered a few seconds too late. Empty hands hungry for my curves and the ghost of my scent in his nostrils as he navigates through drunken clubgoers who have no idea they’re in the path of an apex predator.
!!!!!!
Everything I’ve been holding back since the night I saw him at Curly’s comes rushing to the surface. Four years of want breaking through the barricade I built out of the rubble of us, tumbling out of me, and taking complete control of my limbs. Suddenly, my arms are around his neck. My back arched as I try to eliminate every fragment of space between his skin and mine. Chris’ hands come around my waist, and he sighs.
He sighs like it’s a relief to finally touch me. He sighs like every breath before that one was a struggle. He sighs, and that one, small sound threatens to undo me, to untangle me like an errant thread of yarn on a well-worn sweater.
This time he doesn’t argue, and in a matter of seconds, the four years I’ve spent without this dissolves into nothingness. His tongue sweeps across my lower lip, and I open for him, moaning at the taste of lost time and stolen futures. Another doomed reunion beginning with a kiss that’s so familiar it feels like tradition.
I’ve drank the finest wines, eaten the most decadent desserts, and still, she’s at the top of my list. Her pleasure, the best thing I’ve ever had the honor of putting in my mouth, the soft column of flesh that makes up her neck, the greatest thing I’ve ever sunk my teeth into.
He is so down bad!
Nothing compares to her. To us. And there aren’t many things in this world that could make me stop indulging in her—especially when my fingers are busy exploring her, seeking out the heat of her sex—but the moment her breathy, desperate assurance reaches my ears, I freeze and pull back because I need to be looking in her eyes when she repeats herself. When her unexpected revelation mocks me for thinking that this moment of fitful passion is something special, something that only belongs to us.
The most primal, possessive part of me wants to scream yes, to demand a list of the names of every man who has heard the crescendo of moans that led to her release so I can wipe them from this mortal plane, but the sensible, more logical part of me knows I have no right. I left her, and she had an obligation to herself to keep living, to continue finding pleasure and satisfaction in the arms of willing partners.
That’s not a problem for me, and despite the blinding rage I feel just knowing that some other bastard has touched her, I’m happy to have the information. Because whether she knows it or not, Mallory has just added another item to the list of things I owe her: an orgasm so fucking intense she forgets she ever knew another man, let alone let one touch her.
I lean forward and drop a kiss on her lips that turns into a line of nips and bites along her jaw, all the way to her ear, where I whisper my response. “Because your experiences with those other men didn’t leave any room for doubt, Mallory. They might have satisfied you for a moment, maybe even a night, but what they gave you isn’t as important as what they taught you.”
Her body jerks when I sink my fingers deeper, but she’s right here with me. Listening intently to my explanation, so she can reply. “They didn’t teach me anything, Chris. They made me come, and when I was done, I walked away.”
“Every time you walked away from one of them, you took a step closer to me, Mallory. And when you’re done running, when you finally come home, when you believe me when I say I’m sorry, and you trust that I’m not going anywhere without you ever again, you’ll agree that every man who’s touched you has only served as a reminder that you were made for me.”
Mallory’s leg tightens around my waist, and I feel her arching off the wall. The music from the club is loud, but it’s quieter here. Just quiet enough for us to hear the obscenely intimate sounds of my plundering fingers and her gasping breaths.
“There will be nights when you wake up in our bed, remembering every time in this very hallway when the lust faded away and the disappointment set in, when your pussy was wet for him, but your heart was desperate for me. You’ll panic at first, thinking you’re back there, in that empty place, but then you’ll realize you’re in my arms, and you’ll know, princess, you’ll be certain you don’t belong with anyone else but me.”
Damn he not playing fair!
“Oh, fuck.” I kiss my way from her shoulder to her mouth. “Is it good, princess?” A tearful moan leaves her lips. “It’s so good, Chris.” “I’m a lucky man right, baby?”
“Am I a lucky man, Mallory?” I drop a kiss to the corner of her mouth, applying more pressure to her clit. “You could have been here with anyone else, there’s not a single man in this club tonight who would have told you no, but you chose me, so that means I’m lucky, right?”
Her teeth sink into her bottom lip, and she’s never looked sexier than she does right now. In this dark hallway with my fingers buried in her pussy and half-lidded eyes that refuse to leave mine even though I know the way I’m pounding into her makes them want to roll into the back of her head. I lean forward, using my own teeth to set her lip free and then pulling back again. “Say it, princess.”
“You’re lucky, Chris. You’re lucky I chose you. You’re lucky you’re going to be the one to make me come tonight. ” “Damn right I am,” I growl, capturing her lips again while my hand becomes a frenzied blur of movement that Mallory meets thrust for thrust until she finally, blessedly, breaks.
Her orgasm is a sweet pulsing and messy gush of satisfaction that coats my fingers and fills the air, invading my nostrils and triggering the unreasonable desire to bottle the scent, to hoard it so no one else in the world gets to have it but me. I kiss her through the entire thing, my hand slowing down significantly but still moving just to prolong the pleasure.
I learned a long time ago that I’m incapable of saying no to Mallory Kent. Any need she expresses is a direct order for me, something I can't ignore, so when she said she was hungry, I knew I had to feed her.
But it’s not her booth. It’s ours, and it’s the first thing we shared after a game of truth or dare led to a kiss that changed our lives. I don’t know what it means that after all these years she still comes to Curly’s and sits here, at the site of our beginning. I know what I want it to mean, and the need to ask her if I’m correct is strong, but I don’t do it.
Jalisa looks fondly between the two of us. “That’s good to hear, and it’s even better to see you two together. I still remember that first night y’all came in. Grandpa couldn’t stop talking about how good y’all looked together. All I heard for the next few weeks was, ‘If you and your little boyfriend ain’t looking at each other like that, then you shouldn’t be wasting each other’s time.’”
All of it still lives inside me. He still lives inside of me. His promises are embedded in my skin. His fingerprints are etched into my bones, his words an ancient spell that awakens parts of me I’ve hidden from everyone, even myself. They ache for him, yearning for his soothing touch and loving whispers, for hope inspired by the earnestness in his eyes when he does things like ask me to let him try to fix us.
“Fine.” I shrug. “But what you do need to do is keep Sloane’s name out of your mouth and figure out why you’re trying to make it her fault that you couldn’t hold on to a man that never wanted to keep you in the first place.”
Boop
“Mal, I’m so sorry,” Sloane says, her voice thick with regret and fear I don’t understand. “We were only together for a few weeks. It was a stupid mistake, and it’s over now.” She reaches over, grabbing my hand, and squeezing hard. “Please, don’t hate me.”
Sloane and Nic. In what world? The question I asked myself last night bounces around my mind. Apparently, in this one.
“Calm down, girl! I’m mad at you for not telling me what was going on. We’re supposed to be best friends, and you’re out here keeping major secrets from me.”
“DOM?” An involuntary gag from deep in my stomach fills the air. “Ugh. Why do you call him that? Never mind, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know anything about your sex life.”
Lol
“Because I was married to your brother.” Oh, I really want to thump her in the forehead now. Only this time, I’d follow it up with a whole speech about how her marriage to Eric doesn’t mean he owns her for the rest of her life. Yes, she loved him. Yes, it sucks that he’s gone, but she honored her vows and loved him until death did them part. Now, she’s free to love and fuck whoever she wants, including Nic.
